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'magnetic fluids’ in the doctor's body, or in objects which had
'absorbed' such from him.
It is at least conceivable that what Mesmer was discovering was a different kind of mentality that, given a proper locale, a special education in childhood, a surrounding belief system, and isolation from the rest of us, possibly could have sustained itself as a society not based on ordinary consciousness, where metaphors of energy and irresistible control would assume some of the functions of consciousness.
How is this even possible? As I have mentioned already, I think Mesmer was clumsily stumbling into a new way of engaging that neurological patterning I have called the general bicameral paradigm with its four aspects: collective cognitive imperative, induction, trance, and archaic authorization. I shall take up each in turn.
The Changing Nature of Hypnotic Man
That the phenomenon of hypnosis is under the control of a collective cognitive imperative or group belief system is clearly demonstrated by its continual changing in history. As beliefs about hypnosis changed, so also its very nature. A few decades after Mesmer, subjects no longer twisted with strange sensations and convulsions. Instead they began spontaneously to speak and reply to questions during their trance state. Nothing like this had happened before. Then, early in the nineteenth century, patients spontaneously began to forget what had happened during the trance,2 something never reported previously. Around 1825, for some unknown reason, persons under hypnosis started to spontaneously diagnose their own illnesses. In the middle of the century, phrenology, the mistaken idea that conformations of the skull indicate mental faculties, became so popular that it actually 2 As revealed in the important writings of A.-M.-J. Chastenet, Marquis de Puyseg-ur, " Memoires four Servir a L’Histoire et a L’Establissement du Magnetism Animate>" 2nd ed. (Paris, 1809).
384 Vestiges of the Bicameral Mind in the Modern World engulfed hypnosis for a time. Pressure on the scalp over a phre-nological area during hypnosis caused the subject to express the faculty controlled by that area (yes, this actually happened), a phenomenon never seen before or since. When the scalp area over the part of the brain supposedly responsible for "veneration"
was pressed, the hypnotized subject sunk to his knees in prayer!3
This was so because it was believed to be so.
A little later, Charcot, the greatest psychiatrist of his time, demonstrated to large professional audiences at the Salpetriere that hypnosis was again quite different! Now it had three successive stages: catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism. These
"physical states" could be changed from one to another by manipulating muscles, or various pressures, or friction on the top of the head. Even rubbing the head over Broca's area produced aphasia! And then Binet, arriving at the Salpetriere to check on the findings of Charcot, promptly compounded the problem by returning to Mesmer's magnets and discovering even more bizarre behavior.4 Placing magnets on one side or the other of the body of a hypnotized person, he could flip-flop perceptions, hysterical paralyses, supposed hallucinations, and movements from one side to the other, as if such phenomena were so many iron filings. None of these absurd results was ever found before or since.
It is not simply that the operator, Mesmer or Charcot or whoever, was suggesting to the pliant patient what the operator believed hypnosis to be. Rather, there had been developed within 3 These demonstrations by Sir James Braid, otherwise the first cautions student of the subject, later embarrassed him. He never referred to such results after 1845 -— and probably never understood them. A detailed account of Braid's pivotal position in the history of hypnosis may be found in J. M. Bramwell, Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory (London: 19035 New York: Julian Press, 1956).
4 See Alfred Binet and C. Fere, Le Magnetisme Animate (Paris: Alcan, 1897).
This self-deluding work and the dispute with Delboeuf and the more correct Nancy School that followed, as well as Binet's later acknowledgment of his foolish error, are described in Theta Wolf's excellent biography Alfred Binet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 40-78.
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the group in which he worked a cognitive imperative as to what the phenomenon was 'known' to be. Such historical changes then clearly show that hypnosis is not a stable response to given stimuli, but changes as do the expectations and preconceptions of a particular age.
What is obvious in history can be shown in a more experimentally controlled way. Previously unheard-of manifestations of hypnosis can be found by simply informing subjects beforehand that such manifestations are expected in hypnosis, that is, are a part of the collective cognitive imperative about the matter.
For example, an introductory psychology class was casually told that under hypnosis a subject's dominant hand cannot be moved.
This had never occurred in hypnosis in any era. It was a lie.
Nevertheless, when members of the class at a later time were hypnotized, the majority, without any coaching or further suggestion, were unable to move their dominant hand. Out of such studies has come the notion of the "demand characteristics" of the hypnotic situation, that the hypnotized subject exhibits the phenomena which he thinks the hypnotist expects.5 But that expresses it too personally. It is rather what he thinks hypnosis is. And such "demand characteristics," taken in this way, are of precisely the same nature as what I am calling the collective cognitive imperative.
Another way of seeing the force of the collective imperative is to note its strengthening by crowds. Just as religious feeling and belief is enhanced by crowds in churches, or in oracles by the throngs that attended them, so hypnosis in theaters. It is well known that stage hypnotists with an audience packed to the 5 This is one of the important ideas in the history of hypnosis research. See the papers of Martin Orne, particularly, "Nature of Hypnosis: Artifact and Essence,"
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959, 58: 277-299; in this connection David Rosenhan's important and sobering, "On the Social Psychology of Hypnosis Research" in J. E. Gordon, ed., Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Psychology.
386 Vestiges of the Bicameral Mind in the Modern World rafters, reinforcing the collective imperative or expectancy of hypnosis, can produce far more exotic hypnotic phenomena than are found in the isolation of laboratory or clinic.
The Induction
Secondly, the place of an induction procedure in hypnosis is obvious.6 And needs little comment. The variety of techniques in contemporary practice is enormous, but they all share the same narrowing of consciousness, similar to the induction procedures for oracles, or the relationship between a pelestike and a katochos which we looked at in the previous chapters. The subject may be seated or standing or lying down, may be stroked or not, stared at or not, asked to look at a small light or flame or gem, or perhaps a thumbtack on the wall, or at the thumbnail of his own clasped hands, or not — there are hundreds of variations. But always the operator is trying to confine the subject'; attention to his own voice. "All you hear is my voice and you are getting sleepier and sleepier, etc." is a common pattern, repeated until the subject, if hypnotized, is unable to open his clasped hands if the operator says he can't, for example, or cannot move his relaxed arm if the operator so suggests, or cannot remember his name if that is suggested. Such simple suggestions are often used as indications of the success of the hypnosis in its beginning stages.