Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/888

806 The suggestibility which is so characteristic of hypnotic states probably depends upon the persistence of that portion of the patient's consciousness which represents the hypnotizer, while all else has either disappeared, or become much weakened by dissociation from its accustomed re-enforcing elements. The hypnotizer keeps talking to the patient, touching and stroking him. and he has in consequence no opportunity to fall asleep to him, R told me that even when his consciousness of the position of his own body was almost lost, and the sounds of the outer world seemed dull and muffled, the tones of my voice and my lightest touch remained as distinct as ever. The consciousness of the hypnotizer is a center from which radiate new forces, and sometimes, when memory is preserved, the patient may be able to describe the first collisions between the enfeebled upper consciousness and the foreign element. Take Dr. Cocke's account of his own experiences:

"He then said to me, 'You can not open your eyes.' The motor apparatus of my lids would not seemingly respond to my will, yet I was conscious that while one part of my mind wanted to open my eyes, another part did not want to, so I was in a paradoxical state: I believed that I could open my eyes and yet could not. The feeling of not wishing to open them was not based upon any desire to please the operator. . . . He told me that I was asleep, and placed my hand over my head, and stated that it was rigid, and that I could not put it down. Again, a part of my consciousness wanted to put it down and another part did not. He stroked my arm and told me that it was growing numb, that it was growing insensible. He told me that I had no feeling in it. He said, 'You have no feeling in it, have you?' I said 'No,' and I knew that I said 'No,' yet I knew that I had feeling in it, and yet believed that I had no feeling in it. . . . I was not conscious of my body at all, but was painfully conscious of the two contradictory elements within me. I knew that my body existed, but could not prove it to myself. I knew that the statements made by the operator were, in a measure, untrue. I obeyed them voluntarily and involuntarily."

As a brief outline of the salient features of typical hypnotic states the above must suffice, but one must remember that many anomalous states are found to perplex the student. Sometimes one meets with profound lethargy with no suggestibility; at others, the patient becomes extremely suggestible without a sign of sleep, and is afterward found to have no memory of the suggestible stage. Occasionally the attempt to produce a hypnotic state throws the patient into a trancelike nightmare, from which it is very difficult to rescue him. Sometimes it is difficult to get the patient entirely awake, or, even if awake and conscious, some