THE EVOLUTION OF THE MEDIUM
After meeting my first medium I came away with the feeling that he was a
rather artful liar; but now, whilst retaining that opinion, I am ready
to admit that perhaps his lying was not a product of his consciousness.
I know nothing of his history, but he was accepted by intelligent people
as honest and respectable; moreover, records of spiritualism contain so
many examples of people whose belief in their own supernatural powers
must be accepted as real in spite of manifest deceit, that we must again
fall back upon dissociation to explain their state of mind.
I shall assume the existence of three groups just as in connection with
hysteria, and classify mediums, clairvoyants, water-diviners and other
producers of the supernatural into--
1. The deceiver pure and simple.
2. The deceiver who has repressed the consciousness of deceit and
become a Dissociate.
3. The subject who has never been conscious of deceit, but, led
astray by his unconscious, has deceived himself from the beginning
and finished as a Dissociate.
To place any performer in the proper group is again a matter of
judgement. Having a small repertory of tricks, including water-divining
and a few manifestations with a pack of cards, I have sometimes put
myself in the first group with temporary success.
The development of a case of the second group is probably not a
phenomenon that has ever been continuously observed, but Robert Browning
has formed such an excellent conception of it in _Mr. Sludge, the
Medium_, that his description bears comparison with my theory of the
development of some hysterics. David Sludge is a house-servant and his
master is pictured discussing high finance with his guests when the boy
breaks in, saying, 'Sir, I've a five-dollar note.' The scorn of the
guests is immediate:--'He stole it, then; shove him out'. And David is
given the swift kick of ignominy.
* * * * *
'But,' says the poet,
'Let the same lad hear you talk as grand
Of signs and wonders, the invisible world.
If he break in with "Sir, I saw a ghost!"
Ah, the ways change!'
Browning leaves us to imagine the boy's motive; perhaps his was just a
boyish trick inspired by a desire for notoriety of which he himself was
scarcely conscious, but, like the unfortunate hysteric who meets
credulity, David is led on to produce more manifestations.
'And, David, (is not that your Christian name?)
Of all things, should this happen twice--it may--
Be sure while fresh in mind, you let us know!'
Then later:--
'"... came raps!
While a light whisked" ... "Shaped somewhat like a star?
Well, like some sort of stars, ma'am." "So we thought!
And any voice? Not yet? Try hard, next time,
If you can't hear a voice; we think you may."
* * * * *
'So David holds the circle, rules the roast,
Narrates the vision, peeps in the glass ball,
Sets-to the spirit-writing, hears the raps,
As the case may be.'
Then begins his conflict; like the patient who successfully feigns
symptoms, he finds withdrawal difficult:--
'You'd prove firmer in his place?
You'd find the courage--that first flurry over,
That mild bit of romancing-work at end, ...
To interpose with "It gets serious, this;
Must stop here. Sir, I saw no ghost at all.
Inform your friends I made--well, fools of them,
And found you ready-made. I've lived in clover
These three weeks: take it out in kicks of me!"
I doubt it. Ask your conscience!'
Says poor David:--
'There's something in real truth (explain who can)
One casts a wistful eye at.'
Now he faces the same dilemma that the developing hysteric has to meet,
and as the hysteric reaches a false salvation by the repression of the
knowledge of deceit so does David:--
'Why, when I cheat,
Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the act,
Are you, or, rather, am I sure o' the fact?
Well then I'm not sure! I may be, perhaps,
Free as a babe from cheating: how it began,
My gift ... no matter; what 'tis got to be
In the end now, that's the question; answer that!
Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding mine,
Leading me whither, I had died of fright.'
Nor does the poet omit the development of Receptivity:--
'I'm eyes, ears, mouth of me, one gaze and gape,
Nothing eludes me, everything's a hint,
Handle and help.'
At the last the youth, once an innocent jester, pours a stream of
half-believed lies upon the man who, having caught him in his fraud,
lets him go with a chance to start life afresh.
Browning does not carry the idea of repression as far as I do, Sludge
producing clouds of rationalisations to cover his inconsistencies. The
idea of dissociation does not present itself, but the whole picture can
be taken to represent the evolution of many mediums with their mixture
of belief and deception.
