The patient, a man of middle age, highly educated, for years had
heard voices calling his name. A man with whom he had some personal
quarrel, had, as he believed, hypnotized him from a distance and
made him act queerly or do things which he really did not want to
do, by telepathic influence. It is a development which is found
quite frequently. Abnormal organic sensations or abnormal impulses
and inhibitions which the patient cannot account for by his own
motives become connected with some vague ideas which are in the
air, like wireless telegraphy or telepathy or hypnotism from a
distance or electrical influence, or magnetism or telephoning,
these then attached to an acquaintance who stands in a certain
emotional relation. Here, too, some organic sensations evidently
had been the starting point and the idea of the man with whom he
quarreled had been secondarily attached. From this starting point
more and more detail was reached. Every action was brought into
connection with the powerful enemy who controlled more and more
even the normal and reasonable doings of the patient. My first
impression was decidedly that of a paranoiac. Yet in some ways the
case suggested another view. There had remained an insight into the
unreality of the obsession. The patient did not really believe the
theory of the telepathic hypnotic influence. He felt it more as an
idea which he could not get rid of and he did not know clearly
himself whether he requested hypnotic treatment on my part for the
purpose of counteracting the hypnotic power of his enemy or for the
purpose of liberating him from his exasperating fixed idea.
Moreover, I found that his voices had no hallucinatory character,
but were merely sound images. I decided to make the experiment
without great hope of success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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