The explanation of the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic subject lies in the abolition, total or partial, of his stream of consciousness. Such critical powers as he possesses are suspended and he has no standard by which to judge assertions presented to him, like a man in a dream who through a similar absence of standards of comparison sees no absurdity in the suspension of the laws of gravity. The unconscious of the subject is now accessible to suggestions which may be planted there and will bear fruit even if the subject is unaware of them. It is an experimental commonplace for a subject, told in a hypnotic state to perform a simple but unnecessary action after waking, to invent a rationalisation to account for doing it, whilst having no suspicion that he does it as a result of suggestion. But throughout all the stages he still has a volition of his own and will do nothing that seriously conflicts with his well-rooted ideas of conduct. If he is persuaded that an imaginary some one is sitting in a chair, and is directed to stab him with an imaginary knife, he will perhaps do so, for he would not object to doing so in his waking state; but suggest to him that he should steal a real watch, and if he be a man of ordinary honesty he will find reasons for not stealing it, though perhaps the man of criminal tendencies would fall to the suggestion. A story in illustration of this resistance was told me by a doctor who practised hypnotism for the cure of the alcohol habit. Having successfully suggested to a patient that whisky would produce nausea, he congratulated himself on a cure, but to his annoyance the patient came home one day cheerfully intoxicated with beer. Further hypnosis was tried and, although the hypnotic state was induced as before, suggestion had no further effect on the drinking habit. It turned out that the patient had decided not to be cured of the beer habit, hence the failure. In hypnosis we have another example of dissociation; during the process of induction the stream of consciousness is thinned out or completely abolished according to the depth of hypnosis. The fact that there may or may not be during the waking state a recollection of the events in a previous hypnosis shows that the dissociation may be continuous or abrupt (see Chapter IV). The substituted stream is made up of suggestions from the operator and of material from the unconscious, for the hypnosis may be used to revive memories that have been lost to the consciousness through repression. In this last use we see a relation to automatic writing and other methods of bringing to light the contents of the unconscious.