 -
- THE medico-legal question arose, we may say,
in the early days of hypnotism, or animal
magnetism, as it was called in 1784. At that
time, Louis XVI., moved by the rumor current
about the new medical treatment discovered by
Mesmer, appointed a commission to investigate
animal magnetism. The secretary of this
commission was Bailly, member of the Academy of
Sciences, who a few years later fell a victim to
revolutionary violence. Of his fellow members of
the commission we may name Franklin, Lavoisier,
d'Arcet, and the famous Dr. Guillotin, of
Bicêtre. August 11, 1784, the commission
made their report. Setting all theory aside, and
confining themselves to the simple ascertainment
of the facts they had observed, they laid
special stress upon the "crises" and their
hurtful consequences. Not only did Mesmer's
treatment seem to them little deserving of
encouragement, but they condemned it in the
strongest terms. "These nervous disorders," said
they, speaking of the crises, "when natural, are
the despair of physicians; it is not for art to
produce them." The exhibiting of these crises is
no less dangerous, because of that imitativeness
which nature seems to have made a law of our
being; therefore "all public treatment wherein
the methods of magnetism are employed, can in
the long run have only a pernicious effect."
Thus the commission seemed to invoke the rigor
of the law upon public treatments with
magnetism. They went further still; for to this
report, designed to be published, they appended
another, which for a long time remained secret.
It dealt specially with the dangers to which
good morals were exposed in the Sieur Mesmer's
house. The Lieutenant of the Police now
intervened, and, addressing Dr. Deslon, Mesmer's
assistant, said to him: "In my capacity of
Lieutenant General of the Police, I ask you
whether in case a woman is magnetized or in
crisis, it would not be easy to outrage her.
"Deslon answered affirmatively, and pleaded that
his confrères "pledged by their calling
to honorable behavior," should have the sole
right to practice magnetism.
-
- In truth we may say that the royal
commission, in their report, covered all the
medico-legal aspects of hypnotism. Yet we do not
find in it any remarks upon "criminal
suggestion," so called, about which much has
been written in our day; for at that time
nothing was yet known of somnambulism, the
period in hypnosis at which suggestion is most
readily practicable. But if Mesmer never was
able clearly to determine what were the
phenomena he produced, it was not so with one of
his disciples, the Marquis de Puységur,
who, intent specially upon avoiding the crises
that his master almost invariably brought about,
discovered artificial somnambulism and drew up
the first rules for hypnotic suggestion. It was
even his fortune to observe and note the fact
that the somnambule was not absolutely a mere
automaton, but had an individuality of his own
capable of withstanding suggestions of a certain
class. This resistance to suggestions is highly
important as regards the matter in hand, and it
is worthy of mention that one of Puysgur's
somnambules said beforehand that he would have a
crisis if he were compelled to carry out a
suggestion that he did not accept.
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- This brief historical account premised,
before I touch upon the present state of the
question I deem it necessary to offer a few
remarks needed for a clear understanding of the
facts that are to follow. One point that to me
appears to be established by incontestable
observations, is that the persons, whether men
or women, who are susceptible of hypnotization,
are nervous creatures, capable of becoming
hysterical, if not actually hysterical at the
beginning of the experiments. Hypnotism and
hysteria are very near of kin; and some hysteric
disorders-those which assume a cataleptoid form
for instance-have often been taken for hypnotic
catalepsy by inexperienced observers. In the
second place, it is to be noted that hypnotism
is a genuine neurosis, not a physiological
state; that it has its determinism, judged, in
the physical order, particularly by the
neuro-muscular superexcitability, which assumes
two special aspects, the lethargic and the
somnambulie. In the lethargic form I have shown
that the muscle or the nerve contracts or
produces contracture under the action of a
direct pressure; in the somnanibulic form
cutaneous excitation alone causes the subjacent
muscle to contract. Such is the case at least in
the state which I call the major hypnotism, in
contra-distinction to another state, the minor
hypnotism, wherein, physical signs failing, the
only criterion of the sleep is the greater or
less suggestibility of the subject-an
insufficient criterion and difficult to
appreciate in a matter wherein simulation must
ever be present to the mind of the observer. I
would remark further that men, though
hysterical, are seldom and only with difficulty
hypnotizable -a fact that I have been able to
establish in my service at the
Salpêtrière, where cases of male
hysteria are very frequent. Finally, I have
proved that in hypnosis there are three states:
the lethargy, the catalepsy, and the
somnambulism. In the first two, and particularly
in the lethargy, there is absolute
unconsciousness; the subject is motionless, his
will is in abeyance, there is no suggestibility.
