by Colin Wilson
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Mesmer and Puységur would have shaken their heads in amazement if told that, two centuries after their discoveries, science still refuses to acknowledge them. That is carrying conservatism to the point of sheer mulishness.
Of course, we now accept hypnosis as a reality. That came about in the last decades of the 19th century, mostly through the researches of the great French doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, who ran the Salpêtrière Hospital (mostly for very poor patients) in Paris. Charcot was puzzled by the phenomenon of hysteria—how a woman could believe she was pregnant, and her stomach swell up, or a man believe his arm was paralysed, and be unable to move it. He soon discovered that he could induce exactly the same effects by hypnosis, and he gave amazing demonstrations in which people would drop on all fours and bark like dogs, or flap their arms when told they were birds, or even eat a lump of charcoal with relish when told it was chocolate. Because Charcot was practising on poor down-and-outs, his rich medical colleagues did not feel threatened as Mesmer’s colleagues had. And they were completely won over when Charcot announced his conclusion that hypnosis was just another form of hysteria. That made it perfectly all right. Of course, Charcot was mistaken. We can see perfectly well that, in fact, hysteria is a form of hypnosis; the hysterically pregnant woman has, in effect, hypnotised herself—convinced her unconscious mind that she is pregnant, so it causes her stomach to swell. However, Charcot’s error had one excellent effect, in that it made hypnotism more-or-less respectable again. And a young doctor called Freud, who had come from Vienna to study under Charcot, was deeply impressed by the phenomena of hypnosis, and reasoned that it must be caused by some part of the mind which is far more powerful than our everyday consciousness. So Mesmer’s discovery had led, in a roundabout way, to the foundation of modern psychology.
But Freud’s interpretation of hypnosis—that it merely demonstrates the enormous hidden powers of the unconscious—only confirmed the view that was originally held by Mesmer’s colleagues: that it was all a matter of ‘suggestion’. If you tell a hypnotised man that you are about to touch his arm with a red-hot poker, and in fact you touch it with an icicle, he screams with pain, and will develop a blister. This is merely a demonstration of the immense powers of the unconscious mind. But it is not a case of ‘mind over matter’, for the unconscious is really a kind of gigantic machine—far bigger and more powerful than the puny mechanisms of the conscious mind. Freud won over the scientists so easily because his view was so determinedly realistic.
But what if someone had asked Freud—or Charcot, for that matter—how a hypnotised girl could read a book placed open on her stomach, or obey orders given to her mentally? How could this be explained in terms of ‘unconscious suggestion?’ The answer of course, is that it cannot be. Which means that, as far as modern science is concerned, some of the most important findings of Mesmer, Puységur, D’Eslon, Alfred Russel Wallace and the rest, are still ignored. Hypnosis is ‘suggestion’, and that is that.
It follows, of course, that no one can be induced to do something under hypnosis that he—or she—would not do when normally awake. And yet, as we shall see, this is a highly questionable assertion. Consider, for example, ‘the Story of the Wicked Magician Thimotheus’, as described by Professor Heinz E. Hammerschlag in his book Hypnose und Verbrechen (Hypnotism and Crime):
‘One March evening in the year 1865, there was a knock at the door of an honest workman in the village of Solliès-Farliede (Bar). He lived in the house together with his two children, a boy of fifteen and a girl called Josephine, aged twenty-six. Josephine opened the door and was deeply frightened, without knowing what there was about the man standing there that could awaken such a feeling of terror. Certainly he was ugly, unkempt, and club-footed; and he gave her to understand by a sign that he was a deaf-mute. In addition, there was something about this terribly neglected man which filled her with fear, so that she would gladly have turned him away. But her father had compassion for the pitiful state of the beggar; and he allowed him to come into their living-room and to join them at supper which was ready on the table. During the meal Josephine had a chance of more closely watching this man, whose long black hair and untidy beard filled her with revulsion. A cold shudder passed down her spine when she saw his strange habits while he ate. When he poured out some wine for himself, he did not, for example, fill his glass at one time but usually put it down three times before it was filled, and never took a sip from the glass without first making a sign of the cross over it.
