Question: Am I the one who asks the questions? Yes.
Is Clelia there? No.
Who is here then? Nobody.
Does Clelia exist at all? No.
With whom then was I speaking yesterday? With no one.
* * * * *
Janet[34] conducted the following conversation with the subconsciousness of Lucie, who, meanwhile, was engaged in conversation with another observer. "M'entendez-vous?" asks Janet. Lucie answers by automatic writing, "Non." "Mais pour répondre il faut entendre?" "Oui, absolument." "Alors comment faites-vous?" "Je ne sais." "Il faut bien qu'il y ait quelqu'un qui m'entend?" "Oui." "Qui cela! Autre que Lucie. Eh bien! Une autre personne. Voulez-vous que nous lui donnions un nom?" "Non." "Si, ce sera plus commode," "Eh bien, Adrienne!" "Alors, Adrienne, m'entendez-vous?" "Oui."
From these quotations it will be seen in what way the subconscious personality is constructed. It owes its origin purely to suggestive questions meeting a certain disposition of the medium. The explanation is the result of the disintegration of the psychical complex; the feeling of the strangeness of such automatisms then comes in to help, as soon as conscious attention is directed to the automatic act. Binet[35] remarks on this experiment of Janet's: "Il faut bien remarquer que si la personnalité d'Adrienne a pu se créer, c'est qu'elle a rencontré une possibilité psychologique; en d'autres termes, il y avait là des phénomènes désagrégés vivant séparés de la conscience normale du sujet." The individualisation of the subconsciousness always denotes a considerable further step of great suggestive influence upon the further formation of automatisms.[36] So, too, we must regard the origin of the unconscious personalities in our case.
The objection that there is simulation in automatic table-turning may well be given up, when one considers the phenomenon of thought-reading from the purposeful tremors which the patient offered in such plenitude. Rapid, conscious thought-reading demands at the least an extraordinary degree of practice, which it has been shown the patient did not possess. By means of the purposeful tremors whole conversations can be carried on, as in our case. In the same way the suggestibility of the subconscious can be proved objectively if, for instance, the experimenter with his hand on the table desires that the hand of the medium should no longer be able to move the table or the glass; contrary to all expectation and to the liveliest astonishment of the subject, the table will immediately remain immovable. Naturally any other desired suggestions can be realised, provided they do not overstep by their innervations the region of partial hypnosis; this proves at the same time the limited nature of the hypnosis. Suggestions for the legs and the other arm will thus not be obeyed. Table-turning was not an automatism which belonged exclusively to the patient's semi-somnambulism: on the contrary, it occurred in the most pronounced form in the waking state, and in most cases then passed over into semi-somnambulism, the appearance of this being generally announced by hallucinations, as it was at the first sitting.
2. _Automatic Writing._--A second automatic phenomenon, which at the outset corresponds to a higher degree of partial hypnosis, is automatic writing. It is, according to my experience, much rarer and more difficult to produce than table-turning. As in table-turning, it is again a matter of a primary suggestion, to the conscious when sensibility is retained, to the unconscious when it is obliterated. The suggestion is, however, not a simple one, for it already bears in itself an intellectual element. "To write" means "to write something." This special element of the suggestion, which extends beyond the merely motor, often conditions a certain perplexity on the part of the subject, giving rise to slight contrary suggestions which hinder the appearance of the automatisms. I have observed in a few cases that the suggestion is realised, despite its relative venturesomeness (_e.g._ one directed towards the waking consciousness of a so-called normal person). However, it takes place in a peculiar way; it first displaces the purely motor part of the central system concerned in hypnosis, and the deeper hypnosis is then reached by auto-suggestion from the motor phenomenon, analogous to the procedure in table-turning described above. The subject,[37] who has a pencil in his hand, is purposely engaged in conversation whilst his attention is diverted from the writing. The hand begins to make movements, beginning with many upward strokes and zigzag lines, or a simple line is made. Occasionally it happens that the pencil does not touch the paper, but writes in the air. These movements must be conceived as purely motor phenomena, which correspond to the expression of the motor element in the presentation "write." This phenomenon is somewhat rare; generally single letters are first written, and what was said above of table-turning holds true of their combination into words and sentences. True mirror-writing is also observed here and there. In the majority of cases, and perhaps in all experiments with beginners who are not under some very special suggestion, the automatic writing is that of the subject. Occasionally its character may be greatly changed,[38] but this is secondary, and is always to be regarded as a symptom of the intruding synthesis of a subconscious personality.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
As stated, the patient's automatic writing never came to any very great development. In these experiments, generally carried out in darkness, she passed over into semi-somnambulism, or into ecstasy. The automatic writing had thus the same effect as the preliminary table-turning.
