rence with the dog. The effect on her waking life was 1 38 Suggestion.
very marked. The next day she could not be induced to go into her bedroom, protesting, ' Doggie in ana,' and crying lustily if the endeavour was made to carry her. Further, for several days the sight of a dog on the street threw her into such convulsive fits of fear that her nurse brought her home to be quieted — a much more violent exhibition, be it noted, than that which occurred after the real occurrence with the dog, but before the dream. The sight or even the picture of a dog still excites great emo- tion, and it is not unlikely that she will carry for life this antipathy, and it will appear later to be unaccountable.^ Normal Aiito-Snggestion. — A further class of sugges- tions, which fall under the general phrase ' auto-sugges- tion,' of a normal type, may be illustrated. In experiment- ing upon the possibility of suggesting sleep to another, I have found certain strong reactive influences upon my own mental condition. Such an effort, which involves the picturing of another as asleep, is a strong auto-sugges- tion of sleep, taking effect in my own case in about five minutes if the conditions be kept constant. The more clearly the patient's sleep is pictured, the stronger be- comes the subjective feeling of drowsiness. After about ten minutes the ability to give strong concentration seems to disintegrate, attention is renewed only by fits and starts and in the presence of great mental inertia, and the on- coming of sleep is almost overpowering. An unfailing- cure for insomnia, speaking for myself, is the persistent effort to put some one else asleep by hard thinking of the end in view, with a continued gentle movement, such as stroking the other with the hand.
1 Fere cites a case of hysterical paralysis brought on by a dream, Sensa- tion et Mouvenient, p. 25. See also Brain, January, 1887.
Sitbconscious Adztlt Suggestion. 139 On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state of drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. The first effort at this, indeed, is promising, for it leads to a state of restfulness and ease akin to the mental composure which is the usual preliminary to sleep; but it goes no farther. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, which effort of attention or effort not to attend only in- tensifies. If the victim of insomnia could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could forget himself altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The contrast between this con- dition and that already described shows that it is the self- idea, with the emotions it awakens, which prevents the suggestion from realizing itself and probably accounts for most cases of insomnia.^ The attempt to analyze out the emotional * moments ' which enter into the latter case yields some such result as the following. It is impossible to think of self, however vaguely and fugitively, without inducing positive emo- tional excitement. All the intense self-motives which practical life keeps alive — the most vigorous expressive influences of our mental nature — at once tend to spring up from their nascent state. There are really no proper distinctions among them: pride ^ shades down to compla- cency, complacency merges into mild interest, interest be- comes intensified in anxiety or fear. Or the mere thought of self starts a train of affairs through consciousness about which personal concern is lively. When one thinks of himself, a kind of egoistic excitement at once arises. It is 1 This is confirmed by the fact that insomnia readily yields to hypnotic suggestion.
2 A friend informs me that when he pictures himself asleep or dead, he cannot help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a corpse.
1 40 Suggestio7i.
undoubtedly these subjective elements, these emotional phases, which prevent such conscious auto-suggestions from realizino- themselves.
Sense Exaltation. — Recent hypnotic discussions have shown the remarkable exaltation which the senses may attain in somnambulism, together with a corresponding refinement in the interpretative faculty. Events, etc., quite subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habit- ual with the experimenter, may suffice to hypnotize his accustomed subject. The possibility of such training of the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient em- phasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial and other personal indications are remarkable. The pro- longed experience of putting H. to sleep — extending over a period of more than six months, during which I slept beside her bed — served to make me alive to a certain class of suggestions otherwise quite beyond notice.^ In the first place, we may note the intense auto-sugges- tion of sleep already pointed out, under the stimulus of re- peated nursery rhymes regularly resorted to in putting the child asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of hearing and the interpretation of sounds coming from her in a dark room. At the end of four or five months, her move- ments in bed awoke me or not according as she herself was awake or not. Frequently after awaking I was distinctly aware of what movements of hers had awaked me.^ A 1 It is well known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants when they are asleep to everything else; but no psychological observer has, to my knowledge, made a personal study of the mental state in himself.
