by DK
1880s Sigmund Freud investigates hypnosis and its apparent power to control unconscious symptoms.
The practice of inducing trance states to promote healing is not new. Several ancient cultures, including those of Egypt and Greece, saw nothing strange about taking their sick to “sleep temples” so they could be cured, while in a sleeplike state, by suggestions from specially trained priests. In 1027, the Persian physician Avicenna documented the characteristics of the trance state, but its use as a healing therapy was largely abandoned until the German doctor Franz Mesmer reintroduced it in the 18th century. Mesmer’s treatment involved manipulating the body’s natural, or “animal,” magnetism, through the use of magnets and suggestion. After being “mesmerized,” or “magnetized,” some people suffered a convulsion, after which they claimed to feel better.
A few years later, Abbé Faria, a Portugese-Goan monk, studied Mesmer’s work and concluded that it was “entirely absurd” to think that magnets were a vital part of the process. The truth was even more extraordinary: the power to fall into trance or “lucid sleep” lay entirely with the individuals concerned. No special forces were necessary, because the phenomena relied only upon the power of suggestion.
"Nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination."
Abbé Faria
Franz Mesmer induced trance through the application of magnets, often to the stomach. These were said to bring the body’s “animal” magnetism back into a harmonious state.
Lucid sleep
Faria saw his role as a “concentrator,” helping his subject get into the right state of mind. In On The Cause of Lucid Sleep, he describes his method: “After selecting subjects with the right aptitude, I ask them to relax in a chair, shut their eyes, concentrate their attention, and think about sleep. As they quietly await further instructions, I gently or commandingly say: ‘Dormez!’ (Sleep!) and they fall into lucid sleep.”
It was from Faria’s lucid sleep that the term “hypnosis” was coined in 1843 by the Scottish surgeon James Braid, from the Greek hypnos, meaning “sleep” and osis meaning “condition.” Braid concluded that hypnosis is not a type of sleep but a concentration on a single idea, resulting in heightened suggestibility. After his death, interest in hypnosis largely waned until the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot began to use hypnotism systematically in the treatment of traumatic hysteria. This brought hypnosis to the attention of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, who were to question the drive behind the hypnotic self, and discover the power of the unconscious.
ABBÉ FARIA
Born in Portuguese Goa, José Custódio de Faria was the son of a wealthy heiress, but his parents separated when he was 15. Armed with introductions to the Portuguese court, Faria and his father traveled to Portugal where both trained as priests. On one occasion, the young Faria was asked by the queen to preach in her private chapel. During the sermon, he panicked, but his father whispered, “They are all men of straw—cut the straw!” Faria immediately lost his fear and preached fluently; he later wondered how a simple phrase could so quickly alter his state of mind. He moved to France, where he played a prominent part in the French Revolution and refined his techniques of self-suggestion while imprisoned. Faria became a professor of philosophy, but his theater shows demonstrating “lucid sleep” undercut his reputation; when he died of a stroke in 1819, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Montmartre, Paris.
Key work
1819 On the Cause of Lucid Sleep
See also: Jean-Martin Charcot • Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung • Milton Erickson
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Structuralism
BEFORE
1704 German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz discusses petites perceptions (perceptions without consciousness) in his New Essays on Human Understanding.
1869 German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann publishes his widely read Philosophy of the Unconscious.
AFTER
1895 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer publish Studies on Hysteria, introducing psychoanalysis and its theories of the unconscious.
1912 Carl Jung writes The Psychology of the Unconscious, suggesting that all people have a culturally specific collective unconscious.
Johann Herbart was a German philosopher who wanted to investigate how the mind works—in particular, how it manages ideas or concepts. Given that we each have a huge number of ideas over the course of our lifetime, how do we not become increasingly confused? It seemed to Herbart that the mind must use some kind of system for differentiating and storing ideas. He also wanted to account for the fact that although ideas exist forever (Herbart thought them incapable of being destroyed), some seem to exist beyond our conscious awareness. The 18th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz was the first to explore the existence of ideas beyond awareness, calling them petite (“small”) perceptions. As an example, he pointed out that we often recall having perceived something—such as the detail in a scene—even though we are not aware of noticing it at the time. This means that we perceive things and store a memory of them despite the fact that we are unaware of doing so.
