Suggestibility

“ Suggestibility is the quality of liability to suggestive influence.35 "Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to admit any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and inhibitions."36 It differs greatly in degree, and is present in different grades in different crowds. ”

“ Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and imitation.37 In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to do, one, by acting, may lead them all 22through imitative suggestibility. People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which preclude criticism or reflection. ”

“ Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness. ”

“ In the midst of the panic or in the midst of the heroic enthusiasm no one has kept his own characteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges for himself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates with the feelings of the whole crowd. The mass consciousness is not an adding up, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation of something entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any paths, chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any ends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bring good or bad results. ”

“ For how can consciousness be wholly resolved into impressions and ideas, when an impression of necessity implies something impressed? Or again, how can the sceptic who has decomposed his consciousness into impressions and ideas, explain the fact that he considers them as his impressions and ideas? Or once more, if, as he must, he admits that he has an impression of his personal existence, what warrant can he show for rejecting this impression as unreal while he accepts all his other impressions as real? ”

“ It becomes therefore a question of the highest importance to determine in every case what the nature of the suggestion shall be and from what source it shall proceed; but before considering the sources of suggestion we must realize more fully the place taken by subjective mind in the order of Nature. ”

“ There is, therefore, nothing paradoxical, but the reverse, in our being led by observation to a recognition of such truths, as general propositions, coextensive at least with all human experience. That they pervade all the objects of experience, must ensure their continual suggestion by experience; that they are true, must ensure that consistency of suggestion, that iteration of uncontradicted assertion, which commands implicit assent, and removes all occasion of exception; that they are simple, and admit of no misunderstanding, must secure their admission by every mind. ”

“ Have you ever stopped to think that these multiplied impressions might create a current of thought—a mental atmosphere—an inscrutable power of suggestion?”
“Even when one is ignorant? When one does not know the story?” ”

“ For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by these very suspected faculties themselves.’ This is the substance of the argument that rests on the data of the sense or reason with which human nature is inspired. ”

“ With regard to this Law of Suggestion it is well to remember that, while the subjective mind is invariably and constantly swayed by suggestion, and is capable of offering no resistance except that which has been communicated to it by the objective mind, or which is inherent in its nature, the objective mind, on the other hand, is perpetually assailed by extrinsic suggestion, its capacity for resistance being in proportion to the dominant quality and development of the mind-whole. ”

“ A man is said to be suggestible when he comes to conclusions or acts without due deliberation. Suggestion, then, is nothing but the mental condition which causes us to believe and respond without the normal amount of weighing of evidence. ”

“ Subjective intelligence, be it remembered, is capable of exercising but one form of reasoning,—the deductive. But it will reason deductively from any premise imparted to it, by any form of suggestion, with great acumen; and it never arrives at a conclusion inconsistent with the premise,—that is, the suggestion. All the facts known to the individual's objective experience which are inconsistent with that premise stand for nought in presence of the one ever-present idea. ”

“ The obvious exaggeration of this estimate proves more conclusively than anything that it is the consequence, not of common sense, but of suggestion. The more trivial, the lower, the emptier a phenomenon is, if only it has become the subject of suggestion, the more supernatural and exaggerated is the significance attributed to it. ”

“ What is definition, after all, but a form of description? To assert, in effect, that consciousness is indefinable because it is indescribable, and that for this reason we must be content with description, is both a flagrant disregard of consistency and an unwarranted abuse of our good nature. ”

“ Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? ”

“ It is necessary to make sure no word, tone, or movement carries the least suggestion that might possibly leave a false impression of the real You.
Let us make a brief analysis now of words, tones, and acts—the three means of suggestive expression which are the natural equipment of every man for conveying his ideas to the minds of others. You cannot employ the discriminative-restrictive method to develop your selling skill unless you know very definitely just what your different tools of expression are, and the almost infinite variety of uses to which they can be put. ”

“ Nathan C. Schaeffer, Thinking and Learning to Think.
When we weigh, compare, and decide upon the value of any given ideas, we reason; when an idea produces in us an opinion or an action, without first being subjected to deliberation, we are moved by suggestion. ”

“ I have stated to you my own opinion with respect to visible figure,—an opinion, which to myself, I confess, appears almost certain, or, at least, far more probable than the opinion generally entertained, that has no evidence in our consciousness at any one moment of vision to support it. ”

“ And if, reflecting on this all-pervasive character of the Intelligible and of Intelligence, we formulate certain 'Laws of Thought', we are condensing into isolated judgements truth for which there is overwhelming evidence. Such judgements are 'indubitable'; for an intelligent doubt presupposes knowledge, and any and every knowledge inevitably, confirms them. ”

“ Thus, then, a judgment, an opinion, if it means anything concrete, is always an appeal to more or less accessible human experience--and is not, as I have been asserting, an appeal to an overarching higher insight. When you make any significant assertion, you appeal to whatever concrete human observations, experiments, or other findings of data, actual or possible, can furnish the test that the opinion calls for. ”

