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of accepting any further suggestion. When I separate my hands he knows his own
name, and knows also that he had forgotten it a moment ago. He goes away, and
in a few days we meet again ; but now he remembers his name however I hold my
hands. But he remembers perfectly well that the other day he was several times
unable to say his own name. He maintains that he was awake all the time.
We are not justified in calling this case one of hypnosis. There was no mental
symptom of hypnosis, no loss of memory,
I66 HYPNOTISM.
no suggestibility, no fatigue; the subject did not think he had been asleep;
nothing remains but to consider the state a perfectly normal one, except on
one point. Whether such a state may be regarded as normal, generally speaking,
is another matter. I shall discuss this when I come to the legal question for
which these cases are very important, according to Bentivegni.
It appears from these examples that post-hypnotic sugges. tions may be carried
out in various different states. Between the two extremes—the one case
in which there were all the mental symptoms of a new hypnosis, and the other
in which there were none—there are many degrees which I will now discuss.
Here is a third example. A woman is hypnotized, and two men A., and B., are
present. I say to the subject, " When A. speaks to you after you wake,
you will laugh at him. When B. speaks to you, you will put your tongue out at
him. Wake!" She wakes. A. speaks to her and she laughs. I ask, " Why
did you laugh just now?" "I did not laugh." A. speaks to her
again; she laughs, and again at my question she denies having laughed. She puts
out her tongue at B. when he speaks to her, and the moment after, when I question
her, she says that she did not do it. I suggest that she hears a barrel-organ,
but she says she does not, and is insusceptible to other suggestions. She remembers
everything else that has happened, and knows perfectly well what I have said
to her. All that is forgotten is the post-hypnotic act and what is immediately
connected with it—i.e., the words which A. and B. spoke to her. She can
repeat what I said to her, and her replies ; everything, in fact, unconnected
with the post-hypnotic suggestion. She knows nothing about the brief space during
which she carried out the suggestion; at the same time she recognizes no gap
in her memory.
In this case there is complete loss of memory for the post-hypnotic act, and
no further suggestibility; the loss of memory extends simply to the post-hypnotic
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