POWER BEHIND DICTATORS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22231, 23 October 1937, Page 16

POWER BEHIND DICTATORS

HYPNOTISM EMPLOYED BY HITLER CONTENTIONS MADE BY BRITISH PSYCHOLOGIST Orxox ovb oww coßßSspoitDEjrr.) LONDON, September- 4. The suggestion that Hitler and Mussolini had hypnotised their nations was made by Dr. William Brown, director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology, and Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford, to the Psychology section of the British Association at Nottingham. "There can be no doubt," said Dr. Brown, "that the methods adopted in Germany and Italy of attaining efficiency as a nation under individual leadership finds a great deal of support in modern psychology. "It is a mistake to suppose that the followers in those countries are slaves copying their leader from a motive of fear or in cringing submission. Rather do their own selfassertive and aggressive tendencies become liberated in the process, and their heightened enthusiasm and confidence in their leader and his resources make what might have been a timid, panic-stricken crowd into a powerful army, race, or nation. "Therapeutic hypnotism properly conducted does the same thing for the individual. Hitler is the greatest psycho-therapeutist of a nation, and he will go down in history as such." Discussing hypnotism generally, Dr. Brown said that almost anybody with care, deliberation, and concentration, can hypnotise himself. "You must concentrate your mind," he said, "on a point on the far-distant horizon. Relax your muscles completely, and say to yourself, *I am getting drowsy.' "While in this state you must make suggestions to yourself of increased powers—such as you will have a good night's rest to-night, or your memory is going to be better, or you are going to make a speech to-night without stammering. You can do that without harm to yourself and with great benefit. I have done it myself, often." Dr. Brown who, during the war was in charge of all the nerve and shell-shock cases in the 4th Army on the Somme, and later of the 3rd and sth Armies, said that he saw 5000 cases during that period and treated 15 per cent, of them with the hypnotic method. A patient came to him for treatment once, but asked him not to hypnotise him. He quite accidentally closed his eyes and then found that he could not open them, and became very angry. The explanation was that owing to the "dissociated" state of his mind he had hypnotised himself.