Experiment No. 5

Wednesday, December 18th, 3.45 p.m. Suggestion in 24 hours, 2880 minutes.

Result

3.45 p.m., Saturday, December 21st. Correct....

Experiment No. 9

December 31st, 1895, 4 p.m. Suggestion in 11,525 minutes.

Result

11.5 a.m., Wednesday, January 8th. Wrong.

Remarks

The result ought to have been 4.5 p.m., January 8th. I re-hypnotised her on that day, and asked her to recall the suggestion I had made on December 31st. She said it was to be executed in 11,225 minutes. The supposed suggestion of 11,225 minutes had been carried out correctly.

I now attempted to find out during hypnosis the patient's mental condition in reference to these suggestions. In reply to my questions she informed me: 1. That when the suggestions were made in hypnosis she did not calculate when they fell due. 2. That she did not calculate them at any time afterwards. 3. That she had no recollection of them when awakened. 4. That no memory of them ever arose in the waking state. 5. That shortly before their fulfilment she always experienced a motor impulse, that her fingers moved as if to grasp a pencil and to perform the act of writing. 6. That this impulse was immediately followed by the idea of making a cross, and of the time. 7. That she never looked at clock or watch until after she had written the figures.

Experiments. Wednesday, January 8th, 1896

No. 10

4.5 p.m. Suggestion in 4417 minutes.

No. II

4.5 P.M. Suggestion in 11,470 minutes.

No. 12

4.30. p.m. Suggestion in 10,070 minutes.

Results

No. 10

5.42 p.m., Saturday, January nth.

No. 11

3.15 P.M., Thursday, January 16th.

No. 12

4.20 p.m., Wednesday, January 15th.

All Were Correct. Remarks

As the patient had stated in hypnosis that she made no calculations in reference to the suggestions, in order to vary the experiments I asked her as soon as I had made them, and before awakening her, to calculate mentally when they would fall due, and to tell me the result. She replied as follows: -

"No. 10 in 3 days, 37 minutes, or twenty-three minutes to five next Saturday afternoon.

"No. II in 187 hours, 50 minutes, or 7 days, 9 hours, 50 minutes. Next Wednesday morning at five minutes to twelve.

"No. 12 in 1067 hours, 40 minutes, or 6 days, 23 hours, and 40 minutes. 4.20 p.m. next Wednesday".

[All these answers were wrong, except No. 12, in which the answer was right, but the calculation wrong. In spite of this, the suggestions were all carried out at the right time].

When I made the patient calculate when the suggestions would fall due, and found that her calculations were wrong, I naturally concluded that, as she had fixed the date at which the suggestions were to be fulfilled in her own mind, in the hypnotic state, they would be carried out at the erroneous times. My astonishment was great when I found they were executed correctly. I re-hypnotised the patient and said to her, " You have not carried out these suggestions at the time you told me they would fall due. Why is this ? " She replied, " What I told you was all wrong." " How do you know the others are right ? " "I can't tell you, I only feel that they are." I was not able to elicit by questioning any memory of the processes by which the original mistakes were corrected. The patient assured me that from the time the suggestions were made she had never again thought of them, and that at the time of their fulfilment she had suddenly had the impulse to put down the figures. When doing so she had no recollection of her original calculations.

From this time I usually made a number of suggestions to the patient at each seance. Sometimes these started from the same hour, sometimes from different hours. In the latter case, the starting-points were usually imaginary.... [From three to six suggestions were made in rapid succession on each occasion, to be fulfilled at intervals varying from 720 to 21,434 minutes. These series of suggestions were never read over to the patient more than twice, and sometimes only once, and that quickly. The last two series were the most complicated of all, as follows: - ]

Experiments. Thursday, May 7th, 3 P.m

No. 50

Suggestion in 8650 minutes.

No. 51

Suggestion in 8680 minutes.

No. 52

Suggestion in 8700 minutes.

I still further complicated these by suggesting as follows: -

"No. 50 is to be fulfilled in the waking state. Five minutes before 51 comes due you are to fall asleep. No. 51 is to be fulfilled while you are asleep, and five minutes afterwards you are to awake and remain so until after the fulfilment of No. 52. Eight minutes after 52 falls due you are again to fall asleep".

Result

These suggestions were carried out correctly, with the exception that she fell asleep at 3.31 instead of 3.35.

Experiments. Wednesday, May 13th, 4.30 P.m

On this occasion I said to the patient, " You are to carry out all the suggestions made last Thursday, but to-day you are to start from 2.55 instead of from 3 p.m., and to each of them you are to add 1440 minutes." As I was much pressed for time, these suggestions were made very hurriedly, and without explanation, and I was not at all certain whether the patient understood them.

Results

Correct, with the exception of slight differences between the correctly estimated time and the moment at which the suggestion was fulfilled.

Summary

Fifty-five experiments are cited; of these one, apparently, was either not carried out by Miss A., or unrecorded by me, while in another (No. 9) she mistook the original suggestion, but fulfilled it correctly in accordance with what she thought it had been. Forty-five were completely successful, i.e. not only did Miss A. write down the correct terminal time, but this was done, also, at the moment the experiment fell due. Eight were partially successful. In these the terminal time was correctly recorded in every instance, but there were minute differences, never exceeding five minutes, between the patient's correct estimate of when the suggestion fell due and the moment at which she carried it out. The proportion which these errors bear to their respective intervals varies between 1 to 2028 and 1 to 21,420.