3. _The Hallucinations._--The nature of the passing into somnambulism in the second séance is of psychological importance. As stated, the automatic phenomena were progressing favourably when darkness came on. The most interesting event of this séance, so far, was the brusque interruption of the communication from the grandfather, which was the starting-point of various debates amongst the members of the circle. These two momentous occurrences, the darkness and the striking event, seem to have been the foundation for a rapid deepening of hypnosis, in consequence of which the hallucinations could be developed. The psychological mechanism of this process seems to be as follows. The influence of darkness upon the suggestibility of the sense-organs is well known.[39] Binet[40] states that it has a special influence on hysterics, producing a state of sleepiness. As is clear from the foregoing, the patient was in a state of partial hypnosis and had constituted herself one with the unconscious personality in closest relationship to her in the domain of speech. The automatic expression of this personality is interrupted most unexpectedly by a new person, of whose existence no one had any suspicion. Whence came this cleavage? Obviously the eager expectation of this first séance had very much occupied the patient. Her reminiscences of me and my family had probably grouped themselves around this expectation; hence these suddenly come to light at the climax of the automatic expression. That it was just my grandfather and no one else--not, _e.g._, my deceased father, who, as she knew, was much closer to me than the grandfather whom I had never known--perhaps suggests where the origin of this new person is to be sought. It is probably a dissociation of the personality already present which seized upon the material next at hand for its expression, namely, upon the associations concerning myself. How far this is parallel to the experiences revealed by dream investigation (Freud's[41]) must remain undecided, for we have no means of judging how far the effect mentioned can be considered a "repressed" one. From the brusque interruption of the new personality, we may conclude that the presentations concerned were very vivid, with corresponding intensity of expectation. This perhaps was an attempt to overcome a certain maidenly shyness and embarrassment. This event reminds us vividly of the manner in which the dream presents to consciousness, by a more or less transparent symbolism, things one has never said to oneself clearly and openly. We do not know when this dissociation of the new personality occurred, whether it had been slowly prepared in the unconscious, or whether it first occurred in the séance. In any case, this event meant a considerable increase in the extension of the unconscious sphere rendered accessible through the hypnosis. At the same time this event must be regarded as powerfully suggestive in regard to the impression which it made upon the waking consciousness of the patient. For the perception of this unexpected intervention of a new power must inevitably excite a feeling of the strangeness of the automatisms, and would easily suggest the thought that an independent spirit is here making itself known. Hence the intelligible association that she would finally be able to see this spirit. The situation that ensued at the second séance is to be explained by the coincidence of this energising suggestion with the heightened suggestibility conditioned by the darkness. The hypnosis, and with it the series of dissociated presentations, break through to the visual area, and the expression of the unconscious, hitherto purely motor, is made objective, according to the measure of the specific energy of the new system, in the shape of visual images with the character of hallucinations; not as a mere accompanying phenomenon of the word-automatism, but as a substituted function. The explanation of the situation that arose in the first séance, at that time unexpected and inexplicable, is no longer presented in words, but as a descriptive allegorical vision. The sentence "they do not hate one another, but are friends," is expressed in a picture. We often encounter events of this kind in somnambulism. The thinking of somnambulists is given in plastic images which constantly break into this or that sense-sphere and are made objective in hallucinations. The process of reflection sinks into the subconscious; only its end-results arise to consciousness either as presentations vividly tinged by the senses, or directly as hallucinations. In our case the same thing occurred as in the patient whose anæsthetic hand Binet pricked nine times, making her think of the figure 9; or as in Flournoy's[42] Helen Smith, who, when asked during business-hours about certain patterns, suddenly saw the number of days (18) for which they had been lent, at a length of 20 mm. in front of her. The further question arises, why does the automatism appear in the visual and not in the acoustic sphere? There are several grounds for this choice of the visual sphere.
(1) The patient is not gifted acoustically; she is, for instance, very unmusical.
(2) There was no stillness corresponding to the darkness which might have favoured the appearance of sounds; there was a lively conversation.
(3) The increased conviction of the near presence of spirits, because the automatism felt so strange, could easily have aroused the idea that a spirit might be seen, thus causing a slight excitation of the visual sphere.
(4) The entoptic phenomena in darkness favoured the occurrence of hallucinations.
