The result was not merely the confirmation and correction of much that Esdaile and other earlier inquirers had noted, but also an impressive, and in some respects startling, extension of knowledge concerning the processes of the human mind. Bearing out these discoveries, moreover, came the findings of sundry French savants—Janet, Binet, Féré, etc.—who, about the same time as the English investigators, and in the same spirit of open-minded research, sought to ascertain the true inwardness of hypnotism. On the one hand, the work of the Englishmen and the Frenchmen, between the years 1882 and 1890, made it certain that in hypnotism psychology possessed a wonderful instrument for experimentation. And, on the other hand, their own experiments with hypnotism revealed the various mental faculties—perception, attention, memory, and the rest—in entirely new aspects; paved the way to a correct understanding of hitherto obscure and baffling maladies; nay, even made necessary a radical readjustment of the scientific concept of human personality itself.
In this productive study of the phenomena of hypnotism two names stand supreme—the names of Pierre Janet and Edmund Gurney. Janet, who still is with us, deservedly enjoys today a worldwide fame for the part he has played in the inception and development of psychopathology, or medical psychology. Gurney to most people is not even a name. Yet in the brief period of experimentation that preceded his untimely death, he achieved so much as to suggest that had he lived he would probably have won a place in contemporary science fully as high as that held by Janet. More than one medical psychologist, in all likelihood, has been inspired by Gurney’s researches to specialize in that fascinating and important branch of the healing art—as was Morton Prince, on his own statement to the writer. It was not for medical purposes, however, that Gurney himself experimented with hypnotism: medical psychology was then in embryo, and Gurney was only secondarily interested in its possibilities. His great aim was to ascertain the nature of the hypnotic state, and the condition of the mind during hypnosis.
To review adequately the ingenious methods he adopted and the results he obtained, would delay us unduly. Enough to stress the salient fact that, through a brilliant series of experiments full of interest to modern psychology, he demonstrated the existence of a great undercurrent of mental life, in which the most complex processes are carried on without the individual’s conscious knowledge. Already, to be sure, several students of personality—Hamilton and Carpenter, for instance—had recognized the necessity of postulating something of the sort as the only means of rationally explaining certain anomalies and mysteries of human behavior. But to take it for granted was one thing, to demonstrate it was obviously quite another. And it remained for Gurney’s experiments—together with the concurrent experiments of Janet and his French colleagues—to effect the work of demonstration, and, still more, to trace the operations of this mental undercurrent in channels, and with consequences, formerly unsuspected.
Not until Gurney’s and Janet’s time, to be more explicit, had experimental proof been forthcoming of the far-reaching influence of “subconscious ideas” in affecting human conduct, and of the possibility of initiating trains of thought completely cut off, or “dissociated,” from the field of conscious mentation. This was first convincingly revealed by experiments based on the discovery of the fact that commands “suggested” to a hypnotized person would be faithfully executed at a stated moment after the awakening from hypnosis, and this despite the absence, in the normal waking state, of any conscious recollection of the commands in question. That this actually involved mentation beneath the threshold of consciousness was shown by Gurney in a number of experiments made possible by the further discovery that there are some people who can write “automatically”—that is, without conscious control of the words they put on paper, and even without knowing that they are writing anything. Thus Gurney records, in the course of his detailed record of these experiments (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 268-323):
On April 20 [P—ll] was told [while hypnotized] that half an hour after his next arrival he was to wind up a ball of string, and to let me know how the time was going. He arrived next evening at 8.30, and was set to the planchette [an instrument then often used to obtain automatic writing] at 8.43. He wrote, “13 minett has passed, and 17 more minetts to pass.” Some more experiments followed, and it so happened that at 9, the exact time when the fulfillment was due, he was in the trance. He suddenly said “Oh!” as if recollecting something, but did not move; he was then woke, and at 9.2 he walked across the room to where some string was lying, and wound it up....
Another day the same “subject” was told that when I coughed for the sixth time he was to look out of the window. He was woke, and I gave at intervals five coughs—one of which, however, was a failure, owing to its obvious artificiality. He was set to the planchette, and the words produced were, “When Mr. Gurney cough 6 times I am to look out.” At this point I read his writing and stopped it. I asked if he had noticed my coughing, and he said, “No, sir”; but this, of course, showed no more than [that] he had heard without attending. He was now hypnotized, told that I wanted to know how often I had coughed, and at once woke. The writing recommenced, “4 times he has cough, and 2 times more he has to cough.” I coughed twice more, and he went to the window, drew aside the blind, and looked out. Two minutes afterward I asked him what sort of a night it was. He said, “Fine when I came in.” I said I thought I had seen him looking out just now, but he absolutely denied it.
Any doubt that the memory oblivion in the waking state was genuine was removed by the interesting circumstance that though the “subjects”—men to whom even small sums of money meant much—were repeatedly offered substantial rewards if they could state what had been said to them during hypnosis, they were invariably unable to do so. Stranger still, Gurney demonstrated that it was entirely possible to develop, in the hypnotic state itself, different sets of memories, each completely independent of the others; so that, so far as concerned the contents of his consciousness, the hypnotized “subject” seemed to possess two or more personalities, each with its own distinct set of memory-images (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 515-521). This may be made clearer by giving a sample of the many curious conversations between one of the “subjects” and G. A. Smith (known in the published reports as S.), a hypnotist often employed by Gurney to assist him in his experiments:
A young man named S—t ... after being hypnotized was told in state A that the pier-head had been washed away, and in state B that an engine-boiler had burst at Brighton station and killed several people. He was then roused to state A, when he proved to recollect about the accident to the pier; after which a few passes brought him again to state B.
