|
|
brought about by the verbal suggestions of the experimenter.
Such cases of increased recollection recall others which are mentioned in the
literature of hypnotism ; for example, the famous one of the servant-girl who
suddenly spoke Hebrew. She also, in an abnormal state of consciousness, spoke
a language which she did not know, but which she had often heard when young
in the house of a clergyman. We hear of like cases of hypermnesia in dreams.
Maury, whose investigations on the subject of dreams are classic, relates a
number of things which returned to him in dreams, although when awake he knew
nothing about them. The heightened faculties of hypnotic subjects of which we
so often hear, and which we can observe in auto-hypnosis also, are a result
of this increased power of reproducing ideas. Many apparently supernatural facts
can be explained in this way. I shall refer to this later on.
SYMPTOMS OF HYPNOSIS. I25
Dreams, also, which have occurred in natural sleep are sometimes reproduced
in hypnosis, although they may have been forgotten on waking. It is naturally
very difficult to judge of the accuracy with which dreams are reported. But
as dreams sometimes leads to talking in sleep, it is then possible to make observations.
I know of many cases in which persons betrayed their dreams by talking in their
sleep; in several instances I was able to show that the loss of memory which
followed on waking disappeared in hypnosis, and the dream was remembered. In
one case a bed-fellow was able to confirm the accuracy of the recollection.
The occurrences of a pathological condition may be reproduced in hypnosis just
as we have seen those of a dream. Bramwell mentions a case reported by Morton
Prince, in which a hypnotized person remembered many things—especially
those which had occurred during the delirium of fever—which could not be
recollected when the subject was in a normal state. In recent years this question
has occupied the attention of several authors, among whom may be mentioned Naef,
Grater, Hilger, Muralt, Heilbronner, Binswanger, and, more especially, Riklin.
They endeavoured to restore in hypnosis, memory, the loss of which had been
caused by epilepsy or hysteria. Binswanger and Heilbronner consider that the
amnesia of hysteria can be dispelled in hypnosis, but not that caused by epilepsy;
on the other hand, Riklin concludes from his experiments that the amnesia of
epilepsy may also disappear. Bramwell experimented for the purpose of ascertaining
if in hypnosis a person could recollect what had happened to him when under
the influence of ether or laughing gas, but only obtained negative results.
Other experiments in which attempts were made to cause subjects to recollect
what had gone on around them while they were in natural sleep were equally unsuccessful.
|
|