As to the psychological origins of the Hindoo dream—considered not so much in its Oriental decoration, but in its essential note, which is the relation of Simandini to Sivrouka (the pretended anteriority of M. F.)—two hypotheses can be framed, between which it is difficult to choose.
First. From the point of view of psychopathology I should be tempted to cause this entire somnambulistic romance to be included in that which Freud calls Abwehrpsychosen, resulting from a sort of autotomy which frees the normal self from an affective idea incompatible with it; which idea revenges itself by occasioning very diverse perturbations, according to the subjects, from disorders of innervation, coming to disturb the daily life (hysteria by somatic conversion of the affective coefficient of the repulsed idea), up to the case in which the self only escapes the intolerable contradiction between the given reality and the idea which besets it by plunging itself entirely into the latter (mental hallucinatory confusion, delirium, etc.).
Between these varied results may be found that in which the idea excluded from the consciousness becomes the germ of hypnoid developments, the point of departure of a secondary consciousness unknown to the ordinary personality, the centre of a somnambulistic life in which the tendencies which the normal self has driven far away from it may take refuge and give themselves free play.
This is, perhaps, the happiest solution, from a practical and social point of view, since it leaves the individual in a state of perfect equilibrium and free from nervous troubles, outside of the very limited moments in which the underlying processes break out in accesses of somnambulism.
Such may be the case of the Hindoo dream and the origin of the attributing of the rôle of Sivrouka to M. F. Nothing, assuredly, in the normal life or being of Mlle. Smith would cause the suspicion that she had ever consciously felt towards the latter the absurd sentiments which good sense would have condemned in advance; but divers hints of her subliminal life, independently of the Hindoo cycle itself (certain dreams, etc.), have sometimes seemed to betray a latent conflict, which the sane and reasonable self would have quickly gotten rid of by the banishment from the ordinary personality of the affective idea, inadmissible in the given conditions of reality. Hence, with a temperament accustomed to mediumistic doubling of personality and imbued with spiritistic doctrines, the birth and development, underneath the level of the normal consciousness, of this romance of a former existence, in which emotional tendencies incompatible with the present life have found on occasion a sort of theoretic justification and a free field for expansion.
Secondly: It may also be presumed, and I prefer to admit, that the sentiments of Simandini towards her fictitious rajah, far from being the reflection and somnambulic transposition of an impression really felt by Mlle. Smith in regard to some one real and determined, are only a fantastic creation—like the passion with which juvenile imaginations are sometimes inflamed for an ideal and abstract type while awaiting the meeting with a concrete realization more or less like it—and that the assimilation of Sivrouka to M. F. is only a coincidence due to the simple chance of Mlle. Smith having made the acquaintance of M. F. at the time when the Hindoo dream was about to begin. Two points strengthen this hypothesis of a contingent and superficial confusion between M. F. and Sivrouka. First, the Hindoo dream was evidently begun by a characteristic vision in which Simandini appeared, almost two months before the admission of M. F. to the seances (see pp. [279]-281). Instead of supposing that the subconsciousness of Mlle. Smith foresaw already the probable arrival of this new spectator, and reserved for him in advance a leading rôle in the romance of former existence which she was in process of elaborating (which is not altogether impossible, it is true), it hardly seems as though M. F. could have stood for anything in the dream-personage of Sivrouka. In the second place, it is only in the light somnambulisms and her mixed or crepuscular states that Mlle. Smith happens to take M. F. for the Hindoo prince and to seat herself at his feet in attitudes of tenderness and abandon (without otherwise ever departing from the bounds of perfect propriety); as soon as the trance becomes profound and the Hindoo somnambulism complete, M. F. ceases to exist for her, as well as the others present, and she then is concerned only with an absolutely hallucinatory Sivrouka. This is the place to state that Hélène has never presented any phenomenon similar to—far from it—certain cases in which have been seen the awakening in the hypnotic subject of gross and more or less bestial tendencies, for which the subjects would have blushed in their waking state. There is nothing of that nature in Mlle. Smith. Somnambulism does not detract in any way from the elevation of her moral sense. The same is true of her deepest trances or when she “incarnates” personages very different from her ordinary character—she never departs from that real dignity which is a trait of her normal personality.
To sum up—the hypothesis of a purely accidental identification, a kind of association by simple contiguity between the Hindoo prince and M. F., seems to me, on the whole, the most natural. It releases the latter, besides, from all responsibility (altogether involuntary, however) for the sentiments so profound, so disinterested, so worthy of a less tragic fate, which the imaginary personage of Sivrouka Nayaka inspires in the poor Princess Simandini.