THE SYMPTOMS OF THE TRANCE.

This accounts for the altogether indefinite array of symptoms which have been gathered together as characteristic of the hypnotic state. The law of habit dominates hypnotic subjects even more than it does waking ones. Any sort of personal peculiarity, any trick accidentally fallen into in the first instance by some one subject, may, by attracting attention, become stereotyped, serve as a pattern for imitation, and figure as the type of a school. The first subject trains the operator, the operator trains the succeeding subjects, all of them in perfect good faith conspiring together to evolve a perfectly arbitrary result. With the extraordinary perspicacity and subtlety of perception which subjects often display for all that concerns the operator with whom they are en rapport, it is hard to keep them ignorant of anything which he expects. Thus it happens that one easily verifies on new subjects what one has already seen on old ones, or any desired symptom of which one may have heard or read.

The symptoms earliest observed by writers were all thought to be typical. But with the multiplication of ob- [p. 602] served phenomena, the importance of most particular symptoms as marks of the state has diminished. This lightens very much our own immediate task. Proceeding to enumerate the symptoms of the hypnotic trance, I may confine myself to those which are intrinsically interesting, or which differ considerably from the normal functions of man.

First of all comes amnesia. In the earlier stages of hypnotism the patient remembers what has happened, but with successive sittings he sinks into a deeper condition, which is commonly followed by complete loss of memory. He may have been led through the liveliest hallucinations and dramatic performances, and have exhibited the intensest apparent emotion, but on waking he can recall nothing at all. The same thing happens on waking from sleep in the midst of a dream -- it quickly eludes recall. But just as we may be reminded of it, or of parts of it, by meeting persons or objects which figured therein, so on being adroitly prompted, the hypnotic patient will often remember what happened in his trance. One cause of the forgetfulness seems to be the disconnection of the trance performances with the sys-tem of waking ideas. Memory requires a continuous train of association. M. Delboeuf, reasoning in this way, woke his subjects in the midst of an action begun during trance (washing the hands, e.g.), and found that they then remembered the trance. The act in question bridged over the two states. But one call often make them remember by merely telling them during the trance that they shall remember. Acts of one trance, moreover, are usually recalled, either spontaneously or at command, during another trance, provided that the contents of the two trances be not mutually incompatible.

Suggestibility. The patient believes everything which his hypnotizer tells him, and does everything which the latter commands. Even results over which the will has normally no control, such as sneezing, secretion, reddening and growing pale, alterations of temperature and heart-beat, menstruation, action of the bowels, etc., may take place in consequence of the operator's firm assertions during the hypnotic trance, and the resulting conviction on the [p. 603] part of the subject, that the effects will occur. Since almost all the phenomena yet to be described are effects of this heightened suggestibility, I will say no more under the general head, but proceed to illustrate the peculiarity in detail.

Effects on, the voluntary muscles seem to be those most easily got; and the ordinary routine of hypnotizing consists in provoking them first. Tell the patient that he cannot open his eyes or his mouth, cannot unclasp his hands or lower his raised arm, cannot rise from his seat, or pickup a certain object from the floor, and he will be immediately smitten with absolute impotence in these regards. The effect here is generally due to the involuntary contraction of antagonizing muscles. But one can equally well suggest paralysis, of an arm for example, in which case it will hang perfectly placid by the subject's side. Cataleptic and tetanic rigidity are easily produced by suggestion, aided by handling the parts. One of the favorite shows at public exhibitions is that of a subject stretched stiff as a board with his head on one chair and his heels on another. The cataleptic retention of impressed attitudes differs from voluntary assumption of the same attitude. An arm voluntarily held out straight will drop from fatigue after a quarter of an hour at the at most, and before it falls the agent's distress will be made manifest by oscillations in the arm, disturbances in the breathing, etc. But Charcot has shown that an arm held out in hypnotic catalepsy, though it may as soon descend, yet does so slowly and with no accompanying vibration, whilst the breathing remains entirely calm. He rightly points out that this shows a profound physiological change, and is proof positive against simulation, as far as this symptom is concerned. A cataleptic attitude, moreover, may be held for many hours. -- Sometimes an expressive attitude, clinching of the fist, contraction of the brows, will gradually set up a sympathetic action of the other muscles of the body, so that at last a tableau vivant of fear, anger, disdain, prayer, or other emotional condition, is produced with rare perfection. This effect would seem to be due to the suggestion of the mental state by the first contraction. Stammering, aphasia, or [p. 604] inability to utter certain words, pronounce certain letters, are readily producible by suggestion.

