PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL RESEARCHES:
STUDIES IN MENTAL DISSOCIATION

Boris Sidis, M. A., Ph.D., M.D.
with
William A. White, M.D., George M. Parker, M.D.

© 1908
Boston: Richard G. Badger

The first tracing shows the curve under normal conditions; also the first part of the second tracing in which the patient gradually passes through the process of hypnotization into deep hypnosis. The transition state from the normal to hypnosis is marked, as it is also in the first tracing of Plate III. The awakening of the patient by counting is brought out well in the tracing, showing an abrupt change. Experiments by the method of distraction in the waking state: the patient absorbed ion reading, while a sound stimulus was given a little later by (+ x). The effects of this stimulus, which the patient did not consciously perceive, but which she nevertheless perceived subconsciously and to which she accordingly reacted, are indicated at the end of the second tracing. The rest of the tracings, 3, 4, 5, and 6, are under similar conditions, the patient being first put in the hypnotic state, then awakened, and experimented on by the method of distraction. Tracings 4 and 5 show marked respiratory disturbances when the patient passed into hypnosis by stimulations of colored light falling far outside her contracted field of vision. Great hyperæsthesia shown to colored light; the field of colored vision is far more extensive than that of the average normal individual. The different changes from one state to the other and the condition of the patient under different stimuli when experimented on by this method are clearly manifested in these tracings.