Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/46

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ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

gradually became smaller and clearer. It was not essentially different from the medium’s own. The grandfather was again the controlling spirit.

V. Somnambulic attacks in September, 1899. S. W. sits upon the sofa, leans back, shuts her eyes, breathes lightly and regularly. She gradually became cataleptic, the catalepsy disappeared after about two minutes, when S. W. lay in an apparently quiet sleep with complete muscular relaxation. She suddenly begins to speak in a subdued voice: “No! you take the red, I’ll take the white, you can take the green, and you the blue. Are you ready? We will go now.” (A pause of several minutes during which her face assumes a corpselike pallor. Her hands feel cold and are very bloodless.) She suddenly calls out with a loud, solemn voice: “Albert, Albert, Albert,” then whispering: “Now you speak,” followed by a longer pause, when the pallor of the face attains the highest possible degree. Again, in a loud solemn voice, “Albert, Albert, do you not believe your father? I tell you many errors are contained in N.’s teaching. Think about it.” Pause. The pallor of the face decreases. “He’s very frightened. He could not speak any more.” (These words in her usual conversational tone.) Pause. “He will certainly think about it.” S. W. now speaks again in the same tone, in a strange idiom which sounds like French or Italian, now recalling the former, now the latter. She speaks fluently, rapidly, and with charm. It is possible to understand a few words but not to remember the whole, because the language is so strange. From time to time certain words recur, as wena, wenes, wenai, wene, etc. The absolute naturalness of the proceedings is bewildering. From time to time she pauses as if some one were answering her. Suddenly she speaks in German, “Is time already up?” (In a troubled voice.) “Must I go already? Goodbye, goodbye.” With the last words there passes over her face an indescribable expression of ecstatic blessedness. She raises her arms, opens her eyes,—hitherto closed,—looks radiantly upwards. She remains a moment thus, then her arms sink slackly, her eyes shut, the expression of her face