Hypnotic Suggestion Updates

If the purpose of the sitting is to stimulate an emotional attitude, as when the patient is to be cured of an objectionable habit, such as nail-biting or smoking, when he must be taught to feel disgust or aversion to the object of his addiction, the emotion should be aroused by some visual image or by some imaginary yet realistic experience, rather than be suggested merely in words. A hypnotist will do wisely to memorize a number of stories that can serve the purpose. "When I suggest anger," write Schilder and Kauders, "I never suggest this feeling alone, but must always suggest a content of reproduction or of conception together with the idea. In fact, in general, much better results will be obtained in suggestions of this type by emphasizing the content and not the feeling of the emotion as such... This attitude simultaneously furnishes us with the general formulation that every conception, every perception, every idea, has its appropriate vasovegetative consequences. . . If I desire an acceleration of my heart-beat, I can attain it by visualizing a terrifying conception." To a scientist well versed in the functional mechanism of human psychology, such a procedure is not a novel device, but an old and basic rule of suggestion.