THE GRUDGE
Hypnotism Made Practical – J Louis Orton
We own two copies of this 1948 book, thanks to Kev’s late-night, sozzled Ebay purchasing. One with funky dust jacket and one without.
I read it with no knowledge of who J Louis Orton was and with zero expectations.
But Orton quickly establishes the formula for this book. It’s a veritable fruit-machine of hypno-fun: snide, bitchy remark; supercilious, obscure intellectual reference; namedrop, namedrop, namedrop; a reference to his own body of work; then another snide, bitchy remark. And so on and so forth.
Let me quote you the very first words in the foreword, to set the tone:
“Recently I listened with interest and some pleasure to a B.B.C. feature on hypnotism, and to the incorporated comments by Dr. Alexander Kennedy, Professor of Psychological Medicine at Durham University. Previously the B.B.C. has sponsored fantastic and injurious representations anent hypnotism. The comments of Dr. Kennedy were different. Professedly they were not only rational but thoroughly up-to-date. Nevertheless, substantially they were but little more than echoes of statements by me in an article entitled “Hypnotism: What is It and What it Does,” published in the Weekly Times and Echo as long ago as 28th October, 1911. The conclusions I put forward were results of the nine-years’ investigation and experimentation terminated by me in 1909, the very year in which Dr. Alexander Kennedy was born.” [Underlining added by me to emphasise Orton’s emphasis.]
This book is packed with shaaade for past and (then) present fellow hypnotists and psychologists! The most scintillating beef being with none other than Emile Coué…
I normally write my reflections on a book and then share my cursory Google findings, but let’s break with that and get straight to the goss. We learn that Orton and Coué were associates; Orton wrote a biography of Coué – Emile Coué: The Man and His Work – and the pair collaborated on Conscious Auto-Suggestion.
In Orton’s account of his meeting and later collaborations with Coué from page 48, he is at pains to convey Coué’s respect for him and his work, as well as how he was never a Coué disciple and disagrees on a number of points. There are a handful of further mentions and you finish the book sensing that something was awry…
There’s a tantalising mention of Orton in this Coué biography here, describing him as “a disaffected ex-associate”, but I can’t glean much more than that. Curiouser and curiouser!
The book is blanketed in bitterness – you get the sense that Orton foresaw his reputation and legacy would not stand the test of time.
For instance, Orton has lots of forward-leaning ideas, such as hypnotism being a “matter of collaboration” or not using the word ‘sleep’, plus he explains that his approach to hypnotism sits between James Braid and the Nancy School.
But, in between the bitch-fest, there are big passages on, for instance, the nature of genius or ‘imbeciles’. I’m intrigued to read further Orton works, but it’s not very accessible.
That said, I did enjoy this book and I do get the sense that Orton was kind of A Big Deal.
In the interests of Cosmic Pancakes! becoming a bit of a breadcrumb trail for hypno-connections, here are some further nuggets from Orton:
- Indian mysticism and Christian Science pop up through the book. It’s interesting that these were inextricably linked to hypnosis not so long ago.
- Orton states that Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism is preceded by, and almost identical to, that of a 1679 theory by William Maxwell, a Scottish physician and writer. Which is a new one on me.
- He mentions ‘Donatism’ a couple of times. I can’t figure out what the hypnosis inference is though. (As mentioned, the intellectual references are hard going!)
- I came across a story about James Braid doing a hypnosis ‘stunt’ with opera singer Jenny Lind in another book I’ll reflect on some other day. But page 137 relates this story; a factory girl, hypnotised by Braid, “performed before Jenny Lind some feats of phonic imitation (in song and speech) that would doubtless be astonishing to persons unacquainted with a certain class of hypnotic phenomena.” I need to revisit the original account, but that struck me as a mentalism trick, ‘performed’ for the assembled witnesses rather than Lind – though Orton takes it on merit and is keen to tell us what Braid got wrong with this ‘experiment’.
- Finally, I have to doff my cap to Orton for his Illuminati titbits! On page 97, he recalls an “unscrupulous business man” propositioning him to set up a new religion. While page 122 reveals his highest connections to the US Mormon Church. I’m sure if I combed through the squillions of names dropped throughout, we’d yield all sorts of weird and wonderful connections!
