I
Early in the history of the Society for Psychical Research, Von
Helmholtz speaking to Professor Barrett, of telepathy, said, “Neither
the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even
the evidence of my own senses, could lead me to believe in the
transmission of thought from one person to another independently of
the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible.” Many
have followed the example of the psychologist Wundt, in holding that
“no man of science, truly independent and without _parti pris_, could
be interested in occult phenomena.” Stranger still, as reported by
William James, “An illustrious biologist told me one day that even if
telepathy were proved to be true, the savants ought to band together to
suppress and conceal it, because such facts would upset the uniformity
of nature, and all sorts of other things without which the scientists
cannot carry on their pursuits.” Dogmatic skepticism, veiled or overt
contempt, and an unreasoning aversion--such was the attitude of the
scientific world in general toward the men who, in the early eighties
of last century, first seriously grappled with the problems of the
weird and the uncanny; while the great majority of educated laymen,
almost equally under the spell of the preponderating materialism of the
age, heartily endorsed the verdict of the scientists.
Things have not much changed in the years that have passed. It is
true that there have been numerous accessions to the ranks of the
“psychical researchers” from the scientific world itself. Many men of
science--some among them even eminent men of science--have scandalized
their fellows by adopting Newton’s ridiculous point of view--“To
myself I seem to have been as a child playing on the seashore,
while the immense ocean of Truth lay unexplored before me”--and by
deeming psychical research not unworthy their personal participation.
Crookes, Lodge, James, Richet, Flammarion, Flournoy, Bergson, Lombroso,
Morselli, are a few names that instantly flash into mind. And from
some great thinkers of non-scientific training, but justly esteemed
for their intellectual powers, has come an endorsement of Gladstone’s
appreciation: “Psychical research is the most important work which is
being done in the world--by far the most important.” But scientists
and laymen, so far as concerns the great mass, are still over-eager to
deride and belittle the delvers into the occult--who, so their critics
say, have been laboring all these years to no purpose whatever, and
whose labors, no matter how long continued, can have only futile or
mischievous results.
This widespread conviction of the futility of psychical research is
evinced in many ways. It is seen in the jesting or scornful comments
of writers in the periodical press; it is continually cropping
out in the half-contemptuous, half-pitying smile that greets any
sympathetic reference to “ghosts” or “telepathy”; it manifests in
petulant outbursts from “orthodox” scientists, akin to the outburst
of Von Helmholtz, as when our genial friend, the excellent Professor
Münsterberg, heatedly proclaims, “As to spirit communications, there
are none, and there never will be any.” Perhaps most striking of all
is the almost complete indifference with which the published reports
of the various psychical research organizations now in existence
are regarded by instructors and students alike in many, if not all,
institutions for higher education. In one great American university, to
the writer’s personal knowledge, the many volumes of the _Proceedings_
and _Journal_ of the English Society for Psychical Research, and of the
younger American Society for Psychical Research, are seldom removed
from the library shelves except to be dusted. Truth-seekers in this
university, it would seem, have no time to waste on the “bosh,” “rot,”
and “rubbish” which these silly publications contain.
Now, it may be true--though a number of really learned men believe
otherwise--that those engaged in psychical research have not as yet
demonstrated scientifically either telepathy or survival; and it may
be true that they have set themselves a hopeless task in endeavoring
to establish communication between this world and the next. But it
decidedly is not true that their investigations have been entirely
fruitless. On the contrary, it is safe to say that no other scientific
movement ever set on foot has, in the same length of time, contributed
so much toward the advancement of knowledge as has psychical research.
Few will dispute that psychology today is the most conspicuous and
most promising of the “recognized” sciences. Its marvellous growth
during the past quarter of a century is quite generally attributed to
the increasing application of the laboratory methods devised by Wundt
and his pupils. In reality a large part of the credit--perhaps the
larger part--must be given to those “dabblers in the occult,” who,
like Sidgwick, Myers, and Gurney, in England, and Janet and Richet in
France, thought it not beneath their dignity to study table-tipping,
alleged telepathy, and the disputed phenomena of the hypnotic trance.
