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- Lucifer, vol. 5, no. 26, October 1889, pp. 93-102
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Title for references: Besant A. - Hypnotism
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For many years the scientific world in Germany and France has been stirred to its depths by the experiments in hypnotism made by some of the leading physicians in each country. Both from the philosophical and the practical sides it has been realised that the strange power which formed the subject of investigation was one of supreme importance in its bearing on the constitution and conduct of man. Many of the records of alleged feats by Middle Ages witches and wizards – regarded by the nineteenth century as the mere drivel of superstitious ignorance – paled their ineffectual fires before the wonders of the new experimenters, while the visions of the saints received startling pendants from the Salpêtrière. In Germany, the State, with characteristic promptitude, appears to have armed itself against the practical dangers which threaten to assail society, with a law which forbids unqualified persons to practice hypnotism. On the other hand, the Materialists, recognising by a true intuition the fatal character of the new departure for the Materialist philosophy, assailed the experimenters with quite theological virulence, scoffing at their experiments and decrying their motives. The famous Dr. Ludwig Büchner – whose services alike to medicine and to biology have been great – has vehemently attacked those of his compatriots who have entered the new path. In the last edition of his “Kraft und Stoff” he speaks of “the legerdemain and claptrap of magnetisers, clairvoyants, thaumaturgists, spiritualists, hypnotists, and other jugglers.” [1] Yet even he alludes to the hypnotic as a “highly interesting condition”[2] and suggests that “it is probable that hypnotism accounts for much that occurs at exhibitions of animal magnetism.” He remarks, indeed, that “the whole effect is brought about by strictly natural causes,” a statement with which Theosophists, at least, will not quarrel.
Hypnotism – derived from ὕπνος sleep – obtained its name from its resemblance to somnambulism; in most respects the hypnotic resembles the mesmeric or magnetic trance, but differs from it in this, that suggestions made to a person under hypnotism are carried out when the hypnotic state has apparently passed away, and not during the trance, as with ordinary mesmerism. Everyone has seen the mesmerised person obey the mesmeriser, accept his fictions as facts, and perform at his bidding acts of the most startling absurdity. But when the patient recovers his senses, the spell is broken. Not so with hypnotism. The patient opens his eyes, walks about, goes away, performs the ordinary duties of life, but obeys with undeviating regularity the impulse communicated by the hypnotiser, imagining all the time that he is acting as 94a free agent while he is the bond-slave of another’s will. There can be little doubt, however, that all these phenomena are but phases of the same condition; Hypnotism is a new name, not a new thing, its differentia being but extensions of the old “mesmerism.”
From the time of Mesmer onwards attention has from time to time been directed to the curious phenomena obtained by mesmeric passes, fixity of gaze, etc., but MM. Binet and Féré, in their work on “Le Magnétisme Animal,”[3] give to Dr. James Braid, a Manchester surgeon, the credit of being “the initiator of the scientific study of animal magnetism” (p. 67).
“Magnetism and hypnotism,” say these authors, “are fundamentally synonymous terms, but the first connotes a certain number of complex and extraordinary phenomena, which have always compromised the cause of these fruitful studies. The term hypnotism is exclusively applied to a definite nervous state, observable under certain conditions, subject to general rules, produced by human and in no sense mysterious processes, and based on modifications of the functions of the patient’s nervous system. Thus it appears that hypnotism has arisen from animal magnetism, just as the physico-medical sciences arose from the occult sciences of the Middle Ages.”
