Helen Smith[1] says in regard to the origin of her vision of March:
“La lueur rouge persista autour de moi et je me suis trouvée entourée de fleurs extraordinaires.”
At all times the complex hallucinations of visionaries have occupied a peculiar place in scientific criticism. Macario[2] early separated these so-called intuition-hallucinations from others, since he maintains that they occur in persons of an eager mind, deep understanding and high nervous excitability. Hecker[3] expresses himself similarly but more enthusiastically.
His view is that their condition is “the congenital high development of the spiritual organ which calls into active, free and mobile play the life of the imagination, bringing it spontaneous activity.” These hallucinations are “precursors or signs of mighty spiritual power.” The vision is “an increased excitation which is harmoniously adapted to the most complete health of mind and body.” The complex hallucinations do not belong to the waking state, but prefer as a rule a partial waking state. The visionary is buried in his vision even to complete annihilation. Flournoy was also always able to prove in the visions of H.S. “un certain degré d’obnubilation.” In our case the vision is complicated by a state of sleep whose peculiarities we shall review later.
The Change in Character.
The most striking characteristic of the second stage in our case is the change in character. We meet many cases in the literature which have offered the symptom of spontaneous character-change. The first case in a scientific publication is Weir-Mitchell’s[4] case of Mary Reynolds.
