Its necessary condition is the trance or somnambulistic state. The sensitive falls asleep spontaneously, or is put to sleep artificially by passes. After a certain time, more or less long, and after diverse movements, the most usual of which seem to be muscular contractions of the face and pharynx, the sensitive enters into somnambulism and passes into the secondary state. Some subjects fall asleep very quickly. It is not a rare thing in spiritistic seances, for two or three persons to enter into a state of somnambulism at the same time. The perfection of the sensitive’s acting, when personifying diverse individualities, is most striking when they have known the persons they are imitating. Observation is extremely interesting. In spiritistic seances these personalities, naturally, always represent spirits.
I have seen nothing in this order of phenomenon which appeared to me worth noting. Everything is easily explained by the play of impersonal memory and by imitation. Many transcendental facts have been related to me: personally I have observed none. But I have very rarely tried to provoke trance phenomena. They do not present the same interest to me as physical phenomena do. The most interesting I have seen, were given me by Madame Agullana, in private seances. This sensitive’s most curious personality is that of a doctor, who died about eighty or a hundred years ago: he has always refused to give any information concerning his identity; the reason he advances for maintaining his incognito—the existence of his family, members of whom are living in the south of France—does not satisfy me; I imagine he is withholding the best. His medical language is archaic. He calls plants by their ancient medical names; his diagnosis, accompanied with extra-ordinary explanations, is generally correct, but the description of the internal symptoms which he perceives is such as would astound a doctor of the twentieth century. Matters, fluids, molecules, dance a strange saraband. Nevertheless, my colleague from beyond the tomb—not at all loquacious, by the way—retains a serenity, which is proof against everything, and humbly recognises that there are many things he does not know. During the ten years I have been observing him, he has not changed, and presents a logical continuity which is most striking. Persons, who are not au courant with the features of secondary personalities, might easily be deceived and believe in his objective reality. Be he what he says he is, or be he what I suspect him to be, that is to say, one of the sensitive’s secondary personalities, my confrère Hippolytus is an interesting interlocutor, and, with his conversation, one could write a work on clinical medicine which would be rather out of the common. This is not the place to study him, for his examination only raises problems of psychological interest. In these phenomena of mixed automatism, of ‘incarnation,’ we observe the complete development of personifications. These personifications are the feature common to all psychical phenomena. Raps claim to emanate from a given personality, paranormal movements have the same pretension, automatic script assures us of a like origin: ‘incarnation’ or ‘control’ puts forth the claim of being the personality himself, in full possession of the sensitive’s body, directing and using it as he pleases.
The problem which these personifications set before us is, perhaps, the most interesting of all those which are to be met with, in the kind of study to which this book is consecrated. I have pointed out, that the general feature of these personifications is to present themselves as living—or more usually deceased human beings. My observations do not tend to make me think that this claim is well founded. It does not come within the scheme of my work to analyse the different hypotheses, which have been emitted by the different mystic schools. Occultists profess to see astral shells, in these personifications, debris—still organised—of the body’s astral double, which the superior principles have abandoned. Theosophists have about the same theory, designating these debris by the name of elementals. Spiritists attribute their phenomena to the spirits of the dead. Roman Catholics see the intervention of the devil therein, while the greater number of savants only see fraud or chimera. All these opinions are too absolute. There is, certainly, something; but I think this something is neither spirit, shell, elemental nor demon. It is not my province to formulate in detail my theory: properly speaking, I have not any. I observe without bias of any kind, and the only indication I can give is the following:—in almost every case I have studied, I believe I recognised the mentality of the medium and the sitters in the personification. It is true, there are certain cases which I cannot explain in this way; but the spirit hypothesis explains them still less satisfactorily. We must continue seeking.
