Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/673

 HYPNOTISM

607

HYPN0TI6M

Catalepsy reduces the subject to the state of an inflexible corpse; it is characterized by impassibility and muscular rigidity; the subject keeps every posi- tion into which the experimenter puts him. He can be caught antl tlirown tliis way or that, pinched, pricked, slapped, without showing the least sign of sensibility. He is so rigid that he can remain indefi- nitely supported on the backs of two chairs, touching them only with the back of his neck and his heels, without Ijetraying the least weakness or the slightest fatigue. The experimenter can climb upon his body without causing it to diverge from the horizontal straight line. Certain movements communicated to the patient are continued automatically and without variation. Even words are sometimes repeated me- chanically. But what is still more curious is the reaction of a gesture upon the facial expression, and vice versa. If the subject is placed in a pugilistic atti- tude, his features, until then impassive, straightway express determination and defiance. If his eyebrows be drawn downward and inward (by the operator) his whole countenance becomes sad and gloomy. Let the hands be taken up and applied to the lips, and the corners of the mouth move apart and communicate a tender and smiling air to the whole phy.siognomy. Make the subject kneel as for prayer, and immediately the hands clasp, and the face expresses recollection and adoration.

To bring the cataleptic into lethargy it is sufficient to close his eyes or to gently rub his elbow or the top of his head. In the waking state this hypnotic con- dition is produced by pressing the eyeballs under the clo.sed lids. In lethargy, the head falling back as if wearied, the flaccid limbs and the whole body present the phenomena of profound slumber ; there is no longer either consciousness or intelligence, memory or sensa- tion. The contraction of the muscles responds with extreme readiness to the least excitation.

A gentle friction or pressure applied to the top of the head brings on somnambulism. Here the sleep is lighter. The subject's eyes are open; he is insensible to pain, but his muscular strength and the power of his senses are increased to a remarkable degree; he sees, hears, speaks, and walks with uncommon vigour, and avoids the obstacles in his way. He has the appear- ance of being awake, but is not in possession of him- self; he is only an automaton, with the operator pulling the strings at his pleasure. All the activity of the somnambulist is under the operator's control by means of verbal suggestion. If a suggestion be made to the hypnotized subject that it is cold, he straightway shivers. Tell him it is hot, he pants and fans himself, wipes his forehead, and tries to take off his coat. Hand him a glass of cold water and say, "Drink this glass of good Bordeaux ", and he sips and smacks his hps. Tell him it is vinegar; he barely tastes it, and puts it away in disgust. Persuade him that he is listening to a beautiful piece of music, and he hears it so well that he beats time to it. The somnambulist sees and hears in imagination all that it is possible to suggest, and nothing is more amusing than his animated conversations with his absent rela- tions and friends. Just as the absent can be made present to him, so a person who is really present can be made to disappear — can be eliminated. "By suggestion", says M. Beaunis, "we can lay an inter- dict on an object or a person actually present, so that the person or object shall be, for him, non-existent. . . . More than this, we can make a person disappear partially; the subject will not see him, but will hear him; or he will be able to see and hear him, but not be aware of him by contact." Charcot often per- formed this experiment at the Salpetriere: "When you awake", he would say, "you will not see M. X." He awoke the subject, and, in fact, the interdicted individual was invisible to him. M. X. places him- self directly in his path, and he takes no notice of

the obstruction; M. X. stands between him and the window, and he sees only a cloud shutting out the daylight. A hat is put on the head of M. X., and the subject halts in astonishment at seeing a hat sus- pended in the air without anything to support it. A still more complicated experiment is possible: out of ten cards, all exactly alike, one is pointed out to the somnambulist which he is told will be invisible to him, and another on which he is shown an imaginary por- trait. The ten cards are mixed up, and the somnam- bulist discovers the non-existent portrait on the same card on which it was previously shown to him, while the other of the two indicated cards passes absolutely unperceived.

Cutaneous insensibility is general, but the hypno- tist can remove it or localize it at his own pleasure; he can trace a circle, for example, on an arm and make that portion of the limb insensible, while the other part of the arm continues normal. Dr. Barth makes a pretence of touching an hysterical subject on the forearm with a lighted cigar, and immediately a white spot develops on the skin, as large as a bean and sur- rounded by a circle of red. Itchings and inflamma- tions can be produced. On the other hand, the appearance of water blisters, or phlyctwnce, vesication, and cutaneous hemorrhages (experiments of Foca- chon, Bourru, and Burot) are among the most se- riously questioned and most questionable experi- ments; they have never been verified, even in the case of subjects affected with dermographism. Sug- gestion not only works upon the sensibility, but also acts very powerfully on the motive faculty of the subject. It determines either contractions or pa- ralyses, the rigidity of one member, the flaccidity of another. The subject is told: " Your fingers are glued together; separate them if you can." The man makes strenuous efforts to separate his fingers, but cannot. The arm is forbidden to make this or that movement, the hand to write certain letters, the larynx to pronounce a vowel, and the prohibition is effectual; a subject can be made to stutter, to fall dumb, or be afflicted with aphasia at the operator's discretion. The consciousness, the personality, or, more precisely, the memory, may be subjected to strange metamorphoses. "I say to a subject: 'C., you are six years old, you are a little child. Go and play with the other children.' And up he jumps, leaps, goes through the motion of tak- ing marbles out of his pocket, sets them in the proper order, measures the distance with his hand, takes aim carefully, rims and puts them in a row, and thus keeps up his game with an attention and precision of detail nio.st astonishing. In the same way he plays at hide-and-seek and at leap-frog, vaulting over one or two imaginary playmates in succession and increasing the distance each time — all with an ease of which, considering his illness, he would be incapable in the waking state. He transforms himself into a young girl, a general, a curf, an advocate, a dog. But when you saddle him with a personality above his ability, he tries in vain to realize it" (Bernheim).

The hypnotist can modify his subject, can make him believe that he is changed into another person, and even set side by side in the same person two exist- ences — one real, the other suggested — which are parallel and mutually inconsistent. M. Gurney calls out a word or a number before a hypnotized subject, or tells some story, then he awakens her and shows plainly that she remembers nothing about it. Then taking her hand he puts a pencil in it and interposes a screen so that she cannot see it. Presently the hand begins to move about and, without the knowledge of the awakened subject, writes the word, or number, or story that was pronounced in the presence of the sleeping subject. It is a trick of the under-self, an automatic act of memory. Suggestion does not al- ways produce its effects immediately; the operator can retard development; he can defer the execution