OBSESSION

 THE Christian church should be' as familiar with obsession as it is with the divinity of Christ, miracles, the immaculate conception, inspiration, baptism, and other doctrines: for the existence of evil spirits affecting the living is as clearly taught in the New Testament, and implied in the Old Testament, as any doctrine there expounded. But the church has repudiated belief in "witchcraft," which it cannot escape save by accepting the verdict of science instead of revelation. It has reduced the Biblical cases of obsession to hysteria, epilepsy, paranoia and similar maladies, thus disposing of facts which we might easily believe by its own doctrine of the "communion of the saints": for we can hardly admit that evil spirits do not know the method of communication which the "saints" practice. So we should have no difficulty in forcing all believers in the New Testament to believe in obsession and to set about mastering what it implies.

 Nevertheless, obsession is not lightly to be believed. It is quite as conceivable as ordinary communication with the dead, but it is not so easily proved. In our search for scientific proof of survival we have been dealing with honest personalities, ready to make concessions and to supply evidence of their identity. But experience has shown that mischievous personalities are desirous of concealing instead of revealing their identity. In default of evidence to the contrary, we should have to accept the orthodox verdict of medicine and psychiatry, which explain obsessions as cases of dual or multiple personality, hysteria, or some form of insanity. It required ten years of investigation, after I had admitted the existence of spirits is credible, to convince me of the possibility of obsession; then followed some years of work to accumulate the facts which make it scientifically probable.

 Most people are familiar with the campaign of the church and the law against belief in witchcraft throughout the Western world; the medical explanation was sufficient, if not to eliminate the phenomena, at least to eradicate the belief in obsession. But, in reporting on some of the investigations in the Piper case, Professor James said that, though hesitating to accept the spiritistic theory, he was certain that belief in demoniac possession would have its innings again. He lived long enough to see the report on the Thompson-Gifford case published in the American Proceedings; it was that case which overcame my resistance to the idea of obsession, though I felt and said that it alone was hardly adequate evidence.

 There can be no a priori argument against obsession after the existence of discarnate spirits in any form has been proved or even shown to be possible or probable. The process employed to establish the personal identity of spirits may well be used by mischievous or ignorant personalities in order to disturb the normal life of the living. It is not at all likely that sane and intelligent spirits are the only ones to exert influence from a transcendental world. If they can act on the living there is no reason why others cannot do so as well. The process in either case would be the same; we should have to possess adequate proof that nature puts more restrictions upon ignorance and evil in the next life than in this, in order to establish the certainty that mischievous personalities do not or cannot perform nefarious deeds. The objection that such a doctrine makes the world seem evil applies equally to the situation in the present life.

 Obsession, a term used by psychiatry to denote fixed ideas, is employed by psychic researchers to denote the abnormal influence of spirits on the living. It does not mean ordinary mediumship, which either may occur without disturbing normal life or may be a merely temporary interruption of that normal life. It represents a dissociation (if functions, varying from the slightest disturbance of normal personality to complete displacement. But in all cases it represents an influence foreign to the organism instead of within it, due to the action of a discarnate spirit or spirits, whether the influence be voluntary or involuntary. The process by which this influence is exercised may be the same as that which is employed to communicate desirable messages, but it is conducted either with a very different purpose or as the result of laws which happen to involve ignorant spirits in toils from which they sometimes cannot easily escape.

 The phenomena which I have ultimately come to think are due to foreign action, do not appear to be evidence of any such invasions. They are not like the facts which we have been accustomed to regard as evidence of the existence of spirits or of supernormal knowledge. They appear to be morbid states of the subject afflicted. Many cases of hysteria, of dementia precox, of paranoia, of manic depressive insanity, and of dual or multiple personality do not show any superficial indications of spirit invasion. The psychiatrist has been quite right in refusing to diagnose them as obsessions. Cases of dual and multiple personality immediately suggest obsessions, because of the dissociation between the personalities. But the lack of evidence of supernormal knowledge and of the identity of the spirits in some, if not in all, of these cases, at first prevented the application of a spiritistic explanation to them.

