A psychoanalyst looks at a hypnotist: a study of folie à deux

This paper traces my personal development from anesthetist to hypnotist, psychotherapist, and, finally, psychoanalyst. The change was precipitated by the successful treatment of a patient with congenital organic skin disease by hypnotism. Alongside my change of profession, I attempt to illustrate my change of ideas and the change of my relationship to patients which accompanies these other changes. I feel that my personal experience throws some light on the nature of suggestion and hypnotism and how they differ from each other and from psychoanalysis. I believe that observations support the idea that hypnotism is a folie à deux caused by mutual projective identification between two people and that in a less dramatic form this condition commonly occurs in normal development as well as in pathological psychological states. Several cases illustrate these ideas.