Report of the Committee on Hypnotism

PROCEEDINGS OF THE leat Society lor Psych American Sociely for Psyehical Research —————— Ee Vou. L. JULY, 1886. No, 2. CONTENTS. PAGE GHMNEN at crt a Li See onl el Meee Yer fe. ys) ae List oF OFFICERS ee e SAT AL he Aah ale. | een List oF MEMBERS : ° * re SN Suna is oy - 88 List oF ASSOCIATE MEMBERS . - e ° ° . | . - 59 MEETINGS OF THE SOCIETY e ; ° . - ° - a GL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT . . * . é ‘ ‘ ° a 0s OS Numpen-Hanrr. (Presented as an Appendix to the First Report of Thought-Transference Committee, p. 10) . ‘ FS P ‘ - 86 Reponr or Committee on Hypnotism. + © + + © + 05 ‘Rerorr or Comarrroe on Mepruwistic PuenomMENA. « « «+ 102 Report or Commitrex on Toovant-TRANSFERENCE . . «~. «+ 106 Expenimenrs ON THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE . - + «© « «+ Id On tHe Existence or A MAGNETIC SENSE . «© + ele O16 A Research on THE Rwaurty of RetcuenBacn’s FLAMES vn Sar dane, Pretmmnary Report oF THE COMMITTEE ON APPARITIONS AND Haunted Houses. ° sree = ons ests Mw cee CrrcuLar No. 6. IssueD By COMMITTEE ON APPARITIONS AND ‘Haunted Houses . eee pet > eile Siete Fie) See [Responsibility for both the facts and the reasoning, in addresses, reports, or papers published in the Proceedings of this Society, rests exclusively with their authors, and in nowisé with the Society or its Council.) FOR SALE BY THE AMERICAN BRANCH OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, 5 BOYLSTON PLACER, BOSTON, MASS,

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HYPNOTISM. Maxy hours have been spent in work upon this subject by the members of the committee, for the most part singly. Mr. Cory has no report to make at present. Messrs. James and Carnochan’s experiments were confined almost entirely to students of Harvard College. Out of between fifty or sixty of these, who were operated on, a dozen, more or less, were influenced at the first sitting, being a proportion of about one in five. ‘Two men were so much better subjects than the rest, that they ended by receiving almost exclusive attention. The comparatively small amount of time at our disposition for these investigations, and the variations of some of the subjects from one day to another, necessitating many repetitions of the same experi- ment, make it impossible to report any thing definitive this year. A few of our notes may, however, be of interest, although nothing essentially novel is contained therein. The need of ** guiding sensations’ for voluntary motion was proved by the artificial reproduction of a rare pathological state. In two persons (one of them being the Mrs. P. who is mentioned in the report on mediumistic phenomena) an arm was made absolutely anesthetic, whilst retaining its muscular contractility. Under these

96 Report of Committee on Hypnotism. ‘ circumstances, the subject could execute 2 commanded movement, — such as raising the arm, clenching the fist, writing the name, ete., — but only when the eyes were used to superintend. With closed eyes the movements were feeble and ineffectual, and the patient quite uncertain whether the purpose had been accomplished or not. Pas- sive movements communicated to the arm and hand were then un- recognized or misunderstood. Much time was spent in a quest (as yet only advanced enough to show how far from simple the conditions are) of what the psychical modification is in the hypnotic trance. Is the anesthesia, for ex- ample, produced by suggestion, due to an abolition of sensation or an abolition of ‘+ apperception’’? Does the subject not feel? or is he become incapable of noticing what he feels? or is his state some- thing more peculiar still? That the sensorial process? occurs, seems proved by after-images. Two of our subjects who were made completely blind to a red patch laid on a piece of paper immediately saw a bluish-green patch when the red patch was removed. * That the process of apperception, assimilation, or recognition of what the impression is, does also occur, seems proved by observa- tions of a somewhat similar sort on the same two subjects. Make a stroke on paper or blackboard, and tell the subject it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next, he not looking, surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out