‘Later in the evening, some neighbours who had heard about the peculiar stranger called at the house. The conversation was carried on very painfully with paper and pencil. It emerged that the deaf-mute stranger was a cork-cutter named Thimotheus Castellan who had had to give up his occupation because of an injury to his hand and who now travelled through the country as a healer, magnetizer and water-diviner. His signs and his mysterious behaviour made a great impression on the simple peasants. Only Josephine, out of fear, remained silent. When the stranger was later brought to the haystack for the night, she remained on the bed in her room fully dressed and for many hours could not fall asleep. Nevertheless, the night passed without anything unusual happening. The following morning, her brother was the first to leave the house to go to work. He was followed afterwards by her father and the stranger.
‘Before some minutes had passed the beggar returned by himself to the house where he found Josephine occupied with her work. She dared not turn him away, although the same feeling of anxiety overcame her as on the previous day. He sat in silence near the hearth and watched the girl at her work. Their silence was repeatedly interrupted by visits from neighbours who evidently regarded the stranger as someone endowed with unusual powers. They observed him with astonishment and even brought him articles of food as presents. Just as one of the neighbours, without being noticed, entered the kitchen he saw the stranger making mysterious signs with his hand behind the girl’s back. Josephine herself seemed restless and excited and was obviously very glad to see any visitor who interrupted her isolation with the beggar, the cause of so much anxiety. But towards noon she could no longer avoid being alone with him. For they sat together at the mid-day meal, which she provided for him so as not to let him go away hungry.
‘And now the incomprehensible happened: Josephine had just begun to eat, when the man stretched out his hand and made a movement with two fingers as if he were going to put something into the spoon which she was taking to her mouth. At the same moment she felt that she was becoming unconscious. She came to as the man was standing in front of her and sprinkling her with cold water. Then, so she later reported, he took her in his arms, carried her into her room and there violated her. While this took place she was fully conscious, but in spite of all her efforts she could not ward off the fiend nor could she, by knocking on the wall, draw the attention of neighbours; she could not even answer a relative who knocked at the door and called for her.
‘Early in the evening the neighbours, to their astonishment, saw Josephine leave the house in the company of the lame beggar. She gave the impression of being very disturbed, and called out to her acquaintances unintelligently and incoherently. No one understood how the girl, whose reputation was unstained, could follow the man on the road; yet no one tried to prevent her or ask her what was the cause of her behaviour.
‘For two days the unusual pair roamed about in the surrounding area. At night they found refuge with a farmer who took pity on the girl without, however, being able to persuade her to return home. On the third day, they came to the village of La Cappelude and stayed at a farmhouse. Here a most unusual scene was soon enacted. Josephine fell from one extreme to the other: at one moment she smothered her companion with tenderness, at the next she pushed him away in fear and disgust. Here as well, the neighbours came running as soon as they heard of the unusual visitor.
‘In the evening Josephine asked a girl from a neighbouring house to let her stay the
re for the night. But her companion forbade her to leave him, and as she wanted to go in spite of that, he made some mysterious signs over her body. Whereupon Josephine fell into his arms and remained as if paralysed for nearly an hour. The beggar then asked a neighbour, ‘Shall I make her laugh?’ and she immediately burst into a mad, yelling laughter. ‘Now I will bring her back to herself,’ he said, and slapped her face violently three times. Soon Josephine seemed to awaken from a deep sleep without having felt any mistreatment; she laughed and said she felt very well. They were given a room in the house for the night. When everyone in the house was asleep, a dreadful noise was heard coming from their room. The farmer armed himself with a stick, intending to throw the beggar out of the house as quickly as he could, but Josephine refused to follow the farmer’s advice not to go with the beggar, so they were allowed to remain in the house. The next morning, in the presence of the members of the household and neighbours, the man made Josephine crawl about the room like an animal. This enraged the onlookers and they threw him out of the house. He had hardly left the room when the girl got into a dreadful state; suddenly she could neither speak nor move her arms; a stark and confused expression came over her face. Those present could think of no other way of helping her than by calling the beggar back. Scarcely had he stepped into the room, when the girl’s fixed gaze left her. Murmuring some unintelligible words, he got her out of her fearful state by using his strange methods, at the same time once more giving her three slaps in the face. Then they both left the house.
