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MIKKEL
BORCH-JACOBSEN
Hypnosis in Psychoanalysis
BY FREUD
constitutea usefulpointof departure
Two STATEMENTS
for discussing hypnosisin psychoanalysis.The firstone is taken fromthe nine-
Lecturesto Psychoanalysis:
teenth of the Introductory
began when
I have been able to say thatpsychoanalysisproper [dieeigentliche
Psychoanalyse]
I dispensed withthe help of hypnosis.'
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27
Summer1989(C
THE REGENTS
OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
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unconscious.5
Again, in TheEgo and theId, hypnosisis elevated to the rank of paradigm of the
unconscious,exactlyon a par withdreams,and thereforealso as a kindof second
"royalroad" of analysis:
To mostpeople who have been educatedin philosophy
theidea of anything
psychical
whichis not also consciousis inconceivable.... I believethisis onlybecausetheyhave
neverstudiedtherelevantphenomenaofhypnosis
and dreams,which-quiteapartfrom
thisview.Theirpsychology
pathologicalmanifestations-necessitate
of consciousness
is
incapableofsolvingtheproblemsofdreamsand hypnosis.6
These citations,of course, are farfromexhaustive,but theyare alreadysufficient
to establishthat,for Freud, thefactof hypnosisis certainlyequivalentto thefact
of the unconscious (the unique "object"of psychoanalysis).
This factof hypnosis,thistypicalexample of theunconscious,simultaneously
representsa formidable"riddle"forpsychoanalysis.This is "theriddle [Rdtsel]of
suggestiveinfluence,"the riddle of suggestion.Afterall, whyis one susceptible,
under hypnosis,to "an influencein theabsence of all logicalreason"?What is this
strangeemotionalmalleabilityof thehypnotizedperson,whichcauses himto feel,
perceive, and sometimeseven experience in his body everythingthat the hypHypnosisin Psychoanalysis
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93
notistdirects?How to explain this"paralysis"of the will,thisradical disengagementof self,whichis at the same timea radicalengagementbyanother?In short,
where do the extraordinarypowerof thehypnotistand theextraordinarydocility
of the hypnotizedperson come from?
This enigma, it mustbe stressed,is both the enigma of the unconscious and
thatof a certainrelationshipto others,perhaps even thatof the unconsciousas a
relationshipto others.It arises in GroupPsychology
and theAnalysisoftheEgo when
Freud's investigationinto the essence of the social tie-and, more generally,of
what he calls the "emotionaltie" (Gefiihlsbindung)
to others-provides the opportunityfora protracteddebate withGabrielTarde, GustaveLe Bon, and Hyppolite
Bernheim, all advocates of the theoryof suggestion.Freud heartilyrejects this
theoryin chapter 4: the notion of suggestion,supposed to explain everything,
cannot explain itself,he says; it is onlya "magic word" (Zauberwort)
employed to
explain, tautologically,"the magic of words."Freud thereforedeclines to explain
hypnoticsuggestion and related phenomena (such as "mental contagion" in a
crowd,the "sympatheticinducementof emotions,"Einfdhlung,
and so on) by the
theory
of suggestion-a theorybased on thehypothesisof a kindof physicalreflex
(and, in thissense, unconscious) mimesisof others.But thisrefusalcertainlydoes
not remove the mysterythatthe veryfactof suggestionstillrepresentsfor him.
For Freud himselfhas no alternativetheoryto propose: the one he attemptsto
put forward-the theoryof thelibido-ultimatelyfailswhen confrontedwiththe
phenomenon to be explained.
