Early in the history of the Society for Psychical Research, Von Helmholtz speaking to Professor Barrett, of telepathy, said, “Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses, could lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible.” Many have followed the example of the psychologist Wundt, in holding that “no man of science, truly independent and withoutparti pris, could be interested in occult phenomena.” Stranger still, as reported by William James, “An illustrious biologist told me one day that even if telepathy were proved to be true, the savants ought to band together to suppress and conceal it, because such facts would upset the uniformity of nature, and all sorts of other things without which the scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.” Dogmatic skepticism, veiled or overt contempt, and an unreasoning aversion—such was the attitude of the scientific world in general toward the men who, in the early eighties of last century, first seriously grappled with the problems of the weird and the uncanny; while the great majority of educated laymen, almost equally under the spell of the preponderating materialism of the age, heartily endorsed the verdict of the scientists.
Things have not much changed in the years that have passed. It is true that there have been numerous accessions to the ranks of the “psychical researchers” from the scientific world itself. Many men of science—some among them even eminent men of science—have scandalized their fellows by adopting Newton’s ridiculous point of view—“To myself I seem to have been as a child playingon the seashore, while the immense ocean of Truth lay unexplored before me”—and by deeming psychical research not unworthy their personal participation. Crookes, Lodge, James, Richet, Flammarion, Flournoy, Bergson, Lombroso, Morselli, are a few names that instantly flash into mind. And from some great thinkers of non-scientific training, but justly esteemed for their intellectual powers, has come an endorsement of Gladstone’s appreciation: “Psychical research is the most important work which is being done in the world—by far the most important.” But scientists and laymen, so far as concerns the great mass, are still over-eager to deride and belittle the delvers into the occult—who, so their critics say, have been laboring all these years to no purpose whatever, and whose labors, no matter how long continued, can have only futile or mischievous results.
This widespread conviction of the futility of psychical research is evinced in many ways. It is seen in the jesting or scornful comments of writers in the periodical press; it is continually cropping out in the half-contemptuous, half-pitying smile that greets any sympathetic reference to “ghosts” or “telepathy”; it manifests in petulant outbursts from “orthodox” scientists, akin to the outburst of Von Helmholtz, as when our genial friend, the excellent Professor Münsterberg, heatedly proclaims, “As to spirit communications, there are none, and there never will be any.” Perhaps most striking of all is the almost complete indifference with which the published reports of the various psychical research organizations now in existence are regarded by instructors and students alike in many, if not all, institutions for higher education. In one great American university, to the writer’s personal knowledge, the many volumes of theProceedingsandJournalof the English Society for Psychical Research, and of the younger American Society for Psychical Research, are seldom removed from the library shelves except to be dusted. Truth-seekers in this university, it would seem, have notime to waste on the “bosh,” “rot,” and “rubbish” which these silly publications contain.
Now, it may be true—though a number of really learned men believe otherwise—that those engaged in psychical research have not as yet demonstrated scientifically either telepathy or survival; and it may be true that they have set themselves a hopeless task in endeavoring to establish communication between this world and the next. But it decidedly is not true that their investigations have been entirely fruitless. On the contrary, it is safe to say that no other scientific movement ever set on foot has, in the same length of time, contributed so much toward the advancement of knowledge as has psychical research.
Few will dispute that psychology today is the most conspicuous and most promising of the “recognized” sciences. Its marvellous growth during the past quarter of a century is quite generally attributed to the increasing application of the laboratory methods devised by Wundt and his pupils. In reality a large part of the credit—perhaps the larger part—must be given to those “dabblers in the occult,” who, like Sidgwick, Myers, and Gurney, in England, and Janet and Richet in France, thought it not beneath their dignity to study table-tipping, alleged telepathy, and the disputed phenomena of the hypnotic trance. To them, incontrovertibly, we owe the foundation-laying of abnormal psychology, with its manifold practical implications to the physician, the criminologist, and the educator; to them, as will hereinafter be shown, we chiefly owe the opening up of vistas of progress undreamed in the days before scientific psychical research began.
