---
title: "James Braid (surgeon)"
chunk: 5/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In his presentation Braid stressed that, because he had clearly demonstrated that the effects of hypnotism were "quite reconcilable with well-established physiological and psychological principles" (viz., they were well connected to the prevailing canonical knowledge), it was highly significant that none of the extraordinary effects that the mesmerists and animal magnetists routinely claimed for their operations – such as clairvoyance, direct mental suggestion, and mesmeric intuition – could be produced with hypnotism. So, he argued, it was clear that their claims were entirely without foundation.However, he also stressed to his audience that, whilst it was, indeed, entirely true that these effects could not be produced with hypnotism – and whilst the claims of the mesmerists and animal magnetists were, ipso facto, entirely false – one must not make the mistake of concluding that this was unequivocal evidence of deception, dishonesty, or outright fraud on the part of those making these erroneous claims.In Braid’s view (given that many of the proponents of such views were decent men, and that their experiences had been honestly recounted), the only possible explanation was that their observations were seriously flawed.To Braid, these faults in their investigatory processes were "the chief source of error". He urged the audience – before any of the claims of the mesmerists and animal magnetists could be examined in any way, or any of their findings investigated, or any confidence be placed in any of the recorded results of any of their experiments – that the entire process of the research that they had conducted, the investigative procedures that they had employed, and the experimental design that had underpinned their enterprise must be closely examined for the presence of what he termed "sources of fallacy".In the process of delivering his lecture, Braid spoke in some detail of six "sources of fallacy" that could contaminate findings. – Yeates, (2013), pp. 741–42.
In 1903, Bramwell published a list of eight "sources of fallacy" attributed to Braid; the final two having been directly paraphrased, by Bramwell, from other aspects of Braid's later works (see text at right).
In 1853, Braid investigated the phenomenon of "table-turning" and clearly confirmed Michael Faraday's conclusion that the phenomenon was entirely due to the ideo-motor influences of the participants, rather than to the agency of "mesmeric forces" – as was being widely asserted by, for example, John Elliotson and his followers.

== The mono-ideo-dynamic principle ==
On 12 March 1852, convinced (as both a scientist and physiologist) of the genuineness of Braid's hypnotism, Braid's friend and colleague William Benjamin Carpenter presented a significant paper, "On the influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular Movement, independently of Volition", to the Royal Institution of Great Britain (it was published later that year).

Carpenter explained that the "class of phenomena" associated with Braid's hypnotism were consequent upon a subject's concentration on a single, "dominant idea": namely, "the occupation of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it, and in the influence which these ideas exert upon the actions of the body". Moreover, Carpenter said, "it is not really the will of the operator which controls the sensations of the subject; but the suggestion of the operator which excites a corresponding idea": the suggested idea "not only [producing non-volitional] muscular movements [through this psychosomatic mechanism], but other bodily changes [as well]" (1852, p. 148).
In order to reconcile the observed hypnotic phenomena "with the known laws of nervous action" (p. 153), and without elaborating on mechanism, Carpenter identified a new psycho-physiological reflex activity – in addition to the already identified excito-motor (which was responsible for breathing, swallowing, etc.), and the sensori-motor (which was responsible for startle responses, etc.) – that of "the ideo-motor principle of action". At the conclusion of his paper, Carpenter briefly noted that his proposed ideo-motor principle of action, specifically created to explain Braid's hypnotism, could also explain other activities involving objectively psychosomatic responses, such as the movements of divining rods:

"Thus the ideo-motor principle of action finds its appropriate place in the physiological scale, which would, indeed, be incomplete without it.And, when it is once recognized, it may be applied to the explanation of numerous phenomena which have been a source of perplexity to many who have been convinced of their genuineness, and who could not see any mode of reconciling them with the known laws of nervous action.The phenomena in question are those which have been recently set down to the action of an "Od-force", such, for example, as the movements of the "divining-rod", and the vibration of bodies suspended from the finger; both which have been clearly proved to depend on the state of expectant attention on the part of the performer, his Will being temporarily withdrawn from control over his muscles by the state of abstraction to which his mind is given up, and the anticipation of a given result being the stimulus which directly and involuntarily prompts the muscular movements that produce it. – Carpenter (1852, p. 153)
Braid immediately adopted Carpenter's ideo-motor terminology. In order to stress the importance (within Braid's own representation) of the single, "dominant" idea concept, Braid spoke of a "mono-ideo-motor principle of action". However, by 1855, based on suggestions that had been made to Carpenter by their friend in common, Daniel Noble — that Carpenter's innovation would be more accurately understood, and more accurately applied (viz., not just limited to divining rods and pendulums), if it were designated the "ideo-dynamic principle" — Braid was referring to a "mono-ideo-dynamic principle of action":