Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/132

120 EDMUND GUENEY. attending Brighton College, and asked his name, he gave it as Gerald Hamilton. (5) The next case is stranger still, though quite as definite. If in the alert state any physical effect is produced by suggestion e.g., if the ' subject ' is made unable to flex his arm by being told that he cannot do so a further very marked effect is produced on his mental powers and memory, although there is 110 special sign that his mind is preoccupied with attending to his bodily symptoms. A boy's arm was thus extended ; he became unable to talk rationally ; and being set to read aloud, he did so in a stupid and mechanical way, and could not recollect what he had read. He was now passed into the deep state, during which his arm dropped ; and on being recalled from this state, was asked what he had been doing just before he went to sleep. He replied that he was holding his arm out ; but both forgot and utterly denied the fact of the reading. Similarly the operations of opening a piano and picking out a tune on it, carried out by a ' subject ' while under an impression that he could not unclench one of his fists, were clean forgotten after an interval of the deep state. (6) Any sort of argument or bothering has a singular effect in causing the ' subject's ' mind to drift into a deeper dream-like state. Thus, at the close of the experiment just mentioned, the ' subject ' was pressed for some time as to how his arm, which he remembered to have been stiff and extended, had dropped. While he was in a state of puzzle and worry, a sudden clap and call brought him instantly to a point at which the whole circum- stance as to his arm was completely forgotten ; but being allowed to lapse quietly, he again recalled it. There are thus sub- divisions of recollective power within the alert stage itself. (7) We now come to an apparent exception of another sort. If the thing impressed on the ' subject's ' mind in the deep state is a command, which he is to execute ' on waking,' he will execute it as soon as he returns to the alert state ; or, if allowed to work off his trance in natural sleep, he will usually perform the act on normal waking ; but, if the act has been performed in the alert state, he will have no recollection of it when brought to his normal state. 1 Such obedience is, however, no true exception to the rule that psychic memory of ideas does not extend from one state to another, any more than in the case above noticed where a ' subject ' obeys a command fixed for some distant hour : he feels an impulse but does not remember its source. A singular 1 After what has been said above, it will be readily understood that per- formance in the alert state of commands given in the deep, and remem- brance of impressions from one alert state to another with a deep state between, are liable to be represented as performance or remembrance on waking i.e., on complete waking into the normal state owing to the ease with which the alert state may be confounded with the normal.