SPIRITUALISM AND THE
NEW PSYCHOLOGY

AN EXPLANATION OF SPIRITUALIST
PHENOMENA AND BELIEFS
IN TERMS OF MODERN
KNOWLEDGE

BY MILLAIS CULPIN

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
PROFESSOR LEONARD HILL

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

1920

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE

My object in writing this book is to present an explanation of so-called occult phenomena concerning which credulity is still as busy as in the days of witchcraft. The producers of these phenomena have been exposed efficiently and often, but their supporters are as active as ever, and show a simple faith which is more convincing than any argument. Moreover, the producers themselves—mediums, clairvoyants, water-diviners, seers, or whatever they may be—are sometimes of such apparent honesty and simplicity that disbelief seems almost a sacrilege; therefore part of my aim is to show how a man believing firmly in his own honesty may yet practise elaborate trickery and deceit.

As the book is intended for readers presumably unacquainted with the trend of modern psychology, it is necessary to point out how much of the opinions set forth are accepted by workers at the subject.

The theory of dissociation has, as far as I know, no opponents. It was applied by Pierre Janet to hysteria and water-divining, thought-reading, etc., all of which he regarded as psychologically identical.[1]

The theory of the unconscious, which we owe to Freud, of Vienna, is still strongly opposed, and the influence, or even the existence, of repressions is disputed by those who have not looked for them, undoubted cases of loss of memory being regarded as something of quite different nature. A growing number of workers, however, both here and in America, appreciate the importance of these contributions to psychology.

The possible development of the hysteric from the malingerer by the repression of the knowledge of deceit is an idea of my own, which is not accepted by any one of importance.

These explanations are necessary in fairness to the reader, but I regard appeals to authority on matters of opinion as pernicious, and try to present my opinions in such a way as to allow them to be judged on their merits.

Nevertheless, since I take for granted that supernatural phenomena are not what their producers would have us believe, and at the same time make no general attempt to prove their human origin, I must refer the reader to books on the subject, viz., Studies in Psychical Research, by the late Frank Podmore, which treats the spiritualists sympathetically and weakens occasionally in its unbelief; Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge, by Dr. Charles Mercier, which is a direct and vigorous attack upon them; and The Question, by Edward Clodd, a book dealing with the subject historically from primitive man to 'Feda'. Stuart Cumberland, in Spiritualism—the Inside Truth, records some of the results of his vain search for spiritist phenomena that will bear investigation; and in The Road to Endor the authors relate the story of a deliberate fraud that was accepted by their friends as a genuine manifestation.

M. C.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

By PROFESSOR LEONARD HILL, F.R.S.

The body of man is made up of an infinite number of cells—minute masses of living substance—grouped into organs subserving particular functions, and held together by skeletal structures, bones and containing membranes such as the horny layer of the skin which are formed by the living cells. The whole is comparable to citizens grouped in farms and factories subserving one or other function necessary for the commonweal; and just as the city has its transport connecting the whole, distributing food and the various products of the factories, a drainage and scavenger system taking away the waste material, and a telephone system through which operations can be ordered and co-ordinated according to the needs of the commonweal, so has the body its blood circulation, digestive and excretive systems, and a co-ordinating nervous system. How small are the cells, how infinite their number is shown by the fact that each drop of blood the size of a pin's head contains five million red corpuscles; there are five or six pints of blood in the body!

The living substance, e.g. of a nerve cell, appears as a watery substance crowded with a countless number of granules, which are so small that only the light dispersed around each is visible under the highest power of the microscope when illuminated by a beam of light against a dark ground, just as the halo of each dust particle in the air is made visible by a beam of light crossing a dark room, and just as these dust particles are in dancing motion due to the currents of air, so are the particles in the living substance ceaselessly kept dancing by the play of inter-molecular forces. From the dead substance of the cells the chemist extracts various complex colloidal substances, e.g. proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and various salts, and these in their turn he can resolve into chemical elements. The interplay of energy between the multitude of electrically charged granules inside the cell, and the environment outside keeps up the dance of life, the radiant energy of the sun, and the atomic energy of the elements being the ultimate source of the energy transmutations exhibited by both living and non-living matter.

In the living cell there is an interplay of the energy of masses of molecules forming the granules, of single molecules in watery solution, of atoms which compose the molecules, and of electrons, the various groupings of which compose the atoms of the elements. The elements themselves are now recognised to be transmutable through simplification and rearrangement of their electronic structure, and to be evolved out of one primordial electronic unit, a unit of energy, unknowable in nature, out of the groupings and transmutations of which arise all manner of living and non-living forms, the apparently indestructible stable materials being no less in a state of flux and evolution than the most unstable. The complexity of the transmutations of energy and ultimate unknowableness and mystery of their cause are no less in the case of a drop of water or a particle of dirt than in that of a living cell. The scientific conception of the universe, the very opposite of materialism, approaches pantheism.

The living substance of a uni-cellular organism, similarly the congery of cells forming the body of man, has evolved the power of sensing and of moving towards, or away from life-giving or destroying sources of energy. Special sense-organs, receptive of one or other form of energy have been evolved through the æons of the struggle for existence, together with nervous and muscular systems, to enable him to preserve his life in the midst of the shocks and thrills of his environment. There are also evolved inner senses, and a sympathetic nervous system which knits all parts of the body in harmonious action; the community of action also being brought about by the circulating fluids of the body, the blood and the lymph, to which each living cell gives and from which each cell takes. For communion with the environment, eyes for visual, and sense organs in the skin for thermal radiant energy have been perfected, ears for sound waves travelling through air, taste organs for substances in solution, smell organs for particles of substances floating in the atmosphere, touch organs for sensing movements of masses.

The receptive cells of the special sense organs are composed of watery, granular, living substance and elaborate mechanisms have been evolved for converting one or other form of energy into such a form that it can be received by the living substance, e.g. the intricate structure of the eye with its focussing lenses, retinal cells laden with pigment sensitive to light, the ear with its drum membrane vibrating in unison with sound waves in the air, its chain of transmitting osicles, and complicated receiving organ placed in the spiral turns of the cochlea. Be it noted, the receptive cells of the sense organs are immersed in fluid, and each sense organ is specifically sensitive, i.e. only to that form of energy which it has been evolved to receive through countless ages of evolution.

The nervous system is composed of myriads of nerve cells, and of nervous fibres, which are long and exceedingly slender processes of these cells formed of similar substance, each shielded and insulated by a double coat. The nerve cells and the nerves are arranged in an ordered plan which has been unravelled by ingenious methods. They connect all parts of the body one with another. Think of the whole telephone system of Britain linked up together with millions of receivers, thousands of local exchanges, hundreds of central exchanges, etc., the nervous system with its sense organs, sensory nerves, lower and higher nerve centres and motor nerves, is infinitely more intricate than that. The whole forms an interlacing feltwork formed of watery nerve cells and processes, and not only receives sensory stimuli and transmits them as motor impulses, but is more or less permanently modified by each sensory thrill which enters it, memorising each, more or less, for longer or shorter time according to its character or intensity. Thus the response of the nervous system to sensory excitation changes with education, habits form and character develops from birth to manhood, to decay again from manhood to old age, ceaselessly changing, but becoming graved on a certain plan. The making thereof depends on inborn qualities of the living substance—the conjugate product of the male and female parents, this moulded by environmental conditions, both in utero and after birth, by food, and the ceaseless instreaming of sensations. Depending on the nutrition of the cortex of the great brain, abrogated by narcotics, absent in sleep, consciousness of our being flickers from moment to moment, the product of the instreaming of sensations from the outer world and from our own body, and of memories of past sensations, aroused, by some present sensation. Conscious judgement arises from the balancing of present sensations with memorised sensations and leads to purposeful actions.

Beneath the conscious world an infinite host of functions are carried out unconsciously, functions depending on the nervous connection of one part with another, just as the common people carry out a host of actions through the telephone system without the cognisance of the government which is seated at the highest central exchange.

To find food, satisfy the sexual instinct, escape enemies, gain shelter from excessive physical changes of environment, the special senses and nervous system have then been evolved and perfected in the intricacy of their mechanism through vast æons of evolution. There is evidence that man has for some million years trod the earth; but the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch were evolved in the vast procession of lower animals which preceded him for those millions of years which reach back and ever back to the first generation of life.

The realisation of these facts saves the physiologist from being deceived, either by fraudulent tricks or those natural chances of human occurrence which occasion the belief of the credulous in telepathy. He recognises that the human nervous system is built on a common plan, and that it is to be expected that the sensory stimuli received from a given environmental condition will often arouse the same train of thought in two or more people, standing together, especially in those who habitually associate. Such coincidences of thought, which astonish the ignorant, are due to natural law. Human experience shows that judgements of fundamental importance which would, if transmittable to another at a distance by telepathy, win a fortune, save a defeat, etc., are never so transmitted. The Stock Exchange and the army in the field must have their telephone and telegraph systems and messengers. No more concentrated will to send information, which might bring succour, say from the artillery, could be given than by men in peril of their lives in the trenches, when the enemy came swarming over the top, but we know that with the wires cut and the human messengers killed no succour came. Neither does it come to the liner which, in full proud course with its freight of thousands of souls strikes an iceberg, unless the wireless mechanism be installed and operated so that the S.O.S. signal is despatched. Otherwise it sinks without trace, as the Germans advised their 'U' boats to let their victim merchant ships sink.

The phenomena of wireless telegraphy and of radio-active elements have led people to think that some direct means of communication of energy from one brain to another may be possible, that is without intervention of the special senses. There is not the least evidence in favour of this view; the evolution of the senses is wholly against it. It is true that all vital activity is accompanied by electrical change—by a flow of electrons—in the living matter, the nervous impulse itself may be so transmitted. Such electrical change by a special evolution of structure is magnified in the electric organ of certain fishes and used by them as a weapon of offence. It is then sensed just as an electric shock from a battery is sensed, and the intensity of the shock lessens inversely as the square of the distance. There is no evidence that the minute electrical changes accompanying nervous action in man are transmittable to a distance through space; the nerves are evolved to confine and convey these as nerve impulses to suitable receivers within their body whereby function is co-ordinated.

A radio-active element enters into the composition of the living matter, e.g. potassium. A nutritive fluid can be prepared from a watery solution of sodium calcium and potassium salts capable of keeping the excised heart of the frog in action. The place of potassium in this fluid can be taken by the energy radiated from radio-active material placed suitably near the weak solution of the other two salts which contains the heart. Too strong a radiation kills the heart. Wonderful as this new discovery is it is comparable with the well-known fact that the radiant energy of the sun—either heat rays or the cold ultraviolet rays of intense chemical action—while beneficent, when properly graded, kill the living substance which is over-exposed to them. Hence the evolution of the green colour of plants and the pigment in the skin of animals, which acts as screens.

It has recently been shown that trees pick up the long waves used in wireless telegraphy, and can be used as receivers, but there is no evidence that animals are sensitive to these waves. No one knew either of their existence or of that of magnetic storms until instruments were invented suitably tuned to pick up the waves of energy and demonstrate them to one or other of man's special senses—sight, hearing or touch.

Every invention of science goes to prove that knowledge enters only through the avenue of the senses, which are tuned to the receipt of certain forms of energy. Other forms of energy to which the senses are not tuned must be converted by instrumental means into a form of energy which can be sensed.

Contrary then to scientific evidence is the supposition that waves of energy proceed directly through space from the watery granular living substance of one brain, confined within skull and skin, and passes into the similar substance of another. If any such direct transmission and reception of energy were possible why were æons spent in the evolution of sense organs, and why is the labour of men spent in perfecting the means of communication of his thoughts by observation of the movements of expression, by speech, writing, semaphore, heliograph, telegraph and telephone and by waves of energy sent through wires or wireless space?

