purely to suggestive questions meeting a certain disposition of the medium. This explanation is the result of the disintegration of the psychical complex; the feeling of the strangeness of such automatisms then comes in to help, as soon as conscious attention is directed to the automatic act. Binet[1] remarks on this experiment of Janet’s: “Il faut bien remarquer que si la personnalité d’Adrienne a pu se créer, c’est qu’elle a rencontré une possibilité psychologique; en d’autres termes, il y avait là des phénomènes désagrégés vivant séparés de la conscience normale du sujet.” The individualisation of the sub-consciousness always denotes a considerable further step of great suggestive influence upon the further formation of automatisms.[2] So, too, we must regard the origin of the unconscious personalities in our case.
The objection that there is simulation in automatic table-turning may well be given up, when one considers the phenomenon of thought-reading from the purposeful tremors which the patient offered in such plenitude. Rapid, conscious thought-reading demands at the least an extraordinary degree of practice, which it has been shown the patient did not possess. By means of the purposeful tremors whole conversations can be carried on, as in our case. In the same way the suggestibility of the subconscious can be proved objectively if, for instance, the experimenter with his hand on the table desires that the hand of the medium should no longer be able to move the table or the glass; contrary to all expectation and to the liveliest astonishment of the subject, the table will immediately remain immovable. Naturally any other desired suggestions can be realised, provided they do not overstep by their innervations the region of partial hypnosis; this proves at the same time the limited nature of the hypnosis. Suggestions for the legs and the other arm will thus not be obeyed. Table-turning is not an automatism which belongs exclusively
