In this domain, the psychologist and the "psychical researcher"
proceed most amicably; and yet their purposes and points of view lead
them frequently to part company, although it may be only for a brief
_au revoir_. When the "psychical researcher" leaves the main highway
to track a possible "telepathic" hypnotic subject, or one who, while
hypnotized, is sensitive to the magnetic current, or who experiences
the characteristic effects of drugs applied in sealed vials to the
back of the neck, or who falls into the hypnotic condition when
handling a "magnetized" doll,--the psychologist is apt to decline the
invitation to join in the pursuit. I should advise him, however, to
go along for the sake of the excellent illustrations thus obtainable
of the effects of unconscious suggestion. From the time of the
first serious investigation of these phenomena up to the present,
unconscious suggestion has been one of the most potent influences
for the production of alleged marvels and pseudo-phenomena. All the
series of experiments brought forward at irregular intervals during
the past century to establish supernormal sensibilities have depended
for their apparent success (apart from trickery) upon unconscious
suggestion of the operators, combined with the shrewd assimilation
of the desired or expected result on the part of the subjects.
The transposition of the senses discovered by Pétetin (1787), the
hypnotized subjects who in Braid's day (1850) proved the location
of the phrenological organs by the appropriateness of their actions
when certain parts of the head were pressed, the sensitiveness to
magnets and hermetically sealed drugs brought forward by Reichenbach
(1845), and by Bourru and Burot (1885), and Dr. Luys's (1890)
absurd trifling with puppets, and probably, too, Charcot's sharp
differentiation of distinct hypnotic conditions (1882),--all furnish
illustrations of the subtle possibilities of unconscious suggestion.
Besides adorning an interesting psychological tale, they point a
moral to the intending investigator, and open his eyes to the extreme
caution necessary to exclude this source of error, and to realize the
ever-present possibility that, in spite of the sterilizing apparatus
and the other equipments of modern research, the germs of this
insidious form of delusion may have been unwittingly introduced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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