The examples I have given of intellectual phenomena show that in every case of which I have been able to make a thorough analysis, we discover the action of the impersonal consciousness. This explains itself naturally, since the personal and voluntary consciousness excludes by definition the co-existence of a second personality. Nevertheless, this is not absolutely true. The medium, of whom I have already spoken, he who produces raps when writing, writes automatically while he speaks, in quite a natural way, of other things. In fact, he only writes well when his attention is drawn away from his hand. As soon as he is conscious of the movement, the writing ceases. Things happen with him, as though the normal consciousness lost all contact with the motor centres of the arm and hand. A special consciousness appears to be developed in these centres.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF AUTOMATISM
The difficulty, which is raised by the interpretation of facts of the kind exposed above, is considerable. It is to be remembered, that the sensitive of whom I have just spoken, does not appear to suffer any diminution of his normal personality; he converses with facility, his normal personal souvenirs and his intelligence remain intact. His arm and hand alone, especially the latter, are withdrawn from consciousness, and this in the sensitive as well as in the motor spheres. Janet sees in these facts psychological disaggregation, and in many cases his explication is the correct one. But it cannot be applied to the case I am speaking of, for no diminution in the memory, intelligence or mental activity is perceptible. However, Janet seems to have only seen one of the phases of these curious phenomena. I attach so much importance to the establishing of the point de fait that, before all analysis thereof, I desire to state it precisely, successively with the discussion.
The first circumstance of fact which observation of the case I am examining reveals, is the one I have just pointed out: an apparent dissociation of the normal personality, from the cenesthesic consciousness of which a portion of the body is withdrawn. The second circumstance is the relative knowledge of English—with correct orthography excepting one mistake only—which is shown by the apparently self-governed limb. Note also that I feel sure that this knowledge of English is probably subconscious, and that I have supposed, although this has not been proved, that the writer has now and then come across a few English sentences, containing the phrases written by him. These two circumstances are, for me, observed facts.
From these facts there results a third fact, the consequence of the first two: the consciousness, which directs the limb withdrawn from the personality, appears to have more considerable resources—at least from a memory point of view—than the normal consciousness. If it be correct to speak of apparent disaggregation in that which concerns the conscious normal personality, it seems to me that this expression ceases to represent the facts, as soon as it can be demonstrated, that the consciousness manifested by the automatism is more extensive than the normal consciousness. If we are to attach a precise meaning to language—and Janet’s language is so clear and simple that we may not accuse this elegant and remarkable writer of want of precision—the idea of disaggregation implies the division of the personal consciousness into elementary parts, according to definition, lesser than the whole. This phenomenon is frequently observed, e.g. when automatic writing shows itself to be incapable of logical co-ordination, of which I have given examples; sometimes there is no trace of thought, properly so called, e.g. when the sensitive confines himself to repeating sine die the same letter, or traces nothing but lines, and strokes, etc. But can we consider the case as one of veritable disaggregation where the hand, withdrawn from normal consciousness, appears to dispose of a greater mass of souvenirs than the normal consciousness does?
Janet himself has verified the fact, and gives some examples of it in his work, Névroses et idées fixes, vol i. After that, is it not contradictory to say (Automatisme psychologique, p. 452): ‘The result of our studies has been to bring back the diverse phenomena of automatism to their essential conditions—most of these phenomena depend upon a state of anæsthesia or abstraction. This state is connected with the narrowing of the field of consciousness, and this narrowing itself is due to the feebleness of synthesis and the disaggregation of the mental compound into diverse groups smaller than they should normally be. These diverse points are easy to verify; the state of abstraction, incoherence, of disaggregation, in a word, of suggestible individuals has often been pointed out.’ How can a group, smaller than the mental compound of which it forms one of the parts, be more considerable than that compound? How can a part be greater than its whole? This is, nevertheless, a fact easily verifiable in the domain of memory and sometimes in that of intelligence. Janet’s theory explains only some of the observable facts; it is only partially true. It suffices to compare the quotation I have just given with what he says in his work, Névroses et idées fixes, vol. i. p. 137: ‘The souvenir even in somnambulism only exists if the patient be oblivious to everything and replies automatically to questions, by the mechanical association of ideas without reflection, without the personal perception of what he is doing.