Braid found that many persons could hypnotise themselves by gazing fixedly at an object placed a little above the head in such a position that the eyes, when fixed on it, squinted – or, to put the matter in more dignified fashion, in such a position as induced a convergent and superior strabismus. The fixation of the attention was also necessary, and Braid considers that the insensibility of idiots to hypnotism arises from their incapacity for fixed attention (pp. 69, 70). At the Salpêtrière, Dr. Charcot and his pupils, dealing with hysterical patients,[4] found that catalepsy could be produced by sudden sounds or vivid light, and that the patient could be made to pass from the cataleptic to the somnambulic or lucid hypnotic condition by friction on the scalp, pressure on the eyeballs, and other methods. Speaking generally, Dr. Richer states that stimulants
“which produce a sudden shock to the nervous system and cause a sleep whose abrupt commencement is accompanied by marked hysterical symptoms, such as twitching of the limbs, movements of swallowing, a little foam on the lips, pharyngeal murmur, etc., give rise to the nervous condition termed lethargy; while those which gently impress the nervous system and cause none of the hysterical symptoms to which I have alluded, produce a sleep which comes on progressively and without shock, the characteristics of which, differing from those of lethargy, belong to the special nervous state known under the name of somnambulic”
, or hypnotic. The ticking of a watch, the steady gaze of the doctor, magnetic passes, a verbal command, etc., will throw many subjects into a hypnotic trance.
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The condition of the hypnotised person may vary from insensibility to acute sensitiveness. The body may be rendered insensible to pain, so that critical operations can be performed without the use of a material anæsthetic, and a number of such cases are on record. On the other hand, hypnotisation often produces extreme hyperæsthesia. Binet and Féré say:
“In somnambulism [hypnotism] the senses are not merely awake, but quickened to an extraordinary degree. Subjects feel the cold produced by breathing from the mouth at the distance of several yards (Braid). Weber’s compasses, applied to the skin, produce a twofold sensation with a deviation of 3°, in regions where, during the waking state, it would be necessary to give the instrument a deviation of 18° (Berger). The activity of the sense of sight is sometimes so great that the range of sight may be doubled, as well as sharpness of vision. The sense of smell may be developed so that the subject is able to discover by its aid the fragments of a visiting-card which had been given to him to smell before it was torn up (Taguet). The hearing is so acute that a conversation carried on in the floor below may be overheard (Azam). These are interesting but isolated facts. We are still without any collective work on the subject, of which it would be easy to make a regular study, with the methods of investigation we have at our disposal. More careful observations of the state of the memory have been made, but this state has only been studied as it is found during somnambulism, when it generally displays the same hyper-excitability as the other organs of the senses”
Memory may, indeed, be rendered extraordinarily vivid under hypnotism. A poem read to a hypnotised person was repeated by her correctly; awake, she had forgotten it, but on being again hypnotised she repeated it. A patient recalled the exact menu of her dinner a week ago, though awake she could only remember those of a day or two. Another gave correctly and without hesitation the name of a doctor whom she had seen in childhood, although in her waking condition she, after some doubt, only recalled the fact that he had been a physician in a children’s hospital.
Many of the purely physical results obtained are interesting in themselves, but, to the Theosophist, less suggestive than those which pass into the psychical realm. Contractures can be caused, and transferred from one side to the other, by a magnet. A limb can be rendered rigid, or can be paralyzed, and so on. An extremely curious experiment is the tracing some words on the arms of a hypnotised subject with a blunt probe; the doctor then
“issued the following order: ‘This afternoon at four o’clock, you will go to sleep, and blood will then issue from your arms, on the lines which I have now traced.’ The subject fell asleep at the hour named, the letters then appeared on his left arm, marked in relief, and of a bright red colour which contrasted with the general paleness of the skin, and there were even minute drops of blood in several places. There was absolutely
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nothing to be seen on the right and paralysed side [the patient was affected with hemiplegia and hemi-anæsthesia]. Mabille subsequently heard the same patient, in a spontaneous attack of hysteria, command his arm to bleed, and soon afterwards the cutaneous hæmorrhage just described was displayed. These strange phenomena recall, and also explain, the bleeding stigmata which have been repeatedly observed in the subjects of religious ecstasy, who have pictured to themselves the passion of Christ. Charcot and his pupils at the Salpêtrière have often produced the effects of burns upon the skin of hypnotized subjects by means of suggestion. The idea of the burn does not take effect immediately, but after the lapse of some hours”
The bearing of these experiments on the supposed miraculous impression of the sacred stigmata is obvious, and offers one more of the many illustrations which shew that the best way to eradicate superstition is not to deny the phenomena on which it rests, many of which are real, but to explain them, and to prove that they can be produced by natural means.
