Psychological Automatism

a small number of simultaneous sensations. Mr. Pick Arnold Pick (1851–1924), a prominent neuropsychiatrist summarizes the facts he has observed by stating that this is a narrowing of the motor impulse. We do not believe that this expression differs significantly from our own: voluntary movements depend on the images that are momentarily gathered in the mind, and this decrease in simultaneous movements is, in short, only a reduction in the number of motor images that a person can synthesize during each movement. We are therefore pleased with this interesting verification that Mr. Pick has added to our research.

There is no need to dwell on this or that particular form of suggestion that could easily be added to our summary list. However, we are obliged to say that on one point relating to these suggestions, we have been led to significantly modify our opinions. We had previously stated that the possibility of provoking actual crimes through suggestion did not seem demonstrated to us. Indeed, theoretical discussions prove nothing and laboratory experiments cannot be convincing in such a case; clinical observation is the only method here that can allow us to settle the question. Now, by an unfortunate chance, we were led to observe two criminal acts committed this year by two different people—an adultery and an abortion—which in both cases were effectively determined by suggestions made during somnambulism A historical term for a deep hypnotic state or sleepwalking-like trance. Undoubtedly, these two cases, if it were possible, should be discussed in detail. We do not claim at all that the same acts in the same subjects could not have been determined otherwise. On the contrary, these were patients who were severely hysterical In 19th-century medicine, "hysteria" was a common diagnosis for various psychological and neurological symptoms, with very weak wills, who could have, without a doubt, been led to the same acts by simple persuasion while awake. There was no miraculous transformation effected by suggestion; it is simply a known crime: the abuse of minors or the mentally ill. But, be that as it may, in these two cases, the acts were in reality suggested during somnambulism, and by this means, it was possible to more easily overcome the resistance of the patients. The authors who have raised this question of crime by suggestion have perhaps exaggerated the danger; but they seem to me to be right if one considers mentally weak individuals who can be led to criminal acts by suggestion.

The narrowing of the field of consciousness brings a serious consequence in its wake: that all psychological phenomena are no longer synthesized into the same personal perception, and that a certain number of them remain isolated and unperceived. This important remark has led us to the study of subconscious phenomena and the division of personality.

Facts of this kind were already frequently reported by philosophers and physicians; one even finds traces of them in purely literary works. In a novel by the famous Russian writer Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, there is a curious passage from this point of view, which Mr. J. Soury Jules Soury (1842–1915), a French scholar and neuroanatomist was kind enough to point out to us regarding our first studies on subconscious acts. "I was going to your house," began Raskolnikov; "but how is it that upon leaving the Haymarket, I took the Prospect?... I never pass