207 A. Some striking cases of forgotten terrors giving rise to hysterical attacks, which have been cured by the skilful use of hypnotic suggestion, are given in Drs. Raymond and Janet's Névroses et Idées fixes.

The book contains many examples of " fixed subconscious ideas "at various depths of submergence, the most completely forgotten being often the most potent for mischief. A fixed memory of this kind, removed, so to say, from the general mental circulation, may act in precisely the same way as an actual lesion to motor nerves, inducing definite physical disabilities.

"The contraction persists," says Dr. Janet of one such case (vol. i. p. 344), "because the emotion persists, involving always the same psychological and physiological consequences. It is, so to say, a fixed emotion - a variety of fixed idea of which we from outside can see only one exterior manifestation, while the patient herself is unaware of the interior phenomenon which determines it".

To attempt to cure such patients without first discovering the true cause of mischief by some automatic message (as writing, or crystal vision, or utterance in hypnotic trance) which emanates from subliminal strata of their being, is like trying to open a secret drawer without having discovered the spring.

But Dr. Janet finds that hypnotic suggestion, - used with great patience and tact, - is able gradually to remove a great number of these mental spasms and insistent memories. It is not, of course, enough to make the suggestion crudely and bluntly. In order to enable it to fake, it must be grafted adroitly upon the patient's mental condition of the moment. First of all, one must discover the hidden sources of her trouble - of which sources, strangely enough, she is often herself unaware - and then one must gradually suggest successive slight modifications in the painful memory. " The incident which gave you the shock was not so bad as you think; it really happened thus and thus," says Dr. Janet, until at last the old horror is forgotten, or transformed into something grotesque or innocuous.

Thus one patient is led to believe that the haunting word "cholera " is really the name of a Chinese general; another, who has loved not wisely, but too well, is induced to see the lover of her hallucinatory memories with head transformed into a pig's, and undergoes a revulsion of feeling, à la Titania (vol. ii. p. 135).

Another curious case (vol. ii. p. 256) in which hypnotism first explained the trouble and then did much to amend it, is that of a boy, "Rou," whose short life has been plentifully interspersed with hysterical "fugues" or escapades, of which (like Ansel Bourne, 225 A) he loses all memory when he returns to normal life. He comes to himself suddenly - in a forest, in a convent, in a street-passage - and, as I say, remembers nothing, except an occasional drenching from rain or river, which has, in fact, for the moment partially awakened him from his somnambulic state. Hypnotisation, however, brings back the memory of the "fugues " (just as it did with Ansel Bourne), and we find that they have all been the working out of an idée fixe - that of going to sea as a cabin-boy. During these "fugues" the lad was anaesthetic, and consequently endured cheerfully extraordinary hardships, allowing himself with perfect insouciance to be treated by rough canal-men like a beast of burden. Hypnotic suggestion was able to avert these " fugues " whenever the boy was dimly conscious that they were coming on, although his brain was too profoundly affected to make the prognosis a hopeful one.

Many of these cases remind us of the narratives of Drs. Breuer and Freud, in their Studien über Hysteric (of which accounts are given above, in sections 217 and 218). I give as a sample one case of this type (Janet, vol. ii. p. 234), where hysterical attacks depending on the revival of a scheme of emotion [état émotif systématique) which has become subconscious are cured by this same process of first discovering, and then gradually removing, the alarming memory.

A girl of eighteen, designated as Lie, has suffered for two years from almost daily convulsive attacks. Each attack constitutes a revival of a past scene, constituting in rudimentary form a secondary state of personality. The attack begins with syncope, and the return to conscious life is a return to a condition of terror, with cries of "Lucien, Lucien," as if appealing to some one for defence; then she rushes to the window and cries "Thieves!" and then gradually re-enters her ordinary state. Asked what she can remember of such a scene, the girl can recollect nothing. She thinks that her attacks were originally induced by distress and fear at the sight of her father's drunkenness. She knows no one called Lucien. She came to Paris alone, and there seems to be no external way of supplying any possible defect in her memory.

Hypnotism, however, comes promptly to the physician's aid. Thrown into the hypnotic sleep, the patient recovers at once the details of a tragic story of her childhood - of an insult offered to her, from which a "Lucien" had defended her, and of a theft at the château where she worked, which followed a few days later. These terrifying events gave rise to attacks of syncope, somnambulism, etc, - and those attacks had now, in their turn, obliterated the memory of the events from the patient's waking mind. When she was reminded of them, they gradually recurred to her, and at the same moment the convulsive attacks which had been troubling her more or less ever since the events occurred entirely ceased.

Here is another remarkable case (p. 248) of the efficacy of hypnotic suggestion, first in discovering the nature of a mental confusion, and then in curing it. A young officer, Pk., is brought to the Salpêtrière, having fallen down in the Champs Elysées, and seeming entirely bewildered on rising up again. Arrived at the hospital, he holds out his hand to Dr. Janet, and addresses him as Dr. N. - a doctor at a military hospital at Brest. Asked what he means, and where he supposes himself to be, he replies, "We are at the military hospital at Brest, and you are Dr. N. They brought me here a few days ago - in May 1896." As a matter of fact, this occurred on July 6th, 1895. Next day the patient is in a different phase, and knows quite well that he is in Paris, although he remembers nothing about imagining himself to be at Brest. On inquiry it appears that this young man of twenty.eight is suffering from the combined effects of typhoid, dysentery, marsh-fever, sunstroke, an unfortunate marriage, and a tendency to absinthe.

These troubles have made him hysterical, so that if he receives any shock or stimulus - as a threat of divorce or a glass of brandy - he is apt to become unconscious, and then to act in all sorts of odd ways, till he wakes up again in surprise, and with no recollection.

Fortunately he can be thrown at once into a somnambulic state which brings back the memory of the spontaneous somnambulisms. He is then able to explain how he came to suppose himself to be in the hospital at Brest, and in the year 1896. He had, in fact, while walking in the Champs Elysees, been planning to apply for treatment in a military hospital and calculating that by about May 1896 he would be in the hospital, at Brest, where he knew the aforesaid Dr. N. Falling into his secondary state, he had no longer the ability to distinguish between this reverie and reality; and the continuing reverie substituted itself for the actual surroundings, so that he imagined himself to be already in the Brest hospital, as if his calculation had already worked itself out.

So soon as his excessive modifiability had thus been discovered, it was comparatively easy to give him the suggestions needed to set right his habits and to inspire him with strength for the future. He has since distinguished himself in military service abroad.