A psychoanalyst looks at a hypnotist: a study of folie à deux.
This paper traces my personal development from anesthetist to hypnotist, psychotherapist, and, finally, psychoanalyst. The change was precipitated by the successful treatment of a patient with congenital organic skin disease by hypnotism. Alongside my change of profession, I attempt to illustrate my change of ideas and the change of my relationship to patients which accompanies these other changes. I feel that my personal experience throws some light on the nature of suggestion and hypnotism and how they differ from each other and from psychoanalysis. I believe that observations support the idea that hypnotism is a folie à deux caused by mutual projective identification between two people and that in a less dramatic form this condition commonly occurs in normal development as well as in pathological psychological states. Several cases illustrate these ideas.
Mason
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D000328:Adult; D002321:Career Choice; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006990:Hypnosis; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011385:Projection; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D012753:Shared Paranoid Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D013404:Suggestion