Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/719

Rh mind without running the risk of encountering a mass of ideas which either are antagonistic to it or overcome it by sheer weight of numbers. Furthermore, most persons who closely watch their mental life can detect in it that at present mysterious activity of the "self" to which I alluded in my first article. We must conceive it as in some way originated by and dependent upon our past experience, and in it we see, as I have elsewhere expressed it, the present conscious representative of the net resultant of our past experience, brought to bear upon the nascent mental state. Its function in our life may be compared to that of the rudder on the ship: it serves to hold us steadily to the course already laid out, and makes our present and our future symmetrical with our past.

It is evident, then, that, if we would restore primitive suggestibility in an adult, we must either break up the consciousness of self, or weaken its power of control. If we can do that, we have removed from the path of the suggested state the most formidable possible impediment to. its free progress and development. But to give it full liberty we must abolish or enfeeble all other sensations and ideas as well. These would be, from the psychological point of view, the conditions of heightened suggestibility.

In many cases it is, unfortunately, impossible to get any evidence as to the mental condition of the patient, but such evidence as we have goes to support this hypothesis. The hypnotized patient, if asked what he is thinking about usually says, "Nothing." Sometimes you find that he is dreaming and will tell his dreams, but, like other dreams, they are readily guided or dissipated by the least sensory suggestion. In the few cases in which the patient remembers his experiences upon awaking, he says he felt drowsy, dull, or weak. One of my patients told me that it seemed to him as if the motor suggestions I gave him were executed by his body, mechanically, without his own concurrence. He did not feel disposed to resist, but, when he did, he either found himself helpless, or could overcome the suggestion by the most strenuous resistance only.

But the suggestibility thus produced differs widely from that observed in children. The consciousness of the child is so rudimentary in character that complex thoughts can not be awakened in it by any means; its suggestibility, therefore, is limited to the performance of relatively simple acts. But in the complex brain of the adult, with its myriad ramifications, the range of suggestibility, when once it is established, is far greater and its phenomena more striking. In language we possess an instrument which, although intangible, is as much physical as an axe, a saw, or a knife, and with it, as with an adjustable stamp, we can impress upon the still sensitive brain what modifications we will. Once