Part 8 (1/2)
Yet even at this remarkably early stage H. was found to be in some degree receptive to certain Suggestions conveyed by repeated stimulation under uniform conditions. In the first place, the suggestions of sleep began to tell upon her before the end of the first month. Her nurse put her to sleep by laying her face down and patting gently upon the end of her spine. This position soon became itself not only suggestive to the child of sleep, but sometimes necessary to sleep, even when she was laid across the nurse's lap in what seemed to be an uncomfortable position.
This case ill.u.s.trates what may be called Physiological Suggestion. It shows the law of physiological habit as it borders on the conscious.
The same sort of phenomena appear also in adult life. Positions given to the limbs of a sleeper lead to movements ordinarily a.s.sociated with these positions. The sleeper defends himself, withdraws himself from cold, etc. Children learn gradually to react upon conditions of position, lack of support, etc., of the body, with those actions necessary to keep from falling, which adults have so perfectly. All secondary automatic reactions may be cla.s.sed here; the sensations coming from one action, as in walking, being suggestions to the next movement, unconsciously acted upon. The consciousness at any stage in the chain of movements, if present at all, must be similar to the baby's in the case above--a mere internal glimmering. The most we can say of such physiological suggestion is, that there is probably some consciousness, and that the ordinary reflexes seem to be abbreviated and improved.
_Subconscious Adult Suggestion._--There are certain phenomena of a rather striking kind coming under this head whose cla.s.sification is so evident that we may enumerate them without discussion of the general principles which they involve.
_Tune Suggestion._--It has been pointed out recently that dream states are largely indebted for their visual elements--what we see in our dreams--to accidental lines, patches, etc., in the field of vision when the eyes are shut, due to the distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to changes in the external illumination, to the presence of dust particles of different configuration, etc. The other senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by equally subconscious suggestions. There is no doubt, further, that our waking life is constantly influenced by such trivial stimulations.
I have tested in detail, for example, the conditions of the rise of so-called ”internal tunes”--we speak of ”tunes in our head” or ”in our ears”--and find certain suggestive influences which in most cases cause these tunes to rise and take their course. Often, when a tune springs up ”in my head,” the same tune has been lately sung or whistled in my hearing, though quite unnoticed at the time. Often the tunes are those heard in church the previous day or earlier. Such a tune I am entirely unable to recall voluntarily; yet when it comes into the mind's ear, so to speak, I readily recognise it as belonging to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various accidental suggestions, such as the tune Mozart suggested by the composer's name, the tune Gentle Annie suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness and after much seeking that the suggesting influence is discovered.
Closer a.n.a.lysis reveals certain additional facts: The ”time” of such internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhythmical subconscious occurrence. After hearty meals it is always the time of the heart beat, unless there be ”in the air” some more impressive stimulus; as, for example, when on s.h.i.+pboard, the beat is with me invariably that of the engine throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of the footfall. On one occasion a knock of four beats on the door started the Ma.r.s.eillaise in my ear; following up this clew, I found that at any time different divisions of musical time being struck on the table at will by another person, tunes would spring up and run on, getting their cue from the measures suggested. Further, when a tune dies away, its last notes often suggest, some time after, another having a similar movement--just as we pa.s.s from one tune to another in a ”medley.” It may also be noted that in my case the tune memories are auditive: they run in my head when I have no words for them and have never sung them--an experience which is consistent with the fact that these ”internal tunes” arise in childhood before the faculty of speech. They also have distinct pitch. For example, I once found a tune ”in my head” which was perfectly familiar, but for which I could find no words. Tested on the piano, the pitch was F-sharp and the time was my heart beat. Finally, after much effort, I got the unworthy words ”Wait till the clouds roll by” by humming the tune over repeatedly. The pitch is determined probably by the accidental condition of the auditory centre in the brain or by the pitch of the external sound which serves as stimulus to the tune.