It is impossibleto retracehere the extraordinarily
complex route thatleads,
in GroupPsychology
and theAnalysisoftheEgo, to the admission(or half-admission)
of thisfailure.Here I shall onlysay,on thebasis of previousanalyses,7thatFreud
does attemptthroughoutthisworkto interpretthe social or (and it comes to the
same thing,in thiscontext)"emotional"tie to othersas a libidinalor erotic phenomenon, a phenomenon of love. Thus it is for love that someone would surrender to a hypnotist,forlove thatmembersof a crowdor a societywould identify
withone another,and again forlove thattheywould submitthemselvespolitically
to the crowd's Father-Head-Ringleader.In otherwords,the libido,and not suggestion, is what would constitutethe basis of the relationship to others (to
and the
"objects") in general. Nevertheless,a close reading of GroupPsychology
Analysisof theEgo establishes that Freud himself was not satisfiedwith this
answer-first of all because thewhole problemof the"social"and "emotional"tie
confrontedhim in manywayswiththe paradox of a "rapportsans rapport"with
others, an identificatory
relationship:ambivalent,preceding the ob-positionof
the Ego and the object, and thereforealso precedingany libidinalobject or any
eroticrelationship.In short,just as the libidinalhypothesiswas based on the idea
of a monadic and substantialsubject (desiring,instinctual,and so on) whom the
relationshipto otherswould affectonlysecondarily,so too did thewhole problem
of the social-emotionaltie make it necessaryto envisage a kind of originalaltera94
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95
of all questions; hence, the importanceof reconsideringthisso-called abandonment,not so much to initiatea "returnto hypnosis"as to examine, in lightof the
questions Freud was asking himselfin his last phase, the reasons whyin his first
phase he had believed, rathertoo quickly,thatthese issues were settled.In other
words, what is importantis to reconsiderwhat Freud called the "prehistory"of
psychoanalysis,to returnto itwiththe suspicionthatthis"prehistory"belongs to
a certainfutureof psychoanalysisratherthan to a long-dead past.
It is certainlywithrespectto everythingtouchingon the transferencethatthe
"resurgence of hypnosis"(to quote the titleof Leon Chertok'srecent book) is
most spectacular in Freud. And this is hardlysurprising,if we reflectthat the
transference-that strange "rapport sans rapport" set up between patient and
analyst-always representedforFreud a kind of blueprintor,betteryet,a repetitionof the "emotionaltie"to others.Thereforeitis onlynaturalthattheproblems,
gave rise should have
both theoreticaland practical,to whichthisGeffihlsbindung
with the crucial
reappear,
to
of
"rapport"
caused the whole problem hypnotic
question now being to know how the transferencerelationshipcan finallybe distinguishedfrom the hypnotictie,which analysisinitiallyrefused to mobilize in
the cure.
It is thisquestion thatI would like to examine, byattemptingto "repeat" (in
Heidegger's but also Freud's possible meaning of thisword) thatpart of history
which runs fromthe discardingof hypnosisup to the definitiveisolationof the
transferenceas a distinctproblem,and hoping thatthisjourney willfinallyproto others.
vide some insightinto the "riddle" of the Gefithlsbindung
To recall some historicalfact,in December 1887 Freud told Wilhelm Fliess
thathe had immersed himselfin "hypnotism"and thathe had already obtained
"all sorts of small but peculiar successes" (letter2).9 "Hypnotism"at that time
meant "psychotherapyby suggestion,"as practicedby Bernheim and the Nancy
School. Briefly,here is what hypnosisconsistedof. A verbalsuggestionwas given
("You are now in a deep sleep," and so on), followedbya furthersuggestion,still
verbal,thatthe symptomor itsimmediatecause should disappear. This method,
of the subjectsand at the same
based on the deliberateuse of the "suggestibility"
timeon what Freud was alreadycallingthe"magicalpowerof words,"is described
favorablyand at length in a series of articleswrittenby Freud around 1890,
in the article "Hypnosis" in
mainly in his review of August Forel's Hypnotism,
Anton Bum's dictionary,and in "PsychicalTreatment."
In May 1889, Freud began the treatmentof Emmyvon N., in whichhe first
used the "catharticmethod" developed byJosefBreuer. This method stillused
hypnosis, but no longer for direct suggestion. Instead, hypnosiswas used to
reimmersethe patientintothat"hypnoid"stateduringwhicha "traumatic"event
supposedly had become embedded like an "internalforeignbody" in the psychic mechanism,and thus to facilitatethe recollectionor reexperiencingof that
event. According to thishypothesis,derived fromJean-MarieCharcot,hysterics
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97
Lacan, in a passage of "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psy-
choanalysis"worthquoting here:
If thisevent [whichis "the pathogenicevent dubbed the traumaticexperience"] was recognized as being the cause of the symptom,it was because the puttinginto words of the
event (in the patient's"stories")determinedthe liftingof the symptoms.Here the term
"prisede conscience,"
borrowed fromthe psychologicaltheorywhichwas at once attributed
to this fact,retains a prestigethat deserves what we consider to be a healthydistrustof
explanations thatdo officeas self-evidenttruths.The psychologicalprejudices of the day
were opposed to acknowledgingin verbalizationas such anyrealityotherthanitsownflatus
vocis.The factremainsthatin the hypnoticstateverbalizationis dissociatedfromtheprise
de conscience,
and this factalone is enough to require a revisionof the conception of its
effects.