To them, incontrovertibly, we owe the foundation-laying of abnormal
psychology, with its manifold practical implications to the physician,
the criminologist, and the educator; to them, as will hereinafter be
shown, we chiefly owe the opening up of vistas of progress undreamed in
the days before scientific psychical research began.
The men who enrolled under Sidgwick in 1882 to form the English
Society for Psychical Research, were not the fanatical, credulous
“ghost-hunters” they are commonly supposed to have been. Their first
task, they saw clearly, was to determine whether the alleged facts
adduced in support of the soul doctrine were really facts; and, if
facts, whether they were not susceptible of adequate explanation on a
wholly naturalistic basis. In the words of Frank Podmore, one of the
earliest and most active members of the Society (_The Naturalization of
the Supernatural_, p. 2):
The title which I have chosen for the present book, _The
Naturalization of the Supernatural_, describes in popular language
the object aimed at. The facts which the Society proposed to
investigate stood, and some still stand, as aliens, outside the
realm of organized knowledge. It proposed to examine their claim to
be admitted within the pale. And it is important to recognize that
whether we found ourselves able to accept the credentials of these
postulants for recognition, or whether we felt ourselves compelled
to reject them as undesirables, the aim which the Society set before
itself would equally be fulfilled. In undertaking the inquiry we did
not assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the
evidence to be examined. Whatever the present bias of individual
members toward belief or disbelief, it will not, I think, be charged
against us, by any one who dispassionately studies the results ...
that any private prepossessions were allowed to pervert the methods
of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost
to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim
of the Society and its workers.
In this spirit the Society for Psychical Research attacked the whole
strange medley of occult phenomena, from hypnotism to premonitions
and hauntings. To most readers of these pages it may seem almost
incredible that so short a time ago hypnotism was still outside the
pale of science, and was pretty generally regarded as imaginary or
supernatural, according to one’s temperament and training. But,
prior to the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, only
a few inquirers of established reputation--such as Esdaile, Braid,
Liébeault, and Charcot--had deemed it a proper and desirable subject
of investigation; the scientific brotherhood would have none of it,
and frowned on its exponents as self-deluded simpletons or impudent
charlatans. As late as 1875 a writer in the _Grand Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique des Sciences Medicales_, summing up in a few words all
that was to be said about hypnotism, brushed it aside as non-existent.
It was because they questioned dogmatic utterances like this, and
because they hoped through hypnotism to gain fresh light on the problem
of the soul, that the members of the English Society for Psychical
Research listed the study of hypnotism among their principal activities.
The result was not merely the confirmation and correction of much that
Esdaile and other earlier inquirers had noted, but also an impressive,
and in some respects startling, extension of knowledge concerning the
processes of the human mind. Bearing out these discoveries, moreover,
came the findings of sundry French savants--Janet, Binet, Féré,
etc.--who, about the same time as the English investigators, and in
the same spirit of open-minded research, sought to ascertain the true
inwardness of hypnotism. On the one hand, the work of the Englishmen
and the Frenchmen, between the years 1882 and 1890, made it certain
that in hypnotism psychology possessed a wonderful instrument for
experimentation. And, on the other hand, their own experiments with
hypnotism revealed the various mental faculties--perception, attention,
memory, and the rest--in entirely new aspects; paved the way to a
correct understanding of hitherto obscure and baffling maladies; nay,
even made necessary a radical readjustment of the scientific concept of
human personality itself.
In this productive study of the phenomena of hypnotism two names stand
supreme--the names of Pierre Janet and Edmund Gurney. Janet, who still
is with us, deservedly enjoys today a worldwide fame for the part he
has played in the inception and development of psychopathology, or
medical psychology. Gurney to most people is not even a name. Yet in
the brief period of experimentation that preceded his untimely death,
he achieved so much as to suggest that had he lived he would probably
have won a place in contemporary science fully as high as that held
by Janet. More than one medical psychologist, in all likelihood, has
been inspired by Gurney’s researches to specialize in that fascinating
and important branch of the healing art--as was Morton Prince, on his
own statement to the writer. It was not for medical purposes, however,
that Gurney himself experimented with hypnotism: medical psychology
was then in embryo, and Gurney was only secondarily interested in
its possibilities. His great aim was to ascertain the nature of the
hypnotic state, and the condition of the mind during hypnosis.
