'Why,' says she, 'I have an eyeglass in my left hand!'" M.Binet found a very curious sort of connection between the apparently anaesthetic skin and the mind in some Salpétrière-subjects.Things placed in the hand were not felt, but thought of (apparently in visual terms) and in no wise referred by the subject to their starting point in the hand's sensation.A key, a knife, placed in the hand occasioned ideas of a key or a knife, but the hand felt nothing.Similarly the subject thought of the number 3, 6, etc., if the hand or finger was bent three or six times by the operator, or if he stroked it three, six, etc., times.
In certain individuals there was found a still odder phenomenon, which reminds one of that curious idiosyncrasy of 'colored hearing' of which a few cases have been lately described with great care by foreign writers.These individuals, namely, saw the impression received by the hand, but could not feel it; and the thing seen appeared by no means associated with the hand, but more like an independent vision, which usually interested and surprised the patient.Her hand being hidden by a screen, she was ordered to look at another screen and to tell of any visual image which might project itself thereon.Numbers would then come, corresponding to the number of times the insensible member was raised, touched, etc.
Colored lines and figures would come, corresponding to similar ones traced on the palm; the hand itself or its fingers would come when manipulated;
and finally objects placed in it would come; but on the hand itself nothing would ever be felt.Of course simulation would not be hard here; but M.
Binet disbelieves this (usually very shallow) explanation to be a probable one in cases in question.
The usual way in which doctors measure the delicacy of our touch is by the compass-points.Two points are normally felt as one whenever they are too close together for discrimination; but what is 'too close' on one part of the skin may seem very far apart on another.In the middle of the back or on the thigh, less than 3 inches may be too close; on the finger-tip a tenth of an inch is far enough apart.Now, as tested in this way, with the appeal made to the primary consciousness, which talks through the mouth and seems to hold the field alone, a certain person's skin may be entirely anaesthetic and not feel the compass-points at all; and yet this same skin will prove to have a perfectly normal sensibility if the appeal be made to that other secondary or sub-consciousness, which expresses itself automatically by writing or by movements of the hand.M.Binet, M.Pierre Janet, and M.Jules Janet have all found this.The subject, whenever touched, wonld signify 'one point' or 'two points,' as accurately as if she were a normal person.She would signify it only by these movements;
and of the movements themselves her primary self would be as unconscious as of the facts they signified, for what the submerged consciousness makes the hand do automatically is unknown to the consciousness which uses the mouth.
Messrs.Bernheim and Pitres have also proved, by observations too complicated to be given in this spot, that the hysterical blindness is no real blindness at all.The eye of an hysteric which is totally blind when the other or seeing eye is shut, will do its share of vision perfectly well when both eyes are open together.But even where both eyes are semi-blind from hysterical disease, the method of automatic writing proves that their perceptions exist, only cut off from communication with the upper consciousness.M.
Binet has found the hand of his patients unconsciously writing down words which their eyes were vainly endeavoring to 'see,' i.e., to bring to the upper consciousness.Their submerged consciousness was of course seeing them, or the hand could not have written as it did.Colors are similarly perceived by the sub-conscious self, which the hysterically color-blind eyes cannot bring to the normal consciousness.Pricks, burns, and pinches on the anaesthetic skin, all unnoticed by the upper self, are recollected to have been suffered, and complained of, as soon as the under self gets a chance to express itself by the passage of the subject into hypnotic trance.
It must be admitted, therefore, that in certain persons , at least, the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist but mutually ignore each other , and share the objects of knowledge between them.More remarkable still, they are complementary.Give an object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it from the other or others.Barring a certain common fund of information, like the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the under self is ignorant of, and vice versa.M.Janet has proved this beautifully in his subject Lucie.The following experiment will serve as the type of the rest: In her trance he covered her lap with cards, each bearing a number.
He then told her that on waking she should not see any card whose number was a multiple of three.This is the ordinary so-called 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' now well known, and for which Lucie was a well-adapted subject.Accordingly, when she was awakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said she saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3.To the 12, 18, 9, etc., she was blind.But the hand , when the sub-conscious self was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper self in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's lap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick up all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others lie.