2 This fact is analogous to our common experience of being awaked by a loud noise and then hearing it after we awake; although the explanation is not the same.
Siibconscious Adult Suggestion. 141 movement of her head by which it was held up from her pillow was readily distinguished from the restless movements of her sleep. It was not so much, there- fore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of the function of the 7rcog7ittio7i of sounds heard and of their discriini- jiation.
Again, the same phenomenon to an equally marked degree attended the sound of her breathing. It is well enough known that the smallest functional bodily changes induce changes in both the rapidity and the quality of the respiration.^ In sleep the muscles of inhalation and ex- halation are relaxed, inhalation becomes long and deep, exhalation short and exhaustive, and the rhythmic intervals of respiration much lengthened. Now degrees of relative wakefulness are indicated with surprising delicacy by the slight respiration-sounds given forth by the sleeper. Pro- fessional nurses learn to interpret these indications with great skill. This kind of hearing-exaltation became very pronounced in my operations with my child. After some experience the peculiar breathing of advancing or actual wakefulness in the child was sufficient to wake me. And when awake myself, the change in the infant's respiration- sounds to those indicative of on-coming sleep was sufficient to suggest or bring on sleep in myself. In the dark, also, the general character of her breathing-sounds was inter- preted with great accuracy in terms of her varied needs, her comfort or discomfort, etc. The same kind of sugges- tion from the respiration-sounds now troubles me when- ever any one is sleeping within hearing distance.^ 1 Cf. Vierordt in Gerhardt's Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, p. 215.
2 This is an unpleasant result which I find confirmed by professional infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James 142 Sttggestion.
The reactions in movement upon these suggestions are very marked and appropriate, in customary or habitual Hnes, although the stimulations are quite subconscious. The clearest illustrations in this body of my experiences were afforded by my responses in crude songs to the infant's waking movements and breathing-sounds. I have often waked myself by myself singing one of two nursery rhymes, which by endless repetition night after night had become so automatic as to follow in a reactive way upon the sense-stimulus from the child. It is certainly aston- ishing that among the things which one may get to do automatically, we find automatic singing: but writers on mental defect have claimed that the function of musical or semi-musical expression may be reflex.^ The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which these simple facts are less important illustrations, has very interesting applications in the higher reaches of social, moral, and educational theory. I have applied the Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, prelimi- nary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so — the consequence being that she is ready for the infant when it gets fully awake and cries out.
I may add that these vague suggestive influences, acting upon the operator, have not been sufficiently weighed in the practice of hypnotism. Ochorowicz points this out. It is almost impossible for the operator to give suggestions which he has not himself taken in a measure from the patient, or which both he and the patient have not gotten in common from a common psychic atmos- phere. There is, I fancy, a good deal of this reciprocal influence in the cases of striking rapport between particular operators and patients. Of course I can more easily give eff'ective suggestions to you, if I am myself getting what I suggest in whole or part from you in the first instance.
1 Cf. Wallaschek, Zeitsch. filr Psychologic, VI., Hefte 2, 3.
Inhibitory Suggestion. 143 phrase 'plastic imitation' to certain of the social and educational phenomena.^ § 6. InJdbitory Suggestion.
An interesting class of phenomena which figure perhaps at all the levels of suggestion now described, may be known as * inhibitory suggestions.' The phrase, in its broadest use, refers to all cases in which the suggesting stimulus tends to suppress, check, inhibit, movement. We find this in certain cases just as strongly marked as the positive movement-bringing kind of suggestion. The facts may be put under certain heads in relation to the types of suggestion already enumerated, the general theory being left over for the doctrine of mental development found in subsequent chapters.
Pain Suggestion. — Of course, the fact that pain inhib- its movement occurs at once to the reader. As far as this is true always, and is a native inherited thing, it is organic, and so falls under the head of ' physiological suggestion ' of a negative sort. The child shows contracting move- ments, crying movements, starting and jumping move- ments, shortly after birth, and so plainly that we need not hesitate to say that these pain responses are provided for in his nervous system; and that, in general, they are inhibitory and contrary to those other native reactions which indicate pleasure. Our theory provides, as stated below, a way of accounting for this state of things.^ The influence of pain, besides being thus a physiological datum, extends everywhere through mental development.
