The suggestion-theory may therefore be approved as correct, provided we grant the trance-state as its prerequisite. The three states of Charcot, the strange reflexes of Heidenhain, and all the other bodily phenomena which have been called direct consequences of the trance-state itself, are not such. They are products of suggestion, the trance-state having no particular outward symptoms of its own; but without the trance-state there, those particular suggestions could never have been successfully made.[516]
THE SYMPTOMS OF THE TRANCE.
This accounts for the altogether indefinite array of symptoms which have been gathered together as characteristic of the hypnotic state. The law of habit dominates hypnotic subjects even more than it does waking ones. Any sort of personal peculiarity, any trick accidentally fallen into in the first instance by some one subject, may, by attracting attention, become stereotyped, serve as a pattern for imitation, and figure as the type of a school. The first subject trains the operator, the operator trains the succeeding subjects, all of them in perfect good faith conspiring together to evolve a perfectly arbitrary result. With the extraordinary perspicacity and subtlety of perception which subjects often display for all that concerns the operator with whom they are en rapport, it is hard to keep them ignorant of anything which he expects. Thus it happens that one easily verifies on new subjects what one has already seen on old ones, or any desired symptom of which one may have heard or read.
The symptoms earliest observed by writers were all thought to be typical. But with the multiplication of observed phenomena, the importance of most particular symptoms as marks of the state has diminished. This lightens very much our own immediate task. Proceeding to enumerate the symptoms of the hypnotic trance, I may confine myself to those which are intrinsically interesting, or which differ considerably from the normal functions of man.
First of all comes amnesia. In the earlier stages of hypnotism the patient remembers what has happened, but with successive sittings he sinks into a deeper condition, which is commonly followed by complete loss of memory. He may have been led through the liveliest hallucinations and dramatic performances, and have exhibited the intensest apparent emotion, but on waking he can recall nothing at all. The same thing happens on waking from sleep in the midst of a dream—it quickly eludes recall. But just as we may be reminded of it, or of parts of it, by meeting persons or objects which figured therein, so on being adroitly prompted, the hypnotic patient will often remember what happened in his trance. One cause of the forgetfulness seems to be the disconnection of the trance performances with the system of waking ideas. Memory requires a continuous train of association. M. Delbœuf, reasoning in this way, woke his subjects in the midst of an action begun during trance (washing the hands, e.g.), and found that they then remembered the trance. The act in question bridged over the two states. But one can often make them remember by merely telling them during the trance that they shall remember. Acts of one trance, moreover, are usually recalled, either spontaneously or at command, during another trance, provided that the contents of the two trances be not mutually incompatible.
Suggestibility. The patient believes everything which his hypnotizer tells him, and does everything which the latter commands. Even results over which the will has normally no control, such as sneezing, secretion, reddening and growing pale, alterations of temperature and heart-beat, menstruation, action of the bowels, etc., may take place in consequence of the operator's firm assertions during the hypnotic trance, and the resulting conviction on the part of the subject, that the effects will occur. Since almost all the phenomena yet to be described are effects of this heightened suggestibility, I will say no more under the general head, but proceed to illustrate the peculiarity in detail.
Effects on the voluntary muscles seem to be those most easily got; and the ordinary routine of hypnotizing consists in provoking them first. Tell the patient that he cannot open his eyes or his mouth, cannot unclasp his hands or lower his raised arm, cannot rise from his seat, or pick up a certain object from the floor, and he will be immediately smitten with absolute impotence in these regards. The effect here is generally due to the involuntary contraction of antagonizing muscles. But one can equally well suggest paralysis, of an arm for example, in which case it will hang perfectly placid by the subject's side. Cataleptic and tetanic rigidity are easily produced by suggestion, aided by handling the parts. One of the favorite shows at public exhibitions is that of a subject stretched stiff as a board with his head on one chair and his heels on another. The cataleptic retention of impressed attitudes differs from voluntary assumption of the same attitude. An arm voluntarily held out straight will drop from fatigue after a quarter of an hour at the utmost, and before it falls the agent's distress will be made manifest by oscillations in the arm, disturbances in the breathing, etc. But Charcot has shown that an arm held out in hypnotic catalepsy, though it may as soon descend, yet does so slowly and with no accompanying vibration, whilst the breathing remains entirely calm. He rightly points out that this shows a profound physiological change, and is proof positive against simulation, as far as this symptom is concerned. A cataleptic attitude, moreover, may be held for many hours.—Sometimes an expressive attitude, clinching of the fist, contraction of the brows, will gradually set up a sympathetic action of the other muscles of the body, so that at last a tableau vivant of fear, anger, disdain, prayer, or other emotional condition, is produced with rare perfection. This effect would seem to be due to the suggestion of the mental state by the first contraction. Stammering, aphasia, or inability to utter certain words, pronounce certain letters, are readily producible by suggestion.