To review adequately the ingenious methods he adopted and the results
he obtained, would delay us unduly. Enough to stress the salient fact
that, through a brilliant series of experiments full of interest
to modern psychology, he demonstrated the existence of a great
undercurrent of mental life, in which the most complex processes are
carried on without the individual’s conscious knowledge. Already, to
be sure, several students of personality--Hamilton and Carpenter, for
instance--had recognized the necessity of postulating something of
the sort as the only means of rationally explaining certain anomalies
and mysteries of human behavior. But to take it for granted was one
thing, to demonstrate it was obviously quite another. And it remained
for Gurney’s experiments--together with the concurrent experiments of
Janet and his French colleagues--to effect the work of demonstration,
and, still more, to trace the operations of this mental undercurrent in
channels, and with consequences, formerly unsuspected.
Not until Gurney’s and Janet’s time, to be more explicit, had
experimental proof been forthcoming of the far-reaching influence
of “subconscious ideas” in affecting human conduct, and of the
possibility of initiating trains of thought completely cut off, or
“dissociated,” from the field of conscious mentation. This was first
convincingly revealed by experiments based on the discovery of the fact
that commands “suggested” to a hypnotized person would be faithfully
executed at a stated moment after the awakening from hypnosis, and
this despite the absence, in the normal waking state, of any conscious
recollection of the commands in question. That this actually involved
mentation beneath the threshold of consciousness was shown by Gurney
in a number of experiments made possible by the further discovery that
there are some people who can write “automatically”--that is, without
conscious control of the words they put on paper, and even without
knowing that they are writing anything. Thus Gurney records, in the
course of his detailed record of these experiments (_Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research_, vol. iv, pp. 268-323):
On April 20 [P--ll] was told [while hypnotized] that half an hour
after his next arrival he was to wind up a ball of string, and to
let me know how the time was going. He arrived next evening at 8.30,
and was set to the planchette [an instrument then often used to
obtain automatic writing] at 8.43. He wrote, “13 minett has passed,
and 17 more minetts to pass.” Some more experiments followed, and
it so happened that at 9, the exact time when the fulfillment was
due, he was in the trance. He suddenly said “Oh!” as if recollecting
something, but did not move; he was then woke, and at 9.2 he walked
across the room to where some string was lying, and wound it up....
Another day the same “subject” was told that when I coughed for the
sixth time he was to look out of the window. He was woke, and I gave
at intervals five coughs--one of which, however, was a failure, owing
to its obvious artificiality. He was set to the planchette, and the
words produced were, “When Mr. Gurney cough 6 times I am to look
out.” At this point I read his writing and stopped it. I asked if he
had noticed my coughing, and he said, “No, sir”; but this, of course,
showed no more than [that] he had heard without attending. He was now
hypnotized, told that I wanted to know how often I had coughed, and
at once woke. The writing recommenced, “4 times he has cough, and 2
times more he has to cough.” I coughed twice more, and he went to the
window, drew aside the blind, and looked out. Two minutes afterward
I asked him what sort of a night it was. He said, “Fine when I came
in.” I said I thought I had seen him looking out just now, but he
absolutely denied it.
Any doubt that the memory oblivion in the waking state was genuine was
removed by the interesting circumstance that though the “subjects”--men
to whom even small sums of money meant much--were repeatedly offered
substantial rewards if they could state what had been said to them
during hypnosis, they were invariably unable to do so. Stranger still,
Gurney demonstrated that it was entirely possible to develop, in the
hypnotic state itself, different sets of memories, each completely
independent of the others; so that, so far as concerned the contents
of his consciousness, the hypnotized “subject” seemed to possess two
or more personalities, each with its own distinct set of memory-images
(_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. iv, pp.