In The Road to Endor, we read how two clever officers, E. H. Jones and C. W. Hill, giving the whole time of a tedious captivity to evolving tricks of the business, successfully fooled a hundred of their fellow-officer prisoners, men of intelligence and education, into belief in telepathy. In the appendix of their book there is given a portion of their telepathy code to show the sort of system which may be worked, a code which allowed the communication of the names of hundreds of common articles, numbers, the names of all the officers in the camp, etc. They could use the code with, or without speaking; perfection in its use, the authors say, involved a good deal of memory work and constant practice. 'Nothing but the blankness of our days, and the necessity of keeping our minds from rusting could have excused the waste of time entailed by preparation for a thought-reading exhibition. It is hardly a fitting occupation for free men.' What these officers could do obviously the professional conjurer can do, no less the humbug and quack who swindles money out of the credulous and superstitious. Let no one give credence to telepathy till he or she has read this most amusing and educative book. The authors no less humbugged the camp by planchette writing whereby they transmitted messages supposed to come from disembodied spirits. They fooled not only their fellow-prisoners with these spirit messages, but the Turkish interpreter and Commandant of the camp, gaining thereby important concessions. They planned a daring method of escape which depended on exciting the cupidity of the Commandant and on a hunt for buried treasure, occupying many months of preparation, and only failing at the last through the unwitting interference of a brother officer. Some of their 'spirit' messages were actually transmitted through the Commandant to the War Office in Constantinople, so implicit became his obedience. What these two officers affected is unequalled by anything in Sir Oliver Lodge's evidence as set forth in Raymond. They give details of how they used chance remarks and trivial facts heard and memorised months beforehand, and of how they observed and were guided by the slightest variation in tone of answer or movement of their victims, which expressed interest and excitement or the reverse, and so built up a story of some past action which clinched belief. The hits were striking and memorised, and the misses unnoticed, forgotten—for such is the tendency of the human mind. Such are the methods of the professional medium, and in The Road to Endor they lie unravelled and fully exposed.

The physiologist recognises the tendency of those with unstable, nervous temperaments—e.g. hysterical girls—to gain interest and cause excitement at any cost of trouble in developing methods of deceit. Hence the ghostly visitations of houses, the mysterious bell-ringings, rappings, spillings of water, etc. I, myself, have personally come across and investigated two of these cases—one of a young, educated woman who played pranks on the house of her hosts, pouring water into their beds, etc.; the other of a servant-maid who caused the disappearance of meat from the larder, and dirtying the cat's feet made it make foot-marks on a perpendicular wall leading to the larder window, who spirited away the gardener's firewood and wrote mysterious letters in a feigned hand, the imprint of which were found in her blotting-book, and who reported she saw a mysterious woman prowling round the house.

The few eminent scientists who have expressed their belief in spiritualism are mostly physicists, e.g. Crookes, Oliver Lodge and W. Barrett—men who have not made a life-study of physiology and nervous disorders, who are not familiar with the attainments and methods of conjurers and professional impostors, and are shielded in their laboratories and home life from close acquaintance with human deceit and cunning. Their familiarity with the transmission of waves of energy in dead material, and through space leads them to concepts which cannot justly be applied to living beings. To the physiologist, who recognises the majestic unity of natural phenomena, belief in telepathy and spiritualism appear a form of materialism as gross as the ju-ju superstition of the Benin native.

Nothing can excite greater contempt than the mean trivialities which are served as communications from that infinite, silent universe wherein the energy of individual life sinks on death.

The belief in spiritualism works grave harm on ignorant, credulous people of nervous temperament, and fills the pockets of rascally impostors. Its practice should then be as sternly suppressed by the law as any other fraud and imposture. Dr. Culpin, in his valuable and thoughtful treatment of this subject, shows, inter alia, how the medium requires no less to be protected from deception and ruin of his own soul than does his dupe.

SPIRITUALISM AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER I

THE UNCONSCIOUS

From the moment of waking till we fall asleep again our thoughts are busy, one thought following another all day long without a break and each being in some way related to the preceding one. Memories come up into the stream, the outer world is constantly affecting it through our senses, and we tend to think that all our mind-work is done in this 'stream of consciousness'.

But beneath our stream of consciousness lies a deep sea of memories, feelings, and directive influences. All our previous experience is buried there, and no man knows how much he knows. Every one has experienced the sudden recollections which come up unsought when a sight, a sound, or a scent makes association with something long past and apparently forgotten; and not only our memories of things, places, and people, but our past mental processes themselves lie in this deep sea of the unconscious, to help or hinder us in the present or future.

I speak of the unconscious, though there are objections to the use of the word, which may lead to such a contradiction of terms as 'unconscious knowledge'. It is much more than a storehouse of memories: it is the seat of mental processes which take place unknown to us and are revealed at times in strange and unexpected ways. It comes into contact with the stream of consciousness, and, as we so often find in attempting to classify natural phenomena, there are no well-marked lines of demarcation between one and the other, though the extremes are definite enough.

The unconscious is not always a willing servant and often refuses to obey the wishes of its owner. Every one has at some time vainly tried to recall a name which is 'on the tip of the tongue', and one name after another is tried till perhaps the right one comes up and leaves us wondering where the difficulty was. There is, according to the teaching of some psychologists, always a reason for this failure to remember, though even an apparently ordinary example may need a skilful analysis to show how the failure arose and why the other names presented themselves. Slips of the tongue are likewise dependent upon unconscious influences, and, although I was once sceptical, a few examinations of my own slips have convinced me of the truth of this little theory. Here is an example of one of them, such as occurs often enough and would ordinarily be passed over without further examination:—

Sitting one evening with friends who were interested in this subject, I read aloud a paragraph from the book I was reading, and was asked the name of the author. My answer, after a slight pause, was 'Robert Brown'; it was immediately corrected by one of my friends, who pointed out that the author was Robert Smith (the names are fictitious), and called upon me for an explanation of the mistake. The first question was, 'Who is Brown?' and the only Brown I knew was a man concerning whom I had a few days before received a letter with information about him which led me to regard him with strong dislike. The next point was that we had been recently discussing the private life of Robert Smith, and I had manifested dislike towards his actions. Then I remembered that when I was asked the name of the author there had flashed into my consciousness the feeling that he was not precisely the sort of man I liked. Although the rest of the chain of thought was unknown to me at the time, yet it became plain, under my friends' cross-examination, that this feeling of dislike had called up the name of the other victim of my displeasure, though questions from my friends were necessary before I could remember to whom the other name referred.

The last point is quite characteristic, for there seems to be a definite resistance in the mind of the perpetrator of the slip against piecing together his thought processes, and the aid of some one else is necessary to enable, or force him, to do it; then he feels compelled to acknowledge the hidden thoughts. The difficulty in recognising and admitting the cause of such slips is due to their being so often the expression of feelings which the owner does not like to publish to the world or perhaps even acknowledge to himself.

But the unconscious is not always, or even often, such a useless intruder upon our everyday life. It economises our energies, and often takes us by short cuts to ends which would otherwise need continued reasoning. 'Intuition' is the product of previous experience, and rises into the consciousness as a finished judgement without the owner of the gift being aware of the factors concerned in its formation. One kind of intuition is improperly called in my profession 'clinical instinct', but, unlike instinct, it is a result of training and experience, and is never seen without them. Here is an example which came under my notice: An ophthalmic house-surgeon, busy with new patients, sees a man aged about thirty-five, who complains of failing sight, and without further investigation he writes on the man's book, 'Tobacco amblyopia?' and sends him in to his chief. Later on his chief asks him, 'How did you spot this case?' and the house-surgeon answers, 'I don't know, but he looked like it'. The chief agrees that there is something which can be seen but not described in the looks of a sufferer from this complaint. Now this house-surgeon, though keen on his work, had seen only a few cases of that disease, and I do not now accept his explanation of how he 'spotted' it. A man of thirty-five may find his sight failing from various causes, but the common ones are not many. If the cause had been 'long-sight', he would have complained that he could not see to read; certain general diseases causing loss of sight at that age would perhaps have visible symptoms; the man was too young for cataract, and his eyes looked healthy. In short, tobacco amblyopia was a reasonable guess, and, when we remember that the disease is caused by smoking strong pipe tobacco, and that the man who smokes that tobacco generally smells of it, it is fair to suppose that it was not the evidence of his eyes alone that guided the house-surgeon in his guess, though he was not conscious of any train of reasoning nor was he aware of the smell of stale tobacco.

This suggests that a stimulus may act upon our thoughts without our being conscious of the origin of the feeling produced, and this is what happens in connection with that well-known sensation, felt on visiting a new place, that one has been there before. If a close examination is made it will be found that there is really something—a picture, a scent, or even so slight a stimulus as a puff of warm air—which has stirred a memory in the unconscious; this memory fails to reach the consciousness in its entirety, or it would immediately be recognised as caused by the particular stimulus, but in its incomplete form it appears as a memory of nothing in particular. Such a memory being inconceivable it is at once joined on to the whole scene, and one feels 'I've surely been here before'. This feeling may be regarded as an intuition in its most useless and incomplete form, but its theoretical importance will be seen later.

Women exercise intuition more than do men, and up to a point this gives them an advantage, though it may annoy the male who prefers to find his reasons on the surface and call them logical.

'The reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell',

is a perfect example of intuition, and a full analysis of the unconscious of the poet would undoubtedly recall a wealth of reasons why. Still, intuition is likely to be a fallible guide, and the man who wishes to avoid trouble with his personal dislikes must always be prepared to check it by whatever conscious knowledge and reasoning power he may possess. The lines quoted above would be a poor defence against a charge of assault.

The person who is guided by intuition in some accustomed situation may be incapable of understanding why another person has not that power. I saw an example of this when I was making a short journey in the North Queensland bush with a white boy who had been reared in that district, but was a stranger to the particular locality in which we then were. It was a rainy day, and we were bound for a place which could be reached by following a stream down to the main river and then travelling up the latter, and this route I proposed to take. My companion showed astonishment at this, and said, pointing as it were along the other side of the triangle, 'But that's the way.' I agreed, but told him that I couldn't find the way and should get 'bushed' if I tried. He could not understand, but we set off for a ride of some nine to ten miles through fairly dense timber with the boy as guide. In vain I asked him how he kept his course; in similar circumstances I should have marked a tree as far ahead as possible and ridden towards it, marking another before I reached the first, and so on. All he could say was, 'That's the way', and I puzzled him by my questions more than he puzzled me by his ability to go straight to our destination.

The sense of direction is of course well known amongst animals, and I have often in my bush-days confidently trusted my horse to take me to his and my home on the darkest of nights. Although one talks of the 'sense of direction', there is no need to assume anything more than ordinary sense perceptions interpreted by the unconscious workings of the mind. The man who is over-anxious about his capabilities cannot allow his unconscious to take charge of his thoughts in this way. I was always afraid of being lost in the bush and always preoccupied with the need for carefully watching my course; therefore, although I could find my way, I never developed a 'sense of direction'.

To sum up, the unconscious is a collection of mental processes, memories, desires, and influences of infinite variety which are not always or even often perceived as such by our conscious mind, but the presence of which may and does influence our thoughts and actions. By its aid we obtain results the factors of which are unknown to us, and of which we fail to recognise the origin, and in it is stored not only what we remember but also what we forget. It is in relation to our stream of consciousness and normally blends with it, but the more independently we can allow it to operate the more surely does it reach its end in certain cases.

I must add that Freud introduces a foreconscious to indicate the mind-contents which are accessible to the consciousness, but are not of it, but for the sake of simplicity I have avoided the use of that word. The reader must bear in mind that such terms are used to describe not phenomena, but conceptions. Newspapers, the voices of men in the train or the street, marks on ballot-papers, are all phenomena, but 'public opinion' is only a conception useful to facilitate the expression of ideas. If one asks, 'Where is this unconscious and what does it look like?', I can only answer by asking, 'Where is this "public opinion" and what does it look like?'

The same caution is necessary in regard to other phrases. The stream of consciousness and dissociation are conceptions only, and are not intended to indicate the existence of things having relation to each other in space; the words are used as convenient means to sum up processes which I hope to show really take place.

