Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/191

XIV ] one in five—would have greater ability to connect with the supersystem than others. These have "true" dreams, or see visions or apparitions, sometimes acquiring correct information in this way, which they could not otherwise have received.

The reason for this as Carington would explain it would be that in their individual psychonsystem a subsystem can be split off and take the control away, temporarily, from the central system whose job it is to keep the organism alive in the struggle for existence. If this subsystem is in almost complete control, the condition of the person is said to be that of "trance," more or less deep, in which the subsystem sometimes announces itself to be another personality (see studies in multiple personality) 14 or even declares it is a spirit "control," a declaration which it is sometimes hard to disprove.

Within the individual psychon-system such a subsystem may communicate telepathically with the central system or with other subsystems, in which case the "normal" consciousness may be aware of symbolic visions or hear voices, usually much to its distress. They would usually be a demonstration by frustrated emotion psychons, or they might be an attempt to convey an extrasensory perception. That would have to be tested. Some Jungian psychiatrists are beginning to do so.15

Continuing for a little while longer to use the psychon terms, it can be said that there seems to be a subsystem which is capable of manufacturing "real" sense impressions. Take dreams. As Swedenborg had noted, one can have "sensations" in dreams with an extraordinary "reality" about them, with details so vivid that one could never supply them from the best memory while awake.

The ordinary theory is, of course, that it is from "memory traces" that such dreams are built up. But a good hypnotist can persuade a good subject that the lemon he is holding is a sweet pear and the subject will eat it with every sign of sweet-pear enjoyment. He may even be persuaded that a pear is there when it is not, or he may be told that he feels no pain when a pin is stuck into him, and he will feel no pain. Or, as Pierre Janet proved, the hypnotist can taste, say, salt, out of sight of the hypnotized subject, and the latter also "tastes" it.15a