Just as in the hysteric we meet with mechanical ways of deceit, shown by
self-inflicted injuries, so in the medium we meet with mechanical tricks
for the production of spurious phenomena. In both cases fully-conscious
deceit, reconciled to the moral complexes by rationalisations, is the
easiest explanation, but sometimes fully-conscious deceit is unlikely.
There is a disappointing lack of originality in spiritualist literature,
for the same stories of the marvellous are repeated in one book and
another. The Fox Sisters, Slade, Eglington, Eusapia Palladino and others
appear according to the fancy of the writer, and their fraudulent tricks
may or may not be acknowledged. It is a peculiarity of spiritualist
reasoning that if a medium is caught cheating it only proves that he was
cheating when he was caught; if he is not caught next time, we must
accept as genuine the phenomena then produced.
But no spiritualist writer can avoid the names of Home, Stainton Moses
and Mrs. Piper, for _they were never caught cheating_; nevertheless, we
apparently need testimonials at great length to their honesty. Mr. J.
Arthur Hill gives two pages of testimonials to Stainton Moses, and
repeats a story telling how the Reverend medium made an automatic
drawing of a horse and truck and gave a spirit message concerning a man
who had been killed that day under a steamroller in Baker Street. Mr.
Hill says: 'Mr. Moses had passed through Baker Street in the afternoon,
but had heard nothing of any such incident.'[26]
[Footnote 26: _Spiritualism_, p. 64. Cassell & Co., 1918.]
If Mr. Hill knew anything about dissociation he would not give us this
oft-quoted but flimsy story. Whence does he obtain his evidence that
the medium had heard nothing of the incident? Of course, from the honest
personality of Mr. Stainton Moses himself.
But a story of some terrifying episode is often, by psychological
technique, extracted from a war-strained soldier only to be repressed
and honestly denied by the man a little while later. If the dissociated
sufferer can deny the truth of an incident which, when recalled again,
fills him with horror, then the denial by another Dissociate that he has
heard of a street accident does not carry weight, even if we read a
bookful of testimony to his honesty.
The accounts of this famous medium, who is still held in awe by
believers, are full of such happenings. On another occasion the spirit
in possession of him gave the names of members of a family who had died
in India and were unknown to him or any one present. The names were
verified by reference to the obituary column of _The Times_ of a few
days before. We can assume that the honest Stainton Moses did not read
_The Times_, but that the dissociated Stainton Moses read and
remembered.
With this dissociation well established and having for its object the
production of occult phenomena, we can understand the rest of the
manifestations that he produced for his circle of friends. He received
numerous communications from the dead, produced spirit lights,
transferred objects from one room to another through closed doors,
floated about, and, in short, went through all the spiritualist
repertory.
The ball is kept rolling by all sorts of people. The late Archdeacon
Wilberforce, who believed in 'objective entities that seem able to
manipulate or influence nerve currents, or magnetic ether, or whatever
it is, of persons in the flesh',[27] wrote approvingly of him: 'The most
remarkable medium I ever knew was the Reverend Stainton Moses, a
clergyman in my father's diocese of Oxford'.[28]
[Footnote 27: _There is no Death_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 28: _Ibid._, p. 62.]
Of the same medium Mr. Podmore says: 'Apart from the moral difficulties
involved, there is little or nothing to forbid the supposition that the
whole of these messages were deliberately concocted by Mr. Moses himself
and palmed off upon his unsuspecting friends.'[29]
[Footnote 29: _Studies in Psychical Research_, p. 133.]
The moral difficulties disappear when we consider the case as one of
dissociation. His spirit communications were psychologically identical
with the automatic writings of the Glastonbury archaeologists (see
Chapter IX); he read obituary notices, studied out-of-the-way stories of
men and women, and from the stores of his unconscious he produced this
information as news from the spirit world. But, knowing nothing of the
ways of the unconscious and becoming a prey to his own dissociated
stream, he fed this stream and drifted with it into something a little
removed from sanity.
