CHAPTER V.
Self-Hypnotization.—How It may Be Done.—An Experience.—Accountable for Children’s Crusade.—Oriental Prophets Self-Hypnotized.
If self-hypnotism is possible (and it is true that a person can deliberately hypnotize himself when he wishes to till he has become accustomed to it and is expert in it, so to speak), it does away at a stroke with the claims of all professional hypnotists and magnetic healers that they have any peculiar power in themselves which they exert over their fellows. One of these professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls “The Wonderful Lock Method.” He says that though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls. All that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves. He shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain circumstances the hypnotizer is in danger of becoming hypnotized himself. In this he makes no claim that the subject is using any psychic power; but, of course, if the hypnotizer looks steadily into the eyes of his subject, and the subject looks into his eyes, the steady gaze on a bright object will produce hypnotism in one quite as readily as in the other.
Hypnotism is an established scientific fact; but the claim that the hypnotizer has any mysterious psychic power is the invariable mark of the charlatan. Probably no scientific phenomenon was ever so grossly prostituted to base ends as that of hypnotism. Later we shall see some of the outrageous forms this charlatanism assumes, and how it extends to the professional subjects as well as to the professional operators, till those subjects even impose upon scientific men who ought to be proof against such deception. Moreover, the possibility of self-hypnotization, carefully concealed and called by another name, opens another great field of humbug and charlatanism, of which the advertising columns of the newspapers are constantly filled—namely, that of the clairvoyant and medium. We may conceive how such a profession might become perfectly legitimate and highly useful; but at present it seems as if any person who went into it, however honest he might be at the start, soon began to deceive himself as well as others, until he lost his power entirely to distinguish between fact and imagination.
Before discussing the matter further, let us quote Dr. Cocke’s experiment in hypnotizing himself. It will be remembered that a professional hypnotizer or magnetizer had hypnotized him by telling him to fix his mind on the number twenty-six and holding up his hand. Says the doctor:
“In my room that evening it occurred to me to try the same experiment. I did so. I kept the number twenty-six in my mind. In a few minutes I felt the sensation of terror, but in a different way. I was intensely cold. My heart seemed to stand still. I had ringing in my ears. My hair seemed to rise upon my scalp. I persisted in the effort, and the previously mentioned noise in my ears grew louder and louder. The roar became deafening. It crackled like a mighty fire. I was fearfully conscious of myself. Having read vivid accounts of dreams, visions, etc., it occurred to me that I would experience them. I felt in a vague way that there were beings all about me but could not hear their voices. I felt as though every muscle in my body was fixed and rigid. The roar in my ears grew louder still, and I heard, above the roar, reports which sounded like artillery and musketry. Then above the din of the noise a musical chord. I seemed to be absorbed in this chord. I knew nothing else. The world existed for me only in the tones of the mighty chord. Then I had a sensation as though I were expanding. The sound in my ears died away, and yet I was not conscious of silence. Then all consciousness was lost. The next thing I experienced was a sensation of intense cold, and of someone roughly shaking me. Then I heard the voice of my jolly landlord calling me by name.”
The landlord had found the doctor “as white as a ghost and as limp as a rag,” and thought he was dead. He says it took him ten minutes to arouse the sleeper. During the time a physician had been summoned.
As to the causes of this condition as produced Dr. Cocke says: “I firmly believed that something would happen when the attempt was made to hypnotize me. Secondly, I wished to be hypnotized. These, together with a vivid imagination and strained attention, brought on the states which occurred.”
It is interesting to compare the effects of hypnotization with those of opium or other narcotic. Dr. Cocke asserts that there is a difference. His descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to De Quincey’s dreams, such as those described in “The English Mail-Coach,” “De Profundis,” and “The Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” all of which were presumably due to opium.
The causes which Dr. Cocke thinks produced the hypnotic condition in his case, namely, belief, desire to be hypnotized, and strained attention, united with a vivid imagination, are causes which are often found in conjunction and produce effects which we may reasonably explain on the theory of self-hypnotization.