Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/129

 THE STAGES OF HYPNOTISM. 117 curred in it is exceptional. I have, however, lately met with well-marked cases of it in two of my own acquaintance, who gave descriptions of their somnambulic experiences very similar to those given by hypnotic ' subjects '. Though exceptional, such cases are pi-obably not absolutely rare ; and it is the more curious that Despine, Heidenhain, and others should have so hastily and sweepingly assumed that the function of true psychic memory is suspended in hypnotism. (3) In my experience no true memory has ever been exhibited, on complete waking, of things which have been done or suffered in the deep state. Xor am I aware of any record of such an event. The performance, at the appointed time, of commands impressed on the ' subject ' when in the deep state hours or even days before, is not a case in point. For though he feels impelled to do what he has been told to do, he has no recollection of the fact of having been so told, and is at a loss to comprehend his own impulse. This is merely an instance of the well-known phenomenon of cerebral (or as it has been called ' organic ') memory ; but is interesting as taking place when the person is otherwise in a completely normal state. So much, then, for the conditions of the memory on complete waking ; next as to its conditions in the hypnotic states them- selves. (1) Facts of the 'subject's' general knowledge, his address, business, recent employments, and so on, are remembered even in the deep state, if that state is sufficiently marked and pro- longed for some amount of conversation to be sustained in it. With a favourable ' subject,' something that has happened during one of the hypnotic states will often recur to the memory on the next occasion when that state is produced, though in the interval of normality amounting it may be to several days and nights which has intervened between the two occasions, it has been completely forgotten. (The thing, however, must not be an action performed /// i>i-oj,r>'<r j ,:<ona, for this as we have seen above would not be forgotten during the normal state ; nor connected with a delusive impression, for this as we shall see below would not le remembered on the recurrence of the abnormal state.) This recurrence may be made a test of the extreme rapidity with which a ' subject ' will, in exceptional cases, pass from the alert hypnotic to the normal state his attention being first arrested by a suitable incident, a few passes of the waking and ' clearing ' sort obliterating all knowledge of it, and then a few more of the opposite sort bringing it back again to his mind, all within the space of a minute. But the chief interest of this induced pheno- menon of alternating memory lies in its resemblance to what occurs in spontaneous conditions. Even ordinary dr<ainirt<i oc- casionally presents this feature in an embryonic form a dream- scene or dream-incident being often more apt to recur in di-eam than in waking moments : not that the mere recurrence could