13
How, then, Lacan wonders,could Breuer and Freud have attributedthe dispelling of hystericalsymptomsto a prisede conscience,
to insight,to conscious recollectionof the traumaticevent,sincein hypnosistherecollectionoperates farmore
in a state of absence, of unconsciousness,of forgetfulnessof self? This point is
far fromincidental,for in cuttingthroughthisambiguity-in maintainingonly
the one aspect, that of conscious recollection-Freud founded psychoanalysis
proper, die eigentlichePsychoanalyse.
In the fall of 1892 Freud began to use the method called "freeassociation,"
fromwhich all suggestiveor hypnoticelementswere graduallypurged, untilthe
definitiveabandonment of hypnosisaround 1896. But whywas hypnosisabandoned? Why was there thisshifttowarda purelynarrative,demimeticized,deemotionalized therapeuticmethod? We know that the reasons Freud gave later
on were quite diverse: hypnosis would provide only temporaryremission of
symptoms,it was apparentlypowerlessto overcomethe "resistance"(Freud also
saysthe "autocratism")of certainsubjects,or (and here is an apparent contradiction) it would preventanalysisof this"resistance"bysuppressingit artificially.
On closerexamination,however,we observethatthedivorcebetweenanalysis
and hypnosisoccurredessentiallyovertheissue of remembering.The initialidea,
in fact,was that one could just as well obtain the patient'srecollectionswithout
hypnosis.This idea had been supplied bycertainexperimentsof Bernheim,who
showed that it was possible to dispel posthypnoticamnesia merelyby applying
lightpressure on the patient'sforehead once the patientwas awake. It was this
Druckmethode,
significantly
qualifiedas "lighthypnosis,"thatFreud began to use,
although finallyhe trustedthe patient'sspeech alone, speech freeto sayanything
was said). Thus, ifhypnosiswas abandoned, itwas firstof all
(so long as everything
in its capacityas a simple technical
procedure
designed to bringabout the recollectionof "scenes,"whetherreal or,lateron, in fantasy.Fromthisremembering,this
recollectionof "forgotten"ideas, Freud continued to expect the reliefof symptoms,and thisis whyhypnosiswas rejectedin favorof a therapyusing language
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he has verbalized it ... thathe has made it pass into the verbeor more precisely,into the
eposbywhichhe bringsback into presenttimethe originsof his own person. And he does
this in a language that allows his discourse to be understood by his contemporaries,and
which furthermorepresupposes theirpresentdiscourse.Thus it happens thatthe recitation of the eposmay include a discourse of earlier days in its own archaic, even foreign
tensewithall theanimationoftheactor;but
language, ormayevenpursueitscoursein thepresent
it is like an indirectdiscourse,isolated betweenquotation markswithinthe thread of the
narration,and, ifthe discourseis playedout,itis on a stageimplyingthe presencenot only
of the chorus,but also of spectators.
Hypnosisin Psychoanalysis
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99
It is notable that"verbalization,"supposed to bringabout the reliefof symptoms,is defined here bytwotraits:1) itis speech-thatis, a discourseaddressed to
an otherand throughwhichthe subjectis supposed to recognizehimself
in his own
truth;and 2) itis a story
(Lacan also callsitan epos,no doubt thinkingof the"mixed
diegesis"of Plato), since even when thesubjectpresentshis "story""in the present
tense withall the animationof the actor,"thismimesisis held to constitutea kind
of quotation "in the thread of the story"addressed to the physician.
