Going upward in the nervous system, we next find a certain group of bodies within the gross mass of the brain, certain centres lying between the hemispheres above and the medulla and spinal cord below, and in direct connection by nervous tracts with both of these. The technical names of the more important of these organs are these: the "corpora striata," or striped bodies, of which there are two, the "optic thalami," also two in number, and the "cerebellum" or little brain, situated behind. These make up what is called the "second level" in the system. They seem to be especially concerned with the life of sensation. When the centres lying above them, the hemispheres, are removed, the animal is still able to see, hear, etc., and still able to carry out his well-knit habits of action in response to what he sees and hears. But that is about all. A bird treated thus, for example, these second-level centres being still intact while the hemispheres are removed, retains his normal appearance, being quite able to stand upon his feet, to fly, walk, etc. His reflexes are also unimpaired and his inner physiological processes; but it soon becomes noticeable that his mental operations are limited very largely to sensations. He sees his food as usual, but does not remember its use, and makes no attempt to eat it. He sees other birds, but does not respond to their advances. He seems to have forgotten all his education, to have lost all the meanings of things, to have practically no intelligence. A dog in this condition no longer fears the whip, no longer responds to his name, no longer steals food. On the side of his conduct we find that all the actions which he had learned by training now disappear; the trick dog loses all his tricks. What was called Apperception in the earlier chapter seems to have been taken away with the hemispheres.

Coming to the "first level," the highest of all, both in anatomical position and in the character of the functions over which it presides, we see at once what extraordinary importance it has. It comprises the cortex of the hemispheres, which taken together are called the cerebrum. It consists of the parts which we supposed cut out of the pigeon and dog just mentioned; and when we remember what these animals lose by its removal, we see what the normal animal or man owes to the integrity of this organ. It is above all the organ of mind. If we had to say that the mind as such is located anywhere, we should say in the gray matter of the cortex of the hemispheres of the brain. For although, as we saw, animals without this organ can still see and hear and feel, yet we also saw that they could do little else and could learn to do nothing more. All the higher operations of mind come back only when we think of the animal as having normal brain hemispheres.

Further, we find this organ in some degree duplicating the function of the second-level centres, for fibres go out from these intermediate masses to certain areas of the hemispheres, which reproduce locally the senses of hearing, sight, etc. By these fibres the functions of the senses are "projected" out to the surface of the brain, and the term "projection fibres" is applied to the nerves which make these connections. The hemispheres are not content even with the most important of all functions—the strictly intelligent—but they are jealous, so to speak, of the simple sensations which the central brain masses are capable of awaking. And in the very highest animals, probably only monkeys and man, we find that the hemispheres have gone so far with their jealousy as to usurp the function of sensation. This is seen in the singular fact that with a monkey or man the removal of the cortical centres makes the animal permanently blind or deaf, as the case may be, while in the lower animals such removal does not have this result, so long as the "second-level" organs are unimpaired. The brain paths of the functions of the second and first levels taken together constitute the so-called "voluntary circuit" (see Fig. 2).

In addition to this general demarcation of functions as higher and lower—first, second, and third level—in their anatomical seat, many interesting discoveries have been made in the localization of the simpler functions in the cortex itself. The accompanying figures (Figs. 3 and 4) will show the principle centres which have been determined; and it is not necessary to dwell upon additional details which are still under discussion. The areas marked out are in general the same on both hemispheres, and that is to say that most of the centres are duplicated. The speech centres, however, are on one side only. And in certain cases the nervous fibres which connect the cortex with the body-organs cross below the brain to the opposite side of the body. This is always true in cases of muscular movement; the movements of the right side of the body are controlled by the left hemisphere, and vice versa. The stimulations coming in from the body to the brain generally travel on the same side, although in certain cases parallel impulses are also sent over to the other hemisphere as well. For example, the very important optic nerve, which is necessary to vision, comes from each eye separately in a large bunch of fibres, and divides at the base of the brain, so that each eye sends impulses directly to the visual centres of both hemispheres.



Of all the special questions which have arisen about the localization of functions in the nervous system, that of the function of certain areas known as "motor centres" has been eagerly discussed. The region on both sides of the fissure of Rolando in Fig. 3 contains a number of areas which give, when stimulated with electricity, very definite and regular movements of certain muscles on the opposite side of the body. By careful exploration of these areas the principal muscular combinations—those for facial movements, neck movements, movements of the arm, trunk, legs, tail, etc.—have been very precisely ascertained. It was concluded from these facts that these areas were respectively the centres for the discharge of the nervous impulses running in each case to the muscles which were moved. The evidence recently forthcoming, however, is leading investigators to think that there is no cortical centre for the "motor" or outgoing processes properly so called, and that these Rolandic areas, although called "motor," are really centres for the incoming reports of the movements of the respective muscles after the movements take place, and also for the preservation of the memories of movement which the mind must have before a particular movement can be brought about (the mental images of movement which we called on an earlier page Kinaesthetic Equivalents). These centres being aroused in the thought of the movement desired, which is the necessary mental preparation for the movement, they in turn stimulate the real motor centres which lie below the cortex at the second level. This is in the present writer's judgment the preferable interpretation of the evidence which we now have.



The Speech Zone.—Many interesting facts of the relation of body and mind have come to light in connection with the speech functions. Speech is complex, both on the psychological and also on the physiological side, and easily deranged in ways that take on such remarkable variety that they are a source of very fruitful indications to the inquirer. It is now proved that speech is not a faculty, a single definite capacity which a man either has or has not. It is rather a complex thing resulting from the combined action of many brain centres, and, on the mental side, of many so-called faculties, or functions. In order to speak a man normally requires what is called a "zone" in his brain, occupying a large portion of the outside lateral region (see Fig. 5). It extends, as in the figure, from the Rolandic region (K), where the kinaesthetic lip-and-tongue memories of words are aroused, backward into the temporal region (A), where the auditory memories of words spring up; then upward to the angular gyrus in the rear or occipital region (V), where in turn the visual pictures of the written or printed words rise to perform their part in the performance; and with all this combination there is associated the centre for the movements of the hand and arm employed in writing, an area higher up in the Rolandic region (above K). In the same general zone we also find the music function located, the musical sounds being received in the auditory centre very near the area for words heard (A) while the centre for musical expression is also in the Rolandic region. Furthermore, as may be surmised, the reading of musical notation requires the visual centre, just as does the reading of words. In addition to this, we find the curious fact that the location of the whole speech zone is in one hemisphere only. Its location on the left or the right, in particular cases, is also an indication as to whether the person is right-or left-handed; this means that the process which makes the individual either right or left-handed is probably located in the speech zone, or near it. A large majority of persons have the speech zone in the left hemisphere, and are right-handed; it will be seen that the figure (5) shows the left hemisphere of the brain, and with it the right hand holding the pen.

Defects of Speech—Aphasia.—The sorts of injury which may befall a large zone of the brain are so many that well-nigh endless forms of speech defect occur. All impairment of speech is called Aphasia, and it is called Motor Aphasia when the apparatus is damaged on the side of movement.