515-521). This may be made clearer by giving a sample of the many
curious conversations between one of the “subjects” and G. A. Smith
(known in the published reports as S.), a hypnotist often employed by
Gurney to assist him in his experiments:
A young man named S--t ... after being hypnotized was told in state
A that the pier-head had been washed away, and in state B that an
engine-boiler had burst at Brighton station and killed several
people. He was then roused to state A, when he proved to recollect
about the accident to the pier; after which a few passes brought him
again to state B.
S. “But I suppose they’ll soon be able to build a new one.”
Had the pier been now present in S--t’s mind, this remark would
have been naturally understood to refer to it, as it had formed the
subject of conversation a few seconds before. But he at once replied,
“Oh, there are plenty on the line”--meaning plenty of engines.
S. “The pile-driving takes time, though.”
S--t. “Pile-driving? Well, I don’t know anything about engines
myself.”
A few upward passes were now made, and it at once became clear that
the memory had shifted.
S. “If they have plenty more, it doesn’t matter much.”
S--t. “Oh, they can’t put it on in a day; it was a splendid place.”
S. “Why, I’m talking about the engine.”
S--t. “Engine! What, on the pier? I never noticed one there.”
Again, the same “subject” was told in state A that a balloon had
been seen passing over the King’s-road. Some passes were made which
carried him into state B, when S. said, “But I didn’t see it myself.”
S--t. “What was that?”
He was now told that two large dogs had been having a fight in the
Western-road; and a few upward passes roused him to state A.
S. “But it was a good long time in sight.”
S--t. “The balloon?”
S. “No, the dog.”
S--t. “Dog? Why, was there one on it? A dog on a balloon!”
The “subject” is brought down again to state B.
S. “But it didn’t remain in sight long; it soon went up.”
S--t. “What didn’t? What went up?”
S. “Weren’t we talking about balloons?”
S--t. “No; but one of them dogs looked like a busted balloon when he
was down.”
A few upward passes, and S. says, “Which one?”
S--t. “Why, there was only one.”
S. “One what?”
S--t. “Balloon.”
S. “I was talking about dogs.”
S--t. “I don’t know nothing of dogs.”
Three days afterward S--t was again hypnotized, and S. said, “What
was that you said about the pier?”
S--t. “Oh, about the head being washed away.”
This, it will be seen, was the memory appropriate to state A. Some
downward passes were made, and S. said, “A good thing that things
don’t often happen like that.”
S--t. “No, they don’t at Brighton; they do on the Northern lines.”
Here we have the engine accident again--the memory appropriate to
state B. The balloon over the King’s-road was now strongly suggested
to S; but that idea belonging to state A, it could not be recalled in
state B.
In all these conversations, in short, it was exactly as if the
hypnotist, S., when talking to his subject in state A, and talking to
him in state B, were talking to two different persons, each ignorant
of facts known to the other. (The profound significance of this, from
a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint will be made evident
later.) On the other hand, and in sharp contrast, Gurney, in common
with the Continental investigators, also demonstrated through hypnotic
experimentation that the memory process as a regular thing is almost
incredibly retentive, so that under appropriate conditions it is
possible to recall happenings, it may be of earliest childhood, which
have long since dropped out of conscious recollection--happenings,
even, of which one has never had conscious knowledge. But, indeed,
credit for the experimental demonstration of this twofold principle of
subconscious perception and subconscious memory--which lies at the very
root of abnormal psychology--by no means belongs wholly to Gurney and
the French hypnotists. Many other pioneers in the systematic study of
the “phenomena outside science” had a hand in proving and elucidating
it, notably those who made a special study of crystal-gazing.