Hallucinations of all the senses and delusions of every conceivable kind can be easily suggested to good subjects. The emotional effects are then often so lively, and the pantomimic display so expressive, that it is hard not to believe in a certain 'psychic hyper-excitability,' as one of the concomitants of the hypnotic condition. You can make the subject think that he is freezing or burning, itching or covered with dirt, or wet; you can make him eat a potato for a peach, or drink a cup of vinegar for a glass of champagne;[517] ammonia will smell to him like cologne water; a chair will be a lion, a broom-stick a beautiful woman, a noise in the street will be an orchestral music, etc., etc., with no limit except your powers of invention and the patience of the lookers on.[518] Illusions and hallucinations form the pièces de résistance at public exhibitions. The comic effect is at its climax when it is successfully suggested to the subject that his personality is changed into that of a baby, of a street boy, of a young lady dressing for a party, of a stump orator, or of Napoleon the Great. He may even be transformed into a beast, or an inanimate thing like a chair or a carpet, and in every case will act out all the details of the part with a sincerity and intensity seldom seen at the theatre. The excellence of the performance is in these cases the best reply to the suspicion that the subject may be shamming—so skilful a shammer must long since have found his true function in life upon the stage. Hallucinations and histrionic delusions generally go with a certain depth of the trance, and are followed by complete forgetfulness. The subject awakens from them at the command of the operator with a sudden start of surprise, and may seem for a while a little dazed.
Subjects in this condition will receive and execute suggestions of crime, and act out a theft, forgery, arson, or murder. A girl will believe that she is married to her hypnotizer, etc. It is unfair, however, to say that in these cases the subject is a pure puppet with no spontaneity. His spontaneity is certainly not in abeyance so far as things go which are harmoniously associated with the suggestion given him. He takes the text from his operator; but he may amplify and develop it enormously as he acts it out. His spontaneity is lost only for those systems of ideas which conflict with the suggested delusion. The latter is thus 'systematized'; the rest of consciousness is shut off, excluded, dissociated from it. In extreme cases the rest of the mind would seem to be actually abolished and the hypnotic subject to be literally a changed personality, a being in one of those 'second' states which we studied in Chapter X. But the reign of the delusion is often not as absolute as this. If the thing suggested be too intimately repugnant, the subject may strenuously resist and get nervously excited in consequence, even to the point of having an hysterical attack. The conflicting ideas slumber in the background and merely permit those in the foreground to have their way until a real emergency arises; then they assert their rights. As M. Delbœuf says, the subject surrenders himself good-naturedly to the performance, stabs with the pasteboard dagger you give him because he knows what it is, and fires off the pistol because he knows it has no ball; but for a real murder he would not be your man. It is undoubtedly true that subjects are often well aware that they are acting a part. They know that what they do is absurd. They know that the hallucination which they see, describe, and act upon, is not really there. They may laugh at themselves; and they always recognize the abnormality of their state when asked about it, and call it 'sleep.' One often notices a sort of mocking smile upon them, as if they were playing a comedy, and they may even say on 'coming to' that they were shamming all the while. These facts have misled ultra-skeptical people so far as to make them doubt the genuineness of any hypnotic phenomena at all. But, save the consciousness of 'sleep,' they do not occur in the deeper conditions; and when they do occur they are only a natural consequence of the fact that the 'monoideism' is incomplete. The background-thoughts still exist, and have the power of comment on the suggestions, but no power to inhibit their motor and associative effects. A similar condition is frequent enough in the waking state, when an impulse carries us away and our 'will' looks on wonderingly like an impotent spectator. These 'shammers' continue to sham in just the same way, every new time you hypnotize them, until at last they are forced to admit that if shamming there be, it is something very different from the free voluntary shamming of waking hours.