 But I found a way to supply this evidence by the method of cross­reference. I take the patient to a psychic under conditions that exclude from the psychic all normal knowledge of the situation, and see what happens. If the same phenomena that occur in the patient are repeated through the medium; if I am able to establish the identity of the personalities affecting the patient; or if I can obtain indubitably supernormal information connecting the patient with the statements made through the psychic, I have reason to regard the mental phenomena observed in the patient as of external origin. While the experiences of the patient may not in themselves be evidence of the supernormal or of foreign invasion, the repetition of the same experiences through the psychic, who is ignorant of them, establishes their supernormal character without question. In a number of cases, persons whose condition would ordinarily be described as due to hysteria, dual, or multiple personality, dementia precox, paranoia, or some other form of mental disturbance, showed unmistakable indications of invasion by foreign and discarnate agencies.

 It is not necessary to suppose that these invasions were the primary cause of the trouble. Organic lesions sometimes open the way to all sorts of other disorders. Functional disturbances may be due to invasions of the discarnate, but in some instances these influences were preceded by organic derangements or by accidents. The hypothesis of obsession does not set aside physiological causes. It designates only a concomitant cause or disturbance in the situation, unless in certain types of purely functional trouble the discarnate be primary and sufficient cause. Obsession is not incompatible with hysteria, dual or multiple personality, and the like. It only adds to the complications of the phenomena and may lead to the consideration of more causes than have hitherto been recognized.

 We do not need accept the spiritistic hypothesis in order to admit the possibility of obsession. If we believe in telepathy, we believe in a process which makes possible the invasion of personality by some one at a distance. Telepathy not only involves the transmission of thoughts from one person to another, but very distinctly implies that these thoughts can exercise a causal influence on the percipient. Psychology assumes that only physical stimuli, through the intermediation of the body, can affect the mind. But telepathy assumes that one mind affects another. This very supposition contains the possibility of all that we observe in obsession, if it be proved to exist. Consequently there is no need of insisting that spirits are the sole agents in obsession. We might point out that there would be no hope for a cure if telepathy caused the obsession, as we might never be able to find the personality guilty of producing the effect on the patient, and so would not be in a position to exorcize him or to teach him to avoid using his influence. Telepathy thus used would be Mrs. Eddy's "malicious animal magnetism," which is only obsession disguised so as not to imply the spiritistic theory, which she once believed and later rejected. But such an explanation represents the malady as incurable, since on this hypothesis we cannot get at the causes. On the spiritistic theory it is possible to find the causes and to deal with them.

 But examination of the actual facts will show not only that telepathy is wholly irrelevant to the problem, but also that only spiritistic agencies rationally explain the phenomena, while the admission of the existence of spirits on other evidence prepares the way, more definitely than does telepathy, for acceptance of the possibility of obsession. The whole case will rest upon the special nature of the facts obtainable in support of the hypothesis.

 If we could interpret every case of psychic invasion as obsession, the case would be won in all instances where the supernormal is discoverable. It would make the term synonymous with mediumship; perhaps in principle they really are the same. But the term has usually been confined to those cases which do not show the usual type of evidence for spirit invasion. The term denominates abnormal cases, in which the dissociation and disintegration of normal life has been so great as thoroughly to demoralize it. This is not true of what may be called normal mediumship. There is no hard and fast line between the two types, except the application of the term obsession to cases that do not in themselves contain evidence for the supernormal and that are characterized by clear and distinct evidence of the abnormal.

 Now as the supernormal is not superficially apparent in these cases, we cannot assume them to be instances of obsession unless we can produce evidence that the ordinary medical diagnosis is either incorrect or imperfect. Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Smead, Mrs. Chenoweth, Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Holland and others gave unmistakable evidence for the supernormal, which could be proved by very simple methods. All we had to do was to take strangers to them and record the subsequent events. But cases of hysteria and of dual or multiple personality furnished no such revelations of the personal identity of the dead. Hence we had either to contrive a new method of experiment or to surrender the diagnosis to psychiatry.

