Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/223

203 THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 203 plored, become completely insensible without the other vital functions becoming gravely disturbed. These hysterical anaesthesias can be made to disappear more or less completely by various odd processes. It has been recently found that magnets, plates of metal, or the electrodes of a battery, placed against the skin, have this peculiar power. And when one side is relieved in this way, the anaesthesia is often found to have transferred itself to the opposite side, which until then was well. Whether these strange effects of magnets and metals be due to their direct physiological action, or to a prior effect on the patient's mind (' expectant attention' or ' suggestion') is still a mooted question. A still better awakener of sensibility is the hypnotic trance, into which many of these patients can be very easily placed, and in which their lost sensibility not infrequently becomes entirely restored. Such returns of sensibility succeed the times of insensibility and alternate with them. But Messrs. Pierre Janet * and A. Binet t have shown that during the times of anaesthesia, and coexisting with it, sensibility to the ancesthetic parts is also there, in the form of a secondary consciousness entirely cut off from the primary or normal one, but susceptible of being tapped and made to testify to its existence in various odd ways. Chief amongst these is what M. Janet calls * the method of distraction.' These hysterics are apt to possess a very narrow field of attention, and to be unable to think of more than one thing at a time. When talking with any person they forget everything else. " When Lucie talked directly with any one," saysM. Janet, "she ceased to be able to hear any other person. You may stand behind her, call her by name, shout abuse into her ears, without making her turn round ; or place yourself before her, show her objects, touch her, etc., without attracting her notice. When finally she becomes aware of you, she thinks you have just come into the room again, and greets you accordingly. This singular forgetfulness makes her liable to tell all her secrets aloud, unrestrained by the presence of unsuitable auditors." t See his articles iu the Chicago Open Court, for July, August and Kovember, 1889. Also iu the Revue Philosophique for 1889 and '90.
 * L'Automatisme Psychologique, Paris, 1889, passim.