Real Ghost Stories Part 2

On her fifth hypnotisation, however, Lucie underwent a kind of catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of a.s.sent or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she executed them infallibly, whether they were to take effect immediately, or after waking.

In Lucie's case this went further, and the suggested actions became absolutely a portion of the trance-life. She executed them without apparently knowing what she was doing. If, for instance, in her waking state she was told (in the tone which in her hypnotic state signified command) to get up and walk about, she walked about, but to judge from her conversation she supposed herself to be still sitting quiet. She would weep violently when commanded, but while she wept she continued to talk as gaily and unconcernedly as if the tears had been turned on by a stop-c.o.c.k.

Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a brusque tone of command reached the Unconscious Self alone; and other remarks reached the subject--awake or somnambulic--in the ordinary way. The next step was to test the intelligence of this hidden "slave of the lamp," if I may so term it--this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all that was bidden.

How far was its attention alert? How far was it capable of reasoning and judgment? M. Janet began with a simple experiment. "When I shall have clapped my hands together twelve times," he said to the entranced subject before awakening her, "you will go to sleep again." There was no sign that the sleeper understood or heard; and when she was awakened the events of the trance were a blank to her as usual. She began talking to other persons. M. Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not seem to be attending to him, he went up to her and said, "Did you hear what I did just now?"

"No; what?" "Do you hear this?" and he clapped his hands once more.

"Yes, you clapped your hands." "How often?" "Once." M. Janet again withdrew and clapped his hands six times gently, with pauses between the claps. Lucie paid no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of this second series--making the twelfth altogether--was reached, she fell instantly into the trance again. It seemed, then, that the "slave of the lamp" had counted the claps through all, and had obeyed the order much as a clock strikes after a certain number of swings of the pendulum, however often you stop it between hour and hour.

Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the unconscious element in Lucie was not direct, but inferential. The nature of the command which it could execute showed it to be capable of attention and memory; but there was no way of learning its own conception of itself, if such existed, or of determining its relation to other phenomena of Lucie's trance. And here it was that automatic writing was successfully invoked; here we have, as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new attention directed to this seldom-trodden field. M. Janet began by the following simple command: "When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was done in the usual scrawling script of automatism, and Lucie, though fully awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all.

M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a persistent effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter as usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many cases, a new and invading separate personality is a.s.sumed.

A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory intelligence, an ident.i.ty sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in order to answer one must hear." "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?"

"I don't know." "There must be somebody that hears me." "Yes." "Who is it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes, Blanche." Blanche, however, had to be changed. Another name had to be chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must, it will be more convenient." "Well, then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality had less spontaneity about it.

Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper down than Lucie. She could get at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations of which Lucie experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient was subject.

Lucie's special terror, which recurred in wild exclamation in her hysterical fits, was in some way connected with hidden men. She could not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an illness in consequence. Now, during these "crises" Lucie (except, presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty constant element in such attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at; could no longer obey orders, and if she wrote, wrote only "J'ai peur, j'ai peur."

M. Janet, however, waited until the attack was over, and then questioned Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne was able to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations; but she knew what Lucie saw, and why she saw it; nay, indeed, it was Adrienne, rather than Lucie, to whom the hallucination was directly visible.

Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned, an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state, not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments.

Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm began to deal blows, and her face a.s.sumed a look of anger. The suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?"

"Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."

In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were--as the pure experimentalist might say--only too sanative, only too rapidly tending to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the rational command, her own Undine-like ident.i.ty vanished away. The day came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the unconscious again--must I say?--for ever more.

Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own ident.i.ty.

And we must remember that Adrienne--while she was, if I may say so, the Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression--did, nevertheless, manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated, might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different, though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more--and this last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative conclusions--Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for evolution, as well as for part.i.tion, for dissolution, of the corporate being.

_Felida X. and her Submerged Soul._

Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The woman in question, Felida X., has been transformed.

In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs but for a few hours at long intervals. Felida's second state is altogether superior to the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior, inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her shop much more effectively than when she was in the _etat bete_, as she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no memory of which remains in the first state--has resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been antic.i.p.ated from any moral or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Felida's normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average women of her cla.s.s. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)

Chapter III.

Madame B. and Her Three Souls.