 The method of experiment adopted, when the influence of discarnate spirits was suspected, was that of cross-reference. If the same phenomena that had occurred in the patient were repeated through the psychic, and if this repetition was accompanied by unmistakable evidence of supernormal knowledge relevant to the case, there would be reason at least to raise the question of obsession. If the same personalities as those constituting the dual or multiple personalities were manifest in a trained psychic, we should have strong evidence that they were not in the first instance merely subjective creations. This sort of experiment was tried for the purpose of seeing whether we could secure evidence of external personality in what seemed to be merely an abnormal state in the patient. We have tried this experiment in a number of cases with the same result; a similar result never manifested itself when normal persons were the sitters or subjects of experiment.

The case which first suggested obsession to me was that of Mr. Thompson. The invading agent was Mr. Gifford. Mr. Thompson, after a period in which he felt compelled to paint in Gifford's style, was unable to resume his profession as a silversmith. It nauseated him. This indicated to me that the invasion had brought about some sort of organic alteration in his interests and physiological habits. The persistent invasion of Gifford to accomplish his purpose and the organic alteration of the man's habits and tastes suggested, though it did not prove, obsession. It made me resolve to investigate similar cases until I should have ascertained what was going on. In the experiences of Mr. Thompson there was no evidence that would convince the scientific man, especially the student of abnormal psychology, that he was the subject of discarnate invasion. Indeed two physicians diagnosed the case as paranoia, and one of them, without offering to cure it, expressed a desire to watch the progress of the malady. But cross-reference proved very clearly that the spirit of Mr. Gifford, whatever the motive, was behind the phenomena; and the abnormality of the effect on the profession of Mr. Thompson suggested that something more than mediumship was manifested.

 Soon afterwards I came across three other cases which every psychiatrist would diagnose as hysteria, two of them perhaps as incipient paranoia. One of these persons was writing stories purporting to come from a well­known author who had died some years before and about whom the automatist knew very little. Another was engaged in musical composition both for the piano and the opera. There were decided symptoms of hysteria in her case. The third case showed no disagreeable indications of dissociation, but was doing automatic writing purporting to come from Emma Abbott and was singing under the same inspiration. All three were taken to Mrs. Chenoweth under conditions that excluded all normal knowledge of the persons and the facts. The personalities purporting to direct the subjects claimed to communicate through Mrs. Chenoweth and so to be the instigators of the phenomena observed. None of the three cases was the victim of serious dissociation save the first, who was rendered incapable of earning her living. When the work with the psychic had been done, however, she recovered her balance. None of them had reached a stage in which physicians would have assigned them to an asylum. They were not cases that would pass for victims of obsession, in the sense of constant persecution by transcendental agencies. Such persecution is the distinguishing characteristic of cases that demand special treatment.

 Another case, that of a young girl just entering womanhood, was diagnosed by two physicians as dementia precox or paranoia. There were no apparent symptoms of physical degeneration: but she became perfectly stupid, so that she could not always rationally answer questions of the simplest kind. When a narrative of the child's experiences came to my attention I at once saw possibilities that I should not have suspected until I had observed and proved what was happening in the several cases outlined above: and I resolved to try the experiment of investigation with the child. I soon found that the phenomena were instigated from without and got into contact with a personality whose influence on the child can be discussed only in a medical work. I tried two psychics, with the same general result. We had not the means to continue the work until we obtained a perfect cure. But there was unmistakable evidence that the phenomena were of foreign instigation, though affected by the subconsciousness of the child. There was no superficial evidence of foreign stimuli until cross-reference was applied to the case.

 The next case, that of Doris Fischer, is most important; but the summary of it must be preceded by a brief account of the celebrated case of Sally Beauchamp, treated by Dr. Morton Prince of Boston. Doris Fischer had one personality so like the mischievous personality of Sally Beauchamp that a comparison between the two is necessary.

 Sally Beauchamp manifested four chief personalities; that is, there appeared to be four different persons inhabiting the one body. These were designated as B. I, B. II, B. III or Sally, and B. IV.

