February 14, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



1 1 



■ BOOK-REVIEWS. 



De la Suggestion et du Somnambulisine dans leurs Rapports avec 

 la Jurisprudence et la Mddedne Legale. Par Jules Liegois. 

 Paris. 8°. 



Professor Liegois has in this volume presented a work 

 destined to take an authoritative place in the modem study of 

 hypnotism. He approaches the subject from an aspect not yet 

 worthily represented. He is a professor in the law faculty at 

 Nancy, and, together with Bernheim, Beaunis, and Liebault, has 

 conti'ibuted to the position and the fame of the school of Nancy. 

 In the present volume he brings together the result of some five 

 years' study and observation. Though interested primarily in 

 the legal aspects of hypnotism, and entitling the volume accord- 

 ing to this interest, the author takes a very wide view of the sub- 

 ject; so that, in addition to its special purpose, the volume forms 

 a serviceable manual of the views of the Nancy school of hypno- 

 tism. 



We have first an historical survey of the phenomena beginning 

 with Mesmer, in which special attention is paid to those who 

 fii-st presented the importance of suggestion as an explanation of 

 the i^henomena, and thus in some sense were predecessors of the 

 school of Nancy. Following upon this is a chapter describing 

 the methods of hypnotization and the various kinds and degrees 

 of tlie effects produced. We come then to the real core of the 

 subject, suggestion and its many variations. The author 

 forcibly defends, and illustrates with an abundance of examples 

 and pieces jiisticatives, the point of view of the school of Nancy, 

 holding that suggestion, conscious or unconscious, is the clew 

 to the explanation of all the phenomena, and assigning to the 

 physical manipulations, etc. , the rule of re-enforcements of sug- 

 gestion. The main body of the work is devoted to the descrip- 

 tion of all those phenomena of hypnotism likely to be concerned 

 in criminal abuses, for which this state of automatism and 

 unconsciousness offers facilities ; and, as almost the entire range 

 of phenomena can be so abused, the result is a rather large 

 work. 



The first class of crimes noticed are those against the person 

 hypnotized. To make this possible, it is necessary that the sub- 

 ject shall be entirely insensible, and again, that, upon awaken- 

 ing, the subject retain no memor-y of what has been done. The 

 former is conclusively shown by the many tests of pricking with 

 pins ; applying electi'ical shocks, irritating substances, etc. , em- 

 ployed to show the genuineness of the phenomena ; and, in addition, 

 by tlie many cases in which this insensibility is utilized for per- 

 forming surgical operations. A very complete account of these 

 is given, showing how easily and how variedly this power may be 

 abused, and no clew remain of the perpetrator of the crime The 

 forgetting of what lias happened in hypnosis is the normal case in 

 all but the lightest stages, and, especially if re-enforced by a di- 

 rect suggestion that no trace shall remain in the memory, be- 

 comes a most serious factor in the legal aspects of hypnotism. 

 The normal life of the individual is broken into by these hypnotic 

 states, until at length we have almost a dual personality; the 

 normal self knowing nothing of the hypnotic ego, and the latter 

 forming successive though not continuous experiences of its own. 



A second important class of crimes is inherent in the siiscejiti- 

 bility of the subject. The automatism of the hypnotic state, 

 placing the subject so largely at the mercy of the operator, opens 

 out possibilities of abuse limited only by the variety of sugges- 

 tions. Tlie subject's signature may be obtained to documents of 

 great money value: he may be induced to declare himself the 

 perpeti-ator of a crime really committed by another ; he may be 

 made to accuse an innocent third party of a crime, and perhaps 

 declare himself a witness of the fact ; he may be made to commit 

 a theft, a forgery, while hypnotized ; and so on. Tliese compli- 

 cations are made .the more probable and the more perplexing by 

 the existence of post-hypnotic and of retro-active hallucinations. 

