HYPNOTISM. 611 



trained subjects clurmg the hypnotic state, but the phe- 

 nomenon then occurred in some of them during the waking 

 state, even when their consciousness was absorbed in ani- 

 mated conversation with a fourth party,* I confess that 

 when I saw these experiments I was impressed with the 

 necessity for admitting between the emanations from differ- 

 ent people differences for which we have no name, and a 

 discriminative sensibility for them of the nature of which 

 we can form no clear conception, but which seems to be 

 developed in certain subjects by the hypnotic trance. — The 

 •enigmatic reports of the effect of magnets and metals, even 

 if they be due, as many contend, to unintentional sugges- 

 tion on the operator's part, certainly involve hyperaesthetic 

 perception, for the operator seeks as Avell as possible to 

 •conceal the moment when the magnet is brought into play, 

 and yet the subject not only finds it out that moment in a 

 way difficult to understand, but may develop effects which 

 (in the first instance certainly) the operator did not expect to 

 iind. Unilateral contractures, movements, paralyses, liallu- 

 •cinations, etc., are made to pass to the other side of the 

 body, hallucinations to disappear, or to change to the com- 

 plementary color, suggested emotions to pass into their 

 opposites, etc. Many Italian observations agree with the 

 Frencli ones, and the upshot is that if unconscious sugges- 

 tion lie at the bottom of this matter, the patients show an 

 •enormously exalted power of divining what it is they are 

 •expected to do. This hyper?estlietic perception is what 

 concerns us now.t Its modus cannot yet be said to be de- 

 fined. 



* Here again the perception in question must take place below the 

 threshold of ordinary consciousness, possibly in one of those split-off selves 

 or ' second ' states whose existence we have so often to recognize. 



t I myself verified many of the above effects of the magnet on a blind- 

 folded subject on whom I was trying them for the first time, and whom I 

 believe to have never heard of them before. The moment, however, an 

 opaque screen was added to the blindfolding, the effects ceased to coincide 

 with the approximation of the magnet, so that it looks as if visual percep- 

 tion had been instrumental in producing them. The subject passed from 

 my observation, so that I never could clear up the mystery. Of course I 

 gave him consciously no hint of what I was looking for. 