_Normal Auto-Suggestion._--A further cla.s.s of Suggestions, which fall under the general phrase Auto-suggestion, or Self-suggestion of a normal type, may be ill.u.s.trated. In experimenting upon the possibility of suggesting sleep to another I have found certain strong reactive influences upon my own mental condition. Such an effort, which involves the picturing of another as asleep, is a strong Auto-suggestion of sleep, taking effect in my own case in about five minutes if the conditions be kept constant. The more clearly the patient's sleep is pictured the stronger becomes the subjective feeling of drowsiness. After about ten minutes the ability to give strong concentration seems to disintegrate, attention is renewed only by fits and starts and in the presence of great, mental inertia, and the oncoming of sleep is almost overpowering. An unfailing cure for insomnia, speaking for myself, is the persistent effort to put some one else asleep by hard thinking of the end in view, with a continued gentle movement, such as stroking the other with the hand.
On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state of drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. The first effort at this, indeed, is promising, for it leads to a state of restfulness and ease akin to the mental composure which is the usual preliminary to sleep; but it goes no further. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, which effort of attention or effort not to attend only intensifies. If the victim of insomnia could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could forget himself altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The contrast between this condition and that already described shows that it is the Self-idea, with the emotions it awakens,[11] which prevents the suggestion from realizing itself and probably accounts for many cases of insomnia.
[Footnote 11: A friend informs me that when he pictures himself dead he can not help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a corpse.]
_Sense Exaltation._--Recent discussions of Hypnotism have shown the remarkable ”exaltation” which the senses may attain in somnambulism, together with a corresponding refinement in the interpretative faculty. This is described more fully below. Events, etc., quite subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habitual with the experimenter, may suffice to hypnotize his accustomed subject. The possibility of such training of the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient emphasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial and other personal indications are remarkable. The prolonged experience of putting H. to sleep--extending over a period of more than six months, during which I slept beside her bed--served to make me alive to a certain cla.s.s of suggestions otherwise quite beyond notice. It is well known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants when they are asleep to everything else.
In the first place, we may note the intense auto-suggestion of sleep already pointed out, under the stimulus of repeated nursery rhymes or other regular devices regularly resorted to in putting the child asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of the hearing and interpretation of sounds coming from her in a dark room. At the end of four or five months, her movements in bed awoke me or not according as she herself was awake or not. Frequently after awaking I was distinctly aware of what movements of hers had awaked me.[12] A movement of her head by which it was held up from the pillow was readily distinguished from the restless movements of her sleep. It was not so much, therefore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of the function of the recognition of sounds heard and of their discrimination.
[Footnote 12: This fact is a.n.a.logous to our common experience of being awaked by a loud noise and then hearing it after we awake; yet the explanation is not the same.]
Again, the same phenomenon to an equally marked degree attended the sound of her breathing. It is well enough known that the smallest functional bodily changes induce changes in both the rapidity and the quality of the respiration. In sleep the muscles of inhalation and exhalation are relaxed, inhalation becomes long and deep, exhalation short and exhaustive, and the rhythmic intervals of respiration much lengthened. Now degrees of relative wakefulness are indicated with surprising delicacy by the slight respiration sounds given forth by the sleeper. Professional nurses learn to interpret these indications with great skill. This exaltation of hearing became very p.r.o.nounced in my operations with the child. After some experience the peculiar breathing of advancing or actual wakefulness in her was sufficient to wake me. And when awake myself the change in the infant's respiration sounds to those indicative of oncoming sleep was sufficient to suggest or bring on sleep in myself. In the dark, also, the general character of her breathing sounds was interpreted with great accuracy in terms of her varied needs, her comfort or discomfort, etc. The same kind of suggestion from the respiration sounds now troubles me whenever one of the children is sleeping within hearing distance.[13]
[Footnote 13: This is an unpleasant result which is confirmed by professional infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never asks for a vacation.
Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, preliminary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so--the consequence being that she is ready for the infant when it gets fully awake and cries out.]
