by the increased suggestibility which the whole
situation brings with it.

This reenforcement of the psychophysical readiness for suggestions
results indeed quite directly both from expectation of the unknown and
of the half-way mysterious, and from the confidence in the doctor. Of
course it can work very differently. The expectation can upset the
nervous system and produce unrest instead of suggestibility and, instead
of confidence, the patient may feel that discouraging diffidence which
settles easily upon those who have tried one fashionable physician after
another. But where there is real confidence, based perhaps on the fame
of the doctor and on the reports of his powerful achievements, there the
conditions for effective suggestions are greatly strengthened. Still
better is it if this confidence in the man is combined with a sincere
hope for recovery. To lie down on a lounge on which hundreds have been
cured fascinates the imagination sufficiently to give to every
suggestion a much better chance to overcome the counter-idea. The
expectation that something wonderful will happen can even produce an
almost hypnoid state. The effect will be the greater, the less the
barriers of systematic knowledge hinder the entrance of suggested ideas.
The uneducated will on the whole offer less resistance to suggestions,
just as superstitions find the freest play in the minds of the
untrained. It is not by chance that the earlier epidemics of
pathological suggestibility have on the whole disappeared with the
better popular education. In a similar way work fatigue and exhaustion.
The resistance has grown weaker, the suggested idea goes automatically
into activity.

Skillful artificial means can still surpass the effect of these natural
conditions. Here belongs everything which accentuates the authority and
dignity of the originator of the suggestion. The psychologically trained
physician has no difficulty in heightening the effect by simple
surprises, if he cares for such tricks. If the patient for whom a mental
treatment is recognized as necessary shows himself too skeptical to
submit to the powers of the psychotherapist, such captivation of his
belief can easily be secured. Let the man perhaps fixate a penny on the
table with his right eye, while the left is closed and you show him that
you can make another penny suddenly disappear when you move it a certain
distance to the right and appear again when you move it still further.
A