“ To traverse openly the statements of a person in the subjective state, is certain to restore him to the normal condition, often with a severe nervous shock. The explanation of these facts is easy to find in the constant amenability of the subjective mind to the power of suggestion. ”

“ And this influence, not through persuasion, imagination, citation, but through those still unexplained remote effects which may be best compared with “determining.” Suggestion is as widespread as language. We receive suggestions through the stories of friends, through the examples of strangers, through our physical condition, through our food, through our small and large experiences. Our simplest actions may be due to suggestion and the whole world may appear subject to the suggestion of a single individual. ”

“ Most of our opinions and actions are not based upon conscious reasoning, but are the result of suggestion. In fact, some authorities declare that an act of pure reasoning is very rare in the average mind. Momentous decisions are made, far-reaching actions are determined upon, primarily by the force of suggestion. ”

“ Our knowledge in such cases is limited to the recognition of the confusion of the subject, and knowledge in its widest sense is the consciousness of some definite content; in this case, confusion. Here, as everywhere, knowledge is not identical with truth; knowledge is only subjective truth. ”

“ You invariably lead me into the realms of speculation, and then throw me upon the defensive by asking me to prove my own theories, or with apparent sincerity, you advance an unreasonable hypothesis, and then, before I am aware of your purpose, force me to acquiesce because I can not find facts to confute you. ”

“ Of course, the consciousness is; but, however subjective, the consciousness must have more than its mere subjectivity, than its mere seeming or wanting or willing, being in some way genuinely objective or grounded in reality. In a word, all consciousness implies and demands, postulates and possesses, a real world ”

“ And again, in all persuasions that are wrought by eloquence, and other impressions of like nature, which do paint and disguise the true appearance of things, the chief recommendation unto reason is from the imagination. ”

“ Such daily experience shows us that suggestive power may belong to different men in different degree. There are lawyers whose arguments and whose presentation open our mind, it seems, to any suggestion: while others leave us indifferent; we understand their idea, we follow their thoughts, and yet we remain accessible to opposite influences. ”

“ It was so in my training. We seek to silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order to Know. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge, or Genius, above the mind. ”

“ If then this person should pretend, or even design, to reason from his definition, and yet reason from his idea, a misapprehension will arise in the hearer, who supposes him to reason from his definition merely. ”

“ For example, when in the thought process a suggestion from one’s own subconscious interests appears in support of a forming plan of action, or idea, the various sensory elements, their movements, and the spatial, temporal and causal forms of the awareness aspect of the new interest, are clearly supported by or dependent upon both the new interest and the interest called a suggestion. ”

“ It is astonishing, again, how constantly one hears rationalists arguing upon some deep topic, apparently without troubling about the deep assumptions involved, having lost their sense, as it were, of the real colour and character of a man's assumption. ”

“ That being so, the great thing is to get a standard for fundamental, unchangeable, and sufficient suggestion to which you can always turn, and which is automatically impressed upon your subconscious mind so deeply that no counter-suggestion can ever take its place ”

“ For demonstrative evidence is naturally out of the question, and estimates of opposing probabilities are apt to be strongly tinctured with ‘personality.’ Prepossessions of all kinds warp the judgment, even in purely literary matters, and, in this case especially, have led to the learned advocacy of extreme opinions. ”

“ But the unexplainable power by means of which a human mind grasps a bundle of bare, dry facts, sorts them over speculatively and then pieces them together into a new, luminous bit of mind stuff, different from anything seen, or heard or handled by that personality before—this is the miracle working of what we know as constructive imagination. ”

“ In the treatment of thought and feeling they wanted clearness, they wanted ideas which the mass of men would readily apprehend and assent to, and they wanted not hints or half-spoken suggestions but complete statement. ”

“ But confirmations from experience are preferable, because the deductions of reason are not comprehended by many, and because they who have confirmed themselves in the contrary opinion, turn them into matters of doubt by reasonings drawn from the fallacies of the senses. ”

“ For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity—that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. ”

“ That all these, both within and without, are Suggestive; that one idea, or image, or object, suggests another, or others, no one will deny, who has ever thought about his own thinking. It is like saying, all mental pictures are composite ”

“ Intellectually, we conceive or we judge; our past feelings, in Simple Suggestion, of image after image, arise again, in colours more or less faint, without any known cause exterior to the mind. By our capacity of the other species of Suggestion, we are impressed with feelings of a different order, that arise when two or more objects are contemplated together,—feelings of their agreement, proportion, or some one or other of the variety of their relations. ”

“ If, then, we recognize, as we must, that the alogical production of conviction is the essence of suggestion, and that this frequently occurs in normal minds as well as in those suffering from various degrees of dissociation, it becomes necessary to define the conditions that favour the operation of suggestion in normal minds. ”