In the third state, on the other hand, the
subject hears, sees what goes on, is capable of
receiving and carrying out suggestions given him
by the person who has hypnotized him. A
specially important fact is that on awaking he
recollects, outside of the suggestion given him,
nothing of what has happened during the sleep;
but he will recollect it in a second period of
hypnotic somnambulism, unless a contradictory
suggestion be given. This loss and this recovery
of recollection under fixed conditions, play an
important part in medico-legal hypnotism.
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- From what has just been said about the
different hypnotic states, one readily infers
that the "faits passibles" (Acts, occurrences,
transactions in which a person is passive) that
come up in the courts, in which hypnotism is
supposed to have part, will be such as these:
attempts upon the person during the periods when
the will is in abeyance and the sleep complete;
criminal suggestions and their consequences
during the somnambule's period of mental
activity. To these two categories I add a third,
the most important perhaps of them all, namely,
the mischief done by the ill-advised
hypnotization of subjects predisposed to
hysteria, and the responsibility thus incurred
by the hypnotizer.
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- As was surmised by the royal commission of
1784, rape and attempts to rape are the crimes
that are oftenest committed upon hypnotized
persons. That this should be so is readily seen,
for in the lethargy especially, as I have said,
the subject is, so to speak, so much lifeless
matter offered to the lechery of the magnetizer.
Dr. Gilles de la Tourette, formerly my chief of
clinic, in his work on "Hypnotism from the
Medico-legal Point of View," ("L'Hypnotisme au
Point de Vue Médico-légal." Paris:
Pion. 2d edition, 1889) is able to cite five
facts of this class developed in actions at
law-a number comparatively large if we take
account of tue difficulties that in such cases
attend the detection of the culprit. I must add
that in these five cases the crime was not in
every instance committed during the lethargic
state. The somnambule can, as I have said,
withstand a suggestion; but I must add that by
the very fact of the somnambulism there arises
often a quite special state of "affectivity"
between the hypnotizer and the hypnotized. Thus,
a woman who in the waking state would have been
chaste, may during the somnambulism give herself
up to the one who has hypnotized her, especially
if the hypnosis has been repeated many times. In
one case, that of Castellan, in 1865, the jury
held these relations to be of the nature of
rape, the moral force of resistance in the
subject having been broken down by the
magnetizer. A similar case was reported by Dr.
Bellanger, in 1854, the accused being a
physician, who by absconding saved himself from
the punishment that awaited him.
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- In the cases just mentioned the hypnotized
subject is the direct victim of the magnetizer.
In the two that follow the question is
different. Here the somnambule commits a crime
at the instigation of the one who hypnotizes
him. We thus come to the consideration of
criminal suggestion, as it is called-a subject
that has made a good deal of noise during the
last few years. The problem to be solved is
this: Given the suggestibility of a somnambule,
can one use him to do a criminal act to which he
would never have consented outside of the
hypnotic sleep? It may be observed that,
theoretically, the "suggestioner" can assure
himself impunity by ordering the subject not to
recall, on awaking, the name of the one who gave
the suggestion. The order given by the
hypnotizer may be carried out while the subject
is in the somnambulic state (intra-hypnotic
suggestion), or in the waking state
(post-hypnotic suggestion). Let us study the
latter variety and consider a case. I set a
subject asleep and place him in the somnambulie
state, satisfying myself as to the reality of
this state by bringing into action the
neuro-muscular superexcitability peculiar to
this period of hypnosis. I then say to him: "You
know A; he is a contemptible fellow and is ever
trying to injure you. He must be put out of the
way. Here is a dagger. To-morrow "-or the day
after, or ten days hence, for the suggestion may
extend over a considerable interval -" you will
make your way to his home; you will wait till he
quits the house, and will stab him without any
pity. He must die. You are not to remember at
all that I ordered you to kill him, even if you
be hypnotized again." The subject takes the
suggestion, and promises to kill the one who has
become his enemy. At the appointed hour he will
be at the place named, and will deal the blow
with a steady hand. Whether arrested or not for
the deed, he will find it out of his power to
reveal the name of the one who put the dagger in
his hand. The theme is an attractive one, but
can the thing be done? Experimentally, yes; and
there is hardly any one that has studied
hypnotic suggestion that has not on his
conscience many of these laboratory crimes, in
which pistols go off only in the subject's
imagination.
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- Let us consider the matter a little in
detail. In the study of suggestion we find in
the first place that all subjects are not
equally available for successful experiment.
Some subjects positively refuse to obey. "Why do
you want me to kill Mr. A? He has always been
kind to me"; or, "I do not know him; he has done
me no wrong." Here we have resistance to
suggestion, observed even by Puységur,
and criminals will find themselves confronted by
this. The check is all the more serious because
one does not by any means succeed, at the first
hypnotizing seance, in putting the subject into
a state of somnambulism so profound as to
justify the expectation that such suggestions
will be accepted. The training of the subjects
is no easy thing and takes time; and besides,
fit subjects are by no means so plentiful as
some authors would have us believe. So then we
have these points to take into account: fewness
of the subjects, time and labor spent in their
training, and possible resistance to
suggestion.
