Thirteen days: Joseph Delboeuf versus Pierre Janet on the nature of hypnotic suggestion
✍ Scribed by André LeBlanc
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2004
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 150 KB
- Volume
- 40
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
The problem of post‐hypnotic suggestion was introduced in 1884. Give a hypnotic subject the
post‐hypnotic command to return in 13 days. Awake, the subject remembers nothing yet nonetheless fulfills
the command to return. How then does the subject count 13 days without knowing it? In 1886, Pierre Janet
proposed the concept of dissociation as a solution, arguing that a second consciousness kept track of time
outside of the subject's main consciousness. Joseph Delboeuf, in 1885, and Hippolyte Bernheim, in 1886,
proposed an alternative solution, arguing that subjects occasionally drifted into a hypnotic state in which they
were reminded of the suggestion. This article traces the development of these competing solutions and describes
some of Delboeuf's final reflections on the problem of simulation and the nature of hypnosis. © 2004
Wiley Periodicals, Inc.