Yet thisidea of hysterical"verbalization,"no doubt valid forthe classicalanalyticalsituation,causes major problemsif,withLacan, we transpose it onto the
hypnoticsituation.Indeed, the least we can say is thatin thiscase thereis not an
I facingtheyouand thereforeno parolepleine,either,no symbolicmediation,no
"intersubjectivity,"
no dialecticof recognitionwhereinthesubjectreceiveshis own
message in invertedform.The other,in hypnosis,does not appear as other,and
if the subject does recognize himselfin the other,it is ratherby totallyidentifying
withhim.
To grasp this,we have onlyto thinkof hypnosisbyverbalsuggestion,as Freud
described it,forexample, in "PsychicalTreatment."The hypnotistsays,"You are
fallingasleep," and voild,I fallasleep. He says,"You are smellinga flower,"and I
smell the fragrance.He says,"You see a snake,"and I see the reptile,I am afraid,
and I cryout. It would be totallyfalse to claim thatan I is submittingor responding to another here. In reality,"I" am spokenbythe other,I come into the place
of the other-who, by the same token,is no longer an otherbut rather"myself"
in my undecidable identityof somnambulisticego. Thus, the other disappears
fromthe awareness of the hypnotizedsubjectat theverymomentwhen the other
provides the subject'sconsciousnesswithideas, perceptions,volitions,and so on.
We could even say,as Freud did in the "Note on the Unconscious,"thatthe other
remains"unconscious,"so long as we understandthatthiswithdrawalof theother
person fromconsciousnessprecedes anyideaof theotherperson and likewiseany
rememberingand repression. In this sense, hypnoticsuggestion may well be
defined, in the termsFreud used in the preface to his translationof Bernheim,
as "a conscious idea which has been introducedinto the brain of the hypnotized
subject byan externalinfluence,and whichhas been accepted bythe subjectas if
it had arisen spontaneously."'6 This verysingularhypnotic"spontaneity"is here
the effectof a radical forgetting
oftheother-a forgettinginaccessibleto any recollection(and veryclose, by the way,to the "forgetting"
of whichHeidegger and
Blanchot speak, each in his own fashion).
The preceding description,which applies to direct hypnoticsuggestion,
applies equally to the kind of somnambulismexperienced by Anna 0., wherein
the hypnotizedperson seems to enjoy a somewhatgreaterautonomytowardthe
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was acted out (not to say mimed) with the analyst.This phenomenon, which
he firstexplained as one more
Freud noticed as early as the Studiesin Hysteria,
and
resistance among others, simplyas a displacement(the termsVerschiebung
were at thattimealmostsynonymous).In thisregard,itis instructive
Ubertragung
to consider the passage of the Studieswhere the concept of transferencefirst
appears. In that passage, Freud proposes a theorythat consistsof interpreting
as Emile Benvenistemightsay) as a
the patient'spresent demand (his discourse,
"story"in disguise-that is, as a resistanceto the rememberingrequired by the
analyst.Thus, referringto a hystericalpatientwho threwher arms around his
neck in the middle of a session, Freud immediatelyexplains that the patient's
desire was not addressed to him but to another,a "thirdperson." Behind theyou
stated in the currentsituation,one should hear a he narratedin the past:
The contentof the wishhad appeared firstof all in the patient'sconsciousnesswithoutany
memoriesof the surroundingcircumstanceswhichwould have assigned it to a past time.
The wish which was present was then, owing to the compulsion to associate which was
dominant in the consciousness,linked to my person.... Since I have discovered this,I
have been able, whenever I have been similarlyinvolved personally,to presume that a
and a false connection [falscheVerkniipfung]
have once more
transference[Ubertragung]
taken place.'9
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in
person, as soon as it is recognized,is immediatelyinterpretedin analyticalterms
that the patient'scurrentrelationshipwiththe analystis understood (and at the
same timederealized) as the displaced representationor reproductionof an earPerson.The emotionalscene that
lier "emotionaltie" to a loved and/orhated dritte
the patientplays out to the analystsupposedlyconceals a storyand makes a past
memorypresent("withall the animationof the actor,"to repeat Lacan's phrase).