one by one all the new strokes, and omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous the new strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly, if the original single stroke to which he is blind be doubled by a prism of sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the direction in which the image seen through the prism lies. Obviously, then, he is not blind to the kind of stroke in the least. He is blind only to one individual stroke of that kind in a particular position on the board or paper, — that is, to a particular complex * By sensorial | do not necessarily mean retinal exelusively, M, Binet, in ble excellent ithe Prychologie du Ratsonnement, considers that afterimages tnvolve cerebral as well ae retinal processes. If, namely, the right eye look fixedly at a colored stripe whilet the left eye Is closed, the left eye will get an after-image of the «tripe when we open ft and look at the background, closing in turn the righteye. A student, Mr. R. W. Black, to whom I was showing the experi. ment, suggested that the after-image might «till belong to the ehut right eye, combining ite darkoned field of view with the open left eyo’s brighter one, This objection to Mr, Binet's interpretation of the process a4 non-retinal fe, at least, plausible. I have ae yet been unable to devise an experimental combination for deciding conclusively between the two views. — W. J. * That thie was not due to enggestion or expectation, seems proved by its not invariably taking place with the same subject. Report of Committee on Hypnotism. 97 ; , paradoxical as it may seem to say so, he must distin- or Sg tei acenracy from others like it, in order to remain blind to it when the others are brought near. He Meee it, as a preliminary to not seeing it at all!! How to conceive of W - state of mind, is not easy. It would be much simpler to understan the process, if adding new strokes made the first one visible. There would then be two different objects apperceived as totals, — paper with one stroke, paper with two strokes ; and, blind to the former, he would see all that was in the latter, here he would have apper- ved i ifferent total in the first nce. ropcteseat sort occurs sometimes (not always) when the new strokes, instead of being mere repetitions of the original one, are lines which combine with it into a total object, say, a human Ae The subject of the trance then may regain his sight of the : e to which he had previously been blind, by seeing it as part of the rae When by « prism before one eye 4 previously invisible ine “ been made visible to that eye, and the other eye is closed or age its closure makes no difference ; the line still remains visible. But then the prism is removed, the line will disappear even to the pita which a moment ago saw it, and both eyes will revert to their ori- ind state.* oe uae then, to deal in these cases neither with a sensorial ati thesia, nor with a mere failure to notice, but with something Se more complex ; namely, an active counting out and positive exel of certain objects. It is as when one ‘‘euts’’ an acquaintance, “ignores ”’ a claim, or ** refuses to be influenced ’’ by a consideration of whose existence one remains aware. ‘This, at least, <> provisional hypothesis which may reveal new facts by suggesting new i test its truth. sorbate of discrimination shown in recognizing the nyeue line is often very great. The extraordinary mixture, in the hypnotic trance, of preternatural refinement of discrimination with the some insensibility, is one of the most remarkable features of the condit ~ A blank sheet of paper with machine-cut edges, without water-mu or any thing which could lead to the recognition of one side or edge from the other, is shown to the subject, with the statement we it is a photograph of a well-known face. As soon as he ae ae the photograph upon its surface, he is told that it will float off from my now, the first to make thie remark. 1M. Ch. Féré was, so far as I know, the first to make 2 The phenomenon bt described ax it moet agape ir ana aggro a there some curluue variations In v sibility © : a eas out the fine ho sees when be looks at it with both eyes open and the prism before one; but these we rorerve for further study. .