I know not how the manifestations began, and whether he belonged to my
second or third group I do not attempt to discuss; I am satisfied if I
have made it clear that the work of this wonderful medium can be
explained otherwise than by one of the two alternatives of spiritualism
or conscious deceit.
We meet with the same rush to testify to the honesty of Mrs. Piper. Sir
Oliver Lodge of course guarantees her, and the late Professor William
James, the Harvard psychologist, wrote of her: 'Practically I should be
willing now to stake as much money on Mrs. Piper's honesty as on that of
any one I know, and am quite satisfied to leave my reputation for wisdom
or folly so far as human nature is concerned to stand or fall by this
declaration.'[30]
[Footnote 30: Re-quoted from _Spiritualism_, p. 75.]
This honesty of the main personality of the Dissociate leads astray
professors of physics or of the old psychology.[31] It is the honest but
mistaken man who misleads his fellows. We are on our guard against the
rogue, and the conscious deceiver must needs be a good actor if he would
succeed. The best actor knows he is acting, but the Reverend Moses
needed no effort to preserve for years the appearance of
straightforwardness and honesty. As far as he knew, he _was_
straightforward and honest, though beneath his consciousness lay
fathomless possibilities of deceit, ever ready to take advantage of the
externals of an honest man.
[Footnote 31: I may owe an apology here to the memory of Professor
James, for the original quotation is given without its context.]
As I said in Chapter VI, an authoritative and confident manner makes
easy the acceptance of suggestion. What can be more authoritative and
confident than the manner of a man who believes what he says and knows
that his hearers are willing to believe? If what he says are lies and
delusions, that makes no difference in his manner, and his unsuspicious
hearers are still ready to stake their reputations upon his honesty.
That readiness only makes them the more suggestible and renders
valueless their opinion as to the truth of what he says.
Spiritualist writers are glib concerning 'subliminal consciousness',
and, knowing not what they mean, attribute to it powers of communication
with the spirit world. The only one worthy of study is the late F. H.
Myers, and though his stories of the marvellous are largely repetitions
of old material yet his treatment of the psychology of double
personality is illuminating. His work on _Human Personality_, if free
from the spiritualist complex, would probably rank well in advance of
its period. He has a good grasp of the subject of hysterical double
personality, giving some excellent examples, but postulates a transition
from the imaginings of the hysteric to the revelations of the spirit
world. That the mind should pass through disease on its way to divine
revelation, the boundary between the two being only a matter of
judgement, is a necessary part of his explanation of mediumism. Just as
spiritualists will maintain their belief in a medium after fraud has
been detected, placing upon unbelievers the onus of proving fraud in
every case, so Myers, knowing the workings of hysterical double
personality, claims the right to exclude hysteria whenever he pleases
and to attribute a divine origin to the material then produced. This
demand appeals neither to the religious man nor to the sceptic.
I take the liberty of borrowing a story from Mr. Hereward Carrington, a
spiritualist of some critical power.[32]
[Footnote 32: _Personal Experiences in Spiritualism_, pp. 59-61. T.
Werner Laurie, Ltd.]
'One of the most interesting cases that I have ever encountered is
the following, which I consider of remarkable psychological
interest from various points of view.
During the early summer of 1911, a gentleman called upon me,
stating that he knew a wonderful physical medium, of the same type
as Palladino. He himself was a lawyer; his friend, the medium, was
also a lawyer, and had "a scientific interest in these things," and
in "having the remarkable manifestations which occurred in his
presence solved," etc. For three years and a half, I was told, this
case had been under private observation, and the manifestations had
grown more and more numerous and bewildering as time went on. This,
and much more of like nature, I heard by way of preliminary to the
investigation of what appeared to be a very promising case.
An evening having been arranged, the two gentlemen called at my
house, and, after a chat, the demonstrations were undertaken.
A broom was placed on the floor, and then, the medium kneeling over
the object (or, rather, squatting on the ground), he placed his
fingers on either side of the broom-handle, and then gradually
took them away. As he did so the broom was seen to rise into the
air. It remained suspended in space for a few seconds, then fell to
the floor. The effect was most striking, while the phenomenon was
of that simple order which one would naturally expect to discover
in a simple undeveloped medium.
