HYPNOTIC STATES, TRANCE, AND ECSTASY. 805 



we should do in order to be hypnotized. Often the attention is 

 riveted upon a bright spot, upon a sound, a sensation of touch, or 

 even upon a thought. As it is very difficult to hold attention 

 upon an absolutely unchanging thing, it is customary to help the 

 patient by providing some monotonous variation. This is the 

 chief function of the "mesmeric passes" of which we hear so 

 much, of the revolving mirrors, oscillating pendulum, etc. 



Whenever the normal flow of consciousness is thus interrupted, 

 there is a tendency for the patient to fall asleep. It would seem 

 as if the other elements those which are prevented from getting 

 into the upper consciousness lose their co-ordination and coher- 

 ence ; they no longer faithfully mirror the past or paint the 

 future, they become broken, dislocated, "dreamy," and finally 

 die away altogether. Then the element which has occupied at- 

 tention also dies away, and the patient has reached the deepest 

 stage of hypnotic lethargy. I asked one of my patients, while he 

 was apparently sunk in a deep lethargy, what he was thinking of. 

 He told me in a halting, broken way that he was in his own home, 

 it was about eight o'clock at night, he was playing cards with So- 

 and-so ; I was at a neighboring table, also playing cards, etc. In 

 what respect does this differ from the ordinary dream ? But more 

 often the mind seems like a slate erased, and the only thoughts 

 existing are those which the hypnotizer suggests. 



It is often possible to trace the stages through which con- 

 sciousness passes in its progress toward complete disordination 

 and coma, and many have tried to discover some fixed relation 

 between these stages. There is, I think, none, but there are some 

 recurring sequences. Usually the control of movement by 

 thought is first impaired. The patient feels himself becoming 

 weak, his limbs grow heavy, the more delicately co-ordinated 

 muscle groups of the eyelids, lips, and fingers become paralyzed, 

 then the larger groups are affected. Sometimes one side of the 

 body yields before the other ; and sometimes, instead of paralysis, 

 rigidity supervenes. I remember one patient who, when com- 

 manded to shut his eyes, instantly "went off" like a spring 

 released, becoming as rigid as a log, and we had great ado to 

 " limber him up " again. 



If the patient be left to himself he will either awake of him- 

 self or fall into a normal sleep, from which all signs of suggesti- 

 bility, catalepsy, etc., have disappeared. This is most easily in- 

 terpreted upon the supposition that hypnotic states are in fact 

 only imperfect forms of sleep, and therefore unstable, tending to 

 resolve themselves in either the one direction or the other. The 

 fact that hypnotic states may be produced not only by putting a 

 waking man partly asleep, but also by partly waking a sleeping 

 man, would point to the same conclusion. 