08 Report of Committee on Hypnotism. : the paper, make a voyage round the walls of the room, and then return to the paper again. During this imaginary performance, he sees it successively on the various regions of the wall; but if the paper is meanwhile secretly turned over, and handed to him upside down, or with its under surface on top, he instantly recognizes the change, and, seeing the portrait in the altered position of the paper, turns the latter about ‘to get the portrait right.’’ Here, then, is an hallucination, which, in traversing the room, can conquer the most discrepant backgrounds, but which peculiarities in the look of a sheet of paper, perceivable by no normal eye, can turn upside down! Sheets of paper absolutely indistinguishable by the bystanders, or by the subject himself when awake, are identified in trance, no matter how much they may be shuffled and mixed together, by the imaginary pictures they are supposed to bear. The hallucination is presumably determined by minute peculiarities in the paper, and yet it negates completely the paper's most flagrant characteristic, which is the blank- ness of its surface.’ We have no comment to make on the psychic condition here, except to suggest its complexity, and its analogy to the psychic blindness previously described. Both states imply a preliminary process of discrimination and identification of the object really present, followed by its apperception or conception in falsified form. The conception is what the subject’ believes, and on it he acts, To what degree it carries actual sensorial brain-processes with it, is a matter for future research. That it can carry them is evident; for, as we have verified, the hallucination of a colored patch on a real white ground will sometimes be followed by a negative after-image when the gaze is transferred to another place. But, on the other hand, when subjects are asked to trace their hallucinations with a pencil, or even to describe them minutely, they often show a vague- ness and uncertainty which their previous expressions and actions would hardly have led one to expect. . Another very simple observation shows the delicacy of visual dis- crimination in the trance state. If a sheet of ruled foolscap paper, or a paper with a fine monotonous ornamental pattern printed on it, be shown to the subject, and one of the ruled lines or elements of the pattern be pointed to for an instant, and the paper immediately removed, he will then almost always, when after a short interval the paper is presented to him again, pick out the indicated line or element * Thin reminds ues little of the tate of mind in thore perceptions called by Aubert “ secon- dire Ortheiistduschangen.” The moon, ¢.g., appears to moat people email through a telescope. ‘The instrament enlarges all ite details so that it seems wear,—*o pear that we apparently think ite retinal image ought to be larger If It were the same moon, £rpo, we deem it a emallor moon. In other words, our conclusion ture round and destroys ite own prenilees. . Report of Committee on Hypnotism. 99 with infallible correctness. The operator, meanwhile, has either to keep his eye fixed upon it, or to make sure of its position by count- ing, i t to lose its place. This ier on the teankof a distinction between the normal and the trance mode of perception, which partly explains the latter. The evolution of man’s mind is altogether in the analytic direction. He deals with objects by picking out their ‘+ essential '’ character, tra- cing its consequences, and ignoring other features, He remembers a house in a street by the one little inconspicuous detail of its number, very likely observing nothing else about it; and similarly he retains the line on the foolscap paper by not dispersing his attention over the sheet, but counting the number of lines between the one selected and the nearest edge. The number thus obtained isa permanent ini of the mind’s possession, and is obviously for practical purposes ie exact than any reminiscence of the * general look ’’ of the line in its uld be. 1 oh pomalee eA however, surrenders himself to the general look. He disperses his attention impartially over the sheet, The place of the particular line touched is part of a ** general effect which he gets in its entirety, and which would be distorted if an- other line were touched instead. This general effect is lost upon the normal looker-on, bent as he is on concentration, analysis, and emphasis. What wonder, then, that, under these experimental _— tions, the trance-subject excels him in touching the right line again If he has time given him to connt the line, he will excel the trance- subject; but, if the time be too short to count, he will best succeed by following the trance method, abstaining from analysis, and = guided by the ** general loo * of the line’s place on the sheet. ne js surprised at one’s success in this the moment one gives up one's bitually analytic state of mind. a it fod “aie to say that we have in this dispersion of the atten- tion and subjection to the “* general effect "’ something like a relapse into the state of mind of brutes? The trance-subject never gives any other reason for his optical discriminations, save that it ‘* looks so.” Soa man, on a road once traversed inattentively before, takes a certain turn for no reason except that he feels as if it must he right. He is guided by a sum of impressions, not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one of which is essential, not one of which is conceived, but all of which together drive him to a con- clusion to which nothing but that sum-total leads. Are not some of the wonderful discriminations of animals explicable in the same way? The cow finds her own stanchions in the long stable, the