If the fibres coming out from the speech zone be impaired, so that the impulses can not go to the muscles of articulation and breathing, we have Subcortical Motor Aphasia. Its peculiarity is that the person knows perfectly what he wants to say, but yet can not speak the words. He is able to read silently, can understand the speech of others, and can remember music; but, with his inability to speak, he is generally also unable to write or to perform on a musical instrument (yet this last is not always the case). Then we find new variations if his "lesion"—as all kinds of local nervous defects are called—is in the brain centre in the Rolandic region, where arise the memories of the movements required. In this latter case the aphasic patient can readily imitate speech so long as he hears it, can imitate writing so long as it lies before him, but can not do any independent speaking or writing for himself. With this there goes another fact which characterizes this form of aphasia, and which is called Cortical, as opposed to the Subcortical Motor Aphasia described above, that the person may not be able even to think of the words which are appropriate to express his meaning. This is the case when those persons who depend upon the memories of the movements of lip and tongue in their normal speech are injured as described.

Besides the two forms of Motor Aphasia now spoken of, there are certain other speech defects which are called Sensory Aphasia. When a lesion occurs in one of the areas of the brain in the speech zone in which the requisite memories of words seen or heard have their seat—as when a ball player is struck over the sight centre in the back of the head—special forms of sensory aphasia show themselves. The ball player will, in this case, have Visual Aphasia, being unable to speak in proportion as he is accustomed in his speaking to depend upon the images of written or printed words. He is quite unable to read or write from a copy which he sees; but he may be able, nevertheless, to write from dictation, and also to repeat words which are spoken to him. This is because in these latter performances he uses his auditory centre, and not the visual. There are, indeed, some persons who are so independent of vision that the loss of the visual centre does not much impair their normal speech.

When, again, an injury comes to the auditory centre in the temporal region, we find the converse of the case just described; the defect is then called Auditory Aphasia. The patient can not now speak or write words which he hears, and can not speak spontaneously in proportion as he is accustomed to depend upon his memories of the word sounds. But in most cases he can still both speak and write printed or written words which he sees before him.

These cases may serve to give the reader an idea of the remarkable delicacy and complexity of the function of speech. It becomes more evident when, instead of cases of gross lesion, which destroy a whole centre, or cut the connections between centres, we have disease of the brain which merely destroys a few cells in the gray matter here or there. We then find partial loss of speech, such as is seen in patients who lack only certain classes of words; perhaps the verbs, or the conjunctions, or proper names, etc.; or in the patients who speak, but yet do not say what they mean; or, again, in persons who have two verbal series going on at once, one of which they can not control, and which they often attribute to an enemy inside them, in control of the vocal organs, or to a persecutor outside whose abuse they can not avoid hearing. In cases of violent sick headache we often miscall objects without detecting it ourselves, and in delirium the speech mechanism works from violent organic discharges altogether without control. The senile old man talks nonsense—so-called gibberish—thinking he is discoursing properly.

In the main cases of Aphasia of distinct sensory and motor types psychological analysis is now so adequate and the anatomical localization so far advanced that the physicians have sufficient basis for their diagnosis, and make inferences looking toward treatment. Many cases of tumour, of clot on the brain, of local pressure from the skull, and of haemorrhage or stopping up of the blood vessels in a limited area, have been cured through the indications given by the particular forms and degrees of aphasia shown by the patients. The skull is opened at the place indicated by the defect of speech, the lesion found where the diagnosis suggested, and the cause removed.

This account of Localization will suggest to the reader the truth that there is no science of Phrenology. No progress has been made in localizing the intelligence; and the view is now very general that the whole brain, with all its interchange of impulses from part to part, is involved in thinking. As for locating particular emotions and qualities of temperament, it is quite absurd. Furthermore, the irregularities of the skull do not indicate local brain differences. It is thought that the relative weight of the brain may be an indication of intellectual endowment, especially when the brain weight is compared with the weight of the rest of the body, and that culture in particular lines increases the surface of the cortex by deepening and multiplying the convolutions. But these statements can not be applied off-hand to individuals, as the practise of phrenology would require.

Defects of Memory—Amnesia.—The cases given just above, where the failure of speech was seen to be due to the loss of certain memories of words, illustrate also a series of mental defects, which are classed together as Amnesias. Any failure in memory, except the normal lapses which we call forgetfulness, is included under this term. Just as the loss of word memories occasions inability to speak, so that of other sorts of memories occasions other functional disturbances. A patient may forget objects, and so not know how to use his penknife or to put on his shoes. He may forget events, and so give false witness as to the past.

One may forget himself also, and so have, in some degree, a different character, as is seen, in an exaggerated way, in persons who have so-called Dual Personality. These patients suddenly fall into a secondary state, in which they forget all the events of their ordinary lives, but remember all the events of the earlier periods of the secondary personality. This state may be described as "general" amnesia, in contrast to the "partial" amnesia of the other cases given, in which only particular classes of memories are impaired.

The impairment of memory with advancing years also illustrates both "general" and "partial" Amnesia. The old man loses his memory of names, then of other words, then of events, and so gradually becomes incapable of much retention of any sort.

Defects of Will—Aboulia.—A few words may suffice to characterize the great class of mental defects which arise on the side of action. All inability to perform intentional acts is called Aboulia, or lack of Will. Certain defects of speech mentioned above illustrate this: cases in which the patient knows what he wishes to say and yet can not say it. This is the type of all the "partial" Aboulias. There may be no lack in determination and effort, yet the action may be impossible. But, in contrast with this, there is a more grave defect called "general" Aboulia. Here we find a weakening of resolution, of determination, associated with some lack of self-control showing itself frequently by a certain hesitation or indecision. The patient says: "I can not make up my mind," "I can not decide." In exaggerated cases it becomes a form of mania called "insanity of doubt." The patient stands before a door for an hour hesitating as to whether he can open it or not, or carries to its extreme the experience we all sometimes have of finding it necessary to return again and again to make sure that we have locked the door or shut the draught of the furnace.

With these illustrations our notice of mental defects may terminate. The more complex troubles, the various insanities, manias, phobias, etc., can not be briefly described. Moreover, they are still wrapped in the profoundest obscurity. To the psychologist, however, there are certain guiding principles through the maze of facts, and I may state them in conclusion.

First, all mental troubles involve diseases of the brain and can be cured only as the brain is cured. It does not follow, of course, that in certain cases treatment by mental agencies, such as suggestion, arousing of expectation, faith, etc., may not be more helpful here, when wisely employed, than in troubles which do not involve the mind; but yet the end to be attained is a physical as well as a mental cure, and the means in the present state of knowledge, at any rate, are mainly physical means. The psychologist knows practically nothing about the laws which govern the influence of mind on body. The principle of Suggestion is so obscure in its concrete working that the most practised and best-informed operators find it impossible to control its use or to predict its results. To give countenance, in this state of things, to any pretended system or practice of mind cure, Christian science, spiritual healing, etc., which leads to the neglect of ordinary medical treatment, is to discredit the legitimate practice of medicine and to let loose an enemy dangerous to the public health.

