Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism Part 4

A slow movement was tried (the Valhalla motif). At first it seemed to produce the opposite effect, for the pulse was lowered. Later it rose to a rate double the normal, and the tension was diminished. The impression described by the subject afterward was a feeling of "lofty grandeur and calmness." A mountain climbing experience of years before was recalled, and the subject seemed to contemplate a landscape of "lofty grandeur." A different sort of music was played (the intense and ghastly scene in which Brunhilde appears to summon Sigmund to Valhalla). Immediately a marked change took place in the pulse. It became slow and irregular, and very small. The respiration decreased almost to gasping, the face grew pale, and a cold perspiration broke out.

Readers who are especially interested in this subject will find descriptions of many other interesting experiments in the same article.

Dr. c.o.c.ke describes a peculiar trick he played upon the sight of a subject. Says he: "I once hypnotized a man and made him read all of his a's as w's, his u's as v's, and his b's as x's. I added suggestion after suggestion so rapidly that it would have been impossible for him to have remembered simply what I said and call the letters as I directed.

Stimulation was, in this case impossible, as I made him read fifteen or twenty pages, he calling the letters as suggested each time they occurred."

The extraordinary heightening of the sense perceptions has an important bearing on the question of spiritualism and clairvoyance. If the powers of the mind are so enormously increased, all that is required of a very sensitive and easily hypnotized person is to hypnotize him or herself, when he will be able to read thoughts and remember or perceive facts hidden to the ordinary perception. In this connection the reader is referred to the confession of Mrs. Piper, the famous medium of the American branch of the Psychical Research Society. The confession will be found printed in full at the close of this book.

CHAPTER V.

Self-Hypnotization.--How It may Be Done.--An Experience.--Accountable for Children's Crusade.--Oriental Prophets Self-Hypnotized.

If self-hypnotism is possible (and it is true that a person can deliberately hypnotize himself when he wishes to till he has become accustomed to it and is expert in it, so to speak), it does away at a stroke with the claims of all professional hypnotists and magnetic healers that they have any peculiar power in themselves which they exert over their fellows. One of these professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls "The Wonderful Lock Method." He says that though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls. All that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves. He shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain circ.u.mstances the hypnotizer is in danger of becoming hypnotized himself. In this he makes no claim that the subject is using any psychic power; but, of course, if the hypnotizer looks steadily into the eyes of his subject, and the subject looks into his eyes, the steady gaze on a bright object will produce hypnotism in one quite as readily as in the other.

Hypnotism is an established scientific fact; but the claim that the hypnotizer has any mysterious psychic power is the invariable mark of the charlatan. Probably no scientific phenomenon was ever so grossly prost.i.tuted to base ends as that of hypnotism. Later we shall see some of the outrageous forms this charlatanism a.s.sumes, and how it extends to the professional subjects as well as to the professional operators, till those subjects even impose upon scientific men who ought to be proof against such deception. Moreover, the possibility of self-hypnotization, carefully concealed and called by another name, opens another great field of humbug and charlatanism, of which the advertising columns of the newspapers are constantly filled--namely, that of the clairvoyant and medium. We may conceive how such a profession might become perfectly legitimate and highly useful; but at present it seems as if any person who went into it, however honest he might be at the start, soon began to deceive himself as well as others, until he lost his power entirely to distinguish between fact and imagination.

Before discussing the matter further, let us quote Dr. c.o.c.ke's experiment in hypnotizing himself. It will be remembered that a professional hypnotizer or magnetizer had hypnotized him by telling him to fix his mind on the number twenty-six and holding up his hand. Says the doctor:

"In my room that evening it occurred to me to try the same experiment. I did so. I kept the number twenty-six in my mind. In a few minutes I felt the sensation of terror, but in a different way. I was intensely cold.

My heart seemed to stand still. I had ringing in my ears. My hair seemed to rise upon my scalp. I persisted in the effort, and the previously mentioned noise in my ears grew louder and louder. The roar became deafening. It crackled like a mighty fire. I was fearfully conscious of myself. Having read vivid accounts of dreams, visions, etc., it occurred to me that I would experience them. I felt in a vague way that there were beings all about me but could not hear their voices. I felt as though every muscle in my body was fixed and rigid. The roar in my ears grew louder still, and I heard, above the roar, reports which sounded like artillery and musketry. Then above the din of the noise a musical chord. I seemed to be absorbed in this chord. I knew nothing else. The world existed for me only in the tones of the mighty chord. Then I had a sensation as though I were expanding. The sound in my ears died away, and yet I was not conscious of silence. Then all consciousness was lost.

The next thing I experienced was a sensation of intense cold, and of someone roughly shaking me. Then I heard the voice of my jolly landlord calling me by name."

The landlord had found the doctor "as white as a ghost and as limp as a rag," and thought he was dead. He says it took him ten minutes to arouse the sleeper. During the time a physician had been summoned.

