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The chances are great that many unintended bad effects slip in and that not a few hysterias may be created by a method at the first glance so startling. Much less objectionable is it to make use of the effect of that period of half-sleep which precedes the natural sleep, and which is for many a period of increased suggestibility for autosuggestions.

These autosuggestions may take a firmer hold of the mind than any suggestions from without, but surely such openness to selfimplanted beliefs must be acknowledged as symptomatic of disease, while hypnosis with its impositions can be broken off at any moment and thus should no more be classed among the diseases than are sleep and dreams.

The heightened emotionality characteristic of this state bespeaks an increased tendency to outcropping, and so an increased suggestibility. Thus spontaneous autosuggestions are far more potent than in the normal course of life. But, happily, induced autosuggestions are aided by the same conditions, so that the mother awake to her powers and duties can do as much good as the ignorant may do harm.

If we classify symptoms, we may separate from it that which we nowadays are inclined to call psychasthenia. An abnormal suggestibility for autosuggestions stands in the foreground. Fixed ideas and fixed emotions, especially fears, trouble the patient. He may pick up his obsession by any chance experience and no good-will liberates him from the intrusion perhaps for years.

Instances of this ill-effect are comparatively common, and the link between cause and effect is often unmistakable. There is no need to point out that these cases are nothing more than spontaneous autosuggestions operating in the maternal Unconscious; since during pregnancy the mother moulds her little one not only by the food she eats but also by the thoughts she thinks.

Often it is wise to give the suggestion, not from without but to prescribe it in the form of autosuggestions. For instance, advise the patient not only to have the good will and intention of suppressing a certain fixed idea or by producing a certain inhibited impulse but to speak to himself in an audible voice, every morning and every evening, saying that he will overcome it now.

There is no balance where independence and subordination do not supplement each other. A wide education not only trains for both but also secures habits which work as autosuggestions in both directions. But all this harmonious development of intellect and temperament and character has to go on when the school days are over and just here begins the duty of the community as a whole.

Of course, the patient does not accept the explanation at once. He feels sure that he is not accessible to suggestion and that he has least of all a tendency to autosuggestions, but the skillful psychotherapist will find somewhere an opening for the entering wedge.

These day-dreams cause very potent autosuggestions, and one should take care that they are wholesome and innocent; but the important point is that on this level of consciousness association seems to operate by similarity, and emotion is comparatively intense. These conditions are highly favourable to acceptation.

I cannot do or say or write just what I wish, and cannot concentrate my thoughts. To try to read a book is punishment because I forget as fast as I read." And so on. I answered him certainly not to come but tried to induce some autosuggestions. A few weeks later, he wrote me: "Ever since you wrote me, I am now feeling somewhat improved."