1 Mind, January, 1894; cf. Chap. XIL, § 2, below.
2 Especially, Chap. VII., and Chap. XVI., § 2.
1 44 Suggestion.
It is one of the main objects of this book to ascertain its exact function, both in individual and in race develop- ment; so any further word upon it here would only anti- cipate later detailed treatment. The general fact, however, is this: that pain suggests a lively muscular revolt away from every stimulus which produces it; and this state- ment includes, of course, the inhibition of any movement which gives pain, since this movement is itself felt as a stimulating or incoming process along those afferent nerve courses which serve as the apparatus of the muscular sense.
Contj'ol Sjio-crestion. — This covers all cases which show any kind of restraint set upon the movements of the body short of that which comes from voluntary intention. The infant brings the movements of his legs, arms, head, etc., gradually into some kind of order and system. This is accomplished by a system of organic checks and counter- checks, by which associations are formed between mus- cular sensations and certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, hearing, etc. The latter serve as suggestions to the performance of those movements, and those only, which produce the former. The infant learns to hold up his head, to raise his trunk, to extend his hands, to grasp with thumb opposite the four fingers — all purely by such con- trol suggestions. The inhibition and postponement of the natural functions for the suitable time and place also fall here.
These cases come so near to the sphere of voluntary action — indeed, they pass so directly into volitions — that they are more profitably discussed in the chapter devoted to that topic. We will there see reasons for rejecting the view of some, that these are voluntary acts Inhibitory Siiggcstiou. 145 on the part of the child. The few new observations which I have to offer on this topic may also be reserved.
Cojitraiy Suggestion. — By this is meant a tendency of a very remarkable kind observable in many children, no less than in many adults, to do the contrary when any course is suggested. The very word ' contrary ' is used in popular talk to describe an individual who shows this type of conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious whenever rebellion is possible; he seems to kick constitutionally against the pricks. My child E. showed it in her second year in a very marked way. When told that a new taste was 'good' — a suggestion readily taken in its positive sense by her sister at that age — she would turn away with evident distaste even when she had liked the same taste earlier. When asked to give her hand into mine, — a case of direct imitative suggestion, — she thrust it be- hind her back. The sight of hat and cloak was a signal for a tempest, although she enjoyed out-door excursions. These are only instances from many of her contrary sug- gestions at this period. The tendency yielded to the all- conquering onset of imitation late in her second year, and she is now (third year) as docile an imitator as one could desire.
The fact of 'contrariness' in older children — especially boys — is so familiar to all who have observed school children with any care, that I need not cite further de- tails. And men and women often become so enslaved to suggestions of the contrary that they seem only to wait for indications of the wishes of others in order to oppose and thwart them.
Contrary suggestions are to be explained as exaggerated instances of control. It is easy to see that the checks L 146 Suggestion.
and counter-checks already spoken of as constituting the method of control of muscular movement — that these may themselves become so habitual and intense as to dominate the reactions which they should only regulate. The associations between the muscular series and the visual series, let us say, which controls it, comes to work backwards, so that the drift of the organic processes is toward certain contrary reverse movement. Certain of the other associates of the control series also, especially those which, by strong contrasting experiences of pleasure and pain, represent in any sense a contrary series, may become dominating. While in the case of simple move- ments, as I have said, the dominant associates are only the same motor and visual series read backwards; yet the range of contrast effects secured by association extends to all cases of opposing systems of movement and suggestions of conduct. So contrary suggestion becomes clear as a case of auto-suggestion in which the stimulating sensation or thought is itself started up in sharp contrast and habitual opposition to a present external suggestion of the regular kind.