‘On the following day, they met some hunters who spoke to them. While the beggar, who had suddenly recovered his speech, was talking to them, the girl succeeded in getting away unnoticed. By hiding under a hill she eluded pursuit and, after a long search, found her way to the village she had left in the morning. There she met some kind-hearted men who took her home. On the way back, she was repeatedly overcome by states of excitement which sometimes seemed like attacks of rage. A doctor was brought and Josephine was given a thorough medical examination. The doctor found that the girl was suffering from fever and nervous strain; according to his opinion there was no mental disturbance. After about six weeks of rest she was well again; at any rate the excitement and attacks of anxiety stopped.
‘In the meantime Thimotheus Castellan was arrested for vagrancy and begging. During the enquiry the court considered the question whether the young girl’s will-power was so weakened by the “magnetic influences” exerted by the accused that the intimate relations between them constituted rape.
‘Two physicians were charged to express their expert opinion on this question. In their report they stated:
‘We the undersigned declare . . .:
(1) That by the so-called magnetic effect on the will of any person who is disposed to it by nervous temperament, an influence can be exerted such that the person’s moral freedom is completely perverted or more or less destroyed.
(2) That if one puts a young girl into magnetic sleep one can have intimate relations with her of which, when she awakens, she has no knowledge.
(3) That it is possible, by the effect of magnetism, to blunt the feelings so much and to weaken the will of a young girl to such an extent that, without her being completely asleep, she no longer has the necessary moral freedom to resist intimacy, or to give her consent to it with full understanding.’
‘On the basis of this report and the confirmation of its outcome by three other doctors, Castellan was sentenced by the court to twelve years’ hard labour.’
Here it seems clear that the doctors were correct, and that Josephine ‘no longer had the necessary moral freedom’ to prevent her rape or abduction. Perhaps the most interesting part of the narrative is the neighbour’s description of seeing Castellan make ‘mysterious signs with his hand’ behind her back, and Josephine’s subsequent deposition that he stretched out his hand and made a movement with two fingers, which had the effect of causing her to become unconscious. It sounds as if Castellan hypnotised Josephine without any of the normal preliminaries of hypnotic induction—in fact, simply by an exercise of will power.
This also appears to be true in another celebrated criminal case reported by Hammerschlag, which he describes as ‘a case of criminal exploitation of hypnosis unique in the history of criminology and hypnotism’.
In the late summer of 1934, a Heidelberg official (Hammerschlag calls him H.E.) reported to the local police that his wife had been swindled out of 3,000 marks. The swindler, he thought, was a man who posed as a doctor, and he even believed that he had been sexually abusing Mrs E. The lady herself remembered that the ‘doctor’ had often sent her to sleep by placing his hand on her head, but to all other questions answered: ‘I can’t remember.’ Mrs E. had no history of mental illness—in fact, she came of healthy farming stock.
The police turned the case over to Dr Ludwig Mayer, who found that he was able to place Mrs E. under hypnosis. But she seemed unable to answer any questions about her ‘illness’. Eventually, she was able to make a preliminary statement:
‘Before I was married I was once travelling from home to Heidelberg wishing to go to a doctor because I had stomach pains. On the way a man got into my compartment and seated himself opposite me. He had a conversation with me, we began to talk about my sickness and he said that he could see immediately that I was ill. He said that he was a nature healer and homeopath, presenting himself as Dr Bergen from Karlsruhe-Daxlanden, and explained that it was just the kind of illness that I had that he could treat very well. When the train stopped at Graben he invited me to join him in a cup of coffee. I didn’t want to because I felt so insecure. But he was very helpful as I got out of the train and carried my case. Suddenly, he took hold of my hand and it seemed to me as if I no longer had a will of my own. I felt so strange and giddy. Later he ordered me verbally and by letter to come to Karlsruhe or even to Heidelberg, at the station, where he always met me. I no longer know the place in which he treated me.
