The hypnoid state is a theory of the origins of hysteria published jointly by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud in their Preliminary communication [1] of 1893, subsequently reprinted as the first chapter of Studies on Hysteria (1895).[2]
For Breuer and Freud, who characterised the hypnoid state as a state of absence of mind/consciousness produced by intense daydreams of a mournful or sexual nature, "the existence of hypnoid states forms the foundation and condition of hysteria".[3]
The hypnoid state was seen as one resembling but not identical with hypnosis.[4] In the hypnoid state, one may have dream-like experiences.[4] One enters the hypnoid state by either hypnosis or by voluntary amnesia.[4]
Breuer credited Paul Julius Möbius as a forerunner in the development of the idea.[5]
Freud was shortly to repudiate the causative notion of hypnoid states, in favour of his theory of psychological repression.[6] As he would put it later, "Breuer's theory of 'hypnoid states' turned out to be impeding and unnecessary, and it has been dropped by psycho-analysis today...the screen of hypnoid states erected by Breuer".[7]
Nevertheless he continued to recognise the importance of such states of absent consciousness in the symptomatology of the hysterical subject.[8]