Full identity is out of question between the two sets of phenomena, hysteric and hypnotic. But the relationship is doubtless close. How can it be explained? A similarity of effects, anywhere in nature, can be accounted for, barring accident, in one of two ways: either the phenomena in question are themselves of the same kind or they proceed from a common source. The first alternative having been disproved by Bernheim, it remains for us to accept the second. As a parallel study of the phenomena of suggestion (including hypnosis) and those of hysteria shows a remarkable functional similarity, it must be rooted in the identity of the bodily mechanism underlying them, that is to say, in the mechanism of the autonomic nervous system. Hysteria, like the hypnotic state, manifests the signs of both the excitatory and inhibitory functions of the autonomic nervous system. The precipitating cause of neurosis is, as clinical observation demonstrates, almost invariably some shock of personal experience, but the basic explanation is to be looked for in some functional or organic disorder of the autonomic nervous system.
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