Hallucinations of all the senses and delusions of every conceivable kind can be easily suggested to good subjects. The emotional effects are then often so lively, and the pantomimic display so expressive, that it is hard not to believe in a certain 'psychic hyper-excitability,' as one of the concomitants of the hypnotic condition. You call make the subject think that he is freezing or burning, itching or covered with dirt, or wet; you can make him eat a potato for a peach, or drink a cup of vinegar for a glass of champagne; [5] ammonia will smell to him like cologne water; a chair will be a lion, a broom-stick a beautiful woman, a noise in the street will be an orchestral music, etc., etc., with no limit except your powers of invention and the patience of the lookers on. [6] Illusions and hallucinations form the pieces de résistance at public exhibitions. The comic effect is at its climax when it is successfully suggested to the subject that his personality is changed into that of a baby, of a street boy, of a young lady dressing for a party, of a stump orator, or of Napoleon the Great. He may even be transformed into a beast, or an inanimate thing like a chair or a carpet, and in every case will act out all the details of the part with a sincerity and intensity seldom seen at the theatre. The excellence of the performance is in these cases the best reply to the suspicion that the subject may be shamming -- so skilful a shammer must long since have found his true function in life upon the stage. Hallucinations and histrionic delusions generally go with a certain depth of the trance, and are followed [p. 605] by complete forgetfulness. The subject awakens from them at the command of the operator with a sudden start of surprise, and may seem for a while a little dazed.

Subjects in this condition will receive and execute suggestions of crime, and act out a theft, forgery, arson, or murder. A girl will believe that she is married to her hypnotizer, etc. It is unfair, however, to say that in these cases the subject is a pure puppet with no spontaneity. His spontaneity is certainly not in abeyance so far as things go which are harmoniously associated with the suggestion given him. He takes the text from his operator; but he may amplify and develop it enormously as he acts it out. His spontaneity is lost only for those systems of ideas which conflict with the suggested delusion, The latter is thus 'systematized'; the rest of consciousness is shutoff, excluded, dissociated from it. In extreme cases the rest of the mind would seem to be actually abolished and the hypnotic subject to be literally a changed personality, a being in one of those 'second' states which we studied in Chapter X. But the reign of the delusion is often not as absolute as this. If the thing suggested be too intimately repugnant, the subject may strenuously resist and get nervously excited in consequence, even to the point of having an hysterical attack. The conflicting ideas slumber in the background and merely permit those in the foreground to have their way until a real emergency arises; then they assert their rights. As M. Delboeuf says, the subject surrenders himself good-naturedly to the performance, stabs with the pasteboard dagger you give him because he knows what it is, and fires off the pistol because he knows it has no ball; but for a real murder he would not be your man. It is undoubtedly true that subjects are often well aware that they are acting a part. They know that what they do is absurd. They know that the hallucination which they see, describe, and act upon, is not really there. They may laugh at themselves; and they always recognize the abnormality of their state when asked about it, and call it 'sleep.' One often notices a sort of mocking smile upon them, as if they mere playing a comedy, and they may even say on 'coming to' that they were sham- [p. 606] ming all the while. These facts have misled ultra-skeptical people so far as to make them doubt the genuineness of any hypnotic phenomena at all. But, save the consciousness of 'sleep,' they do not occur in the deeper conditions; and when they do occur they are only a natural consequence of the fact that the 'monoideism' is incomplete. The background-thoughts still exist, and have the power of comment on the suggestions, but no power to inhibit their motor and associative effects. A similar condition is frequent enough in the waking state, when an impulse carries us away and our 'will' looks on wonderingly like an impotent spectator. These 'shammers' continue to sham in just the same way, every new time you hypnotize them, until at last they are forced to admit that if shamming there be, it is something very different from the free voluntary shamming of waking hours.