Muscular contractions of the limbs produce corresponding changes in the face, normally expressive of the feelings suggested by the artificially produced attitude. Richer states:
“A tragic attitude impresses sternness on the face, and the brows contract. On the other hand, if the two open hands are carried to the mouth, as in the act of blowing a kiss, a smile immediately appears on the lips. In this case the reaction of gesture on physiognomy is very remarkable and is produced with great exactitude. . . . One can thus infinitely vary the attitudes. Ecstasy, prayer, humility, sadness, defiance, anger, fear, can be represented. It is indeed startling to see how invariably a simple change in the position of the hands reacts on the features. If the open hand is stretched outwards, the facial expression is calm and benevolent, and changes to a smile if the arm is raised and the tips of the fingers brought to the mouth. But without altering the attitude of the arms, it suffices to close the subject’s hands to see benevolence give place to severity, which soon becomes anger if the clenching of the fist is increased. This phenomenon may be unilateral. If the fist is clenched on one side and carried forward as in menace, the corresponding brow only is contracted. So also if only one open hand is brought to the mouth, the smile will only appear on the same side of the face. The two different attitudes may be simultaneously impressed on the two sides of the body, and each half of the face will reflect the corresponding expression”
It is possible that these muscular contractions may give rise to no corresponding emotions, although it seems prima facie probable that where the emotions constantly find expression in gestures, the gestures should, in their turn, arouse the emotions. Yet it may be that the link is merely between muscle and muscle, and that the continual co-ordination results in a purely automatic muscular action. We will therefore 97pass to phenomena in which the psyche is involved, and see what strange tricks can be played with it by the experimenter in hypnotism.
The lower senses of touch and taste and smell can be played with at will. A hypnotised patient, told that a bird had placed itself on her knee, stroked and caressed it (Richer, p. 645). “If a hallucinatory object, such as a lamp-shade, is put into the subject’s hands, and he is told to press it, he experiences a sensation of resistance, and is unable to bring his hands together” (Binet and Féré, p. 213). Colocynth placed on the tongue is not tasted, odours are not smelt (Richer, p. 660). In the automatic stage contact with familiar objects brings up the action constantly associated with them; given soap and water a patient will steadfastly wash her hands; given a match, she will strike it, but is unconscious of pain if the flame touches her; given a probing pin, she will plunge it into her hand; given a book, she will begin to read it fluently, and when the book is turned upside down, continue to read it aloud in the reversed position (Richer, pp. 693-696). This automatic stage can be made to pass into the somnambulic, where the will is dominated, but where intelligence survives.
But it is when we come to the more intellectual sense of vision that we meet the most surprising phenomena. On a piece of white paper a white card was placed, and an imaginary line was drawn round this card, with a blunt pointer, without touching the paper, the patient being told that the line was being drawn. When she awaked she was given the blank paper, and she saw on it the rectangle which had not been traced; asked to fold the paper along the lines she saw, she folded it exactly, so that it was just covered by the card when the latter was placed on it (Richer, p. 723). A patient was told that she saw a black circle; on waking she looked about, rubbed her eyes, and on being questioned complained that she saw a black circle in whichever direction she turned her eyes, and that it was extremely annoying (Ibid). A portrait was said to exist on a piece of blank cardboard; when the card was reversed, the imaginary portrait was reversed with it, and it disappeared when the other side of the cardboard was shewn, although the changes of position were made out of sight of the patient (Binet and Féré, p. 224). Such a portrait is visible to the patient through an opera-glass, and is magnified or diminished like a real object. Again, a patient Bar – was told that Dr. Charcot was present, and although he was not there, she addressed him; told to listen to the music, she heard an imaginary concert; informed that a number of children were present, she made the gestures of taking them in her arms and kissing them, described the colour of their hair and eyes; while another patient complained that their play irritated her, and that the noise they made was intolerable.
