Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/124

 112 EDMUND GUENEY. their waking hours. If this be allowed, then we shall have to seek the essential difference of the hypnotic condition, not in any feature which it immediately presents, but wholly in two possi- bilities attaching to it, either of which demands appropriate treat- ment to become a reality. In the first place, if the ' subject ' be left completely to himself, he will rapidly sink into the deeper state, and thence into hypnotic sleep, in either of which he will prove insensitive to any moderate amount of torture. Clearly the condi- tion which leads rapidly and naturally on to further conditions of this sort is not a normal one : it can never be said of a person in a normal state, however sleepy he may be, that in two or three minutes he will be in a condition when pins may be run into him, or the severest pinches applied, without awaking him or evoking any sign of distress. The passage into these deeper conditions, it should be observed, is often so rapid that the fact of their being reached through the alert stage may be wholly unnoticed. The hypnotising process may carry a sensitive ' subject ' in a minute or less from a condition of normal waking into hypnotic sleep ; and in such a case the ' alert ' period has been represented only by the few seconds before his eyes closed. If he had been taken in hand during those few seconds, and been talked to or kept employed, this passage into the deeper state would have been prevented ; but if he is allowed ,to follow the natural course without interference, he will simply be seen to go to sleep, and he must be awakened by the operator before any phenomena can be exhibited. This liability to lapse, then, is one distinguishing characteristic of the alert state. It is characterised, in the second place, by the possibility of obtaining, while it lasts, certain special phenomena of an active sort. The ' subject ' can be made to do, and to continue doing, any action which the operator commands, although he may be perfectly conscious of making a fool of himself, and may strongly desire to resist the command. He can also be put under the influence of delusions can have his senses deceived, so that he mistakes salt for sugar, ammonia for eau de Cologne', or can even be made to believe that he is in some distant place, or that his identity is changed. 1 These are the common platform-phenomena ; and as the very object of hypnotising a ' subject ' at all is usually to procure some of them, and the pos- sibility of procuring them is thus practically certain to be tested, it might seem that the recognition of the abnormality of his state was in this case, at any rate, assured. But though this may be 1 It should be remarked that even here the necessity remains of stimulat- ing the ' subject ' from time to time, to keep him going. When he is under a delusion, he will sometimes give long connected accounts, in great part often fictitious, as if he were following the course of a dream ; but though very slight questions and comments will be enough to make him proceed, he will not do so if left to sustain a complete monologue.*