in the The Questionof Lay
The patient, Freud said later and very significantly
Analysis,is "obliged to stage a revival"of an old play; he reproduces it "tangibly,
as if it were actuallyhappening, insteadof rememberingit."23
This hypothesisis decisive,since itestablishesthe supposedlyirreducibledifference between the analystand the hypnotist.Indeed, to respond to the somnambulisticaffectof the patient,as Freud untiringlyexplains,would be to swing
into the orbitof hypnoticsuggestion.It would confuse the ostensibleyouof the
Person,and thus would lock the patient
emotional impulse withthe he,the dritte
into the "perpetual attachment"thatbinds the subjectto thatthirdperson,when
the point is preciselyto expose thisbond forwhatit is and freethe patientfrom
it. In thissense, an analystis an analystonlyif he does not respond to the affects
and demands of the patient,thusforcinghimto movefromactingto telling,from
repeating to remembering,fromthe presentto the past. In fact,the abstinence
and impassibility(or, perhaps more accurately,the apathyand disaffection)that
Freud demands of theanalystcorrespondto thisstrategyor policyof enunciation.
The analystmustnot open himselfto the actionsor affectsof the patient,which
bytheirverynature are alwaysin the present,active,acted out (mimed,we might
say), and therefore"resistant"to the narrationrequired byanalysis.
thingsdid get complicatedwhen
This definitivehypothesisnotwithstanding,
Freud realized that the transference,far frombeing only one resistanceamong
others,reallyconstitutedthemajor resistanceto analysis.The harder the analyst
tried to obtain the patient'srecollection,the more the patienttended to forget
himself,as it were, in the analyst'sarms, so thatall the otherresistancesseemed
to revolve around that particular"amnesia." As a result,analysisof resistances
increasinglybecame analysis of the transferenceor, in other words, analysisof
the analyticalrelationshipitself,as if the transferencewere both the obstacle to
and the mainspringof the cure. Freud made thispoint in 1912, in the articleon
"The Dynamicsof the Transference,"and itmeans among otherthingsthatitwas
even impossible,to distinguishbetween the
becoming more and more difficult,
of
mechanicsof analysisand those hypnosis,even thoughhypnosiswas supposed
to have been discarded once and for all. If the transferencetends to dominate
the whole analyticalsituation,and ifthe analyst'ssilence,ratherthan keeping the
transferenceat bay,actuallyprovokesit,thenone can no longeroppose, as Freud
had done earlier, the pure interpretativelisteningof the analystto the direct
of the hypnotistto the abstensuggestionof the hypnotist,or the interventionism
tionismof the analyst.This is what FrancoisRoustang has pointed out: whether
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106
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Notes
This paper was originallypresentedas a lectureon 24 January 1985 at the invitation
of the Societ6 franpaisede medecine psychosomatique,and was subsequentlypublished in Mikkel Borch-Jacobsenand Leon Chertok,Hypnoseet psychanalyse
(Paris,
1988).
1. StandardEditionoftheComplete
Works
Psychological
ofSigmundFreud(hereafterSE), ed.
Werke
James Strachey,24 vols. (London, 1953-74), 16:292; Gesammelte
(hereafterGW),
ed. Anna Freud et al., 17 vols. (London, 1940-52), 11:302.
2. SE 12:118; GW 8:384.
3. Jacques Lacan, TheFourFundamental
Concepts
trans.Alan Sheridan
ofPsycho-Analysis,
(London, 1977), 273.
4. SE 20:17; GW 14:41.
5. SE 14:168; GW 10:267.
6. SE 19:13; GW 13:239.
7. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen,Le Sujetfreudien(Paris, 1982); The FreudianSubject,trans.
Catherine Porter(Stanford,Calif., 1988).
8. SE 18:114-15; GW 13:126-27.
9. Sigmund Freud, TheOriginsofPsycho-Analysis
(New York, 1977), 53.
10. Plato Republic392c-398b. Insofar as I shall be making use, in what follows,of the
Platonic terminology,I should recall that Plato distinguishesthree modes of poetic
enunciation,depending on whetherthepoet "speaksin hisown name withoutseeking
to make us believe that it is someone other than he who is speaking" (this is "pure
narrative,"hapMdiegesis),
or,on thecontrary,"makesa speech in someone else's name"
(this is dramaticmimesis),
or, finally,uses a combinationof both registers(and this is
the "mixed narrative"characteristicof the epic).
11. SE 2:6; GW 1:85.
12. SE 20:21; GW 14:46.
13. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits:A Selection,
trans.Alan Sheridan (London, 1982), 46.
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109
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