‘I was often in a room at Heidelberg but I no longer know where. He met me at Tiefburg, took my hand and said that it was very dark around me. After a long walk we went up two steps, he opened the door and then it became light again. The room was small and simple, with a couch and a table . . . he placed his hand on my forehead and said: ‘You are getting calmer and calmer!’ I do not know what he did to me. I cannot remember any more. . . .’
Soon after this, a swindler named Franz Walter was arrested for other crimes; his description sounded so much like that of ‘Dr Bergen’ that Mrs E. was asked to identify him. She thought it was the same man, but he denied it. But Dr Mayer was convinced he was lying. He began the long and painful process of ‘unlocking’ Mrs E’s memory. Little by little, an amazing story emerged. After causing Mrs E. to fall into a trance on that first day, Walter had taken her to his room, made her lie on a couch, then placed her arms behind her and told her that she could not move. After that, he had raped her. He had then ordered her to lose all memory of this event.
Later, Walter had ordered her to become a prostitute. The men to whom he sold her were taught a ‘magic word’, ‘Combarus’, which would make her do whatever they asked. Walter took all the money she earned.
But after her marriage, her husband became suspicious about the amount of money she was spending. She told Walter that her husband was thinking of going to the police. He then told her that the best thing she could do would be to ‘get rid of him’. She was ordered to buy poison and put it in his food. This plan failed when her husband ordered her not to go out that evening. Next she was told to take a pistol out of the drawer, shoot him in the head, then place it in his hands as if he had committed suicide. She actually pointed the gun at her husband’s head when he was asleep and pulled the trigger; but he had taken the precaution of removing all the bullets. Walter next ordered her to pick poison mushrooms and to feed them to her husband with ordinary edible ones; he did not like the taste, and pushed them away after a mouthful. Even so, he was stricken with dia
rrhoea and vomiting. She gave him a white powder that Walter had ordered her to slip into his coffee; but she had spilt most of it in her pocket, and the small amount she used only gave him stomach-ache.
Walter’s next—and fortunately his last—scheme was to kill the husband by tampering with the brakes on his motor-cycle. On the first occasion he came close to crashing into a moving train at a level crossing; on the second, he injured an arm and a knee.
Having failed in his attempts to kill her husband, Walter now ordered her to kill herself. His first instruction was to take an overdose of sleeping tablets on an empty stomach; but her own doctor refused to prescribe the tablets. After this Walter ordered her to jump out of a moving train; but she fell into conversation with a comforting elderly lady who drove all thoughts of suicide from her head. Walter now assured her that her husband was in love with another woman and meant to leave her; he ordered her to drown herself in the Rhine. Fortunately, her housekeeper noticed her distress and followed her, preventing her from jumping.
And so, finally, the husband went to the police, Franz Walter was arrested on another charge, and Ludwig Mayer solved the case by ‘unblocking’ the hypnotic suggestions by which Walter had tried to prevent her from recalling what had happened. Franz Walter was found guilty, and received ten years in jail.
The most obviously striking thing about this story is that Walter did not hypnotise her by saying ‘Look into my eyes’ and making mesmeric passes with his fingers. He simply took her hand. How could that happen? The advocates of ‘suggestivism’ would argue that he had already made suggestions that placed her in his power, and that taking her hand—with its ‘invasion of her personal space’—merely confirmed it. But there is nothing in her account to suggest that this is so. Here, as in the case of the wicked magician Thimotheus, it looks as if hypnosis was induced by the direct influence of one mind on another.
