POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION. 237 



difficult for the patient's already partly disordinated conscious- 

 ness to execute or were resisted by elements already present. A 

 good case of the latter type is quoted by Mr. Gurney from Prof. 

 Delboeuf. " He told the patient to straighten a crooked knitting 

 needle at a future moment when he foresaw that to do so would 

 necessitate drawing the needle out of the stocking and spoiling 

 the work. When the moment arrived she solved the difficulty by 

 going to sleep and dreaming that she straightened the needle.'* I 



told T that he could not see two chairs, and then caused him to 



walk into them. Asked what impeded his progress, he said " The 

 wall." When I showed him that could not be true, and insisted 

 upon his telling me what it was, he fell into a deep lethargy and 

 collapsed in a heap on the floor. He nearly always falls asleep 

 when told to execute any complicated suggestion. Patients who 

 pass into a secondary state during the execution of a suggestion 

 often manifest no more surprise at the most extraordinary hallu- 

 cinations than one usually feels when confronted with the marvels 

 of dreamland. T described in all detail how a cup of choco- 

 late, which was held by a person I had forbidden him to see, was 

 hanging in the air all alone, how the spoon was traveling around 

 in it quite of its own accord, but he seemed to find it entirely 

 natural. This is due to the fact that surprise is one of the ideal 

 emotions originated in the clash of inconsistent states. Here the 

 hallucination found no sensations or thoughts in the disordinated 

 state with which to clash. 



The whole question as to the relation between the posthypnotic 

 suggestion and the normal consciousness is involved in much 

 obscurity, which is the more to be regretted when one considers 

 that upon it depends the solution of that other vexed question as 

 to whether suggestions can be used to further a criminal end. 



To the best of my knowledge, no indubitable cases are on 

 record in which a person was impelled by posthypnotic sugges- 

 tion to the commission of a crime which he would not have 

 committed of his own motion, although there are a few cases re- 

 ported in which criminal assault was probably committed during 

 the hypnotic state. The evidence, therefore, is almost entirely 

 experimental. 



It is clear that the control of the operator over the patient 

 during the hypnotic state is often almost unlimited, and un- 

 doubtedly might be used for the commission of crimes which 

 could be completed during the state without danger of detection 

 to the suggester. There are, however, not many crimes that could 

 so be committed. Signatures could be got by such means, but even 

 when got the suggester would often have difficulty in making use 

 of a signature which was not witnessed or which was repudiated 

 as a forgery by the man who was supposed to have written it. 