The men who enrolled under Sidgwick in 1882 to form the English Society for Psychical Research, were not the fanatical, credulous “ghost-hunters” they are commonly supposed to have been. Their first task, they saw clearly, was to determine whether the alleged facts adduced in support of the soul doctrine were really facts; and, iffacts, whether they were not susceptible of adequate explanation on a wholly naturalistic basis. In the words of Frank Podmore, one of the earliest and most active members of the Society (The Naturalization of the Supernatural, p. 2):
The title which I have chosen for the present book,The Naturalization of the Supernatural, describes in popular language the object aimed at. The facts which the Society proposed to investigate stood, and some still stand, as aliens, outside the realm of organized knowledge. It proposed to examine their claim to be admitted within the pale. And it is important to recognize that whether we found ourselves able to accept the credentials of these postulants for recognition, or whether we felt ourselves compelled to reject them as undesirables, the aim which the Society set before itself would equally be fulfilled. In undertaking the inquiry we did not assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the present bias of individual members toward belief or disbelief, it will not, I think, be charged against us, by any one who dispassionately studies the results ... that any private prepossessions were allowed to pervert the methods of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers.
The title which I have chosen for the present book,The Naturalization of the Supernatural, describes in popular language the object aimed at. The facts which the Society proposed to investigate stood, and some still stand, as aliens, outside the realm of organized knowledge. It proposed to examine their claim to be admitted within the pale. And it is important to recognize that whether we found ourselves able to accept the credentials of these postulants for recognition, or whether we felt ourselves compelled to reject them as undesirables, the aim which the Society set before itself would equally be fulfilled. In undertaking the inquiry we did not assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the present bias of individual members toward belief or disbelief, it will not, I think, be charged against us, by any one who dispassionately studies the results ... that any private prepossessions were allowed to pervert the methods of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers.
In this spirit the Society for Psychical Research attacked the whole strange medley of occult phenomena, from hypnotism to premonitions and hauntings. To most readers of these pages it may seem almost incredible that so short a time ago hypnotism was still outside the pale of science, and was pretty generally regarded as imaginary or supernatural, according to one’s temperament and training. But, prior to the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, only a few inquirers of established reputation—such as Esdaile, Braid, Liébeault, and Charcot—had deemed it a proper and desirable subject of investigation; the scientific brotherhood would have none of it, and frowned on its exponents as self-deluded simpletons or impudent charlatans. As late as 1875 a writer in theGrand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Medicales,summing up in a few words all that was to be said about hypnotism, brushed it aside as non-existent. It was because they questioned dogmatic utterances like this, and because they hoped through hypnotism to gain fresh light on the problem of the soul, that the members of the English Society for Psychical Research listed the study of hypnotism among their principal activities.
The result was not merely the confirmation and correction of much that Esdaile and other earlier inquirers had noted, but also an impressive, and in some respects startling, extension of knowledge concerning the processes of the human mind. Bearing out these discoveries, moreover, came the findings of sundry French savants—Janet, Binet, Féré, etc.—who, about the same time as the English investigators, and in the same spirit of open-minded research, sought to ascertain the true inwardness of hypnotism. On the one hand, the work of the Englishmen and the Frenchmen, between the years 1882 and 1890, made it certain that in hypnotism psychology possessed a wonderful instrument for experimentation. And, on the other hand, their own experiments with hypnotism revealed the various mental faculties—perception, attention, memory, and the rest—in entirely new aspects; paved the way to a correct understanding of hitherto obscure and baffling maladies; nay, even made necessary a radical readjustment of the scientific concept of human personality itself.
In this productive study of the phenomena of hypnotism two names stand supreme—the names of Pierre Janet and Edmund Gurney. Janet, who still is with us, deservedly enjoys today a worldwide fame for the part he has played in the inception and development of psychopathology, or medical psychology. Gurney to most people is not even a name. Yet in the brief period of experimentation that preceded his untimely death, he achieved so much as to suggest that had he lived he would probably have won a place in contemporary science fully as high as that held by Janet. More than one medical psychologist, inall likelihood, has been inspired by Gurney’s researches to specialize in that fascinating and important branch of the healing art—as was Morton Prince, on his own statement to the writer. It was not for medical purposes, however, that Gurney himself experimented with hypnotism: medical psychology was then in embryo, and Gurney was only secondarily interested in its possibilities. His great aim was to ascertain the nature of the hypnotic state, and the condition of the mind during hypnosis.
To review adequately the ingenious methods he adopted and the results he obtained, would delay us unduly. Enough to stress the salient fact that, through a brilliant series of experiments full of interest to modern psychology, he demonstrated the existence of a great undercurrent of mental life, in which the most complex processes are carried on without the individual’s conscious knowledge. Already, to be sure, several students of personality—Hamilton and Carpenter, for instance—had recognized the necessity of postulating something of the sort as the only means of rationally explaining certain anomalies and mysteries of human behavior. But to take it for granted was one thing, to demonstrate it was obviously quite another. And it remained for Gurney’s experiments—together with the concurrent experiments of Janet and his French colleagues—to effect the work of demonstration, and, still more, to trace the operations of this mental undercurrent in channels, and with consequences, formerly unsuspected.
