The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams, S. 820

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gent reaction. His treatment of the emotions was a very complete anticipation of the Behaviourist line of thought. Before his time it had been customary for psychologists to assume that the physical changes that make our emotions visible to others are the result of our experiencing these emotions. When we turn pale with fear, when our hair stands on end and our heart beats fast and we suffer other visceral disturbances, the bodily change had been supposed to follow upon the mental. But James argued that matters were the other way about. It is not that ““we meet a bear, are frightened and run,” but ‘‘ we meet a bear, run and are afraid.” Complex reflexes move us ; when the stimulus does not overpower us altogether, these reflexes are generally in the nature of preparations for the emergency; the quickened circulation, the withdrawal of blood from the surface and so forth ; and the emotions are merely the shadows of these preparations upon the mirror of the mind.

A very fertilizing stream of influence upon psychology which rose to its maximum twelve or fifteen years ago has been what is generally known as psycho-analysis, the work of Freud, Adler, Jung, and their followers. (We say “ generally known ”’ because there are disputes as to the use of the word, which we shall use here in its less restricted sense.) Their work has gone on with a certain independence of the researches of the Behaviourists and it would be premature as well as presumptuous for us, in this popular summary, to attempt a synthesis of these different systems of thought and inquiry. A certain miscellaneousness must rule therefore in the sections that follow this. We shall deal first with the phenomena of hypnotism and the integrity of the individuality. Then we shall go on to the essential ideas of psycho-analysis. ‘Throughout all this discussion and leading up to our treatment of conduct in the subsequent chapter, the reader will find that current conceptions of motive, individuality, and personality and therewith the reader’s own egotism are undergoing an intensive illumination. We are exploring “selves” and ‘‘ will’? here of the same constitutions as your own self and will, and it is impossible to avoid the personal application.

§ 4 Flypnosis In the previous chapter we described how

various animals can be hypnotized, and explained the relation of hypnosis to the

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general process of inhibition. Here we will deal with the much more elaborate phenomena of the hypnotized human being. They throw a very penetrating beam of light into the self under consideration.

There are few things more striking than a successful experiment in hypnotism. The subject is told to lie back, relaxed, in a chair, with his gaze directed up at some bright object held near him. The hypnotizer, or operator, as we will call him, talks quietly and firmly to the subject, suggesting various appurtenances of sleep—drowsiness, heavy eyelids and limbs, a sense of warmth, numbness. At the same time, he will generally stroke the subject’s limbs and make “ passes in front of his face. It used to be supposed that these encouraged a flow of “ animal magnetism ’’ from operator to subject ; but this mysterious “‘ fluid’? has no existence, and the strokings and movements of the hands, like the flow of soothing words, act, it would seem, merely by their rhythmic monotony.

After a time, the subject finds his limbs beginning to feel heavy ; he does not want to move them, and eventually cannot move them, even when challenged by the operator. His limbs then become rigid, and later, as the hypnosis becomes deeper, pass into a state of plasticity, as it is called, in which they remain in any position they are put, however unusual or fantastic, for a more or less indefinite period. If the subject is now awakened, he will be able to give a fairly complete account of his experiences ; but if the experiment be continued further, he passes into a state in which, as in dreamless sleep, there is no remembering.

His condition differs from sleep, however, in one important particular. The subject is still in touch with the operator, or, as it is generally called, en rapport with him. He is cut off from the rest of the world. Loud noises, the exhortations or commands of the bystanders—these have no effect; but he will obey the whispered suggestions of the operator.

When hypnotism is practised as an entertainment the operator generally orders the performance of some ridiculous actionthe subject is told to scrub the floor with the imaginary water in an empty basin ; it is suggested to him that a raw potato is an apple, and he is told to eat it; or he is informed that he is a sheep—and he begins to do what he is told, to act in keeping with the suggestion.

When experiments are scientifically carried out, it is found that the operator’s powers of