We have been obliged to ignore up to this point the problem of failure of memory with regard to experiences in hypnosis, since the fundamental psychological question as to the psychic adjustment of the hypnotized had not yet been clarified. Having now expounded our attempt at solution, namely, that hypnosis involves a form of transference, we may now turn our attention to the problem of amnesia with regard to the experiences in hypnosis. First let us state the fact in the case: A number of hypnotized persons have no memory of the experiences passed through in hypnosis.

For the most part it is the very suggestible patients who amnesize, but this rule has its exceptions in two directions. Many otherwise quite suggestible persons do not amnesize what was experienced in hypnosis; on the other hand, hypnotized persons are occasionally encountered who do not accept suggestions in hypnosis, who awake from the hypnosis with a start, open their eyes, become apparently quite awake and yet give evidence subsequently of complete amnesia. In addition to the spontaneously evident amnesia, there are amnesias which do not appear until express command to that effect is issued by the person conducting the experiment. Post-hypnotic commands are as a rule better executed if amnesia is present. Yet this rule is not without its exceptions. Even the hypnosis and profound hypnotic sleep are frequently amnesized. This experience will enable us to understand the observation, frequently made, that when a profound hypnotic condition intervenes between a superficial initial and final stage of hypnosis, the person experimented on will nevertheless state that he has been " awake " during the entire period of the hypnosis and can remember everything he experienced in the hypnosis. The consciousness of being awake here simply carries on the continuity between the nonamnesized initial stage of the hypnosis to the similarly nonamnesized final stage by way of a third lacuna of amnesic profound sleep.

The important question is to determine why spontaneous amnesia ensues after a previous hypnosis. We must first point out that profound slumber is suggested to the hypnotized, and that we rarely have any recollection of events experienced in profound slumber. Even dreams, as is well known, are forgotten with extraordinary frequency. In order to explain the forgetting of dreams we might mention—if we regard the formal point of view as important—their fragmentary character. From the standpoint of content, this fragmentary character bespeaks a primitive impulsive life which tends to dissolve (release) inhibitions. In our explanation of hypnotic amnesia, we shall have to make use of the same assumption, but must emphasize the fact that, in accordance with our entire exposition, important sections of the hypnotic experience do not correspond with the experience of dreams, but present a preconscious structure which to a great extent corresponds to the structure of the waking experience. We have all the more cause to seek for the motive of amnesia, and this motive must be sought in peculiarities of content. Obviously, the hypnotized is ashamed of his infantile-masochistic adjustment and denies the hypnosis in order to conceal the adjustment. Very frequently, therefore, we find hypnotized persons indignantly denying that they have been hypnotized. Profound slumber is frequently denied (see above). To the same sphere of phenomena belongs also the fact that hypnotized persons who have released themselves in one way or another from their hypnotizer not only maintain that they never were hypnotized, but recount—as an evidence in support of this statement—all the events that took place luring hypnosis, events that had apparently been amnesized. Perhaps facts of this type will also remind us that the hypnotized sometimes forgets in order to please the hypnotizer.

But the amnesia of hypnosis may also disappear in another manner. Not infrequently, the content of the hypnosis will reappear in a dream, although the patient may not always be able to indicate precisely the origin of this content. The content of the hypnosis may also come to light in the form of a spontaneously arising notion. Furthermore, post-hypnotic amnesia may yield as a result of persistent questioning, questioning accompanied by suggestive proceedures (such as laying the hand on the forehead or stroking the latter) and finally, amnesia may cease as a result of a new hypnosis in which case the content may either be awakened in hypnosis together with the simultaneous shout of an order not to forget the content of the hypnosis after waking, or the order may simply be issued in hypnosis that everything be remembered after waking. We may, therefore. state it as a principle that every hypnosis content may again be made accessible to the every-day consciousness by renewed hypnosis.