Not until Gurney’s and Janet’s time, to be more explicit, had experimental proof been forthcoming of the far-reaching influence of “subconscious ideas” in affecting human conduct, and of the possibility of initiating trains of thought completely cut off, or “dissociated,” from the field of conscious mentation. This was first convincingly revealed by experiments based on the discovery of the fact that commands “suggested” to a hypnotized person would be faithfully executed at a stated moment after the awakeningfrom hypnosis, and this despite the absence, in the normal waking state, of any conscious recollection of the commands in question. That this actually involved mentation beneath the threshold of consciousness was shown by Gurney in a number of experiments made possible by the further discovery that there are some people who can write “automatically”—that is, without conscious control of the words they put on paper, and even without knowing that they are writing anything. Thus Gurney records, in the course of his detailed record of these experiments (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 268-323):
On April 20 [P—ll] was told [while hypnotized] that half an hour after his next arrival he was to wind up a ball of string, and to let me know how the time was going. He arrived next evening at 8.30, and was set to the planchette [an instrument then often used to obtain automatic writing] at 8.43. He wrote, “13 minett has passed, and 17 more minetts to pass.” Some more experiments followed, and it so happened that at 9, the exact time when the fulfillment was due, he was in the trance. He suddenly said “Oh!” as if recollecting something, but did not move; he was then woke, and at 9.2 he walked across the room to where some string was lying, and wound it up....Another day the same “subject” was told that when I coughed for the sixth time he was to look out of the window. He was woke, and I gave at intervals five coughs—one of which, however, was a failure, owing to its obvious artificiality. He was set to the planchette, and the words produced were, “When Mr. Gurney cough 6 times I am to look out.” At this point I read his writing and stopped it. I asked if he had noticed my coughing, and he said, “No, sir”; but this, of course, showed no more than [that] he had heard without attending. He was now hypnotized, told that I wanted to know how often I had coughed, and at once woke. The writing recommenced, “4 times he has cough, and 2 times more he has to cough.” I coughed twice more, and he went to the window, drew aside the blind, and looked out. Two minutes afterward I asked him what sort of a night it was. He said, “Fine when I came in.” I said I thought I had seen him looking out just now, but he absolutely denied it.
On April 20 [P—ll] was told [while hypnotized] that half an hour after his next arrival he was to wind up a ball of string, and to let me know how the time was going. He arrived next evening at 8.30, and was set to the planchette [an instrument then often used to obtain automatic writing] at 8.43. He wrote, “13 minett has passed, and 17 more minetts to pass.” Some more experiments followed, and it so happened that at 9, the exact time when the fulfillment was due, he was in the trance. He suddenly said “Oh!” as if recollecting something, but did not move; he was then woke, and at 9.2 he walked across the room to where some string was lying, and wound it up....
Another day the same “subject” was told that when I coughed for the sixth time he was to look out of the window. He was woke, and I gave at intervals five coughs—one of which, however, was a failure, owing to its obvious artificiality. He was set to the planchette, and the words produced were, “When Mr. Gurney cough 6 times I am to look out.” At this point I read his writing and stopped it. I asked if he had noticed my coughing, and he said, “No, sir”; but this, of course, showed no more than [that] he had heard without attending. He was now hypnotized, told that I wanted to know how often I had coughed, and at once woke. The writing recommenced, “4 times he has cough, and 2 times more he has to cough.” I coughed twice more, and he went to the window, drew aside the blind, and looked out. Two minutes afterward I asked him what sort of a night it was. He said, “Fine when I came in.” I said I thought I had seen him looking out just now, but he absolutely denied it.
