I was once called in as an expert in the case of a charlatan who advertised that he treated disease by suggestion and hypnosis. He was accused of having forced several women to sleep with him. In one of the cases the examining magistrate had so strong a suspicion that the victim had been hypnotized, that he asked me at the outset of the examination to make a very careful investigation of all the circumstances of the case. After taking every point into consideration, I was only able to state that in all probability an attempt had been made to hypnotize the woman, but that I could not assert that hypnosis had been induced. The accused, who was very importunate the first time the patient visited him, had on the second occasion suddenly seized her by the shoulders, placed her hands on his shoulders, then stared hard at her, forced her towards the sofa, and finally thrown her on it. At the same time she stared at him. The whole procedure was reminiscent of fascination (cf. p. 73). When we consider what the accused did, and all the other facts that came out during the investigation, we can only conclude that at the most an attempt at hypnosis had been made.

There are, moreover, cases in which girls assert they have been assaulted, although nothing of the kind has taken place. Some of these appear to be the result of auto-suggestion. It may have been so in a case in which the public prosecutor referred to me about a report sent in by my locum tenens, Dr. Hirschlaff, during my absence, and that led to the matter being discussed. A girl had told Dr. Hirschlaff that she had been hypnotized and rendered enceinte by some man. Hirschlaff then hypnotized her himself and was convinced from the detailed statements she made in hypnosis that there was no objective ground whatever for the charge. It is quite possible that the girl believed the charge to be true even when she was in the waking state. The case reported by William Lee Howard was probably of a similar nature. Two girls who were employed by a travelling hypnotizer in his experiments, fell into a condition of hysterical auto-hypnosis, and accused Dr. Picken of seducing them while they were in the hypnotic state.

Judge Bailey applied to Howard, who came to the conclusion that the case was one of auto-suggestive self-delusion.

But there are other cases in which there is nothing of the kind last mentioned: the woman invents the hypnosis, or at least the rape, simply to hide a faux-pas she has made, to extort money, to make herself appear interesting, or for some other reason. Tardieu had already seen a case of that kind in which a sixteen-year-old girl brought an obviously false charge. Another case of this nature was reported on by Ladame in Geneva in 1882. The supposed offender was acquitted, as the accusation was probably false. I have frequently seen such cases, and have found that it is not always quite easy to explain them. A case that came before the court in a town of Southwest Germany not long ago was obviously difficult; a doctor was charged with hypnotizing a young girl by stroking her forehead and then behaving indecently to her. Edinger, who was called as an expert witness, admitted that the case might possibly be one of auto-suggested delusion. Schrenck-Notzing has also published a case in which a hypnotized child was supposed to have been used for immoral purposes. But Schrenck-Notzing came to the conclusion that it was a case of retro-active falsification of the memory, or perhaps even of conscious simulation.

Certainly we must exercise great care before assuming that there is conscious lying on the part of the accuser in such a case. The confused notions of hypnosis and suggestion that are still so prevalent make it quite possible for a woman to mistake intense sexual excitement for hypnosis, and this appears all the more likely when we come to consider that sexual excitement, when artificially aroused, renders a girl quite as incapable of offering resistance as hypnosis or suggestion. Of course, from the human point of view we may be charitably inclined in such cases, but as experts we must rigidly distinguish between them and hypnoses. Czynski's case, tried at Munich in December 1894, belongs here. Czynski, who had studied hypnosis and animal magnetism, made the acquaintance of Baroness X. He was charged with seducing her by means of post-hypnotic suggestion. This was followed by a sham marriage ceremony performed by one of his acquaintances, a man named Wartalsky. The jury acquitted Czynski of having committed an offence against morality, but he was condemned to three years' imprisonment for his conduct in respect of the mock marriage. The opinions expressed by the experts engaged in the case were somewhat at variance.

Grashey took up the standpoint that the baroness's love was not normal, but hypnotic; her love was aroused by Czynski's declaration of love, which he made while she was in hypnosis. Although Schrenck-Notzing and Preyer expressed the same view, I think that Hirt was right in ascribing very little importance to hypnosis in this case. To my mind the most probable explanation is that the baroness did fall in love with Czynski, and that the question of hypnosis was only introduced into the case later on when it became known that the accused had devoted much time to the study of that subject. He may possibly have made use of post-hypnotic suggestion; but I do not think that was necessary, considering the terms on which the parties stood. But attention must certainly be called to the dangers of exaggeration where hypnosis is concerned, and this view is in nowise affected by the fact that the relatives of a girl who has been criminally assaulted, and very often the girl herself, are firmly convinced that she was hypnotized. Just as some strong perfume used to be considered the overpowering agent in cases of criminal assault in the train, so nowadays hypnosis is unjustly blamed; though we must at once admit that such assaults may be, and frequently have been, made during hypnosis.