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- Now let us attempt the solution of the
problem. The suggestion is accepted; at the
appointed hour, a thought that till then had
lain entirely dormant suddenly arises in the
brain of the "suggestioned" subject, and there
overmasters all others the thought of murder.
The assassin, whose crime has been contrived and
planned beforehand by the suggestioner, lies in
ambush, with arm raised; he strikes when the
victim passes. But if the victim does not pass,
what then? Will he put off the crime till the
next day? By no means. The victim must be there
at the appointed hour, else, as I know very well
from repeated experiments, a fit of hysteria
will in most cases be the ending of the matter.
Or perhaps the subject will have an attack of
acute delirium, or of babbling mania, very
unfortunate for the magnetizer; and this cannot
be checked save by counter-suggestions that it
is always very difficult to make the subject
accept, as has been shown by my former pupil,
Dr. Pitres, now Dean of the Faculty of Bordeaux.
It is absolutely necessary, then, not only that
the suggestion be accepted, but also that its
conditions be realized. An odd sort of assassin
this, who does not know enough to sheathe the
sword he cannot use; who from the instant the
hour is struck, is nothing but an unconscious
automaton controlled by all the caprices of a
fixed idea. Experimentally, when we furnish a
subject with a crime already planned, arming him
with a pasteboard dagger, or providing him with
a poison consisting of a harmless powder, we may
witness the carrying out, in all its details, of
what I have called a "laboratory crime." But is
it so, can it be so, in real life? I for one
doubt it. For though writers who have treated
the question have reported a plenty of
experiments, they have not yet been able to
discover one single crime of this kind actually
committed; and that not because they have not
sought to discover such crimes. What is it that
the criminal desires above everything? To escape
punishment for his crime. Can he imagine that he
will make sure his revenge and conceal himself
from prosecution by putting a weapon in the hand
of a lunatic somnambule? A moment's reflection
shows that in the matter of criminal suggestions
there is a wide interval between theory and
practice.
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- In this utter lack of real crimes
attributable to somnambules, the theorists of
criminal suggestion entrench themselves behind
the papers, contracts, deeds of gift, etc., that
somnambules may fraudulently he made to sign
during the hypnotic sleep. Well, suppose a
somnambule signs a check, or a receipt for
goods, is it to be supposed that the signer on
awaking will part with his property and utter no
word of protest? In the first place, having, as
always happens in such cases, lost all memory of
what took place in somnambulism, he will ask
himself how it came about that he should sign
such a paper. From that question to the
explanation is but a step; and should an
investigation be made, it might bring confusion
to the holder of the check or receipt. An
extra-lucid somnambule may, by means of lying
allegations and fallacious predictions, prevail
upon the unfortunates who blindly put their
trust in her advice, to part with large sums of
money; that has happened often, and
unfortunately will happen again. But hypnotic
suggestion has nothing to do with that sort of
cheats, in which the robber sleeps or feigns to
sleep, and not the robbed. It will, perhaps, be
urged that in the matter of testamentary gifts,
the testator will not be at hand to undo his
act; but the tricksters who seek to win bequests
do not find somnambules everywhere, and the
courts will not fail to inquire into the mental
condition of the testator. In such cases are
involved, it seems to me, downright
impossibilities, which relegate criminal
suggestion to the lowest place as regards the
perpetration of crimes and frauds with the aid
of hypnotism. And yet, from time to time the
newspapers publish accounts of just such frauds
and crimes. But what ground of truth underlies
these stories, always exaggerated and distorted?
In December, 1885, the newspapers told of a
woman at St. Lazaire having under suggestion
committed a series of thefts. Now what did
happen was just this: A woman of twenty-six
years stole a cotton coverlet and sold it for
eighty centimes. Arrested on this charge, she
said that, being sick and unable to procure for
herself the necessaries of life, she had
committed the theft in order to get bread. To
the committing magistrate her mental state
appeared to be such that I was called in to
investigate, in company with Drs. Brouardel and
Motet. The result was to show that Annette G-,
an hysteriac and morphinomaniac, had, in a
moment of cerebral disorder, caused by privation
of her customary stimulant, committed theft in
order to procure morphine. She was placed under
my charge in the Saltpêtrière, and
is still there. I have at my leisure fully
assured myself that she did not steal under the
influence of hypnotic suggestion, inasmuch as
she is not hypnotizable! I am of the opinion
that stories of this kind very often have no
better foundation. As in the fable of the
floating sticks,"De loin c'est quelque chose, et
de pris ce n'est rien."
