412. The answer of actual experience to these questions is unexpectedly direct and clear. In every recorded instance - so far at least as my memory serves me, where there has been any unification between alternating states, so as to make comparison possible - it is the memory furthest from waking life whose span is the widest, whose grasp of the organism's up-stored impressions is the most profound. Inexplicable as this phenomenon has been to observers who have encountered it without the needed key, the independent observations of hundreds of physicians and hypnotists have united in affirming its reality. The commonest instance, of course, is furnished by the ordinary hypnotic trance. The degree of intelligence, indeed, which finds its way to expression in that trance or slumber varies greatly in different subjects and at different times. But whensoever there is enough of alertness to admit of our forming a judgment, we find that in the hypnotic state there is a considerable memory - though not necessarily a complete or a reasoned memory - of the waking state; whereas with most subjects in the waking state - unless some special command be imposed upon the hypnotic self - there is no memory whatever of the hypnotic state.

In many hysterical conditions also the same general rule subsists; namely, that the further we get from the surface the wider is the expanse of memory which we encounter.

If all this be true, there are several points on which we may form expectations definite enough to suggest inquiry. Ordinary sleep is roughly intermediate between waking life and deep hypnotic trance; and it seems à priori probable that its memory will have links of almost equal strength with the memory which belongs to waking life and the memory which belongs to the hypnotic trance. And this is in fact the case; the fragments of dream-memory are interlinked with both these other chains. Thus, for example, without any suggestion to that effect, acts accomplished in the hypnotic trance may be remembered in dream; and remembered under the illusion which was thrown round them by the hypnotiser. Thus Dr. Auguste Voisin suggested to a hypnotised subject to stab a patient - really a stuffed figure - in the neighbouring bed.1 The subject did so; and of course knew nothing of it on waking. But three days afterwards he returned to the hospital complaining that his dreams were haunted by the figure of a woman, who accused him of having stabbed and killed her.

Appropriate suggestion laid this ghost of a doll.

Conversely, dreams forgotten in waking life may be remembered in the hypnotic trance. Thus Dr. Tissié's patient, Albert, dreamt that he was about to set out on one of his somnambulic "fugues," or aimless journeys, and when hypnotised mentioned to the physician this dream, which in his waking state he had forgotten.1 The probable truth of this statement was shown by the fact that he did actually set out on the journey thus dreamt of, and that his journeys were usually preceded and incited by remembered dreams.

1 Revue de l'ypnotisme, June 1891, p. 302.

I need not dwell on the existence, but at the same time the incompleteness, of our dream-memory of waking life; nor on the occasional formation of a separate chain of memory, constructed from successive and cohering dreams. It should be added that we do not really know how far our memory in dream of waking life may have extended; since we can only infer this from our notoriously imperfect waking memory of past dreams.

413. A cognate anticipation to which our theory will point will be that dream-memory will occasionally be found to fill up gaps in waking memory, other than those due to hypnotic trance; such so-called "ec-mnesic " periods, for instance, as sometimes succeed a violent shock to the system, and may even embrace some space of time anterior to the shock. These periods themselves resemble prolonged and unremembered dreams. Such accidents, however, are so rare, and such dream-memory so hard to detect, that I mention the point mainly for the sake of theoretical completeness; and must think myself fortunate in being able to cite a case of M. Charcot's which affords an interesting confirmation of the suggested view.2

A certain Madame D., a healthy and sensible woman of thirty-four, was subjected, on August 28th, 1891, to a terrible shock. Some scoundrel who has not been identified entered her cottage and told her brusquely that her husband was dead, and that his corpse was being brought home. This was absolutely false; but the news threw her into a state of profound agitation; and when some indiscreet friend, seeing the husband approach, cried out Le voilà! the poor woman, supposing that the corpse was thus announced, fell into a prolonged hysterical attack. After two days of raving she came to herself; - but had lost the memory of all events since July 14th; i. e. since a date six weeks before the shock. This kind of retroactive ecmnesia - inexplicable as it is - is known to occur sometimes after a physical concussion. In Madame D.'s case the shock had been wholly a mental one; yet the forgetfulness continued, and had spread overall the period up to M. Charcot's lecture on the case, December 22nd, 1891. Madame D. was then possessed of full recollection of her life up to July 14th, 1891; but she could recall no event whatever which had occurred since that date.

She endeavoured to continue her domestic duties; but if she wished to recollect anything she had to write it down instantly in a note-book to which she constantly referred. For instance, she was bitten by a dog believed to be mad. She instantly made a written note of the fact; but except when actually referring to her note-book she retained no recollection whatever of the bite or of her subsequent treatment in M. Pasteur's laboratory.

1 Les Rêves, p. 135. This remarkable patient afforded examples of many forms of communication of memory between different states of personality. See pp. 192-200 for a conspectus of these complex recollections.

2 Revue de Midecine, February 1892. A full account and discussion of the case of Madame D. is contained in Dr. P. Janet's Néroses et Idies fixes, vol. i. pp. 116 et seq.

Here, surely, was a case where it might have seemed that there had been some absolute evanescence, absolute abolition of whatsoever traces or tendencies may be held to constitute memory.

But one fact was observed which threw a decisive light upon this puzzling case. The patients in the two beds adjoining Madame D.'s were told to observe her at night. They reported that she was in the habit of talking in her sleep; and that in the fragments of dreams thus revealed she made frequent allusions to the mad dog's bite, and to other events which had occurred during her ecmnesic period. This hint, of course, was enough for M. Charcot. Classing her ecmnesia as a kind of prolongation of a hystero-epileptic attack, he hypnotised the patient, and found that in the hypnotic trance her memory for the ecmnesic period was absolutely intact. Post-hypnotic suggestions to remember the lost days are now slowly restoring the poor woman to the possession of her whole past.

The fact which interests us here is the accidentally discovered persistence in dream of memories which had vanished from the supraliminal consciousness. This shows that in dream Madame D. had got down not merely to a stratum of confusion, - but to a state so far deeper than the waking state that the memories of which shock or hysteria had robbed the waking state were there found to be uninjured. This well-observed case may here stand as representative of the gap-filling dream-memory which I ventured to anticipate. Other cases will be noticeable when spontaneous somnambulism comes under review, - in its complex relations with common dreams, hypnotism, hysteria, and even epilepsy.