CHAPTER II

COMPLEXES

Every man likes to think that his creed, religious, political, or social, is founded upon reason; but let the reader consider the beliefs of his acquaintances and he will soon realise that they depend far more upon early training, social position, and the general influence of surroundings than upon any reasoning process. After this exercise let him turn his critical powers upon his own beliefs and examine closely how far they are dependent upon reason or upon influences which he has not recognised before.

Who can say that, in the days when Home-Rulers and anti-Home-Rulers abounded, the average voter was swayed by a reasoned knowledge of the subject? Yet he was quite sure that his side was right and the other wrong, and found it hard to understand how any sane man could own the opinions the other fellows held. Let us picture two neighbours of opposite political beliefs:—if they are both keen gardeners they may exchange views about methods and manures, and in case of difference of opinion one will possibly convince the other by argument. On other matters, too, they will mutually be open to conviction. If one favours Ilfracombe for a holiday and the other swears by Torquay, the latter may decide to try Ilfracombe for a change. But let them discuss Home Rule till the crack of doom and neither will convince the other by any process of reasoning; yet each will believe firmly that his opinions are the results of reason, finding an infinity of argument to support them.

Or let anyone start a discussion on a so-called moral question, such as polygamy. He will arouse the warmest expressions of opinion that polygamy is sinful, absurd, and unworkable, and may point in vain to such countries as China, where it apparently works with no more trouble than occurs with our system. Reasons will be showered on him, but scarcely anyone will admit that he objects to polygamy because he has been taught to regard monogamy as the only proper state of marriage.

A man, honestly believing that he is always actuated by certain moral principles, may do things which others regard as opposed to those principles, and if approached on the subject will be greatly annoyed and produce a chain of argument to justify his actions.

Scarcely any of us are free from these failings; certain beliefs we keep stored away, allowing nothing to interfere with them. They are placed in logic-tight compartments and carefully guarded by a pseudo-reasoning which satisfies our desire for logical explanation.

To this pseudo-reasoning is given the name of 'rationalisation', and, lest anyone may be offended by finding the same term applied to the process by which lunatics defend their delusions, I will add that there is no dividing line between health and disease, and the modes of thought of the insane are not so very different from those of the ordinary man.

To return now to the subject of 'logic-tight compartments'. Each contains a collection of ideas which are treated by the owner in a special way, cherished and guarded carefully from those forces which may cause modification. At the same time he will probably refuse to admit that they influence his consideration of certain questions related to them. The more logic-tight the compartment is, the more warmly does its owner defend it; but where plain reasoning is concerned few men can be roused to enthusiasm. Even though there may be people who regard the reasonings of Euclid as purely appeals to the emotions, what mathematician could grow excited about a man who denied the truth of the Fifth Proposition? But to run counter to a man's political or social beliefs is a sure way to raise the controversial temperature.

As will be easily seen, rationalisation is of everyday occurrence with all of us, and the man who rationalises always believes he is reasoning.

Consider now the business rogue who makes a success of his roguery and then launches out as a philanthropist, still continuing his roguery as a permanent side-line. Such cases are not unknown, and the man seems able to carry on without any sense of conflict between his two activities. Or consider those not uncommon instances where a man prominent in religious work is detected in some financial crime; it is usual to regard him as a hypocrite who has used religion as a cloak, but it is equally probable that he was honestly religious, that his earliest steps into crime were reconciled to his principles by rationalisations, and, as he advanced, a logic-tight compartment was built up to prevent conflict between his wrong-doing and his self-respect.

In these examples we have a part of the stream which comes into contact with the main stream of consciousness only by means of a process of rationalisation which allows the two to exist without great mental conflict, but this will never be admitted by the owner, though other people may be acutely conscious of it.

Here, to simplify explanation, I must introduce the word complex as used to indicate a system of ideas having a common centre,[2] whether the system is present in the consciousness or exists only in the unconscious.

Our ideas of morality, religion, or politics form complexes, as do our desires and disappointments. An ardent photographer or naturalist is possessed of a complex concerning his hobby, and this complex tends to turn his thoughts in the corresponding direction. If a keen botanist and an equally keen amateur photographer are travelling by train each views the scenery according to his complex: the one might note the trees and plants, their flowering or bursting into leaf, and how they vary with the soil, and might speculate as to what finds a closer view might produce; the other sees the same objects, but is busy composing pictures, thinking out distances and exposures, or differences of light and shade.

The man with 'a bee in his bonnet' gives an example of a single powerful complex; but all our thinking is a matter of complexes except on those rare occasions when logic alone is concerned, such as the consideration of a problem of mathematics. Scientific men are prone to believe that their mind-work is purely logical; so it is, up to a certain point, and the more exact the science the less room there is for thinking in complexes; but the reception of a new theory is always opposed by those whose firmly established complexes are offended by it. The aim of scientific training is to eliminate complex thinking and substitute logic, and in the exact sciences this is practically attained; but as soon as the trained man forsakes his laboratory or workshop methods he is at the mercy of his complexes and becomes the ordinary rationalising human being.

There is a great difference between a complex, such as photography, of which the influence is recognised and admitted by its owner, and another, such as a political one, where the influence is strongly denied. The latter is kept in a logic-tight compartment and reconciled to the reason by rationalisations.

Instincts have their abode in the unconscious and differ from acquired influences in being inborn and common to the race. It is difficult to determine what emotions and desires are truly inborn, as Benjamin Kidd shows in a valuable personal observation.[3]

He found a wild duck's nest as the young birds had just emerged from the egg, the mother-bird flying off at his approach. He took the young birds out of the nest and they showed no fear, nestling from time to time on his feet. Then he moved away and saw the mother-bird return with 'the great terror of man' upon her; next he approached the group again, but the mother-bird flew away with warning quacks and the little ones scattered to cover. He found one of them, but it was now 'a wild transformed creature trembling in panic which could not be subdued'.

McDougall, whose work on Instinct holds high rank, places 'flight' with its emotion of 'fear' among the primary instincts. The apperception of danger is necessary in order to call up this instinct, and Kidd shows that when once the fear of danger from man is planted in the young birds it becomes integrated with the instinct and inseparable from it. Acquired tendencies associated with emotion can therefore share the strength of instincts (the application of this fact is the theme of Mr. Kidd's book), and we accordingly find the results of early training accepted by the consciousness as perfect and unquestionable. This same characteristic applies, in a modified degree, to all complex thinking. Carry on an argument with an intelligent man on any complex-governed subject, and he will nearly always come down to the bed-rock foundation that he believes his view to be right because he feels it. Then you may cease the discussion.

It is by this reasoning that we can understand the attributes of the German mind. The German had certain complexes concerning the Right of Might so built into his unconscious that he gave them the obedience that is demanded by an instinct, and nothing short of national disaster could induce him to relinquish them.

CHAPTER III

FORGETTING AND REPRESSION

How we remember is an old and unsolved question, but few people think of asking how we forget: and yet one problem is as important as the other. I cannot answer either except by putting a new one, which is, 'Do we ever forget?'

If we specify the factors concerned in memory and say that it depends upon impression, retention, and recall, then what do we mean by 'forgetting'? If an event makes no impression upon the mind there is neither remembering nor forgetting; if there is retention of a memory, but one cannot recall it, it is nevertheless stored in the mind and may yet be revived by some association. So that the only certain factor in forgetting is the loss of power of recall, for what is apparently quite forgotten may still be retained in the unconscious.

Can we voluntarily forget? If by that is meant, 'Can we voluntarily lose the power of voluntary recall?' I must, strange as it seems at first sight, assert that we can, though I make the proviso that 'voluntarily' is a word with a very elastic meaning, and one whose definition would open up the never-ended argument about Free-will. I will take refuge in a quotation[4]:—

'We ought not to assume that a clear and full anticipation or idea of the end is an essential condition of purposive action, and we have no warrant for setting up the instances in which anticipation is least incomplete as alone conforming to the purposive type, and for setting apart all instances in which anticipation is less full and definite as of a radically different nature.'

Expressing this idea in the terms employed in the previous chapters, we can picture an action as being produced by motives in consciousness, and these motives as being influenced to a greater or less extent by the instincts, emotions, and desires of the unconscious. Every action is influenced by the unconscious, however voluntary it may appear. The young man who seeks the society of a maiden may think he is acting voluntarily and with full consciousness of the end in view, but the end is often visualised by the friends of the pair before the young man realises where his instincts and emotions have led him.

The man who resolutely refuses to think of an unpleasant experience and shuts off the thought of it whenever it rises into his consciousness may not have the intention of placing it beyond reach of voluntary recall, but he may succeed in so doing, and the process by which the end was reached was voluntary. That we have this power is shown by the investigation of war-strained soldiers of the type said to be suffering from 'shell-shock'. These men are often stout fellows who have fought long and bravely, and whose condition is a result of the emotions they have suffered rather than of any particular shell explosion. Their typical symptoms are depression, dreams of battle horrors, tremors and stammerings, and strange fears without apparent cause.

In an ordinary case there is great difficulty in persuading the man to talk about his war experiences: he says plainly that he doesn't want to talk about them, or may persistently avoid the subject, or he gives a poor account and shows difficulty in recall, or he claims to have forgotten and requires stimulating in order to remember, or he may have an absolute blank in his memory for certain periods.

Here we see all grades of the result of trying to forget, and the more successful the result the more difficult is the cure; for though the memories are repressed their associated emotions cannot be so dealt with, but remain in consciousness exaggerated and distorted. The dependence of an emotion upon a repressed memory prevents the sufferer from knowing its cause, and the sufferer from an apparently causeless emotion is to be pitied, for he can see no end to his trouble.

A man who was afraid of walking in the dark for fear of falling into holes which he knew only existed as a product of his fancy, affords a simple example of this condition. He said that his fear was absurd, therefore it was useless to point out to him its absurdity; the proper course was to show that it was not absurd, that it had a cause, and that the cause was something in the past which, when recognised, could be reasoned away. Fortunately the cause was easily found by any one with a knowledge of modern war: there was soon brought to light a 'forgotten' memory of his mates being drowned in shell-holes at night, and the fear disappeared as the patient learnt to look his memories in the face and not sink them into his unconscious.

More striking, however, are those cases in which a man forgets all his war experiences, and, though he is ready to believe that he has spent, say, two years in France, has no recollection of them. Such cases are not rare, the loss of memory often including part or all of the patient's previous life. One man could only remember the last three months of his life and failed to recognise his own father, though his memory was subsequently restored; this loss, occurring suddenly, could hardly be in any degree voluntary, though it served the purpose of excluding many horrible memories from his consciousness. Another nervous lad was so constituted that he forgot all incidents that frightened him, only to be haunted by the emotions attached to them. Seeing a steeple-jack fall was forgotten, and produced nightmares for years; a practical joke gave him a terror of the dark; his sister calling to him when burglars were in the house gave him hallucinations of voices; and minor incidents were equally forgotten, each producing its own symptoms. As the individual memories were brought up from his unconscious he went through the fright again, but the associated symptoms soon disappeared.

In these pathological losses of memory, whether for one incident or for a whole period, it is important to note that the patient does not necessarily recognise the incident when he is told of it, just as the lad mentioned above failed to recognise his father when he met him. A patient may in a sleep-walking state act as if performing a definite action, such as bayoneting one of the enemy, and when awake deny all knowledge of such an incident; yet the memory of it may return later with overwhelming emotion. This failure to recognise a personal experience is of great importance in the consideration of some spiritualist phenomena.

It requires little thought to realise that the only memories we try to repress are those that conflict with our other feelings or desires, and their repression is to some extent tolerated by a healthy man and may be regarded to that extent as a normal process.

But in addition to the repression of unpleasant memories there are other ways of forgetting. It has been assumed that each individual has a limit to his capacity for remembering, and that when that limit is reached fresh memories can be stored up only by casting out old ones. Whether that be so or not, it is certain that we can recall to consciousness only a tiny fraction of our past experiences, and no one can say what proportion that fraction bears to the whole contents of the storehouse of the unconscious. Let two men meet and recall old school-days spent together: one memory brings up another, schoolboy phrases and terms of speech appear as it were spontaneously, and by their united efforts the two recall far more than the sum of their recollections before the meeting, and still neither knows how much is left untouched.

