The Social Before Sociocognitive Theory: Explaining Hypnotic Suggestion in German-Speaking Europe, 1900–1960

Abstract

The article intends to retrace and review German discourse on hypnotic suggestion from 1900 onward, demonstrating the variety of arguments advanced to account for the social relationship in the hypnotic setting well before the emergence of sociocognitive theory. Using Spanos’s distinction between “happenings” and “doings,” it shows how, in the case of the “social” in early 20th century German texts on (hypnotic) suggestion, the passive observer, recipient, or victim of hypnosis, a trope familiar to the discipline for many decades, was called into question. This image, however, was not called into question by scientists experimenting in laboratories. On the contrary, the neurologists, psychologists, and philosophers who proffered a new way of seeing suggestion, one that privileged the hypnotic as well as the reciprocity between hypnotist and hypnotic, were part of a wider movement within the social sciences (grounded in hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Gestalt theory) that distanced itself from “positivistic” methodologies and “scientistic” verities. The article, then, seeks to remind readers that the sociocognitive perspective does not define the sociopsychological study of hypnosis.

Keywords:

• German psychology
• hypnosis
• social psychology
• sociogognitive theory