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VI. Other forms of involuntary indications; "involuntary whispering;" the subconscious 334

Date of account
Published 1900
Source
Fact and Fable in Psychology
Reference
Fact and Fable in Psychology · selected passage 32
Rights
public_domain
Language
English
Record updated
2026-08-24

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Record summary

I should advise him, however, to go along for the sake of the excellent illustrations thus obtainable of the effects of unconscious suggestion

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

I should advise him, however, to go along for the sake of the excellent illustrations thus obtainable of the effects of unconscious suggestion. From the time of the first serious investigation of these phenomena up to the present, unconscious suggestion has been one of the most potent influences for the production of alleged marvels and pseudo-phenomena. All the series of experiments brought forward at irregular intervals during the past century to establish supernormal sensibilities have depended for their apparent success (apart from trickery) upon unconscious suggestion of the operators, combined with the shrewd assimilation of the desired or expected result on the part of the subjects. The transposition of the senses discovered by Pétetin (1787), the hypnotized subjects who in Braid's day (1850) proved the location of the phrenological organs by the appropriateness of their actions when certain parts of the head were pressed, the sensitiveness to magnets and hermetically sealed drugs brought forward by Reichenbach (1845), and by Bourru and Burot (1885), and Dr.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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