3. The Connesor Group.—Connesor is the opposite pole of Magnesor. It is the dark and wicked power equal in intensity to the good power of light. While the good power creates, this one turns into the opposite. Endos is an elemental power of minerals. From these (significance unknown) gravitation proceeds, which on its side is designated as the elemental force of the forces of resistance that occur in phenomena (gravity, capillarity, adhesion and cohesion). Nakus is the secret power of a rare stone which controls the effect of snake poison. The two powers Smar and Pusa have a special importance. According to S. W., Smar develops in the bodies of morally good men at the moment of death. This power enables the soul to rise to the powers of light. Pusa behaves in the opposite way, for it is the power which conducts morally bad people to the dark side in the state of Connesor.
In the sixth circle the visible world begins, which only appears to be so sharply divided from the other side in consequence of the fickleness of our organs of sense. In reality the transition is a very gradual one, and there are people who live on a higher stage of knowledge because their perceptions and sensations are more delicate than those of others. Great seers are enabled to see manifestations of force where ordinary people can perceive nothing. S. W. sees Magnesor as a white or bluish vapour, which chiefly develops when good spirits are near. Connesor is a dark vapour-like fluid, which, like Magnesor, develops on the appearance of "black" spirits. For instance, the night before the beginning of great visions the shiny vapour of Magnesor spreads in thick layers, out of which, the good spirits grow to visible white forces. It is just the same with Connesor. But these powers have their different mediums. S. W. is a Magnesor medium, as were the Prophetess of Prevorst and Swedenborg. The materialisation mediums of the spiritualists are mostly Connesor mediums, because materialisation takes place much more easily through Connesor on account of its close connection with the properties of matter. In the summer of 1900 S. W. tried several times to produce the circles of matter, but she never arrived at other than vague and incomprehensible hints and afterwards spoke no more about this.
Conclusion.—The really interesting and valuable séances came to an end with the production of the system of powers. Before this a gradual decline in the vividness of the ecstasies was noticeable. Ulrich von Gerbenstein came increasingly to the front, and filled up the séances with his childish chatter. The visions which S. W. had in the meantime likewise seem to have lost vividness and plasticity of formation, for S. W. was afterwards only able to feel pleasant sensations in the presence of good spirits, and disagreeableness in that of bad spirits. Nothing new was produced. There was something of uncertainty in the trance talks, as if feeling and seeking for the impression which she was making upon the audience, together with an increasing staleness in the content. In the outward behaviour of S. W. there arose also a marked shyness and uncertainty, so that the impression of wilful deception became ever stronger. The writer therefore soon withdrew from the séances. S. W. experimented afterwards in other circles, and six months after my leaving was caught cheating in flagranti delicto. She wanted to arouse again by spiritualistic experiments the lost belief in her supernatural powers; she concealed small objects in her dress, throwing them up in the air during the dark séance. With this her part was played out. Since then, eighteen months have passed during which I have not seen S. W. I have learnt from an observer who knew her in the earlier days, that she has now and again strange states of short duration during which she is very pale and silent, and has a fixed glittering look. I did not hear any more of visions. She is said not to take part any longer in spiritualistic séances. S. W. is now in a large business, and according to all accounts is an industrious and responsible person who does her work eagerly and cleverly, giving entire satisfaction. According to the account of trustworthy persons, her character has much improved; she has become quieter, more regular and sympathetic. No other abnormalities have appeared in her. This case, in spite of its incompleteness, contains a mass of psychological problems whose exposition goes far beyond the limits of this little work. We must therefore be satisfied with a mere sketch of the various striking manifestations. For the sake of a more lucid exposition it seems better to review the various states separately.
1. The Waking State.—Here the patient shows various peculiarities. As we have seen, at school she was often distracted, lost herself in a peculiar way, was moody; her behaviour changes inconsequently, now quiet, shy, reserved, now lively, noisy and talkative. She cannot be called unintelligent, but she strikes one sometimes as narrow-minded, sometimes as having isolated intelligent moments. Her memory is good on the whole, but owing to her distraction it is much impaired. Thus, despite much discussion and reading of Kerner's "Seherin von Prevorst," for many weeks, she does not know, if directly asked, whether the author's name is Koerner or Kerner, nor the name of the Prophetess. All the same, when it occasionally comes up, the name Kerner is correctly written in the automatic communications. In general it may be said that her character has something extremely impulsive, incomprehensible, protean. Deducting the want of balance due to puberty, there remains a pathological residue which expresses itself in reactions which follow no rule and a bizarre unaccountable character. This character may be called déséquilibré, or unstable. Its specific mould is derived from traits which can certainly be regarded as hysterical. This is decidedly so in the conditions of distraction. As Janet[22] maintains, the foundation of hysterical anæsthesia is the loss of attention. He was able to prove in youthful hysterics "a striking indifference and distracted attention in the whole region of the emotional life." Misreading is a notable instance, which beautifully illustrates hysterical dispersion of attention. The psychology of this process may perhaps be viewed as follows: during reading aloud attention becomes paralysed for this act and is directed towards some other object. Meanwhile the reading is continued mechanically, the sense impressions are received as before, but in consequence of the dispersion the excitability of the perceptive centre is lowered, so that the strength of the sense impression is no longer adequate to fix the attention in such a way that perception as such is conducted along the motor speech route; thus all the inflowing associations which at once unite with any new sense impression are repressed. The further psychological mechanism permits of only two possible explanations: (1) The admission of the sense impression is received unconsciously (because of the increase of threshold stimulus), in the perceptive centre just below the threshold of consciousness, and consequently is not incorporated in the attention and conducted back to the speech route. It only reaches verbal expression through the intervention of the nearest associations, in our case through the dialect expression[23] for the object. (2) The sense impression is perceived consciously, but at the moment of its entrance into the speech route it reaches a territory whose excitability is diminished by the dispersion of attention. At this place the dialect word is substituted by association for the motor speech image, and it is uttered as such. In either case it is certain that it is the acoustic dispersed attention which fails to correct the error. Which of the two explanations is correct cannot be proved in this case; probably both approach the truth, for the dispersion of attention seems to be general, and in each case concerns more than one of the centres engaged in the act of reading aloud. In our case this phenomenon has a special value, for we have here a quite elementary automatic phenomenon. It may be called hysterical in so far as in this concrete case a state of exhaustion and intoxication, with its parallel manifestations, can be excluded. A healthy person only exceptionally allows himself to be so engaged by an object that he fails to correct the errors of a dispersed attention—those of the kind described. The frequency of these occurrences in the patient point to a considerable limitation of the field of consciousness, in so far as she can only master a relative minimum of elementary sensations flowing in at the same time. If we wish to describe more exactly the psychological state of the "psychic shady side," we might call it either a sleeping or a dream-state, according as passivity or activity predominated. There is, at all events, a pathological dream-state of very rudimentary extension and intensity and its genesis is spontaneous; dream-states arising spontaneously, with the production of automatisms, are generally regarded as hysterical on the whole. It must be pointed out that these instances of misreading occurred frequently in our subject, and that the term hysterical is employed in this sense; so far as we know, it is only on a foundation of hysterical constitution that spontaneous states of partial sleep or dreams occur frequently.
Binet[24] has studied experimentally