The average scientist of that time--perhaps it would be true to say
the same of the average scientist of today--had about as much interest
in the phenomena of crystal-gazing as he had in the “ravings” of the
entranced spiritistic “medium.” He well knew that from time immemorial
it had been a practice among the mystically minded to employ crystals,
mirrors, or other objects with a reflecting surface, for purposes of
divination; and that it had been insistently claimed that, by gazing
steadily into such objects, hallucinatory pictures often became
visible, imparting useful knowledge about people and events outside the
crystal-gazer’s ken. But the scientist dismissed this as merely another
evidence of the invincible superstitiousness of mankind. It never
occurred to him to try crystal-gazing on his own account; or if it did,
he shudderingly repelled the idea. The founders of the Society for
Psychical Research were not so squeamish; crystal-gazing was approved
by them as a fitting subject for investigation; and ere long, their
decision was abundantly vindicated.
One member of the society, Miss Goodrich-Freer, finding that she
possessed the crystal-gazer’s “gift,” sedulously cultivated it for
experimental purposes, and made as careful and detailed a record of
what she observed as would any scientist employed in the vitally
important task of watching and recording the wriggles of a tadpole.
A fact which soon made itself evident to her was the frequency with
which her crystal-visions represented incidents in her own past life,
sometimes incidents dating back to early childhood. On one occasion,
she notes, somebody was speaking in her presence, though not to her,
of Palissy ware. She happened at the moment to be staring aimlessly
at a dark green scent-bottle. At once there appeared in it a picture
of a man furiously tearing up garden palings. She was wondering what
this meant, when it was followed by a second picture showing, with the
greatest distinctness, the library where as a child she had kept her
books. Among these, Miss Goodrich-Freer now remembered, was one she had
not seen for many years called _The Provocations of Madame Palissy_.
Then she also remembered that one of this lady’s provocations was a bad
habit her husband had of using the first material that came to hand as
fuel for his furnace; and immediately the meaning of the first picture
became clear to her.
Similarly one of her earliest experiences in crystal-vision was a
picture of “a quaint oak chair, an old hand, a worn black coat-sleeve
resting on the back of the chair--slowly recognized as a recollection
of a room in a country vicarage, which I had not entered, and had
seldom recalled, since I was a child of ten.” Again, looking in her
crystal she saw a copy of a medical prescription for which, a few
hours before, she had been vainly hunting. On further inspection she
perceived, without being able to read the words, that it was in the
handwriting, not of her physician, but of a friend. Acting on the
hint she searched through her friend’s letters, and found the medical
prescription folded in one of them, where, she had reason to believe,
it had been for more than four years. It could have been put there
only accidentally, yet it was clear that she must have subconsciously
perceived what she was doing when she slipped the prescription into the
letter, and that the mechanism of memory had registered an image of her
absent-minded act. Many other examples of the memory registration of
subconscious percepts are given in Miss Goodrich-Freer’s reports to the
Society (_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. v,
pp. 486-521; vol. viii, pp. 484-495). For example:
I find in the crystal a bit of dark wall, covered with white
jessamine, and I ask myself, “Where have I walked today?” I have no
recollection of such a sight, not a common one in the London streets
but tomorrow I will repeat my walk of this morning, with careful
regard for creeper-covered walls. Tomorrow solves the mystery. I find
the very spot, and the sight brings with it the further recollection
that at the moment we passed this spot I was engaged in absorbing
conversation with my companion, and my voluntary attention was
pre-occupied.
To take another example. I had been occupied with accounts; I opened
a drawer to take out my banking-book. My hand came in contact with
the crystal, and I welcomed the suggestion of a change in occupation.
However, figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing
more attractive to show me than the combination 7694. Dismissing
this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or
a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I
laid aside the crystal and took up my banking-book, which I certainly
had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the
number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures I
should, without doubt, have failed and could not even have guessed
at the number of digits or the value of the first figure. Certainly,
one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb “to
forget,” in all its moods and tenses....
I saw in the crystal a young girl, an intimate friend, waving to me
from her carriage. I observed that her hair, which had hung down her
back when I last saw her, was now put up in young-lady fashion. Most
certainly I had not consciously seen even the carriage, the look
of which I knew very well. But next day I called on my friend; was
reproached by her for not observing her as she passed; and perceived
that she had altered her hair in the way which the crystal had shown.