Marvellous as the cases cited in the last chapter appear, they are thrown entirely into the shade by the case of Madame B., in which the two personalities not only exist side by side, but in the case of the Sub-conscious self knowingly co-exist, while over or beneath both there is a third personality which is aware of both the other two, and apparently superior to both. The possibilities which this case opens up are bewildering indeed. But it is better to state the case first and discuss it afterwards. Madame B., who is still under Prof. Richet's observations,[3] is one of the favourite subjects of the French hypnotiser. She can be put to sleep at almost any distance, and when hypnotised completely changes her character. There are two well-defined personalities in her, and a third of a more mysterious nature than either of the two first. The normal waking state of the woman is called Leonie I., the hypnotic state Leonie II. The third occult Unconscious Personality of the lowest depth is called Leonie III.

[3] 1891.

"This poor peasant," says Professor Janet, "is in her normal state a serious and somewhat melancholy woman, calm and slow, very gentle and extremely timid. No one would suspect the existence of the person whom she includes within her. Hardly is she entranced when she is metamorphosed; her face is no longer the same; her eyes, indeed, remain closed, but the acuteness of the other senses compensates for the loss of sight. She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an insupportable degree; she continues good-natured, but she has acquired a singular tendency to irony and bitter jests.... In this state she does not recognise her ident.i.ty with her waking self. 'That good woman is not I,'

she says; 'she is too stupid!'"

Madame B. has been so often hypnotised, and during so many years (for she was hypnotised by other physicians as long ago as 1860), that Leonie II. has by this time acquired a considerable stock of memories which Madame B. does not share. Leonie II., therefore, counts as properly belonging to her own history and not to Madame B.'s all the events which have taken place while Madame B.'s normal self was hypnotised into unconsciousness. It was not always easy at first to understand this part.i.tion of past experiences.

"Madame B. in the normal state," says Professor Janet, "has a husband and children. Leonie II., speaking in the somnambulistic trance, attributes the husband to the 'other' (Madame B.), but attributes the children to herself.... At last I learnt that her former mesmerisers, as bold in their practice as certain hypnotisers of to-day, had induced somnambulism at the time of her accouchements. Leonie II., therefore, was quite right in attributing the children to herself; the rule of part.i.tion was unbroken, and the somnambulism was characterised by a duplication of the subject's existence" (p. 391).

Still more extraordinary are Leonie II.'s attempts to make use of Leonie I.'s limbs without her knowledge or against her will. She will write postscripts to Leonie I.'s letters, of the nature of which poor Leonie I. is unconscious.

It seems, however, that when once set up this new personality can occasionally a.s.sume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say without any prompting. This is curiously ill.u.s.trated by what may be termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and her secondary self, Leonie II. "She had," he says, "left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. On the first page was a short note written in a serious and respectful style. She was unwell, she said--worse on some days than on others--and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in quite a different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity:--'My dear good sir,--I must tell you that B. really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me. I am going to demolish her, she bores me. I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine' (the name first given to Leonie II).

"When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her concerning this curious missive. She remembered the first letter very distinctly, but she had not the slightest recollection of the second. I at first thought there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope. But afterwards these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study the mode of their production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in the left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into s.p.a.ce with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic tune; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surrept.i.tiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round wide-awake but was surprised to see me, for in her state of distraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.

"Leonie II.'s independent action is not entirely confined to writing letters. She observed (apparently) that when her primary self, Leonie I., discovered these letters she (Leonie I.) tore them up. So Leonie II.

hit upon a plan of placing them in a photographic alb.u.m into which Leonie I. could not look without falling into catalepsy (on account of an a.s.sociation of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose portrait had been in the alb.u.m). In order to accomplish an act like this Leonie II. has to wait for a moment when Leonie I. is distracted, or, as we say, absent-minded.

If she can catch her in this state Leonie II. can direct Leonie I.'s walks, for instance, or start on a long railway journey without baggage, in order to get to Havre as quickly as possible."

In the whole realm of imaginative literature, is there anything to compare to this actual fact of three selves in one body, each struggling to get possession of it? Leonie I., or the Conscious Personality, is in possession normally, but is constantly being ousted by Leonie II., or the Subconscious Personality. It is the old, old case of the wife trying to wear the breeches. But there is a fresh terror beyond. For behind both Leonie I. and Leonie II. stands the mysterious Leonie III.

"The spontaneous acts of the Unconscious Self," says M. Janet, here meaning by _l'inconscient_ the ent.i.ty to which he has given the name of Leonie III., "may also a.s.sume a very reasonable form--a form which, were it better understood, might perhaps serve to explain certain cases of insanity. Mme. B., during her somnambulism (_i.e._ Leonie II.) had had a sort of hysterical crisis; she was restless and noisy and I could not quiet her. Suddenly she stopped and said to me with terror.