The reasons (3) and (4)--the entoptic phenomena in the darkness and the probable excitation of the visual sphere--are of decisive importance for the appearance of hallucinations. The entoptic phenomena in this case play the same rôle in the auto-suggestion, the production of the automatism, as the slight tactile stimuli in hypnosis of the motor centre. As stated, flashes preceded the first hallucinatory twilight-state. Obviously attention was already at a high pitch, and directed to visual perceptions, so that the retina's own light, usually very weak, was seen with great intensity. The part played by entoptic perceptions of light in the origin of hallucinations deserves further consideration. Schüle[43] says: "The swarming of light and colour which stimulates and animates the field of vision, although in the dark, supplies the material for phantastic figures in the air before falling asleep. As we know, absolute darkness is never seen; a few particles of the dark field of vision are always illumined; flecks of light move here and there, and combine into all kinds of figures; it only needs a moderately active imagination to create out of them, as one does out of clouds, certain known figures. The power of reasoning, fading as one falls asleep, leaves phantasy free play to construct very vivid figures. In the place of the light spots, haziness and changing colours of the dark visual field, there arise definite outlines of objects."[44]
In this way hypnagogic hallucinations arise. The chief _rôle_ naturally belongs to the imagination, hence imaginative people in particular are subject to hypnagogic hallucinations.[45] The hypnopompic hallucinations described by Myers arise in the same way.
It is highly probable that hypnagogic pictures are identical with the dream-pictures of normal sleep--forming their visual foundation. Maury[46] has proved from self-observation that the pictures which hovered around him hypnagogically were also the objects of the dreams that followed. G. Trumbull Ladd[47] has shown this even more convincingly. By practice he succeeded in waking himself suddenly two to five minutes after falling asleep. He then observed that the figures dancing before the retina at times represented the same contours as the pictures just dreamed of. He even states that nearly every visual dream is shaped by the retina's own light-figures. In our case the fantastic rendering of these pictures was favoured by the situation. We must not underrate the influence of the over-excited expectation which allowed the dull retina-light to appear with increased intensity.[48] The further formation of the retinal appearances follows in accordance with the predominating presentations. That hallucinations appear in this way has been also observed in other visionaries. Jeanne d'Arc[49] first saw a cloud of light, and only after some time there stepped forth St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret. For a whole hour Swedenborg[50] saw nothing but illuminated spheres and fiery flames. He felt a mighty change in the brain, which seemed to him "release of light." After the space of one hour he suddenly saw red figures which he regarded as angels and spirits. The sun visions of Benvenuto Cellini[51] in Engelsburg are probably of the same nature. A student who frequently saw apparitions stated: "When these apparitions come, at first I only see single masses of light and at the same time am conscious of a dull noise in the ears. Gradually these contours become clear figures."
The appearance of hallucinations occurred in a quite classical way in Flournoy's Helen Smith. I quote the cases in question from his article.[52]
"18 Mars. Tentative d'expérience dans l'obscurité. Mlle. Smith voit un ballon tantôt luminieux, tantôt s'obscurcissant.
"25 Mars. Mlle. Smith commence à distinguer de vagues lueurs, de longs rubans blancs, s'agitant du plancher au plafond, puis enfin une magnifique étoile qui dans l'obscurité s'est montrée à elle seule pendant toute la séance.
"1 Avril. Mlle. Smith se sent très agitée, elle a des frissons, est partiellement glacée. Elle est très inquiète et voit tout à coup se balançant au-dessus de la table une figure grimaçante et très laide avec de longs cheveux rouges. Elle voit alors un magnifique bouquet de roses de nuances diverses; tout à coup elle voit sortir de dessous le bouquet un petit serpent, qui, rampant doucement, vient sentir les fleurs, les regarde," etc.
Helen Smith[53] says in regard to the origin of her vision of March:
"La lueur rouge persista autour de moi et je me suis trouvée entourée de fleurs extraordinaires."
At all times the complex hallucinations of visionaries have occupied a peculiar place in scientific criticism. Macario[54] early separated these so-called intuition-hallucinations from others, since he maintains that they occur in persons of an eager mind, deep understanding and high nervous excitability. Hecker[55] expresses himself similarly but more enthusiastically.
His view is that their condition is "the congenital high development of the spiritual organ which calls into active, free and mobile play the life of the imagination, bringing it spontaneous activity." These hallucinations are "precursors or signs of mighty spiritual power." The vision is "an increased excitation which is harmoniously adapted to the most complete health of mind and body." The complex hallucinations do not belong to the waking state, but prefer as a rule a partial waking state. The visionary is buried in his vision even to complete annihilation. Flournoy was also always able to prove in the visions of H.S. "un certain degré d'obnubilation." In our case the vision is complicated by a state of sleep whose peculiarities we shall review later.
