Hippolyte Bernheim

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Hippolyte Bernheim

Hippolyte Marie Bernheim (born April 17, 1840 in Mulhouse / Alsace , † February 2, 1919 in Paris ) was a French internist, psychiatrist , neurologist and hypnosis researcher.

biography

Bernheim studied at the University of Strasbourg , where he graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1867 . In the same year he became a lecturer at the university and established himself as a psychiatrist in the city.

When Strasbourg fell to Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War , Bernheim moved back to Nancy, where he became professor of internal medicine at the university in 1879 .

When the medical faculty took up the subject of hypnosis around 1880 , Bernheim was enthusiastic about it and soon became one of the leading researchers in this field. In 1882, Bernheim took over the “suggestion” method developed by the “medical magnetizer” Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823–1904) in the Nancy school . Until then, hypnosis had mainly been used as a show effect . Bernheim contradicted the thesis that was widespread at the time that only hysterics could be hypnotized. Rather, he was of the opinion that hypnosis was a normal, unpathological phenomenon that occurred as a psychological reaction to suggestions and could not, as was often assumed at the time, be influenced by magnets and metals . The doctrine of suggestion formulated by him in 1884 replaced older hypnosis and somnambulism concepts of mesmerism , animal magnetism and Reichenbach 's doctrine of OD .

In 1889 the Viennese doctor Sigmund Freud visited Bernheim and was informed about his experiments with the so-called "post-hypnotic suggestion". From Bernheim's experimental results, Freud concluded that there must be an unconscious .

During his professorship at the medical faculty of Nancy (1910-1919), Bernheim took the view that the subconscious is the bridge between doctor and patient if the patient is only imagining illnesses . In his Suggestive Therapeutics , he reports, among other things, of a case of paralysis of the tongue , which he healed completely by telling the patient about a new, completely safe healing device and then achieved immediate success when he received a - from the patient not as such recognized - fever thermometer put in the mouth. In another case, he gave a patient who was no longer able to speak, in front of the assembled student body, a few light electrical shocks to the larynx , which should not have had any medical effect - which the patient was not aware of. She, too, was healed on the spot.

In 1909 Bernheim became president of the "International Association for Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy".

Works

  • On typhoid fever in general , Strasbourg, 1868;
  • Clinical Medicine Lesson , Paris, 1877;
  • On suggestion in the state of hypnosis and in the state of consciousness , Paris 1884;
  • De la suggestion et de ses applications à la therapeutique. Paris 1886.
    • About suggestion and its application in therapy. Paris 1887.
    • The suggestion and its healing effects. Translated by S. Freud, Leipzig / Vienna 1888.
  • Hypnotism, suggestion, psychotherapy. Études nouvelles. Paris 1891.
    • New studies on hypnotism, suggestion and psychotherapy. Translated by S. Freud, Leipzig / Vienna 1892.

literature

  • Guillemain, Hervé: La méthode Coué : histoire d'une pratique de guérison au XXe siècle. Paris: Seuil, 2010.
  • Sabine Kleine: The rapport between animal magnetism and hypnotism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 299-330; here: p. 316 f.
  • Helmut Siefert : Bernheim, Hippolyte Marie. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 170.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hans Huldrych Walser : Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823-1904), the founder of the "École hypnologique de Nancy". In: Gesnerus. Volume 17, 1960, pp. 145-162.
  2. Axel W. Bauer : Liébeault, Ambroise-Auguste. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 852.
  3. Christina Schröder: Bernheim, Hippolyte Marie. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart , Christoph Gradmann (Hrsg.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present. 3. Edition. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, p. 43 f., Doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .