In the 6 years between 1887 and 1893, Drs A. W. Van Renterghem and F. Van Eeden treated more than a thousand patients. They published their results in French in Psycho-Therapie (1894).Reference Wilson1 Its larger purpose was to counter prevailing materialistic conceptions of the human mind. Both authors allied themselves to the therapeutic methods of Ambroise August Liébeault and Hyppolite Bernheim. But they wanted to distance themselves from the dramatic hypnotic séances given by Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, and the dubious, but undeniably popular, activities of various stage hypnotists, magnetists and mountebanks. For this reason they preferred the use of the term psychotherapy.
Several years agoReference van Eeden2 we maintained that the first concern of the doctor practicing psychotherapy should be to try to increase the psychological stability of his patient. We had no argument with the view that a certain link exists between hysteria and hypnosis or suggestibility, and we thought it could be detected in the psychological dissociation or instability which is innate in the hysteric and artificially induced in the hypnotised.
But at the same time we pointed to the deplorable fact that psychotherapy, whose theoretical basis was founded by Hack Tuke and whose practical application we learned from Liébault, has been confused and conflated with hypnotism. In fact, the two should be distinguished as clearly as possible. We are absolutely convinced that the word hypnotism, in Charcot's sense, has nothing to do with psychotherapy, and only produces confusion.
The only clear and durable way of conceptualising psychotherapy seems to us to be the following: that psychotherapy combats illness through the mobilisation of the patient's psychological organ; suggestion, exercise and strengthening through encouragement are its instruments. This conception would surely be seen as an obvious fact, and the most innocent in the world, were it not for the confusion brought about by the abnormal practices of hypnotism.
That it is possible to induce a state of sleep in many patients by verbal influence, and that experience teaches us the influence exercised over a sleeping person or one half asleep, or in a passive state, acts more powerfully than in the waking state; constitutes moreover a simple fact, not in any way frightening, and is a useful ingredient in the application of psychotherapy. It permits us to apply psychological therapy methodically.
For the doctor who practises psychotherapy, hypnotic experiments simply constitute a warning that he could harm his patients if he doesn't stick strictly to therapeutic aims. That is to say, he could increase abnormal suggestibility and thus produce an undesirable lasting state of instability, whereas normal suggestibility is absolutely sufficient for his ends, notably cure.
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