The ordinary man reads many books, and each one leaves some impression and has some influence upon his later thoughts, though in time the recollection, not only of the contents of the book, but even of having read it, may fade away. This is the explanation of some cases of literary plagiarism: a previously read phrase comes up from the unconscious, and all recognisable connections with memory having been lost it is greeted as a fresh creation and given rank accordingly.

There is still another type of forgetting: most of us know the man who 'draws the long bow', who embellishes his story and embroiders it with imagined incidents, whilst we listen and wonder how much the narrator himself believes. Fishermen's stories and snake yarns are examples, and one explains the mental process of the story-teller by saying, 'He's told the story so often that at last he believes it himself.' The process is really one of forgetting and is closely allied to the repression of an unpleasant memory, for the man is the victim of a mental conflict: on the one side is his desire to tell a good story, and on the other is his moral complex which forbids a lie, so he solves the conflict by forgetting that the embroideries are inventions. This type is an important one, and what I shall call the 'repression of the knowledge of deceit' plays an important part in the explanation of the abnormal phenomena with which this book deals. In tracing the development of the abnormal we must start with what is nearest the normal, and the man who embroiders his story gives an illustration of the simplest form of this particular repression.

Now, just as memories are repressed because they were repugnant to the other contents of the consciousness, so other complexes may be repugnant and meet the same fate. To be torn by conflicting emotions is the fate of most people at some time or other, and the conflict between two complexes may be solved in various ways. The healthy way is to face the difficulty, to reason it out, and reach a conclusion by which action may be guided; another way, a common one, is to seclude one complex in a logic-tight compartment and so avoid the conflict. The man who uses sharp or shady methods in the city and is a gentle-minded philanthropist in other walks of life is using the latter method, and will produce such rationalisations as 'business is business' when the contents of his different compartments need protection from each other.

But for some people such methods are impossible: either they cannot directly solve the conflict or they are too self-critical to build a logic-tight compartment, and in such cases a repression of one of the opposing complexes may result. In this way complexes concerning ambitions and desires may be repressed, and so may those concerning fears and dislikes. The youth put to an uncongenial trade, the man or woman married to an unsuitable partner, may find no escape from the position and decide to bear it and forget its anxiety. How far this succeeds depends upon the previously existing tendencies of the individual: he may suffer no evil from the repression or, like the soldier's repressed war memories, it may manifest itself by indirect means and the unfortunate sufferer becomes a victim of one of the varied forms of neurosis.

The day-dreams of youth are rarely openly expressed: no one can tell what fantasies a child may have, and many of us are familiar with the thoughtful child who sits lost in meditation and presents an impenetrable barrier to the grown-up who would enter into the secrets of the day-dream. These fancies may be, and probably are, completely forgotten, but they can still lie in the unconscious, and Freud and his followers claim that they influence us throughout life.

CHAPTER IV

DISSOCIATION

As you sit reading this book you perhaps cross your legs or move to an easier position. Did you think, 'My leg is beginning to feel tired, I'll shift it?' Did you even know you were shifting it? Watch a friend next time he drives you in his car. If he is an expert driver he will talk to you whilst his car slips through the traffic, and handle the various gears and controls as occasion arises without apparently giving any thought to the action; moreover, if you direct his attention to what he is doing he may do it with less accuracy than before—like the billiard player who carefully studies a shot and then makes a miss-cue. It is not sufficient to call the driving automatic, though that word is often used to describe actions of this type, for it is dependent upon innumerable stimuli that reach the driver's mind through all his senses and there produce sensations and impulses which have to be translated into actions. There is much real mind-work involved, and we must regard the driving as carried on by a part of his consciousness which is temporarily apart from his main stream, the latter being devoted to your intellectual entertainment.

So far as it concerns this example the splitting-off is normal. Most of us develop such capability in some way or other: the skilful pianist will talk while playing from sight a difficult passage, and the smoker carries out puffing actions by his little split-off stream whilst the main stream is solving the problem of the moment. All sorts of trivial actions are done unknown to the doer. For instance, a man whilst reading may have the habit of turning a pencil over and over and if any one gently removes the pencil he will reach out for it and continue to turn it, whilst his main stream knows nothing of the little by-play.

We see that consciousness is not fully and evenly aware of all our actions; some actions with their accompanying mental process can be carried on by an independent stream and, as in the case of the pianist, the streams are of such balanced complexity that we can regard them as co-equal. Others, like turning over the pencil, are associated with such a lack of awareness that they hardly seem conscious, and if they are regarded as due to a split-off stream the stream is a very minor one.

This loss of awareness can be carried further, and actions involving complicated processes can be performed without the main personality knowing of them. The easiest example by way of illustration is automatic writing, often carried out by Planchette, which is a small platform mounted on wheels and bearing a pencil whose point touches a sheet of paper. If two people, sitting opposite each other, place their finger-tips upon the platform it immediately begins to move, for unless the muscular push of one operator is absolutely balanced by that of the other the apparatus moves away from one of them; the other person straightway resists the movement and pushes in an opposite direction, and thus a see-saw motion is kept up which the operators cannot stop. The resulting scrawls on the paper may be deciphered according to fancy, but with practice a legible product is obtained; further, some people are able to concentrate the mind upon, or in other words fill the stream of consciousness with, another set of ideas by means of talking or reading, so that the automatic writing is carried on by a split-off stream of which the main stream is unaware. One person can use Planchette alone, though the experiment is oftener carried out as described above because unintended movements are more readily produced by two operators.

By this trick of splitting-off, or dissociation, the operator is able to allow ideas and memories from the unconscious to come to the surface unrestrained by the cramping control of the consciousness; hence the product of the automatism is usually fantastic and imaginative, though memories are available which may be beyond the reach of the consciousness.

An excellent example of this dissociation is given in The Gate of Remembrance, a book which I shall consider later.

The view might be held that the dissociated stream is really a part of the unconscious whose results make themselves manifest in the consciousness, as I described in the first chapter when writing about intuition; but in automatic writing the main personality is not aware of the results: the dissociated writer does not know what he has written until he reads it, and it may be as much news to him as to a bystander.

The two streams of thought flowing side by side exemplify one kind of dissociation of consciousness, and others of this kind will be described later; this type I shall call continuous dissociation, but there is another which at first sight seems quite different and of which I will give an example:—

An ex-soldier suffered from fears and depressions which made his life a misery, and an endeavour was made to find the cause in a repressed memory. His account of events was complete up to a certain time, but there his recollections ceased; then one day something touched up the hidden memory and in the presence of his doctor he went through a most dramatic scene, showing horror at falling down a dark dug-out upon the bodies of dead Germans and at subsequent experiences which had strongly affected him and whose revival produced again the same emotions as the original events. At the next interview the following dialogue took place:—

'I want you to tell me about falling down the dug-out.'

'What dug-out, sir?'

'The one you told me about last time.'

'I don't remember telling you about it.'

'Yes you do, the dug-out at....'

'No, I don't remember any dug-out at....'

There was no reason why the man should lie, and his expression of surprise and absence of other emotion seemed indicative of truth. When the doctor made the man close his eyes and thus shut out his present surroundings the memory returned with strong emotional reaction, less intense, however, than on the former occasion.

This case can be explained by regarding his repressed complex as lying in the unconscious, held there by the repugnance he felt towards it; then during the interview with the doctor it rose into consciousness and swept every other thought away. The stream of consciousness was suddenly cut off, its place being taken by this new stream with its recollections and emotions, and when the ordinary consciousness resumed its flow there was no connection between it and the dramatic episode which had interrupted, so that all memory of the episode was lost.

We can picture the repressed complex not as lying in the unconscious but as forming a dissociated stream flowing parallel with the main one, and showing its presence by producing those apparently causeless fears and depressions from which the patient suffered, till it suddenly swept aside the main stream and took its place. This alternative view shows the absence of any sharp division between the concept of the unconscious and of a dissociated consciousness, and at the same time brings this abrupt dissociation into harmony with continuous dissociation. Such a dissociation, but with less emotional contents, can persist for a long time, the subject living, as it were, the life of the dissociated stream. Then we have a man with no memory of his previous life, but whose repressed memories, desires, or troubles, forming a complex in the unconscious, have finally broken across the stream of consciousness and taken its place as a second personality. Such instances have been described[5] as 'double personalities', and to this group belong those cases in which a man is found wandering with all memory of his name or associations gone. In soldiers with repressed war memories the repression may include the whole of their war experiences, and they can tell nothing of, say, a year spent in France; here, as long as the repression continues, there is the potentiality of the outbreak of a second personality.

The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, stripped of those portions which R. L. Stevenson introduced to make it suit his public—the bodily change and the drugs which produced it—can be read with interest as a study of the development of a dissociation, the main personality being aware of the dissociated stream but unable to control it when once the splitting-off had been accomplished.

A less fanciful story of a dissociation is given in A Tale of Two Cities, where the unfortunate Dr. Manette, having learnt shoemaking whilst a prisoner in the Bastille, insists on retaining his tools and material after he is rescued and brought to England, in times of stress secluding himself for a period and living his old life again, working at the old employment and hardly aware of the real world around him.

The source of the story might be made a subject of research by the Dickens Fellowship, for it is too accurate to be purely a fantasy of Charles Dickens, who, like all of his craft that live, was no mean psychologist. Even Dr. Manette's insistence upon retaining his tools, unaware as he was of his own reason for doing so, is consistent with what really happens when a dissociated stream influences the personality.

The different degrees of dissociation can be represented diagramatically. (See opposite page.)

It is to be noted that the dissociation may be the result of purposive action on the part of the subject, though, as will be seen in later chapters, an entirely wrong interpretation may be given to it by the person most concerned and by other people as well; or it may be the result of a repression, and in that case any interpretation given by the subject must necessarily be a wrong one, for he is ignorant of its cause on account of the mechanism of repression, or, to put it differently, if he knows the cause it is no longer repressed.

Two streams of equal value and under the same control. Examples: The pianist and the motor-car driver. A normal phenomenon, but linked to the next class by cases of absent-mindedness.

Two streams, one being the ordinary stream of consciousness and the other a stream not under the control of the main personality, which is concerned only with the ordinary stream. Examples: automatic writing, water-divining and hysteria (see Chapter VIII). Continuous dissociation.

A continuous dissociation with a sudden irruption of the dissociated into the main stream, completely replacing it for a period. Examples: The case of the ex-soldier and those of double personality; also somnambulisms and spiritualist trances. Abrupt dissociation.

Once again I will emphasise the difficulty of drawing a line between normal and abnormal. My boy guide referred to in Chapter I was as near normal as could be, though the means by which he kept his course might be described as a product of dissociation. If he had been imaginative and I credulous he could have foisted upon me a supernatural explanation of his powers and taken his place with clairvoyants and water-diviners. But there are manifestations of distinctly abnormal character to explain which is the object of this book, and for the people producing these manifestations I propose the name of Dissociates, since dissociation is the key to the understanding of the phenomena they present.

The logic-tight compartments previously described are to be regarded as partial dissociations to which we are all liable, the partitions being unrecognised by their owner and the contents kept apart from the modifying influences of the main personality. Hence when the onlooker becomes aware of the presence of such a dissociation he does not judge the contents of the compartment by the same standard that he applies to the person as a whole.

There is nothing fresh in this point of view, which is admitted when virulent political opponents can be good friends by each ignoring the dissociated prejudices of the other, or in everyday life when in some circles the discussion of political or religious subjects is avoided for the sake of good fellowship.

Extreme dissociation by reason of a logic-tight compartment is shown in that kind of insanity in which the sufferer behaves as an ordinary being with ordinary actions and ideas except for the influence of a systematised delusion (generally persecutory or grandiose) of most irrational type which is impregnable to explanation or argument. On all other points the man is sane, and the purely mental origin of the disease is suggested by his remaining in good health and without mental deterioration apart from the delusional system, in this respect differing greatly from the sufferers from most other forms of insanity. Some psychiatrists claim to have traced the delusions back to repressions that took place in early life.[6]

CHAPTER V

WATER-DIVINING

Water-divining, or dowsing, is accepted in many parts of the world and used as a practical method of locating underground water. Official bodies as well as private individuals employ practitioners of the art, and among people generally there is a strong belief in its genuineness.

