[The unconscious and hypnosis]

Hypnosis and the unconscious: both fields equally obscure, giving rise to broad plurality of conceptions. The only point we may assert with any certainty is that they are closely linked. Historically, experiments on post-hypnotic suggestion were in fact the starting point for the discovery of the unconscious. Post-hypnotic suggestion is in effect one of the most irrefutable proofs that psychical contents can influence behaviour, albeit eluding the subject's consciousness. In this paper, we provide a description of Soviet researchers' conceptions of the unconscious, and of the point of view from which they approach hypnotic phenomena. We then study psychoanalytical theories on hypnosis, which are essentially based on transference. We show why this notion seems to us powerless to account for the specific nature of the hypnotic relationship. There is, in effect, a psycho-physiological dimension of hypnosis. It lies at the crossroads between the instrumental and the relational. But we know nothing about what unconscious processes hide at the psycho-physiological level. Psychoanalysis has brought to light the laws governing the functioning of unconscious representations. But the realm of the affect, the non-verbal, the corporal still remains beyond our knowledge. This is a hidden side of the unconscious, in relation to which hypnosis may serve as another "royal way". Finally, we point out a few directions now opening up for hypnotic research work in this perspective.