CHAPTER III.
HYPNOTISM—PSYCHICAL ASPECT.
As before remarked the phenomena of hypnotism may be viewed from two distinct standpoints—one, that from which the physical and especially the therapeutic features are most prominent, the standpoint from which we have already viewed the subject; the other is the psychical or mental aspect, which presents phenomena no less striking, and is the one which is especially attractive to the most earnest students of psychology.
The hypnotic condition has been variously divided and subdivided by different students and different writers upon the subject; Charcot, for instance, makes three distinct states, which he designates (1) catalepsy, (2) lethargy, and (3) somnambulism, while Bernheim proposes five states, or, as he designates them, degrees of hypnotism, namely, (1) sleepiness, (2) light sleep, (3) deep sleep, (4) very deep sleep, (5) somnambulism.
All these divisions are arbitrary and unnatural; Bernheim’s five degrees have no definite limit or line of separation one from the other, and Charcot’s condition of catalepsy is only lethargy or sleep in which the subject may, to a greater or less degree, maintain the position in which he is placed by his hypnotizer.
There are, however, as already stated, two distinct and definite conditions, namely, (1) lethargy, or the inactive stage, and (2) somnambulism, or the alert stage, and if, in examining the subject, we make this simple division, we shall free it from much confusion and unnecessary verbiage.
When a subject is hypnotized by any soothing process, he first experiences a sensation of drowsiness, and then in a space of time, usually varying from two to twenty minutes, he falls into a more or less profound slumber. His breathing is full and quiet, his pulse normal; he is unconscious of his surroundings; or possibly he may be quiet, restful, indisposed to move, but having a consciousness, probably dim and imperfect, of what is going on about him.
This is the condition of lethargy, and in it most subjects, but not all, retain to a greater or less degree whatever position the hypnotizer imposes upon them; they sleep on, often maintaining what, under ordinary circumstances, would be a most uncomfortable position, for hours, motionless as a statue of bronze or stone.
If, now, he speaks of his own accord, or his magnetizer speaks to him and he replies, he is in the somnambulic or alert stage. He may open his eyes, talk in a clear and animated manner; he may walk about, and show even more intellectual acuteness and physical activity than when in his normal state, or he may merely nod assent or answer slowly to his hypnotizer’s questions; still, he is in the somnambulic or alert stage of hypnotism.