Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/97

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PSYCHOLOGY OF OCCULT PHENOMENA
79

understand these and cannot answer a single question concerning the situation. Their stereotyped reference to Ivenes is: “Ask Ivenes.” This observation reveals a dualism in the character of the subconscious personalities difficult to explain; for the grandfather, who gives information by automatic speech, also appears to Ivenes and, according to her account, teaches her about the objects in question. How is it that, when the grandfather speaks through the patient’s mouth, he knows nothing of the very things which he himself teaches her in the ecstasies?

We must again return to the discussion of the first appearance of the hallucinations. We then picture the vision as an irruption of hypnosis into the visual sphere. That irruption does not lead to a “normal” hypnosis, but to a “hystero-hypnosis,” that is, the simple hypnosis is complicated by a hysterical attack.

It is not a rare occurrence in the domain of hypnotism for normal hypnosis to be disturbed, or, rather, to be replaced by the unexpected appearance of hysterical somnambulism; the hypnotist in many cases then loses rapport with the patient. In our case the automatism arising in the motor area plays the part of hypnotist; the suggestions proceeding from it (called objective auto-suggestions) hypnotise the neighbouring areas in which a certain susceptibility has arisen. At the moment when the hypnotism flows over into the visual sphere, the hysterical attack occurs which, as remarked, effects a very deep-reaching change in a large portion of the psychical region. We must now suppose that the automatism stands in the same relationship to the attack as the hypnotist to a pathological hypnosis; its influence upon the further structure of the situation is lost; The hallucinatory appearance of the hypnotised personality, or, rather, of the suggested idea, may be regarded as the last effect upon the somnambulic personality. Thenceforward the hypnotist becomes only a figure with whom the somnambulic personality occupies itself independently: he can only state what is going on and is no longer the conditio sine qua non of the content of the somnambulic attack. The independent ego-complex of the attack, in our case Ivenes, has now the