第23章

they are just like yours.'...I com- mand her to weep, and when awake she really sobs, but continues in the midst of her tears to talk of very gay matters.The sobbing over, there remained no trace of this grief, which seemed to have been quite sub-conscious."

The primary self often has to invent an hallucination by which to mask and hide from its own view the deeds which the other self is enacting.

Léonie 3 writes real letters, whilst Léonie 1 believes that she is knitting; or Lucie 3 really comes to the doctor's office, whilst Lucie 1 believes herself to be at home.This is a sort of delirium.The alphabet, or the series of numbers, when handed over to the attention of the secondary personage may for the time be lost to the normal self.Whilst the hand writes the alphabet, obediently to command, the 'subject,' to her great stupefaction, finds herself unable to recall it, etc.Few things are more curious than these relations of mutual exclusion, of which all gradations exist between the several partial consciousnesses.

How far this splitting up of the mind into separate consciousnesses may exist in each one of us is a problem.M.Janet holds that it is only possible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect of unifying or co-ordinating power.An hysterical woman abandons part of her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it together.The abandoned part meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or sub-conscious self.In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand, what is dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the next.The whole fund of experiences and knowledges remains integrated, and no split-off portions of it can get organized stably enough to form subordinate selves.The stability, monotony, and stupidity of these latter is often very striking.The post-hypnotic sub-consciousness seems to think of nothing but the order which it last received; the cataleptic sub-consciousness, of nothing but the last position imprinted on the limb.M.Janet could cause definitely circumscribed reddening and tumefaction of the skin on two of his subjects, by suggesting to them in hypnotism the hallucination of a mustard-poultice of any special shape."J'ai tout le temps pensé à votre sinapisme," says the subject, when put back into trance after the suggestion has taken effect.

A man N.,...whom M.Janet operated on at long intervals, was betweenwhiles tampered with by another operator, and when put to sleep again by M.Janet, said he was 'too far away to receive orders, being in Algiers.' The other operator, having suggested that hallucination, had forgotten to remove it before waking the subject from his trance, and the poor passive trance-personality had stuck for weeks in the stagnant dream.Léonie's sub-conscious performances having been illustrated to a caller, by a ' pied de nez '

executed with her left hand in the course of conversation, when, a year later, she meets him again, up goes the same hand to her nose again, without Léonie's normal self suspecting the fact.

All these facts, taken together, form unquestionably the beginning of an inquiry which is destined to throw a new light into the very abysses of our nature.It is for that reason that I have cited them at such length in this early chapter of the book.They prove one thing conclusively, namely, that we must never take a person's testimony, however sincere, that he has felt nothing, as proof positive that no feeling has been there.

It may have been there as part of the consciousness of a 'secondary personage,'

of whose experiences the primary one whom we are consulting can naturally give no account.In hypnotic subjects (as we shall see in a later chapter)

just as it is the easiest thing in the world to paralyze a movement or member by simple suggestion, so it is easy to produce what is called a systematized anaesthesia by word of command.A systematized anaesthesia means an insensibility, not to any one element of things, but to some one concrete thing or class of things.The subject is made blind or deaf to a certain person in the room and to no one else, and thereupon denies that that person is present, or has spoken, etc.M.P.Janet's Lucie, blind to some of the numbered cards in her lap (p.207 above), is a case in point.

Now when the object is simple, like a red wafer or a black cross, the subject, although he denies that he sees it when he looks straight at it, nevertheless gets a 'negative after-image' of it when he looks away again, showing that the optical impression of it has been received.

Moreover reflection shows that such a subject must distinguish the object from others like it in order to be blind to it.Make him blind to one person in the room, set all the persons in a row, and tell him to count them.He will count all but that one.But how can he tell which one not to count without recognizing who he is? In like manner, make a stroke on paper or blackboard, and tell him it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board.Next (he not looking) surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees.He will point out one by one all the new strokes, and omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous the new strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged.Similarly, if the original single stroke to which he is blind be doubled by a prism of some sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the direction in which the image seen through the prism lies, ignoring still the original stroke.

Obviously, then, he is not blind to the kind of stroke in the least.He is blind only to one individual stroke of that kind in a particular position on the board or paper - that is to a particular complex object;