-je POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" A subconscious dream,* in which the movement of a limb is 

 represented, tends to some extent to invade the primary con- 

 sciousness and deprive it of control over that limb. Le 



dreams that he is fighting with a thief, and keeps off his assailant 

 with his right hand ; the thief puts his knee on his left side and 



clutches his neck with his hand. Upon awaking, Le has a 



hypersBsthetic point on the left side, pressure upon which is suffi- 

 cient to bring on the complete hallucination of the scene, and has, 

 further, an anaesthetic spot upon the neck with complete insen- 

 sibility and almost complete paralysis of the right arm. "Why do 

 we find these two symptoms ? Because these sensations of pres- 

 sure on the neck and movement of the arm form, so to speak, part 

 of the dream, are absorbed by it, and are no longer at the dis- 

 posal of the self." 



Sometimes we meet with cases in which the secondary system 

 is not subconscious, but blends sufficiently with the primary sys- 

 tem to be recalled, and at the same time retains its independent 

 character. The experiences of Dr. Cocke and of Anna Katharina 

 Emmerich, to which I allude in my paper on Hypnotic States, 

 Trance, and Ecstasy, are of this type. Similar cases are not infre- 

 quent in insanity. One of the best accounts from normal life that 

 I have seen is given by the late Robert Louis Stevenson in a let- 

 ter to Mr. F. W. H. Myers, dated July 14, 1892 : f 



" During an illness at Nice I lay awake a whole night in ex- 

 treme pain. From the beginning of the evening one part of my 

 mind became possessed of a notion so grotesque and shapeless that 

 it may best be described as a form of words. I thought the pain 

 was, or was connected with, a wisp or coil of some sort ; I knew 

 not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was, and cared not ; 

 only I thought if the two ends were brought together the pain 

 would cease. Now all the time, with aiiother part of my mind, 

 which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the 

 absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired sanity, 

 and was engaged with my other self in perpetual conflict. Myself 

 had nothing more at heart than to keep from my wife, who was 

 nursing me, any hint of this ridiculous hallucination ; the other 

 was bound that she should be told of it and ordered to effect the 

 cure. I believe it must have been well on in the morning before 

 the fever (or the other fellow) triumphed, and I called my wife to 

 my bedside, seized her savagely by the wrist, and looking on her 

 with a face of fury, cried, ' Why do you not put the two ends 

 together and put me out of pain ?' " 



In another illness, at Sydney, "^Tie other fellow had an explana- 



* Op. cit., p. 132. 



f Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. ix, p. 9. 



