Chapter I

ON THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF SO-CALLED OCCULT
PHENOMENA 1

Difficulty of demarcation in borderline cases between
epilepsy, hysteria, and mental deficiency--Somnambulism an
hysterical manifestation--A case of spontaneous somnambulism,
with some characters of protracted hysterical delirium--Other
cases quoted--Charcot's classification of somnambulism--Naef's
and Azam's cases of periodic amnesia--Proust's and Boileau's
wandering-impulse cases--William James' case of Rev. Ansel
Bourne--Other examples showing changes in consciousness--Hypnagogic
hallucinations--Neurasthenic mental deficiency, Bleuler's
case--Summing up of Miss Elsie K.'s case--Need of further
scientific investigation in the field of psychological
peculiarities.

CASE OF SOMNAMBULISM IN A PERSON WITH NEUROPATHIC INHERITANCE
(SPIRITUALISTIC MEDIUM) 16

History of case--Accidental discovery of her mediumistic
powers--Her somnambulic attacks, "_attitudes passionelles_,"
catalepsy, tachypnoea, trance speeches, etc.--Ecstasies--Her
conviction of the reality of her visions--Her dreams,
hypnagogic and hypnopompic visions--The elevation of her
somnambulic character--Mental thought transference--S. W.'s
double life--Psychographic communications--Description of
séances--The Prophetess of Prevorst--Automatic writing--The two
grandfathers--Appearance of other somnambulic personalities.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOMNAMBULIC PERSONALITIES 30

The psychograph and spiritualistic wonders--The
grandfather the medium's "guide" or "control"--Ulrich von
Gerbenstein--The somnambulic personalities have access
to the medium's memory--Ivenes--S. W.'s amnesia for her
ecstasies--Later séances--Her journeys on the other side--Oracular
sayings--Conventi--Ivenes' dignity and superiority to her
"guides"--Her previous incarnations--Her race-motherhood.

MYSTIC SCIENCE AND MYSTIC SYSTEM OF POWERS 40

Her growing wilful deception--The waking
state--Her peculiarities--Instability--Hysterical
tendencies--Misreading--Errors of dispersion of attention discussed.

SEMI-SOMNAMBULISM 48

AUTOMATISMS 49

Table movements--Unconscious motor
phenomena--Verbal suggestion and auto-suggestion--The
experimenter's participation--The medium's unconscious
response--Thought-reading--Table-tilting experiment,
illustrated--Experiments with beginners--Myers' experiments
in automatic writing--Janet's conversation with Lucie's
subconsciousness--Example of the way the subconscious personality
is constructed--Hallucinations appear with deepening hypnosis;
some contributing factors--Comparison between dream symbols
and appearance of somnambulic personalities--Extension of the
unconscious sphere--The somnambulist's thinking is in plastic
images, which are made objective in hallucinations--Why visual
and not auditory hallucinations occur--Origin of hypnagogic
hallucinations--Those of Jeanne d'Arc and others.

THE CHANGE IN CHARACTER 64

Noticeable in S. W.'s case, also in Mary
Reynolds'--Association with amnesic disturbances--Influence
of puberty in our case--S. W.'s systematic anæsthesia--Ivenes
not so much a case of double consciousness as one in which she
dreams herself into a higher ideal state--Similar pathological
dreaming found in the lives of saints--Mechanism of hysterical
identification--S. W.'s dreams break out explosively--Their origin
and meaning, and their subjective roots.

RELATION TO THE HYSTERICAL ATTACK 75

In considering the origin of attack, two moments, viz.
irruption of hypnosis, and the psychic stimulation, must be
taken into account--In susceptible subjects relatively small
stimuli suffice to bring about somnambulism--Our case approaches
to hysterical lethargy--The automatisms transform lethargy
into hypnosis--Her ego-consciousness is identical in all
states--Secondary somnambulic personalities split off from the
primary unconscious personality--All group themselves under two
types, the gay-hilarious, and serio-religious--The automatic
speaking occurs--This facilitates the study of the subconscious
personalities--Their share of the consciousness--The irruption of
the hypnosis is complicated by an hysterical attack--The automatism
arising in the motor area plays the part of hypnotist--When the
hypnotism flows over into the visual sphere the hysterical attack
occurs--Grandfathers I. and II.--Hysterical dissociations belong to
the superficial layers of the ego-complex--There are layers beyond
the reach of dissociation--Effect of the hysterical attack.

RELATIONSHIP TO THE UNCONSCIOUS PERSONALITY 82

The serio-religious and the gay-hilarious explained by the
anamnesis--Two halves of S. W.'s character--She is conscious of the
painful contrast--She seeks a middle way--Her aspirations bring her
to the puberty dream of the ideal Ivenes--The repressed ideas begin
an autonomous existence--This corroborates Freud's disclosures
concerning dreams--The relation of the somnambulic ego-complex and
the waking consciousness.

COURSE 83

The progress of this affection reached its maximum in
4-8 weeks--Thenceforth a decline in the plasticity of the
phenomena--All degrees of somnambulism were observable--Her
manifest character improved--Similar improvements seen in certain
cases of double consciousness--Conception that this phenomenon
has a teleological meaning for the future personality--As seen in
Jeanne d'Arc and Mary Reynolds II.

THE UNCONSCIOUS ADDITIONAL CREATIVE WORK 84

S. W. shows primary susceptibility of the unconscious--Binet
affirms the susceptibility of the hysteric is fifty times
greater than that of normal--Cryptomnesia, a second additional
creation--Cryptomnesic picture may enter consciousness
intra-physically--Unconscious plagiarism explained--Zarathustra
example--Glossolalia--Helen Smith's Martian language--The names
in Ivenes' mystic system show rudimentary glossolalia--The
Cryptomnesic picture may enter consciousness as a hallucination--Or
arrive at consciousness by motor automatism--By automatisms regions
formerly sealed are made accessible--Hypermnesia--Thought-reading
a prototype for extraordinary intuitive knowledge of somnambulists
and some normal persons--Association-concordance--Possibility
that concept and feeling are not always clearly separated in the
unconscious--S. W.'s mentality must be regarded as extraordinary.