Whitehead, Anne "Open to Suggestion: Hypnosis and History in Pat Barker's Regeneration"

Whitehead, Anne "Open to Suggestion: Hypnosis and History in Pat Barker's Regeneration"
MFS Modern Fiction Studies - Volume 44, Number 3, Fall 1998, pp. 674-694
The Johns Hopkins University Press


Excerpt
"We could try hypnosis now, if you liked."
"Now?"
"Yes, why not? It's the time we're least likely to be interrupted."
Prior's eyes flickered round the room. He licked his lips. "It's odd, isn't it? When you said most people were frightened, I didn't believe you."
"What frightens them," Rivers said carefully, "is the belief that they're putting themselves completely in the therapist's power. That he can make them do anything, even things they'd normally consider ridiculous or even immoral. But that isn't true, you remain yourself throughout."
--Pat Barker, Regeneration

In 1915, Dr. Charles S. Myers, a physician serving at casualty clearing stations behind the front line in France, wrote an article in which he observed the lack of correlation between the symptoms exhibited by the soldiers whom he treated and the explosion of nearby shells, which was (supposedly) their cause. Although the shells burst [End Page 674] with considerable noise, the hearing of his patients was almost entirely unaffected, while the memory and the senses of sight, smell, and taste were invariably at the heart of the complex of symptoms which was displayed. 1 This discrepancy led Myers to conclude his 1915 article, "A Contribution to the Study of Shell Shock": "The close relation of these cases to those of 'hysteria' appears fairly certain" (320). Once the correlation between the symptomatology of warfare and the condition of hysteria had been recognized by some physicians, modes of treatment were revised in order to reflect the new diagnosis. In particular, the use of hypnosis entered the scene of therapy for the war neuroses, although the technique had been more or less abandoned since the turn of the century. 2

The revival of...