Lapses of memory after profound hypnoses precisely correspond, in their structure, to those encountered in hysteria and hysterical twilight states. It is self-evident that hysterical amnesias may also be eliminated by hypnosis. The original theory of Breuer and Freud was to the effect that traumatic experiences bring about a hypnoid condition which prevents the full coming to consciousness of the traumatic experiences—thus amnesizes the traumatic experiences. By being thus cut off from the consciousness, the traumatic experience only now attains its disease-causing effect. The theory goes on to say that the blocking of the consciousness constricts the emotion, the constriction of the emotion produces the hysterical phenomena. The emotion is thus transformed, by the path of conversion, into bodily, somatic phenomena. According to this view, amnesia is a prerequisite for the effectiveness of a traumatic experience. Now, in hypnosis, we have an opportunity to subject the Breuer-Freud view to the experimental test. We issue an order to the person experimented on in hypnosis, to clap his hands, after waking, whenever asked: " How do you do ? " After waking, the person experimented on, to his own great amusement, tirelessly and repeatedly will clap his hands when the aforesaid question is put. After having recovered his memory, by hypnotic or suggestive means, he will cease clapping his hands in response to the question. The experiment does not always turn out so unambiguously as here indicated. At times the reaction will dwindle of itself; at times the post-hypnotic order is effective even though amnesia has not been present. The original Breuer-Freud formulation cannot therefore be a complete explanation.

This question is answered by the later developments of psychoanalysis, which considers infantile tendencies which have been inhibited and are now becoming effective, as the essential factor of hypnosis. The traumatic experience is of importance only to the extent that it awakens such infantile erotic adjustments. For the reasons above indicated, amnesia is very frequently connected with the traumatic experience, and may even facilitate its effectiveness, but surely is not the prerequisite for the effectiveness of the traumatic experience. On the contrary, only the impulsive adjustments of infantile life and the amnesias connected with them are of importance. It is their elucidation only that would involve complete cure, according to the later views of psychoanalysis. The original method of psychoanalysis was the so-called cathartic hypnosis. The patient is obliged, in hypnosis, to recall the traumatic scene; once he recalls the traumatic scene, the inhibited motion is released, the individual is freed from hysteria. In the famous case of Anna O., under Brauer's observation, who is the point of departure for the entire subject of psychoanalysis, the symptoms disappeared whenever, in the course of the cathartic hypnosis, all the events had been uncovered which had found their expression in the hysterical symptom. The physician was obliged to proceed gradually from more recent to earlier occasions in which the symptom had appeared. Only after the first occasion had been determined, did the symptom disappear. The method of cathartic hypnosis is accordingly a systematic retracing of one's steps to the first cause.

Since hypnosis is based on infantile erotic associations (Bindungen) it is obvious that we cannot loosen by means of hypnosis precisely those infantile erotic Bindungen which are so important from the psychoanalytic point of view. Precisely that portion of the neurosis which we now consider the dominant portion, is not accessible to cathartic hypnosis. Let us add another thought to that just expressed, for the sake of completeness. In the material concealed by hypnotic amnesia, we are concerned in great measure, in fact predominantly, with material having a preconscious structure. But we know how decisive is the share of the unconscious mind in the origin of the neurosis. It will be possible for us to derive from the unconscious character of the experiences in hypnosis, the fact that cathartic hypnosis can have only a limited effectiveness.