It is carried out by means of a forked twig, hazel by traditional preference, which is grasped in the dowser's two hands and is said to be twisted upwards by an unknown force when there is water underground. As an addition it is sometimes claimed that the twig will indicate the presence of metals by being twisted downwards.

Believers in the twisting of the twig are generally ignorant that it was formerly used in the pursuit and detection of criminals and the finding of buried treasure[7] and that it was being used in the year 1918 to locate a seam of coal. Going farther afield, we learn that the witch-findings practised by African savages are sometimes carried out by means of a stick which points at the victim.

Such varied uses demand a new and complicated system of physics if the results are due to any forces external to the diviner, but my own observations satisfy me that we need not overturn our ordinary conceptions of cause and effect to explain the different properties of the divining-rod.

When a friend told me of the presence of a dowser in the neighbourhood and gave me a would-be convincing account of how he had seen him at work, how the twig was twisted upwards with such force that my informant was unable to depress it, and how the man was employed by engineers to tell them where to sink wells, I became interested and asked to see the marvel. The resulting experiment, though conducted haphazard, was instructive as regards both water-divining and credulity.

The man broke a forked twig from a bush, and, holding it in the way described later, was directed down a path leading to a tennis-court. Along this path no water was known to exist, but the twig rose twice. Beneath the tennis-court ran a water-pipe which had burst during the previous winter, and of which the position was known to six at least of those present. This pipe was located by the man, and he demonstrated it again and again by walking across it, the twig rising each time. It rose again when he was directed past a cook-house. Next he was sent along a path leading from the cook-house to the main building, and the twig rose several times. He said, 'There is water all along here', and was told that there was a pipe running along the path. Here I intervened and asked him to try across one edge of the path, which was about six feet wide. The twig rose, and, just as on the tennis-court, he walked again and again across the indicated line, the twig rising every time, though as a fact the pipe lay on the other side of the path. He explained to us that God gave 'the gift' to Moses, and that now only one man in ten thousand received the gift.

When he left I took a twig and showed that I had the gift, or, at least, that the twig performed in my hands exactly as it had done in his. 'But', said my friends, 'he found the pipe on the tennis-court.' It mattered nothing that he had found water twice within a few yards where none was known, or that at least six of the bystanders knew of the existence of the water-pipe and were ready to show their anticipation as he approached it and their delight when he located it, nor that he located the other pipe on the wrong side of the path. The movements of the twig might be a fraud, his other finds might be failures or guesses, but his one success was enough for them. Even the Padre, when I said that the man had the face typical of a mystic, was moved to ask, 'But may not a mystic have powers of which we know nothing?'

In short, the rising of the twig was produced by the man himself, and his findings were guesses, aided by ordinary knowledge as to where water-pipes are to be expected, and more especially aided by the attitude and expression of the bystanders.

Yet by his manner he showed that he plainly believed in his own powers: otherwise his reference to the gift of God was simple blasphemy, and he seemed an earnest man.

Fig 2

How can we explain this belief on the one hand and the trickery on the other? First let us examine the mechanism involved in the upward twisting of the twig. Suppose you take a tough and springy forked twig, each arm of the fork being about nine or ten inches long, hold it with the apex away from you, and, with your palms facing together and your finger-tips pointing upward, place the thumb and little finger of each hand inside the fork at the places marked T and F. Now close each hand, and you have each arm of the fork firmly gripped; next, keeping your elbows well in, bend the arms of the fork outward as in Fig. 2, with your palms now looking upward. You will then find that a sort of trigger action tends to occur, and by a slight pressure of your ring-fingers against the twig you can make it rise. Still gripping firmly and pressing your hands a little together you will find it continues to rise, and by bending your hands downwards at the wrists and pressing your elbows to your side you can easily persuade an observer, and perhaps yourself, that you are trying to hold the twig down. You may even find that it leaves a pressure mark on your little finger, which you can show as evidence of how you tried to restrain it. If one arm of the fork is weaker than the other it may break, and that of course will be conclusive proof of the working of a mysterious power. So we see there is nothing very strange in the man believing that his muscular action was not responsible for the moving of the twig; but his two-sided make-up—piety on one side and trickery on the other—can best be explained by a dissociation, with repression of the knowledge of trickery as far as the main personality is concerned. We might split up his consciousness like this:—

Perhaps it is unfair to talk of trickery; he may have deceived himself from the start and never known that he was deceiving any one.

At first I pictured him as learning the trick from some one else, trying it on with his friends—maybe across a bridge over a stream—and being taken seriously, and then, when he could not escape from his reputation without owning up to the fraud, being compelled for his peace of mind to repress the deceit complex and carry on as a Dissociate. The man himself would be the last person to gain information from, for his repression, however it began, is now complete.

The discussion that followed the experiment was instructive: most of the bystanders appeared to believe in the existence of some unknown force of nature operating through a specially-gifted person, the mechanism of the twig being unnoticed and the greatest emphasis placed upon the one success. I have no doubt that in a short time the memory of that one success would be the only part of the performance not forgotten. Moreover, if any one of the bystanders had told me the story, describing fully and fairly everything he had observed, I should have been unable to criticise the facts thus presented and denial of the miraculous would have been ineffectual; yet these bystanders were all educated and intelligent men.

With the information gained from this experiment I was able to understand the next example. The subject was mentioned in a provincial newspaper, and incidentally a story was told of how a dowser who also had the power of locating metals was able by means of the twig to indicate the position of two sovereigns concealed under a carpet, showing the relationship of water-divining to some forms of 'thought reading.' In the next number of the paper appeared 'some corroborative testimony' from a well-known local gentleman, who was also a dowser, and some of his testimony I will quote:—

'I have had twigs as thick as my little finger twist off and break after scoring my hand until it was red. The muscles of the arm become contracted when the bodily magnetism is affected by the presence of water, and a strong spring will make my arms ache badly. It is quite true that only running water affects me, and on one occasion I had a curious example of this. It was on a Saturday evening, and I quite accidentally found the presence of water close to a house where my sister was living. The following day I told her about the spring and tried the spot, when no effect was observable. On enquiry she told me that there was a pipe underneath connected with a ram which was always put out of action on Sunday.'

Further on, referring to another incident, he says:—

'I had dowsed the ground, and in addition had noted, with the help of an eminent geologist, the geological strata. The dowsing satisfied me that the ground was full of water: the geological survey suggested the best place to collect it. I suppose the power must have something to do with the composition of the blood and nerve cells, but I have never yet come across a scientific explanation of the power, which is certainly possessed by many people.'

Here we have a country gentleman of indisputable honesty and intelligence attributing to unknown forces such movements and sensations as any one can produce who follows the preceding instructions, water or no water being present. The 'bodily magnetism' is a pure rationalisation and beyond discussion, but the story of the pipe and the ram is different: a ram is a pump worked by a stream of water and the noise of it is carried a long way, especially along any pipe connected with it, and if I told this gentleman that he had heard the noise of the ram he would strenuously deny the possibility, and might challenge me to test whether I could hear the noise; but I have no dissociated water-divining personality unhampered by my conscious efforts and trained to pick up such indications. It would seem incredible to him that he heard the noise of the ram on the Saturday, failed to hear it on the Sunday, deduced that the water was no longer running, and then showed this deduction by refraining from tilting up the twig; but with our knowledge of dissociation and repression, and of the working of the unconscious, we can understand all this taking place without his main stream of consciousness being aware of it.

The reference to geology is also instructive; he evidently has a knowledge of that subject, and he might perhaps admit that the indications of the twig coincided with the geological indications, though he is unaware of and cannot admit any dependence of the former on the knowledge of the latter.

Thus in both these cases the likelihood of the presence of water is only a matter of observation—skilled and minute no doubt—and the movement of the twig is in no way caused by any physical forces except those exercised by the muscles of the dowser. That the second personality of the dowser is able to deceive him is now explained, and his obvious honesty so influences non-critical observers that their credulity is no cause for wonder.

An example of water-divining without dissociation was given me by Dr. W. H. Bryce, of Fifeshire, whose words are as follows:—

'There was an old Scot who was reputed to be very skilful in finding water and who was so employed throughout his neighbourhood. He was not above using the twigs, but told me they were no use, but he judged entirely by the lie of the land. In his own language he always looked for the "rise of the metals" in looking for water. A diviner came to the neighbourhood and located water in two places. In the one place the old countryman said, "How can he get water there? Now at the top of the den where the metals rise each way he might get it." Bores were sunk at both places that the diviner indicated, but no water was got.'

This man would probably have refused such a test as locating a water-pipe, for his conclusions were based upon conscious reasoning and he would be incapable of making guesses or picking up indications from the behaviour of bystanders; therefore in the eyes of the credulous he would be inferior to the wonder-working dowser.

One repeatedly hears stories of how the dowser has found water when geologists have failed, but the man who is sufficiently uncritical to accept the working of the twig as due to some strange 'gift' is likely to be as credulous in observation and beliefs concerning the rest of the phenomena.

CHAPTER VI

SUGGESTION

'The power of suggestion' is a plausible explanation of varied phenomena. By it the feelings of a crowd are swayed, fashions are spread, mistakes are made, and beliefs are imposed upon the multitude, and in the production of hypnotic and hysterical manifestation the words 'power of suggestion' and 'personal magnetism' are sufficient explanation of all things visible and invisible.

'Personal magnetism' and its kindred phrases implying the existence of some subtle physical force are, except when used figuratively, mere incoherences, but suggestion is an undoubted cause of certain effects and we must try to understand the meaning of the word.

McDougall defines suggestion as 'a process of communication resulting in the acceptance with conviction of the communicated proposition in the absence of logical grounds for its acceptance'.[8]

Our thinking (apart from the observation of cause and effect in the small affairs of ordinary life) is generally a matter of complexes, logic being concerned only in rare cases; hence if we use the above definition the greater part of our accepted propositions owe their acceptance to suggestion. This is true as regards most of our political, religious, and social beliefs, and, since children believe what they are taught chiefly because the teacher says so, there does not seem much opinion or knowledge of the abstract for which suggestion is not accountable.

If a suggestion agrees with the complexes already existing in the mind of the hearer then acceptance is likely to follow; this partly explains the psychology of crowds and the power of oratory, which appeals to emotions and prejudice rather than to reason. The knowledge that one's fellows believe is sufficient to convince the ordinary man, and often the existence of widespread belief is used as an argument to prove the truth of a proposition. One recognises this tendency at once in people of another race and other superstitions. An educated Chinese once assured me that blood from those nearly related would mix if dropped into a bowl of water, and drops from the veins of strangers would remain apart, and that this test was used to decide cases of disputed relationship. When I showed incredulity my friend assured me, 'It's true, quite true, every one knows it.'

Within a day or two an Englishman, whilst discussing telegony, or the influence of a first mating upon the progeny of subsequent pairings, maintained that the widespread belief among dog-breeders in the existence of this influence proved its truth, and my recollection of the argument of my Chinese friend showed me how alike are the causes of belief among all mankind.

Man tends to believe what his fellows believe and act as his fellows act, and this tendency has been erected into an instinct by Trotter, who shows how important the Herd Instinct is to all gregarious animals, including man.[9]

But if suggestion is to be made synonymous with the Herd Instinct it explains too much, and we must seek to narrow its meaning or use another word. It is already used in a somewhat special sense to account for the acceptance of propositions which an ordinary man in his ordinary state of mind would not accept, and especially is it used in relation to abnormal states such as hypnosis and hysteria.

An authoritative and confident manner makes easy the acceptance of suggestion, as every confidence-trick man knows; the writer of advertisements or political articles knows it too, but in the last example we see a new factor. The hardened Big-ender would be impervious to the most imposing suggestions from a Little-endian source, but would accept the saddest nonsense from a journal of his own party. We see here an active desire to accept propositions that accord with a powerful complex, and as complexes become more separated from the influence of reason so this desire increases.