The first two or three experiments interested me immensely, I must
confess. But I noted one particular thing about the movements of
the medium, which was that every time he placed an object on the
floor, he placed it very close to his knees; this caused me to look
between his knees intently instead of at the object during the next
few trials. The result was that I distinctly saw _a fine black
thread_ stretched from leg to leg, forming a loop, into which the
various objects were slipped in the act of placing them on the
floor. The rest was only a matter of balance.
In spite of the fact that I had discovered the _modus operandi_, I
did not wish to act hastily, having been accused so often in the
past of condemning too hastily upon discovering the fraud.
Accordingly I asked the medium to meet me a few evenings later at
the office of my friend, Dr. Gustave Sayer, and here we witnessed a
second demonstration. It would be useless to repeat the details of
this performance, which was simply a repetition of the first.
Suffice it to say that not only was the medium seen using the loop
of thread throughout, but this loop broke twice during the
evening--once in the middle of the experiment--the thread being
heard to break, and the object at once falling to the ground.
On the first occasion the medium made an excuse, retired upstairs,
and evidently arranged the thread, for he came down again in a few
minutes and proceeded to give us a further test. Upon the thread
(audibly) breaking a second time, however, he said that he "did not
think he could do any more for us that evening," and sat down,
apparently exhausted.
It was the most flagrant and bare-faced swindle I ever came across,
and in this Dr. Sayer agrees with me.
And yet here was a young lawyer practising these tricks,
apparently for no motive, and constantly lying about them in a most
astonishing manner; and this was a case from which much was to be
hoped, apparently.'
This story hardly needs comment; but the writer's attitude towards
another and more famous medium, Eusapia Palladino, is very different.
Until I read the book from which these passages are quoted I thought no
one regarded this lady as anything but an exposed fraud; even Sir Oliver
Lodge has written concerning her, 'my only regret is that I allowed
myself to make a report, although only a private report, to the Society
for Psychical Research, on the strength of a few exceptionally good
sittings, instead of waiting until I had likewise experienced some of
the bad or tricky sittings to which all the Continental observers had
borne frequent witness.'[33]
[Footnote 33: Quoted from _The Question_, p. 118.]
Mr. Carrington says of this lady[34]:--
'In any event, it appears to me obvious that, even assuming that
fraud was intended on this occasion, it proves nothing more than
the fact that Eusapia will resort to clever trickery whenever the
occasion is given her to do so--a fact which all students of her
phenomena know full well already; and it does not in the least
prove that the whole seance was fraudulent--which is what is
implied in Professor Munsterberg's article. Every one knows well
enough that scores of phenomena have been observed in the past
which could not possibly have been accounted for, even assuming
that the medium had both her feet free--a fact I have previously
pointed out. The difference between Eusapia and the other mediums
spoken of in this volume is this, that in their case they
invariably fail whenever "test conditions" are imposed, whereas
Eusapia generally succeeds; further, the whole tenor and setting of
the seance, so to speak, is entirely different. Lastly, we have the
unanimity of opinion amongst scientific men as to Eusapia's powers,
whereas we have nothing of the sort in the case of any other
medium. On the contrary, whenever they are investigated along these
lines, they either fail altogether or are detected in fraud.'
[Footnote 34: _Personal Experiences_, p. 174.]
This gentleman has reason for pride in his powers of observation, but
his spiritualist complexes are so firmly enclosed in their logic-tight
compartment that his own critical powers beat in vain against the door.
It was unfortunate for the young lawyer, but at the same time
inexplicable, that Mr. Carrington pitted his observations, made at two
sittings only, against those of the people who had had the case under
private observation for three and a half years. Surely this respectable
young man deserved the laurels of mediumism as much as did Eusapia. What
are two failures against three and a half years' manifestations that
'had grown more and more numerous and bewildering as time went on'? I am
sure that, if Mr. Hereward Carrington had given his blessing, this young
man might have become a famous medium instead of being blighted after
his years of successful effort.
But Mr. Carrington cannot conceive an alternative between a bare-faced
swindle and a spirit manifestation, and in this he is harsher than I. It
is plain that this young lawyer had the respect of his friends and was
believed to be honest, just like Mrs. Piper and Stainton Moses, and Mr.