Moreover, such things produce a form of hysterical subjectivism which destroys sound judgment, and dissolves the sense of reality which it has taken modern science many generations to build up. Science has all along had to combat such wresting of its more obscure and unexplained facts into alliance with the ends of practical quackery, fraud, and superstition; and psychologists need just now to be especially alive to their duty of combating the forms of this alliance which arise when the newer results of psychology are so used, whether it be to supplement the inadequate evidence of "thought-transference," to support the claims of spiritualism, or to justify in the name of "personal liberty" the substitution of a "healer" for the trained physician. The parent who allows his child to die under the care of a "Christian Science healer" is as much a criminal from neglect as the one who, going but a step further in precisely the same direction, brings his child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France and Russia experimenting in hypnotism on well persons has been restricted by law to licensed experts; what, compared with that, shall we say to this wholly amateurish experimenting with the diseased? Let the "healer" heal all he can, but let him not experiment to the extremity of life and death with the credulity and superstition of the people who think one "doctor" is as good as another.

Second, many experts agree that diseases of the mind, whatever their brain seat may be, all involve impairment of the Attention. This, at any rate, is a general mark of a deranged or defective mind. The idiot lacks power of attention. The maniac lacks control of his attention. The deluded lacks grasp and flexibility of attention. The crank can only attend to one thing. The old man is feeble in the attention, having lost his hold. So it goes. The attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception, and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form of defect.

Third, it is interesting to know that in progressive mental failure the loss of the powers of the mind takes place in an order which is the reverse of that of their original acquisition. The most complex functions, which are acquired last, are the first to show impairment. In cases of general degeneration, softening of the brain, etc., the intelligence and moral nature are first affected, then memory, association, and acquired actions of all sorts, while there remain, latest of all, actions of the imitative kind, most of the deep-set habits, and the instinctive, reflex, and automatic functions, This last condition is seen in the wretched victim of dementia and in the congenital idiot. The latter has, in addition to his life processes and instincts, little more than the capacity for parrot-like imitation. By this he acquires the very few items of his education.

The recovery of the patient shows the same stages again, but in the reversed direction; he pursues the order of the original acquisition, a process which physicians call Re-evolution.



CHAPTER VI.

HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND—EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.

In recent years the growth of the method of experimenting with bodies in laboratories in the different sciences has served to raise the question whether the mind may not be experimented with also. This question has been solved in so far that psychologists produce artificial changes in the stimulations to the senses and in the arrangements of the objects and conditions existing about a person, and so secure changes also in his mental states. What we have seen of Physiological Psychology illustrates this general way of proceeding, for in such studies, changes in the physiological processes, as in breathing, etc., are considered as causing changes in the mind. In Experimental Psychology, however, as distinguished from Physiological Psychology, we agree to take only those influences which are outside the body, such as light, sound, temperature, etc., keeping the subject as normal as possible in all respects.

A great many laboratories have now been established in connection with the universities in Germany, France, and the United States. They differ very much from one another, but their common purpose is so to experiment upon the mind, through changes in the stimulations to which the individual is subjected, that tests may be made of his sensations, his ability to remember, the exactness and kind of movements, etc.

The working of these laboratories and the sort of research carried out in them may be illustrated best, perhaps, by a description of some of the results, apparatus, methods, etc., employed in my own laboratory during the past year. The end in view will, I trust, be considered sufficient justification for the degree of personal reference which this occasions; since greater concreteness and reality attach to definite descriptions such as this. The other laboratories, as those at Harvard and Columbia Universities, take up similar problems by similar methods. I shall therefore go on to describe some recent work in the Princeton laboratory.

Of the problems taken up in the laboratory, certain ones may be selected for somewhat detailed explanation, since they are from widely different spheres and illustrate different methods of procedure.

I. Experiments on the Temperature Sense.—For a score of years it has been suspected that we have a distinct sense, with a nerve apparatus of its own, for the feeling of different temperatures on the skin. Certain investigators found that this was probably true; it is proved by the fact that certain drugs alter the sensibility of the skin to hot and cold stimulations.

Another advance was made when it was found that sensations of either hot or cold may be had from regions which are insensible at the same time to the other sort of stimulation, cold or hot. Certain minute points were discovered which report cold when touched with a cold point, but give no feeling from a hot object; while other points would respond only with a sensation from heat, never giving cold. It was concluded that we have two temperature senses, one for hot and the other for cold.

Taking the problem at this point, Mr. C.[3] wished to define more closely the relation of the two sorts of sensation to each other, and thought he could do so by a method by which he might repeat the stimulation of a series of exact spots, very minute points on the skin, over and over again, thus securing a number of records of the results for both hot and cold over a given area. He chose an area of skin on the forearm, shaved it carefully, and proceeded to explore it with the smallest points of metals which could be drawn along the skin without pricking or tearing. These points were attached to metallic cylinders, and around the cylinders rubber bands were placed; the cylinders were then thrust in hot or cold water kept at certain regular temperatures, and lifted by the rubber bands. They were placed point down, with equal pressure, upon the points of the skin in the area chosen. In this way, points which responded only to hot, and also those responding only to cold, were found, marked with delicate ink marks in each case, until the whole area was explored and marked in different colours. This had often been done before. It remained to devise a way of keeping these records, so that the markings might all be removed from the skin, and new explorations made over the same surface. This was necessary in order to see whether the results secured were always the same. The theory that there were certain nervous endings in the skin corresponding to the little points required that each spot should be in exactly the same place whenever the experiment was repeated.

[Footnote 3: Mr. J. F. Crawford, graduate student.]

Mr. C. made a number of so-called "transparent transfer frames." They are rectangular pieces of cardboard, with windows cut in them. The windows are covered with thin architect's paper, which is very transparent. This frame is put over the forearm in such a way that the paper in the window comes over the markings made on the arm. The markings show through very clearly, and the points are copied on the paper. Then certain boundary marks at the corners are made, both on the paper and on the arm, at exactly the same places, the frame is removed, and all the markings on the arm are erased except the boundary points. The result is that at any time the frames can be put over the arm again by matching the boundary points, and then the original temperature spots on the skin will be shown by the markings on the paper window.

Proceeding to repeat the exploration of the same area in this way, Mr. C makes records of many groupings of points for both hot and cold sensations on the same area; he then puts the frames one upon another, holds them up before a window so that they have a bright background, and is thus able to see at a glance how nearly the results of the different sittings correspond.

His results, put very briefly, fail to confirm the theory that the sense of temperature has an apparatus of fixed spots for heat and other fixed spots for cold. For when he puts the different markings for heat together he finds that the spots are not the same, but that those of one frame fall between those of another, and if several are put together the points fill up a greater or smaller area. The same for the cold spots; they fill a continuous area. He finds, however, as other investigators have found, that the heat areas are generally in large measure separate from the cold areas, only to a certain extent overlapping here and there, and also that there are regions of the skin where we have very little sense of either sort of temperature.

The general results will show, therefore, if they should be confirmed by other investigators, that our temperature sense is located in what might be called somewhat large blotches on the skin, and not in minute spots; while the evidence still remains good, however, to show that we have two senses for temperature, one for cold and the other for hot.