Dynamic ideas
According to Herbart, ideas form as information from the senses combines. The term he used for ideas—Vorsfellung— encompasses thoughts, mental images, and even emotional states. These make up the entire content of the mind, and Herbart saw them not as static but dynamic elements, able to move and interact with one another. Ideas, he said, can attract and combine with other ideas or feelings, or repulse them, rather like magnets. Similar ideas, such as a color and tone, attract each other and combine to form a more complex idea. However, if two ideas are unalike, they may continue to exist without association. This causes them to weaken over time, so that they eventually sink below the “threshold of consciousness.” Should two ideas directly contradict one another, “resistance occurs” and “concepts become forces when they resist one another.” They repel one another with an energy that propels one of them beyond consciousness, into a place that Herbart referred to as “a state of tendency;” and we now know as “the unconscious.”
Herbart saw the unconscious as simply a kind of storage place for weak or opposed ideas. In positing a two-part consciousness, split by a distinct threshold, he was attempting to deliver a structural solution for the management of ideas in a healthy mind. But Sigmund Freud was to see it as a much more complex and revealing mechanism. He combined Herbart’s concepts with his own theories of unconscious drives to form the basis of the 20th-century’s most important therapeutic approach: psychoanalysis.
Thoughts and feelings contain energy, according to Herbart, acting on each other like magnets to attract or repel like or unlike ideas.
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART
Johann Herbart was born in Oldenburg, Germany. He was tutored at home by his mother until he was 12, after which he attended the local school before entering the University of Jena to study philosophy. He spent three years as a private tutor before gaining a doctorate at Göttingen University, where he lectured in philosophy. In 1806, Napoleon defeated Prussia, and in 1809, Herbart was offered Immanuel Kant’s chair of philosophy at Königsberg, where the Prussian king and his court were exiled. While moving within these aristocratic circles, Herbart met and married Mary Drake, an English woman half his age. In 1833, he returned to Göttingen University, following disputes with the Prussian government, and remained there as Professor of Philosophy until his death from a stroke, aged 65.
Key works
1808 General Practical Philosophy<
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1816 A Text-book in Psychology
1824 Psychology as Science
See also: Wilhelm Wundt • Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung • Anna Freud • Leon Festinger
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Existentialism
BEFORE
5th century BCE Socrates states the key to happiness is discovering the “true self.”
AFTER
1879 Wilhelm Wundt uses self-analysis as an approach to psychological research.
1913 John B. Watson denounces self-analysis in psychology, stating that “introspection forms no essential part of its methods.”
1951 Carl Rogers publishes Client-centered Therapy, and in 1961 On Becoming a Person.
1960 R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self redefines “madness,” offering existential analysis of inner conflict as therapy.
1996 Rollo May bases his book, The Meaning of Anxiety, on Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety.
The fundamental question, “Who am I?” has been studied since the time of the ancient Greeks. Socrates (470–399 BCE) believed the main purpose of philosophy is to increase happiness through analyzing and understanding oneself, famously saying: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Søren Kierkegaard’s book The Sickness Unto Death (1849) offers self-analysis as a means to understanding the problem of “despair,” which he considered to stem not from depression, but rather from the alienation of the self.
Kierkegaard described several levels of despair. The lowest, and most common, stems from ignorance: a person has the wrong idea about what “self” is, and is unaware of the existence or nature of his potential self. Such ignorance is close to bliss, and so inconsequential that Kierkegaard was not even sure it could be counted as despair. Real desperation arises, he suggested, with growing self-awareness, and the deeper levels of despair stem from an acute consciousness of the self, coupled with a profound dislike of it. When something goes wrong, such as failing an exam to qualify as a doctor, a person may seem to be despairing over something that has been lost. But on closer inspection, according to Kierkegaard, it becomes obvious that the man is not really despairing of the thing (failing an exam) but of himself. The self that failed to achieve a goal has become intolerable. The man wanted to become a different self (a doctor), but he is now stuck with a failed self and in despair.
Abandoning the real self
Kierkegaard took the example of a man who wanted to become an emperor, and pointed out that ironically, even if this man did somehow achieve his aim, he would have effectively abandoned his old self. In both his desire and accomplishment, he wants to “be rid of” his self. This disavowal of the self is painful: despair is overwhelming when a man wants to shun himself—when he “does not possess himself; he is not himself.”
However, Kierkegaard did offer a solution. He concluded that a man can find peace and inner harmony by finding the courage to be his true self, rather than wanting to be someone else. “To will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair,” he said. He believed that despair evaporates when we stop denying who we really are and attempt to uncover and accept our true nature.
