In order to prove that suggestibility played an important part in the phenomena, it would be necessary to show that all witnesses of the phenomena were suggestible--for the phenomena were seen by all in a slightly varying degree.
In treating it, the self is unified, abnormal suggestibility is removed, and the patient is cured!
On the side of conduct his suggestibility is equally remarkable.
Now, such persons undoubtedly represent a variation towardsuggestibility of the most delicate and singular kind.
This goes to show that the Nancy school are right in saying that while in Hypnosis suggestibility is exaggerated to an enormous degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral sentiments, social opinions, etc.
Responding to either end of the suggestibility scale is indicative of success with hypnosis.
The time required for the successful accomplishment of this test depends upon the degree of suggestibility of the subject.
Inducing hypnosis merely creates a mood or state in which the powers of suggestibility are heightened.
You need only use this latent suggestibility and make it work for you.
It is true, he was not using self-hypnosis as has been outlined in this book, but he had now achieved a heightened state of suggestibility (hypnosis) and was using this state to further his own ends.
I do so to illustrate the point that I made earlier in this chapter that so long as certain of the subject's requirements are met, whether valid or invalid, the subject's suggestibility is greatly enhanced.
Achieving hypnosis, therefore, is a matter of directing this suggestibility that we all possess into the channels that will finally produce the hypnotic state.
What would you say about the suggestibility of a person who doesn't want to talk about hypnosis?
The build-up of suggestions convinces the subject he is in a heightened state of suggestibility and can benefit from the therapeutic suggestions of the hypnotist or his own.
My contention is that we are all suggestible and, therefore, being hypnotized or hypnotizing ourselves is just a matter of increasing thesuggestibility that we already possess.
The use of the aids helps increase the suggestibility of the subject toward hypnosis.
It becomes a matter of manipulating this suggestibility skillfully in order to achieve results.
The goal is to increase your suggestibility which, in turn, means deepening of the hypnotic state.
The high degree of their suggestibility during those hours in the dark house may be taken for granted.
The spellbound audience in a theater or in a picture house is certainly in a state of heightened suggestibility and is ready to receive suggestions.
It is along this second line that the theory of mental dissociation attempts to explain the increased suggestibility of hypnosis.
There can be no doubt that the increased suggestibility and all the other symptoms of hypnosis imply some abnormal condition of the brain of a temporary and harmless nature.
The amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer.
The hallucinations in the second state show a certain creativeness which seems to be conditioned by the auto-suggestibility of this state.
There is here no fundamental distinction from somnambulic dissociation of personality, but only a difference of degree, which rests upon the intensity of the primary auto-suggestibility or disintegration of the psychic elements.
To a critical intelligence it is unthinkable that suggestibility and suggestion can be excluded in the cathartic method.
The situation that ensued at the second séance is to be explained by the coincidence of this energising suggestion with the heightened suggestibility conditioned by the darkness.
The influence of darkness upon the suggestibility of the sense-organs is well known.
It is well recognised that almost any emotional excitement increases the suggestibility of the individual, though the explanation of the fact remains obscure.
A further ground of the suggestibility of the crowd is that prevalence of emotional excitement which was discussed in the foregoing pages.
A second condition, which co-operates with the foregoing to keep the intellectual processes of crowds at a low level, is the increased suggestibility of its members.
This sensitiveness is, as Sidis has clearly seen, closely associated with the suggestibility of the gregarious animal, and therefore with that of man.
A state of suggestibility is always a pre-condition of suggestion, and suggestibility means just such an isolation and dissociation of the suggested idea as has been described.
It is of especial importance to note that this suggestibility is not general, and that it is only herd suggestions which are rendered acceptable by the action of instinct.
The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward the sentiments and attitudes of B and C.
A crowd in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing.
The suggestibility of the hypnotic makes these infinitesimal signals specially dangerous in his case.
I allude to that suggestibilityof which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect.
The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are then: (1) A condition of rapport among the members of the group with a certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility incident to it.
Similarly, if the idea appear from without, it, too, is not inhibited, which produces the suggestibility that in turn accounts for catalepsy.
This makes one think of two tendencies: suggestibility on the one hand, and opposition on the other.
If such things happen in the normal waking life, they may assuredly happen in the narrowed and intensive suggestibility of the hypnotic state.
