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American Journal of Clinical

Hypnosis
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Sophrology
Isaac Gubel M.D.
Published online: 21 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: Isaac Gubel M.D. (1967) Sophrology, American Journal of Clinical
Hypnosis, 9:4, 247-251, DOI: 10.1080/00029157.1967.10402559

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 THEAMERICANJOUBNAL OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS
Volume IX,Number 4, April 1987
Printed in U.S.A.
SOPHROLOGY’
Isaac Gubel, M.D.2
I n Argentina, and most especially in the
capital city of Buenos Aires, there has been
such active professional interest in the
fields of psychiatry and medical psy-
chology that it is in the process of be-
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coming an important international center
of research and teaching.
I n the specific field of hypnology, an
interest in this old science of Mesmer and
Braid began to be awakened some 10 or
12 years ago. But hypnosis was not
studied nor used in universities, hospitals
and consulting rooms, and it was strongly
criticized by professional men in general.
Nevertheless, putting prejudice and pre-
conceived ideas aside, a group of physi-
cians and odontologists began to study and
investigate this intriguing subject. The
available references were practically non-
existent in the Spanish language, and very
few available English language publica-
tions were of the level necessary to arouse
the interest of the researcher to read them
in that foreign tongue, with the exception
of Wolberg’s classical Medical Hypnosis
and a few others. I n the German language
‘EDITOB’S COMMENT: This paper is of particular
interest because of the phenomenal growth of
what is presently widely known throughout Latin
America and many European countries as SOPH-
ROLOQY. It also is timely, because in conjunction
with the 42nd Congress of the Pan American
Medical Association covering all areas of medical
interest, which will take place November 26-30,
1967 in Buenos Aires, there will be held the Sec-
ond Pan American Congress of Hypnology and
the First Argentine Congress of Sophrology. The
Pan American Medical Association includes a
section on Clinical Hypnosis, and will be holding
a Sectional Meeting in this field for the third time
in its history. There promises to be presented a
host of new and significant research and insights,
and an impetus will be given to sophrology and
hypnosis which will be felt in many Iands for
many years to come.
’Montevideo 945,Buenos Aires, Argentina.
247
the works of Stokvis of Holland were ex-
ceedingly useful. Some Russian material
was available, such as Pavlov’s works, and
Platonov’s The Word as a Physiological
and TherapeuticaE Means. We also ob-
tained older works from international liter-
ature, such as Bernheim’s book in French.
With this background of material and
with our own personal experience, in which
our knowledge of dynamic psychology
played an important role, we embarked on
the dangerous task of arousing interest in
this branch of medicine among Argentine
physicians and odontologists.
As a consequence in 1958 we organized
and directed a twenty-one-hour-course
which included the historical, theoretical,
psychological and technical aspects of
hypnosis and its practical applications.
The interest this course aroused was very
great and encouraged us to assume the re-
sponsibility of the creation of the Argen-
tine Society of Hypnotherapy. This sci-
entific undertaking was jointly begun by
myself and Doctors Corazzi, Garfinkel,
Molina, Mabromata, Blumtritt, Achaval,
Goldfeder, and other valuable colleagues
who represented almost every medical
specialty. The Argentine Society of Hypno-
therapy, which changed its name in 1965
to the Argentine Society of Sophrology,
carried on successfully an intensive and
active teaching and lecture program not
only in Argentina but also in other Latin
American countries.
About the same time as the founding of
this Society two more groups were formed
in Buenos Aires: the Argentine Society of
Medical Hypnosis and Hypnoanalysis, and
the Argentine Society of Hypnology. Our
Society held an eclectic position, con-
sidering that in medicine there are no ail-
ments, only the ailing, that is to say that
we adapt ourselves to the necessities of
 248 GUBEL
each patient in particular, but always with
a dynamic viewpoint; the second society
attempted to work from a philosophy ex-
clusively Freudian, and the third did so
from the reflexological viewpoint of the
Russian school.
Of the work carried out during the en-
suing ten years, we calculate that the three
societies trained some five thousand Ar-
gentine physicians and dentists, that is to
say, 10 percent of the doctors and dentists
of the country, who may or may not use
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hypnosis in their daily practice but who
have a modern knowledge of the same. I n
recent years, universities, hospitals and
medical associations, setting aside their
initial resistance, have sponsored courses
which were organized and taught by our
group and one of the other two mentioned.
At the present time our Argentine So-
ciety of Sophrology is the only active one
with a membership of four hundred and
eighty-six, exclusively limited to physi-
cians and dentists.