II. Reaction-Time Experiments.—Work in so-called "reaction times" constitutes one of the most important and well-developed chapters in experimental psychology. In brief, the experiment involved is this: To find how long it takes a person to receive a sense impression of any kind—for example, to hear a sound-signal—and to move his hand or other member in response to the impression. A simple arrangement is as follows: Sit the subject comfortably, tap a bell in such a way that the tapping also makes an electric current and starts a clock, and instruct the subject to press a button with his finger as soon as possible after he hears the bell. The pressing of the button by him breaks the current and stops the clock. The dial of the clock indicates the actual time which has elapsed between the bell (signal) and his response with his finger (reaction). The clock used for exact work is likely to be the Hipp chronoscope, which gives on its dials indications of time intervals in thousandths of a second. For the sake of keeping the conditions constant and preventing disturbance, the wires are made long, so that the clock and the experimenter may be in one room, while the bell, the punch key, and the subject are in another, with the door closed. This method of getting reaction times has been in use for a number of years, especially by the astronomers who need to know, in making their observations, how much time is taken by the observer in recording a transit or other observation. It is part of the astronomer's "personal equation."

Proceeding with this "simple-reaction" experiment as a basis, the psychologists have varied the instructions to the subject so as to secure from him the different times which he takes for more complicated mental processes, such as distinguishing between two or more impressions, counting, multiplying, dividing, etc., before reacting; or they have him wait for an associated idea to come up before giving his response, with many other variations. By comparing these different times among themselves, interesting results are reached concerning the mental processes involved and also about the differences of different individuals in the simpler operations of their daily lives. The following research carried out by Mr. B.[4] serves to illustrate both of these assertions.

[Footnote 4: The writer.]

Mr. B. wished to inquire further into a fact found out by several persons by this method: the fact that there is an important difference in the length of a person's reaction time according to the direction of his attention during the experiment. If, for example, Mr. X. be tested, it is possible that he may prefer to attend strictly to the signal, letting his finger push the key without direct care and supervision. If this be true, and we then interfere with his way of proceeding, by telling him that he must attend to his finger, and allow the signal to take care of itself, we find that he has great difficulty in doing so, grows embarrassed, and his reaction time becomes very irregular and much longer. Yet another person, say Y, may show just the opposite state of things; he finds it easier to pay attention to his hand, and when he does so he gets shorter and also more regular times than when he attends to the signal-sound.

It occurred to Mr. B. that the striking differences given by different persons in this matter of the most favourable direction of the attention might be connected with the facts brought out by the physiological psychologists in connection with speech; namely, that one person is a "visual," in speaking, using mainly sight images of words, while another is a "motor," using mainly muscular images, and yet another an "auditive," using mainly sound images. If the differences are so marked in the matter of speech, it seemed likely that they might also extend to other functions, and the so-called "type" of a person in his speech might show itself in the relative lengths of his reaction times according as he attended to one class of images or another.

Calling this the "type theory" of reaction times, and setting about testing four different persons in the laboratory, the problem was divided into two parts; first, to direct all the individuals selected to find out, by examining their mental preferences in speaking, reading, writing, dreaming, etc., the class of images which they ordinarily depended most upon; and then to see by a series of experiments whether their reaction times to these particular classes of images were shorter than to others, and especially whether the times were shorter when attention was given to these images than when it was given to the muscles used in the reactions. The meaning of this would be that if the reaction should be shorter to these images than to the corresponding muscle images, or to the other classes of images, then the reaction time of an individual would show his mental type and be of use in testing it. This would be a very important matter if it should hold, seeing that many questions both in medicine and in education, which involve the ascertaining of the mental character of the individual person, would profit by such an exact method.

The results on all the subjects confirmed the supposition. For example, one of them, Mr. C., found from an independent examination of himself, most carefully made, that he depended very largely upon his hearing in all the functions mentioned. When he thought of words, he remembered how they sounded; when he dreamed, his dreams were full of conversation and other sounds. When he wrote, he thought continually of the way the words and sentences would sound if spoken. Without knowing of this, many series of reaction experiments were made on him; the result showed a remarkable difference between the lengths of his reactions, according as he directed his attention to the sound or to his hand; a difference showing his time to be one half shorter when he paid attention to the sound. The same was seen when he reacted to lights; the attention went preferably to the light, not to the hand; but the difference was less than in the case of sounds. So it was an unmistakable fact in his case that the results of the reaction experiments agreed with his independent decision as to his mental type.

In none of the cases did this correspondence fail, although all were not so pronounced in their type preferences as was Mr. C.

The second part of the research had in view the question whether reaction times taken upon speech would show the same thing; that is, whether in Mr. C.'s case, for example, it would be found that his reaction made by speaking, as soon as he heard the signal or saw the light, would be shorter when he paid attention to the signal than when he gave attention to his mouth and lips. For this purpose a mouth key was used which made it possible for the subject simply by emitting a puff of breath from the lips, to break an electric current and thus stop the chronoscope as soon as possible after hearing the signal. The mouth key is figured herewith (Fig. 6).



This experiment was also carried out on all the subjects, none of them having any knowledge of the end in view, and the experimenters also not having, as yet, worked out the results of the earlier research. In all the cases, again, the results showed that, for speech, the same thing held as for the hand—namely, that the shortest reaction times were secured when the subject paid attention to the class of images for which he had a general preference. In Mr. C.'s case, for example, it was found that the time it took him to speak was much shorter when he paid strict attention to the expected sound than when he attended to his vocal organs. So for the other cases. If the individual's general preference is for muscular images, we find that the quickest time is made when attention is given to the mouth and lips. Such is the case with Mr. B.

The general results go to show, therefore—and four cases showing no exception, added to the indications found by other writers, make a general conclusion very probable—that in the differences in reaction times, as secured by giving the attention this way or that, we have general indications of the individual's temperament, or at least of his mental preferences as set by his education. These indications agree with those found in the cases of aphasia known as "motor," "visual," "auditory," etc., already mentioned. The early examination of children by this method would probably be of great service in determining proper courses of treatment, subjects of study, modes of discipline, tendencies to fatigue and embarrassment, and the direction of best progress in education.

This research may be taken to illustrate the use of the reaction-time method in investigating such complex processes as attention, temperament, etc. The department which includes the various time measurements in psychology is now called Mental Chronometry, the older term, Psychometry, being less used on account of its ambiguity.

III. An Optical Illusion.—In the sphere of vision many very interesting facts are constantly coming to light. Sight is the most complex of the senses, the most easily deranged, and, withal, the most necessary to our normal existence. The report of the following experimental study will have the greater utility, since, apart from any intrinsic novelty or importance the results may prove to have, it shows some of the general bearings of the facts of vision in relation to AEsthetics, to the theory of Illusions, and to the function of Judgment.

Illusion of the senses is due either to purely physiological causes or to the operation of the principle of Assimilation, which has already been remarked upon. In the latter case it illustrates the fact that at any time there is a general disposition of the mind to look upon a thing under certain forms, patterns, etc., to which it has grown accustomed; and to do this it is led sometimes to distort what it sees or hears unconsciously to itself. So it falls into errors of judgment through the trap which is set by its own manner of working. Nowhere is the matter better illustrated than in the sphere of vision. The number of illusions of vision is remarkable. We are constantly taking shapes and forms for something slightly different from what, by measurement, we actually find them to be. And psychologists are attempting—with rather poor success so far—to find some general principles of the mechanism of vision which will account for the great variety of its illusions.

