Home > International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis > Bernheim, Hippolyte (1840-1919)

A professor of ambulatory health care at the department of medicine in Nancy, Hippolyte Bernheim was born in Mulhouse on April 27, 1840, and died in Paris on February 2, 1919. He studied medicine in Strasbourg and, when he received his degree in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, he decided to practice in France. In 1879 he was offered the chair of ambulatory medicine at the then-new department of medicine in Nancy. Around 1882, in spite of his initial reticence, he agreed to visit Ambroise Liebeault's "clinic." Convinced of the efficacy of Liebeault's methods, Bernheim began to use hypnosis on some of his patients, generally working with people suffering from a variety of infectious diseases. In 1884 he published a scathing attack on the Salpêtrière: hysteria and hypnosis were no more than cultural phenomena aroused by the power of suggestion.

Bernheim now became the spokesman of a new school that was internationally recognized. In his private practice he saw neurotic patients from all over Europe. In spite of his personal admiration for Jean Martin Charcot, his position was deepened and further radicalized in two books translated by Freud, De la suggestion et de ses applicationsà la thérapeutique (Suggestion and its Therapeutic Applications) (1886 and 1888) and Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychothérapie (Hypnotism, Suggestion, Psychotherapy) (1891 and 1903). The prevalence of Bernheim's position seems to have exhausted itself by the end of the century. Char-cot himself, at the end of his life, in La foi qui guérit (The Faith that Heals) (1892), appears to have moved closer to the position of the school of Nancy. However, in Nancy, Bernheim felt isolated. He distanced himself from Liebeault, his hypnosis practice began to disintegrate, and his support for Dreyfus aroused considerable anti-Semitic hostility. After retiring in 1910 Bernheim moved to Paris. In 1913, in a book on hysteria, he gave a favorable assessment of the Studies on Hysteria.

According to Bernheim, hypnosis is only a particular case of the psychological phenomenon of suggestion. Psychotherapy—a term Bernheim popularized—incorporated the power of language, the doctor's influence on the patient, and the effect of the patient's mind on his body. Bernheim argued for a therapy of and by the mind, which could cure nervous illnesses and suppress or calm the symptoms, even the causes, of organic disease. He seems to have been a flexible and eclectic therapist, passing when necessary from authoritarianism to insinuation, sometimes even refusing to give orders to his patients.

Shortly before the July 1889 Congress on Hypnotism held in Paris that year, Sigmund Freud came to see Bernheim in Lorraine. In a letter to August Forel, Bernheim referred to Freud as a "charming young man." In 1888 however, Freud had turned to Charcot for support in criticizing Bernheim. After 1889 Freud would make use of some of Bernheim's ideas to distance himself from Charcot, but he continued to remain critical of the theory of suggestion promulgated by the school of Nancy. Freud later recalled how forcefully certain experiments of 1889, involving the recall of memories originating during hypnosis, had struck him. Reading the text published in 1890 after his trip to Lorraine, the "insightful" clinician from Nancy may also have left Freud with the nucleus of an idea for the treatment of the "psyche," or "soul," and an interest in the magic of words.

JACQUELINE CARROY

See also: Autosuggestion; Cäcilie M., case of; Hypnosis; Liebeault, Ambroise Auguste; Negative hallucination; Suggestion; Translation.