I n January, 1967, the Argentine author-
ities, following the example of Brazil, pro-
hibited every public demonstration or use
of hypnosis to any person who was neither
a physican nor a dentist. It was a hard
battle, but we think it was well worthwhile.
The development of hypnology in Ar-
gentina interested professional men in other
countries, and Brazil invited Dr. Torres
Norry, who, in Rio de Janeiro and Sao
Paulo trained a group of colleagues, who
later created various societies of a purely
Pavlovian orientation. These Brazilian
groups organized in 1961 The First Pan-
American Congress of Hypnology which
was attended by more than three hundred
hypnologists. The Second Pan-American
Congress is being organized in November
of this current year.
I n Uruguay, Dr. Galina Solovey de
Milechnin, who had travelled to Phoenix in
the U.S.A. to study under Dr. Milton H.
Erickson for several weeks, initiated and
inspired interest in medical hypnosis. Her
work, carried on with her husband, Dr.
Anatol Milechnin, included lecturing and
writing of a number of scientific papers.
In Venezuela, in 1960 Dr. Milton H.
Erickson travelled from the U.S.A. to give
a series of lectures in Caracas which were
presented a t the Medical Association build-
ing and attended by a large number of
physicians, who organized a Society led by
Dr. Francisco Baquero.
Dr. Marcel0 Lerner was invited to Mex-
ico where he gave several courses, and for
my part I had the honor of being invited
on various occasions to Venezuela, Colom-
bia, Peru and Paraguay. I n those coun-
tries numerous physicians and dentists at-
tended some twenty-five courses given in
universities and Medical Associations, and
these later formed active societies which
grouped together afterwards to form the
Latin-American Federation of Clinical
Hypnosis.
I n this panorama of the teaching and
diffusion of hypnosis in Latin America, as
you can see, our country, Argentina, played
a large part we consider important.
It should also be added here that the
hypnosis movement in Spain was primarily
initiated by Dr. Alfonso Caycedo of Co-
lombia in the first place. I had the privi-
lege of also contributing to its growth when
in 1964 I was invited by the Societies of
Sophrology of Spain for a month’s cycle of
conferences in different scientific centers.
Now that we have mentioned Spain, the
time has arrived to develop the explanation
of the concept of Sophrology.
I n 1962, Dr. Caycedo, then Assistant
Professor of Psychiatry in Madrid, began
a renewal movement of what has come to
be understood as hypnotic phenomena and
proposed a new denomination, creating a
neologism : “Sophrology.” I n this connec-
tion we kept up a close correspondence
which bore fruit when we had the oppor-
tunity of knowing each other and spending
some weeks together in the clinic of Dr.
Ludwig Binswanger in Switzerland where
Dr. Caycedo was carrying on his work.
We arrived a t the conclusion that sev-
eral psychobiological manifestations that
had not been united into one concept, were
nevertheless, actually the same thing in
spite of their different manifestations and
development. I refer to hypnosis as such,
to certain yoga manifestations, to the so-
 SOPHROLOGY
called spiritism state of trance, to the twi-
light state, to religious ecstasies which can
be seen in Oriental and Occidental religions
and in primitive worships, and various
other manifestations that can be self-in-
duced in deeply relaxed conditions, for ex-
ample Shultz’s Autogenic Training. Like-
wise on the psychoanalyst’s couch the
patient can, either through silence or a
moment of free association, experience some
phenomena that do not pertain to the ha-
bitual psychical state.
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The word Sophrology, which compre-
hends all these manifestations, is a concept
utilized in the ancient Greece, not only in
a philosophical sense, but also in a sense
that today we call psychosomatic.
The ancient Greeks do not speak of
Sophrology, naturally, but of Sophrosyne.
Already in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
there are clear references which show us
that speech, or one might say the word,
was employed as a therapeutical means.
Three different ways in which it was em-
ployed can be distinguished:
1) as a magic psalm: EPA OIDE
2) as a prayer: EUKE
3) as the pleasant and suggestive turn
of speech which they styled TERPNOS LOGOS.
The TERPNOS LOGOS, or pleasant turn of
speech is especially interesting to us, as the
Greek sophist Gorgias proposed the tech-
nical application of this for treatment in
medicine.
In his day, Plato, referring to the
“psalm” (which in some way has been
associated with TERPNOS LOGOS, that is the
pleasant style of speech) also calls it
LOGOS KALOS (beautiful discourse) when
this word produced in the soul SOPHROSYNE.
Here we are faced with the problem of
what was understood in ancient Greece by
SOPHROSYNE . physician can determine psychobiological
Perhaps we are helped by what Plato
relates in his Dialogues when he tells us
that his master Socrates meets young Car-
mides returning from battle suffering from
an intense headache, which Socrates says
he will cure. He knows of a plant which t o
be effective must have added to it an
EPODE, that is to say, a psalm.