This I shall call 'receptivity', and to the term I shall give a further meaning in the sense not only of desiring to accept propositions but of anticipating or guessing them, of picking up hints as to what is in the minds of the other persons concerned and reflecting them as if they originated in the mind of the receiver.

In some cases of hysteria the patient presents a weak or paralysed limb, and this limb is often so insensitive that pins may be pushed through the skin without any manifestations of pain. This phenomenon, which resembles the insensitive patches that under the name of 'Devil's claws' were found upon witches when witchcraft was fashionable, has been long known as a sign of hysteria. There is now a tendency to ascribe it to suggestibility or, as I should prefer, to receptivity.

In the early stage of the disease some one examines the arm, pricks it, and asks, 'Do you feel that?' It is my experience that the patient sometimes flinches at the first prick, but answers 'No', and until this newly-implanted belief is removed he never flinches again when the limb is pricked.

The question is taken by the patient to mean that the doctor expects that the prick will not be felt—or why should he ask? The hint is accepted and the insensibility established, though its unreal nature is shown by the fact that the patient is not especially disposed to burn or injure the limb, unlike the sufferer from a true loss of sensation, who is always liable to such an accident owing to the lack of the protective sense of pain. I believe that this is the true explanation for many cases, and put it forward as a good example of receptivity.

The insensitiveness is similarly explained by Babinski,[10] who uses a different method of examination. He blindfolds the patient, who must not have been subjected to a previous test, and stimulating him variously in different places asks what he feels. This avoids the suggestion of loss of sensation, and the result is that Babinski finds few examples of such loss in cases where the 'Do you feel that?' method would produce many positive results.

It may also be explained by a dissociation of consciousness, in which the split-off stream deals with the paralysed limb and therefore the main stream of consciousness knows nothing about the prick. The difference between the two theories is not so great as appears, for the control of the supposed loss of sensation, once it is established, finds its home in a split-off stream, and the process I describe is only a stage in the dissociation.

I must admit, however, to seeing cases where a hysterical loss of voice of long duration is accompanied by a loss of sensation in the throat which is not explicable by receptivity, and it is possible for the dissociation to be directly responsible for the loss.

Jung expresses sound views when he writes:—

'It should long ago have been realised that a suggestion is only accepted by one it suits.... This pseudo-scientific talk about suggestion is based upon the unconscious superstition that suggestion actually possesses some magic power. No one succumbs to suggestion unless from the very bottom of his heart he be willing to co-operate.'[11]

Whilst stripping suggestion of its magic I by no means deny its power. Let one person at a dinner suggest that the fish is tainted and he will generally have one or two supporters who would have eaten it without a doubt of its freshness if no one had cast suspicion upon it; or let one of a class of medical students say with sufficient assurance that he hears a murmur over a patient's heart and, even if the heart sounds are quite ordinary, others will hear it too.

There are conditions, such as fatigue or sleep, in which the effort necessary to examine the truth of a proposition seems too great, and suggestions are accepted which would be rejected in a state of fuller consciousness. For example, I was awakened one night, when a hospital resident, and told that one of my patients was very restless. I could not remember the man, but asked a few questions about him and ordered a soporific. Next morning on waking I became aware that I had no such patient, and on enquiry found that I had been mistaken for another resident whose slumbers had been undisturbed, thanks to my suggestibility, for had I been fully awake I should have repudiated any connection with the case. The confident manner of the messenger assisted the suggestion, and I like to think that had there been a trick intentionally played upon me even my sleepy consciousness might have detected some warning change of tone.

Psychologists regard hypnotic suggestibility as only a further stage of this sleepy non-resistance, but I see in the former a more active desire to accept. Though suggestion might be further classified according to the factors concerned in its acceptance, the class showing 'receptivity' is the important one for our consideration.

There remains auto-suggestion to be considered; it is as difficult to define as suggestion, but in the absence of any more precise term it must be accepted as indicating certain mental processes.

The sensations felt in the arms and hands by the water-diviner or table-turner are partly the result of auto-suggestion and partly of muscular contractions, themselves produced by the same cause, and some of the varied sensations of the hysteric are of similar origin. Creepy feelings at the mention of snakes, and unpleasant sensations at the thought of those 'minor horrors of war' that live in undergarments, are further examples.

As far as the persons concerned are able to judge, the sensations are often real enough, though it was long before I could believe that a confirmed hysteric who complained of a severe pain really suffered from that pain; the description of a water-diviner's sensations, given by himself and quoted in another chapter, are such that one must believe in the honesty of the writer.

One might say auto-suggestion arises from the unconscious or from a dissociated stream of consciousness, and this would make it account for hallucinations and obsessions, but here we must again take account of borderline cases. The person who feels a cold shiver at the mention of a snake cannot tell us precisely to what extent the shiver is due to conscious thoughts, or whether he feels it just because he must; and the feeling may be due to what he remembers being told about snakes, in which case it would not be due to pure auto-suggestion.

The explanation of the success of suggestion in particular cases is to be sought in the emotional state of the subject. When I was the victim, as described above, my readiness to believe arose from my being accustomed to nocturnal interruptions when my patients were in trouble and also from my reliance on the hospital staff, my emotional state being one of expectation and confidence. If to these influences are added stronger emotional forces, such as wonder or terror, acceptance of suggestion is still easier, and when people assembled together are swayed by these feelings the Herd Instinct reaches its full strength and we have the ingredients for the manufacture of a collective delusion. There are many examples of strange and supernatural occurrences vouched for by masses of observers, and I see no reason to doubt the good faith of the historians. We all know how infectious is emotion and how hard it is for one man to remain unmoved when around him are others all under the influence of some excitement, and man always insists on finding reasons for his feelings or objects for his emotions. When wonder or terror are roused by the operation of the Herd Instinct, the individual, not knowing their origin, projects them externally and seeks an object for them. He is now ready to see or hear anything that will fit his emotions, and when an object is suggested he will speedily accept its existence as a reality.

I will give some further examples of suggestion in varying degrees of strength. During the arrival of recently wounded men at a hospital in France, I was in a ward with two eminent members of my profession and another medical officer. As one man seemed bad the sister asked me to see him at once; his left arm was paralysed, and he had a wound on the head where in the brain beneath lies the 'motor area' of the left arm. Looking at the wound, which was obscured by hair and blood, I said, 'That's pulsating'; the two consultants and the other officer agreed with my observation, and appropriate treatment was recommended. The importance of pulsation lies in the fact that it is a sign of the exposure of brain substance, which pulsates strongly, and in this case it signified the presence of a hole in the skull which allowed the pulsation to appear; but in the operating theatre shortly afterwards the skull was found intact, and therefore pulsation had not been present.

How did this joint error of observation arise? The combination of a gunshot wound of the head with a paralysed limb may occur in connection with a hole in the skull, and such penetrating wounds were common before the introduction of helmets. My unconscious had worked out the probabilities and led me to expect the signs of penetration; deceiving myself, by my confident manner I imposed my belief upon my colleagues, who had, I may assume, placed unjustified confidence in my reliability as an observer; and we all saw that which was not.

Another example shows how ghost stories arise: A man related to me how at the age of sixteen he was sleeping with his brother, and woke up to see a ghostly face on the wall. So far we have an ordinary half-awake hallucinatory condition, which is not uncommon; but the lad became terrified and tried to cover his head to hide the sight, when the brother woke up, and, being told of the face, promptly saw it too. The brother's evidence is strongly corroborative, not of the presence of a ghost, but of the power of suggestion when the way is prepared by strong emotion. It may be remarked that the man was one of those nervous people who fear the dark or being alone; seeing a ghost was not the cause of his condition, but resulted from the inculcation of a belief in ghosts in a person predisposed to fall a prey to his own unconscious.

The next example is a well-worn tale which has been quoted by Frank Podmore, W. H. Myers, Sir William Barrett, and probably many others. I take it from pages 62 and 63 of Human Personality, vol. i.[12]

It (the account) was given by Mr. Charles Lett on December 3, 1885, and reads as follows:—

'On the 5th of April, 1873, my wife's father, Captain Towns, died at his residence, Cranbrook, Rose Bay, near Sydney, New South Wales. About six weeks after his death my wife had occasion, one evening about nine o'clock, to go to one of the bedrooms in the house. She was accompanied by a young lady, Miss Britton, and as they entered the room—the gas was burning all the time—they were amazed to see, reflected as it were upon the polished surface of the wardrobe, the image of Captain Towns. It was barely half-figure, the head, shoulders, and part of the arms only showing—in fact it was like an ordinary medallion portrait, but life-size. The face appeared wan and pale, as it did before his death; he wore a kind of grey flannel jacket, in which he had been accustomed to sleep. Surprised and half alarmed at what they saw, their first idea was that a portrait had been hung in the room, and that what they saw was its reflection, but there was no picture of the kind.

'Whilst they were looking and wondering, my wife's sister, Miss Towns, came into the room, and before either of the others had time to speak, she exclaimed, "Good gracious! Do you see Papa?" One of the housemaids happened to be passing downstairs at the moment and she was called in, and asked if she saw anything, and her reply was "Oh, Miss: the master." Graham—Captain Towns' old body-servant—was then sent for, and he also exclaimed, "Oh, Lord save us! Mrs. Lett, it's the Captain!" The butler was called, and then Mrs. Crane, my wife's nurse, and they both said what they saw. Finally Mrs. Towns was sent for, and, seeing the apparition, she advanced towards it ... as she passed her hand over the panel of the wardrobe the figure gradually faded away, and never again appeared.

'These are the facts of the case, and they admit of no deceit; no kind of intimation was given to any of the witnesses; the same question was put to each one as they came into the room, and the reply was given without hesitation by each.

'Mrs. Lett is positive that the recognition of the appearance on the part of each of the later witnesses was independent, and not due to any suggestion from the persons already in the room.'

Then follows a statement by two of the witnesses that this account is correct.

In the lapse of twelve years between the incident and its narration a story of this nature would have been re-told many times, and we know what happens under such conditions. As the tale is given, however, it reveals more than the narrator thinks it does.

Most interesting is the denial of suggestion when we have present all the factors necessary for suggestion of the most powerful kind. Picture Miss Towns coming into the room whilst the first two were 'looking and wondering' (and not in silence, we may be sure, in spite of the words 'before either of the others had time to speak', which are interpolated to strengthen the story); she straightway experiences the same emotion as do the others and sees what they see. Now we have three emotional people, and as each new witness is brought along the emotion increases till it would require a very self-possessed and sceptical person to resist its influence. The butler and the nurse simply had to see the ghost, though the account is a little ambiguous at that point.

'The same question was put to each one as they came into the room', but is it likely that under such a condition of excitement enough self-control was left to every individual to ensure that the same question, and nothing else, was put to each newcomer? Such a thing could only happen by careful pre-arrangement, which was lacking here, and the writer's insistence shows that somewhere in his mind was present the suspicion that suggestion had a hand in the production of the unanimous evidence.

Mrs. Lett is equally insistent that the recognition was not due to any suggestion from the persons already in the room, but she was unaware that suggestion can occur without intent and that the most powerful suggestion is that which is unintentional. Can we suppose that there were no signs of wonder and awe on the faces of those present, no excited exclamations, no glances towards the wardrobe, no pointing of hands: only a few calm and self-possessed people asking each newcomer if he or she saw anything? If two or three people tried by suggestion to persuade others to see a ghost they would not be able to reach the emotional state of the actors in this scene, and the intentional effort at suggestion would have a good chance of failure.

The minute account of the apparition, given by some one who was not present, and told as if it were the result of the immediate observations of the first two witnesses, has been influenced by discussion after the incident and is itself another product of suggestion. The narrator has over-shot the mark in his protest against the possibility of suggestion, and has produced a story in which the apparition is not the only improbability.

I have given this analysis because the story is quoted repeatedly by writers on the spiritualist side, and until one examines it critically it appears convincing.

