body. We touch the spot in question employing verbal suggestion or making use of some existing auto-suggestion, and of the tactile stimulus which we know acts suggestively, to bring about the desired partial hypnosis. In accordance with this procedure refractory subjects can rather easily be brought to an exhibition of automatism. The experimenter intentionally gives the table a slight push, or, better, a series of rhythmic but very slight taps. After a short time he notices that the oscillations become stronger, that they continue although he has interrupted his own intentional movements. The experiment has succeeded, the subject has unsuspectingly taken up the suggestion. By this procedure much more is obtained than by verbal suggestion. In very receptive persons and in all those cases where movement seems to arise spontaneously, the purposeful tremulous movements,[1] not perceptible by the subject, assume the rôle of agent provocateur.
In this way persons who by themselves have never obtained automatic movements of a coarse calibre, sometimes assume the unconscious guidance of the table-movements, provided that the tremors are strong and that the medium understands their meaning. In this case the medium takes control of the slight oscillations and returns them considerably strengthened; but rarely at exactly the same instant, generally a few seconds later, in this way revealing the agent’s conscious or unconscious thought. By means of this simple mechanism there may arise those cases of thought-reading so bewildering at first sight. A very simple experiment, that succeeds in many cases even with unpractised persons, will serve to illustrate this. The experimenter thinks, say, of the number four, and then waits, his hands quietly resting on the table, until he feels that the table makes the first
- ↑ As is known, during the waking state the hands and arms are never quite still, but are constantly subjected to fine tremors. Preyer, Lehmann, and others have proved that these movements are influenced in a high degree by the predominant presentations. Preyer shows that the outstretched hand drew small, more or less faithful, copies of figures which were vividly presented. These purposeful tremors can be demonstrated in a very simple way by experiments with the pendulum.