Any doubt that the memory oblivion in the waking statewas genuine was removed by the interesting circumstance that though the “subjects”—men to whom even small sums of money meant much—were repeatedly offered substantial rewards if they could state what had been said to them during hypnosis, they were invariably unable to do so. Stranger still, Gurney demonstrated that it was entirely possible to develop, in the hypnotic state itself, different sets of memories, each completely independent of the others; so that, so far as concerned the contents of his consciousness, the hypnotized “subject” seemed to possess two or more personalities, each with its own distinct set of memory-images (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 515-521). This may be made clearer by giving a sample of the many curious conversations between one of the “subjects” and G. A. Smith (known in the published reports as S.), a hypnotist often employed by Gurney to assist him in his experiments:
A young man named S—t ... after being hypnotized was told in state A that the pier-head had been washed away, and in state B that an engine-boiler had burst at Brighton station and killed several people. He was then roused to state A, when he proved to recollect about the accident to the pier; after which a few passes brought him again to state B.S. “But I suppose they’ll soon be able to build a new one.”Had the pier been now present in S—t’s mind, this remark would have been naturally understood to refer to it, as it had formed the subject of conversation a few seconds before. But he at once replied, “Oh, there are plenty on the line”—meaning plenty of engines.S. “The pile-driving takes time, though.”S—t. “Pile-driving? Well, I don’t know anything about engines myself.”A few upward passes were now made, and it at once became clear that the memory had shifted.S. “If they have plenty more, it doesn’t matter much.”S—t. “Oh, they can’t put it on in a day; it was a splendid place.”S. “Why, I’m talking about the engine.”S—t. “Engine! What, on the pier? I never noticed one there.”Again, the same “subject” was told in state A that a balloon had been seen passing over the King’s-road. Some passes were made which carried him into state B, when S. said, “But I didn’t see it myself.”S—t. “What was that?”He was now told that two large dogs had been having a fight in the Western-road; and a few upward passes roused him to state A.S. “But it was a good long time in sight.”S—t. “The balloon?”S. “No, the dog.”S—t. “Dog? Why, was there one on it? A dog on a balloon!”The “subject” is brought down again to state B.S. “But it didn’t remain in sight long; it soon went up.”S—t. “What didn’t? What went up?”S. “Weren’t we talking about balloons?”S—t. “No; but one of them dogs looked like a busted balloon when he was down.”A few upward passes, and S. says, “Which one?”S—t. “Why, there was only one.”S. “One what?”S—t. “Balloon.”S. “I was talking about dogs.”S—t. “I don’t know nothing of dogs.”Three days afterward S—t was again hypnotized, and S. said, “What was that you said about the pier?”S—t. “Oh, about the head being washed away.”This, it will be seen, was the memory appropriate to state A. Some downward passes were made, and S. said, “A good thing that things don’t often happen like that.”S—t. “No, they don’t at Brighton; they do on the Northern lines.”Here we have the engine accident again—the memory appropriate to state B. The balloon over the King’s-road was now strongly suggested to S; but that idea belonging to state A, it could not be recalled in state B.
A young man named S—t ... after being hypnotized was told in state A that the pier-head had been washed away, and in state B that an engine-boiler had burst at Brighton station and killed several people. He was then roused to state A, when he proved to recollect about the accident to the pier; after which a few passes brought him again to state B.
S. “But I suppose they’ll soon be able to build a new one.”
Had the pier been now present in S—t’s mind, this remark would have been naturally understood to refer to it, as it had formed the subject of conversation a few seconds before. But he at once replied, “Oh, there are plenty on the line”—meaning plenty of engines.
S. “The pile-driving takes time, though.”
S—t. “Pile-driving? Well, I don’t know anything about engines myself.”
A few upward passes were now made, and it at once became clear that the memory had shifted.
S. “If they have plenty more, it doesn’t matter much.”
S—t. “Oh, they can’t put it on in a day; it was a splendid place.”
S. “Why, I’m talking about the engine.”
S—t. “Engine! What, on the pier? I never noticed one there.”
Again, the same “subject” was told in state A that a balloon had been seen passing over the King’s-road. Some passes were made which carried him into state B, when S. said, “But I didn’t see it myself.”
S—t. “What was that?”
He was now told that two large dogs had been having a fight in the Western-road; and a few upward passes roused him to state A.
S. “But it was a good long time in sight.”
S—t. “The balloon?”
S. “No, the dog.”
S—t. “Dog? Why, was there one on it? A dog on a balloon!”
The “subject” is brought down again to state B.
S. “But it didn’t remain in sight long; it soon went up.”
S—t. “What didn’t? What went up?”
S. “Weren’t we talking about balloons?”
S—t. “No; but one of them dogs looked like a busted balloon when he was down.”
A few upward passes, and S. says, “Which one?”
S—t. “Why, there was only one.”
S. “One what?”
S—t. “Balloon.”
S. “I was talking about dogs.”
S—t. “I don’t know nothing of dogs.”
Three days afterward S—t was again hypnotized, and S. said, “What was that you said about the pier?”
S—t. “Oh, about the head being washed away.”
This, it will be seen, was the memory appropriate to state A. Some downward passes were made, and S. said, “A good thing that things don’t often happen like that.”
S—t. “No, they don’t at Brighton; they do on the Northern lines.”
