Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/505

 THE PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. 493 action associated with conscious attention to the work of reacting is diminished, we may fairly suppose that the amount of conscious attention is itself diminished. And this leads us on to the more general supposition, that actions winch would normally involve very distinct consciousness may be performed by the hypnotic ' subject ' either with a lesser degree of it or entirely without it. There is thus considerable justification for Heidenhain's explanation of the singular exhibitions known as hypnotic mimicry. Ac- cording to him, the movements or words of the operator, acting on the eyes or ears of the ' subject,' stimulate as usual the lower sensory centres ; but in the hypnotic state, the functions of the higher cortical portion of the brain (to which nervous discharges are supposed normally to pass from the lower sensory centres) are inhibited, and conse- quently no effect is produced in the way of consciousness. At the same time, the disturbance in the lower sensory centres, though thus unaccompanied by consciousness, is sufficient to pass on the nervous discharge to the most nearly associated motor centres, which will naturally be those whose activity will produce the same words or move- ments ; since clearly no association can well be closer or more constant than that between the sight and sound of a movement or word and the act of producing that movement or word. And since the same inhibition of the cortical functions, which precludes consciousness of the impression, precludes also the normal exercise of the power to direct and control movements, 1 the mimicry takes place mechani- cally and unfailingly, i.e., as genuine reflex action. Heiden- hain further extends this explanation to the phenomena of what he calls ' automatism at command '. He attributes the machine-like obedience of the ' subject ' to a similar in- hibition of cortical function, and to the consequent opening of an unimpeded channel of discharge from the lower idea- tional to the motor centres i.e. from the place of the ability to do this doubtless arose not from an inhibition of the normal reflex movement, but from a direct deadening of sensibility in a particular organ. So extreme a deadening in the ' alert stage ' of hypnotism is rare, though out of several hundred ' subjects ' I have found two whose eyes remain open even in the deep stage. Such exceptions are valuable as showing the variety that may exist even in the simplest facts of hypnotism. 1 Heidenhain has introduced an equivoque into the terminology of the subject by calling the hypnotic action on the cortical functions inhibition, without pointing out explicitly that the normal action of those functions in respect of motion is to a large extent inhibitory, and that the complete description of the method by which the automatic reflex responses are brought is thus inhibition of the inhibitory function. 34