3rd Edition

Suggestion and its Role in Social Life

By V. M. Bekhterev Copyright 1998
    230 Pages
    by Routledge

    230 Pages
    by Routledge

    Vladimir Mikhailovitch Bekhterev was a pioneering Russian neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist. A highly esteemed rival of Ivan Pavlov, his achievements in the areas of personality, clinical psychology, and political and social psychology were recognized and acclaimed throughout the world. However, when his version of reflexological doctrine ran afoul of official Soviet ideology in the 1920s his work was banned and his influence suppressed through the dispersal of his many colleagues and disciples. Bekhterev himself died in 1927 under mysterious circumstances. This translation of Suggestion and Its Role in Social Life is a significant instance of intellectual and cultural restoration. It marks a starting point of Bekhterev's lifelong endeavour to relate his clinical observations and philosophy of science to problems of the social world.

    Bekhterev's investigation reviews and explains the many conflicting positions in the social and scientific thought concerning the nature and power of suggestion. He takes pains to differentiate the process from persuasion and hypnosis, and discusses suggestion and autosuggestion in the waking state, examining their effectiveness on feeling, thought, and behaviour. He then discusses the destructive consequences of the process—violent crime, suicide, witchcraft, and devil-possession hysteria— in a wide variety of contexts important in the Russia, Europe and North America of the period.

    Bekhterev presents a structural model of the mind, including both conscious and unconscious realms, and the phenomena of suggestion without awareness; in doing so he anticipated much present-day work on preconscious influence. Suggestion and Its Role in Social Life is a landmark study in collective psychological research that may lead to revisions in histories of social psychology. It will be read by psychologists, sociologists, and social historians.

    Preface and Acknowledgments

    Introduction
    Lloyd H. Strickland

    Foreword to the Second Edition
    V. Bekhterev

    Foreword to the Third Edition
    V. Bekhterev

    1 Different Views on the Nature of Suggestion
    2 The Definition of Suggestion
    3 Suggestion and Persuasion
    4 Suggestion in the Hypnotic State
    5 Suggestion in the Waking State
    6 The Importance of Faith
    7 Unintentional Suggestion and Mutual Suggestion
    8 Concerning the Suggestion of Thoughts
    9 Paths of Influencing One Another through Suggestion
    10 Collective or Mass Illusions and Hallucinations
    11 Inalterable Hallucinatory Sensations and the Importance of Auto-Suggestion
    12 Suggestion as a Factor in Mass Self-Destructive Acts of the Russian Sectarians, and Suicide Epidemics
    13 Murder and Robbery Epidemics
    14 Epidemics of Convulsions in History
    15 Witchcraft and Devil-Possession Epidemics
    16 Hysterical and Nervous Debility Epidemics
    17 Other Psychopathological Epidemics of a Religious Variety
    18 The Paranoiac Malevannii as a Culprit in a Distinctive Psychopathological Epidemic
    19 The Malevannism Epidemic
    20 The Jehovah Psychopathological Epidemic
    21 The Tatar Psychopathological Epidemic in Kazan Province
    22 The Supanevo Psychopathological Epidemic in Orel Province
    23 The Novogrud Epidemic and the "Pavlovka Slaughter"
    24 Sectarian Collectivities and Epidemics
    25 A Chinese Epidemic of the I-Ho-Ch'uan Sect
    26 A Canadian Psychopathological Epidemic among Russian Dukhobors
    27 The Epidemic Dissemination of Mystical Doctrines
    28 A Free Love Epidemic
    29 Panic among People and Animals
    30 Psychic Epidemics during Historic People's Movements
    31 Financial Speculation Epidemics
    32 The Importance of People's Collectivities for the Spread of Psychic Epidemics
    33 The Importance of Suggestion for Social Groups

    Index

    Biography

    V. M. Bekhterev