The reactions in movement upon these suggestions are very marked and appropriate, in customary or habitual lines, although the stimulations are quite subconscious. The clearest ill.u.s.trations in this body of my experiences were afforded by my responses in crude songs to the infant's waking movements and breathing sounds. I have often waked myself by myself singing one of two nursery rhymes, which by endless repet.i.tion night after night had become so habitual as to follow in an automatic way upon the stimulus from the child. It is certainly astonis.h.i.+ng that among the things which one may get to do automatically, we should find singing; but writers on the subject have claimed that the function of musical or semi-musical expression may be reflex.
The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which these simple facts are less important ill.u.s.trations, has very interesting applications in the higher reaches of social, moral, and educational theory.
_Inhibitory Suggestion._--An interesting cla.s.s of phenomena which figure perhaps at all the levels of nervous action now described, may be known as Inhibitory Suggestions. The phrase, in its broadest use, refers to all cases in which the suggesting stimulus tends to suppress, check, or inhibit movement. We find this in certain cases just as strongly marked as the positive movement--bringing kind of suggestion. The facts may be put under certain heads which follow.
_Pain Suggestion._--Of course, the fact that pain inhibits movement occurs at once to the reader. So far as this is general, and is a native inherited thing, it is organic, and so falls under the head of Physiological Suggestion of a negative sort. The child shows contracting movements, crying movements, starting and jumping movements, shortly after birth, and so plainly that we need not hesitate to say that these pain responses belong purely to his nervous system; and that, in general, they are inhibitory and contrary to those other native reactions which indicate pleasure.
The influence of pain extends everywhere through mental development, however. Its general effect is to dampen down or suppress the function which brings the pain; and in this its action is just the contrary to that of pleasure, which furthers the pleasurable function.
_Control Suggestion._--This covers all cases which show any kind of restraint set upon the movements of the body short of that which comes from voluntary intention. The infant brings the movements of his legs, arms, head, etc., gradually into some sort of order and system. It is accomplished by a system of organic checks and counter-checks, by which a.s.sociations are formed between muscular sensations on the one hand and certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, hearing, etc., on the other hand. The latter serve as suggestions to the performance of these movements, and these alone. The infant learns to balance his head and trunk, to direct his hands, to grasp with thumb opposite the four fingers--all largely by such control suggestions, aided, of course, by his native reflexes.
_Contrary Suggestion._--By this is meant a tendency of a very striking kind observable in many children, no less than in many adults, to do the contrary when any course is suggested. The very word ”contrary” is used in popular talk to describe an individual who shows this type of conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious whenever rebellion is possible; he seems to kick const.i.tutionally against the p.r.i.c.ks.
The fact of ”contrariness” in older children--especially boys--is so familiar to all who have observed school children with any care that I need not cite further details. And men and women often become so enslaved to suggestions of the contrary that they seem only to wait for indications of the wishes of others in order to oppose and thwart them.
Contrary suggestions are to be explained as exaggerated instances of control. It is easy to see that the checks and counter-checks already spoken of as const.i.tuting the method of control of muscular movement may themselves become so habitual and intense as to dominate the reactions which they should only regulate. The a.s.sociations between the muscular series and the visual series, let us say, which controls it, comes to work backward, so that the drift of the organic processes is toward certain contrary reverse movements.
In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find interesting cases of very refined contrary suggestion. In the man of ascetic temperament, the duty of self-denial takes the form of a regular contrary suggestion in opposition to every invitation to self-indulgence, however innocent. The over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is a prey to the eternal remonstrances from the contrary which intrude their advice into all his decisions. In matters of thought and belief also cases are common of stubborn opposition to evidence, and persistence in opinion, which are in no way due to the cogency of the contrary arguments or to real force of conviction.
_Hypnotic Suggestion._--The facts upon which the current theories of hypnotism are based may be summed up under a few headings, and the recital of them will serve to bring this cla.s.s of phenomena into the general lines of cla.s.sification drawn out in this chapter.