Observations placeholder
Freud, Sigmund - Under drugs, hypnosis or any other method of implanting suggestion, the patient will generally play back to the doctor, what the doctor wants to hear
Identifier
024328
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Dr William Sargant was born in Highgate, London, in 1907 and educated at Leys School and St John's College, Cambridge. Up to 1972 he was Physician in Charge of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, London. He was Associate Secretary of the World Psychiatric Association and on the staff of the Maudsley Hospital, London for many years, He was also Registrar of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, Rockefeller Fellow at Harvard University and Visiting Professor at Duke University. He was also the author of Battle for the Mind, and The Unquiet Mind.
A description of the experience
The Mind Possessed - Dr William Sargant
Freud, when, he was working with Breuer, induced more than ten consecutive Viennese women under hypnosis to remember vividly having been slept with or interfered with sexually by their fathers. He thought he had stumbled on the basic cause of hysteria in women, until he realized that 10 out of 10 meant 100 out of 100, and that every Viennese father must be sleeping or sexually interfering with his daughter.
This was obviously nonsense, and Freud was so disappointed that he said later that he nearly gave up psychoanalysis, which had led him so sorely astray.
To solve his dreadful dilemma he invented his concepts of the sexual 'subconscious mind' and explained that many of his patients had 'subconsciously' wanted to sleep with their fathers, instead of actually having done so.
Under drugs, hypnosis, induced abreactive excitement, or any other conscious or sub-sconscious method of implanting suggestion, the patient will generally play back to the doctor what the doctor wants to hear.