T. was actively engaged in the study of hypnosis and suggestion, so popular in psychiatry of his time; it was the subject of his 1888 work ‘Hypnotism and Suggestion’, published first in the magazine ‘Archive of Psychiatry, Neurology and Forensic Psychopathology’, and then as a separate book. That work by a young psychiatrist attracted attention, and T. was invited to the city of Kyakhta in Buryatia to conduct therapeutic hypnotic sessions. On the trip, he also observed the ‘rite with an arrow’, a description of which he published in 1894 in the magazine ‘Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii’ (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology). T. noted that the phenomenon he observed was a consequence of hypnotism provoked with the monotonous sounds uttered by lamas. In addition to hypnotism, according to T., manifestations of mental automatic acts and self-hypnosis plaid an important role in that rite. As a result, T. came to the conclusion that “hypnotism is a means for detecting the automatism of mental life”.