 It has been shown that almost any suggestion acted out by the 

 subject while hypnotized may also be performed while in his 

 normal waking condition, in obedience to a suggestion given a 

 shorter or longer time previously in the hypnosis. Here, then, 

 would be a person committing a crime with a full consciousness 



of his surroundings, perhaps accepting the responsibility of his,- 

 actions, and yet really the tool of another, irresistibly guided by 

 a hidden hand. To show that these cases are more than ficti- 

 tious. Professor Liegois devised several experiments in which 

 subjects were made to shoot a designated individual with a paper 

 pistol, offer him a drink of water which was believed by the sub- 

 ject to be poison, and the like. The retro-active hallucinations 

 take place when the subject accepts the suggestion that a certain 

 event has formed a part of his experience ; that he has done or 

 seen a certain thing, while in fact, though the event may be a 

 real one, he has had no part in it. The easily impressed subject 

 absorbs the pseudo-event into his mental possessions, may perhaps 

 add corroborating details of his own, fixing the time, place, and 

 circumstances. Eveiy imaginable variety of falsification of testi- 

 mony is thus made possible. This susceptibility has been observed, 

 too, in the ordinary waking state without any hyimotization 

 whatever, though usually only with persons subject to hyimoti- 

 zation. The state would then be similar to that slightly morbid 

 condition in which fact and fiction are intermingled and an 

 imaginative person believes his own fabrications, except that the 

 latter are impressed upon him from without. Children are par- 

 ticularly liable to this weakness. The case of the boy Moritz, in 

 the famous Tisza-Eslar affair, accusing his own father of a 

 heinous crime, is doubtless to be accounted for in this way ; and 

 Professor Liegois cites several cases in which, in less enlightened 

 ages, pereons have been tortured and executed on the strength of 

 evidence very probably the result of suggestion upon a suscepti- 

 ble temperament. 



Having thus outlined the field of criminal suggestion, the 

 author reviews a few cases of actual legal proceedings in which 

 he feels confident that hypnotism has played a part. In some, 

 ti'ials an abnormal condition was suspected, in others not. They 

 ^are mostly, however, of no recent date, and will not command 

 the interest attendant upon cases now occurring, in which the 

 possibilities of hypnotism are fully underetood. It is to the dis- 

 cussion of the methods of placing the responsibility in cases that 

 may arise, that Professor Liegois devotes the final chapters of his 

 volume. In the cases where the subject is the victim of a 

 crime, it will usually be known whether he or she has been 

 accustomed to be hypnotized, and by whom ; in other words, the 

 case would present the same difficulties as the detection of guilt 

 in an assault in which the victim is rendered helpless by physical 

 means. In cases in which the hypnotized subject commits a 

 crime, the hypnotizer alone is responsible ; and the proof of act- 

 ing while in an irresponsible condition will clear the alleged 

 criminal, as in a plea of insanity. If the crime is committed 

 post-hypnotically, the proof would be more difficult, though in 

 both cases it would have to be shown that the defendant can be 

 hypnotized to a degree of forgetting all that happens in the hyp- 

 notic state. The right of a court to hypnotize a pei-son in order 

 to ascertain what has occurred in a former hypnosis (but which 

 remains totally forgotten in the normal state) the author seems to 

 regard as a dangerous precedent. The main point, however, is 

 to discover the author of a suggestion, when the latter has taken 

 the precaution to suggest to his subject complete amnesia of him- 

 self, and a full acceptance of the deed as his or her own. This 

 difficulty Professor Liegois thinks he has solved by a series of in- 

 genious tests. It is quite true, that, under the conditions de- 

 scribed, the subject will be unable to name the author of a sug- 

 gestion; but if, for example, she be told that as soon as the 

 author of the suggestion enters the room she will go to sleep or 

 do any designated act, she will do as desired, and thus reveal the 

 real criminal. No matter how carefully the hypnotizer may have 

 trained his subject, the possibilities of indirectly inducing the- 

 subject to reveal the hypnotizer are so many and various that 

 some means of detection must be available. The subject, then, 

 while irresponsive to a direct question or appeal, will respond 

 to a suggestion indirectly giving the desired information, pro- 

 vided this does not conflict with a conti-ary suggestion previously 

 imposed ; and the safeguard of society lies in the endless possi- 

 bilities of these indirect suggestions. 



Such, then, are the main points in the legal aspects of hypno-^ 

 tism. It will readily be understood that much of their interest. 