All the ‘methods’ of hypnotising are so many tricks to bring about a state of undivided attention and a corresponding suggestibility in the subject.
Such a crowd may be pushed into any paths, chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any ends.
But the degree of suggestibility changes no less from hour to hour with the individual.
In a state of fatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence of strong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reënforced.
The highest degree of suggestibility is that mental state which we call hypnotism, in which the power to resist the proposed idea of action is reduced to a minimum.
Yet neither gambling and taking risks, nor suggestibility and imitation, are the whole of the story.
I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is only an effect.
In considering the psychology of suggestion, we recognized at once that the degree of natural suggestibility varies excessively.
The patient who can touch the relics of the saints or bathe in the waters of Lourdes or at least feel on his forehead the hand of the minister, is wrought up to a state of suggestibility which makes suggestions easily effective.
But it is evident that this degree of suggestibility means at the same time the most fertile soil for every chance suggestion and for influences which are perhaps entirely unintended.
But the abnormal increase of suggestibility parallel to that of hypnotism for suggestions from without exists for suggestions from within, mainly in nervous diseases, especially in neurasthenic, hysteric, and psychasthenic states.
In claiming that hypnotism depends upon the over-attention to the hypnotizing person, we admit that the increased suggestibilitybelongs entirely to suggestions which come from without.
Just as the normal suggestibility showed itself very different with different persons, the degree of artificial reënforcement varies still more.
The non-suggestible mind is only to a slight degree influenced by any of these proposed forms of suggestion as long as the suggestibilityitself is not heightened.
Within certain limits, we might almost say that this increase of suggestibility for autosuggestion is the fundamental characteristic of these diseases, just as increase of suggestibility for heterosuggestions characterizes hypnotism.
The increased suggestibilitythus sets in by his own imagination which may be stirred up by slight visual or tactual or acoustic stimuli or by monotonous words or by feelings of relaxation and especially by words which encourage sleep.
All that is needed is a higher degree of suggestibility than is found in the normal life.
But the chief difference lies after all in the different degrees of suggestibility among those who receive such impressions.
Thus suggestibility is really a practical factor in every walk of life.
Much less objectionable is it to make use of the effect of that period of half-sleep which precedes the natural sleep, and which is for many a period of increased suggestibility for autosuggestions.
An abnormal suggestibilityfor autosuggestions stands in the foreground.
Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to admit any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and inhibitions.
These appeals to suggestibility all come under the head of drama.
Suggestibility is the quality of liability to suggestive influence.
Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond.
The phenomena of suggestion and suggestibility demand some attention because the members of a group are continually affecting each other by them, and great mass phenomena very often are to be explained by them.
Sidenote: Finding Out the Close-Mouthed] One quality entering into the ability to keep a secret is the degree ofsuggestibility of the individual.
Rivers found amongst both Papuans and Todas, that, as to suggestibility in perception, they showed a high degree of independence of judgment.
But special suggestibility (I should say) is the liability to adopt a belief on testimony not only in the absence of evidence, but against evidence; and contra-suggestibility is the liability to reject a belief against the evidence.
Finally, if sorcery is persecuted, it excites the contra-suggestibility which in some neurotics becomes a passion capable of supporting them at the stake.
Contra-suggestibility in general is the opposite tendency.
A necessary complement to the suggestive devices of a wizard is the suggestibility of his clients.
There is now a tendency to ascribe it to suggestibility or, as I should prefer, to receptivity.
The explanation of the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic subject lies in the abolition, total or partial, of his stream of consciousness.
Psychologists regard hypnotic suggestibility as only a further stage of this sleepy non-resistance, but I see in the former a more active desire to accept.
We shall find them display suggestibility and but slight capacity for reasoning, while they are open to the influence of the leaders of crowds, and they are guided in the main by unconscious sentiments.
The patient’s suggestibility was a favorable factor in his cure, but there were some unfavorable features.
Myers argues that the stupor preceding mutism is the antithesis of suggestibility and is, in fact, a condition of extreme autofixity.
Janet has cited one case where suggestibility was developed during recovery from delirium tremens.
He did not recognize the dependence of suggestibility upon sexuality and the activity of the libido.
Suggestibility in his sense is nothing more than an inclination to transference, bounded so narrowly that there is no room for any negative transfer.
One writer after another has placed as basic in social instinct, sympathy, imitation, suggestibility and the recognition of "likeness.
