ect of
sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted
both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned,
an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were
shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was
remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state,
not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but
the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial
expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments.
Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm
began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The
suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had
operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other
ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be
communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution
of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched
her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her
right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued
to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand
wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but
I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and
put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face
smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?"
"Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."
In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were--as the pure
experimentalist might say--only too sanative, only too rapidly tending
to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with
therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he
clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease
having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal
sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the
rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day
came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him
who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but
Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the
unconscious again--must I say?--for ever more.
Few lives so brief have taught so man
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