Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge
John Stuart Mill · en
These directions are sufficient to start victims along the path taken by
Eusapia, and, though we do not know how this woman reached the condition
described by Mr. Carrington, yet the men who fostered her deception
certainly helped the unfortunate creature in her development of a second
personality compounded of delusion and fraud. The description of the
other case of Mr. Carrington's contains a significant phrase: 'the
phenomenon was of that simple order which one would naturally expect to
discover in a simple undeveloped medium.' Just so: the game was only
beginning, but, if the medium had developed, the split-off personality
would have taken charge and limitless cheating and fraud could have been
carried on by a medium who was to all seeming an honest man.
But as I showed that the causes of hysteria are to be found in conflict
and repression, only taking the 'Will to Power' and 'repression of the
knowledge of deceit' as particular forms applying to a few cases, so I
must allow that the medium may not always be influenced by the last two
factors. 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; her visions were real to her, and tradition
may be believed when it relates the story of her detection of King
Charles disguised as one of his own courtiers. 'Be not amazed, nothing
is hid from me', are the words attributed to her, and the incident well
exemplifies the hypersensitivity of a dissociated stream.
I cannot picture a modern medium actuated by high motives, but am ready
to admit that even in our days there may be mystics whose dissociations
arose from commendable origins. Theosophy is bound up with the story of
two women, Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant; the former was a
self-confessed deceiver, but the latter is a very different kind of
woman. Brought up in strict religious surroundings, she found herself
compelled to cast aside her religious beliefs and, at great personal
sacrifice, take up a public attitude directly opposite to them; but her
old beliefs still lay in the unconscious, and when the opportunity
arose she found relief from her conflict in a fantastic creed of the
supernatural. No one who has studied her life can deny her honesty, but
honesty does not make her beliefs easier of acceptance.