Compare with this the mediaeval case of " Soeur Jeanne" (832 B). Professor Flournoy's subject "Hélène Smith" (834-842) is another instance of " pseudo-possession," though not by imaginary demons.

223 A. The following is a case of alternating consciousnesses apparently developed out of accesses of "sleep-waking." The account is taken from a paper by Dr. Elliotson on "Instances of Double States of Consciousness independent of Mesmerism" in the Zoist, vol. iv. p. 158, being quoted by him from the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions of 1822.

Dr. Devan read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in February 1822, the history of a case observed by Dr. Dyce of Aberdeen, in a girl sixteen years old, which lasted from March 2nd to June nth, 1815. The first symptom was an uncommon propensity to fall asleep in the evenings. This was followed by the habit of talking in her sleep on these occasions. One evening she fell asleep in this manner: imagining herself an Episcopal clergyman, she went through the ceremony of baptizing three children, and gave an appropriate prayer. Her mistress shook her by the shoulders, on which she awoke, and appeared unconscious of everything, except that she had fallen asleep, of which she showed herself ashamed. She sometimes dressed herself and the children while in this state... answered questions put to her in such a manner as to show that she understood the question.... One day, in this state, she sat at breakfast, with perfect correctness, with her eyes shut. She afterwards awoke with the child on her knees, and wondered how she got on her clothes.... She sang a hymn delightfully while in this state, and... it appeared incomparably better done than she could accomplish when awake.... The circumstances which occurred during the paroxysm were completely forgotten by her when the paroxysms were over, but were perfectly remarked during subsequent paroxysms.... [One] Sunday she was taken to church by her mistress while the paroxysm was on her.

She shed tears during the sermon, particularly during the account given of the execution of three young men at Edinburgh who had described, in their dying declarations, the dangerous steps with which their career of infamy and vice took its commencement. When she returned home she recovered in a quarter of an hour, was quite amazed at the questions put to her about the church sermon, and denied that she had been to any such place; but next night on being taken ill she mentioned that she had been at church, repeated the words of the text, and in Dr. Dyce's hearing gave an accurate account of the tragical narrative of the three young men by which her feelings had been so powerfully affected.

223 B. I give next an early instance of the method of elucidation of the mental condition in the secondary state through suitable experiments in automatic action, - the method which - as we see in other sections of this chapter - has been so successfully developed in the hands of Dr. Janet and other psychologists.

Dr. Mesnet1 records the case of a soldier, F------, who received a gunshot wound in the head at Sedan, and was afterwards subject to periodical attacks, lasting for about a day in each month, of a kind of somnambulism, during which he hears, tastes, and smells nothing; and hardly sees at all except when the sense of touch calls his attention to objects, which he can then, as it seems, see distinctly.

During these accesses his actions seem purely automatic, and are for the most part an exact repetition of his everyday mode of life at the hospital. But by tactile suggestion the memory can be made to go back to an earlier epoch.

Thus if a cane is put into his hand in a way which suggests a rifle, he goes through the movements, and utters the brief cries, of battle: "Henri!" "There they are! at least a score of them!" "We must try and settle this beween us!" etc.

Now let us see in what way the act of writing revivified past experience. I abridge Dr. Mesnet's account (p. 18 seqg.) which contains several points of interest. "He passed his hands over the table; felt the handle of a drawer; opened it and took out a pen, which at once excited in him the idea of writing. He felt in the drawer, and took out some sheets of paper and an ink-bottle. These he placed on the table, sat down, and began a letter addressed to his general, urging his own good conduct and courage, and asking his general to endeavour to procure for him the military medal.

1 Del'Automatisme de la Mémoire, etc. Par le Dr. Ernest Mesnet. Paris, 1874.

"The faults of spelling, etc, in the letter were neither more nor less numerous than was habitual with the subject in his normal state. The facility with which he wrote, keeping to the true lines, showed that he saw what he was doing. To test this, we repeatedly placed a sheet of iron between his eyes and hand. He continued to write a few words illegibly, then ceased to write, without showing impatience. When the obstacle was removed he finished the imperfect line, and began another. The sense of sight was therefore needful to the written expression of the subject's thought.

"The ink in his inkstand was then replaced by water. He perceived the faintness of the letters traced, wiped his pen again and again, but never looked at the ink-bottle. His field of vision, it seemed, was awakened by touch alone, and was limited to objects with which he was actually in contact.

"He was writing on a sheet of paper which lay on a pile of about ten similar sheets. We quickly drew this top sheet away, and his pen continued to write on the second sheet. When he had written about ten words on the second sheet we snatched this also away, and he continued his phrase at exactly the same point on the third sheet. This process was repeated, and on the fifth sheet there was nothing but his signature at the bottom. Nevertheless, he read over and corrected his letter on this blank fifth sheet, scattering stops and corrections over the empty page, each of which corresponded to mistakes made on the co-ordinate points of the pages which had been snatched away from him".

On a later occasion (p. 23) pens were put in his way again; and as soon as he touched them he sat down and began a letter to a friend, this time making an appointment for the evening, after a concert at the café of the Champs Elysées, at which (as he supposed) he had to sing. Some slight change in the surroundings had carried his automatic reminiscence back to this other phase of his past career.

Here, then, we have automatic writings appearing to proceed from the writer's known personality, but projected backwards to an earlier point of time. They may be compared with writings professing to emanate from a personality other than the writer's, but at the present moment of time. We shall find, I think, that this is not necessarily a deep-seated distinction; rather that the automatic writing, while representing some dislocation or rearrangement - some "allotropic form," as I have elsewhere suggested - of the writer's personality, yet may sometimes take its superficial colour from some almost accidental circumstance, some suggestion round which the flow of more or less incoherent mentation crystallises into definite shape. The subject is discussed fully in Chapter VIII (Motor Automatism).