It is already apparent from what has been said above that the content of one hypnosis is in communication with the content of the other hypnosis. We may state it thus: The foreconscious materials stand in communication with each other. A similar communication exists also, however, between the content of the peculiar hysterical conditions and hypnosis, and also between the various peculiar conditions themselves. We are thus entering on the transition to the famous cases of a so-called double consciousness. If we designate the normal state as the first state, the exceptional state as the second state (Stat second, P. Janet), the experiences of the second state may be united in an apparently closed personality in spite of the fact that the personality of the second state knows nothing of the personality of the first state. Similarly, the first personality may be completely deprived of any knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of the second personality. But the most varied fluctuations are conceivable. In some cases, one personality will know of the other while the other knows nothing of it. For we must emphasize the fact that the experiences of the peculiar hysterical state which are not accessible to normal personality must nevertheless be contained in the psychic experience. They may either be beheld in a crystal held before the eyes, they may be experienced in dreams, or they may find their expression in the fact that words intended to refer to experiences from the exceptional state, produce bodily emotive reactions which cannot be understood from the experiences of the normal state. Prince and Petersen have shown by means of the psychogalvanic phenomena in a case of double consciousness that the person experimented on reacts emotively to those experiences of which he has apparently no knowledge. This leads us to the important question: In what manner are apparently forgotten experiences experienced? Are they really unconscious, or are they not present, after all, in the background of consciousness? Our observation of the conduct of somnambulous persons show that reality, though apparently not perceived, still reaches into the experiences of the hypnotized. We are therefore probably entitled to infer that in the waking state the experiences of hypnosis are in consciousness, though they be only in the background of consciousness, and that the same holds true of the experiences in the peculiar hysterical condition, particularly if we recall the facts described above. We are therefore of the opinion that even apparently forgotten experiences are retained in experience ; not in the foreground, to be sure, but in the background of experience, and we imagine that the true personality remains in the background of the experience of the hypnotized, as we have been emphasizing throughout, and that the experiences of the hypnosis are in the background of the awakened personality. We are inclined to transfer this view without modification to the peculiar hysterical states and to the states of double consciousness. The amnesias of hypnosis are of extremely far reaching importance when viewed from general psychological angles. In the post-hypnotic order, the individual is carrying out an instruction without being conscious of having received the instruction. If asked why he has carried out the instruction the individual will either state he does not know why or—and this is very significant—his answers will very often be erroneous. Thus, a hypnotized man who has raised his umbrella in obedience to a post-hypnotic command, although the sky is clear. will perhaps say that he wished to protect himself against the sun or a person experimented on, who has clapped her hands in response to a post-hypnotic order will state that she was merely giving expression to her feeling of general well being, etc. There is a tendency to find reasons for classing with the normal course of events such executions of post-hypnotic commands although they may frequently be quite different from the acts of normal every-day life. To what extent, of course, such a motivation, which is sometimes advanced in the form of an awkward subterfuge, is actually believed by the explaining person himself, and to what extent we are dealing here with an internally accepted statement, must remain an open question. Hypnosis therefore shows that we do not know the motives of out acts, and it is this profound recognition that is the foundation of psychoanalysis.

A few words are required on so-called post-hypnotic suggestion. If the individual in the hypnosis itself is determined by the adjustments of his own personality to carry out only such commands as may be made to appear to accord with the goals of his personality, we have a right to make the same assumption with regard to the post-hypnotic command. Certain authors actually assume that the hypnosis again comes to life during the execution of the post-hypnotic command, an assumption which is justifiable to the extent that in a number of such cases the persons experimented on actually do enter into a dreamlike state while executing the post-hypnotic order. In other cases, the person complying with the post-hypnotic order can hardly be distinguished from any other person carrying out an order, so that it would appear far fetched to speak of a renewal of the hypnotic state. However this may be, post-hypnotic orders are based in the last analysis on the agreement of the personality. Particular attention is deserved by those cases in which the person experimented on executes the post-hypnotic order with some variation, thus making the execution accord more perfectly with the demands of his personality than would have been the case had he carried out the order implicitly. Thus, we have seen cases of persons who had been ordered to clap their hands and who discharged this obligation by rubbing their hands and simultaneously making a faint motion of clapping, thus transforming the command into an expressive motion that was not very striknig. The reader will observe that in the last analysis all depends on the unit personality which in some manner always interferes with the individual acts and thus controls them. Amnesias of whatsoever kind are by no means a gap between the various experiences of the personality. The apparently forgotten material remains present in the personality. It merely is not so easily available. When therefore we find that the experiences of hypnosis are apparently forgotten, it is not a fact that the material of experience has truly been lost or dissipated, in fact it remains ever present and is released again and again; it is merely not always accessible to the personality; it has been forced into the background; it has been pushed aside.

A question of the greatest importance is the question whether the knowledge obtained through the theory of hypnosis may have general application in the psychology of memory, and we must state to what extent this principle may be extended also to other disturbances of memory and to the phenomenon of forgetting in general In the first place, let us recall that the literature of hypnosis presents a great number of astounding observations in which long forgotten material of experience has again stepped into the foreground under the influence of hypnosis. Thus Benedict tells of a military officer who suddenly began to speak a new language in hypnosis; it was Welsh, a language the officer had learned as a boy and later forgotten The profound similarity between the spontaneous condition of trance and the phenomena of hypnosis finds an expression in the fact that a servant girl in a trance suddenly began to speak Aramaic, a language she had heard from her past when a child, without being conscious of ever having learned this language. It is apparent, therefore, that there is a very close connection between the forgotten material on the one hand, and the condition of hypnosis and trance on the other hand. Forgotten material may therefore be brought back to the consciousness by the "normal" path by means of hypnosis. But this affords a decisive indication that the phenomena of memory in hypnosis may furnish an explanation of the normal phenomena of memory.

