Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/84

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72
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lucie remembered nothing of her hypnotic states and the suggestions given in them, but Adrienne could tell all about both. Lucie knew nothing about her convulsive attacks. When Adrienne was questioned during a convulsion she could only write, "I am afraid, I am afraid," but afterward she gave an account of them which was intelligible enough, although a little incoherent. "I see a curtain first, and then hidden men, who frighten me. In the country once, at grandmother's house during the holidays, two men came; then in the garden a big curtain, which they put on the trees and went behind it, which frightened us, and since then I have always been afraid." Lucie knew she had had a fright when about seven years old, but never could tell what it was. Prof. Janet does not say whether he verified this story or not, but seems to regard it as true.

So of states artificially dissociated from Lucie by suggestion. Bits of paper were put in Lucie's lap, some of which were marked, and she was told that she could not see those that were marked. If Adrienne were asked what was in Lucie's lap, she would describe those only which Lucie could not see. In this way Adrienne was proved capable of distinguishing odd numbers from even and of performing other simple judgments. Whenever a suggestion was given to Adrienne, it and all that it involved were withdrawn from Lucie. While Adrienne was writing the numbers Lucie could not count, and while Adrienne was writing the alphabet Lucie "had forgotten it." In such cases as these the fact might easily escape notice, but when the elements thus subtracted from Lucie's consciousness were such as she would be likely to miss, she supplied their place by a sort of dream of her own. Thus, when Adrienne was told to put her arms above her head, Lucie lost all consciousness of their true position and said they were in her lap. When Prof. Janet established this fact, it supplied the explanation of an occurrence which had puzzled him not a little at the time it happened. Adrienne was told to come to Dr. Povilevitch's house at a certain time, and Lucie's body came. But Lucie believed herself still to be at home, and mistook the furniture for her own, while Adrienne knew perfectly where she was.

Prof. Janet desired to reverse the relative positions of the two systems so as to make Adrienne speak and Lucie write, and, finding that his suggestions to this end were unavailing, he put Lucie into a deep sleep to make her more suggestible. After sleeping a half hour she awoke, and to his surprise he found that he had neither Lucie nor Adrienne, but a new personality derived from the coalescence of both. This personality called herself Adrienne, but had all Lucie's memories and sensations in addition to those of Adrienne. She was more vivacious and intelligent than Lucie,