Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/37

Rh now she would stand up, going through every possible pantomimic gesture. Her speech was equally diversified and without rule. Now she spoke in the first person, but never for long, generally to prophesy her next attack; now she spoke of herself (and this was the most usual) in the third person. She then acted as some other person, either some dead acquaintance or some chance person, whose part she consistently carried out according to the characteristics she herself conceived. At the end of the ecstasy there usually followed a cataleptic state with flexibilitas cerea, which gradually passed over into the waking state. The waxy anæmic pallor which was an almost constant feature of the attacks made one really anxious; it sometimes occurred at the beginning of the attack, but often in the second half only. The pulse was then small but regular and of normal frequency; the breathing gentle, shallow, or almost imperceptible. As already stated, S. W. often predicted her attacks beforehand; just before the attacks she had strange sensations, became excited, rather anxious, and occasionally expressed thoughts of death: “she will probably die in one of these attacks; during the attack her soul only hangs to her body by a thread, so that often the body could scarcely go on living.” Once after the cataleptic attack tachypnoea lasting two minutes was observed, with a respiration rate of 100 per minute. At first the attacks occurred spontaneously, afterwards S. W. could provoke them by sitting in a dark corner and covering her face with her hands. Frequently the experiment did not succeed. She had so-called “good” and “bad” days. The question of amnesia after the attacks is unfortunately very obscure. This much is certain, that after each attack she was quite accurately orientated as to what she had gone through “during the rapture.” It is, however, uncertain how much she remembered of the conversations in which she served as medium, and of changes in her surroundings during the attack. It often seemed that she did have a fleeting recollection, for directly after waking she would ask: “Who was here? Wasn’t X or Y here? What did he say?” She also showed that she was