Real sensations may be abolished as well as false ones suggested. Legs and breasts may be amputated, children born, teeth extracted, in short the most painful experiences undergone, with no other anæsthetic than the hypnotizer's assurance that no pain shall be felt. Similarly morbid pains may be annihilated, neuralgias, toothaches, rheumatisms cured. The sensation of hunger has thus been abolished, so that a patient took no nourishment for fourteen days. The most interesting of these suggested anæsthesias are close limited to certain objects of perception. Thus a subject may be made blind to a certain per-son and to him alone, or deaf to certain words but to no others. [7] In this case the anæsthesia (or negative hallucination, as it has been called) is apt to become systematized. Other things related to the person to whom one has been made blind may also be shut out of consciousness. What he says is not heard, his contact is not felt, objects which he takes from his pocket are not seen, etc. Objects which he screens are seen as if he were transparent. Facts about him are forgotten, his name is not recognized when pronounced. Of course there is great variety in the com- [p. 607] pleteness of this systematic extension of the suggested anæsthesia, but one may say that some tendency to it always exists. When one of the subjects' own limbs is made ansthetic, for example, memories as well as sensations of its movements often seem to depart. An interesting degree of the phenomenon is found in the case related by M. Binet of a subject to whom it was suggested that a certain M. C. was invisible. She still saw M. C., but saw him as a stranger, having lost the memory of his name and his existence. -- Nothing is easier than to make subjects forget their own name and condition in life. It is one of the suggestions which most promptly succeed, even with quite fresh ones. A systematized amnesia of certain periods of one's life may also be suggested, the subject placed, for instance, where he was a decade ago with the intervening years obliterated from his mind.

The mental condition which accompanies these systematized anæsthesias and amnesias is a very curious one. The anæsthesia is not a genuine sensorial one, for if you make a real red cross (say) on a sheet of white paper invisible to an hypnotic subject, and yet cause him to look fixedly at a dot on the paper on or near the cross, he will, on transferring his eye to a blank sheet, see a bluish-green after-image of the cross. This proves that it has impressed his sensibility. He has felt it, but not perceived it. He had actively ignored it, refused to recognize it, as it were. Another experiment proves that he must distinguish it first in order thus to ignore it. Make a stroke on paper or blackboard, and tell the subject it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next, he not looking, surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out one by one all the new strokes slid omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous the new strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly, if the original single stroke to which he is blind be doubled by a prism of sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the direction in which the image seen through the prism lies. [p. 608]

Obviously, then, he is not blind to the kind of stroke in the least. He is blind only to one individual stroke of that kind in a particular position on the board or paper, -- that is, to a particular complex object; and, paradoxical as it may seem to say so, he must distinguish it with great accuracy from others like it, in order to remain blind to it when the others are brought near. He 'apperceives' it, as a preliminary to not seeing it at all! How to conceive of this state of mind is not easy. It would be much simpler to understand the process, if adding new strokes made the first one visible. There would then be two different objects apperceived as totals, -- paper with one stroke, paper with two strokes; and, blind to the former, he would see all that was in the latter, because he would have apperceived it as a different total in the first instance.

A process of this sort occurs sometimes (not always) when the new strokes, instead of Being mere repetitions of the original one, are lines which combine with it into a total effect, say a human face. The subject of the trance then may regain his sight of the line to which he had previously been blind, by seeing it as part of the face.

When by a prism before one eye a previously invisible line has been made visible to that eye, and the other eye is closed or screened, its closure makes no difference; the line still remains visible. But if then the prism is removed, the line will disappear even to the eye which a moment ago saw it, and both eyes will revert to their original blind state.

