SUGGESTED HALLUCINATIONS
The servility, the state of fear of the subconscious, the source of
neurosis, in its relation to the master hypnotizer is well brought
out in the mechanism of hypnotic and post-hypnotic hallucinations.
Before we proceed with our discussion it may be well to give an
analysis, however brief, of the normal percept, of the abnormal
percept or hallucination, and then compare them with hypnotic and
post-hypnotic hallucinations. The understanding of perception,
normal and abnormal, is, in fact, at the basis of normal and
abnormal psychology.
We may begin with the percept and its elements. In looking at
the vase before me I see its beautiful tints, its rounded shape,
its heavy pedestal with its rough curves, its solidity, weight,
brittleness, and other experiences which go to make up the
perception of the vase. The visual elements are given directly by
the visual perceptive experience; but whence come the seemingly
direct experiences of weight, heaviness, roughness, smoothness, and
others of the like kind? They are evidently derived from other
senses. The whole perceptive experience is of a visual character.
We take in the whole with our eye. In the organic structure of
the percept then, besides the experiences directly given by the
stimulated sense-organ, there are other experiences, sensory in
character, indirectly given, and coming from other sense organs
which are not directly stimulated.
The percept is a complicated dynamic product, and its elementary
processes are never derived from one isolated domain of sensory
experience. The activities of all the sensory domains co-operate
in the total result of an apparently simple percept. Along with
sensory processes directly stimulated, a mass of other sensory
processes becomes organized and helps to contribute to the total
result. The direct sensory elements are termed by me _primary
sensory elements_; the indirectly given experiences are termed
_secondary sensory elements_. The secondary sensory elements may be
figuratively said to cluster round the primary sensory elements as
their nucleus.
The whole perceptual experience is tinged by the character of
the primary elements which constitute the guiding nucleus, so to
say. Thus, where the primary sensory elements are visual, the
whole mass, no matter from what domain the sensory experiences
are derived, appears under the form of the visual sense, and the
percept is a visual percept. While the primary sensory elements
form, so to say, the dynamic center of the total perceptual
experience, the secondary sensory elements mainly constitute its
content. Both primary and secondary elements are sensory and
are induced peripherally; the primary directly, the secondary
indirectly. The percept then is sensory and is constituted by
primary sensory elements, or primary sensations, and by secondary
sensory elements, or secondary sensations.
The character of the secondary sensory elements stands out clear
and independent in the phenomena of synaesthesia, of secondary
sensations. In the phenomena of synaesthesia we have a sensation
of one sense organ followed, without an intermediary direct
stimulation, by a sensation coming from another sense organ. Thus,
when a sensation of light instead of giving rise to a subsequent
idea gives rise to a sensation of sound, for instance, we have the
phenomenon of secondary sensation. Here the secondary sensations
stand out free and distinct, but they are really always present in
our ordinary perceptive experiences as bound up secondary sensory
elements, as secondary sensations grouped round primary sensations.
When the phenomena of synaesthesia were first brought to the
notice of the scientific world, they were regarded as abnormal
and exceptional, and only present in special pathological cases.
Soon, however, their field became widened, and they were found not
only in the insane and degenerate, but in many persons otherwise
perfectly normal. We find now that we must further widen the field
of secondary sensory elements, and instead of regarding them as a
freak of nature existing under highly artificial conditions, we
must put them at the very foundation of the process of perception.
Secondary sensations are at the basis of perception. We have become
so accustomed to them that we simply disregard them. When, however,
the conditions change, when the secondary sensations stand out
by themselves, isolated from the primary nuclear elements with
which they are usually organically synthesized into a whole, into
a percept, when they become dissociated, it is only then that we
become conscious of them directly and declare them as abnormal.
Secondary sensations are always present in every act of perception;
in fact, they form the main content of our perceptual activity,
only we are not conscious of them, and it requires a special
analysis to reveal them. Secondary sensations _per se_ are not
something abnormal--just as hydrogen present in the water we drink
or the oxygen present in the air we breathe are not newly created
elements,--it only requires an analysis to discover them. If there
be any abnormality about secondary sensations, it is not in the
elements themselves, but rather in the fact of their dissociation
from the primary nuclear elements.
