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Similar Conditions Induced in Hypnotics by Suggestion, Auto-suggestion, and Physical Impressions
I now illustrate the artificially-induced hypnotic state, and show how our hypnotic patient is subject to the influence of impulses conveyed to her mind either by the voice of the operator or by self-gene-rated influence in the brain, due to such simpje conditions as the position of her muscles and the naffcure of the attitude in which she is placed. She has already been illustrated in the attitude of fixed and what is called { cataleptic' immobility ; but her hands being raised into the attitude of astonishment (fig. 8), the change of expression in the face should be noted as indicating that the change of muscular attitude and the influence of the associated muscular action, related habitually to the emotion of astonishment, have produced that emotion in her mind and it is strikingly depicted in her face. In fig. 9 her fists have been doubled, and she has been placed in a fighting attitude. In fig. 10 her hands are placed in the position in which women, and especially Frenchwomen, are in the habit of going through the little performance called 4 throwing a kiss.' Few actresses, I imagine, however able, accomplished, and remarkable for histrionic power and intelligence, could so rapidly assume and maintain the unaffected expression of graceful welcome such as this unconscious and uneducated
woman has assumed under the impulse of a brain emotion generated by the simple impulse of associated muscular influence in the related brain centres, unrestrained by the self-consciousness which so often spoils the best acting. Self-consciousness is, in virtue of her condition, completely abolished. She is a mere puppet, the slave of unconscious cerebration excited by external influences and suggestion, or of the suggestion of her own muscles.
Another example of the influence of mere physical suggestion may be studied in fig. 11, a girl in the attitude of prayer. Note the intensity of her imploring expression, which might serve as a study for a painter; the idea of prayer has not been suggested to her by word of mouth, nor is this the self-suggestion of a hysteric; it is the attitude induced, and always induced in this particular patient, when hypnotised by the sudden influence of a strong light thrown through the medium of blue glass. The same girl is always dazed and thrown into the hypnotic state under the influence of a strong yellow light. Not only, however, does the whole body of the hypnotised patient or of the highly hysteric patient lend itself thus easily to the influence of physical excitation or suggestion from without, or of ideas aroused by the action of local groups of muscles or of other physical excitations within the body, but individual muscles can just as easily be acted on and separately set in motion. The mere stroking of the extensor muscles of one or two fingers
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