As to the causes of this condition as produced Dr. c.o.c.ke says: "I firmly believed that something would happen when the attempt was made to hypnotize me. Secondly, I wished to be hypnotized. These, together with a vivid imagination and strained attention, brought on the states which occurred."

It is interesting to compare the effects of hypnotization with those of opium or other narcotic. Dr. c.o.c.ke a.s.serts that there is a difference.

His descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to De Quincey's dreams, such as those described in "The English Mail-Coach," "De Profundis," and "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," all of which were presumably due to opium.

The causes which Dr. c.o.c.ke thinks produced the hypnotic condition in his case, namely, belief, desire to be hypnotized, and strained attention, united with a vivid imagination, are causes which are often found in conjunction and produce effects which we may reasonably explain on the theory of self-hypnotization.

For instance, the effects of an exciting religious revival are very like those produced by Mesmer's operations in Paris. The subjects become hysterical, and are ready to believe anything or do anything. By prolonging the operation, a whole community becomes more or less hypnotized. In all such cases, however, unusual excitement is commonly followed by unusual lethargy. It is much like a wild spree of intoxication--in fact, it is a sort of intoxication.

The same phenomena are probably accountable for many of the strange records of history. The wonderful cures at Lourdes (of which we have read in Zola's novel of that name) are no doubt the effect of hypnotization by the priests. Some of the strange movements of whole communities during the Crusades are to be explained either on the theory of hypnotization or of contagion, and possibly these two things will turn out to be much the same in fact. On no other ground can we explain the so-called "Children's Crusade," in which over thirty thousand children from Germany, from all cla.s.ses of the community, tried to cross the Alps in winter, and in their struggles were all lost or sold into slavery without even reaching the Holy Land.

Again, hypnotism is accountable for many of the poet's dreams. Gazing steadily at a bed of bright coals or a stream of running water will invariably throw a sensitive subject into a hypnotic sleep that will last sometimes for several hours. Dr. c.o.c.ke says that he has experimented in this direction with patients of his. Says he: "They have the ability to resist the state or to bring it at will. Many of them describe beautiful scenes from nature, or some mighty cathedral with its lofty dome, or the faces of imaginary beings, beautiful or demoniacal, according to the will and temper of the subject."

Perhaps the most wonderful example of self-hypnotism which we have in history is that of the mystic Swedenborg, who saw, such strange things in his visions, and at last came to believe in them as real.

The same explanation may be given of the manifestations of Oriental prophets--for in the Orient hypnotism is much easier and more systematically developed than with us of the West. The performances of the dervishes, and also of the fakirs, who wound themselves and perform many wonderful feats which would be difficult for an ordinary person, are no doubt in part feats of hypnotism.

While in a condition of auto-hypnotization a person may imagine that he is some other personality. Says Dr. c.o.c.ke: "A curious thing about those self-hypnotized subjects is that they carry out perfectly their own ideals of the personality with whom they believe themselves to be possessed. If their own ideals of the part they are playing are imperfect, their impersonations are ridiculous in the extreme. One man I remember believed himself to be controlled by the spirit of Charles Sumner. Being uneducated, he used the most wretched English, and his language was utterly devoid of sense. While, on the other hand, a very intelligent lady who believed herself to be controlled by the spirit of Charlotte Cushman personated the part very well."

Dr. Cooke says of himself: "I can hypnotize myself to such an extent that I will become wholly unconscious of events taking place around me, and a long interval of time, say from one-half to two hours, will be a complete blank. During this condition of auto-hypnotization I will obey suggestions made to me by another, talking rationally, and not knowing any event that has occurred after the condition has pa.s.sed off."

CHAPTER VI.

Simulation.--Deception in Hypnotism Very Common.--Examples of Neuropathic Deceit.--Detecting Simulation.--Professional Subjects.--How Dr. Luys of the Charity Hospital at Paris Was Deceived.--Impossibility of Detecting Deception in All Cases.--Confessions of a Professional Hypnotic Subject.

It has already been remarked that hypnotism and hysteria are conditions very nearly allied, and that hysterical neuropathic individuals make the best hypnotic subjects. Now persons of this character are in most cases morally as well as physically degenerate, and it is a curious fact that deception seems to be an inherent element in nearly all such characters.

Expert doctors have been thoroughly deceived. And again, persons who have been trying to expose frauds have also been deceived by the positive statements of such persons that they were deceiving the doctors when they were not. A diseased vanity seems to operate in such cases and the subjects take any method which promises for the time being to bring them into prominence. Merely to attract attention is a mania with some people.

There is also something about the study of hypnotism, and similar subjects in which delusions const.i.tute half the existence, that seems to destroy the faculty for distinguishing between truth and delusion.

Undoubtedly we must look on such manifestations as a species of insanity.