Kierkegaard’s emphasis on individual responsibility, and the need to find one’s true essence and purpose in life, is frequently regarded as the beginning of existentialist philosophy. His ideas led directly to R.D. Laing’s use of existential therapy, and have influenced the humanistic therapies practiced by clinical psychologists such as Carl Rogers.
Napoleon’s overreaching ambition for power, as depicted in this painting of him as a student, led him to lose sight of his true self and all-too-human limitations, and ultimately to despair.
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent Danish family, and raised as a strict Lutheran. He studied theology and philosophy at Copenhagen University. When he came into a sizeable inheritance, he decided to devote his life to philosophy, but ultimately this left him dissatisfied. “What I really need to do,” he said, “is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know.” In 1840, he became engaged to Regine Olsen, but broke off the engagement, saying that he was unsuited to marriage. His general state of melancholy had a profound effect on his life. A solitary figure, his main recreational activities included walking the streets to chat with strangers, and taking long carriage rides alone into the countryside.
Kierkegaard collapsed in the street on October 2, 1855, and died on November 11 in Friedrich’s Hospital, Copenhagen.
Key works
1843 Fear and Trembling
1843 Either/Or
1844 The Concept of Anxiety
1849 The Sickness Unto Death
See also: Wilhelm Wundt • William James • Carl Rogers • Rollo May • R.D. Laing
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Bio-psychology
BEFORE
1690 British philosopher John Locke proposes that the mind of every child is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, and hence we are all born equal.
1859 Biologist Charles Darwin suggests that all human development is the result of adaptation to the environment.
1890 William James claims that people have genetically inherited individual tendencies, or “instincts.”
AFTER
1925 Behaviorist John B. Watson says there is “no such thing as inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament, or mental constitution.”
1940s Nazi Germany seeks to create a “master Aryan race” through eugenics.
Francis Galton counted many gifted individuals among his relatives, including the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. So it’s not surprising that Galton was interested in the extent to which abilities are either inborn or learned. He was the first person to identify “nature” and “nurture” as two separate influences whose effects could be measured and compared, maintaining that these two elements alone were responsible for determining personality. In 1869 he used his own family tree, as well as those of “judges, statesmen, commanders, scientists, literary men… diviners, oarsmen, and wrestlers,” to research inherited traits for his book Hereditary Genius. As predicted, he found more highly talented individuals in certain families than among the general population. However, he could not safely attribute this to nature alone, as there were also conferred benefits from growing up in a privileged home environment. Galton himself grew up in a wealthy household with access to unusually good educational resources.
"Characteristics cling to families."
Francis Galton
A necessary balance
Galton proposed a number of other studies, including the first large survey by questionnaire, which was sent out to members of the Royal Society to inquire about their interests and affiliations. Publishing his results in English Men of Science, he claimed that where nature and nurture are forced to compete, nature triumphs. External influences can make an impression, he says, but nothing can “efface the deeper marks of individual character.” However, he insists that both nature and nurture are essential in forming personality, since even the highest natural endowments may be “starved by defective nurture.” Intelligence, he says, is inherited, but must be fostered through education.
In 1875, Galton undertook a study of 159 pairs of twins. He found that they did not follow the “normal” distribution of similarity between siblings, in which they are moderately alike, but were always extremely similar or extremely dissimilar. What really surprised him was that the degree of similarity never changed over time. He had anticipated that a shared upbringing would lessen dissimilarity between twins as they g
rew up, but found that this was not the case. Nurture seemed to play no role at all.
The “nature—nurture debate” continues to this day. Some people have favored Galton’s theories, including his notion—now known as eugenics—that people could be “bred” like horses to promote certain characteristics. Others have preferred to believe that every baby is a tabula rasa, or “blank slate,” and we are all born equal. Most psychologists today recognize that nature and nurture are both crucially important in human development, and interact in complex ways.
Galton’s study of twins looked for resemblances in many ways, including height, weight, hair and eye color, and disposition. Handwriting was the only aspect in which twins always differed.
FRANCIS GALTON
Sir Francis Galton was a polymath who wrote prolifically on many subjects, including anthropology, criminology (classifying fingerprints), geography, meteorology, biology, and psychology. Born in Birmingham, England, into a wealthy Quaker family, he was a child prodigy, able to read from the age of two. He studied medicine in London and Birmingham, then mathematics at Cambridge, but his study was cut short by a mental breakdown, worsened by his father’s death in 1844.