PROBLEMS OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 767 



task whatever has been set. The exact method of mentation by 

 which the problem is extra-consciously solved is learned by cate- 

 chizing the hypnotic personality. But such experiments are plainly 

 artifacts. The dissociation and automatism are the products of 

 suggestion. The results are of value, however, as cannot be too often 

 insisted upon, in that they show the ease with which duality of the 

 mind may be effected by what is plainly a psycho-physiological 

 stimulus, a suggested idea. But to obtain subconscious phenomena 

 free from artifice such phenomena must be spontaneous. Information 

 regarding the presence and character of subconscious states at any 

 given time can be easily obtained owing to the well-known fact 

 that ideas * dissociated from the personal consciousness awake may 

 become synthesized with this same consciousness in hypnosis, and 

 then be remembered. A person in hypnosis may thus be able to 

 analyze and describe the ideas which were spontaneously present 

 as an extra-consciousness when awake, but which were not then 

 known to the personal consciousness. This method is far more 

 accurate than the device of tapping the subconsciousness by auto- 

 matic writing, though the same in principle. I am obliged here to 

 refer to a series of observations of this kind which I have personally 

 made with a view of obtaining light upon this question, as I know 

 of no others that have been limited to spontaneous phenomena 

 and are not open to the objection of artifacts. A systematic examin- 

 ation 2 was made of the personal consciousness in hypnosis, regarding 

 the perceptions and content of the secondary consciousness during 

 definite moments, of which the events were prearranged or other- 



1 This word is used as a convenient expression for any state of consciousness. 



2 I have adopted this custom of treating the hypnotic self as a sane con- 

 sciousness, instead of a freak affair, fit only to be played with and to be made 

 to perform all sorts of antics. I am certain this method of study will throw more 

 light on the composition of normal consciousness than that of inducing hallucina- 

 tions and other artifacts. The hypnotic self, if treated like a reasonable being, 

 will be found able to give important information. It knows the waking self, it 

 knows its own thoughts, and it knows the thoughts of the secondary conscious- 

 ness. It can give very valuable information about each. On the other hand, it 

 is very easily disintegrated by suggestion; and ideas, hallucinations, and what 

 not, are very easily created in it. Experiments of this latter kind have their use, 

 but for the purpose of learning the mode of the working of the normal mind, 

 a still greater advantage is to be obtained by treating it as a rational conscious- 

 ness capable of accurately observing and imparting information derived from 

 its own experiences. 



I would here insist that it is a mistake to confuse the personal consciousness 

 in hypnosis with the secondary consciousness when such exists. They are not 

 identical or coextensive. An hypnotic self, as ordinarily observed, is stiU the per- 

 sonal consciousness, but in hypnosis the previously dissociated states are syn- 

 thesized with this self and remembered. The whole becomes then a unity, and 

 the hypnotic personal consciousness remembers the formerly dissociated ideas 

 and its own and speaks of them as such. This has given rise to the wrong inter- 

 pretation that identifies the hypnotic self with the secondary or subconsciousness. 

 But the hypnotic self includes a large part of the waking personal self. On 

 waking, this part regains the rest of its own syntheses and loses the second states. 

 A failure to recognize these facts has led to much confusion in interpreting 

 abnormal psychological phenomena. 



