Millais Culpin

“ The passing expressions of pleasure or disappointment on the faces of the audience, the sigh of relief when a wrong step is retraced, the glances at the object to be handled, are all picked up by the dissociated stream whilst the main personality of the subject is for the time almost obliterated. We must bear in mind that all the audience are concentrating their minds, that concentration of mind upon an action is likely to be followed by movements corresponding to the action, and that no one is watching his neighbour or suspects any such unconscious indications. ”

“ At first I pictured him as learning the trick from some one else, trying it on with his friends—maybe across a bridge over a stream—and being taken seriously, and then, when he could not escape from his reputation without owning up to the fraud, being compelled for his peace of mind to repress the deceit complex and carry on as a Dissociate. The man himself would be the last person to gain information from, for his repression, however it began, is now complete. ”

“ If a man has fought bravely for years and at last succumbed in his effort to forget the horrors he has seen, it sounds an insult to say he is suffering from hysteria. Yet the newer term of 'shell-shock' was worse, for it conveyed a totally false idea of causation and treatment: to regard as due to the concussion of a shell symptoms which are of purely mental origin led to muddled thinking.
A common history in these cases was that the man became 'unconscious' after a shell explosion, and on returning to consciousness found himself mute, shaky, or paralysed. ”

“ The hysteric is the prey of emotions and experiences which cannot be faced unaided, and the strivings and desires that arise from the unconscious, which in one individual may find expression in social work, may find vent by a neurosis in another, or by mysticism in a third.
The desires may be of the noblest kind, and, failing to find legitimate expression, may show themselves in fantasies. I am not the first to draw attention to the psychology of Joan of Arc, and we can picture her urged by the noblest emotions to seek in a dissociated stream powers beyond the reach of consciousness ”

“ But the unconscious is not always, or even often, such a useless intruder upon our everyday life. It economises our energies, and often takes us by short cuts to ends which would otherwise need continued reasoning. 'Intuition' is the product of previous experience, and rises into the consciousness as a finished judgement without the owner of the gift being aware of the factors concerned in its formation. One kind of intuition is improperly called in my profession 'clinical instinct', but, unlike instinct, it is a result of training and experience, and is never seen without them. ”

“ That the lines of Life, or Love, or what-not, are to be found on the palms of dead-born babies and of monkeys should be enough to stop the cult; but handbooks of palmistry seem to profit their publishers, and the palmists and clairvoyants flourish. The girl who buys a handbook and amuses her friends by reading their hands is comparatively harmless, though even she, becoming shrewd to note when she hits the mark, is likely to develop an unconscious receptivity and drift into fraud. ”

“ It comes into contact with the stream of consciousness, and, as we so often find in attempting to classify natural phenomena, there are no well-marked lines of demarcation between one and the other, though the extremes are definite enough.
The unconscious is not always a willing servant and often refuses to obey the wishes of its owner. Every one has at some time vainly tried to recall a name which is 'on the tip of the tongue', and one name after another is tried till perhaps the right one comes up and leaves us wondering where the difficulty was. ”

“ If three people are present and one thinks he detects the trick he may speak, for he is only in a minority of one to two; but if five out of fifteen detect it, each one, feeling he is in a minority of one to fourteen, is over-ruled by his sense of insignificance and remains silent accordingly. It is easier to sway a crowd than to persuade an individual.
Let me make it clear that I do not merely compare the medium with the hysteric, I regard [Pg 146] them as identical except in those cases where the medium is a conscious deceiver. ”

“ The ideal human mind would be perfectly integrated, there would be no logic-tight compartments, all its complexes would be apparent to the consciousness, all memories available when needed, all emotions assigned to their proper cause and all instincts recognised and well-directed; and the owner of it would find life in our world intolerable.
Remote from this ideal is the mind whose unconscious has taken the place, wholly or in part, of the stream of consciousness. Perhaps the consciousness has not developed—then we find idiocy or imbecility ”

“ Practical experience proves that in many cases there is an intense desire for cure which cannot be reconciled with any consciousness of simulation, and the apparently heartfelt gratitude often shown by the patient on recovery is further proof of the reality of this desire.
It is a matter for regret that we have no word to take the place of 'hysteria', which is a mark [Pg 77] of superstition; the only excuse for its use being that every one knows that it does not mean what it says. ”

“ After considering my own experiences and the evidence produced by Sir Oliver Lodge, I have reached the conclusion that no one desirous of believing only the truth can accept anything 'supernormal' without the strictest investigation on the spot, aided by a knowledge of trickery, verbal or material, as well as of the results produced by dissociation and logic-tight compartments in the minds of the would-be honest. ”

“ If we specify the factors concerned in memory and say that it depends upon impression, retention, and recall, then what do we mean by 'forgetting'? If an event makes no impression upon the mind there is neither remembering nor forgetting; if there is retention of a memory, but one cannot recall it, it is nevertheless stored in the mind and may yet be revived by some association. So that the only certain factor in forgetting is the loss of power of recall, for what is apparently quite forgotten may still be retained in the unconscious. ”