The rumour of the Russian troops passing through England in September, 1914, will go down in history as a proof that mass credulity was then as powerful as ever. The rumour, however it began, was aided by the usual forces: Herd Instinct (for what every one believed was felt to be true), the desire to believe in what we wanted to happen, and the desire to be personally connected with important events. The last factor was shown by the number of people who claimed to have personal experience of the transit of the Russian reinforcements; every one had seen the troops or knew some one who had. One of my friends, a man eminent in a profession which demands clear thinking, told me that his own brother-in-law was responsible for arrangements for their railway transport.

The reader will see in this rumour a perfect example of the working of suggestion in a case familiar to every one, and if the lesson is borne in mind a list of believers in some unnatural occurrence will not necessarily carry conviction.

CHAPTER VII

HYPNOTISM

The history of hypnotism is closely associated with that of charlatanry, though at some periods the practice has reached an honourable position in therapeutics. The 'temple sleep' of ancient Greek medicine was a hypnosis, but in later days hypnotism fell into oblivion till the time of Mesmer, when it was so mingled with quackery and theatrical display that some disrepute is even to this day attached to its honest use in curative medicine.

The common attitude to it is one of mistrust. Thanks to its exploitation by novelists, 'hypnotic power' is regarded as marvellous and uncanny, and the mysterious person who exercises it is able to lead his victims along any path. The fashion for public shows of Mesmerism has apparently died away, their place being taken by thought-reading performances which cater for the desire of man to believe that he is seeing a manifestation of the occult.

The 'mesmeric eye', whose pupil dilates or contracts at the will of its owner while its gaze remains fixed, has by imaginative writers been ascribed alike to Lord Kitchener and the monk Rasputin, and presents a phenomenon unknown to physiologists. The 'will-power' of the hypnotist is as much a product of imagination, whilst the confident and willing co-operation of the subject is really the factor of most importance.

Nobody but a very credulous person can be hypnotised against his will, and at the beginning of the process the full co-operation of the subject is necessary, though with repeated sittings his suggestibility becomes increased and to that extent his 'will-power' may be said to have diminished.

In the induction of hypnosis the essentials are quiet surroundings and confidence of success on the part of both operator and subject. The subject is then led to think only of the operator and his remarks and directions, whilst generally some mechanical method is used which by tiring the eyes produces a feeling of sleepiness. Success varies according to the skill and confidence of the operator and their persuasive effect on the subject.

Several sittings may be necessary before any depth of hypnosis is obtained. If the result is successful the stream of consciousness is thinned out and its place is taken by other thoughts and suggestions supplied by the operator. In light hypnosis there is produced a condition in which suggestions concerning, say, the cessation of bad habits or modes of thought are more readily accepted than in the normal state of consciousness, the subject having afterwards a complete memory of the sitting. In deeper stages hypnotic sleep is produced, suggestions concerning the bodily functions—producing, for example, temporary rigidity or paralysis or loss of feeling—may take effect, and the memory of the sitting may not be recalled afterwards; the subject may carry out various movements by direction of the operator, and may believe what his senses should contradict. In this deeper stage he is in a condition to receive suggestions as to actions to be performed after the hypnotic state has ceased.

The explanation of the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic subject lies in the abolition, total or partial, of his stream of consciousness. Such critical powers as he possesses are suspended and he has no standard by which to judge assertions presented to him, like a man in a dream who through a similar absence of standards of comparison sees no absurdity in the suspension of the laws of gravity. The unconscious of the subject is now accessible to suggestions which may be planted there and will bear fruit even if the subject is unaware of them. It is an experimental commonplace for a subject, told in a hypnotic state to perform a simple but unnecessary action after waking, to invent a rationalisation to account for doing it, whilst having no suspicion that he does it as a result of suggestion.

But throughout all the stages he still has a volition of his own and will do nothing that seriously conflicts with his well-rooted ideas of conduct. If he is persuaded that an imaginary some one is sitting in a chair, and is directed to stab him with an imaginary knife, he will perhaps do so, for he would not object to doing so in his waking state; but suggest to him that he should steal a real watch, and if he be a man of ordinary honesty he will find reasons for not stealing it, though perhaps the man of criminal tendencies would fall to the suggestion.

A story in illustration of this resistance was told me by a doctor who practised hypnotism for the cure of the alcohol habit. Having successfully suggested to a patient that whisky would produce nausea, he congratulated himself on a cure, but to his annoyance the patient came home one day cheerfully intoxicated with beer. Further hypnosis was tried and, although the hypnotic state was induced as before, suggestion had no further effect on the drinking habit. It turned out that the patient had decided not to be cured of the beer habit, hence the failure.

In hypnosis we have another example of dissociation; during the process of induction the stream of consciousness is thinned out or completely abolished according to the depth of hypnosis. The fact that there may or may not be during the waking state a recollection of the events in a previous hypnosis shows that the dissociation may be continuous or abrupt (see Chapter IV). The substituted stream is made up of suggestions from the operator and of material from the unconscious, for the hypnosis may be used to revive memories that have been lost to the consciousness through repression. In this last use we see a relation to automatic writing and other methods of bringing to light the contents of the unconscious.

In my account of the water-diviner I suggested that his dissociated stream was especially trained to pick up indications that are not observed by his ordinary self. The study of the hypnotic state shows that our senses sometimes work better when freed from the control of the consciousness, so that the subject is able to see or hear or feel what is unobserved by the ordinary man. He possesses a hyperæsthesia such as we see in a sleeping dog who wakes at the approach of a footstep inaudible to the human ear and recognises whether it belongs to friend or stranger. A similar alertness and its opposite can be seen at work in ordinary sleep. The mother is roused by the slightest whimper of her babe, whilst louder noises pass unheard; but the person who, with the best intention of breaking a bad habit, has an alarm clock by his bedside, may neglect its call for a few mornings and end by entirely failing to hear it.

The hyperæsthesia belonging to the unconscious is shown in other conditions than hypnosis and ordinary sleep. Jung quotes experiments[13] of Binet, who says: 'According to the calculations I have been able to make, the unconscious sensitiveness of a hysteric is on some occasions fifty times more acute than that of a normal person.'

Dr. Hurst, writing on War Neuroses,[14] says: 'In one severe case true hyperacusis was present, and Captain E. A. Peters estimated that the patient heard sixteen times more acutely than the average normal individual. It was possible to carry on a conversation with him by whispering in one corner of the ward when he was lying in the opposite corner, although men with normal hearing who were standing half-way between in the centre of the room could not hear a word of what was whispered.'

I myself knew a war-strained patient who, as a result of terrifying experiences, had a dread of aeroplanes and could not only hear a plane long before his comrades but could tell at once by the hum of the engine whether it was British or German. In other respects his hearing was no better than his neighbour's.

Another case under my observation was that of a nervous lady with a fear of draughts. Whilst secluded in her bedroom she claimed to be affected when far-away doors were open, and showed a most uncanny and accurate knowledge as to whether they were open or shut, though this knowledge was probably derived from the sense of hearing and not from any sensitivity to heat or cold.

The word 'hyperæsthesia' is used to denote an excessive acuity of our senses. The examples quoted above refer to the sense of hearing; but other senses, such as touch and sight, may be similarly sharpened. Binet's experiments were carried out on the sense of touch.

There is no question here of the development of any new sense; the hyperæsthesia is only an exaggeration of the senses we already possess. Its importance lies in its common alliance with a dissociated receptivity which may lead it to be overlooked and cause its results to be ascribed to something else.

CHAPTER VIII

DREAMS

The mystery of dreams and their interpretation has occupied men's thoughts in all ages. The Jews paid great attention to them, as the Old Testament shows, and there is evidence that the prophet Daniel had a shrewd knowledge, based upon psychological facts, concerning dream meanings.

There are probably 'Dream Books' still sold which purport to provide interpretations for the enquiring dreamer, but it is only in recent years that the scientific study of dreams has produced useful results.

Freud laid the foundations of our modern knowledge, but unfortunately certain parts of his theories have raised so much antagonism that the sound work he has done is still scorned and dream interpretation is regarded as fanciful; nevertheless I propose to show that in dreams we have a key to the unconscious of the dreamer.

Before attempting an explanation of dreams we must first consider sleep, which is an interruption of consciousness, so that whatever mind work is carried on in sleep is a product of dissociation. The interruption of consciousness is more or less complete, the light sleeper reacting to external stimuli, turning away from a touch or making movements to protect himself from heat or cold, whilst the heavy sleeper fails to react to these minor disturbances. The memory of occurrences in the outside world during sleep may be vaguely present in the waking stage, and some sleepers will answer questions or obey orders without waking and have little or no recollection of them afterwards. Such observations point to a resemblance between sleep and that form of dissociation called hypnosis.

In hypnosis the memories and emotions in the unconscious may be brought to the surface, and in sleep the unconscious, escaping from the control of the consciousness, sends up thoughts and feelings which manifest themselves in dreams. How far external stimuli cause or influence dreams is uncertain, but the more one investigates the less importance does one attach to physical stimuli.

The dreams of adults are concerned largely with what I have described in a previous chapter as repressions. These repressions are buried in the unconscious, and their efforts to come into consciousness cause our apparently senseless and fantastic dreams. If we dreamed distinctly about these forgotten episodes, and remembered the dream on waking, they would come into consciousness and be recognised, but, being buried and refused admission to the wide-awake world, before entering consciousness they are so distorted as to be unrecognisable. To the mechanism that holds them down or distorts them is given the name of the 'censor', and the interpreter of dreams must seek to evade the censor and resolve the distorted story into its proper elements.

This method is of value in that treatment of the war-strained soldier which aims at making him face his memories and grow accustomed to them, for if a memory is repressed it tends to appear in the sufferer's dreams, which give an opportunity for its recovery by dream analysis. The opponents of this method picture the analyst, armed with a dictionary of dream meanings, listening to a patient's account of a dream, then giving him an explanation and persuading him to believe it; but, though a shrewd guess may often be made as to the meaning of a dream, the interpretation, to be of any value, must come from the patient. He is made to close his eyes and, visualising the dream, to describe it carefully. If it is a terrifying dream the telling of it will reproduce the feeling of terror, and appropriate questions will recall the occasion on which the same feeling first occurred. If the real incident is recalled there is an emotional outbreak which often startles the observer, who has the satisfaction of knowing that the greater the outbreak the greater will be the benefit.

Here is an example of the practical use of a dream: The patient had lost all memory of his experience in France, and this loss spread to his life before the war so that he failed to recall even his former employment; he slept badly and had terrifying dreams, one of which was as follows:—

'I was on a pleasure steamer with a lot of cheerful people; it went to sea and then entered a dark cavern. On the floor of the cavern were broken skeletons, and at the far end of the cavern was a hole with light showing through. Two pirates with cocked hats came and led seven of us up the cavern, where we saw some old men with whiskers. The pirates were quite kind and led us through another hole into a small cavern; the wall of the cavern began to fall down, so I picked up a broken sword and began to bore into the wall. Then something like a ball of fire came at me, and I woke up frightened.'

Though the reader could probably guess what the dream was about yet the man had no idea of the meaning, for the censor was still at work. He was made to close his eyes and visualise the ball of fire till he became frightened again, so frightened, indeed, that he was in a state of dissociation, his stream of consciousness being filled by the feeling of terror and only in relation to the outside world by means of the voice of the questioner. (The fact that memories restored by this method are often forgotten again as soon as the patient opens his eyes is proof of a dissociation.) At this stage he was told, 'You felt like that in France, what was it?' The normal stream of consciousness being cut off, the censor was now out of action, and the man, putting his hands to his head, cried, 'It's a Minnewerfer', and when he became calmer told of a dug-out being blown in and several of his mates being killed. Then he was taken over the dream and made to look at the various parts and tell what they 'turned to'. The pleasure steamer was the boat in which he went to France, the cheery people on board being other soldiers; he now recognised the place from which the boat started and the port where he landed. The cavern was a tunnel up which a captain and a sergeant-major (the pirates) had led seven men; the cocked hats resolved into the sergeant-major having a piece torn from the cloth cover of his helmet which flapped in the wind; the broken skeletons were the bodies of his slain comrades; the second cavern was the dug-out; the broken sword a bayonet which broke when he tried to dig his way out with it; the old men were German prisoners, and the ball of fire was the flash of the explosion.

