Similarly one of her earliest experiences in crystal-vision was a picture of “a quaint oak chair, an old hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the back of the chair—slowly recognized as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage, which I had not entered, and had seldom recalled, since I was a child of ten.” Again, looking in her crystal she saw a copy of a medical prescription for which, a few hours before, she had been vainly hunting. On further inspection she perceived, without being able to read the words, that it was in the handwriting, not of her physician, but of a friend. Acting on the hint she searched through her friend’s letters, and found the medical prescription folded in one of them, where, she had reason to believe, it had been for more than four years. It could have been put there only accidentally, yet it was clear that she must have subconsciously perceived what she was doing when she slipped the prescription into the letter, and that the mechanism of memory had registered an image of her absent-minded act. Many other examples of the memory registration of subconscious percepts are given in Miss Goodrich-Freer’s reports to the Society (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v, pp. 486-521; vol. viii, pp. 484-495). For example:
I find in the crystal a bit of dark wall, covered with white jessamine, and I ask myself, “Where have I walked today?” I have no recollection of such a sight, not a common one in the London streets but tomorrow I will repeat my walk of this morning, with careful regard for creeper-covered walls. Tomorrow solves the mystery. I find the very spot, and the sight brings with it the further recollection that at the moment we passed this spot I was engaged in absorbing conversation with my companion, and my voluntary attention was pre-occupied.
To take another example. I had been occupied with accounts; I opened a drawer to take out my banking-book. My hand came in contact with the crystal, and I welcomed the suggestion of a change in occupation. However, figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more attractive to show me than the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my banking-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures I should, without doubt, have failed and could not even have guessed at the number of digits or the value of the first figure. Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb “to forget,” in all its moods and tenses....
I saw in the crystal a young girl, an intimate friend, waving to me from her carriage. I observed that her hair, which had hung down her back when I last saw her, was now put up in young-lady fashion. Most certainly I had not consciously seen even the carriage, the look of which I knew very well. But next day I called on my friend; was reproached by her for not observing her as she passed; and perceived that she had altered her hair in the way which the crystal had shown.
Next as to sounds not attended to.... A relative of mine was talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they were further I paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished mahogany table, “1, [Earl’s]-square, Notting Hill.” I had no idea whose this address might be. But some days later my relative remarked, “H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down.” It occurred to me to ask, “Was it 1, [Earl’s]-square?” and this turned out to be the case.
From investigators in other departments of psychical research came—and still comes—evidence no less impressively testifying to the marvellous power of the human memory, with its subconscious awareness even for sights and sounds not consciously perceived. It was further discovered that memory-images not infrequently emerge above the threshold of consciousness in the form of spontaneously externalized visual and auditory hallucinations, sometimes of a striking sort. The discovery was also made that, in persons of a peculiar temperament, subconscious memories might be so completely switched off, or “dissociated,” from the field of consciousness that on coming into it again they would be unrecognized, and would give rise to the conviction that they related to matters which could not possibly have been within the range of previous knowledge, conscious or subconscious. Perhaps the best illustration of this curious and important psychological fact is found in a case reported quite recently by Mr. Lowes Dickinson.
Among his friends was a young lady who developed a form of “trance mediumship,” in which she claimed to visit another world and meet and talk with people there, particularly a certain Blanche Poynings, described as an earth-dweller in the time of Richard II. This “spirit,” speaking through the voice of the entranced “medium,” gave as proof of her identity many interesting particulars regarding her sojourn on earth. She had been, it seemed, an intimate friend of Maud, Countess of Salisbury, and much of her talk had to do with that lady, and with the Earl of Salisbury. Odd little incidents in the latter’s life were vivaciously recounted—such as his throwing an image out of his chapel into a ditch, where it was found by a wayfarer, who repainted it and set it up in a bake-house. “Blanche” also commented in an amusing way on the appearance of Joan, “The Fair Maid of Kent,” and other historical personages; told about her own exile from Court; and gave much information respecting the customs and manners of the period.
All this interested and puzzled Mr. Dickinson, because his friend, whose veracity he could not doubt, assured him that she had never made a study of the events of King Richard’s reign, and had not so much as read anything about it. Yet, as he ascertained by patient research among old chronicles, the alleged “spirit” unquestionably possessed accurate and extensive knowledge of the men and women who had been prominent at King Richard’s Court, and of happenings which in some instances were barely mentioned by the annalists. The only logical explanation seemed to be that this was a genuine case of “spirit communication.” But one day, taking tea with his friend and her aunt, Mr. Dickinson made a discovery that placed the affair in an entirely different light.
