These clumsy attempts must be directly paralleled with the unintelligent and clumsy movements of the table or glass, and most probably correspond to the preliminary activity of the motor portion of the presentation; that is to say, a stimulus limited to the motor-centre which has not previously been subordinated to any higher system. Whether the like occurs in persons who talk in their dreams, I do not know. But it has been observed in hypnotised persons.[99]
Since the convenient medium of speech was used as the means of communication, the study of the subconscious personalities was considerably lightened. Their intellectual compass is a relatively mediocre one. Their knowledge is greater than that of the waking patient, including also a few occasional details, such as the birthdays of dead strangers and the like. The source of these is more or less obscure, since the patient does not know whence in the ordinary way she could have procured the knowledge of these facts. These are cases of so-called cryptomnesia, which are too unimportant to deserve more extended notice. The intelligence of the two subconscious persons is very slight; they produce banalities almost exclusively, but their relation to the conscious ego of the patient when in the somnambulic state is interesting. They are invariably aware of everything that takes place during ecstasy and occasionally they render an exact report from minute to minute.[100]
The subconscious persons only know the patient's phantastic changes of thought very superficially; they do not understand these and cannot answer a single question concerning the situation. Their stereotyped reference to Ivenes is: "Ask Ivenes." This observation reveals a dualism in the character of the subconscious personalities difficult to explain; for the grandfather, who gives information by automatic speech, also appears to Ivenes and, according to her account, teaches her about the objects in question. How is it that, when the grandfather speaks through the patient's mouth, he knows nothing of the very things which he himself teaches her in the ecstasies?
We must again return to the discussion of the first appearance of the hallucinations. We picture the vision, then, as an irruption of hypnosis into the visual sphere. That irruption does not lead to a "normal" hypnosis, but to a "hystero-hypnosis," that is, the simple hypnosis is complicated by a hysterical attack.
It is not a rare occurrence in the domain of hypnotism for normal hypnosis to be disturbed, or rather to be replaced by the unexpected appearance of hysterical somnambulism; the hypnotist in many cases then loses rapport with the patient. In our case the automatism arising in the motor area plays the part of hypnotist; the suggestions proceeding from it (called objective auto-suggestions) hypnotise the neighbouring areas in which a certain susceptibility has arisen. At the moment when the hypnotism flows over into the visual sphere, the hysterical attack occurs which, as remarked, effects a very deep-reaching change in a large portion of the psychical region. We must now suppose that the automatism stands in the same relationship to the attack as the hypnotist to a pathological hypnosis; its influence upon the further structure of the situation is lost. The hallucinatory appearance of the hypnotised personality, or rather of the suggested idea, may be regarded as the last effect upon the somnambulic personality. Thenceforward the hypnotist becomes only a figure with whom the somnambulic personality occupies itself independently: he can only state what is going on and is no longer the conditio sine qua non of the content of the somnambulic attack. The independent ego-complex of the attack, in our case Ivenes, has now the upper hand. She groups her own mental products around the personality of the hypnotiser, that is, of the grandfather, now degraded to a mere image. In this way we are enabled to understand the dualism in the character of the grandfather. The grandfather I. who speaks directly to those present, is a totally different person and a mere spectator of his double, grandfather II., who appears as Ivenes' teacher. Grandfather I. maintains energetically that both are one and the same person, and that I. has all the knowledge which II. possesses, and is only prevented from giving information by the difficulties of speech. (The dissociation was of course not realized by the patient, who took both to be one person.) Grandfather I., if closely examined, however, is not altogether wrong, judging from one fact which seems to make for the identity of I. and II., viz. that they are never both present together. When I. speaks automatically, II. is not present; Ivenes remarks on his absence. Similarly, during the ecstasy, when she is with II., she cannot say where I. is, or she may learn only on returning from an imaginary journey that meanwhile I. has been guarding her body. Conversely I. never says that he is going on a journey with Ivenes and never explains anything to her. This behaviour should be noted, for if I. is really separate from II., there seems no reason why he should not speak automatically at the same time that II. appears, and be present with II. in the ecstasy. Although this might have been supposed possible, as a matter of fact it was never observed. How is this dilemma to be resolved? At all events there exists an identity of I. and II., but it does not lie in the region of the personality under discussion; it lies in the basis common to both; that is, in the personality of the subject which in deepest essence is one and indivisible. Here we come across the characteristic of all hysterical dissociations of consciousness. They are disturbances which only belong to the superficial, and none reaches so deep as to attack the strong-knit foundation of the ego-complex.
In many such cases we can find the bridge which, although often well-concealed, spans the apparently impassable abyss. For instance, by suggestion, one of four cards is made invisible to a hypnotised person; he thereupon names the other three. A pencil is placed in his hand with the instruction to write down all the cards lying there; he correctly adds the fourth one.[101]
In the aura of his hystero-epileptic attacks a patient of Janet's[102] invariably had a vision of a conflagration, and whenever he saw an open fire he had an attack; indeed, the sight of a lighted match was sufficient to bring about an attack. The patient's visual field on the left side was limited to 30°, the right eye was shut. The left eye was fixed in the middle of a perimeter whilst a lighted match was held at 80°. The hystero-epileptic attack took place immediately. Despite the extensive amnesia in many cases of double consciousness, the patients' behaviour does not correspond to the degree of their ignorance, but it seems rather as if a deeper instinct guided their actions in accordance with their former knowledge. Not only this relatively slight amnesic dissociation, but the severe amnesia of the epileptic twilight-state, formerly regarded as irreparabile damnum, does not suffice to cut the inmost threads which bind the ego-complex in the twilight-state to the normal ego. In one case the content of the twilight-state could be grafted on to the waking ego-complex.[103]
Making use of these experiments for our case, we obtain the helpful hypothesis that those layers of the unconscious beyond reach of the dissociation endeavour to present the unity of automatic personality. This endeavour is shattered in the deeper-seated and more elemental disturbance of the hysterical attack,[104] which prevents a more complete synthesis by the tacking on of associations which are to a certain extent the most original individual property of supraliminal personality. As the Ivenes dream emerged it was fitted on to the figures accidentally in the field of vision, and henceforth remains associated with them.
Relationship to the Unconscious Personality.
As we have seen, the numerous personalities become grouped round two types, the grandfather and Ulrich von Gerbenstein. The first produces exclusively sanctimonious religiosity and gives edifying moral precepts. The latter is, in one word, a "flapper," in whom there is nothing male except the name. We must here add from the anamnesis that at fifteen the patient was confirmed by a very bigoted clergyman, and at home she is occasionally the recipient of sanctimonious moral talks. The grandfather represents this side of her past,