There
are certain abnormal mental states that deserve a passing notice. The chief
physical change in sleep is a large reduction of blood in the brain. Its
external features are the suppression of voluntary action and of the action of
the senses. There may always remain, and there certainly often remains, the play
of the imagination known as dreaming. The mental action seems to be sympathetic
with the bodily state, and to be attended with very little control. While
complete sleep involves the large arrest of voluntary life incident to muscular
repose, there are many partial forms of it. The senses may remain cognizant of
very many events; a slight uneasiness or a gentle push may call forth a change
of position. "Words may be spoken; or, more rarely, words may be listened
to and answered, if introduced in the line of existing impressions.
In
somnambulism these states of partial wakefulness assume an extreme and
troublesome form. They are characterized by an unusual acuteness of impression
in some directions, with the ordinary want of it in other directions. The dividing
line between waking and sleeping, active and dormant, powers is drawn with
unusual decision, and in a new direction. Incident to this is also a new
relation of voluntary to involuntary action, the latter taking up what usually
falls to the former.
Hypnotism,
mesmeric states, table-tipping, second-sight, and kindred facts, are phenomena
of somewhat the same order. They involve an unusual suspension of some powers,
and an unusual activity of others. Normal associations in the action of
faculties are broken up, and abnormal ones take their place. They are induced
and established by unbalanced tendencies, by inheritance, by habit. Revery a
like condition in a very moderate degree.
A
succession of images is vividly present to the mind, while the action of the
senses and of the will is suspended. The degree of excitement to which an
abnormal state may bring a faculty or a sense is sometimes illustrated in
sickness. The slightest light or the least sound may be intensely painful, and
passing events may impress themselves in quite a new way on the feelings. The
nervous system under excitements or tension takes on an action quite novel to
it. In hypnotism and mesmerism an abnormal state of wakefulness and of repose
is induced by artificial means, the activity of certain faculties being as
remarkable as the suspension of others. In the mesmeric state the patient for
we may fitly call the person subject to such disordered action in a patient
becomes inattentive to the ordinary conditions of action, and highly sensitive
to those which proceed from the person inducing the state. In hypnotism there
is a like suspension of habitual sensations, and a kindred attention to other
relations determined by previous association. "We may ally the action to
that by which we listen intently without seeing, or look through one eye to the
exclusion of objects in the other. The states implied in hypnotism, while akin
to these, are much more extreme, much more abnormal.
In
these and kindred conditions unconscious and automatic connections gain ground
on conscious and voluntary ones. The eye, our most voluntary sense, is least
attentive, while touch, or rather the organic stimuli allied to it, may be very
active. Persons who have united hands thus become the unconscious mediums of
impressions passing from an active agent at one extremity to a passive agent at
the other; and the latter, abnormally sensitive, marks the slightest change in
the former. The least movement accompanying the recognition of the right word
or the right letter on the part of the active agent, is transferred to the
passive agent, and he, when allowed a choice of actions, words, or letters,
reads correctly the mind of the 'former by virtue of impulses which quite
escape ordinary observation.
In
table-tipping, by mechanical tests, pressure is shown to be present when the
parties to it are wholly unaware of it, and are exercising a measure of
volition against it. Involuntary states triumph over voluntary ones; confused,
secondary and unconscious ones over clear and conscious ones. In the planchette
we have a visible record of automatic impressions escaping from the control of
the voluntary life. Those who are the most coherent, rational, and self-guided
in action are the least subject to these abnormal conditions, while those most
impressible, excitable, weakest in their voluntary life, are especially liable
to them. By repetition these states gain power with a corresponding loss of
self control. Notwithstanding the exalted susceptibility implied in them, they
are to be regarded as intellectually and spiritually unwholesome. In these
states, the automatic life, the life of obscure, physical impressions, gains
ground on the reflective life, in a confused and confusing way. (1) There is a
new and abnormal division of activities between the two; (2) in the unconscious
life there is intense activity in unusual directions; (3) in the conscious
life, unusual inertness in usual directions.
(the "often unrecognized father of New Thought.")
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