Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/128

116 of double entity or double consciousness. The person possessed hears and understands everything that the fox inside says or thinks; and the two often engage in a loud and violent dispute, the fox speaking in a voice altogether different from that which is natural to the individual. The only difference between the cases of possession mentioned in the Bible and those observed in Japan is that here it is almost exclusively women that are attacked—mostly women of the lower classes. Among the predisposing conditions may be mentioned a weak intellect, a superstitious turn of mind, and such debilitating diseases as, for instance, typhoid fever. Possession never occurs except in such subjects as have heard of it already, and believe in the reality of its existence.

"The explanation of the disorder is not so far to seek as might be supposed. Possession is evidently related to hysteria and to the hypnotic phenomena which physiologists have recently studied with so much care, the cause of all alike being the fact that, whereas in healthy persons one half of the brain alone is actively engaged—in right-handed persons the left half of the brain, and in left-handed persons the right—leaving the other half to contribute only in a general manner to the function of thought, nervous excitement arouses this other half, and the two—one the organ of the usual self, the other the organ of the new pathologically affected self are set over against each other. The rationale of possession is an auto-suggestion, an idea arising either with apparent spontaneity or else from the subject-matter of it being talked about by others in the patient's presence, and then overmastering her weak mind exactly as happens in hypnosis. In the same manner, the idea of the possibility of cure will often actually effect the cure. The cure-worker must be a person of strong mind and power of will, and must enjoy the patient's full confidence. For this reason the priests of the Nichiren sect, which is the most superstitions and bigoted of Japanese Buddhist sects, are the most successful expellers of foxes. Occasionally fits and screams accompany the exit of the fox. In all cases—even when the fox leaves quietly—great prostration remains for a day