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- The courts, I repeat, will very seldom have
to take cognizance of crimes or misdemeanors
committed either by somnambules or upon
somnambules. There is danger nevertheless, but
it is to be looked for in another direction, and
in particular in the injurious effects of
ill-advised hypnotizations produced by persons
ignorant of the healing art upon predisposed
subjects. Hypnotism is a two-edged weapon;
wielded with judgment by experienced physicians,
it may be a powerful means of cure; in reckless
or incompetent hands it may produce disastrous
results.
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- For several years the principal towns of
Europe have been overrun by persons from no one
knows where, who, bearing high-sounding titles,
invite the people to hypnotizing performances
given in the local theaters. Sometimes they
operate upon subjects that they have brought
with them; at other times they select out of the
audience a few young persons who are willing to
offer themselves as subjects of experiment. In
these they produce, or try to produce, the
different phases of hypnosis, and make them
accept suggestions that of course have nothing
at all to do with therapeutics. We can track a
showman magnetizer of this sort by his victims
everywhere. When he has gone, it is noticed that
subjects with whom he succeeded best become
nervous and irritable. Some of them fall of
their own accord into a deep sleep, out of which
it is not easy to awaken them; thereafter they
are unfitted for the performance of the duties
of every-day life. Others, and they the
majority, are seized with convulsions exactly
resembling the crises of confirmed hysteria. I
have had occasion to deal in my clinique with
several victims of these magnetizers. The
observations are to be found in my
"Leçons du Mard ià la
Salpêtrièïe." I have shown
that here we have to do with unmistakable
hysteria, and that it is very clearly caused by
the practices of the magnetizers. Considering
how obstinate this neurosis is, particularly in
men, as I have shown, ought not the law to
intervene and to check these dangerous practices
by absolutely prohibiting public exhibitions
given by magnetizers? To protect human liberty
is not to restrict it. It is quite plain to-day
that, inasmuch as medicine, on behalf of both
science and art, has in these later times taken
possession of hypnotism, it alone can know how
to apply it properly, whether in the treatment
of disease, or in physiological or psychological
research. Is it not right, then, that medicine
should henceforth seek to reign as absolute
mistress in this newly-won domain, and should
repulse all intrusion?
-
- Is it possible to define the rules of expert
testimony in the matter of hypnotism? I do not
think it is, for, as we know, the cases that
come up in the courts are so varied that it
seems difficult, under these circumstances, to
give advice to the expert, who will have after
all to find inspiration in the difficulties of
the moment. With regard to responsibility in
individuals subjected to the manipulations of
the magnetizers, the expert has solely to find
out whether there exist in the subject at the
moment of his examination the signs of an
affection-especially of hysteria-capable of
having been produced by ill-advised hypnotic
manipulation. In criminal causes involving rape,
actual or attempted, the medical witnesses, in
the cases we are acquainted with, have testified
not only as to the signs of the assault, but
also as to the hysterical, and further, the
hypnotizable, condition of the subjects. This
latter point, it seems to me, ought always to be
investigated. Under these circumstances the
physical marks of hypnotism are of very great
assistance, for it is necessary to decide
whether a woman who delares that she has been
violated while in hypnosis, is actually
hypnotizable. But the expert's conclusions ought
not to go beyond this formula: The individual
can (or cannot) he put into the hypnotic state.
In the case of a male subject of hysteria, Dr.
Motet proved in court the innocence of the
accused by making him perform, in a second
hypnotization, acts with which he was wrongfully
charged, and of which he could not exculpate
himself, because on awaking he forgot all that
had occurred; here the alleged offense was
committed in a first period of somnambulism. So,
too, Dr. Dufay, by hypnotizing again a girl
accused of theft, reawakened her memory and
procured her acquittal of the charge made
against her. But, clearly, whatever oversteps
simple ascertainment of the person's actual
state, should be carefully weighed by the
expert. The physician testifying as an expert
will remember that he must never act the part of
an advocate; be must not by artificial means
procure either admissions or accusations. Yet,
in one case, perhaps, his keeping silence might
be blamable, when in the course of his
investigation he discovers that justice is
making a misstep, and that an innocent person is
in danger of being pronounced guilty.
 -
- Voir
d'autres portraits, le cabinet de consultation,
le cabinet photographique,
- une
lettre manuscrite de
Charcot
- Une
leçon de Charcot à La
Salpêtrière, tableau de M
Brouillet
- Œuvres
principales de Charcot
- Charcot
JM The topography of the brain Forum
1886
- Charcot
JM Magnetism and hypnotism Forum
1889
- Hypnotisme
and crime Charcot JM
1890
-
- Les
internes de JM. Charcot
-
- JM
Charcot et une patiente
ataxique
1875 la seule photo connue de
Charcot avec un malade
-
- Croquis
de JM. Charcot par Paul
Richer
-
- Charcot
in Morocco: Introduction, notes and translation
by Toby Gelfand
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