Hypnotism / by Albert Moll.

  • Moll, Albert.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hypnotism / by Albert Moll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    appears the memory is weakened in hypnosis, when this is not prevented by suggestion. Dessoir repeated a number of syllables which the hypnotic was to try to remember; a suggestion of improved memory was carefully avoided. Under these circumstances the hypnotized subject remembered fewer syllables than did the same person awake. The older mesmerists, on the contrary, believed that the memory was intensified in the magnetic sleep ; poems could be learnt by heart in a much shorter time than in the normal state. However, these investigators did not avoid suggestion. Is the chain of memory in ordinary life broken by the hypnosis or not ? It was formerly supposed that a break in the memory occurred, because the subject^ always forgot on awaking what had taken place dur- ing hypnosis. But this view has not proved correct. In the lighter hypnotic stages, specially in the first group, no abnormality of memory is found; the subject remembers everything in the hypnosis which concerns his normal life, and after the hypnosis re- members all that has occurred. In the deeper hyp- noses it is very different ; they belong for the most part to the second group, and there is loss of memory^ after the hypnosis. The subject is much astonished when he hears what he has done during the hypnosis— that he has been running about, that he has had hallucinations, &c. Often, however, a dim memory persists, like the memory of a dream. I suggest to some one the hallucination of a bird flying about the room ; the hypnotic tries to catch it, amuses himself for a long time with it, gives it sugar, puts it in an imaginary cage, and so on ; after waking he dimly remembers that he has seen a bird, but that is all ; he certainly does not believe that he has left his seat.