Among these principles one is known as Contrast. It is hardly a principle as yet. It is rather a word used to cover all illusions which spring up when surfaces of different sizes and shapes, looked at together or successively, are misjudged with reference to one another. Wishing to investigate this in a simple way, the following experiment was planned and carried out by Mr. B.

He wished to find out whether, if two detached surfaces of different sizes be gazed at together, the linear distances of the field of vision (the whole scene visible at once) would be at all misjudged. To test this, he put in the window (W)[5] of the dark room a filling of white cardboard in which two square holes had been cut (S S'). The sides of the squares were of certain very unequal lengths. Then a slit was made between the middle points of the sides of the squares next to each other, so that there was a narrow path or trough joining the squares between their adjacent sides. Inside the dark room he arranged a bright light so that it would illuminate this trough, but not be seen by a person seated some distance in front of the window in the next room. A needle (D) was hung on a pivot behind the cardboard, so that its point could move along the bright trough in either direction; and on the needle was put the armature (A) of an electro-magnet which, when a current passed, would be drawn instantly to the magnet (E), and so stop the needle exactly at the point which it had then reached. A clock motor (Cm) was arranged in such a way as to carry the needle back and forth regularly over the slit; and the electro-magnet was connected by wires with a punch key (K) on a table beside the subject in the next room. All being now ready, the subject, Mr. S., is told to watch the needle which appears as a bead of light travelling along the slit, and stop it when it comes to the middle point of the line, by pressing the electric key. The experimenter, who stands behind the window in the dark room, reads on a scale (mm.) marked in millimetres the exact point at which the needle stops, releases the needle by breaking the current, thus allowing it to return slowly over the line again. This gives the subject another opportunity to stop it at what he judges to be the exact middle of the line, and so on. The accompanying figure (Fig. 7) shows the entire arrangement.

[Footnote 5: This and the following letters in parentheses refer to Fig. 7]



A great many experiments performed in this way, with the squares set both vertically and horizontally, and with several persons, brought a striking and very uniform result. The point selected by the subject as the middle is regularly too far toward the smaller square. Not a little, indeed, but a very appreciable amount. The amount of the displacement, or, roughly speaking, of the illusion, increases as the larger square is made larger and the smaller one smaller; or, put in a sentence, the amount varies directly with the ratio of the smaller to the larger square side.

Finding such an unmistakable illusion by this method, Mr. B. thought that if it could be tested by an appeal to people generally, it would be of great gain. It occurred to him that the way to do this would be to reverse the conditions of the experiment in the following way: He prepared the figures given in Plate I, in which the two squares are made of suitable relative size, a line is drawn between them, and a point on the line is plainly marked. This he had printed in a weekly journal, and asked the readers of the journal to get their friends, after merely looking at the figure (i. e., without knowing the result to be expected), to say—as the reader may now do before reading further—whether the point on the line (Plate I) is in the middle or not; and if not, in which direction from the true middle it lies. The results from hundreds of persons of all manner of occupations, ages, and of both sexes, agree in saying that the point lies too far toward the larger square. In reality it is in the exact middle. This is just the opposite of the result of the experiments in the laboratory, where the conditions were the reverse, i. e., to find the middle as it appears to the eye. Here, therefore, we have a complete confirmation of the illusion; and it is now fully established that in all cases in which the conditions of this experiment are realized we make a constant mistake in estimating distances by the eye.[6]

[Footnote 6: In redrawing the figure on a larger sheet (which is recommended), the connecting line may be omitted, only the mid-point being marked. Some get a better effect with two circles, the intervening distance being divided midway by a dot, as in Plate II.]

For instance, if a town committee wish to erect a statue to their local hero in the public square, and if on two opposite sides of the square there are buildings of very different heights, the statue should not be put in the exact middle of the square, if it is to give the best effect from a distance. It should be placed a little toward the smaller building. A colleague of the writer found, when this was first made public, that the pictures in his house had actually been hung in such a way as to allow for this illusion. Whenever a picture was to be put up between two others of considerable difference of size, or between a door (large) and a window (small), it had actually been hung a little nearer to the smaller—toward the small picture or toward the window—and not in the true middle.

It is probable that interesting applications of this illusion may be discovered in aesthetics. For wherever in drawing or painting it is wished to indicate to the observer that a point is midway between two lines of different lengths, we should find that the artist, in order to produce this effect most adequately, deviates a little from the true middle. So in architecture, the effect of a contrast of masses often depends upon the sense of bilateral balance, symmetry, or equality, in which this visual error would naturally come into play. Indeed, it is only necessary to recall to mind that one of the principal laws of aesthetic effect in the matter of right line proportion is the relation of "one to one," as it is called, or equal division, to see the wide sphere of application of this illusion. In all such cases the mistake of judgment would have to be allowed for if masses of unequal size lie at the ends of the line which is to be divided.

IV. The Accuracy of Memory.—Another investigation may be cited to illustrate quite a different department. It aimed to find out something about the rate at which memory fades with the lapse of time. Messrs. W., S., and B.[7] began by formulating the different ways in which tests may be made on individuals to see how accurate their memories are after different periods of time. They found that three different tests might be employed, and called them "methods" of investigating memory. These are, first, the method of Reproduction. The individual is asked to reproduce, as in an oral or written examination, what he remembers of something told him a certain time before. This is the ordinary method of the schools and colleges, of civil-service examinations, etc. Second, the method of Identification, which calls upon the person to identify a thing, sentence, report, etc., a second or third time, as being the same in all respects as that which he experienced the first time it appeared. Third, the method of Selection, in which we show to the person a number of things, sentences, reports, descriptions of objects, etc., and require him to select from them the ones which are exactly the same as those he has had before. These methods will be better understood from the account now to be given of the way they were carried out on a large number of students.

[Footnote 7: Prof. H. C. Warren, Mr. W. J. Shaw, and the writer.]

The first experiments were made by Messrs. S. and B. in the University of Toronto on a class of students numbering nearly three hundred, of whom about one third were women. The instructors showed to the class certain squares of cardboard of suitable size, and asked them to do the following three things on different days: First, to reproduce from memory, with pencil on paper, squares of the same size as those shown, after intervals of one, ten, twenty, and forty minutes (this gives results by the method of Reproduction); second, to say whether a new set of squares, which were shown to them after the same intervals, were the same in size as those which they had originally seen, smaller, or larger (illustrating the method of Identification); third, they were shown a number of squares of slightly different sizes, again at the same intervals, and asked to select from them the ones which they found to be the same size as those originally seen (method of Selection).

The results from all these experiments were combined with those of another series, secured from a large class of Princeton students; and the figure (Fig. 8) shows by curves something of the result. The figure is given in order that the reader may understand by its explanation the "graphic method" of plotting statistical results, which, with various complications, is now employed in psychology as well as in the other positive sciences.