In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find in- teresting cases of very refined contrary suggestion. In the man of ascetic temperament, the duty of self-denial takes the form of a regular contrary suggestion in oppo- sition to every invitation to self-indulgence, however inno- cent. And the over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is a prey to the eternal remonstrances from the contrary which intrude their advice into all his decisions. In matters of thought and belief, also, cases are common of stubborn opposition to evidence, and persistence in opinion, which are in no way due to the cogency of the contrary argu- ment, or to real force of conviction.
Inhibiloiy Suggestion. 147 Bashfiilncss. — I may first give my observations on this interesting fact of child-life, considered as an exhibition of what I have called ' inhibitory suggestion '; and then show its bearings.
The general character of a child's bashfulness need not be enlarged upon. Its form of expression is also familiar. It begins to appear generally in the first year, showing itself as an inhibiting influence upon the child's normal activities. Its most evident signs are nervous fingerings of dress, objects, hands, etc., turning away of head and body, bowing of head and hiding of face, awkward move- ments of trunk and legs, and in extreme cases, reddening of the face, puckering of lips and eye muscles, and finally cries and weeping. An important difference, however, is observable in these exhibitions according as the child is accompanied by a familiar person or not. When the mother or nurse is present, many of the signs seem to be useful in securing concealment from the eye of strangers — behind dress or apron or figure of the familiar person. In the absence, however, of such a refuge the child sinks often into a state of general passivity or inhibition of movement, akin to the sort of paralysis usually associated with great fear.
This analogy with the physical signs of fear, gives a real indication, I think, of the race origin of bashfulness, which is probably a differentiation of fear. This I cannot dwell upon now, but simply suggest that bashfulness arose as a special utility-reaction on occasion of fear of persons, in view of personal qualities possessed by the one who fears. The concealing tendency also shows the parallel develop- ment of intimate personal relationships of protection, sup- port, etc., and so gives indications of certain early social conditions.
148 Suggestion.
My observations of bashfulness — not to dwell upon descriptions which have been made before by others — serve to throw the illustrations of it into certain periods or epochs which I may briefly characterize in order.
I. The child is earliest seized with what may be called 'primary' or 'organic' bashfulness akin to the organic stages in the well-recognized instinctive emotions, such as fear, anger, sympathy, etc.^ This exhibition occurs in the first year and marks the attitudes of the infant toward strangers. It is not so much inhibitory of action in this first stage; it rather takes on the positive signs of fear, with protestation, shrinking, crying, etc. It falls easily under the type of reaction described as ' sensori-motor suggestion,' above; being very largely provided for in the nervous equipment of the child at this age.
The duration of this stage depends largely upon the child's social environment. The passage from the attitude of instinctive antipathy toward out-siders, and that of affection equally instinctive toward the members of the household, over into a more reasonable sense of the differ- ence between proved friends and unproved strangers — this depends directly upon the growth of the sense of general social relationships established by experience.^ One of the most important elements in the child's prog- ress, in this way, out of its ' organic ' social life, is the degree and variety of its intercourse with other children, and indeed also with other adults, than those of its own home. Children carried to summer hotels every year, or 1 On which last see Chap. XL, § 3, below, and cf. my Handbook of Psy- chology, II., Chap. VIII., § 7.
2 The experience, e.g., largely got through imitation and its clarifying influ- ence upon the sense of self in the child: see below, Chap. XL, § 3.
hihibitory Suggestion. 149 brought frequently into the drawing-room to see the mothers' callers, soon lose all * fear of strangers ' and become quite frankly approachable, even showing great liking for society at the tender age of a year and a half or so. On the other hand children kept in extreme isolation from strangers, young or old, may show extraordinary paralysis of all motor functions, of a markedly organic kind, steadily for two or three years later on in their devel- opment, when brought suddenly into the presence of those who are unfamiliar.^ The rapidity with which a child gets over its organic bashfulness varies also remarkably with the attitudes of older children whom he sees. Nothing else cures a child of this physical shyness as quickly as the example of an older child. This is also one of the marked offices of imi- tation. It presents to the imitative child an example or ' copy,' which tends to bring out his action in definite ways earlier than his own organic growth would in itself have warranted. The child by instinct imitates movements, etc., which he would otherwise have waited to acquire largely by accident. In this way the stages of social growth are very materially shortened.