More complex visions can be made to pass before the eyes; suggest to a subject that paradise lies open before her, and she will see angels and saints, the virgin, and so on, the details of the vision varying with the richness of imagination of the patient. Sometimes it is the devil whose 98presence is suggested, and the most vivid fear and anger are expressed. Surely we have here the key to the visions of ecstatic nuns: the fixed gaze at the crucifix with upward-turned eyes is the very position for self-hypnotisation: the matter of the visions is suggested by the pressure of the dominant idea; while the certitude of the patient as to the reality of the visions would be complete.
Yet more curious are the phenomena connected with rendering an object or a person invisible by suggestion. Ten similar cards were shewn to a hypnotised subject, and she was told that she could not see one of them. When she was awaked, that card remained invisible; and similar results were obtained with keys, thermometers, and other objects (Richer, p. 725). To another was said, “You will not see M. X.,” and on waking, M. X. was invisible to her.
“We once suggested to a hypnotic subject that she would cease to see F–– but would continue to hear his voice. On awaking, the subject heard the voice of an invisible person, and looked about the room to discover the cause of this singular phenomenon, asking us about it with some uneasiness. We said jestingly, ‘F–– is dead, and it is his ghost which speaks to you.’ The subject is intelligent and in her normal state she would probably have taken the jest at its true value; but she was dominated by the suggestion of anæsthesia, and readily accepted the explanation. When F–– spoke again he said that he had died the night before, and that his body had been taken to the post-mortem room. The subject clasped her hands with a sad expression, and asked when he was to be buried, as she wished to be present at the religious service. ‘Poor young man!’ she said; ‘he was not a bad man.’ F––, wishing to see how far her credulity would go, uttered groans and complained of the autopsy of his body which was going on. The scene then became tragic, for the emotion of the subject caused her to fall backwards in an incipient attack of hysteria, which we promptly arrested”
The most suggestive experiment was one in which F–– was rendered invisible; the subject was then awakened, and on enquiring for F–– was told that he had left the room. She was then told that she might retire, and went towards the door, against which F–– had placed himself. Unable to see him she came in contact with him, and, on a second experiment to reach the door, became alarmed at the incomprehensible resistance and refused to again go near it. A hat was placed on his head, and “words cannot express the subject’s surprise, since it appeared to her that the hat was suspended in the air. Her surprise was at its height when F–– took off the hat and saluted her with it several times; she saw the hat without any support, describing curves in the air.” F–– then put on a cloak, and she saw the cloak moving “and assuming the form of a person. ‘It is,’ she said, ‘like a hollow puppet.’” A number of other experiments were tried with her, leaving no doubt that she was completely unconscious of F––’s presence (Binet and Féré, pp. 306-308).
In another class of experiments, the subject’s personality was changed.
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“On one occasion we told X – that she had become M. F –, and after some resistance she accepted the suggestion. On awaking she was unable to see M. F – who was present; she imitated his manner, and made the gesture of putting both her hands in the pockets of an imaginary hospital apron. From time to time she put her hand to her lips, as if to smooth her moustache, and looked about her with assurance. But she said nothing. We asked her whether she was acquainted with X – . She hesitated for a moment, and then replied, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders: ‘Oh yes, a hysterical patient. What do you think of her? She is not too wise’”
Another patient personated, in succession, a peasant woman, an actress, a general, an archbishop, a nun, speaking appropriately in each character (Richer, pp. 729, 730).
