From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



Cryptomnesia may also appear in dreams. 



The classical case of Delbceuf 1 is quite characteristic 

 in this respect: in a complicated dream he saw, among 

 other things, a plant with its botanical name, Asplenium 

 ruta muraria. Now Delbceuf was totally ignorant of 

 this name, or thought he was. After long search he 

 found that two years before he had turned over the 

 leaves of a botanical album and there had seen both the 

 plant and the name, of which he had not thought again. 



In hypnosis and connected states cryptomnesia some- 

 times is strikingly manifested. If the subject is carried 

 back, spontaneously or by suggestion to a remote period 

 of his life, all the forgotten impressions reappear and 

 the psychism manifested is precisely that which he had 

 at that age. The experiments of Janet, and, subsequently, 

 those of de Rochas, on the regression of memory have 

 brought this out clearly. 



Sometimes the subject, in this state of regression to 

 a former age, shows knowledge totally forgotten, such as 

 a language learned in childhood. Pitres 2 cites the case 

 of a patient, Albertine M., who thus used the -patois 

 of Saintonge, which she had only spoken in childhood. 

 During this regressional delirium, says Pitres, ' she 

 expressed herself in patois, and if we begged her to speak 

 in French she invariably answered, always in patois, 

 that she did not know the talk of the townspeople.' 



Take, also, the famous case of one of Flournoy's 

 subjects, who, in a state of mediumistic somnambulism, 

 spoke in Sanskrit, a tongue of which he was completely 

 ignorant, and had never learned. Flournoy, in spite of 

 all his investigations, could never discover the origin of 

 this phenomenon.* 



It is in mediumship that cryptomnesia shows a climax. 

 It may be the unsuspected source of quite stupefying 

 messages. 



1 Quoted by M. Dwelshauvers. 



* Pitres : L'Hysterie et I'Hyfmotisme. 



1 Flournoy : Des Indes A la Plantte Mars. 



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