We have, then, to deal in these cases neither with a sensorial anæsthesia, nor with a mere failure to notice, but with something much more complex; namely, an active counting out and positive exclusion of certain objects. It is as when one 'cuts' an acquaintance, 'ignores' a claim, or 'refuses to be influenced' by a consideration of whose existence one remains aware. Thus a lover of Nature in America finds himself able to overlook and ignore entirely the board- and rail-fences and general roadside raggedness, and revel in the beauty and picturesqueness of the other elements of the landscape, whilst to a newly- [p. 609] arrived European the fences are so aggressively present as to spoil enjoyment.

Messrs. Gurney, Janet, and Binet have shown that the ignored elements are preserved in a split-off portion of the subjects' consciousness which can be tapped in certain ways, and made to give an account of itself (see Vol. I. p. 209).

Hyperæsthesia of the senses is as common a symptom as anæsthesia. On the skin two points can be discriminated at less than the normal distance. The sense of touch is so delicate that (as M. Delboeuf informs me) a subject after simply poising on her finger-tips a blank card drawn from a pack of similar ones can pick it out from the pack again by its 'weight.' We approach here the line where, to many persons, it seems as if something more than the ordinary senses, however sharpened, were required in explanation. I have seen a coin from the operator's pocket repeatedly picked out by the subject from a heap of twenty others, [8] by its greater 'weight' in the subject's language. -- auditory hyperæsthesia may enable a subject to hear a watch tick, or his operator speak, in a distant room. -- One of the most extraordinary examples of visual hyperæsthesia is that reported by Bergson, in which a subject who seemed to be reading through the back of a book HREF="page04#linkHREF="page04#linkHREF="page04#linkHREF="page04#linkheld and looked at by the operator, was really proved to be reading the image of the page reflected on the latter's cornea. The same subject was able to discriminate with the naked eye details in a microscopic preparation. Such cases of 'hyperæsthesia of vision' as that reported by Taguet and Sauvaire, where subjects could see things mirrored by non-reflecting bodies, or through opaque pasteboard, would seem rather to belong to 'psychical research' than to the present category. -- The ordinary test of visual hyperacuteness in hypnotism is the favorite trick of giving a subject the hallucination of a picture on a blank sheet of card-board, and then mixing the latter with a lot of other similar sheets. The subject will always find the picture on the original sheet again, and recognize infallibly if it has been turned [p. 610] over, or upside down, although the bystanders have to re-sort to artifice to identify it again. The Subject notes peculiarities on the card, too small for waking observation to detect. [9] If it be said that the spectators guide him by their manner, their breathing, etc., that is only another proof of his hyperæsthesia; for he undoubtedly is conscious of subtler personal indications (of his operator's mental states especially) than he could notice in his waking state. Examples of this are found in the so-called 'magnetic rapport.' This is a name for the fact that in deep trance, or in lighter trance whenever the suggestion is made, the subject is deaf and blind to everyone but the operator or those spectators to whom the latter expressly awakens his senses. The most violent appeals from anyone else are for him as if non-existent, whilst he obeys the faintest signals on the part of his hypnotizer. If in catalepsy, his limbs will retain their attitude only when the operator moves them; when others move them they fall down, etc. A more remarkable fact still is that the patient will often answer anyone whom his operator touches, or at whom he even points his finger, in however concealed a manner. All which is rationally explicable by expectation and suggestion, if only it be farther admitted that his senses are acutely sharpened for all the operator's movements. [10] He often shows great anxiety and restlessness if the latter is out of the room. A favorite experiment of Mr. E. Gurney's was to put the subject's hands through an opaque screen, and cause the operator to point at one finger. That finger presently grew insensible or rigid. A bystander pointing simultaneously at another finger, never made that insensible or rigid. Of course the elective rapport with their operator had been developed in these [p. 611] trained subjects during the hypnotic state, but the phenomenon then occurred in some of them during the waking state, even when their consciousness was absorbed in animated conversation with a fourth party. [11] I confess that when I saw these experiments I was impressed with the necessity for admitting between the emanations from different people differences for which we have no name, and a discriminative sensibility for them of the nature of which we can form no clear conception, but which seems to be developed in certain subjects by the hypnotic trance. -- The enigmatic reports of the effect of magnets and metals, even if they be due, as many contend, to unintentional suggestion on the operator's part, certainly involve hypersthetic perception, for the operator seeks as well as possible to conceal the moment when the magnet is brought into play, and yet the subject not only finds it out that moment in away difficult to understand, but may develop effects which (in the first instance certainly) the operator did not expect to find. Unilateral contractures, movements, paralyses, hallucinations, etc., are made to pass to tile other side of the body, hallucinations to disappear, or to change to the complementary color, suggested emotions to pass into their opposites, etc. Many Italian observations agree with the French ones, and the upshot is that if unconscious suggestion lie at the bottom of this matter, the patients show an enormously exalted power of divining what it is they are expected to do. This hypersthetic perception is what concerns us now. [12] Its modus cannot yet be said to be defined. [p. 612]

