The second counter current that opposed itself to the French neuropathologists, and produced the most lasting impression, is expressed by the magic word "suggestion." A generation ago, Dr. Liebault, the patient investigator and skillful physician, had endeavored to make a remedial use of suggestion in his clinic at Nancy. Charles Richet and others have since referred to it, but Professor Bernheim was the first one to demonstrate its full significance in the realm of hypnotism. According to him, suggestion--that is, the influence of any idea, whether received through the senses or in a hypersensible manner (_suggestion mentale_)--is the key to all hypnotic phenomena. He has not been able in a single case to verify the bodily phenomena of _grandehypnotisme_ without finding suggestion the primary cause, and on this account denies the truth of the asserted physical causes. Bernheim says that when the intense expectance of the subject has produced a compliant condition, a peculiar capacity is developed to change the idea that has been received into an action as well as a great acuteness of acceptation, which together will produce all those phenomena that we should call by the name of "pathological sleep," since they are only separable in a gradual way from the ordinary sleep and dream conditions. Bernheim is particularly strenuous that psychology should appear in the foreground of hypnotism, and on this point has been strongly upheld by men like Professors Beaunis and Richet.
The possibility of suggestion in waking conditions, and also a long time after the sleep has passed off (_suggestions posthypnotiques ou suggestions a (longue) echeance_), as well as the remarkable capacity of subjects to change their personality (_changement de la personnalite objectivation des types_), have been made the subject of careful investigation. The voluntary production of bleeding and stigmata through spiritual influence has been asserted, particularly by Messrs. Tocachon, Bourru, and Burot. The judicial significance of suggestion has been discussed by Professor Liegeois and Dr. Ladame. Professor Pitres in Bordeaux is one of the suggestionists, though differing in many points from the Nancy school.