Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/250

236 patient of this type an alarming suggestion, for the terror which it inspires may do more mischief than the operator can readily undo.

Sometimes while the upper consciousness is apparently unaffected it will be found that the performance of the suggestion is either forgotten or entirely unnoticed. Prof. Janet says of his patient Lucie: "She seemed at the moment quite normal, talked and kept record well enough of the acts she performed spontaneously, but in the midst of all these normal acts she also performed as if by distraction the acts commanded in sleep. Not only did she forget them when performed like most subjects, but she did not seem to be conscious of them the moment she did them. I tell her to raise her arms over her head after waking. Scarcely is she in her normal condition before she raises her arms above her head, but she does not inconvenience herself thereby. She goes, comes, talks, and all the while keeps her arms overhead. If asked what her arms are doing, she is astonished at such a question and says: 'My hands are doing nothing at all; they are like yours.' By this method I make her put her fingers to her nose and walk across the room. I command her to cry, and upon awaking she actually sobs, but in the midst of her tears talks of the most cheerful matters. The sobs over, there remains not a trace of her grief; indeed, she seems to have been unconscious of it."

These may be regarded as the extreme types, the posthypnotic suggestion in the one case coalescing with the upper consciousness, and in the other remaining absolutely dissociated from it. There remains a third type in which the suggestion emerges into the upper consciousness, but in so doing seems to disordinate it to a greater or less degree, thus reducing the patient to a condition analogous to that in which he was when the suggestion was given.

The disturbance is often very slight and it is then not easy to detect or define it. It may be limited to a transient look of abstraction, of vacancy, as if a cloud were passing over the mind. What I have described as failure to coalesce may be conceived as a form of interference in which the suggested state expels from consciousness all inconsistent states without much affecting the balance. At other times if one gives a suggestion the execution of which takes some time, the patient will be found sensitive to fresh suggestions while the first is being executed, or will be found to recollect at that time previous states of somnambulism which are forgotten in his normal condition and are again forgotten, together with the act just performed, a moment afterward. Sometimes the disturbance of the upper consciousness goes further and results in complete disordination or "unconsciousness." I have often seen this as the result of giving suggestions which were too