the speech-musculature are to be noted. They have also been observed in other somnambulists.[1]
These clumsy attempts must be directly paralleled with the unintelligent and clumsy movements of the table or glass, and most probably correspond to the preliminary activity of the motor portion of the presentation; that is to say, a stimulus limited to the motor-centre which has not previously been subordinated to any higher system. Whether the like occurs in persons who talk in their dreams, I do not know. But it has been observed in hypnotised persons.[2]
Since the convenient medium of speech was used as the means of communication, the study of the subconscious personalities was considerably lightened. Their intellectual compass is a relatively mediocre one. Their knowledge is greater than that of the waking patient, including also a few occasional details, such as the birthdays of dead strangers and the like. The source of these is more or less obscure, since the patient does not know whence in the ordinary way she could have procured the knowledge of these facts. These are cases of so-called cryptomnesia, which are too unimportant to deserve more extended notice. The intelligence of the two subconscious persons is very slight; they produce banalities almost exclusively, but their relation to the conscious ego of the patient when in the somnambulic state is interesting. They are invariably aware of everything that takes place during ecstasy and occasionally they render an exact report from minute to minute.[3]
The subconscious persons only know the patient’s phantastic changes of thought very superficially; they do not
- ↑ Thus Flournoy writes, “Dans un premier essai Léopold (H. S.’s control-spirit) ne réussit qu’à donner ses intimations et sa prononciation à Helen: après une séance où elle avait vivement soufiert dans la bouche et le cou comme si on lui travaillait ou lui enlevait les organes vocaux, elle se mit à causer très naturellement.”
- ↑ Loewenfeld, Arch. f. Psych., XXIII., 60.
- ↑ This behaviour recalls Flournoy’s observations: “Whilst H. S. as a somnambule speaks as Marie Antoinette, the arms of H. S. do not belong to the somnambulic personality, but to the automatism Leopold, who converses by gestures with the observer” (Flournoy, l.c., p. 125).
