The hypnoanalytic technique has been refined continually through direct employment either in an investigative or therapeutic way in a variety of cases. During the past five years, in addition to the six psychopaths already mentioned, the following variants were also studied: one male hysterical somnambulist, one sexually frigid woman, one feebleminded psychotic boy, two male anxiety neurotics, one male bronchial asthmatic, three male homosexuals, one male alcoholic, and one male kleptomaniac. None of the analyses exceeded four months and all of the subjects (with the exception of the frigid woman who was forced to abandon treatment) are today better off in every way for having gone through with it. Each case served as a crucible wherein our instrument of research and treatment was further shaped and hardened, enhancing particularly those aspects of the art of its application which cannot ever be communicated by the written word.
In strict fairness to psychoanalysis as an explanatory way of approach to the personality, it must be said that nothing new in the way of interpretation of behavior results from hypnoanalysis: that it tends rather to verify and substantiate the insights into behavior-dynamics which the psychoanalytic approach affords. For example, in the case where it was employed with an hysterical somnambulist, it exposed the primitive phantasy basic to the hysterical reaction and dissected out its components of latent homosexuality, sadism and castration-anxiety composed pre-Oedipally and transformed into the somnambulistic symptom. Apart from the unique concatenation observed with this patient, nothing appeared which either was not already known about hysteria or could not have become known from a psychoanalysis. The method of hypnoanalysis, however, made these items known more rapidly, provided more adequately for complete abreaction and so for a ‘cure’ for the condition. Furthermore, the ‘fresh’ insights into hysterical somnambulism which are claimed as regards symptom-formation and symptom-function were achieved by hypnoanalysis, it is true, but were the result of psychoanalytical regard and stemmed from propositions basic to psychoanalysis.
In short, hypnoanalysis is a radically abbreviated method for the investigation of the personality and the treatment of psychogenic disorders and aberrations of behavior.
So far there has been no direct mention of the curative value of hypnoanalysis. ‘Cured’ in an analytical sense carries a somewhat different meaning than ‘cured’ in a medical and lay sense: it implies rather than an amelioration of symptom or a disappearance of disease the accomplishment of an essential personality change which is the outcome of the redistribution of psychological energy formerly exploited by the pathological condition. In some cases symptoms do disappear entirely, and the medical sense of ‘cure’ can be used. The hysterical patient, for instance, has had no recurrence of the somnambulistic episodes since hypnoanalysis: the alcoholic patient is no more a slave to the bottle: the asthmatic no longer experiences intense attacks accompanied by ‘death-threat’ and panic. In other cases, what is accomplished is the cultivation of an ability on the part of the patient to live with his condition (so to speak), to accept it, even to “make the best of it.” Such was the outcome with two of the three homosexuals who were studied and treated hypnoanalytically. In yet other conditions—in our series the remaining homosexual, the two anxiety neurotics and psychopaths—what is done appears as an alteration, permanent and deep-seated, of the patient’s style of life.
In the case reviewed, the patient was ‘cured’ in the sense of alteration of style of life, and imbued with a real ability to live with his particular occular symptom. The alteration was based on what some psychologists call ‘insight,’ on a real understanding of the past and a reorientation of attitudes and aims. Harold today sees better, feels better, behaves better. Individuals who know him and work with him comment on his radically altered pattern of behavior. Gone is that sneering sullenness, that arrogant aggression, that Storm-Trooper mentality, that disregard for the rights and feelings of others. He knows that he was a psychopath: he knows why he was a psychopath: he knows that he needs to be a psychopath no more.…
II
We have had in this volume a striking illustration of the truth of William A. White’s remark that behind every criminal deed lies a secret. But more important, we have glimpsed the utter futility, the sheer waste, of confining individuals in barred and turretted zoos for humans without attempting to recover such secrets. Harold’s case makes a mockery of current penological pretense. It points the finger of ridicule at the sterile corridors of modern prisons, the gleaming shops and factories, the bright young social workers, the custodial hierarchy—in brief, the whole hollow structure of rehabilitation that is based upon expediency, untested hypotheses, unwarranted conclusions from a pseudo-scientific empiricism.
Harold plundered and almost killed in response to those ungovernable needs which came flaring up from the deepest, remotest shafts of his being. Had he not undertaken analysis, all the trade-training, all the attentions of penal personnel would have been wasted on him; and like every other psychopath who leaves prison he would have been released again to the community as the same predatory beast who entered—with this exception: that his conflicts would have been driven more deeply and his hostility aggravated by a system that flatters itself that it is doing other than substituting psychological for physical brutality.
In spite of the self-flattery in which criminologists, penologists and the assorted professional and warder complement of the modern prison indulge, we are not today treating criminals; and, what is worse, in only a few isolated instances are we even learning anything about them. In all its bald essence, what we are actually doing today is removing a wrong-doer from the community; and while he is in a place of detention we are submitting him unmercifully to the unrequiting ministrations of an expensive officialdom. But beyond the half-hearted employment of a “shot-gun” technique which fires its charge in all directions at once, we do nothing fundamental about crime or the criminal.
There are two approaches to crime, each as important and vital as the other: one from the side of the community, one from the side of the specialist in behavior. Criminal acts are not so simple as our legal code or our sensation-mongering newspapers would have us believe. Crime is behavior which is motivated by prime forces that are not only social but intra-individual. It is precipitated by sociological situations, perhaps, but it is an individual expression that arises from the secret motives or wishes that lie buried deep within the personality.
The need is for an extension to the very limits of the type of activity which has been demonstrated in Harold’s case; for such processing not only often changes the criminal into a useful citizen (always assuming that society will permit him to be an integral part of it when he is released), but it also teaches us lessons about crime that we can use with our and other people’s children.…
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