All this was explained by the patient. If he had been told the probable meaning of the dream he might have believed it; but the result would have been valueless—it was necessary that he should bring up the memories himself. The dream is unusually coherent, but serves as a good example of the modern methods of dream interpretation.

Half-conscious fears or desires are often represented by symbolisms apparent to the analyst but unrecognised by the dreamer. A man told me of a dream in which he met some one whom he had defeated in a business disagreement, and, to his surprise, he shook hands with his old opponent. I told him that he felt the pricking of conscience and was desirous of making amends. This was little more than a guess, but its truth was admitted though the dreamer said that he had hardly realised his feelings before. It is characteristic of dreams, as of the slips of the tongue discussed in Chapter I, that there is an obstacle to the dreamer's unaided understanding of them. A simple dream of my own will illustrate this: When going upstairs at a seaside hotel my wife, noticing a stuffed bird, said to me, 'Is that a sea-gull?' and I answered 'Yes'. The next morning I remembered a dream for which I could trace no cause, and said to my wife, 'I wonder why I dreamed of my old schoolmaster last night?' At this she asked, 'Which one?' and when I answered, 'Mr. Gull', the connection at once became obvious, though something had prevented my seeing the obvious without aid.

Since a dream is a product of dissociation, we expect to find in it the same qualities that belong to the product of other dissociations. The world of the dream is pictured as something external to the dreamer and not arising from his own mind, just as the revelations of automatic writing or the movements of the divining-rod are accepted as coming from some one or something other than the agent.

The dream taps the unconscious, the stories about poets and musicians who rise in the night-watches to pen their elusive inspirations being paralleled by the poetic imagery in the automatic writings of the Glastonbury archæologists.

Lost memories appear in the dream and the dreamer may deny the incidents, as mentioned in Chapter III. In the same way the apparently honest medium may produce a memory, more or less distorted, as a revelation, and deny that it is a memory.

The dissociated stream is hypersensitive and makes use of hints and fears that have passed unperceived by the consciousness. This use accounts for prophetic dreams, which are, like intuitions, the result of unconscious processes. In my own experience I have known but two circumstantial accounts of dream prophecies which were claimed to be fulfilled: One concerned a railway accident, and the other the destruction by fire of a distant house. Both the dreamers, who were of the male sex, had suffered from gross hysterical manifestations, or, in other words, had been woefully led astray by the unconscious concerning something other than prophecy. Accounts of prophetic dreams must always be suspect because of their origin in the unconscious and the inability of the dreamer either to interpret them or trace their origin. It is to be noted that psychologists who work at dream analysis make no mention of dream prophecies, although the fact that 'the wish is father to the thought' explains why a dream sometimes expresses an unconscious desire that later attains fulfilment in reality.

The Biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the idol with feet of clay bears the stamp of genuine history. The king, like the neurotic sufferer of to-day, 'dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.' The magicians, called upon to interpret, asked that the king should first tell his dream; but the king answered, 'The thing is gone from me; if ye will not make known unto me the dream, with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces and your houses shall be made a dunghill.' The magicians and astrologers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans, failed, but the prophet Daniel took up the task and told the king his forgotten dream. We can only imagine his method, but it is possible to revive a dream by using the emotion felt on waking, and such a method, or even direct hypnosis, may have been available to Daniel; and if we regard the interpretation, not as prophetic, but as revealing to the king his forebodings of future disaster, then the chapter accords with modern conceptions of dream analysis. Nebuchadnezzar was already a psycho-neurotic on the borderline of insanity, as his subsequent history shows, and would easily come to rely upon and reward a psychologist like Daniel, who convincingly laid bare to him the working of his unconscious. By tradition the old civilisations of the East were the sources of occult knowledge, and this view of a scrap of Old Testament history gives a hint how the tradition arose. If there existed an esoteric knowledge of psychological technique such as I ascribe to Daniel, then its possessors would easily obtain reputations for more than worldly wisdom.

CHAPTER IX

HYSTERIA

The word 'hysteria', like 'lunacy', is evidence of a belief now discarded. When the theory of demoniacal possession ceased to satisfy the desire for reasons, and material explanations were sought for certain conditions, it was supposed that the uterus (Greek, hystera) came adrift from its position and wandered about the body, producing the condition thenceforward known as hysteria. Advancing knowledge killed this theory, but the influence of the word remained and the disease was attributed to some derangement or irritation of the uterus and its associated organs. Charcot, of Paris, showed the mental origin of hysteria, but, becoming lost in a maze of hypnotism and suggestion, he described as symptoms of the disease various manifestations which were really called up by himself or his assistants. There are medical men who still insist on a bodily cause, but such causes serve merely as pegs on which to hang the symptoms.

As usual, I shrink from a definition, but in this case I have good reason. Every writer who describes hysteria expresses his own ideas about it, and as the ideas of no two writers are alike some definitions scarcely seem to refer to the same subject.

Here is a definition by Babinski, a French writer of international reputation:—

'Hysteria is a peculiar psychical state capable of giving rise to certain conditions which have features of their own. It manifests itself in primary and secondary symptoms. The former can be exactly reproduced by suggestion in certain subjects and can be made to disappear under the sole influence of suggestion.'

And here is one by Pierre Janet, a man of equal eminence:—

'Hysteria is a form of mental depression characterised by retraction of the field of personal consciousness, and a tendency to complete division of the personality, and subconscious mental conditions grow and form a kind of second personality.'

And here are a few words from Ernest Jones, the chief exponent of Freud's views in this country:—

'It is in the excessive tendency to displace affects by means of superficial associations that the final key to the explanation of abnormal suggestion is to be sought. Even if it were true, which it certainly is not, that most hysterical symptoms are the product of verbal suggestion, the observation would be of hardly any practical or theoretical interest.'

When the reader has finished this chapter he will perhaps return to these definitions, and see how each represents one aspect, and how the best understanding is reached by a consideration of all of them.

The Great War has provided plenty of material for the study of hysteria, and French and German writers have dealt extensively with it. The paucity of English writings on the subject may indicate a smaller amount of material, but there has been sufficient considerably to increase our knowledge. The common form of hysteria is a mimicry of bodily disease; pains, paralyses, contractions and joint affections most often occur, though fits and trances are typical and there are few diseases which are not imitated. Hysteria therefore has a superficial resemblance to malingering, or the conscious simulation of disease for a definite end, and many people find it hard to conceive any difference between the two. Various criteria have been given to distinguish them, but, in my opinion, when the question arises the distinction can rarely be made upon physical grounds and is chiefly a matter of judgement concerning the honesty of the patient; that is to say, the hysteric believes in his disease as a reality, but the malingerer knows that it is fictitious. I believe there is no definite line between the groups, though some authorities assert that they are quite distinct. Practical experience proves that in many cases there is an intense desire for cure which cannot be reconciled with any consciousness of simulation, and the apparently heartfelt gratitude often shown by the patient on recovery is further proof of the reality of this desire.

It is a matter for regret that we have no word to take the place of 'hysteria', which is a mark of superstition; the only excuse for its use being that every one knows that it does not mean what it says. Popular and even professional ideas concerning hysteria are so far from the truth that it is a pity a new word is not employed. If a man has fought bravely for years and at last succumbed in his effort to forget the horrors he has seen, it sounds an insult to say he is suffering from hysteria. Yet the newer term of 'shell-shock' was worse, for it conveyed a totally false idea of causation and treatment: to regard as due to the concussion of a shell symptoms which are of purely mental origin led to muddled thinking.

A common history in these cases was that the man became 'unconscious' after a shell explosion, and on returning to consciousness found himself mute, shaky, or paralysed. These facts led to the belief that the condition was actually due to the physical effect of an explosion, 'shell-shock' and 'concussion' being regarded as almost synonymous. But the same symptoms occurred when there was no question of concussion, whilst the recoveries, often sensationally reported in the press, after accidental or deliberate stimuli of various kinds were on all fours with the cures wrought by Christian Science or the pilgrimage to Lourdes. Hence the hysterical nature of the symptoms became evident and the concussion theory faded away.

When one of these patients is encouraged to talk he often tells how he had felt himself overpowered by the horrors of his surroundings and forced to make increased efforts to keep going and avoid showing his condition to his fellows—in other words, to repress his emotions. The strain continuing, the shell-burst proved the last straw, and his repressed feelings broke into consciousness and took possession of it; this is what the man called being 'unconscious', but the condition is really an abrupt dissociation. In course of time—hours, days, or even weeks—he comes to himself again, and once more his feelings are buried; but now he is a hysteric, and his buried feelings—his dissociated stream—produce and maintain his symptoms.

In whatever way the hysteria arises the developed symptoms are the result of a mental activity which is powerful enough to overcome for a long time the desire for recovery. There are two streams of thought—the one desirous of cure and the other engaged in keeping up the symptoms—and we recognise an extreme example of continuous dissociation, in which the main stream is not only unaware of the existence of the other and unable to control it, but in which the results produced by the dissociated stream are antagonistic to the desires of the main personality.

This conception accords fairly well with Janet's definition as given above, but though it gives us a description of the disease and indicates its relation to other phenomena we have yet to understand why the dissociation occurs. This is a difficult problem, and one to which several answers can be given. I have suggested one above, and Freud supplies another, which he applies not only to hysteria but to allied nervous conditions. What follows is not an exposition of his ideas, but rather my interpretation of such as are acceptable and useful to me. A complex, which according to Freud usually centres around an infantile sexual desire, is repugnant to the consciousness and becomes repressed as a result of conflict in just the same way as a memory is repressed. The complex is kept thrust down in the unconscious, but always tends to produce effects; it may do so in dreams or may obtain symbolic representation in the form of a neurosis, especially in times of stress. Besides the primary aim of expressing repression by a symbolic representation, Freud admits a 'secondary function' of the neurosis by which the patient may derive some advantage from the disease.

Here is a case capable of explanation by the Freudian hypothesis: A man said he had fallen on to the blade of an aeroplane propeller and bruised his neck; he complained of severe pain in one side of his neck, with twitching of the arm on the same side, which continued for months. It was found that the patient, who was apprenticed to engineering, had such a deep-seated fear of making mistakes that he had sometimes stayed at the workshop for hours after the day's work was over in order to familiarise himself with the use of tools; but in spite of this his fear increased, until the handling of a file or spanner produced feelings of anxiety. Then he joined the army. Being put to work at aeroplanes he tried to do his duty and succeeded so far as to be made a corporal, saying never a word about his fears and banishing them as far as possible from his thoughts. At last the repression broke forth and took symbolic form in pain, the expression of his fear of the machinery which was blamed as its material cause. No account can picture the emotion produced by the recall of this complex, and it was evident that his feelings were intense and of more importance to him than one unfamiliar with such cases would suppose. His pains ceased when the cause had been revealed, and, what is very important, when he was told that he could not be expected to work at machinery. It must be added that the out-and-out Freudian would not be satisfied with this explanation; he would trace the cause of the original fear of making mistakes, and would expect to find it in some repression of infantile desires or fears. Certainly I have a feeling that the case had only been half investigated, but it will serve as a simple example of symbolic representation.

The 'secondary function' of this neurosis is plain: the patient succeeded in keeping away from machinery all the time the pain lasted, and his anxiety symptoms were powerful enough to lead to his removal to another kind of work.

This leads on to Adler's theory,[15] which, like Freud's, is based upon conflict and repression, but regards the hysteria as derived from the 'Will to Power'. The potential neurotic has a feeling of inferiority combined with a desire to be master of his own fate, and, since direct attainment of this desire is impossible, the end is striven for by a fantasy or fiction produced by the unconscious. This view, thus baldly put, shows a relation between hysteria and malingering, and, returning to the case of the prentice engineer, we can see his work in the shop becoming more and more distasteful whilst his anxiety tended to become a means of escape; then in the army the neurosis took a more determined form which might be confounded with malingering by an observer who assumed that all actions were the result of conscious motives.