None of them knew anything about the others, except that Sally knew the other three, knowing B. IV only partly. There was no connection of memory between them except that Sally knew and remembered what the others thought and did as well as what she herself knew and did; she knew what B. IV thought but not what B. IV did. These are the complications; but the important point is that she was mischievous, like one of the main personalities in Doris Fischer. The Beauchamp case was never tested for evidence of spirit agencies. All that we can say is that Sally showed four characteristics that we find in controls of mediums: (1) she claimed to be a spirit; (2) she did automatic writing; (3) she was always conscious; (4) she had no perception of time. These characteristics seem not to have marked the chief secondary personality in the case of Doris Fischer.

 When a child of three and a half years, Doris Fischer was picked up by her drunken father and thrown down on the floor so violently that her head was injured; from that time on she suffered from dissociation or dual personality until the death of her mother when Doris was seventeen years of age. Until the death of her mother there were but two personalities manifested, the normal Doris and a secondary personality who called herself Margaret. The shock of her mother's death increased the number of personalities to five. The addition to the family, so to speak, consisted of personalities called Sick Doris, Sick Real Doris and Sleeping Margaret. This last never appeared except in sleep. Margaret might appear at any time and stayed for a short or a long time apparently according to caprice. She was mischievous, like Sally Beauchamp. Sally would play all sorts of pranks on the other personalities. B. I was the especial object of her enmity. Sally would take control and go out to the country on the last street car and then leave the girl; that is, let the normal self come in, and the girl would have to walk back home, arriving exhausted. Or Sally would put into a box spiders, toads, or other animals of which the normal self had a horror, and leave them on the bureau so that when the normal self opened the box she would have a severe fright. She would take or lose money belonging to the normal self and thus embarrass the girl when she found that her money was gone. Margaret in the Doris Fischer case would play similar tricks on Doris, the normal self. She would steal aprons or candies from places where Doris was working, so that Doris would be blamed for the theft. That is, Margaret would come—she was not discoverable by strangers, since the child would go on with her work as if normal—and steal and hide what she wanted. The normal self, knowing nothing about it, had to take the blame. Margaret would hide the child's books at school so that the normal self could not study her lessons. She had a bureau drawer at home into which Doris, the normal self, was not allowed to look. There Margaret would keep things she wanted or had stolen, and if Doris accidentally went to it and found something of her own or Margaret's, Margaret would scratch the body until it bled all over, and the normal self would have to endure the pains and sores. Margaret would come in and eat the candy that Doris had bought for herself. Margaret would take horses from the livery stable and ride them into the country, but would return them after her ride. She would rush down to the river and take swims with all the child's clothes on; the river was very dirty at its best, with much of the filth of a large city floating on its surface. The normal self had no memory of the acts, and could not understand the effects.

 Margaret did not claim to be a spirit, as did Sally in the Beauchamp case; neither did she manifest other qualities of a control, such as ignorance of time, continuous consciousness, and automatic writing. She seemed to be only a dissociated group of the mental states of Doris. Sleeping Margaret, however, after claiming not to be a spirit, at last came to believe and to insist that she was. But she could give no evidence of her claim. Sick Doris was very stupid; when she was in control the girl seemed to be very ill, but when the personality changed she would be instantly perfectly well without a feeling or appearance of illness. The transformation was astonishing.

 In all these manifestations there was not the slightest trace of spirits. Margaret occasionally exhibited telepathic powers; but as soon as Dr. Walter H. Prince, who had adopted her to effect a cure, began to experiment with the telepathy, Margaret ceased to show what she could do. Sleeping Margaret directed the cure of the child and the removal of Margaret in a manner that suggested supernormal knowledge. Her knowledge usually, however, was limited to the normal memories and knowledge of Doris, and, when you tested her on matters that spirits ought to know, she wholly disappointed you. She could not tell what spirits should tell. Consequently there was no apparent reason to classify Doris Fischer with the mediumistic type or to treat her personalities as anything but dissociated groups of memories of the girl herself. Whatever the explanation, each personality had to be treated as a group or series of mental states separated from the other group or series by amnesia. There was no evidence of such personal identity as we have to insist upon finding when we test the claims of communicating spirits. Whether the "split" was between different groups of mental states or between different brain cells, the phenomena showed slight indication of being due to foreign personalities. They were just mysteriously separated groups of mental states simulating real individuals in their memories and behavior.