Carrington missed a chance of useful psychological investigation when he
dismissed the case so curtly. The chance cannot be recalled, but a talk
with this medium might have helped in the understanding of his
distinctly disordered mind. I once had the chance of a frank talk with
the accomplice of a professional medium, but, though he had some belief
in the occult, he was so fully conscious of his roguery that I learned
no more psychology than I have picked up from a three-card trickster.
Anyhow, Mr. Carrington gives us an example of a medium in the making who
we can only guess was a man whose disappointed ambitions and neurotic
'Will to Power' had led him astray.
I wonder how Mr. Carrington explains the failure of previous observers
to detect the trickery? The man's apparent honesty of course helped, but
the Herd Instinct was also at work and converts would be unlikely to
criticise when a few reputable people had expressed their belief.
Certain card-tricks are safer from detection by a large audience than by
a small one. If three people are present and one thinks he detects the
trick he may speak, for he is only in a minority of one to two; but if
five out of fifteen detect it, each one, feeling he is in a minority of
one to fourteen, is over-ruled by his sense of insignificance and
remains silent accordingly. It is easier to sway a crowd than to
persuade an individual.
Let me make it clear that I do not merely compare the medium with the
hysteric, I regard them as identical except in those cases where the
medium is a conscious deceiver. The attitude of the believers in the
honesty of the medium is the same as that of the sympathising friends of
the hysteric patient, and it is often as difficult and thankless a task
to explain the patient's condition to his or her friends as it is to
save the credulous from falling a prey to the fortune-teller. But such
difference as there may be is in favour of the unfortunate hysteric, who
is the victim of forces that are too powerful to be resisted without
help and who often anxiously desires recovery.
I have seen in a man suffering from war-strain the spontaneous
development of what would be accepted as clairvoyance; the identity of
his performance with that of the medium is of great importance. The
patient was in that condition of dissociation or partial hypnosis into
which these men easily pass, and was apparently 'seeing' some of the
horrors he had experienced. As a rule such revivals of war episodes can
be relied upon as a true reproduction of actual events, but in this case
there were inconsistencies in the story. For example, describing how
Uhlans drove their lances into Belgian babies, he said: 'If I had my
revolver I'd let them have it,' but gave no indication of what he, a
British soldier, was doing unarmed and under such circumstances.
Moreover, though the account was given with due emphasis, there was a
lack of the emotion characteristic of the revival of actual horrors.
Then a break came in the story, and he went on to describe a tragedy
which had recently roused public interest. He saw the murderer walking
with his victim, described how she handed over certain articles to him,
and then how the man shot her and hurried off.
All this was graphically related as if he were actually witnessing the
tragedy, and as I listened I realised how any one ignorant of the
workings of a disordered mind would feel compelled to believe in the
reality of clairvoyance and might be impelled to act upon the belief,
for the description of the murder, if true, could only have been derived
from something like second-sight.
The cause at work in producing these fantasies was fairly clear. The man
had seen three years of fighting, and had resolutely tried to forget all
that he had passed through; he had the usual symptoms of 'shell-shock',
and in addition complained bitterly of being haunted by dreams of
murder. I know not what particular happening had so impressed him, but
in his unconscious were the memories of many horrors which, refused
admission to his consciousness, insisted on manifesting themselves by
dreams and waking fears.
Every horrible thing he read or heard was joined on to his dissociated
stream of memories and emotions, to be reproduced in dreams and
fantasies.
In his imaginings there was a mixture of truth and fancy; the figure of
the murderer, for example, proved to be associated in his mind with the
figure of an officer who was present at a time of great emotional
strain, and the articles handed over by the victim were identical with
articles familiar to the patient and of emotional importance to him. The
other reproductions proved to be of incidents which had been related to
him and to which he had given an intimate personal interest whilst
elaborating them; his own experiences were more deeply repressed.
His condition was identical with that of the honest medium--whether
Stainton Moses or more recently advertised seers--but fortunately his
friends recognised the true nature of his disorder and, instead of
cultivating it as a 'gift', took steps to have it treated as a disease.