Next as to sounds not attended to.... A relative of mine was
talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I
was reading, and beyond wishing that they were _further_ I paid no
attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared
positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished
mahogany table, “1, [Earl’s]-square, Notting Hill.” I had no idea
whose this address might be. But some days later my relative
remarked, “H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me
her address the other day, but I did not write it down.” It occurred
to me to ask, “Was it 1, [Earl’s]-square?” and this turned out to be
the case.
From investigators in other departments of psychical research came--and
still comes--evidence no less impressively testifying to the marvellous
power of the human memory, with its subconscious awareness even for
sights and sounds not consciously perceived. It was further discovered
that memory-images not infrequently emerge above the threshold of
consciousness in the form of spontaneously externalized visual and
auditory hallucinations, sometimes of a striking sort. The discovery
was also made that, in persons of a peculiar temperament, subconscious
memories might be so completely switched off, or “dissociated,” from
the field of consciousness that on coming into it again they would
be unrecognized, and would give rise to the conviction that they
related to matters which could not possibly have been within the range
of previous knowledge, conscious or subconscious. Perhaps the best
illustration of this curious and important psychological fact is found
in a case reported quite recently by Mr. Lowes Dickinson.
Among his friends was a young lady who developed a form of “trance
mediumship,” in which she claimed to visit another world and meet
and talk with people there, particularly a certain Blanche Poynings,
described as an earth-dweller in the time of Richard II. This “spirit,”
speaking through the voice of the entranced “medium,” gave as proof
of her identity many interesting particulars regarding her sojourn on
earth. She had been, it seemed, an intimate friend of Maud, Countess
of Salisbury, and much of her talk had to do with that lady, and with
the Earl of Salisbury. Odd little incidents in the latter’s life were
vivaciously recounted--such as his throwing an image out of his chapel
into a ditch, where it was found by a wayfarer, who repainted it and
set it up in a bake-house. “Blanche” also commented in an amusing
way on the appearance of Joan, “The Fair Maid of Kent,” and other
historical personages; told about her own exile from Court; and gave
much information respecting the customs and manners of the period.
All this interested and puzzled Mr. Dickinson, because his friend,
whose veracity he could not doubt, assured him that she had never made
a study of the events of King Richard’s reign, and had not so much as
read anything about it. Yet, as he ascertained by patient research
among old chronicles, the alleged “spirit” unquestionably possessed
accurate and extensive knowledge of the men and women who had been
prominent at King Richard’s Court, and of happenings which in some
instances were barely mentioned by the annalists. The only logical
explanation seemed to be that this was a genuine case of “spirit
communication.” But one day, taking tea with his friend and her aunt,
Mr. Dickinson made a discovery that placed the affair in an entirely
different light.
The subject of automatic writing chanced to come up, and it developed
that the “medium” owned a planchette, and often experimented with it.
At her investigator’s request it was brought out, she placed her hands
on it, and questions were put to it concerning the Blanche Poynings
statements. These questions elicited the unexpected announcement, by
the automatic writing, that corroboration of every statement made by
“Blanche” would be found in a book called _Countess Maud_, written by
Emily Holt. So soon as planchette wrote the name of this book, the
“medium” exclaimed that she believed there was a novel with that title,
and that she had once read it. Her aunt confirmed this, but neither
she nor her aunt could recall anything about its plot or characters,
nor even the period with which it dealt. Following the clue thus
strangely given Mr. Dickinson soon had _Countess Maud_ in his hands,
and found mentioned in it, with corresponding detail, almost every
person and every incident given by the “spirit” of Blanche, who, in the
novel, was of quite secondary importance. Even then his mediumistic
friend could not recall anything about the book, except a vague
impression that she had read it as a child.
He now caused her to be hypnotized, and questioned her anew, when he
learned to his surprise that she had never actually read _Countess
Maud_ herself, but had heard her aunt read it aloud. “I looked at it,
and painted a picture in the beginning. I used to turn over the pages.