Here we have the engine accident again—the memory appropriate to state B. The balloon over the King’s-road was now strongly suggested to S; but that idea belonging to state A, it could not be recalled in state B.
In all these conversations, in short, it was exactly as if the hypnotist, S., when talking to his subject in state A, and talking to him in state B, were talking to two different persons, each ignorant of facts known to the other. (The profound significance of this, from a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint will be made evident later.) Onthe other hand, and in sharp contrast, Gurney, in common with the Continental investigators, also demonstrated through hypnotic experimentation that the memory process as a regular thing is almost incredibly retentive, so that under appropriate conditions it is possible to recall happenings, it may be of earliest childhood, which have long since dropped out of conscious recollection—happenings, even, of which one has never had conscious knowledge. But, indeed, credit for the experimental demonstration of this twofold principle of subconscious perception and subconscious memory—which lies at the very root of abnormal psychology—by no means belongs wholly to Gurney and the French hypnotists. Many other pioneers in the systematic study of the “phenomena outside science” had a hand in proving and elucidating it, notably those who made a special study of crystal-gazing.
The average scientist of that time—perhaps it would be true to say the same of the average scientist of today—had about as much interest in the phenomena of crystal-gazing as he had in the “ravings” of the entranced spiritistic “medium.” He well knew that from time immemorial it had been a practice among the mystically minded to employ crystals, mirrors, or other objects with a reflecting surface, for purposes of divination; and that it had been insistently claimed that, by gazing steadily into such objects, hallucinatory pictures often became visible, imparting useful knowledge about people and events outside the crystal-gazer’s ken. But the scientist dismissed this as merely another evidence of the invincible superstitiousness of mankind. It never occurred to him to try crystal-gazing on his own account; or if it did, he shudderingly repelled the idea. The founders of the Society for Psychical Research were not so squeamish; crystal-gazing was approved by them as a fitting subject for investigation; and ere long, their decision was abundantly vindicated.
One member of the society, Miss Goodrich-Freer, finding that she possessed the crystal-gazer’s “gift,” sedulouslycultivated it for experimental purposes, and made as careful and detailed a record of what she observed as would any scientist employed in the vitally important task of watching and recording the wriggles of a tadpole. A fact which soon made itself evident to her was the frequency with which her crystal-visions represented incidents in her own past life, sometimes incidents dating back to early childhood. On one occasion, she notes, somebody was speaking in her presence, though not to her, of Palissy ware. She happened at the moment to be staring aimlessly at a dark green scent-bottle. At once there appeared in it a picture of a man furiously tearing up garden palings. She was wondering what this meant, when it was followed by a second picture showing, with the greatest distinctness, the library where as a child she had kept her books. Among these, Miss Goodrich-Freer now remembered, was one she had not seen for many years calledThe Provocations of Madame Palissy. Then she also remembered that one of this lady’s provocations was a bad habit her husband had of using the first material that came to hand as fuel for his furnace; and immediately the meaning of the first picture became clear to her.
Similarly one of her earliest experiences in crystal-vision was a picture of “a quaint oak chair, an old hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the back of the chair—slowly recognized as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage, which I had not entered, and had seldom recalled, since I was a child of ten.” Again, looking in her crystal she saw a copy of a medical prescription for which, a few hours before, she had been vainly hunting. On further inspection she perceived, without being able to read the words, that it was in the handwriting, not of her physician, but of a friend. Acting on the hint she searched through her friend’s letters, and found the medical prescription folded in one of them, where, she had reason to believe, it had been for more than four years. It could have been put there only accidentally, yet it was clearthat she must have subconsciously perceived what she was doing when she slipped the prescription into the letter, and that the mechanism of memory had registered an image of her absent-minded act. Many other examples of the memory registration of subconscious percepts are given in Miss Goodrich-Freer’s reports to the Society (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v, pp. 486-521; vol. viii, pp. 484-495). For example:
I find in the crystal a bit of dark wall, covered with white jessamine, and I ask myself, “Where have I walked today?” I have no recollection of such a sight, not a common one in the London streets but tomorrow I will repeat my walk of this morning, with careful regard for creeper-covered walls. Tomorrow solves the mystery. I find the very spot, and the sight brings with it the further recollection that at the moment we passed this spot I was engaged in absorbing conversation with my companion, and my voluntary attention was pre-occupied.To take another example. I had been occupied with accounts; I opened a drawer to take out my banking-book. My hand came in contact with the crystal, and I welcomed the suggestion of a change in occupation. However, figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more attractive to show me than the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my banking-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures I should, without doubt, have failed and could not even have guessed at the number of digits or the value of the first figure. Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb “to forget,” in all its moods and tenses....I saw in the crystal a young girl, an intimate friend, waving to me from her carriage. I observed that her hair, which had hung down her back when I last saw her, was now put up in young-lady fashion. Most certainly I had not consciously seen even the carriage, the look of which I knew very well. But next day I called on my friend; was reproached by her for not observing her as she passed; and perceived that she had altered her hair in the way which the crystal had shown.Next as to sounds not attended to.... A relative of minewas talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they werefurtherI paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished mahogany table, “1, [Earl’s]-square, Notting Hill.” I had no idea whose this address might be. But some days later my relative remarked, “H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down.” It occurred to me to ask, “Was it 1, [Earl’s]-square?” and this turned out to be the case.
