Lotze had suggested that the mental image of a definite movement had attached to it as a necessary result the appearance of that definite movement. James termed 'ideomotor response'. Every representation of a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement which is its object. We think the act and it is done. An anticipatory image of the sensorial consequences of a movement is the only psychic state which introspection lets us discern as the forerunner of our voluntary acts.
Movement is the natural immediate effect of feeling'.
He speaks about 'a motor presence of the word'. For him, the word is first of all 'an event which grips my body. Both monoideism and ideomotor action, as applied to hypnosis, would suggest that the hypnotist succeeds by inducing in the subject ideas of action or perception which, in the absence of competing ideas, are translated into movement or apparently actual perception. As the subject hears the words of the hypnotist, the words create in the subject motor programs appropriate for the actions or percepts. In the absence of any competing neural patterning, the motor programs are automatically executed.