Abstract
IN an address on sleep and hypnosis delivered at a meeting of Section J (Psychology) of the British Association at Aberdeen, Dr. William Brown pointed out that although there are marked contrasts between hypnosis and sleep, there is also a close connexion. The muscles in sleep are in a state of relaxation, and in hypnosis in a state of rigidity. In sleep the knee-jerks become less pronounced and eventually disappear: in the hypnotic state, however deep, they remain undiminished. There are other differences; for example, in sleep the subject is unable to respond to a suggestion to perform a simple act, whereas even in deep hypnosis such obedience is readily forthcoming. But in spite of these contrasts, Dr. Brown holds that there is a close connexion between the two states. Sleep can be induced by hypnotic suggestion even to the cure of some forms of insomnia, and the hypnotic state itself readily passes into a state of sleep. Sleep-walking is a spontaneously occurring phenomenon closely analogous to what is induced in a good hypnotic subject. A person who frequently walks in his sleep is, as a rule, exceptionally easy to hypnotise, and in the hypnotic state the dreams of the somnambulist may be recalled and the abnormal condition often rectified.
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Sleep and Hypnosis. Nature 134, 980 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134980a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134980a0