I find in the crystal a bit of dark wall, covered with white jessamine, and I ask myself, “Where have I walked today?” I have no recollection of such a sight, not a common one in the London streets but tomorrow I will repeat my walk of this morning, with careful regard for creeper-covered walls. Tomorrow solves the mystery. I find the very spot, and the sight brings with it the further recollection that at the moment we passed this spot I was engaged in absorbing conversation with my companion, and my voluntary attention was pre-occupied.
To take another example. I had been occupied with accounts; I opened a drawer to take out my banking-book. My hand came in contact with the crystal, and I welcomed the suggestion of a change in occupation. However, figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more attractive to show me than the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my banking-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures I should, without doubt, have failed and could not even have guessed at the number of digits or the value of the first figure. Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb “to forget,” in all its moods and tenses....
I saw in the crystal a young girl, an intimate friend, waving to me from her carriage. I observed that her hair, which had hung down her back when I last saw her, was now put up in young-lady fashion. Most certainly I had not consciously seen even the carriage, the look of which I knew very well. But next day I called on my friend; was reproached by her for not observing her as she passed; and perceived that she had altered her hair in the way which the crystal had shown.
Next as to sounds not attended to.... A relative of minewas talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they werefurtherI paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished mahogany table, “1, [Earl’s]-square, Notting Hill.” I had no idea whose this address might be. But some days later my relative remarked, “H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down.” It occurred to me to ask, “Was it 1, [Earl’s]-square?” and this turned out to be the case.
From investigators in other departments of psychical research came—and still comes—evidence no less impressively testifying to the marvellous power of the human memory, with its subconscious awareness even for sights and sounds not consciously perceived. It was further discovered that memory-images not infrequently emerge above the threshold of consciousness in the form of spontaneously externalized visual and auditory hallucinations, sometimes of a striking sort. The discovery was also made that, in persons of a peculiar temperament, subconscious memories might be so completely switched off, or “dissociated,” from the field of consciousness that on coming into it again they would be unrecognized, and would give rise to the conviction that they related to matters which could not possibly have been within the range of previous knowledge, conscious or subconscious. Perhaps the best illustration of this curious and important psychological fact is found in a case reported quite recently by Mr. Lowes Dickinson.
Among his friends was a young lady who developed a form of “trance mediumship,” in which she claimed to visit another world and meet and talk with people there, particularly a certain Blanche Poynings, described as an earth-dweller in the time of Richard II. This “spirit,” speaking through the voice of the entranced “medium,” gave as proof of her identity many interesting particulars regarding her sojourn on earth. She had been, it seemed,an intimate friend of Maud, Countess of Salisbury, and much of her talk had to do with that lady, and with the Earl of Salisbury. Odd little incidents in the latter’s life were vivaciously recounted—such as his throwing an image out of his chapel into a ditch, where it was found by a wayfarer, who repainted it and set it up in a bake-house. “Blanche” also commented in an amusing way on the appearance of Joan, “The Fair Maid of Kent,” and other historical personages; told about her own exile from Court; and gave much information respecting the customs and manners of the period.
All this interested and puzzled Mr. Dickinson, because his friend, whose veracity he could not doubt, assured him that she had never made a study of the events of King Richard’s reign, and had not so much as read anything about it. Yet, as he ascertained by patient research among old chronicles, the alleged “spirit” unquestionably possessed accurate and extensive knowledge of the men and women who had been prominent at King Richard’s Court, and of happenings which in some instances were barely mentioned by the annalists. The only logical explanation seemed to be that this was a genuine case of “spirit communication.” But one day, taking tea with his friend and her aunt, Mr. Dickinson made a discovery that placed the affair in an entirely different light.