“ The medium has his dissociated stream with its hyperæsthesia and receptivity—alert to pick up the slightest hint and cast it back as a spirit revelation, and ready, moreover, to use more material trickery if needful. On the side of the believer is a logic-tight compartment containing his readiness to seize upon the feeblest evidence of the supernatural. How far he progresses into a dissociation one cannot tell, but when two Dissociates apparently bearing the stamp of honesty—one the medium and one the believer—work into each other's hands results may well be such as to defy explanation. ”

“ I speak of the unconscious, though there are objections to the use of the word, which may lead to such a contradiction of terms as 'unconscious knowledge'. It is much more than a storehouse of memories: it is the seat of mental processes which take place unknown to us and are revealed at times in strange and unexpected ways. ”

“ Let us imagine the patient complaining of severe pain in one foot: the sympathising friends tend her with care and affection, the doctor suspects the early stage of some bone disease, and, as is the fate of so many practitioners, he is urged by the friends to say 'what is the matter.' Then the supposed disease receives a name, muscular action pulls the foot into an abnormal position, deformity appears, and if the true nature of the disease is now discovered not only the patient but the friends and family need the most careful treatment. ”

“ When they enter upon the world of Dissociates, where deceit masquerades under the disguise of transparent honesty, these eminent men are but as babes—country cousins in the hands of confidence-trick men—and their opinions are of less value than those of a smart schoolboy. ”

“ It is not sufficient to call the driving automatic, though that word is often used to describe actions of this type, for it is dependent upon innumerable stimuli that reach the driver's mind through all his senses and there produce sensations and impulses which have to be translated into actions. There is much real mind-work involved, and we must regard the driving as carried on by a part of his consciousness which is temporarily apart from his main stream, the latter being devoted to your intellectual entertainment. ”

“ Just as any one believing all actions to be the result of fully conscious motives may regard the hysteric as a simple fraud, so he may dismiss the medium and the clairvoyant in the same easy way and consider the matter settled. But we find men in positions which lend authority not only vouching for the honesty of the medium but sometimes taking an active part in the production of the phenomena for which the explanation of fraud is regarded as sufficient ”

“ Here, rather late, I will introduce McDougall's definition of an instinct:—
'Instinct is an innate psycho-physical tendency to pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience emotional excitement of peculiar quality on such perceptions, and to act or have an impulse to act in a particular way with regard to that object.'
We can see that instinct suffices for the bird or insect, living almost entirely in the unconscious, to carry on the important affairs of life. ”

“ The man who resolutely refuses to think of an unpleasant experience and shuts off the thought of it whenever it rises into his consciousness may not have the intention of placing it beyond reach of voluntary recall, but he may succeed in so doing, and the process by which the end was reached was voluntary. ”

“ Too strong a radiation kills the heart. Wonderful as this new discovery is it is comparable with the well-known fact that the radiant energy of the sun—either heat rays or the cold ultraviolet rays of intense chemical action—while beneficent, when properly graded, kill the living substance which is over-exposed to them. Hence the evolution of the green colour of plants and the pigment in the skin of animals, which acts as screens. ”

“ Here we see all grades of the result of trying to forget, and the more successful the result the more difficult is the cure; for though the memories are repressed their associated emotions cannot be so dealt with, but remain in consciousness exaggerated and distorted. The dependence of an emotion upon a repressed memory prevents the sufferer from knowing its cause, and the sufferer from an apparently causeless emotion is to be pitied, for he can see no end to his trouble. ”

“ But let them discuss Home Rule till the crack of doom and neither will convince the other by any process of reasoning; yet each will believe firmly that his opinions are the results of reason, finding an infinity of argument to support them. ”

“ Bad enough it is to believe the fantasies of a diseased mind to be revelations from beyond the grave, but how can one sufficiently condemn men of learning and position who would lead along the pathway of disease those who mourn their lost ones? ”

“ Lastly, we have the unanimity of opinion amongst scientific men as to Eusapia's powers, whereas we have nothing of the sort in the case of any other medium. On the contrary, whenever they are investigated along these lines, they either fail altogether or are detected in fraud.'
This gentleman has reason for pride in his powers of observation, but his spiritualist complexes are so firmly enclosed in their logic-tight compartment that his own critical powers beat in vain against the door. ”

“ The 'bodily magnetism' is a pure rationalisation and beyond discussion, but the story of the pipe and the ram is different: a ram is a pump worked by a stream of water and the noise of it is carried a long way, especially along any pipe connected with it, and if I told this gentleman that he had heard the noise of the ram he would strenuously deny the possibility, and might challenge me to test whether I could hear the noise; but I have no dissociated water-divining personality unhampered by my conscious efforts and trained to pick up such indications. ”