Report of the Committee on Hypnotism

The delicacy of discrimination shown in recognizing the invisible line is often very great. The extraordinary mixture, in the hypnotic trance, of preternatural refinement of discrimination with the grossest insensibility, is one of the most remarkable features of the condition. A blank sheet of paper with machine-cut edges, without water-mark or any thing which could lead to the recognition of one side or edge from the other, is shown to the subject, with the statement that it is a photograph of a well-known face. As soon as he distinctly sees the photograph upon its surface, he is told that it will float off from 1 M. Ch. Fere was, so far as I know, the first to make this remark. 2 The phenomenon is described as it most frequently happens. There have been some ex-

This puts us on the track of a distinction between the normal and the trance mode of perception, which partly explains the latter. The evolution of man's mind is altogether in the analytic direction. He deals with objects by picking out their " essential " character, tracing its consequences, and ignoring other features. He remembers a house in a street by the one little inconspicuous detail of its number, very likely observing nothing else about it; and similarly he retains the line on the foolscap paper by not dispersing his attention over the sheet, but counting the number of lines between the one selected and the nearest edge. The number thus obtained is a permanent part of the mind's possession, and is obviously for practical purposes more exact than any reminiscence of the " general look " of the line in its place would be.

What science wants is a context to make the trance-phenomena continuous with other physiological and psychological facts. Curious to ascertain whether there were continuity between the medium-trance and the ordinary hypnotic trance, I made some observations ad hoc upon Mrs. P. My first two attempts to hypnotize her were unsuccessful. Between the second time and the third, I suggested to her "Control" in the medium-trance that he should make her a mesmeric subject for me. He agreed. (A suggestion of this sort made by the operator in one hypnotic trance would probably have some effect on the next.) She became partially hypnotized on the third trial; but the effect was so slight that I ascribe it rather to the effect of repetition than to the suggestion made. By the fifth trial she had become a pretty good hypnotic subject, as far as muscular phenomena and automatic imitations of speech and gesture go; but I could not affect her consciousness, or otherwise get her beyond this