Briefly described in words, it was found that the three methods agreed (the curves are parallel)[8] in showing that during the first ten minutes there was a great falling off in the accuracy of memory (slant in the curves from 0 to 10); that then, between ten and twenty minutes, memory remained relatively faithful (the curves are nearly level from 10 to 20), and that a rapid falling off in accuracy occurred after twenty minutes (shown by the slant in the lines from 20 to 40).

[Footnote 8: This figure shows curves for two of the methods only, Selection and Identification.]

Further, the different positions of the curves show certain things when properly understood. The curve secured by the method of Reproduction (not given in the figure) shows results which are least accurate, because most variable. The reason of this is that in drawing the squares to reproduce the one remembered, the student is influenced by the size of the paper he uses, by the varying accuracy of his control over his hand and arm (the results vary, for example, according as he uses his right or left hand), and by all sorts of associations with square objects which may at the time be in his mind. In short, this method gives his memory of the square a chance to be fully assimilated to his current mental state during the interval, and there is no corrective outside of him to keep him true.

That this difficulty is a real one no one who has examined students will be disposed to deny. When we ask them to reproduce what the text-book or the professor's lectures have taught, we also ask them to express themselves accurately. Now the science of correct expression is a thing in which the average student has had no training. With his difficulty in remembering is connected his difficulty of expression; and with it all goes a certain embarrassment, due to responsibility, personal fear, and dread of disgrace. So the results finally obtained by this method are really very complex.

One of the curves, that given by the method of Selection (I), also shows memory to be interfered with by a certain influence. We saw in connection with the experiments reported above that, even in the most elementary arrangements of squares in the visual fields, an element of contrast comes in to interfere with our judgment of size. This we find confirmed in these experiments when the method of Selection is used. By this method we show a number of squares side by side, asking the individual to select the one he saw before. All the squares, being shown at once, come into contrast with one another on the background; and so his judgment of the size of the one he remembers is distorted. This, again, is a real influence in our mental lives, leading to actual illusion. An unscrupulous lawyer may gradually modify the story which his client or a witness tells by constantly adding to what is really remembered, other details so expertly contrasted with the facts, or so neatly interposed among them, that the witness gradually incorporates them in his memory and so testifies more nearly as the lawyer desires. In our daily lives another element of contrast is also very strong—that due to social opinion. We constantly modify our memories to agree more closely with the truths of social belief, paring down unconsciously the difference between our own and others' reports of things. If several witnesses of an event be allowed to compare notes from time to time, they will gradually come to tell more nearly the same story.

The other curve (II) in the figure, that secured by the method of Identification, seemed to the investigators to be the most accurate. It is not subject to the errors due to expression and to contrast, and it has the advantage of allowing the subject the right to recognise the square. It is shown to him again, with no information that it is the same, and he decides whether from his remembrance of the earlier one, it is the same or not. The only objection to this method is that it requires a great many experiments in order to get an average result. To be reliable, an average must be secured, seeing that, for one or two or a few trials, the student may guess right without remembering the original square at all. By taking a large number of persons, such as the three hundred students, this objection may be overcome. Comparing the averages, for example, of the results given by the men and women respectively, we found practically no difference between them.

This last point may serve to introduce a distinction which is important in all work in experimental psychology, and one which is recognised also in many other sciences—the distinction between results obtained respectively from one individual and from many. Very often the only way to learn truth about a single individual is to investigate a number together. In all large classes of things, especially living things, there are great individual differences, and in any particular case this personal variation may be so large that it obscures the real nature of the normal. For example, three large sons may be born to two small parents; and from this case alone it might be inferred that all small parents have large sons. Or three girls might have better memories than three boys in the same family or school, and from this it might be argued that girls are better endowed in this direction than boys. In all such cases the proper thing to do is to get a large number of cases and combine them; then the preponderance which the first cases examined may have shown, in one direction or the other, is corrected. This gives rise to what is called the statistical method; it is used in many practical matters, such as life insurance, but its application to the facts of life, mind, variation, evolution, etc., is only begun. Its neglect in psychology is one of the crying defects of much recent work. Its use in complicated problems involves a mathematical training which people generally do not possess; and its misuse through lack of exactness of observation or ignorance of the requirements is worse than its neglect.

Another result came out in connection with these experiments on memory, which, apart from its practical interest, may serve to show an additional resource of experimental psychology. In making up the results of a series of experiments it is very important to observe the way in which the different cases differ from one another. Some cases may be so nearly alike that the most extreme of them are not far from the average of them all; as we find, for example, if we measure a thousand No. 10 shot. But now suppose we mix in with the No. 10 some No. 6 and some No. 14, and then take the average size; we may now get just the same average, and we can tell that this pile is different from the other only by observing the individual measurements of the single shot and setting down the relative frequency of each particular size. Or, again, we may get a different average size in one of two ways: either by taking another lot of uniform No. 14 shot, let us say, or by mixing with the No. 10 a few very large bullets. Which is actually the case would be shown only by the examination of the individual cases. This is usually done by comparing each case with the average of the whole lot, and taking the average of the differences thus secured—a quantity called the "mean variation."

In the case of the experiments with the squares, the errors in the judgments of the students were found to lie always in one direction. The answers all tended to show that they took, for the one originally shown, a square which was really too large. Casting about for the reason of this, it was considered necessary to explain it by the supposition that the square remembered had in the interval become enlarged in memory. The image was larger when called up after ten or twenty minutes than it was before. This might be due to a purely mental process; or possibly to a sort of spreading-out of the brain process in the visual centre, giving the result that whenever, by the revival of the brain process, the mental image is brought back again to mind, this spreading out shows itself by an enlargement of the memory image. However it may be explained, the indications of it were unmistakable—unless, of course, some other reason can be given for the uniform direction of the errors; and it is further seen in other experiments carried out by Messrs. W. and B. and by Dr. K.[9] at a later date.

[Footnote 9: Dr. F. Kennedy, demonstrator, now professor in the University of Colorado (results not yet published).]

If this tendency to the enlargement of our memories with the lapse of time should be found to be a general law of memory, it would have interesting bearings. It would suggest, for instance, an explanation of the familiar fact that the scenes of the past seem to us, when we return to them, altogether too small. Our childhood home, the old flower garden, the height of house and trees, and even that of our hero uncle, all seem to the returning traveller of adult life ridiculously small. That we expect them to be larger may result from the fact that the memory images have undergone change in the direction of enlargement.

V. Suggestion.—Space permits only the mention of another research, which, however, should not be altogether omitted, since it illustrates yet other problems and the principles of their solution. This is an investigation by Messrs. T. and H.,[10] which shows the remarkable influence of mental suggestions upon certain bodily processes which have always been considered purely physiological. These investigators set out to repeat certain experiments of others which showed that if two points, say those of a pair of compasses, be somewhat separated and put upon the skin, two sensations of contact come from the points. But if while the experiment is being performed the points be brought constantly nearer to each other, a time arrives when the two are felt as only one, although they may be still some distance apart. The physiologists argued from this that there were minute nerve endings in the skin at least so far apart as the least distance at which the points were felt as two; and that when the points were so close together that they only touched one of these nerve endings, only one sensation was produced. Mr. T. had already found, working in Germany, that, with practice, the skin gradually became more and more able to discriminate the two points—that is, to feel the two at smaller distances; and, further, that the exercise of the skin in this way on one side of the body not only made that locality more sensitive to minute differences, but had the same effect, singularly, on the corresponding place on the other side of the body. This, our experimenters inferred, could only be due to the continued suggestion in the mind of the subject that he should feel two points, the result being an actual heightening of the sensibility of the skin. When he thought that he was becoming more sensitive on one side—and really was—this sense or belief of his took effect in some way in both hemispheres of his brain, and so both sides of the body were alike affected.

