The Psychology of the Dance
The great danger in the dance is, to my mind, a psychological one, which might be overcome by knowledge upon the subject. Let us examine this thought for a time, for here is the crux of the whole matter. When your attention is called to it, you cannot think of more perfect relations existing between two persons for hypnosis, or hypnotic suggestion to take place than that which exists in the dance. To get this clearly before us let us note the steps taken by the hypnotist. He has his subject relax his body, and put his mind at rest and then he prefers to have soft music played. Under these conditions he most easily gets control of the mind of his subject.
Let us now study the couple dancing. The body must be in a more or less relaxed state, for graceful motion would not be possible with a rigid body. The mind is at rest, because the music lulls it into quiet and makes the dominant element in the life the feelings, for we do not think music, we feel it. Just here you must recall, that the sex nerve center is the brain of the physical life and continually sends forth the most exquisite impulses of feeling, which manifest themselves in all the glory and beauty of bodily charm and these must of necessity mingle in their outgoings with the vibrations of the music and the feelings which it induces.
Now you have these two persons, with bodies relaxed, minds at rest, just floating over the floor, and carried, as it were, on waves of music. Under just these conditions many an uninstructed and ignorant girl has passed under a hypnotic spell in which she has been led to do that which ruined her life and which she would have surrendered her life rather than have done, had she been in her normal state.
Let me give you an instance in point. Some years ago I was lecturing on the psychic question, and among other things I spoke of the psychology of the dance. The next morning I met one of the fine, clean young men of the little city, who was teller in one of the banks. He said to me, “Doctor I enjoyed your lecture very much last night, and I believe you have the right idea as to the psychology of the dance.” He said, “Sometime ago I was dancing with one of the finest young ladies in this city, one who is absolutely above reproach. As you said, ‘we were just floating along over the floor charmed by the music.’ I was looking down at her (he was a tall man), and thinking what a nice young woman she was, when all at once she laid her face against mine. She did not excuse herself then and she has not apologized since and I do not believe she knew that she did it.” This is the conclusion of a sane, thoughtful young man, as he pondered over an unusual experience with a pure-minded and irreproachable young woman.
May I here give the testimony of an educated, thoughtful young man of thirty? In a frank talk with me, he said: “There have been a few times in my life when I have found it necessary to stop dancing with certain ladies.”
There might not have been the slightest wrong thought in the minds of this young man or the lady he was dancing with, but the outflooding impulses from the sex nerve center in the life of the lady might just at that time have been so vital and have been carried at such rapid rates of vibration as to make themselves felt in the atmosphere about her. This, my friends, might happen without an evil thought upon the part of either, for this brain of the physical life may and does send out these impulses without the recognition of the intellect.
Had this young man observed these ladies he would have noted a charming and unusual color of the skin of the face and an unusual and bewitching sparkle in the eyes, both of which indicate marked activity of the sex brain, or nerve center.