The psychology of reasoning : based on experimental researches in hypnotism / Translated from the 2d French ed. by Adam Gowans Whyte.

  • Binet, Alfred, 1857-1911.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of reasoning : based on experimental researches in hypnotism / Translated from the 2d French ed. by Adam Gowans Whyte. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    problems. Many orators have their manuscript placed mentally before their eyes when they speak in public. Certain painters, designers and sculptors, after they have attentively studied a model, are able to make a copy of it from memory. Horace Vernet and Gustave Dore possessed this faculty. A painter once copied from memory a Martyre dc Saint-Pierre by Rubens with an accuracy which deceived the connoisseurs. An English painter, mentioned by Wigan, painted a portrait standing, after only one sitting from the model. He held the man in his mind, placed him mentally on the chair, and every time that he looked at the chai-r he saw the person seated. Little by little his mind became confused; he affirmed that the model had actually sat, and finally he became insane. Such is the danger of this hypertrophy of the visual image. Those who possess such an intense visualization are half under the influence of halluci- nation, and it is a hundred to one that the halluci- nation will some day become complete. We may add that very probably visucls are specially predis- posed to hallucinations of the sight, and conse- quently to the forms of delirium of which visual hallucinations are the symptom. According to this theory, a pure visuel can never become a pcrstcutd, because in the persecution delirium only the hallu- cinations of hearing are, in general, according to Laseguc's observation, met with. The persecute does not see his persecutors, he merely affects to hear them. We shall sec later that there is an objective sign whereby we may recognize whether