Similar cases have been reported by other authors, and Vogt specially points out that sexual feeling often occurs spontaneously in hypnosis. I take this opportunity of mentioning that dentists are well aware that lady-patients are often convinced that they . have been assaulted when anaesthetized, although there were no possible grounds for the accusation. It is quite certain that some persons are liable to such auto-suggestions when hypnotized. In recent works dealing with pathological hypnosis such cases are put down to hysteria. Hirschlaff, for example, does so.

Hirschlaff distinguishes several kinds of hypnosis entirely among the deeper grades - i.e., the second group in Max Dessoir's classification.

(1.) A form in which the subject has a power of discrimination. Here autosuggestion outweighs external suggestion, but the auto-suggestion is not, as otherwise often occurs, a result of external suggestion; so far from having any direct connection with the experimenter's intentions, it is opposed to them. In such cases the hypnotic, for example, refuses to carry out experiments with which he is already acquainted and which he has prepared himself to resist by pre-hypnotic auto-suggestion. For instance, when told that his arm will become quite stiff, a subject will reply jeeringly, "No it won't; I am not going to make any experiments." Or a hypnotic is given a piece of paper and told that it is a tablet of chocolate; but he replies with a laugh, "It is a piece of paper. I knew quite well before that you were going to repeat this experiment, but made a firm resolution not to be caught again."

(2.) Abnormal hypnotic sleep. This is characterized by the hypnosigenic means and methods employed producing a normal or abnormal state of sleep instead of the hypnosis which was expected. The sleep may set in with loud snoring. Such persons cannot be influenced by suggestion, and wake either spontaneously with a terrified start, or when spoken to gently. In another group of cases the awakening is not so easy because the subjects are in a deep, unconscious sleep exactly like the pathological sleep which is also observed to occur spontaneously in hysteria. Awakening is difficult, as even strong stimuli produce no impression.

(3). The hystero-hypnoid state, as Hirschlaff terms certain conditions, basing his contention on Freud and Breuer, though he uses the term in a somewhat different sense to those authors. In this case instead of normal hypnosis the hypnosigenic measures produce more or less severe hysterical conditions, palpitation of the heart, hiccoughs, convulsive screaming and crying, attacks of hysteria of the severest nature, cataleptic and lethargic states accompanied by loss of memory. Occasionally these phenomena only appear as a complication of hypnosis.

(4.) Spontaneous somnambulism. Here the hypnosis is apparently normal at first; then there is a more or less sudden, spontaneous, but circumscribed outburst of excitement, generally of an erotic cast, in which the subject often refers to some remote event that had at one time occupied his mind and caused him great mental excitement.

According to Hirschlaff, all these abnormal states are only met with in hystericals. The chief changes which differentiate these from normal deep hypnosis are, (a) decrease or entire cessation of suggestibility, (b) the spontaneous appearance of certain phenomena, (c) increased difficulty in awakening the subject, and (d) post-hypnotic malaise, an almost invariable result.

I myself believe that some of the states which Hirschlaff ascribes to abnormal hypnosis have nothing whatever to do with hypnosis, even if they do occur in hypnotic experiments. For a person who is being hypnotized to have an attack of hysteria (Hirschlaft's third group), or to fall into a lethargic state, or for another person, who is also being hypnotized, to fall asleep and snore but wake up at the slightest noise (HirschlafPs second group), is not hypnosis, and we are therefore not justified in considering such states abnormal hypnoses. But we certainly might look upon those cases in which the hypnosis is complicated by hysteria as abnormal hypnoses: though an attack of hysteria alone must not under any circumstances be considered a case of hypnosis. We might also agree to include among the abnormal hypnoses those cases in which there is pronounced auto-suggestibility, the subject either acting in direct opposition to the hypnotist's suggestions (HirschlafFs first group), or else only allowing his own auto-suggestion to be effective (Hirschlaffs fourth group). I have described a case of this nature on page 36. Such a person will jump up suddenly without a word having been said to him, merely because he is possessed with the hallucination that a tiger is about to spring upon him.

When this phenomenon is more fully developed we are faced by a condition which is hardly distinguishable from spontaneous somnambulism.

I think it is doubtful whether the cases which Hirschlaff describes in the first group only occur in hystericals; but I should certainly contest the assertion that the auto-somnam-bulic states mentioned in the fourth group only occur in cases of hysteria. The form which hypnotic phenomena may take depends very much on the temperament of the subject. A very lively temperament often leads to auto-somnambulism without there being any reason to consider the patient hysterical.

We must certainly agree with Hirschlaff that pronounced auto-suggestibility during hypnosis is far more frequent among hysterical subjects than others. But it does not necessarily follow that it is only met with in hysteria. We must take into consideration that external suggestion is limited by autosuggestion in other cases as well. Nearly every hypnotic's susceptibility to suggestion is, to a certain extent, under his own control. A highly moral man rejects a criminal sugges-tion which one whose ethics are of a lower order would accept without hesitation. Similarly, evidences of erotic feelings during hypnosis are more often observed in subjects whose sexual desires are easily aroused, than in others. Such persons disclose their feelings more readily when hypnotized than when awake, because the restraints exercised in the latter state disappear in the former. But I do not consider it proved that we are therefore justified in assuming hysteria in all such cases. Even the phenomena which Hirschlaff includes in the hystero-hypnoid category, in which hypnosis is complicated by hysterical phenomena (trembling, palpitation, etc.), are not necessarily of hysterical origin; to describe them as such would be giving far too wide a scope to the concept hysteria.