In this connection, we must mention, on the one hand, the investigations of the Kulpe school, and on the other hand, the investigations by psychoanalysis. Since Ach's revelations we know that determining tendencies control the psychic life. These tendencies determine not only the material which comes to the surface and becomes conscious in ideas and thoughts, but they even make a selection among the material that has become conscious. The matter which is associated is determined after the manner of tasks, tasks which also determine the final utilization of that which has already become conscious It is worthy of note that Ach also makes use of hypnotic experiments to support his point of view. The putting of problems necessarily involves the setting aside of materials not serviceable in the solution of the problem. Here again there is a pushing to one side, of course m the wider sense of the word. In other words, there is an intelligent factor in remembering and associating, which determines with intelligence the selection of the associated material. Psychoanalysis has filled this empty outline with the richness of life. Any fairly conscientiously conducted analysis will show that all remembering operates merely as an expression of instinctive adjustments, that all remembering is conditioned by the basic impulses. We are merely reformulating these discoveries, first announced by Freud, when we say that all forgetting takes place because of emotive factors, and that forgetting therefore is by no means equivalent to a destruction of memory material. Accordingly, Freud was able in one case to pursue his analysis back to the age of one and one-half years and to reconstruct (restore) a scene which had taken place at this age. If in the course of life we forget so many things, we forget them because we have no use for them, and because our interest cannot be held captive by their various details. In fact, we go so far as to assume that the various efforts to acquire knowledge and acts of reading which lead to the acquisition of a certain subject must necessarily be retained in the psyche in their individuality, and that they could be reproduced as a whole if it were possible to find pegs on which to attach the biological interest. It is apparent that the type of amnesia of hypnosis is the type of forgetting in general, and precisely herein lies its great importance. It might be urged against this view that there are also, of course, organically conditioned amnesias. Here we may mention investigations which have been going on for many years in our clinic.

Stern was able to restore amnesias in intoxicated persons even where the cases involved so-called pathological intoxications. We are here dealing evidently with an amnesia conditioned or favored by an organic factor, and which nevertheless may be illuminated by hypnosis. More significant is the fact that—as is shown by the investigations of Graeter, Muralt, and Riklin, as well as of one of the present authors—even the forgetfulness in epilepsy is restorable by hypnosis. Epileptic amnesia was and is considered as the very type of organically conditioned amnesia. Similarly, Schilder and Stern succeeded in restoring the retrograde amnesias of persons resuscitated after hanging, whose " organic character" has been proved by Wagner-Jauregg.(*) With regard to amnesias after cranial traumata, retrograde amnesias of traumatic cranial cases, we have not succeeded in bringing about a return in hypnosis. But the mode of restoration in a case reported by Righetti corresponded with the restoration of an hysterical amnesia, and the mode of restoration in a case of amnesia after cranial trauma, studied by Hartmann and Schilder permitted only of the inference that the memory material had not been destroyed as such, but remained preserved. It therefore appears that there is no class of organically conditioned amnesias that escapes classification from the point of view carried out here.(**) J. H. Schultz also advocates similar views.

(*) Of course we may not count on success in every specific case. We have often witnessed failures. But as a matter of principle we consider such amnesias as restorable. Even in the technically more tractable hysterical amnesia, the attempt at illumination occasionally fails, which does not give us any reason to alter our views on hysterical amnesia.

(**) Of course, only such material can be amnesized as has been perceived and absorbed. In stupor and unconsciousness, nothing is taken in. There is nothing to be reamnesized in such cases.