In the description of mediums we often find hints of hysterical
symptoms. Sir Oliver Lodge tells of the sighings and writhings of one of
his performers, but it is not often that a definite diagnosis is made as
in the following extract[35]:--
'I do not think that any one who has seen the effects of a _good_
seance upon Eusapia could doubt its reality. She has been known to
suffer from partial paralysis, from hysteria, nausea, amnesia, loss
of vision, as well as great weakness, prostration, etc., after the
seance. I have seen her actively nauseated--excessively ill--after
a good seance of this character, a symptom which is unlikely to be
simulated, even if it could be. It is only after a _good_ seance
that such things occur, however. After a poor seance at which,
perhaps, much fraud has occurred ... I think that Eusapia often
simulates exhaustion when, as a matter of fact, there is little or
none, but this would not deceive one who has carefully watched her
for weeks and months together, and has observed the effects of a
genuine seance upon her.'
[Footnote 35: _Personal Experiences_, p. 242.]
The behaviour described by Mr. Carrington is precisely that of the
hysteric, but it is not clear what he means when he says that her being
actively nauseated is a symptom unlikely to be simulated, even if it
could be. Hysterical vomiting--resulting from mental processes, and not
from any physical cause--is very common, and is a simulation of bodily
disease, though I do not imply that the patient is aware of the
simulation. Perhaps being nauseated was, in this case, a symbol of the
disgust which one personality felt towards the frauds and lies of the
other. Eusapia, having reached a condition of hysterical dissociation,
presents the material symptoms of such a condition, for the nausea,
paralysis, amnesia, loss of vision, prostration, etc., are classical
symptoms of hysteria. The spiritualist actually holds them forth as
proofs of the reality of spirit communication! Let the reader bear in
mind that they show Eusapia to have been not merely a cheat, but
mentally diseased.
There is a sad list of books purporting to instruct beginners how to
communicate with the dead, and the instructions are such as to induce
dissociation--a mental condition with possibilities of self-deception
and hysterical manifestations like those shown by Eusapia Palladino.
Bad enough it is to believe the fantasies of a diseased mind to be
revelations from beyond the grave, but how can one sufficiently condemn
men of learning and position who would lead along the pathway of disease
those who mourn their lost ones?
A few extracts from _How to Speak with the Dead_[36] will illustrate
these pernicious attempts.
[Footnote 36: By Sciens: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.]
(Page 88) 'By sitting in some place quite alone and free from
interruption, and by adopting a mental attitude of passive
receptivity and expectancy, the soul becomes ready to perceive and
be affected by any spirits that may be in its vicinity and that may
attempt to open up communications.... The manifestations ... may
vary from thought-suggestion to positive physical phenomena ...
such as the hearing of a voice or even the visual appearance of
some supernormal object. All depends upon whether the sitter is or
is not susceptible to psychical influence, and also upon whether
the locality or the sitter personally is or is not haunted.'
Then (page 91) when the Dissociation has developed:--
'In cases where the sitter is markedly "psychic" it frequently happens
that normal control over the body is lost. A condition of trance
supervenes, and while this continues the spirit--which may be either a
"second personality" or a soul from the outside--that has gained the
upper hand makes use to a greater or less extent of the brain and other
organs subject to its mastery. The hand may write: the mouth may speak:
the whole body may be engaged in some impersonation; and all this may
take place beyond the scope of the sitter's normal consciousness.'
Lest the hysterical dissociation is not yet enough developed, the victim
receives, on page 98, another thrust along the road to disease:--
'If it be found on trial that psychic powers exist to an
appreciable extent it may be taken for granted that they are
capable of very great increase by persevering effort and systematic
employment.'
A warning is both given and stultified on page 107:--
'Self-deception and the imaginations bred of wishes and emotions
are to be guarded against;' ... 'in solitary Expectancy fraud and
trickery are completely absent, and all manifestations are matters
of the most simple personal observation, the accuracy of which can
be confirmed--as in an ordinary scientific laboratory--by the test
of repetition.'
