M. Ochorowicz adds here that, so far as he is concerned, the phenomena are not produced by a personality different from that of the medium, nor by a new independent occult force; but it is a special psychic condition which permits the vital _dynamism of the medium_ (the astral body of the occultists) _to act at a distance_, under certain exceptional conditions. It is the only hypothesis which seems _necessary in the actual state of our knowledge_.
Why does the medium so often try to release her hand? So far as the Cambridge experimenters are concerned, the cause is very simple and always the same: she releases her hand in order to indulge in tricks. As a matter of fact, the reasons why she frees her hand are many and complicated.
Dr. Ochorowicz's explanations are as follows:
1. Let me observe, in the first place, that Eusapia frequently releases her hand for no other reason than to touch her head, which is in pain at the moment of the manifestations. It is a natural reflex movement; and, in her case, it is a fixed habit. Since, more often than not, she does not notice that she is doing it, or at least fails to give warning to her controller, the darkness justifies suspicions.
2. Immediately before the mediumistic doubling of her personality, her hand is affected with hyperæsthesia and, consequently, the pressure of the hand of another makes her ill, especially in the dorsal quarter. She then most frequently places the hand which is to be mediumistically active _above_ and not below that of the controller, trying to touch it as little as possible. When the doubling of the personality is complete, and the dynamic hand more or less materialized, that of the medium contracts and rests heavily upon the controller, exactly at the moment that the phenomenon takes place. She is then almost insensible and all shrunken together. In very good mediumistic conditions the doubling is easy and the initial hyperæsthesia of short duration. In this case the medium allows her hand to be completely covered and the feet of the controllers to be _upon_ hers, as was always the case in our séances at Rome in 1893; but, since that time, she can no longer endure that position, and rather prefers to be held by hands under the table.