'Oh, who is talking to me like that? It frightens me.' 'No one is talking to you.' 'Yes! there on the left!' And she got up and tried to open a wardrobe on her left hand, to see if some one was hidden there.

'What is that you hear?' I asked. 'I hear on the left a voice which repeats, "Enough, enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance."' a.s.suredly the voice which thus spoke was a reasonable one, for Leonie II. was insupportable; but I had suggested nothing of the kind, and had no idea of inspiring a hallucination of hearing. Another day Leonie II. was quite calm, but obstinately refused to answer a question which I asked.

Again she heard with terror the same voice to the left, saying, 'Come, be sensible, you must answer.' Thus the Unconscious sometimes gave her excellent advice."

And in effect, as soon as Leonie III. was summoned into communication, she accepted the responsibility of this counsel. "What was it that happened?" asked M. Janet, "when Leonie II. was so frightened?" "Oh!

nothing. It was I who told her to keep quiet; I saw she was annoying you; I don't know why she was so frightened."

Note the significance of this incident. Here we have got at the root of a hallucination. We have not merely inferential but direct evidence that the imaginary voice which terrified Leonie II. proceeded from a profounder stratum of consciousness in the same individual. In what way, by the aid of what nervous mechanism, was the startling monition conveyed?

Just as Mme. B. was sent, by means of pa.s.ses, into a state of lethargy, from which she emerged as Leonie II., so Leonie II., in her turn, was reduced by renewed pa.s.ses to a state of lethargy from which she emerged no longer as Leonie II. but as Leonie III. This second waking is slow and gradual, but the personality which emerges is, in one important point, superior to either Leonie I. or Leonie II. Although one among the subject's phases, this phase possesses the memory of every phase. Leonie III., like Leonie II., knows the normal life of Leonie I., but distinguishes herself from Leonie I., in whom, it must be said, these subjacent personalities appear to take little interest. But Leonie III.

also remembers the life of Leonie II.--condemns her as noisy and frivolous, and is anxious not to be confounded with her either. "Vous voyez bien que je ne suis pas cette bavarde, cette folle; nous ne nous ressemblons pas du tout."

We ask, in amazement, how many more personalities may there not be hidden in the human frame? Here is simple Madame B., who is not one person but three--first her commonplace self; secondly, the clever, chattering Leonie II., who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to demolish her; and thirdly, the lordly Leonie III., who issues commands that strike terror into Leonie II., and disdains to be identified with either of the partners in Madame B.'s body.

It is evident, if the hypnotists are right, that the human body is more like a tenement house than a single cell, and that the inmates love each other no more than the ordinary occupants of tenemented property. But how many are there of us within each skin who can say?

Chapter IV.

Some Suggested Theories.

Of theories to account for these strange phenomena there are enough and to spare. I do not for a moment venture to claim for the man and wife ill.u.s.tration the slightest scientific value. It is only a figure of speech which brings out very clearly one aspect of the problem of personality. The theory that there are two independent personalities within the human skin is condemned by all orthodox psychologists. There is one personality manifesting itself, usually consciously, but occasionally unconsciously, and the different method of manifestation differs so widely as to give the impression that there could not be the same personality behind both. A man who is ambidextrous will sign his name differently with his right or left hand, but it is the same signature. Mr. Myers thinks that the Secondary Personality of Subliminal Consciousness is merely a phase of the essential Unity of the Ego. Some time ago he expressed himself on this subject as follows:--

"I hold that hypnotism (itself a word covering a vast variety of different states) may be regarded as const.i.tuting one special case which falls under a far wider category--the category, namely, of developments of a Secondary Personality. I hold that we each of us contain the potentialities of many different arrangements of the elements of our personality, each arrangement being distinguishable from the rest by differences in the chain of memories which pertain to it. The arrangement with which we habitually identify ourselves--what we call the normal or primary self--consists, in my view, of elements selected for us in the struggle for existence with special reference to the maintenance of ordinary physical needs, and is not necessarily superior in any other respect to the latent personalities which lie alongside of it--the fresh combinations of our personal elements which may be evoked by accident or design, in a variety to which we at present can a.s.sign no limit. I consider that dreams, with natural somnambulism, automatic writing, with so-called mediumistic trance, as well as certain intoxications, epilepsies, hysterias, and recurrent insanities, afford examples of the development of what I have called secondary mnemonic chains; fresh personalities, more or less complete, alongside the normal state. And I would add that hypnotism is only the name given to a group of empirical methods of inducing these fresh personalities."