Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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of authority over X., but fails in every attempt to hypnotize him, whereas B. succeeds at once. This annoys A., and the next time he meets X. he brings his authority into play, partly intentionally and partly unintentionally, and thereby leads X. to confess to fraud. Here, of course, the dread that a denial of imposture might bring about unpleasant consequences may also play a part. Take another case: The head physician of a hospital fails to hypnotize a patient, but another doctor succeeds in doing so. The next time the patient visits the hospital he is so afraid—possibly quite unjustifiably—of all sorts of little unpleasantnesses if he does not gratify the head physician's vanity, that he denies that the other doctor had ever hypnotized him.

In cases like those cited above, the subjects tell untruths unconsciously; but it is much more interesting from a psycho-logical point of view when untruthfulness is the result of self-deception. Here the self-deception is the same as we have found in some cases of post-hypnotic deception. The subjects think they could have acted otherwise if they had so pleased (F. Myers). Heidenhain mentions such a case: a doctor said, after the hypnosis, that he could have opened his eyes if he hSd wanted to; but when the hypnosis was renewed he could no more help himself than on the first occasion. I have made a number of similar observations myself. One case was that. of a doctor who at first almost invariably stated after hypnosis that he could have behaved otherwise, only he did not wish to open his eyes, etc. ; but in each fresh hypnosis his will was inhibited. Finally, he himself became aware of his loss of will-power. In another case, I hypnotized X. at least ten times before he would admit that the suggested paralysis of his arm had really made him unable to move it; he previously believed that he had so behaved to please me. I may here mention that many a man who has done something stupid when drunk

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for the first time, is often convinced on the following day that he could have controlled himself if he had wished to. The self-deceptive process here is obviously just like that in the other cases mentioned.

All this makes it evident how difficult it is to decide the question with regard to fraud. It seems to me to occur relatively more often with children, but the transition from simulation to true hypnosis is so gradual that even an experienced experimenter is sometimes uncertain. For example, when a subject shuts his eyes to be obliging, it is not the same thing as if he shut them to deceive; or he shuts them because he is tired of fixing them on something, but could open them by a strong effort, though he keeps them shut because it is more comfortable.

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