These directions are sufficient to start victims along the path taken by
Eusapia, and, though we do not know how this woman reached the condition
described by Mr. Carrington, yet the men who fostered her deception
certainly helped the unfortunate creature in her development of a second
personality compounded of delusion and fraud. The description of the
other case of Mr. Carrington's contains a significant phrase: 'the
phenomenon was of that simple order which one would naturally expect to
discover in a simple undeveloped medium.' Just so: the game was only
beginning, but, if the medium had developed, the split-off personality
would have taken charge and limitless cheating and fraud could have been
carried on by a medium who was to all seeming an honest man.
But as I showed that the causes of hysteria are to be found in conflict
and repression, only taking the 'Will to Power' and 'repression of the
knowledge of deceit' as particular forms applying to a few cases, so I
must allow that the medium may not always be influenced by the last two
factors. The hysteric is the prey of emotions and experiences which
cannot be faced unaided, and the strivings and desires that arise from
the unconscious, which in one individual may find expression in social
work, may find vent by a neurosis in another, or by mysticism in a
third.
The desires may be of the noblest kind, and, failing to find legitimate
expression, may show themselves in fantasies. I am not the first to draw
attention to the psychology of Joan of Arc, and we can picture her urged
by the noblest emotions to seek in a dissociated stream powers beyond
the reach of consciousness; her visions were real to her, and tradition
may be believed when it relates the story of her detection of King
Charles disguised as one of his own courtiers. 'Be not amazed, nothing
is hid from me', are the words attributed to her, and the incident well
exemplifies the hypersensitivity of a dissociated stream.
I cannot picture a modern medium actuated by high motives, but am ready
to admit that even in our days there may be mystics whose dissociations
arose from commendable origins. Theosophy is bound up with the story of
two women, Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant; the former was a
self-confessed deceiver, but the latter is a very different kind of
woman. Brought up in strict religious surroundings, she found herself
compelled to cast aside her religious beliefs and, at great personal
sacrifice, take up a public attitude directly opposite to them; but her
old beliefs still lay in the unconscious, and when the opportunity
arose she found relief from her conflict in a fantastic creed of the
supernatural. No one who has studied her life can deny her honesty, but
honesty does not make her beliefs easier of acceptance.
Before leaving the subject of mediums I must allude again to witchcraft.
To those who believe in spirits, good or evil, which can take possession
of us and make us do their will, and can throw about bricks and sand and
furniture in our material world, there is nothing remarkable in
epidemics of bewitchery, especially as the witch-finders were more
fortunate than our spiritualists in having the unanimous support of the
most eminent authorities of their day.
To explain the psychology of witchcraft is beyond the scope of this
book, but it is not hard to conceive that when the belief in witchcraft
was strong certain unfortunate people who set out to play tricks, maybe
for notoriety or temporary gain, became ensnared by credulity and
finding escape difficult came to believe in their own powers. Thus
dissociation would be set up and on the side of the witch-finders Herd
Instinct (or suggestion) and logic-tight compartments did the rest.
The fact that confessions of witchcraft were apparently common makes
this explanation more probable.
For a career ending at the stake to have such a trivial origin as a
desire for notoriety is in agreement with the history of Sludge, whose
downfall began with a desire to draw attention to himself. Call them
ambitions and the desires seem less trivial, nor do I shrink from
suggesting that the 'gifts' of the water-diviner and the most
financially disinterested medium, even of Mr. Stainton Moses himself,
have origin in a desire to shine before one's fellows--a neurotic 'Will
to Power'.
CONCLUSION
Although I have emphasised the part that dissociation plays in the
production of beliefs and actions, yet dissociation is only a particular
manifestation of the unconscious and it is the latter which is becoming
the field of research as to the causes of human action.
From the evolutionary standpoint consciousness is a late development.
Man sacrificed many advantages when he rose above the beast; in every
mere bodily endowment he has superiors in the animal world, and as the
influence of consciousness has become more and more important so the
sphere of his unconscious actions has diminished.
The bird needs no foresight for the building of her nest: the impulse to
build comes and must be obeyed. When migration time arrives there is no
reasoned plan of going to a distant land, no scheming of routes or
destinations: she just goes.