100 Report of Committee on Hypnotism. horse stops at the house he has once stopped at in the monotonous street, because no other stanchions, no other house, yield impartially all the impressions of the previous experience. The man, however, by seeking to make some one impression characteristic and essential, prevents the rest from having their effect. So that, if the (for him) essential feature be forgotten or changed, he is too apt to be thrown out altogether. The brute or the trance-subject may then seem to outstrip him in sagacity. It ought to be said, that, in trying to verify in other ways this hypothesis of the trance-subject’s non-analytic state of mind, we have met with exceptions which invite to further study. Certain it is that, when expressly stimulated thereto, trance-subjects will reason and analyze acutely. We therefore publish the above notes as sug- gestions to inquiry rather than as records of results. The habitual psychic stagnancy of the trance-subject is shown by another simple test. If a lot of dots or strokes on a piece of paper be exhibited for a moment to a person in normal condition, with the request that he say how many are there, he will find that they break into groups in his mind's eye, and that whilst he is analyzing and counting one group the others dissolve. In short, the impression made by the dots changes rapidly into something else. In the trance- subject, on the contrary, it seems to stick; and, if the dots did not much exceed twenty, our patients counted them off in their mind’s eye with ease.! : This is all we can say at present of the hypnotic subject’s mental state, —a topic whose investigation will tax the wit, but certainly reward the industry, of the most ingenious psychologist who may devote himself to its elucidation. ' There was no sign of any sort of clairvoyance in either of the two advanced subjects above mentioned, nor, as tested by card guessing in Mrs. P., the medium, when in the hypnotic condition. <A very good student-subject, discovered by one of his comrades, was reported, on what seemed not bad evidence, to have named in his trance objects hidden from his sight; but, in the two sittings we had with him, nothing of the sort occurred. Indeed, on the second of these oceasions, he was with difficulty kept entranced at all. The only quite mysterious case of perception we found was with ! The etagnancy of mind is aleo shown by the tranquil way in which the m ngruots suggestions are adopted, A large «ilk handkerchief was site tortibate by bea ae one of our enbjects, and then thrown over the body of a gentleman #0 as to hide all between his head and hie knees. Naturally, os it wan opaque as well as invisible, it made Invisible whatever it covered, “Te ©, atill in the room?" the subject was then asked. ‘ Hie Acad is here,” waa the reply, made In a perfectly Indifferent tone: ‘+1 don’t know where his body t+." : Report of Committee on Hypnotism. 101 another subject, who in either six or seven different trials picked out from « heap of silver and copper change, consisting of from fourteen to twenty-two pieces, the one coin which had been contributed by his operator to the heap. He never made a false guess on the evenings when these successes occurred ; and the only reason he could give for his choice was either that the coin felt as if it were the right one, or that it ‘felt heavy.’’ The coins were of course arranged out of his sight; and in some of the later trials, though not in the whole series, express care was taken to see whether he might not have been guided to his choice by the right coin being warmer than the rest, but with a negative result, On one evening he altogether failed in this experiment. With handkerchiefs he was less uniformly suc- cessful. We shall continue these experiments, so as to ascertain, if possible, the nature of the clew which determined the subject's choice. A direct difference in the effects of upward and downward passes, independent of suggestion or expectation, has always been part of the orthodox “‘ magnetic”? creed. But the recent flood of ** scientifie"’ literature on the subject is almost mute on this point. Dr. W. K. Mitchell of Philadelphia, a contemporary of Braid, whose caution, clearness, and cool head ought ere now to have secured for him a prominent name in the history of hypnotism,’ admitted that the different effects of upward and downward passes were the only sign of a direct physical influence of operator upon subject which he was able to find. Our own experiments verified the difference in question in cases too numerous to be plausibly ascribed to accident. The young men upon whom the passes were made knew nothing of what we were seeking to test, and as often as nob answered wrongly when asked later if they knew the direction in which the passes had been made. Yet in five or six individuals, upward passes, the first time they were tried, awoke the patient, or restored his hand, arm, etc., to its natural state, whilst downward passes had a pre- cisely opposite effect. It is a curious thing to see the face of a man whose eyes and mouth have been shut tight by suggestion, and over whose face the operator makes passes in an upward direction on the right side, whilst he makes downward passes on the left. On being told to open their eyes and whistle, two or three such patients have opened upon us only the right eye, and whistled out of the right corner of their mouth. Others showed no difference whatever in their reaction to the different passes. The matter must be prose- cuted further. Obviously, so long as it is under dispute, experi- 2 Bee his Five Essays, edited by Dr. 8, Wetr Mitchell, Philadelphia.

102 = Report ef Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena. ments, to prove any thing, must be made with ignorant subjects, and must succeed the first time they are tried. Besides the observations we have recorded, we verified most of the now classical and familiar phenomena of trance. A few curious observations on the rapport between operator and subject, and on the influence of magnets, had better be treated as coincidences for the present, because not found in the subject at different times. Our experience has impressed upon us the variability of the same subject’s trance from one day to another. It may occur that a phenomenon met with one day, but not repeated, and therefore ac- counted a;mere coincidence, is really due to a particular phase of the trance, realized on that occasion, but never again when sought for. To decide definitely between these alternatives, in the case of any special phenomenon, would obviously require many sittings and consume much time. : WILLIAM JAMES. GOUVERNEUR M. CARNOCHAN.