Changes in the nutrition of the tissues may be produced by suggestion. These effects lead into therapeutics -- a subject which I do not propose to treat of here. But I may say that there seems no reasonable ground for doubting that in certain chosen subjects the suggestion of a congestion, a burn, a blister, a raised papule, or a bleeding from the nose or skin, may produce the effect. Messrs, Beaunis, Berjon, Bernheim, Bourru, Buret, Charcot, Delboeuf, Dumontpalier, Focachon, Forel, Jendrássik, Krafft-Ebing, Liébault, Liégeois, Lipp, Mabille, and others have recently vouched for one or other of these effects. Messrs. Delboeuf and Liégeois have annulled by suggestion, one the effects of a burn, the other of a blister. Delboeuf was led to his experiments after seeing a burn on the skill produced by suggestion, at the Saléptrière, by reasoning that if the idea of a pain could produce inflammation it must be because pain was itself an inflammatory irritant, and that the abolition of it from a real burn ought therefore to entail the absence of inflammation. He applied the actual cautery (as well as vesicants) to symmetrical places on the skin, affirming that no pain should be felt on one of the sides. The result was a dry scorch on that side, with (as he assures me) no after-mark, but on the other side a regular blister with suppuration and a subsequent scar. This explains the innocuity of certain assaults made on subjects during trance. To test stimulation, recourse is often had to sticking pills under their finger-nails or through their tongue, to inhalations of strong ammonia, and the like. These irritations, when not felt by the subject, seem to leave no after-consequences. One is reminded of the reported non-inflammatory character of the wounds made on themselves by dervishes in their pious orgies. On the other hand, the reddenings and bleedings of the skin along certain lines, suggested by tracing lines or pressing objects thereupon, put the accounts handed down to us of the stigmata of the cross appearing oil the hands, feet, sides, and forehead of certain Catholic mystics in a new light. As so often happens, a fact is denied until a welcome interpretation comes with it. Then it is admitted readily enough; and evidence judged quite insufficient to back a claim, so long as the church had an interest in making it, proves to [p. 613] be quite sufficient for modern scientific enlightenment, the moment it appears that a reputed saint can thereby be classed as 'a case of hystero-epilepsy.'

There remain two other topics, vis., post-hypnotic effects of suggestion, and effects of suggestion in the waking state.

Post-hypnotic, or deferred, suggestions are such as are given to the patients during trance, to take effect after waking. They succeed with a certain number of patients even when the execution is named for a remote period -- months or even a year, in one case reported by M. Liégeois. In this way one can make the patient feel a pain, or be paralyzed, or be hungry or thirsty, or have an hallucination, positive or negative, or perform some fantastic action after emerging from his trance. The effect in question may be ordered to take place not immediately, but after an interval of time has elapsed, and the interval may be left to the subject to measure, or may be marked by a certain signal. The moment the signal occurs, or the time is run out, the subject, who until then seems in a perfectly normal waking condition, will experience the suggested effect. In many instances, whilst thus obedient to the suggestion, he seems to fall into the hypnotic condition again. This is proved by the fact that the moment the hallucination or suggested performance is over he forgets it, denies all knowledge of it, and so forth; and by the further fact that he is 'suggestable' during its performance, that is, will receive new hallucinations, etc., at command. A moment later and this suggestibility has disappeared. It cannot be said, how-ever, that relapse into the trance is an absolutely necessary condition for the post-hypnotic carrying out of commands, for the subject may be neither suggestible nor amnesic, and may struggle with all the strength of his will against the absurdity of this impulse which he feels rising in him, he knows not why. In these cases, as in most cases, he forgets the circumstance of the impulse having been suggested to him in a previous trance; regards it as arising within him-self; and often improvises, as he yields to it, some more or less plausible or ingenious motive by which to justify it to [p. 614] the lookers-on. He acts, in short, with his usual sense of personal spontaneity and freedom; and the disbelievers in the freedom of the will have naturally made much of these cases in their attempts to show it be an illusion.