There is also a point at which the unconscious deceiver, for the sake of gain, pa.s.ses into the conscious deceiver. At the close of this chapter we will give some cases ill.u.s.trating the fact that persons may learn by practice to do seemingly impossible things, such as holding themselves perfectly rigid (as in the cataleptic state) while their head rests on one chair and their heels on another, and a heavy person sits upon them.

First, let us cite a few cases of what may be called neuropathic deceit--a kind of insanity which shows itself in deceiving. The newspapers record similar cases from time to time. The first two of the following are quoted by Dr. Courmelles from the French courts, etc.

1. The Comtesse de W---- accused her maid of having attempted to poison her. The case was a celebrated one, and the court-room was thronged with women who sympathized with the supposed victim. The maid was condemned to death; but a second trial was granted, at which it was conclusively proved that the Comtesse had herself bound herself on her bed, and had herself poured out the poison which was found still blackening her breast and lips.

2. In 1886 a man called Ulysse broke into the shop of a second-hand dealer, facing his own house in Paris, and there began deliberately to take away the goods, just as if he were removing his own furniture. This he did without hurrying himself in any way, and transported the property to his own premises. Being caught in the very act of the theft, he seemed at first to be flurried and bewildered. When arrested and taken to the lock-up, he seemed to be in a state of abstraction; when spoken to he made no reply, seemed ready to fall asleep, and when brought before the examining magistrate actually fell asleep. Dr. Garnier, the medical man attached to the infirmary of the police establishment, had no doubt of his irresponsibility and he was released from custody.

3. While engaged as police-court reporter for a Boston newspaper, the present writer saw a number of strange cases of the same kind. One was that of a quiet, refined, well educated lady, who was brought in for shop-lifting. Though her husband was well to do, and she did not sell or even use the things she took, she had made a regular business of stealing whenever she could. She had begun it about seven months before by taking a lace handkerchief, which she slipped under her shawl: Soon after she accomplished another theft. "I felt so encouraged," she said, "that I got a large bag, which I fastened under my dress, and into this I slipped whatever I could take when the clerks were not looking. I do not know what made me do it. My success seemed to lead me on."

Other cases of kleptomania could easily be cited.

"Simulation," say Messieurs Binet and Fere, "which is already a stumbling block in the study of hysterical cases, becomes far more formidable in such studies as we are now occupied with. It is only when he has to deal with physical phenomena that the operator feels himself on firm ground."

Yet even here we can by no means feel certain. Physicians have invented various ingenious pieces of apparatus for testing the circulation and other physiological conditions; but even these things are not sure tests. The writer knows of the case of a man who has such control over his heart and lungs that he can actually throw himself into a profound sleep in which the breathing is so absolutely stopped for an hour that a mirror is not moistened in the least by the breath, nor can the pulses be felt. To all intents and purposes the man appears to be dead; but in due time he comes to life again, apparently no whit the worse for his experiment.

If an ordinary person were asked to hold out his arms at full length for five minutes he would soon become exhausted, his breathing would quicken, his pulse-rate increase. It might be supposed that if these conditions did not follow the subject was in a hypnotic trance; but it is well known that persons may easily train themselves to hold out the arms for any length of time without increasing the respiration by one breath or raising the pulse rate at all. We all remember Montaigne's famous ill.u.s.tration in which he said that if a woman began by carrying a calf about every day she would still be able to carry it when it became an ox.

In the Paris hospitals, where the greater number of regular scientific experiments have been conducted, it is found that "trained subjects" are required for all of the more difficult demonstrations. That some of these famous scientists have been deceived, there is no doubt. They know it themselves. A case which will serve as an ill.u.s.tration is that of Dr.

Luys, some of whose operations were "exposed" by Dr. Ernest Hart, an English student of hypnotism of a skeptical turn of mind. One of Dr.

Luys's pupils in a book he has published makes the following statement, which helps to explain the circ.u.mstances which we will give a little later. Says he:

"We know that many hospital patients who are subjected to the higher or greater treatment of hypnotism are of very doubtful reputations; we know also the effects of a temperament which in them is peculiarly addicted to simulation, and which is exaggerated by the vicinity of maladies similar to their own. To judge of this, it is necessary to have seen them encourage each other in simulation, rehearsing among themselves, or even before the medical students of the establishment, the experiments to which they have been subjected; and going through their different contortions and att.i.tudes to exercise themselves in them. And then, again, in the present day, has not the designation of an 'hypnotical subject' become almost a social position? To be fed, to be paid, admired, exhibited in public, run after, and all the rest of it--all this is enough to make the most impartial looker-on skeptical. But is it enough to enable us to produce an a priori negation? Certainly not; but it is sufficient to justify legitimate doubt. And when we come to moral phenomena, where we have to put faith in the subject, the difficulty becomes still greater. Supposing suggestion and hallucination to be granted, can they be demonstrated? Can we by plunging the subject in hypnotical sleep, feel sure of what he may affirm? That is impossible, for simulation and somnambulism are not reciprocally exclusive terms, and Monsieur Pitres has established the fact that a subject who sleeps may still simulate." Messieurs Binet and Fere in their book speak of "the honest Hublier, whom his somnambulist Emelie cheated for four years consecutively."

