8o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The suggestibility whicli is so characteristic of hypnotic states 

 probably depends upon the persistence of that portion of the 

 patient's consciousness which represents the hypnotizer, while all 

 else has either disappeared, or become much weakened by disso- 

 ciation from its accustomed re-enforcing elements. The hypno- 

 tizer keeps talking to the patient, touching and stroking him. 

 and he has in consequence no opportunity to fall asleep to him^ 



R told me that even when his consciousness of the position of 



his own body was almost lost, and the sounds of the outer world 

 seemed dull and mufHed, the tones of my voice and my lightest 

 touch remained as distinct as ever. The consciousness of the 

 hypnotizer is a center from which radiate new forces, and some- 

 times, when memory is preserved, the patient may be able to de- 

 scribe the first collisions between the enfeebled upper conscious- 

 ness and the foreign element. Take Dr. Cocke's account of his 

 own experiences : 



"He then said to me, 'You can not open your eyes.' The 

 motor apparatus of my lids would not seemingly respond to my 

 will, yet I was conscious that while one part of my mind wanted 

 to open my eyes, another part did not want to, so I was in a para- 

 doxical state : I believed that I could open my eyes and yet could 

 not. The feeling of not wishing to open them was not based upon 

 any desire to please the operator. . . . He told me that I was 

 asleep, and placed my hand over my head, and stated that it was 

 rigid, and that I could not put it down. Again, a part of my con- 

 sciousness wanted to put it down and another part did not. He 

 stroked my arm and told me that it was growing numb, that it 

 was growing insensible. He told me that I had no feeling in it. 

 He said, ' You have no feeling in it, have you ?' I said ' No,' and 

 I knew that I said * No,' yet I knew that I had feeling in it, and 

 yet believed that I had no feeling in it. ... I was not conscious 

 of my body at all, but was painfully conscious of the two contra- 

 dictory elements within me. I knew that my body existed, but 

 could not prove it to myself. I knew that the statements made 

 by the operator were, in a measure, untrue. I obeyed them vol- 

 untarily and involuntarily." 



As a brief outline of the salient features of typical hypnotic 

 states the above must suffice, but one must remember that many 

 anomalous states are found to perplex the student. Sometimes 

 one meets with profound lethargy with no suggestibility ; at 

 others, the patient becomes extremely suggestible without a sign 

 of sleep, and is afterward found to have no memory of the sug- 

 gestible stage. Occasionally the attempt to produce a hypnotic 

 state throws the patient into a trancelike nightmare, from which 

 it is very difficult to rescue him. Sometimes it is difficult to get 

 the patient entirely awake, or, even if awake and conscious, some 



