pious lady. It is in the construction of the second person that there lies the far-reaching difference between Léonie II. and Ivenes. Both are psychogenic. But Léonie I. receives in Léonie II. what really belongs to her, while S. W. builds up a person beyond herself. It cannot be said “she deceives herself” into, but that “she dreams herself” into the higher ideal state.[1]
The realisation of this dream recalls vividly the psychology of the pathological cheat. Delbruck[2] and Forel[3] have indicated the importance of auto-suggestion in the formation of pathological cheating and reverie. Pick[4] regards intense autosuggestibility as the first symptom of the hysterical dreamer, making possible the realisation of the “day dreamer.” One of Pick’s patients dreamt that she was in a morally dangerous situation, and finally carried out an attempt at rape on herself; she lay on the floor naked and fastened herself to a table and chairs. Or some dramatic person will be created with whom the patient enters into correspondence by letter, as in Bohn’s case.[5] The patient dreamt herself into an engagement with a totally imaginary lawyer in Nice, from whom she received letters which she had herself written in disguised handwriting. This pathological dreaming, with auto-suggestive deceptions of memory amounting to real delusions and hallucinations, is pre-eminently to be found in the lives of many saints.[6]
It is only a step from the dreamlike images strongly
- ↑ “Les rêves somnambuliques, sortes de romans de l’imagination subliminale, analogues à ces histoires continues, que tant de gens se racontent à euxmêmes et dont ils sont généralement les héros dans leurs moments de far niente ou d’occupations routinières qui n’offrent qu’un faible obstacle aux rêveries intérieures. Constructions fantaisistes, millefois reprises et poursuivies, rarement achevées, où la folle du logis se donne libre carrière et prend sa revanche du terne et plat terre à terre des réalités quotidiennes” (Flournoy, l.c., p. 8).
- ↑ Delbruck, “Die Pathologische Lüge.”
- ↑ Forel, “Hypnotisme.”
- ↑ Pick, “Ueber Path. Träumerei und ihre Beziehung zur Hysterie,” Jahr. f. Psych. und Neur., XIV., p. 280.
- ↑ Bohn, “Ein Fall von doppelten Bewusstsein Diss.” Breslau, 1898.
- ↑ Görres, l.c.
