In other cases the patient is only too ready to do all he is told, and this easily leads to simulation being suspected. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether the subject is acting from complacency, or whether he is deprived of willpower. At the most, we can only ask a subject to exert his whole will against that of the experimenter, and thereby prove the futility of his, the subject's, exertions and his loss of willpower. There are, of course, cases in which the subject's anxiety to conform to the wishes of the experimenter spoil the experiment; but, as Hirschlaff rightly points out, that does not justify the assumption of fraud. In this connection Hirschlaff mentions the experiments which have been made to produce blisters by suggestion. But, as Hirschlaff points out, although accessory rubbing was suspected in the case of one subject, that is not sufficient to justify the assumption of fraud. We must always remember that the subject may think he is in duty bound to do anything to bring about the desired result, Hirschlaff's distinction is certainly quite right from a psychological point of view, although it may not be of great importance in deciding in any particular case whether the organic lesion was of mechanical or mental origin.

In discussing abnormal hypnoses, Hirschlaff also very properly points out that" an outsider may easily take the phenomena presented to be the result of fraud and acting. For example, a subject when hypnotized for the first time will accept every suggestion made, but in subsequent hypnoses he will refuse to carry out any experiment against the performance of which he has prepared himself by pre-hypnotic autosuggestion. When told his right arm is powerless, he replies, "No, my arm is not going to be stiff; and I am not taking part in any experiments." When the subject is given a piece of paper and assured that "it is a chocolate tablet, he replies, "That is a piece of paper; I knew quite well beforehand that you would repeat this experiment, but I have made up my mind not to be taken in again." Naturally, no one but an outsider would conclude that such remarks point to simulation.

Finally, I must mention that a subject will sometimes confess to imposition, or to having acted to please others. Such a confession must be judged with caution. Many who have made hypnotic experiments have observed that subjects will often say after the hypnosis that they have been pretending, though their actions were really compulsory. Much has been written on the significance of confession in criminal cases, and Ernst Lohsing has recently published a small monograph on the subject. He has come to the very proper conclusion that a prisoner should never be found guilty of a crime merely because he has confessed to it. If the criminal law is satisfied that confession to a crime never justifies the assumption that crime has been committed, it would be in the highest degree erroneous to consider a subject's assertion that he has simulated hypnosis as a proof of fraud on his part. Lohsing points out that in judging the value of a confession in criminal cases we must examine the motive, taking care at the same time to distinguish between the motive and that which underlies it. The same procedure must be followed in hypnosis.

For example, a patient receives hypnotic treatment from a doctor, but without success; he is annoyed because the doctor demands payment for his trouble, and declares that he only pretended to be hypnotized. Another person is vexed because he has been a mere plaything in the hands of a professional hypnotizer before a number of spectators. He had gone on to the stage" •to unmask the hypnotizer, but had proved himself one of the best subjects. He is so annoyed and so anxious not to admit that his actions on the stage were compulsory, that he asserts he was pretending all the time. In other cases a confession may be extorted by compulsion or fear. We can easily imagine such a case as the following: - A. is in a position of authority over X., but fails in every attempt to hypnotize him, whereas B. succeeds at once. This annoys A., and the next time he meets X. he brings his authority into play, partly intentionally and partly unintentionally, and thereby leads X. to confess to fraud. Here, of course, the dread that a denial of imposture might bring about unpleasant consequences may also play a part. Take another case: The head physician of a hospital fails to hypnotize a patient, but another doctor succeeds in doing so.

The next time the patient visits the hospital he is so afraid - possibly quite unjustifiably - of all sorts of little unpleasantnesses if he does not gratify the head physician's vanity, that he denies that the other doctor had ever hypnotized him.

In cases like those cited above, the subjects tell untruths unconsciously; but it is much more interesting from a psychological point of view when untruthfulness is the result of self-deception. Here the self-deception is the same as we have found in some cases of post-hypnotic deception. The subjects think they could have acted otherwise if they had so pleased (F. Myers). Heidenhain mentions such a case: a doctor said, after the hypnosis, that he could have opened his eyes if he hid wanted to; but when the hypnosis was renewed he could no more help himself than on the first occasion. I have made a number of similar observations myself. One case was that. of a doctor who at first almost invariably stated after hypnosis that he could have behaved otherwise, only he did not wish to open his eyes, etc.; but in each fresh hypnosis his will was inhibited. Finally, he himself became aware of his loss of willpower. In another case, I hypnotized X. at least ten times before he would admit that the suggested paralysis of his arm had really made him unable to move it; he previously believed that he had so behaved to please me.

I may here mention that many a man who has done something stupid when drunk for the first time, is often convinced on the following day that he could have controlled himself if he had wished to. The self-deceptive process here is obviously just like that in the other cases mentioned.

All this makes it evident how difficult it is to decide the question with regard to fraud. It seems to me to occur relatively more often with children, but the transition from simulation to true hypnosis is so gradual that even an experienced experimenter is sometimes uncertain. For example, when a subject shuts his eyes to be obliging, it is not the same thing as if he shut them to deceive; or he shuts them because he is tired of fixing them on something, but could open them by a strong effort, though he keeps them shut because it is more comfortable. It would be a great mistake to identify this with simulation. Others do what the experimenter wishes, to please him, but not to deceive him. This, as I have already mentioned, is not pure fraud either; we can only speak of that when there is the deliberate intention to deceive.

There is yet another complication: people in hypnosis sometimes pretend exactly as insane persons do. Thus, a hypnotic will say he sees something when he does not. It is, naturally, difficult to say where deceit begins and ends in such a case; but, generally speaking, practice will enable us to Judge the mental state of the subject with some certainty, or at least great probability. It occasionally happens that the most experienced deceive themselves or are deceived; the most experienced alienist or neurologist is in the same case. But that is no reason why we should deny the reality of hypnosis. Obersteiner justly observes: "A group of morbid symptoms, such as an epileptic fit, may be so exactly reproduced by clever simulation that even the most skilful expert (Esquirol, for example) may be deceived. And yet, unfortunately, we must still unconditionally recognize the existence of epileptic fits." The fear of being deceived has prevented many from interest-ing themselves in the subject;yet no other principles need be followed than those which guide us in the study of other mental states - psychopathic states, for example. Each case must be treated with scientific reserve, as mental cases are treated.

We must not make impossible demands in order to exclude imposition; to do so would be to overstep the bounds of scientific scepticism, and would, in truth, only display an unscientific mind. I have heard a "cultivated" man, who thought himself scientifically sceptical, say, when watching a hypnotic subject, that he would only believe in the reality of the hypnosis if the subject could see through a non-transparent substance - e.g., if he could see through a man as if he were a piece of glass!