[Footnote 10: G. A. Tawney, now professor in Beloit College, and C. W. Hodge, now professor in Lafayette College.]

This led to other experiments in Princeton in which suggestions were actually made to the subjects that they were to become more or less sensitive to distance and direction between the points on the skin, with the striking result that these suggestions actually took effect all over the body. This was so accurately determined that from the results of the experiments with the compasses on the skin in this case or that, pretty accurate inferences could be made as to what mental suggestions the subject was getting at the time. There was no chance for deception in the results, for the experiments were so controlled that the subject did not know until afterward of the correspondences actually reached between his states of mind and the variations in sensibility of the skin.

This slight report of the work done in one laboratory in about two sessions, involving a considerable variety of topics, may give an idea, so far as it goes, of the sort of work which experimental psychology is setting itself to do. It will be seen that there is as yet no well-knit body of results on which new experiments may proceed, and no developed set of experimental arrangements, such as other positive sciences show. The procedure is, in many important matters, still a matter of the individual worker's judgment and ability. Even for the demonstrations attempted for undergraduate students, good and cheap apparatus is still lacking. For these reasons it is premature as yet to expect that this branch of the science will cut much of a figure in education. There can be no doubt, however, that it is making many interesting contributions to our knowledge of the mind, and that when it is more adequately organized and developed in its methods and apparatus, It will become the basis of discipline of a certain kind lying between that of physical science and that of the humanities, since it will have features in common with the biological and natural sciences. Its results may be expected also to lead to better results than we now have in the theory and practice of education.



CHAPTER VII.

SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS—HYPNOTISM.

In an earlier place certain illustrations of Suggestion have been given. By Suggestion we mean the fact that all sorts of hints from without disturb and modify the beliefs and actions of the individual. Certain cases from my own observation may be given which will make the matter clear.

Physiological Suggestion.—Observation of an infant for the first month or six weeks after birth leads to the conviction that his life is mainly physiological. When the actions which are purely reflex, together with certain random impulsive movements, are noted, we seem to exhaust the case.

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 illustrates 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 associated 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 classed 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 classification 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 analysis 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 shipboard, 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 Marseillaise 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 pass 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 class of Suggestions, which fall under the general phrase Auto-suggestion, or Self-suggestion of a normal type, may be illustrated. 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 class 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 analogous 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 pronounced 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 illustrations 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 repetition night after night had become so habitual as to follow in an automatic way upon the stimulus from the child. It is certainly astonishing 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 illustrations, has very interesting applications in the higher reaches of social, moral, and educational theory.

Inhibitory Suggestion.—An interesting class 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 associations 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 constitutionally against the pricks.

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 constituting 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 associations 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 class of phenomena into the general lines of classification drawn out in this chapter.

The Facts.—When by any cause the attention is held fixed upon an object, say a bright button, for a sufficient time without distraction, the subject begins to lose consciousness in a peculiar way. Generalizing this simple experiment, we may say that any method or device which serves to secure undivided and prolonged attention to any sort of Suggestion—be it object, idea, anything that is clear and striking—brings on what is called Hypnosis to a person normally constituted.

The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of progress in the hypnotic sleep: First, Catalepsy, characterized by rigid fixity of the muscles in any position in which the limbs may be put by the experimenter, with great Suggestibility on the side of consciousness, and Anaesthesia (lack of sensation) in certain areas of the skin and in certain of the special senses; second, Lethargy, in which consciousness seems to disappear entirely; the subject not being sensitive to any stimulations by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep; third, Somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many persons are subject. This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists "control" persons before audiences and make them obey their commands. While other scientists properly deny that these three stages are really distinct, they may yet be taken as representing extreme instances of the phenomena, and serve as points of departure for further description.

On the mental side the general characteristics of hypnotic Somnambulism are as follows:

1. The impairment of memory in a peculiar way. In the hypnotic condition all affairs of the ordinary life are forgotten; on the other hand, after waking the events of the hypnotic condition are forgotten. Further, in any subsequent period of Hypnosis the events of the former similar periods are remembered. So a person who is frequently hypnotized has two continuous memories: one for the events of his normal life, exercised only when he is normal; and one for the events of his hypnotic periods, exercised only when he is hypnotized.

2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By this is meant the tendency of the subject to have in reality any mental condition which is suggested to him. He is subject to Suggestions both on the side of his sensations and ideas and also on the side of his actions. He will see, hear, remember, believe, refuse to see, hear, etc., anything, with some doubtful exceptions, which may be suggested to him by word or deed, or even by the slightest and perhaps unconscious indications of those about him. On the side of conduct his suggestibility is equally remarkable. Not only will he act in harmony with the illusions of sight, etc., into which he is led, but he will carry out, like an automaton, the actions suggested to him. Further, pain and pleasure, with their organic accompaniments may be produced by Suggestion. The skin may be actually scarred with a lead pencil if the patient be told that it is red-hot iron. The suggested pain brings about vasomotor and other bodily changes that prove, as similar tests in the other cases prove, that simulation is impossible and the phenomena are real. These truths and those given below are no longer based on the mere reports of the "mesmerists," but are the recognised property of legitimate psychology.

Again, such suggestions may be for a future time, and be performed only when a suggested interval has elapsed; they are then called Deferred or Post-hypnotic Suggestions. Post-hypnotic Suggestions are those which include the command not to perform them until a certain time after the subject has returned to his normal condition; such suggestions—if of reasonably trifling character—are actually carried out afterward in the normal state, although the person is conscious of no reason why he should act in such a way, having no remembrance whatever that he has received the suggestion when hypnotized. Such post-hypnotic performances may be deferred by suggestion for many months.

3. So-called Exaltation of the mental faculties, especially of the senses: increased acuteness of vision, hearing, touch, memory, and the mental functions generally. By reason of this great "exaltation," hypnotized patients may get suggestions from the experimenters which are not intended, and discover their intentions when every effort is made to conceal them. Often emotional changes in expression are discerned by them; and if it be admitted that their power of logical and imaginative insight is correspondingly exalted, there is hardly a limit to the patient's ability to read, simply from physical indications, the mental states of those who experiment with him.

4. So-called Rapport. This term covers all the facts known, before the subject was scientifically investigated, by such expressions as "personal magnetism," "will power over the subject", etc. It is true that one particular operator alone may be able to hypnotize a particular patient; and in this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to suggestions from that person only. He is deaf and blind to everything enjoined by anyone else. It is easy to see from what has already been said that this does not involve any occult nerve influence or mental power. A sensitive patient anybody can hypnotize, provided only that the patient have the idea or conviction that the experimenter possesses such power. Now, let a patient get the idea that only one man can hypnotize him, and that is the beginning of the hypnotic suggestion itself. It is a part of the suggestion that a certain personal Rapport is necessary; so the patient must have this Rapport. This is shown by the fact that when such a patient is hypnotized, the operator en rapport with him can transfer the so-called control to any one else simply by suggesting to the patient that this third party can also hypnotize him. Rapport, therefore, and all the amazing claims of charlatans to powers of charming, stealing another's personality, controlling his will at a distance—all such claims are explained, so far as they have anything to rest upon, by suggestion under conditions of mental hyperaesthesia or exaltation.

