HYPNOTISM AND MORAL REFORM.

Colonist, Volume XLIV, Issue 10013, 23 January 1901, Page 4

HYPNOTISM AND MORAL REFORM.

In a recent number of the ' Revue des Revues' Mr Jules Bois has an article entitled " Can we Reform our Characters," and he says that we can, by having recourse to the as yet but half-known powor of mental action. Much of bis article is devoted to an account of Dr. Berillon's PsychoPhysiological Institute in Paris, where the doctor ministers to minds and wills diseased. To him resort those whose mental and moral equilibrium is at fault, vicious children, nervously depraved women, hopeless drunkards or thieves, morphia maniacs, etc. Sleep is first induced — hypnotic sleep ; and then a temptation is put in the way of the subject— irresistible to him in his waking hours, but which hypnotised he must resist. This power of resistance, implanted in the hypnotised subject, grows until it has force enough to enable him in his natural state to overcome the most besetting sins. "Thus has been cured," says M. Bois, " not only habitual drunkardp, but kleptomaniacs, and the victims of many other evil habits. To resuscitate a deadened conscience is the doctor's aim." If he succeeds, he will be the greatest moral reformer of modern times. M. Bois lays he has sucoeeded. But the question which obtrudes itself is, will the " cure " be permanent. The essence of hypnotism is the control of a weak will by a stronger one. Men and women in all ages have exercised it without knowing it. Men have become great conquerors, women noble leaders in moral reforms or courtezans who have wrecked empires. But for the exercise of this magnetic control it seems to be essential that the controller and controlled should be brought into personal contact more or less frequently. Drunkards, lunatics, and the other classes on whom M. Bertillon is experimenting are generally weak-willed, and it is easy to control them by what is called hypnotic suggestion. But when the patients have gone home, and are no longer under the influence of such suggestion, except so far as it can be exercised at a distance, will they not relapse.