I didn’t read it, because it was dull. Blanche Poynings was in the
book; not much about her.” And, in response to a question as to how the
Blanche Poynings impersonation really originated, she made the reply,
of great interest psychologically, “There was a real person named
Blanche Poynings that I met, and I think her name started the memory,
and I got the two mixed up.”
These, then, were some of the first-fruits of systematic psychical
research: Proof that percepts may be subconsciously, as well as
consciously acquired, and that, as Pierre Janet so tersely put it,
“Whatever has gone into the mind may come out of the mind”; proof
that the emergence of subconscious memories may be in the form of
self-induced hallucinations; proof that such memories sometimes develop
a dynamic force, impelling the individual to seemingly inexplicable
conduct; proof that the personality itself may be artificially
dislocated, so that whole areas of memory sink temporarily below the
threshold of consciousness; proof that, even below the threshold,
intelligent mentation continues in a fashion similar to the mentation
consciously directed by the waking will; and, finally, proof that in
hypnotism, crystal-gazing, and automatic writing, invaluable means
are available for exploring the remotest nooks and corners of “the
subconscious.” From one point of view their establishment of such facts
as these was, indeed, disconcerting to the “psychical researchers,”
for it obviously made increasingly difficult the demonstration of
the survival of the soul on evidence afforded by phenomena like
apparitions, hauntings, and mediumistic utterances. But it also marked
an enormous advance in man’s knowledge of himself, and in his control
of his development here on earth.
The first to appreciate this--at any rate, the first to turn it to
practical account--were the Frenchmen who, like Gurney, had attacked
with special vigor the problems raised by hypnotism. Sharing to the
full the belief of their English colleagues that here was a subject
which science ought to have investigated long before--many of them,
in fact, expressing their sympathy with the general purposes of the
Society for Psychical Research by becoming members of it--the French
savants’ motive in invading the realm of the occult had in most cases
been intellectual curiosity rather than any ardent desire to prove life
after death. They were not so much concerned with the possible bearing
of hypnotic phenomena on the soul problem, as with their possible
bearing on man’s earthly welfare. And no sooner was it borne in on them
that hypnotism did have practical uses, than the majority concentrated
their efforts on ascertaining what these uses were, and to what extent,
and with what consequences, the phenomena of the hypnotic state were
paralleled in everyday life.
The leader in this movement--which, with Gurney’s experiments
in England, may be said to constitute the beginning of abnormal
psychology--was Pierre Janet, who, in 1881, at the early age of
twenty-two, had been appointed professor of philosophy in the college
of Chateauroux, and soon afterward received a similar appointment
in the College of Havre. At Havre, Janet took up in earnest the
investigation of things psychical, studying mediumistic phenomena, and
making a series of experiments in hypnotic telepathy that brought him
into mutually helpful relations with Gurney, Myers, and other active
workers in the Society for Psychical Research. But from the first he
was specially interested in the peculiarities of the mind in hypnosis,
and his interest in this particular problem became all-absorbing
when he observed that even the most bizarre hypnotic phenomena
were sometimes spontaneously produced. Perhaps most influential in
determining the future course of his life-activities was his discovery
that hypnotization was not always necessary to effect the strange
dissociation of personality evinced in, for instance, the case of
Gurney’s “subject,” S--t, cited above.
Janet himself, experimenting with Madame B., the peasant wife of a
charcoal-burner, had been astonished to find that when hypnotized
she developed a personality markedly different from that of her
normal waking life. The waking Madame B. was a timid, dull, ignorant
woman; the hypnotized Madame B. (who called herself Léontine) was
bright, vivacious, even inclined to be mischievous. Between the two
personalities, again, there was an absolute cleavage of memory; each
knew nothing of the other’s thoughts and actions. And after a time,
to Janet’s profound astonishment, the Léontine personality began
to manifest spontaneously. In an article contributed to the _Revue
Philosophique_, for March, 1888, he records (translation by Frederic
Myers):
She had left Havre more than two months when I received from her a
very curious letter. She was unwell, she said, worse on some days
than on others, and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over
the page began another letter in a very different style, and which
I may quote as a curiosity, “My dear good sir, I must tell you that
B. really, really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep,
she spits blood, she hurts me; I am going to demolish her, she
bores me, I am ill also, this is from your devoted Léontine.” When
Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her about this
singular missive. She remembered the _first_ letter very distinctly
... but had not the slightest recollection of the second.... I at
first thought that there must have been an attack of spontaneous
somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter
and the moment when she closed the envelope.... But afterward these
unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better
able to study their mode of production. I was fortunately able to
watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious
performance. She was seated at a table, and held in her left hand
the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was
calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was
not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic air; her right hand
wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper
without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round,
wide awake, but surprised to see me, for in her state of abstraction
she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing
she knew nothing whatever.