I may now add certain practical remarks on the subject.

In general, any method which fixes the attention upon a single stimulus long enough is probably sufficient to produce Hypnosis; but the result is quick and profound in proportion as the patient has the idea that it is going to succeed, i. e., gets the suggestion of sleep. It may be said, therefore, that the elaborate performances, such as passes, rubbings, mysterious incantations, etc., often resorted to, have no physiological effect whatever, and only serve to work in the way of suggestion upon the mind of the subject. In view of this it is probable that any person in normal health can be hypnotized, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and power; and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, and that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe the French seem to be most susceptible, and the English and Scandinavians least so. The impression that weak-minded persons are most available is quite mistaken. On the contrary, patients in the insane asylums, idiots, etc., are the most refractory. This is to be expected, from the fact that in these cases power of strong, steady attention is wanting. The only class of pathological cases which seem peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is that of the hystero-epileptics, whose tendencies are toward extreme suggestibility. Further, one may hypnotize himself—what we have called above Auto-suggestion—especially after having been put into the trance more than once by others. When let alone after being hypnotized, the patient usually passes into a normal sleep and wakes naturally.

It is further evident that frequent hypnotization is very damaging if done by the same operator, since then the patient contracts a habit of responding to the same class of suggestions; and this may influence his normal life. A further danger arises from the possibility that all suggestions have not been removed from the patient's mind before his awaking. Competent scientific observers always make it a point to do this. It is possible also that damaging effects result directly to a man from frequent hypnotizing; and this is in some degree probable, simply from the fact that, while it lasts, the state is abnormal. Consequently, all general exhibitions in public, as well as all individual hypnotizing by amateurs, should be prohibited by law, and the whole practical application as well as observation of Hypnosis should be left in the hands of physicians or experts who have proved their fitness by an examination and secured a certificate of licence. In Russia a decree (summer, 1893) permits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official certificates. In France public exhibitions are forbidden.

So-called Criminal Suggestions may be made, with more or less effect, in the hypnotic state. Cases have been tried in the French courts, in which evidence for and against such influence of a third person over the criminal has been admitted. The reality of the phenomenon, however, is in dispute. The Paris school claim that criminal acts may be suggested to the hypnotized subject, which are just as certain to be performed by him as any other acts. Such a subject will discharge a blank-loaded pistol at one, when told to do so, or stab him with a paper dagger. While admitting the facts, the Nancy theorists claim that the subject knows the performance to be a farce; gets suggestions of the unreality of it from the experimenters, and so acquiesces. This is probably true, as is seen in frequent cases in which patients have refused, in hypnotic sleep, to perform suggested acts which shocked their modesty, veracity, etc. This goes to show that the Nancy school are right in saying that while in Hypnosis suggestibility is exaggerated to an enormous degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subject. And it further shows that Hypnosis is probably, as they claim, a temporary disturbance, rather than a pathological condition of mind or body.

There have been many remarkable and sensational cases of cure of disease by hypnotic suggestion, reported especially in France. That hysteria in many of its manifestations has been relieved is certainly true; but that any organic, structural disease has ever been cured by hypnotism is unproved. It is not regarded by medical authorities as an agent of much therapeutic value, and is rarely employed; but it is doubtful, in view of the natural prejudice caused by the pretensions of charlatans, whether its merits have been fairly tested. On the European Continent it has been successfully applied in a great variety of cases; and Bernheim has shown that minor nervous troubles, insomnia, migraines, drunkenness, lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and digestive disorders, together with a host of smaller temporary causes of pain—corns, cricks in back and side, etc.—may be cured or very materially alleviated by suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic state. In many cases such cures are permanently effected with aid from no other remedies. In a number of great city hospitals patients of recognised classes are at once hypnotized, and suggestions of cure made. Liebeault, the founder of the Nancy school, has the credit of having first made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is also becoming more and more recognised as a method of controlling refractory and violent patients in asylums and reformatory institutions. It must be added, however, that psychological theory rather than medical practice is seriously concerning itself with this subject.

Theory.—Two rival theories are held as to the general character of Hypnosis. The Paris school already referred to, led by the late Dr. Charcot, hold that it is a pathological condition which is most readily induced in patients already mentally diseased or having neuropathic tendencies. They claim that the three stages described above are a discovery of great importance. The so-called Nancy school, on the other hand, led by Bernheim, deny the pathological character of Hypnosis altogether, claiming that the hypnotic condition is nothing more than a special form of ordinary sleep brought on artificially by suggestion. Hypnotic suggestion, say they, is only an exaggeration of an influence to which all persons are normally subject. All the variations, stages, curious phenomena, etc., of the Paris school, they claim, can be explained by this "suggestion" hypothesis. The Nancy school must be considered completely victorious apart from some facts which no theory has yet explained.

Hypnotism shows an intimacy of interaction between mind and body to which current psychology is only beginning to do justice; and it is this aspect of the whole matter which should be emphasized in this connection. The hypnotic condition of consciousness may be taken to represent the working of Suggestion most remarkably.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND—EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.

A great deal has been said and written about the physical and mental differences shown by the young; and one of the most oft-repeated of all the charges which we hear brought against the current methods of teaching is that all children are treated alike. The point is carried so far that a teacher is judged from the way he has or has not of getting at the children under him as individuals. All this is a move in the right direction; and yet the subject is still so vague that many of the very critics who declaim against the similar treatment which diverse pupils get at school have no clear idea of what is needed; they merely make demands that the treatment shall suit the child. How each child is to be suited, and the inquiry still back of that, what peculiarity it is in this child or that which is to be "suited"—these things are left to settle themselves.

It is my aim in this chapter to indicate some of the variations which are shown by different children; and on the basis of such facts to endeavour to arrive at a more definite idea of what variations of treatment are called for in the several classes into which the children are divided. I shall confine myself at first to those differences which are more hereditary and constitutional.

First Period—Early Childhood.—The first and most comprehensive distinction is that based on the division of the life of man into the two great spheres of reception and action. The "sensory" and the "motor" are becoming the most common descriptive terms of current psychology. We hear all the while of sensory processes, sensory contents, sensory centres, sensory attention, etc.; and, on the other hand, of motor processes, motor centres, motor ataxy, motor attention, motor consciousness, etc. And in the higher reaches of mental function, the same antithesis comes out in the contrast of sensory and motor aphasia, alexia, sensory and motor types of memory and imagination, etc. Indeed the tendency is now strong to think that when we have assigned a given function of consciousness to one or other side of the nervous apparatus, making it either sensory or motor, then our duty to it is done. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the distinction is throwing great light on the questions of mind which involve also the correlative questions of the nervous system. This is true of all questions of educational psychology.