He previously explains to the patient
249
that good doctors cure not only parts, but
the body entirely, through the adequate
word, creating temperance in the soul
(which is called Sophrosyne) and once this
has been done, it is easy to procure health
to the head and the rest of the body. That
is to say that every therapeutic action by
means of the word will have for object the
producing of Sophrosyne.
Plato textually affirms in the dialogue of
Socrates with Carmides that the former
states “let no one persuade you to cure
your head with a drug if previously you
have not presented your soul to be cured
with the psalm”. Later on he adds that it
is an error to be separately a doctor of the
soul and of the body.
Socrates ,gives in his definition of the
concept of Sophrosyne two essentials: A)
to do all in good order and with calmness;
B) to seek knowledge of one’s self. I n other
considerations, in respect to this concept,
Plato tells us that the real modification of
the soul of the hearer consists in the pro-
duction of Sophrosyne, and adds that not
only does the soul become clear and orderly
but also the body becomes serene. So, the
patient becomes ((sophronized.”
After this brief analysis of the ancient
Greek handling of the value of the word
and its psychosomatic effects, we will now
apply the concepts of Logos and Soph-
rosyne t o our modern language.
For Pavlov, who was perhaps the great-
est psycho-neurophysiologist of this cen-
tury, the word becomes a conditioned re-
flex which he defines as the (‘second signal
system,’’ which in itself can substitute for
physical experience; that is to say, that by
means of the second signal system of the
reflexologists, the Terpnos Logos or Epode
of the Greeks (the adequate word), the
responses of all kinds.
If the aim of the researcher is to use the
word to act on the corticodiencephalic
ways, with the object of calming his pa-
tient and being able to produce in him
what Walter Cannon called “homeostasis,”
this brings about what the Greeks called
Sophrosyne, that is to say the somatic and
 250 GUBEL
psychical equilibrium without which health
is impossible.
I define the concept of Sophrosyne in
the following way, or better still, I define
the concept of the sophronic state with
these words:
“The Sophronic state is a state of con-
sciousness characterized by a retreat of
one’s self (ego) , which involves simulta-
neously a neurovegetative participation in
which will biologically predominate a par-
tial blocking of the function of the as-
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cending reticular activating system.”
This definition comprises, to my under-
standing, all that is subjectively or ob-
j ectively present in a sophronized person,
or as can also be said, “hypnotized.”
Firstly, there is a peculiar modification
with autistic tones of conscious activity.
Secondly, we may observe in the sophro-
nized person a biological modification char-
acterized by a slowing-up of the neuro-
vegetative alertness. And lastly, there is an
evident lessening of awareness in the full
sense of the word, a lessening-up which is
probably due to a modification in the func-
tion of the ascending reticular activity sys-
tem of Magoun and Moruzzi. With this, my
definition acquires full meaning.
We have said that with the concept of
Sophrology we phenomenologically under-
stood what the philosopher Edmund Hus-
serl meant by “the return to things by
themselves.” “Things by themselves” are
what are named hypnosis, samadhi yoga,
religious ecstasies and many similar phe-
nomena, all of them being a sort of con-
dition or state of consciousness with neu-
rovegetative participation, interrelated in
psychobiological phenomena to those which
the ‘(sophronic state” concept comprehends
as belonging to the same psychophysical
manifestations.
It is of no importance by which method
or system a human being arrives a t “Soph-
rosyne” or the sophronic condition, or how
psychic or somatic relaxation has origi-
nated, be it mystically, religiously, super-
stitiously, or if it has the academic touch
of a laboratory experience, or the thera-
peutic aim of the physician, or the slow
workings of the “logos kalos” of the psy-
choanalyst. Phenomenologically, the man
driven by mystic anguish or by pstho-
logical manifestations, by different ways
tries to arrive a t a homeostasis to counter
balance the acceleration of his existence.
I believe I have clarified what is under-
stood by Sophrology. Now we come to the
complex behavior of the sophrologist when
he decides, as a therapeutic indication, to
sophronize his patient. This signifies to
employ psychological means to create
Sophrosyne, that is to say the organic and
physical equilibrium in a human being, the
specific therapy being afterwards adopted
which the doctor considers most useful or
which, with a more restricted outlook may
be that which contains the personal philo-
sophical and theoretical orientation of each
therapist.
The sophronization may be done follow-
ing a technique of putting the patient into
a more or less trance condition, or by means
of the more passive and slower action of a
psychotherapeutic encounter in the psycho-
analytical mode.