Let us now quote Mr. Hart's investigations.

Dr. Luys is an often quoted authority on hypnotism in Paris, and is at the head of what is called the Charity Hospital school of hypnotical experiments. In 1892 he announced some startling results, in which some people still have faith (more or less). What he was supposed to accomplish was stated thus in the London Pall Mall Gazette, issue of December 2: "Dr. Luys then showed us how a similar artificial state of suffering could be created without suggestion--in fact, by the mere proximity of certain substances. A pinch of coal dust, for example, corked and sealed in a small phial and placed by the side of the neck of a hypnotized person, produces symptoms of suffocation by smoke; a tube of distilled water, similarly placed, provokes signs of incipient hydrophobia; while another very simple concoction put in contact with the flesh brings on symptoms of suffocation by drowning."

Signs of drunkenness were said to be caused by a small corked bottle of brandy, and the nature of a cat by a corked bottle of valerian. Patients also saw beautiful blue flames about the north pole of a magnet and distasteful red flames about the south pole; while by means of a magnet it was said that the symptoms of illness of a sick patient might be transferred to a well person also in the hypnotic state, but of course on awaking the well person at once threw off sickness that had been transferred, but the sick person was permanently relieved. These experiments are cited in some recent books on hypnotism, apparently with faith. The following counter experiments will therefore be read with interest.

Dr. Hart gives a full account of his investigations in the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Luys gave Dr. Hart some demonstrations, which the latter describes as follows: "A tube containing ten drachms of cognac were placed at a certain point on the subject's neck, which Dr. Luys said was the seat of the great nerve plexuses. The effect on Marguerite was very rapid and marked; she began to move her lips and to swallow; the expression of her face changed, and she asked, 'What have you been giving me to drink? I am quite giddy.' At first she had a stupid and troubled look; then she began to get gay. 'I am ashamed of myself,' she said; 'I feel quite tipsy,' and after pa.s.sing through some of the phases of lively inebriety she began to fall from the chair, and was with difficulty prevented from sprawling on the floor. She was uncomfortable, and seemed on the point of vomiting, but this was stopped, and she was calmed."

Another patient gave all the signs of imagining himself transformed into a cat when a small corked bottle of valerian was placed on his neck.

In the presence of a number of distinguished doctors in Paris, Dr. Hart tried a series of experiments in which by his conversation he gave the patient no clue to exactly what drug he was using, in order that if the patient was simulating he would not know what to simulate. Marguerite was the subject of several of these experiments, one of which is described as follows:

"I took a tube which was supposed to contain alcohol, but which did contain cherry laurel water. Marguerite immediately began, to use the words of M. Sajous's note, to smile agreeably and then to laugh; she became gay. 'It makes me laugh,' she said, and then, 'I'm not tipsy, I want to sing,' and so on through the whole performance of a not ungraceful giserie, which we stopped at that stage, for I was loth to have the degrading performance of drunkenness carried to the extreme I had seen her go through at the Charite. I now applied a tube of alcohol, asking the a.s.sistant, however, to give me valerian, which no doubt this profoundly hypnotized subject perfectly well heard, for she immediately went through the whole cat performance. She spat, she scratched, she mewed, she leapt about on all fours, and she was as thoroughly cat-like as had been Dr. Luys's subjects."

Similar experiments as to the effect of magnets and electric currents were tried. A note taken by Dr. Sajous runs thus: "She found the north pole, notwithstanding there was no current, very pretty; she was as if she were fascinated by it; she caressed the blue flames, and showed every sign of delight. Then came the phenomena of attraction. She followed the magnet with delight across the room, as though fascinated by it; the bar was turned so as to present the other end or what would be called, in the language of La Charite, the south pole. Then she fell into an att.i.tude, of repulsion and horror, with clenched fists, and as it approached her she fell backward into the arms of M. Cremiere, and was carried, still showing all the signs of terror and repulsion, back to her chair. The bar was again turned until what should have been the north pole was presented to her. She again resumed the same att.i.tudes of attraction, and tears bedewed her cheeks. 'Ah,' she said, 'it is blue, the flame mounts,' and she rose from her seat, following the magnet around the room. Similar but false phenomena were obtained in succession with all the different forms of magnet and non-magnet; Marguerite was never once right, but throughout her acting was perfect; she was utterly unable at any time really to distinguish between a plain bar of iron, demagnetized magnet or a horseshoe magnet carrying a full current and one from which the current was wholly cut off."