The subject of automatic writing chanced to come up, and it developed that the “medium” owned a planchette, and often experimented with it. At her investigator’s request it was brought out, she placed her hands on it, and questions were put to it concerning the Blanche Poynings statements. These questions elicited the unexpected announcement, by the automatic writing, that corroboration of every statement made by “Blanche” would be found in a book calledCountess Maud, written by Emily Holt. So soon as planchette wrote the name of this book, the “medium” exclaimed that she believed there was a novel with that title, and that she had once read it. Her auntconfirmed this, but neither she nor her aunt could recall anything about its plot or characters, nor even the period with which it dealt. Following the clue thus strangely given Mr. Dickinson soon hadCountess Maudin his hands, and found mentioned in it, with corresponding detail, almost every person and every incident given by the “spirit” of Blanche, who, in the novel, was of quite secondary importance. Even then his mediumistic friend could not recall anything about the book, except a vague impression that she had read it as a child.
He now caused her to be hypnotized, and questioned her anew, when he learned to his surprise that she had never actually readCountess Maudherself, but had heard her aunt read it aloud. “I looked at it, and painted a picture in the beginning. I used to turn over the pages. I didn’t read it, because it was dull. Blanche Poynings was in the book; not much about her.” And, in response to a question as to how the Blanche Poynings impersonation really originated, she made the reply, of great interest psychologically, “There was a real person named Blanche Poynings that I met, and I think her name started the memory, and I got the two mixed up.”
These, then, were some of the first-fruits of systematic psychical research: Proof that percepts may be subconsciously, as well as consciously acquired, and that, as Pierre Janet so tersely put it, “Whatever has gone into the mind may come out of the mind”; proof that the emergence of subconscious memories may be in the form of self-induced hallucinations; proof that such memories sometimes develop a dynamic force, impelling the individual to seemingly inexplicable conduct; proof that the personality itself may be artificially dislocated, so that whole areas of memory sink temporarily below the threshold of consciousness; proof that, even below the threshold, intelligent mentation continues in a fashion similar to the mentation consciously directed by the waking will; and, finally, proof that in hypnotism, crystal-gazing, and automaticwriting, invaluable means are available for exploring the remotest nooks and corners of “the subconscious.” From one point of view their establishment of such facts as these was, indeed, disconcerting to the “psychical researchers,” for it obviously made increasingly difficult the demonstration of the survival of the soul on evidence afforded by phenomena like apparitions, hauntings, and mediumistic utterances. But it also marked an enormous advance in man’s knowledge of himself, and in his control of his development here on earth.
The first to appreciate this—at any rate, the first to turn it to practical account—were the Frenchmen who, like Gurney, had attacked with special vigor the problems raised by hypnotism. Sharing to the full the belief of their English colleagues that here was a subject which science ought to have investigated long before—many of them, in fact, expressing their sympathy with the general purposes of the Society for Psychical Research by becoming members of it—the French savants’ motive in invading the realm of the occult had in most cases been intellectual curiosity rather than any ardent desire to prove life after death. They were not so much concerned with the possible bearing of hypnotic phenomena on the soul problem, as with their possible bearing on man’s earthly welfare. And no sooner was it borne in on them that hypnotism did have practical uses, than the majority concentrated their efforts on ascertaining what these uses were, and to what extent, and with what consequences, the phenomena of the hypnotic state were paralleled in everyday life.
The leader in this movement—which, with Gurney’s experiments in England, may be said to constitute the beginning of abnormal psychology—was Pierre Janet, who, in 1881, at the early age of twenty-two, had been appointed professor of philosophy in the college of Chateauroux, and soon afterward received a similar appointment in the College of Havre. At Havre, Janet took up in earnest the investigation of things psychical, studyingmediumistic phenomena, and making a series of experiments in hypnotic telepathy that brought him into mutually helpful relations with Gurney, Myers, and other active workers in the Society for Psychical Research. But from the first he was specially interested in the peculiarities of the mind in hypnosis, and his interest in this particular problem became all-absorbing when he observed that even the most bizarre hypnotic phenomena were sometimes spontaneously produced. Perhaps most influential in determining the future course of his life-activities was his discovery that hypnotization was not always necessary to effect the strange dissociation of personality evinced in, for instance, the case of Gurney’s “subject,” S—t, cited above.
