And the cure for these painful old memories that are driving neurotic behavior? Freud and Breuer wrote: "It will now be understood how it is that the psychotherapeutic procedure which we have described in these pages has a curative effect. It brings to an end the operative force of the idea which was not abreacted in the first instance, by allowing its strangulated affect to find a way out through speech; and it subjects it to associative correction by introducing it into normal consciousness under light hypnosis or by removing it through the physician's suggestion, as is done in somnambulism [hypnosis] accompanied by amnesia."
Freud's main technique for inducing what he called somnambulism was to wave his hand or his fingers from side to side in front of his patient's face while suggesting that the person relax and then consider her or his problem or issue. Freud also used techniques borrowed from stage hypnotists, including "tapping," a technique wherein Freud alternately tapped two fingertips on the person's forehead, cheeks, or collarbone, continually from left to right, until a trance was induced, and another technique in which he put his hand on the client's forehead and applied increasing pressure.
Hypnotic-induction techniques such as these were used to treat people across Europe and America; Freud was using quick-induction trance states to give him access to the inner workings of his patients' minds, helping him to flesh out his theory of the unconscious.
But hypnosis was not uncontroversial. Ever since the father of one of Mesmer's young female patients forced his way into Mesmer's treatment room to "rescue" his daughter, the misuse of hypnosis was a hot topic. Stage demonstrations of hypnosis were among the most popular forms of entertainment throughout the mid- and late 1800s, and usually involved a beautiful female assistant who was put into a trance and then commanded to give blind obedience to the hypnotist.
In 1885, the novelist Jules Clarette published in Paris a work of fiction titled Jean Mornas, about a hypnotist who caused people to steal for him and left them with no memory of the events. In July 1886, as the novel was being translated into German and English, the French Revue De l'Hypnotisme magazine published the results of a series of experiments that sensationalized Clarette's novel: in those experiments, physicians hypnotized their patients and then successfully commanded them to steal. The revelations of these experiments were very troubling to the French public. When Jean Mornas appeared in German in 1889, its publication caused quite a sensation.
By 1891, Freud was still writing enthusiastically about hypnosis, claiming that he had "become convinced that quite a number of symptoms of organic diseases are accessible to hypnosis," but, backpedaling because of the bad press surrounding Clarette's novel, Freud added that "in view of the dislike of hypnotic treatment prevailing at present, it seldom comes about that we can employ hypnosis except after all other kinds of treatment have been tried without success."
Nonetheless, Freud continued to use hypnosis--particularly bilateral eye-motion induction techniques--and continued to get good results from the technique. And he wasn't alone in this: by 1890 most psychiatrists were using the finger-waving-before-the-eyes "hypnotism" system to produce rapid psychotherapeutic results. Braid's refinement of Mesmer's technique was used almost universally across the psychiatry community, and all indications are that it was producing positive results for many patients.
In 1894, however, George Du Maurier changed all that.
Freud's Change of Course
Most people alive today won't remember Du Maurier's name, or even the title of his notorious work of fiction; most people do, however, recognize the name of the villain Du Maurier created. Du Maurier's novel Trilby, published in 1894, became a worldwide best seller in its day and still stands as one of the most famous books of the nineteenth century.
Trilby played on both the growing public fear of hypnosis and the new wave of anti-Semitism that was building in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Du Maurier described his villain in explicit and stereotypical terms:
First, a tall bony individual of any age between thirty and forty-five, of Jewish aspect, well-featured but sinister. He was very shabby and dirty, and wore a red be'ret and a large velveteen cloak, with a big metal clasp at the collar. His thick, heavy, languid, lusterless black hair fell down behind his ears on to his shoulders, in that musician-like way that is so offensive to the normal Englishman. He had bold, brilliant black eyes, with long heavy lids, a thin, sallow face, and a beard of burnt-up black which grew almost from his under eyelids; and over it his mustache, a shade lighter, fell in two long spiral twists. He went by the name of Svengali, and spoke fluent French with a German accent, and humorous German twists and idioms, and his voice was very thick and mean and harsh, and often broke into a disagreeable falsetto.
Du Maurier's villain, Svengali, was an unemployed musician who used hypnosis to put a beautiful young woman named Trilby under his spell. Svengali brought Trilby into a trance using the same methods Freud was using with his clients and that many stage hypnotists were then using as well: bilateral eye movement and tapping her forehead, cheeks, and upper chest left--right, left--right.
Du Maurier wrote:
Svengali told her to sit down on the divan, and sat opposite to her, and bade her look him well in the white of the eyes. "Recartez-moi pien tans le blanc tes yeaux" [Look into the whites of my eyes]. Then he made little passes and counterpasses on her forehead and temples and down her cheek and neck. Soon her eyes closed and her face grew placid.
Once Trilby was under Svengali's power, he mercilessly exploited her sexually and financially until, at the end of the story, she dies tragically of exhaustion while staring at Svengali's picture.
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