208 P8YCH0L0O7. 



Sometimes the mutual ignorance of tlie selves leads to 

 incidents which are strange enough. The acts and move- 

 ments performed by the sub-conscious self are •withdrawn 

 from the conscious one, and the subject will do all sorts of 

 incongruous things of which he remains quite unaware. 

 " I order Lucie [by the method of distraction] to make a 

 pied de nez, and her hands go forthwith to the end of her 

 nose. Asked what she is doing, she replies that she is 

 doing nothing, and continues for a long time talking, with 

 no apparent suspicion that her fingers are moving in front 

 of her nose. I make her walk about the room ; she con- 

 tinues to speak and believes herself sitting down." 



M. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic 

 delirium. Whilst the doctor was questioning him, M. J. 

 made him by whispered suggestion walk, sit, kneel, and even 

 lie down on his face on the floor, he all the while believing 

 himself to be standing beside his bed. Such hizarreries 

 sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long ago, 

 without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of 

 the way in which a person's knowledge may be shared by 

 the two selves. A young woman who had been writing 

 automatically was sitting with a pencil m her hand, trying to 

 recall at my request the name of a gentleman whom she had 

 once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable. Her 

 hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the 

 last two syllables. In a perfectly healthy young man who 

 can write with the planchette, I lately found the hand to 

 be entirely ansesthetic during the writing act ; I could prick 

 it severely without the Subject knowing the fact The ivrit- 

 ing on the planchette, however, accused me in strong terms 

 of hurting the hand. Pricks on the other (non-writing) 

 hand, meanwhile, which awakened strong protest from the 

 young man's vocal organs, were denied to exist by the self 

 which made the planchette go.* 



We get exactly similar results in the so-called post-hyp- 

 notic suggestion. It is a familiar fact that certain sub- 

 jects, when told during a trance to perform an act or to 



* See Proceedings of American Soc. for Psych. Research, vol. i. p. 



518. 



