We see it in an even more pronounced degree where the subject sat on a sailing boat. Miss Johnson, who did not know what the subject of the picture was, asked Miss B. whether it was anything like an animal. Miss B. said: "No; got some prong sort of things--something at the bottom like a little boat. What can that be up in the air? Cliffs, I suppose--cliffs in the air high up--it's joining the boat. Oh, sails!--a sailing-boat--not cliffs--sails." This was not all uttered consecutively, but partly in answer to questions put by Miss Johnson; but, as Miss Johnson was ignorant of the supposed picture, her questions could, of course, give no guidance.
Many experiments have been made in the transference of imaginary scenes, where both operator and subject have attempted to attain a conscious unity of ideas by means of rough drawings. A slight sketch was made, which was then projected to the brain of the percipient, who proceeded to reproduce the unseen, often with amazing fidelity.
In these experiments actual contact was forbidden, to avoid the risk of unconscious indications by pressure. In many cases, however, the agent and percipient have been in the same room, and there has therefore still been some possible risk of unconscious whispering; but this risk has been successfully avoided. It yet remains doubtful how far close proximity really operates in aid of telepathy, or how far its advantage is a mere effect of self-suggestion--on the part either of agent or percipient. Some experimenters--notably the late Mr Kirk and Mr Glardon--have obtained results of just the same type at distances of half-a-mile or more. In the case of induction of hypnotic trance, Dr Gibert, as we have seen, attained at the distance of nearly a mile results which are commonly believed to exact close and actual presence.
Hypnotic agencies, according to Myers, may be simplified into suggestion and self-suggestion. The same author defines suggestion as "successful appeal to the subliminal self." Many striking cases of moral reforms produced by this means have been recorded by Dr Auguste Voisin. For instance:
"In the summer of 1884 there was at the Salpêtrière a young woman of a deplorable type. Jeanne Sch---- was a criminal lunatic, filthy in habits, violent in demeanour, and with a lifelong history of impurity and theft. M. Voisin, who was one of the physicians on the staff, undertook to hypnotise her on 31st May, at a time when she could only be kept quiet by the strait jacket and _bonnet d'irrigation_, or perpetual cold douche to the head. She would not--indeed, she could not--look steadily at her operator, but raved and spat at him. M. Voisin kept his face close to hers and followed her eyes wherever she moved them. In about ten minutes a stertorous sleep ensued, and in five minutes more she passed into a sleep-waking state, and began to talk incoherently. The process was repeated on many days, and gradually she became sane when in the trance, though she still raved when awake. Gradually, too, she became able to obey in waking hours commands impressed on her in the trance--first trivial orders (to sweep the room and so forth), then orders involving a marked change of behaviour. Nay, more; in the hypnotic state she voluntarily expressed repentance for her past life, made a confession which involved more evil than the police were cognisant of (though it agreed with facts otherwise known), and finally of her own impulse made good resolves for the future. Two years later (31st July 1886) M. Voisin wrote that she was then a nurse in a Paris hospital, and that her conduct was irreproachable. It appeared then that this poor woman, whose history since the age of thirteen had been one of reckless folly and vice, had become capable of the steady, self-controlled work of a nurse at a hospital, the reformed character having first manifested itself in the hypnotic state, partly in obedience to suggestion, and partly as the natural result of the tranquilisation of morbid passions."