The subject of automatic writing chanced to come up, and it developed that the “medium” owned a planchette, and often experimented with it. At her investigator’s request it was brought out, she placed her hands on it, and questions were put to it concerning the Blanche Poynings statements. These questions elicited the unexpected announcement, by the automatic writing, that corroboration of every statement made by “Blanche” would be found in a book called Countess Maud, written by Emily Holt. So soon as planchette wrote the name of this book, the “medium” exclaimed that she believed there was a novel with that title, and that she had once read it. Her aunt confirmed this, but neither she nor her aunt could recall anything about its plot or characters, nor even the period with which it dealt. Following the clue thus strangely given Mr. Dickinson soon had Countess Maud in his hands, and found mentioned in it, with corresponding detail, almost every person and every incident given by the “spirit” of Blanche, who, in the novel, was of quite secondary importance. Even then his mediumistic friend could not recall anything about the book, except a vague impression that she had read it as a child.
He now caused her to be hypnotized, and questioned her anew, when he learned to his surprise that she had never actually read Countess Maud herself, but had heard her aunt read it aloud. “I looked at it, and painted a picture in the beginning. I used to turn over the pages. I didn’t read it, because it was dull. Blanche Poynings was in the book; not much about her.” And, in response to a question as to how the Blanche Poynings impersonation really originated, she made the reply, of great interest psychologically, “There was a real person named Blanche Poynings that I met, and I think her name started the memory, and I got the two mixed up.”
These, then, were some of the first-fruits of systematic psychical research: Proof that percepts may be subconsciously, as well as consciously acquired, and that, as Pierre Janet so tersely put it, “Whatever has gone into the mind may come out of the mind”; proof that the emergence of subconscious memories may be in the form of self-induced hallucinations; proof that such memories sometimes develop a dynamic force, impelling the individual to seemingly inexplicable conduct; proof that the personality itself may be artificially dislocated, so that whole areas of memory sink temporarily below the threshold of consciousness; proof that, even below the threshold, intelligent mentation continues in a fashion similar to the mentation consciously directed by the waking will; and, finally, proof that in hypnotism, crystal-gazing, and automatic writing, invaluable means are available for exploring the remotest nooks and corners of “the subconscious.” From one point of view their establishment of such facts as these was, indeed, disconcerting to the “psychical researchers,” for it obviously made increasingly difficult the demonstration of the survival of the soul on evidence afforded by phenomena like apparitions, hauntings, and mediumistic utterances. But it also marked an enormous advance in man’s knowledge of himself, and in his control of his development here on earth.
The first to appreciate this—at any rate, the first to turn it to practical account—were the Frenchmen who, like Gurney, had attacked with special vigor the problems raised by hypnotism. Sharing to the full the belief of their English colleagues that here was a subject which science ought to have investigated long before—many of them, in fact, expressing their sympathy with the general purposes of the Society for Psychical Research by becoming members of it—the French savants’ motive in invading the realm of the occult had in most cases been intellectual curiosity rather than any ardent desire to prove life after death. They were not so much concerned with the possible bearing of hypnotic phenomena on the soul problem, as with their possible bearing on man’s earthly welfare. And no sooner was it borne in on them that hypnotism did have practical uses, than the majority concentrated their efforts on ascertaining what these uses were, and to what extent, and with what consequences, the phenomena of the hypnotic state were paralleled in everyday life.
The leader in this movement—which, with Gurney’s experiments in England, may be said to constitute the beginning of abnormal psychology—was Pierre Janet, who, in 1881, at the early age of twenty-two, had been appointed professor of philosophy in the college of Chateauroux, and soon afterward received a similar appointment in the College of Havre. At Havre, Janet took up in earnest the investigation of things psychical, studying mediumistic phenomena, and making a series of experiments in hypnotic telepathy that brought him into mutually helpful relations with Gurney, Myers, and other active workers in the Society for Psychical Research. But from the first he was specially interested in the peculiarities of the mind in hypnosis, and his interest in this particular problem became all-absorbing when he observed that even the most bizarre hypnotic phenomena were sometimes spontaneously produced. Perhaps most influential in determining the future course of his life-activities was his discovery that hypnotization was not always necessary to effect the strange dissociation of personality evinced in, for instance, the case of Gurney’s “subject,” S—t, cited above.