With one of the multiple methods used:
the word, the adequate environment, quiet-
ness and peace of the consulting room, or
simply the comprehensive attitude, parent-
like and calming of the therapist; all this
will mobilize mechanisms that in certain
moments and in their greatest manifes-
tations could be compared to a nearly fetal
regression. I n this condition, which we call
hypersophronic or holosophronic (from the
Greek holos meaning (‘all”) the patient is
isolated from the stimuli that surrounded
him, present or past, and as Paul Schilder
has described, he experiences a sensation
of dissolution of his psychosomatic self,
that is to say a deep modification of his
body schema.
No psychotherapy will give results if the
patient is not receptive for a re-education
or reorientation of the values of the mis-
directed or distorted aims which have be-
come the motivating forces of his existence.
Psychotherapy is, above all, to re-educate,
and this will be fruitful only when the
patient is put into a condition to re-di-
rect or re-evaluate the philosophy of what
he considers the meaning of his own
 SOPHROLOGY
life. These basic conditions have been
called “rapport” by classic psychiatry,
‘‘transference” by the psychoanalysts, “con-
fidence” by clinical medicine, “encounter”
by the culturalists; “communication,”
“faith” and many more. One interpretation
can gather together all these concepts: to
consider that the therapist is another hu-
man being, who unconsciously is seen as a
good element that is incorporated with
beneficial fetal avidity, and who is capable
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of improving the good and making the evil
Iess so.
Melanie Klein fully investigated all this,
but did so from a very restricted view-
point, as her concept of the good breast and
the bad breast does not take into account
that man is not a being eternally joined by
an umbilical cord to the parent, but is an
integral cell of a society much more com-
plex, that not only gives but demands from
its components their production, love, soli-
darity, group work, hate and sacrifice. The
country, the established institutions, the
class structure, sickness and the unescapa-
ble destiny of death (situations that Karl
Jaspers called the limited state of exist-
ence) , present demands which cannot be
easily resolved.
I feel that it is far too oversimplified to
try to explain the conflicts of a human
being and wrap it up with a little word
that labels the crisis of a life as a phobia,
a depression, mania, Oedipus complex, or
as some colleagues still foolishly call it
“vegetative dystonia,” or simply with the
fashionable word “neurosis.”
We try to put in order our fantastic and
complex inner world with the tortuous and
dispersed world that we have created
around us. Here we find ourselves with the
problem of the sophrologist, the psycho-
therapist, the psychiatrist, the psychoan-
alyst, or whatever he may be called, who
assumes the responsibility (whether he con-
fesses it or not) of the omnipotent maker
of happiness of the patient, who turns to
him to restore the equilibrium of his upset
world and to justify his existence.
I think that we are very limited and that
the little we can do with our present knowl-
25 1
edge and possibilities is basically to re-
gress our patient, making him in a sense a
child again, and to cultivate, wherever we
can, new possibilities of seeing and feeling,
loving and hating, understanding and mak-
ing mistakes, all this ruled by a philosophy
of accepting our transitory passage through
the world; teaching to hate less, to value
more, to diminish fatuous grandeur and to
exalt oneself in one’s existential smallness.
To sophronize is to detain the patient
in the vertices of his existence and to teach
him that life can be beautiful and ugly,
and that each winter of pain can be fol-
lowed by a spring time of pleasure. Natu-
rally enough, there are no magic words,
no TERPNOS LOGOS nor “soothing say-
ings” that doctors, therapists or psycholo-
gists may omnipotently consider infallible
for each life that during fifty minutes
comes to the consulting-room in search of
utopic Sophrosynes.
Both the patient and the physician,
should understand that they are nothing
more nor less than two human beings, each
with his own anxieties, whose goal is that
one receives the secret of being happy while
the other, the physician, tries to give what,
fortunately, sometimes subtly emanates
from him, in his attempt to supply the aid
sought by the patient. To be a good soph-
rologist, one should repeat the words of
Maimonides, who in 1135 said: “Oh, God,
give me the strength, the time and the
opportunity to increase my knowledge.. .
that today I may discover the errors of
yesterday and tomorrow find new light to
analyze what today I consider as true.” It
has not been my intention to give a pessi-
mistic tone to our profession; quite the
contrary, if each therapist wisely learns to
recognize his limitations and makes a com-
mendable effort t o penetrate into the
world of his patient, turning to the knowl-
edge contained in biology, psychology and
philosophy, he will find ways of attaining
the “homeostatic sophrosyne” sought by the
human being, since civilization has im-
posed on man the consciousness of his ob-
ligations to himself and to the society in
which he lives.