2. I find next a period of strong social tendency in the child, of toleration of strangers and liking for persons gen- erally, in great contrast to the attitudes of organic distrust of the earlier period just mentioned. There seems to be in this a reaction against the instinct of social self-preser- vation characteristic of the earlier stage. It is due in all ^ See the remarks on such * isolation,' in reference to the development of personality, in my short article in the Century Magazine, December, 1894, repeated in substance below, Chap. XII., § 3. The matter is to be more fully developed in my proposed volume of ' Interpretations.'
1 50 Suggestio7i, likelihood to the actual experience of the child in receiv- ing kind treatment from strangers — kinder in the way of indiscriminate indulgence than the more orderly treatment which it gets from its own parents. Everybody comes to be trusted on first acquaintance by the child, through the teachings of his own experience, just as in the earlier years everybody was treated by him, under the instincts of his inherited nature, as an agent of possible harm.
That this new phase of social attitude is learned from experience is seen in the absence of this confidence, on the part of the child, toward animals. The fear, purely of the organic stage, persists in the child's thoughts of animals which are new to him, and only becomes more confirmed as he fails to get the same reasons for * modify- ing his opinion ' that teach him to tolerate strange persons more and more comfortably. The contrast is strongly brought out sometimes when such a young child meets ani- mals in public places. He then turns to persons for pro- tection, even to the strange persons before whom, under ordinary circumstances, he would stand abashed. His na- tive sense of social protection, at first limited to his natural protectors in his own house, has come to extend to all persons, as against such common enemies as the brutes. Later on, as we know, the domestic animals get taken over, also, from the one class into the other.
3. Finally I note the return of bashfulness in the child's second and third years. This time it is bashful- ness in the proper sense of the term, rid of the element of fear, and rid, largely, of its compelling organic force and methods of expression. The bashful three-year-old smiles in the midst of his hesitations, draws near to the object of his curiosity, is evidently overwhelmed with the Inhibitory Suggestion. 151 sense of his own presence rather than with that of his new acquaintance, and indulges in actions calculated to keep notiee drazvn to Jnniself.
The reality of this group of the child's social attitudes, and the great contrast which they present to those of the organic period, can hardly have too much emphasis. It is one of the great outstanding facts of his progressive relation to the elements of his social milieu. There is a sort of self-exhibition, almost of coquetry, in the child's behaviour; w^hich shows the most remarkable commin- gling of native organic elements with the social lessons of personal well- and ill-desert which are now becoming of such importance in his life. All this makes so marked a contrast to the exhibitions of organic bashfulness that it constitutes in my opinion a most important resource for the study of the evolution of the social sense.
In this last case we have before us, in short, a phenome- non of rather complex self-consciousness — a thing of ieieal value — and its suggestion-complexes, as they body themselves forth in the child's reactions, tell of his extraor- dinary progress in the understanding of himself and the world. He now begins to show the germ of modesty and of all the emotions akin to and contrary to it.
With this degree of progress I shall now leave the child, reserving for my later work the discussion of the develop- ment of true modesty in its later stages in the intricate special movements of adolescence: but it remains to point out the congruity between this scheme of the child's dif- ferent behaviours in respect to persons and the different mental suggestions which in an earlier place ^ we found him actually getting from persons.
1 Cf. § 3 of this chapter, above, which restates an article on ' Personality Suggestion,' in The Psychological Review, I., p. 274, May, 1894.
1 5 2 Suggestion, It will be remembered that several aspects of the child's personal environment were found to appeal to him in a progressive way. It seemed fair to think that persons are at first to him only a peculiar part of his 'projected,' presented, objective, world of things. He has ' personal projects,' as we found it well to call them, before he has any sense of himself as a spiritual being or as the subject of his own mental processes. The getting of objects seems to be part of the business for which his nervous equipment more or less adequately provides, and among these objects, the persons who move around him get them- selves characterized by very important marks.