Janet himself, experimenting with Madame B., the peasant wife of a charcoal-burner, had been astonished to find that when hypnotized she developed a personality markedly different from that of her normal waking life. The waking Madame B. was a timid, dull, ignorant woman; the hypnotized Madame B. (who called herself Léontine) was bright, vivacious, even inclined to be mischievous. Between the two personalities, again, there was an absolute cleavage of memory; each knew nothing of the other’s thoughts and actions. And after a time, to Janet’s profound astonishment, the Léontine personality began to manifest spontaneously. In an article contributed to theRevue Philosophique, for March, 1888, he records (translation by Frederic Myers):
She had left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. She was unwell, she said, worse on some days than on others, and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in a very different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity, “My dear good sir, I must tell you that B. really, really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me; I am going to demolish her, she bores me, I am ill also, this is from your devoted Léontine.” When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her about this singular missive. Sheremembered thefirstletter very distinctly ... but had not the slightest recollection of the second.... I at first thought that there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope.... But afterward these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study their mode of production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in her left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic air; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round, wide awake, but surprised to see me, for in her state of abstraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.
She had left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. She was unwell, she said, worse on some days than on others, and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in a very different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity, “My dear good sir, I must tell you that B. really, really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me; I am going to demolish her, she bores me, I am ill also, this is from your devoted Léontine.” When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her about this singular missive. Sheremembered thefirstletter very distinctly ... but had not the slightest recollection of the second.... I at first thought that there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope.... But afterward these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study their mode of production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in her left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic air; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round, wide awake, but surprised to see me, for in her state of abstraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.
To Janet this strange occurrence, when viewed in conjunction with phenomena manifested by two or three other of his “subjects,” was chiefly significant as hinting at the possibility that the same mechanism which produced the various phenomena of the hypnotic state—from hallucinations, loss of memory, and automatic execution of “suggestions” given during hypnosis, to the production of blisters, paralyses, and other physical effects of hypnotic suggestion—might be operant in, and responsible for, the protean manifestations of that baffling disease hysteria, with which Madame B. and the other subjects were known to be afflicted. On this theory, hysteria—which until then had been generally assumed to have a physical basis—would be essentially a mental malady; and its fundamental characteristic would be some degree of dissociation of personality.
Already, as Janet was aware, Charcot had demonstrated the inadequacy and downright error of the prevalent medical notions concerning hysteria, and had also rendered a splendid service to humanity by compelling recognition of the fact that sufferers from hysteria oftendevelop symptoms—paralyses, growths, etc.—all too easily mistaken for the symptoms of some really organic disease perhaps incurable, or curable only by the aid of the surgeon’s knife. But while he had thus revealed the wholly functional character of hysteria, and had saved countless sufferers from useless and unnecessary operations, Charcot had thrown little or no light on its causation and mechanism, and this was the problem which Janet now undertook to solve, removing from Havre to Paris, and associating himself with Charcot in the latter’s clinic at the Salpétrière Hospital.
Observing, experimenting, recording—with a truly catholic mind profiting from the observations and experiments of other workers, including his fellow-members in the Society for Psychical Research—he gradually achieved his epoch-marking demonstration of the rôle played by “dissociated memories” in the causation, not alone of hysteria, but of all functional nervous and mental troubles. He showed that severe emotional shocks—frights, griefs, worries—might be, and frequently were, completely effaced from conscious recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the depths of the subconscious; he showed that thence they might, and frequently did, exercise a baneful effect on the whole organism giving rise to disease-symptoms, the particular types of which were determined by the victim’s “self-suggestions” (just as Mr. Dickinson’s “medium” suggested to herself the Blanche Poynings impersonation); and he showed how important it was, as a preliminary to effecting a permanent cure, to get at these dissociated memories and drag them back to the full light of conscious recollection.
To get at them he made use, as medical psychologists all over the civilized world are today making use, of hypnotism, of automatic writing, even of the “mystical” crystal-gazing, the use of which for medical purposes was directly suggested to him by the experiments of Miss Goodrich-Freer.Janet himself, it should perhaps be added, would be the last to disavow the assistance he received in one way or another from the “psychical researchers” of England; indeed, he has not forgotten that everything he has accomplished is the outgrowth of his early studies in the “occult” phenomena of hypnotism. It is to be regretted that many of his present-day fellow-workers in the domain of scientific psychotherapy are not equally appreciative of the fact that every “cure” they put to their credit—every hysteric, neurasthenic, or psychasthenic patient whom they send on his or her way rejoicing in a restoration to health—is a living witness to the beneficial results that have flowed from the patient labors of the courageous pioneers, who, at the risk of their scientific reputations, so boldly adventured into the psychical thirty years ago.
We shall have more to say in a later article on what society owes to psychical research.