So it is with the intricate instincts of other creatures, of the wasp
that builds her brood-cell, fills it with living victims, and places
there an egg of whose future she can know nothing.
Seeing these things we marvel at the intelligence of the agent, but the
child who ties a rag round a stick and gives it a name uses more
initiative than any other animal possesses.
Here, rather late, I will introduce McDougall's definition of an
instinct:--
'Instinct is an innate psycho-physical tendency to pay attention to
objects of a certain class, to experience emotional excitement of
peculiar quality on such perceptions, and to act or have an impulse
to act in a particular way with regard to that object.'
We can see that instinct suffices for the bird or insect, living almost
entirely in the unconscious, to carry on the important affairs of life.
Even in regard to what looks like the exercise of reason or memory we
can find a parallel in the human unconscious.
The unreasonable fears and obsessions of the 'shell-shocked' soldier
rest upon causes of which he is unaware, and the burnt child dreads the
fire even if he were too young to remember the burning. The chicken that
has once tasted a nauseous caterpillar will ever after avoid its like,
but we only know that a certain emotion is called up by the sight of the
caterpillar which causes the chicken to abstain; it is an unnecessary
assumption that memory, as we know it, is concerned. The obsession of
the soldier who felt that he must attack his companion (see Chapter
VIII) arose from the unconscious, and those animal actions which we
attribute to memory can similarly have their origins apart from
consciousness.
McDougall's definition of instinct applies very well to obsessions,
except that the latter are not innate but acquired; that one definition
should apply to both groups is due to them all having their origin in
the unconscious.
Man, though urged by the instincts and memories of his unconscious, yet
lives in his stream of consciousness and tends to believe that there is
no other mind-work involved in his thoughts and actions; but as the
latest evolved function is the most variable and unstable so man's
consciousness is his most uncertain function, its chief variability
being in the extent to which it controls or is controlled by the
unconscious.
The ideal human mind would be perfectly integrated, there would be no
logic-tight compartments, all its complexes would be apparent to the
consciousness, all memories available when needed, all emotions assigned
to their proper cause and all instincts recognised and well-directed;
and the owner of it would find life in our world intolerable.
Remote from this ideal is the mind whose unconscious has taken the
place, wholly or in part, of the stream of consciousness. Perhaps the
consciousness has not developed--then we find idiocy or imbecility;
perhaps some distorted emotion from the unconscious has been the source
of a dissociated stream of ideas which becomes predominant and brings
its owner within the legal definition of a lunatic.
Between the extremes are the rest of mankind, the matter-of-fact man who
reconciles himself to his world by a few serviceable logic-tight
compartments, the man of temperament--artist, poet, or tramp--who counts
the emotions arising from the unconscious as among the real things of
life, and the other people of temperament who, finding their emotions
and desires in discord with their surroundings, misdirect them and join
the sufferers whom we call neurotic.
Then there are those who build up from the unconscious a fantastic world
of imaginings, and, knowing nothing of the source, attribute them to
outside intelligences or beings like themselves. To these belong the
seers and mystics and their present-day representatives, the mediums,
clairvoyants, and other believers in their own fantasies.
The counterpart of the medium is the ready believer, and each is
reciprocally the victim of the other.
The medium has his dissociated stream with its hyperaesthesia and
receptivity--alert to pick up the slightest hint and cast it back as a
spirit revelation, and ready, moreover, to use more material trickery if
needful. On the side of the believer is a logic-tight compartment
containing his readiness to seize upon the feeblest evidence of the
supernatural. How far he progresses into a dissociation one cannot tell,
but when two Dissociates apparently bearing the stamp of honesty--one
the medium and one the believer--work into each other's hands results
may well be such as to defy explanation.
The study of the unconscious is legitimate, and if one chooses knowingly
to tap its stores by a method of dissociation some increase of
knowledge (not about the supernatural, but about the ways of the human
mind) may be expected.
But whoever hands himself over to a belief that the products of a
dissociation--whether of his own consciousness or of another's--are
manifestations of the Spirit World, may come to say--
'Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding mine,
Leading me whither, I had died of fright.'
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