 I had resolved on experiment with the case as soon as Dr. Walter H. Prince had succeeded in his treatment of the girl sufficiently for me to bring her from California to Boston. Nothing had ever been published about the case and even the community in which he lived did not know that the girl was an invalid of the type above described. I brought her all the way from California and had her stay in the country some eighteen or twenty miles from Boston, coming in each morning for the experiments for a few weeks; I then kept her for a time at my own home in New York while the experiments continued, and then took her again to Boston for more immediate contact with the psychic; finally I allowed her to return to California while I continued experiments for some months more. As usual, I did not allow Mrs. Chenoweth to see the patient at any time. The detailed record shows for itself the results, of which we can give only a very brief summary here.

 The mother of Doris, who had been dead eight years, first communicated. She did excellent work to prove her identity, by trivial incidents which were unusually good for the purpose. It is not necessary to summarize them here; but they, together with the evidence of supernormal knowledge, establish the presumption that what she said about the condition of Doris at least has to be reckoned with in the solution of the problem. The mother, however, seems not to have suspected that her daughter was obsessed by mischievous discarnate personalities. The first hint of obsession came from Dr. Hodgson, who came to communicate; he compared the case to that of Sally Beauchamp and remarked that it was as "important as any that Morton Prince ever had." Dr. Hodgson had seen and experimented with Miss Beauchamp when he was living and knew Dr. Morton Prince personally. I had undertaken the experiments partly to see if any comparison with the Beauchamp case could be made; but when he had made the comparison he went on to indicate that Doris's malady was a case of obsession, saying that we should have to reckon with a little Indian in connection with the case. After her cure, Doris developed automatic writing with the planchette. The personality instigating this writing purported to be a guide for the girl and told a few things that had happened in the development of the case, which I was able to verify in California. Then came the little Indian personality to whom Dr. Hodgson had referred; she gave the name Minnehaha or Laughing Water. This name is too well known to be significant, and her identity could not be proved. But the record shows that she was well acquainted with incidents in Doris Fischer's life. She described what had gone on and defined the nature of obsession very well in what she said of the vicious personalities associated with it.

 As Sleeping Margaret had claimed to be a spirit, I tried to verify her statement. Margaret made no such claims. But in my first series of experiments no trace of either of them appeared. I then took Doris to New York and had a seance with Sleeping Margaret to know why she had not communicated in Boston. Her answer was that she did not get a chance, as there were so many others there. I then asked her to come to Boston while Doris remained in New York, and to communicate with me. She said that she could not do it; that she could not go so far away from Doris. But she promised to try, if I took her back to Boston. I did so, but I received no trace of Sleeping Margaret as a communicator. I then resolved on a new experiment. Dr. Hodgson had said that Starlight, a little Indian control of Mrs. Chenoweth, had discovered Minnehaha, and I thought I might find out whether she could get into contact with Sleeping Margaret, if the latter was a spirit at all. I arranged the experiment so that Mrs. Chenoweth would not know that I was dealing with the same case and so that she would seem to be sitting for some stranger. Again I did not allow Mrs. Chenoweth to see Doris. As the experiment had to be carried out when Doris was asleep I had her go to bed and be asleep when I admitted Mrs. Chenoweth. I had the face, hands and body of Doris covered up so that she could not be seen. As soon as Mrs. Chenoweth went into the trance, Starlight saw Minnehaha and tried to give her name, but did not succeed. She got "water lily" and then said, in accordance with the pictographic process: "I see, like a waterfall, just like water falling over and whether it is Water Fall or—something like that." Then she remarked: "She laughs after she shows me the water." Readers will remark that the name was actually given in this description; but it is strange that the subliminal could not do better when the name had been given before clearly enough, and was presumably already known, according to skeptical theories, by the subliminal. But Starlight saw no one else except the mother and "the spirit of the girl herself," partly out of the body and partly in, as she stated, remarking that, if she would go out farther she could communicate with the dead. Sleeping Margaret had not shown herself able to do this; I had thus been unable to prove her a spirit. On the contrary Starlight insisted that she was "the spirit of the girl" herself, and later the work made this interpretation clearer. When I resumed my regular work at the next sitting, Minnehaha came; she named both the Margarets and indicated that Sleeping Margaret was what Starlight had said. Then Margaret was put to work to "confess" what she had done to the child. Margaret told a number of the tricks and pranks she had played on the girl and then followed a number of other personalities said to have been concerned in the phenomena observed and reported by Dr. Walter F. Prince. Various events in the life of Doris which thus came out indicated that Margaret was a spirit, though there was no evidence to that effect in the experiences of Doris. Minnehaha terminated the experiments by recounting a large number of facts which had occurred in California after Doris returned home. They do not directly bear upon the subject of obsession, but in so far as evidence of supernormal knowledge enables us to assign limits to subliminal influence, they are consonant with the evidence for obsession.

