HYPNOTISM. 607 



pleteness of this systematic extension of the suggested 

 anaesthesia, but one may say that some tendency to it always 

 exists. When one of the subjects' own limbs is made anaes- 

 thetic, for example, memories as well as sensations of its 

 movements often seem to depart. An interesting degree of 

 the phenomenon is found in the case related by M. Binet 

 of a subject to whom it was suggested that a certain M. C 

 was invisible. She still saw M. C, but saw him as a 

 stranger, having lost the memory of his name and his exist- 

 ence. — Nothing is easier than to make subjects forget their 

 own name and condition in life. It is one of the sugges- 

 tions which most promptly succeed, even with quite fresh 

 ones. A systematized amnesia of certain periods of one's 

 life may also be suggested, the subject placed, for instance, 

 where he was a decade ago with the intervening years ob- 

 literated from his mind. 



The mental condition which accompanies these sj-stem- 

 atized anaesthesias and amnesias is a very curious one. 

 The anaesthesia is not a genuine sensorial one, for if you 

 make a real red cross (say) on a sheet of white paper in- 

 visible to an hypnotic subject, and yet cause him to look 

 fixedly at a dot on the paper on or near the cross, he will, 

 on transferring his eye to a blank sheet, see a bluish-green 

 after-image of the cross. This proves that it has impressed 

 his sensibility. He has felt it, but not perceived it. He 

 had actively ignored it, refused to recognize it, as it were. 

 Another experiment proves that he vavi^i distinguish it first 

 in order thus to ignore it. Make a stroke on paper or 

 "blackboard, and tell the subject it is not there, and he will 

 see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next, he not 

 looking, surround the original stroke with other strokes 

 exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He Avill point 

 out one by one all the new strokes and omit the original 

 one every time, no matter how numerous the new strokes 

 may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly, if 

 the original single stroke to which he is blind be doubled 

 by a prism of sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes 

 (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one 

 stroke, and point in the direction in wiiich the image seen 

 through the prism lies. 



