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).
[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.