What has been said above applies exclusively to lapses of memory, to amnesias, and we have no right to consider all disturbances of memory as amnesias. We are not concerned only with the forgetting of what was once learned, which we indeed justify in classing with amnesias, but also with the forgetting of an extremely recent experience, in other words, with what is ordinarily called the Korsakoff syndrome,(*) the disturbance of the power of notation. The first important hints in this direction are to be found in the studies on Brodmann-Gregor in the case of Korsakoff patients, which show that any material once learned can be relearned with less effort. No matter how grave may be the disturbance of the power of notation, some trace must remain, and we are perfectly entitled to ask to what extent this trace may be considered as psychic at all, whether we are not dealing here with a purely physical residuum. Some slight assistance is afforded by experiments by one of the present authors who has shown that the amnesic experiences of the epileptic state are relearned with a saving of effort after the cessation of the epileptic state. Similar is the case with material acquired during hypnosis. Now we know from the above data that experiences had in the amnesic epileptic state continue to be transmitted psychically. We therefore have at least the beginning of a proof that wherever an economy of effort is later attainable, psychic traces must also still be present. Of course, we are not presenting an inference of conclusive value, but merely a conjecture supported by analogy. We must state further, however, that, according to the studies of Von Betlheim and Hartmann, the material which replaces the forgotten material suffers condensations and displacements which have an extensive similarity with the condensations and displacements in dream and hysteria. But we may assume that the apparently forgotten material is not truly destroyed either in dream or in hysteria. Thus we have a new indication of the probability that it will be possible to apply similar fundamental assumptions in the understanding of disturbances of the power of notation as in that of the amnesias. But we have now penetrated very profoundly into the realm of organic disturbances of memory and we may hardly be said to know what form of disturbances of memory should be declared as escaping, in principle, our mode of investigation. One might still object, at best, that in aphasias and in mind-blindnesses (agnosias) memory material is lost. But one of the present authors, following out suggestions made by Bergson, has shown that we have no right to speak of a loss of memory material in aphasias and agnosias. This is equivalent to the understanding that the disturbances of memory in hypnosis may facilitate the understanding of organic disturbances of memory.

(*) Forgetfulness of recent events with tendency to fabrication.—Translator.

Let us call particular attention to certain traits of disturbances of memory in hypnosis and to their restoration. We have already pointed out that in the dream or in random notions the memory material of hypnosis may crop out. Frequently without the individual's being aware of the origin of his memory material, without his being able to put this memory material into its proper spatial and chronological relations. This reminds us that we have similar notion concerning the amnesic states of epilepsy (Bonhoeffer) and also the spontaneous restoration of amnesias in cranial traumata. In general we must conceive the matter thus: The process of remembering is a process of progressive differentiation and the terminal point of this differentiation which goes back through a number of displacements and condensations to the forgotten material is the replacing of this material into its proper spatial, chronological and objective relations. Furthermore, in the course of this process of differentiation, details are occasionally differentiated while all else yet remains in the dark. Starting with these facts as a point of departure, we only now begin to understand what takes place in the restoration of amnesic gaps, even when the latter are of hypnotic origin. This restoration always occurs piecemeal or stratum by stratum. Nor are we ever fully protected against the interposition of distorted material among the restored gaps. The same applies also to the restoration of amnesic gaps of any kind originating in the course of pathological processes. The illumination of amnesic gaps may be of importance even in courts of law. If, according to Brauer and Freud, cathartic hypnoses be made use of, the illumination will in turn be of particular importance. But here also one is of course never entirely protected against deceptions, whether these arise from the patient's " unconscious " or whether they be outright simulation. In this connection, we refer to an observation made by one of us in the treatment of a somnambulist woman.

Our section on disturbances of memory in hypnotized persons is incomplete to the extent that we have not yet mentioned the fact that very close relations exist between certain pharmacologic-toxic effects, sleep, hypnosis, and memory. In the first place, we must mention that material long forgotten frequently crops up again in sleep. It is too well known that in an intoxication the experiences of an earlier intoxication may again be recalled, to require any further emphasis on this point. Finally, soporifics have been of excellent service to us in the elimination of stubborn amnesias. We must therefore assume that the profound sleep system has very close relations with the memory systems. We have again and again pointed out that this system also is closely related to hypnosis. A number of further questions connected with the effects of soporifics as well as with their relation with the primitive motility and with the relations to schizophrenia, must still be discussed in this book.