To Janet this strange occurrence, when viewed in conjunction with
phenomena manifested by two or three other of his “subjects,” was
chiefly significant as hinting at the possibility that the same
mechanism which produced the various phenomena of the hypnotic
state--from hallucinations, loss of memory, and automatic execution of
“suggestions” given during hypnosis, to the production of blisters,
paralyses, and other physical effects of hypnotic suggestion--might be
operant in, and responsible for, the protean manifestations of that
baffling disease hysteria, with which Madame B. and the other subjects
were known to be afflicted. On this theory, hysteria--which until
then had been generally assumed to have a physical basis--would be
essentially a mental malady; and its fundamental characteristic would
be some degree of dissociation of personality.
Already, as Janet was aware, Charcot had demonstrated the inadequacy
and downright error of the prevalent medical notions concerning
hysteria, and had also rendered a splendid service to humanity by
compelling recognition of the fact that sufferers from hysteria often
develop symptoms--paralyses, growths, etc.--all too easily mistaken
for the symptoms of some really organic disease perhaps incurable, or
curable only by the aid of the surgeon’s knife. But while he had thus
revealed the wholly functional character of hysteria, and had saved
countless sufferers from useless and unnecessary operations, Charcot
had thrown little or no light on its causation and mechanism, and this
was the problem which Janet now undertook to solve, removing from Havre
to Paris, and associating himself with Charcot in the latter’s clinic
at the Salpétrière Hospital.
Observing, experimenting, recording--with a truly catholic mind
profiting from the observations and experiments of other workers,
including his fellow-members in the Society for Psychical Research--he
gradually achieved his epoch-marking demonstration of the rôle played
by “dissociated memories” in the causation, not alone of hysteria, but
of all functional nervous and mental troubles. He showed that severe
emotional shocks--frights, griefs, worries--might be, and frequently
were, completely effaced from conscious recollection, while continuing
to be vividly remembered in the depths of the subconscious; he showed
that thence they might, and frequently did, exercise a baneful effect
on the whole organism giving rise to disease-symptoms, the particular
types of which were determined by the victim’s “self-suggestions” (just
as Mr. Dickinson’s “medium” suggested to herself the Blanche Poynings
impersonation); and he showed how important it was, as a preliminary to
effecting a permanent cure, to get at these dissociated memories and
drag them back to the full light of conscious recollection.
To get at them he made use, as medical psychologists all over the
civilized world are today making use, of hypnotism, of automatic
writing, even of the “mystical” crystal-gazing, the use of which for
medical purposes was directly suggested to him by the experiments
of Miss Goodrich-Freer. Janet himself, it should perhaps be added,
would be the last to disavow the assistance he received in one way or
another from the “psychical researchers” of England; indeed, he has
not forgotten that everything he has accomplished is the outgrowth of
his early studies in the “occult” phenomena of hypnotism. It is to be
regretted that many of his present-day fellow-workers in the domain of
scientific psychotherapy are not equally appreciative of the fact that
every “cure” they put to their credit--every hysteric, neurasthenic,
or psychasthenic patient whom they send on his or her way rejoicing in
a restoration to health--is a living witness to the beneficial results
that have flowed from the patient labors of the courageous pioneers,
who, at the risk of their scientific reputations, so boldly adventured
into the psychical thirty years ago.
We shall have more to say in a later article on what society owes to
psychical research.