Here is another experiment still more striking. Pierre Janet, Professor of Philosophy in the Havre Lycée, and Monsieur Gibert, a physician, selected as a subject for their observation a certain woman, a native of Brittany. She was fifty years old, robust, and moderately sensitive to hypnotic influences. On October 10, 1885, they agreed upon the following command:
To-morrow, at noon, lock the doors of your house.
w.
This suggestion Dr. Janet inscribed upon a sheet of paper, which he carried about in his pocket, not communicating its purport to anybody. Dr. Gibert made the suggestion by placing his forehead against the woman’s, while she was in a lethargic slumber; and for a few moments he concentrated his mind upon the mental command he was giving.
Writes Janet concerning this incident:
On the morrow we went to the house, at fifteen minutes before twelve, and found the entrance barricaded and the doors locked. Inquiry proved that madame herself had closed them. When I asked her, next day, why she had done such a strange thing, she replied: “I felt very tired, and did not want you to come in and put me to sleep.”
She was greatly agitated at the time. She continually wandered about the garden, and I saw her pluck a rose, and go towards the letter-box, which was near the gate. These actions were of no importance; but it is curious to note that these last actions were precisely those the day before we had thought of ordering her to perform, though we afterwards decided upon a different suggestion, namely, that of locking the doors. Undoubtedly his first suggestion occupied Gibert’s mind while he was giving the second, and had a corresponding influence over the woman.
Here is still another experiment, related by Doctor Dusart:
Every day, before leaving a certain young patient, I commanded her to sleep until a specified hour the next day. Once I came away, forgetting this precaution, and I was seven hundred yards away before I thought of it. Being unable to retrace my steps, I said to myself that my wish might perhaps be felt, notwithstanding the distance, since a silent suggestion was sometimes obeyed at an interval of one or two yards. I therefore formulated my command that she should sleep until eight o’clock the next morning, and then kept on my way. The next day I called again, at half-past seven, and found my patient still asleep.
“How happens it that you are still asleep?”