Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/131

 THE STAGES OF HYPNOTISM. 11 ( .> minutes, and offered 10 to say what either of them was with a result entirely satisfactory to the experimenter. Occasionally I have succeeded in hitting a transitional moment at which lotli things were remembered ; but it was a sort of knife-edge, and the slightest manipulation or pause tending to deepen the condition brought about the customary separation and oblivion of th-- thing told in the alert state. These phenomena seem singularly constant. I have obtained them with a large number of ' subjects,' and with three operators in three different parts of England, two of whom certainly had 110 idea what result I was expecting. They represent, of course, that clear distinction of the two hypnotic stages as something more than mere continuous degrees of a single trance-condition to which I have been leading up ; and the great rapidity of the transition, together with the sharpness of the results, seems to make them as satisfactory indications of that distinction as could well be imagined. (4) To the rule thus established, there are certain definite ex- ceptions. If the idea impressed in the alert state is a /.-//;//, involving either a change of scene or a change of identity, it is not remembered in the usual way. A ' subject ' who has been made to believe himself elsewhere than in the room where he actually is, or to assume the part of another person or of an animal, and who while under this delusion has been carried into the deep state, on returning from that state proves almost always to be the natural self of the alert state, and refuses to believe that any idea of any sort has been impressed upon him. In the few cases within my experience where this has not happened, and where the delusory part was resumed when the alert state returned, it was noticeable that the bare idtn seemed to revive first very likely as the memory of the remark which had preceded and pro- duced the illusion and that then the illusion followed in the wake of the idea. Thus a boy who had been enacting the part of a fish on the floor, and who had been then thrown into the deep state and placed in a chair, was brought back to the alert state by gentle upward passes. He sat for some seconds staring at the floor in a puzzled way, and then flung himself down and recom- menced the fish-like movements. Waking to the alert state by any .*//,/,/,., means always ensured forgetfulness, carrying the ' subject ' at once over that low degree of the alert stage where recurrence of the delusion was possible. It may be added that though delusive ideas are thus forgotten, yet if the same delusion be again suggested in a general way, the 't<!il* of the former one will be remembered. Thus a youth who had been impressed with the idea that he was a schoolboy attending Brighton College, and that his name was ' Gerald Hamilton,' completely forgot this change of identity when he returned to the alert state in which he had undergone it ; but on being then again told that he was