When the secondary sensory elements come to the foreground and
stand out clearly in consciousness, a full-fledged hallucination
arises. In the phenomena of synaesthesia we have hallucinations
in the simplest form, inasmuch as only isolated secondary
sensory elements dissociated from their active primary central
elements stand out in the foreground of consciousness. This
very simplification, however, of hallucinations reveals their
inner character. The most complex hallucinations are only
complex compounds, so to say, of secondary sensory elements.
Hallucinations are not anything mysterious, different from what
we find in the normal ordinary processes of perception; they
are of the same character and have the same elements in their
constitution as those of perception. Both hallucinations and
percepts have the same secondary as well as primary elements. The
difference between hallucinations and percepts is only one of
relationship, of rearrangement of elements, primary and secondary.
When _secondary sensory elements become under conditions of
dissociation dynamically active in the focus of consciousness we
have hallucinations_.
From this standpoint we can well understand why a hallucination,
like a percept, has all the attributes of external reality. A
hallucination is not any more mysterious and wonderful than a
percept is. We do not recognize the humdrum percept, when it
appears in the guise of a hallucination, and we regard it as some
strange visitant coming from a central, or from some supersensory
universe. Hallucinations, like percepts, are constituted of primary
and especially of secondary sensory elements, and like percepts,
hallucinations too are induced peripherally.
How is it with suggested[13] or hypnotic hallucinations? Do we
find in hypnotic or suggested hallucinations, as in the case of
hallucinations in general, the requisite primary and secondary
sensory elements directly and indirectly induced? Binet makes an
attempt to establish a peripheral stimulus in the case of hypnotic
hallucinations, claiming that there is a _point de repére_, a
kind of a peg, on which the hypnotic hallucination is hung. It
is questionable whether Binet himself continued to maintain this
position. However the case may be, this position is hardly tenable
when confronted with facts. Hypnotic hallucinations may develop
without any peg and prop.
Furthermore, granted even that now and then such a peg could be
discovered, and that the alleged hypnotic hallucination develops
more easily when such a peg is furnished, still the fact remains
that even in such cases the peg is altogether insignificant, that
it is altogether out of proportion and relation to the suggested
hallucination, and that on the same peg all kinds of hallucinations
can be hung, and that finally it can be fully dispensed with. All
this would go to show that the peg, as such, is of no consequence,
and is really more of the nature of an emphatic suggestion for the
development of the alleged hypnotic or post-hypnotic hallucinations.
The arbitrariness of the hypnotic hallucinations, showing that the
whole thing is simply a matter of representations, or of what the
patient happens to think at that particular moment, is well brought
out in the following experiments: Mr. F. is put into a hypnotic
state, and a post-hypnotic suggestion is given to him that he shall
see a watch. The eyeball is then displaced, the watch is also
displaced; now when the eyeball returns to its normal condition
we should expect that the hallucinatory watch would return to its
former place; but no, the watch is not perceived in its previous
place,--it appears in a displaced position. The hallucinatory watch
could thus be displaced any distance from its original position.
The patient evidently did not see anything, but simply supplied
from his stock of knowledge as to how a seen watch would appear
under such conditions, and he omitted to observe the fact that with
the normal position of the eye the watch should once more return
to its former position. Such inconsistencies are often found in
hypnosis.
More intelligent and better informed patients would reason out
the matter differently, and would give different results. If the
subject knows of contrast colors and if a color is suggested to him
he will without fail see such contrast colors. If his eyes have
been fixed on some hallucinatory color, such as red, for instance,
he will even give you a detailed account of the green he sees, but
if he does not know anything of the effects of contrast colors no
amount of fixation on hallucinatory colors will bring out the least
contrast effects. The reason is the patient does not know anything
about it and cannot think of it.
We tried to mix by suggestion different hallucinatory colors, and
as long as he knew nothing of the real results his replies were
uniformly wrong; no sooner did he find out what the right mixture
_should_ be than he gave correct results. The hypnotic subject
really does not perceive anything; he tells what he believes
the master wants him to see under the given conditions. The
subconscious fear instinct makes the hypnotized subject obey and
please the hypnotizer, as the dog obeys his master.