There is another class of phenomena which opens up serious dangers of a practical nature. A suggestion made to a hypnotised subject may be carried out when the subject is awake, either immediately, or days or months afterwards, and this obedience is blind to consequences and to every consideration of right and wrong. We have here a personality not a machine, but a personality which is the puppet of another’s will. Dr. Richer remarks:
“In the latter state [cataleptic] the subject is an automaton, without conscience or spontaneity, only moving under the influence of sensorial stimuli, coming from without. The stimulus alone matters, and not the person who supplies it. The personality of the operator is indifferent. All the responses are of the nature of reflex actions, without any participation of the intellectual activity other than such as may be necessary to their production. The somnambulist, on the other hand, is no longer a simple machine. He is the slave of the will of another, the veritable subject of the operator. His automatism consists in servitude and obedience. But a certain consciousness exists other than that of the waking state. A new personality is created, which may give rise to those strange phenomena described under the name of duplication of consciousness or of personality. There is really a somnambulic Ego, while there is no cataleptic Ego”
It is in this somnambulic stage that occur the phenomena now to be considered. A hypnotised subject is desired to steal some object; sometimes she resists, but insistance generally overcomes this resistance; only in a few cases has it been found impossible to conquer it. On awaking, the patient watches her opportunity and performs the theft. And here comes in the curious fact that the subject shews cunning and intelligence in carrying out the suggestion. One patient, told to steal the handkerchief of a certain person, presently feigned dizziness, and staggering against the person stole the handkerchief. In another case, the subject abruptly asked the owner of the handkerchief what he had in his hand, and stole it as he, in surprise, looked at his hand. Another, told to poison X – with a glass of water, offered it with the remark that it was a hot day.
“If Z – is armed with a paper-knife and ordered to
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kill X – she says, ‘Why should I do it? He has done me no harm.’ But if the experimenter insists, this slight scruple may be overcome, and she soon says: ‘If it must be done, I will do it.’ On awaking, she regards X – with a perfidious smile, looks about her and suddenly strikes him with the supposed dagger.”
The patient will find reasons to excuse her act; one who had struck a man with a pasteboard knife under suggestion was asked why she had killed him. “She looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then replied with an expression of ferocity, ‘He was an old villain, and wished to insult me’” (Binet and Féré, pp. 286-291).
Without further accumulating these phenomena, let us consider whether any, and, if any, what explanation of them is possible.
And first, from the standpoint of materialism. It is possible to explain on a materialist hypothesis the muscular contractions and co-ordinations, and the automatic actions succeeding contact with familiar articles. But even in the automatic stage, explanation is lacking of the fluent reading of a reversed book by an uneducated person. It is, however, in the phenomena of memory, of vision of the non-existent, of inhibited vision, that materialist explanation seems to me to be impossible.
Memory is the faculty which receives the impress of our experiences, and preserves them; many of these impressions fade away, and we say we have forgotten. Yet it is clear that these impressions may be revived. They are therefore not destroyed, but they are so faint that they sink below the threshold of consciousness, and so no longer form part of its normal content. If thought be but a “mode of motion,” memory must be similarly regarded: but it is not possible to conceive that each impression of our past life, recorded in consciousness, is still vibrating in some group of brain cells, only so feebly that it does not rise over the threshold. For these same cells are continually being thrown into new groupings for new vibrations, and these cannot all co-exist, and the fainter ones be each capable of receiving fresh impulse which may so intensify their motion as to raise them again into consciousness. Now if these vibrations=memory, if we have only matter in motion, we know the laws of dynamics sufficiently well to say that if a body be set vibrating, and new forces be successively brought to act upon it and set up new vibrations, there will not be in that body the co-existence of each separate set of vibrations successively impressed upon it, but it will vibrate in a way differing from each single set, and compounded of all. So that memory, as a mode of motion, would not give us the record of the past, but would present us with a new story, the resultant of all those past vibrations, and this would be ever changing, as new impressions, causing new vibrations, come in to modify the resultant of the old. On the other hand let us suppose a conscious Ego, retaining knowledge of all its past experiences, but only able to impress such of them on the organ of consciousness as the laws of the material organism permit, the threshold of consciousness dividing what it can thus impress from what it cannot;
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that threshold would vary with the material conditions of the moment, rising and falling with the state of the organism, and what we call memory would be the content of the material consciousness, bounded by that threshold at any given instant. Now under hypnotisation an extraordinary revival of the past occurs, and impressions long since faded come out clear-cut on the tablet of memory. Is it not a possible hypothesis that the process of hypnotisation causes a shifting of the threshold of consciousness, and so brings into sight what is always there but what is normally concealed? The existence of the Ego is posited by Theosophy, and it seems to me that the phenomena of hypnotism require it.