S. “But I suppose they’ll soon be able to build a new one.”
Had the pier been now present in S—t’s mind, this remark would have been naturally understood to refer to it, as it had formed the subject of conversation a few seconds before. But he at once replied, “Oh, there are plenty on the line”—meaning plenty of engines.
S. “The pile-driving takes time, though.”
S—t. “Pile-driving? Well, I don’t know anything about engines myself.”
A few upward passes were now made, and it at once became clear that the memory had shifted.
S. “If they have plenty more, it doesn’t matter much.”
S—t. “Oh, they can’t put it on in a day; it was a splendid place.”
S. “Why, I’m talking about the engine.”
S—t. “Engine! What, on the pier? I never noticed one there.”
Again, the same “subject” was told in state A that a balloon had been seen passing over the King’s-road. Some passes were made which carried him into state B, when S. said, “But I didn’t see it myself.”
S—t. “What was that?”
He was now told that two large dogs had been having a fight in the Western-road; and a few upward passes roused him to state A.
S. “But it was a good long time in sight.”
S—t. “The balloon?”
S. “No, the dog.”
S—t. “Dog? Why, was there one on it? A dog on a balloon!”
The “subject” is brought down again to state B.
S. “But it didn’t remain in sight long; it soon went up.”
S—t. “What didn’t? What went up?”
S. “Weren’t we talking about balloons?”
S—t. “No; but one of them dogs looked like a busted balloon when he was down.”
A few upward passes, and S. says, “Which one?”
S—t. “Why, there was only one.”
S. “One what?”
S—t. “Balloon.”
S. “I was talking about dogs.”
S—t. “I don’t know nothing of dogs.”
Three days afterward S—t was again hypnotized, and S. said, “What was that you said about the pier?”
S—t. “Oh, about the head being washed away.”
This, it will be seen, was the memory appropriate to state A. Some downward passes were made, and S. said, “A good thing that things don’t often happen like that.”
S—t. “No, they don’t at Brighton; they do on the Northern lines.”
Here we have the engine accident again—the memory appropriate to state B. The balloon over the King’s-road was now strongly suggested to S; but that idea belonging to state A, it could not be recalled in state B.
In all these conversations, in short, it was exactly as if the hypnotist, S., when talking to his subject in state A, and talking to him in state B, were talking to two different persons, each ignorant of facts known to the other. (The profound significance of this, from a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint will be made evident later.) On the other hand, and in sharp contrast, Gurney, in common with the Continental investigators, also demonstrated through hypnotic experimentation that the memory process as a regular thing is almost incredibly retentive, so that under appropriate conditions it is possible to recall happenings, it may be of earliest childhood, which have long since dropped out of conscious recollection—happenings, even, of which one has never had conscious knowledge. But, indeed, credit for the experimental demonstration of this twofold principle of subconscious perception and subconscious memory—which lies at the very root of abnormal psychology—by no means belongs wholly to Gurney and the French hypnotists. Many other pioneers in the systematic study of the “phenomena outside science” had a hand in proving and elucidating it, notably those who made a special study of crystal-gazing.
The average scientist of that time—perhaps it would be true to say the same of the average scientist of today—had about as much interest in the phenomena of crystal-gazing as he had in the “ravings” of the entranced spiritistic “medium.” He well knew that from time immemorial it had been a practice among the mystically minded to employ crystals, mirrors, or other objects with a reflecting surface, for purposes of divination; and that it had been insistently claimed that, by gazing steadily into such objects, hallucinatory pictures often became visible, imparting useful knowledge about people and events outside the crystal-gazer’s ken. But the scientist dismissed this as merely another evidence of the invincible superstitiousness of mankind. It never occurred to him to try crystal-gazing on his own account; or if it did, he shudderingly repelled the idea. The founders of the Society for Psychical Research were not so squeamish; crystal-gazing was approved by them as a fitting subject for investigation; and ere long, their decision was abundantly vindicated.
One member of the society, Miss Goodrich-Freer, finding that she possessed the crystal-gazer’s “gift,” sedulously cultivated it for experimental purposes, and made as careful and detailed a record of what she observed as would any scientist employed in the vitally important task of watching and recording the wriggles of a tadpole. A fact which soon made itself evident to her was the frequency with which her crystal-visions represented incidents in her own past life, sometimes incidents dating back to early childhood. On one occasion, she notes, somebody was speaking in her presence, though not to her, of Palissy ware. She happened at the moment to be staring aimlessly at a dark green scent-bottle. At once there appeared in it a picture of a man furiously tearing up garden palings. She was wondering what this meant, when it was followed by a second picture showing, with the greatest distinctness, the library where as a child she had kept her books. Among these, Miss Goodrich-Freer now remembered, was one she had not seen for many years called The Provocations of Madame Palissy. Then she also remembered that one of this lady’s provocations was a bad habit her husband had of using the first material that came to hand as fuel for his furnace; and immediately the meaning of the first picture became clear to her.