Hypnosis Auto-Suggestions Blog

H. F. Dunbar cites an interesting case of "grossesse nerveuse", which shows how deeply can imagination modify the bodily functions; she writes: "E. Graefen-berg (1929) was called to a delivery one morning at five o'clock, only to find a midwife who had been waiting forty eight hours and a physician who had been waiting twenty four hours for the final termination of labor. The patient, forty five years old, was lying in bed shaken by almost continuous bearing-down pains. . . This woman who had wished all her life for a child had succumbed to an idea of pregnancy." Autosuggestion could make the body simulate the symptoms of pregnancy and deceive two specialists; but it could not produce the baby. A remarkable case is related by Woodson. A patient suffered from dementia praecox (paranoid type), imagining that the upper part of his body was as solid within as concrete. The author contends that the patient died in consequence of this delusion.