How can the materialist explain the vision of non-existent things? We know what are the mechanical conditions of vision in the animal body: the rays reflected from the object, the blows of the ethereal waves on the retina, the vibrating nerve-cells, the optic centre – the perception belongs to the world of mind. But in seeing the invisible we have the perception, with none of the steps that normally lead up to it; the suggestion of the hypnotiser awakens the perception, and the mind creates its own object of sense to respond to it. Again it must be the perceptive power, not the sense-channel, which is paralysed when objects and persons become invisible. Take the case of F – and his cloak; certain rays from the body of F – struck the retina of the patient, but no perception followed; for the cloak to be seen normally, a ray from it must traverse exactly the same line as those from his body, impinge on the same retinal cells, throw into vibration the same nervous cord, and so be perceived. If the inhibition were of the nerve-elements, the rays from the cloak would be stopped like those from the body round which it was wrapped. The inhibition was not of nerve but of mind; the operator had entered the subject-world of the patient and had laid his hand on the faculty, not on its instrument. If perception be only the result of the vibrating cells, how comes it that the cells may vibrate and the result be absent? That in two cases the vibration may be equally set up, the same cells be in motion, and yet that perception follows the one vibration and not the other? A still further complication arises when the cloak is seen though the body is interposed between it and the organ of vision. If perception result from cell-vibration, how can perception arise when no cell-vibration is set up?
But it seems that it is not only the perceptive faculty that the operator may bring under his control; he may lay hold of the will and compel the patient to acts, and so become the master of his personality. A terrible power, yet one that can no longer be regarded as doubtful, and which recalls the old-world stories of “possession,” throwing on them a new and lurid light. How many of the tales of magical powers, which changed people’s characters and drove them in obedience to the will of the “magician,” are now explicable as hypnotic effects. How often may the “evil eye” have caused injury, by deliberate suggestion, as Charcot thus caused a burn. I have often thought that there must have 102been some basis of fact underlying the widespread belief in witchcraft; and the possession of hypnotising powers, aided by the exaggeration of fear and credulity, would amply suffice to account for it. The general belief in evil spirits would lead to the ascription of the results to their agency, and the very ignorance of the nature of their own power by the “magicians” would foster the notion of supernatural interference.
The study of hypnotism drives us, if we would remain within the realm of natural law, of causation, into the belief that the mind is not the mere outcome of physical motion, however closely the two may be here normally related. That while the brain is “the organ of mind” on this plane, it is literally the organ, and not the mind; and that it is possible, so to speak, to get behind the organ and seize on the mind itself, dethroning the individuality and assuming a usurped control. On this hypothesis the results of the experiments become intelligible, and we can dimly trace the modus operandi.
Theosophists may well utilise this new departure in science to gain a hearing for their own luminous philosophy, for the Western World cannot turn a deaf ear to the testimony of its own experts, and the experiments of those very experts force on the mind the impossibility of thought and will being the mere result of molecular vibration. Once carry a thoughtful Materialist so far, and he will be bound to go farther, and thus the very triumph of Materialistic science shall lead to the downfall of its own philosophy.
Footnotes
- ↑ Force and Matter. English translation, p. 338.
- ↑ Ibid p. 346.
- ↑ Issued in an English Translation, under the title of “Animal Magnetism.” The references in the text are to the English edition, as it is more accessible to English readers.
- ↑ “Etudes cliniques sur la grande Hystérie.” Par le docteur Paul Richer.