The only really mysterious feature of these deferred suggestions is the patient's absolute ignorance during the interval preceeding their execution that they have been deposited in his mind. They will often surge up at the preappointed time, even though you have vainly tried a while before to make him recall the circumstances of their production. The most important class of post-hypnotic suggestions are, of course, those relative to the patient's health -- bowels, sleep, and other bodily functions. Among the most interesting (apart from the hallucinations) are those relative to future trances. One can determine the hour and minute, or the signal, at which the patient will of his own accord lapse into trace again. One can make him susceptible in [the] future to another operator who may have been unsuccessful with him in the past. Or more important still in certain cases, one can, by suggesting that certain person shall never be able hereafter to put him to sleep, remove him for all future time from hypnotic influences which might be dangerous. this, indeed, is the simple and natural safeguard against those 'dangers of hypnotism' of which uninstructed persons talk so vaguely. A subject who knows himself to be ultra-susceptible should never allow himself to be entranced by an operator in whose moral delicacy he lacks complete confidence; and he can use a trusted operator's suggestions to protect himself against liberties which others, knowing his weakness, might tempted to take with him.

The mechanism by which the command is retained until the moment for its execution arrives is a mystery which give rise to much discussion. The experiments of Gurney and the observations of M. Pierre-Janet and others on certain hysterical somnabulists seem to prove that it is stored up in consciousness; not simply organically registered, but that the consciousness which thus retains it is split off, dissociated form the rest of the subject's mind. We have here, in short, an experimental production of one of those 'second' states of the personality of which we have spoken so often. Only here the [p. 615] second state coexists as well as alternates with the first. Gurney had the brilliant idea of tapping this second consciousness by means of the planchette. He found that certain persons, who were both hypnotic subjects and automatic writers, would if their hands were placed on a planchette (after being wakened from a trance in which they had received the suggestion of something to be done at a later time) write out unconsciously the order, or something connected with it. This shows that something inside of them, which could express itself through the hand alone, was continuing to think of the order, and possibly of it alone. These researchers have opened a new vista of possible experimental investigations into the so-called 'second' states of the personality.

Some subjects seem almost as obedient to suggestion in the waking state as in sleep, or even more so, according to certain observers. Not only muscular phenomena, but changes of personality and hallucinations are recorded as the result of simple affirmation on the operator's part, with-out the previous ceremony of 'magnetizing' or putting into the 'mesmeretic sleep.' These are all trained subjects, however, so far as I know, and the affirmation must apparently be accompanied by the patient concentrating his attention and gazing, however briefly, into the eyes of the operator. It is probable therefore that an extremely rapidly induced condition of trance is a prerequisite for success in these experiments.

I have now made mention of all the more important phenomena of the hypnotic trance. Of their therapeutic or forensic bearings this is not the proper place to speak. The recent literature of the subject is quite voluminous, but much of it consists in repetition. The best compendious work on the subject is 'Der Hypnoismus,' by Dr. A. Moll (Berlin, 1889; and just translated into English, N. Y., 1890), which is extraordinarily complete and judicious. The other writings most recommendable ape subjoined in the note. [13]

Most of them contain a historical sketch and much bibliography. A complete bibliography has been published by M. Dessoir (Berlin, 1888).