 I have known three other instances, none of which have been reported, which show the same kind of evidence that foreign agencies can perform a great deal of mischief, when they get access to the mind or body of a living person. I cannot summarize these cases here. Suffice it to say that they add to the number of cases in which we have to reckon with an influence that has not yet been admitted to the archives of psychiatry.

 It is important to remark at the outset of the explanation of obsession that I do not mean this idea to be a substitute for hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia or other maladies, nor is it a rival explanation. Even the controls stated through Mrs. Chenoweth that obsession might itself be caused by disease or accident, thus conceding that lesions might give rise to it and hence that we are not to set aside organic and functional troubles in body and mind when acknowledging that obsession by spirits is an accompaniment of the trouble. It is quite conceivable that any disturbance to healthy functions, bodily or mental, might create conditions in which accidental connections with the discarnate would be established and would open the way to all sorts of voluntary and involuntary invasions. At least that is the theory of the spirits themselves, and the facts tend to support the contention.

 It must therefore be thoroughly understood that we are not controverting physiological or psychiatrical explanations. The only revolution that we wish to introduce into medicine is the denial of the limits ordinarily assigned to causes of disease and methods of treatment. The terms hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia, manic depressive insanity, and epilepsy are largely descriptive; the causes are revealed only by the autopsy and other such methods. Obsession does not displace other causes, but adds to them another factor. It is a cause, not a mere description, because it implies that an external agency produces the phenomena. A foreign influence is .added to the subjective conditions.

We cannot as yet say exactly how these foreign influences act. All that we contend is, that the facts are evidence that they do act; it remains for the future to determine how. This will be no easy task. We have but touched the surface in this problem, and we may have to experiment with a thousand cases in order to fix upon any generalization about the results or to determine rules of procedure and therapeutics. At any rate, we cannot generalize from the few cases that have yielded to investigation. We have still to experiment and to develop methods of healing.

 As to how obsession takes place, we can resort only to speculation. We have little data to go upon at present in this limitless field. I have alluded to telepathy as making possible the influence of mind upon mind independently of normal methods of causation, and said that we need not adopt a spiritistic hypothesis to explain the facts. But one cannot examine these facts and be impressed with telepathic explanations. When the existence of discarnate spirits is once admitted, we have to assume some sort of transcendental process as the method of obsession. Whatever the process is in telepathy, it is conceivably applicable to obsession. But the means are not the first thing to be determined. The frequency of occurrence is more important at present than the cause. We can hope to understand obsession if we can get at the reason for its frequency.

 Many features in the ordinary communications between the dead and the living suggest where we must look if we are to understand the phenomena, even though we have not as yet brought them under experimental control. In the first place, even in cases of mediumship, in which the process of communication is probably the same as in obsession, though under the control of more intelligent personalities, it is clear that many messages are involuntary. The communicator cannot always determine what he shall send. If the spirit present does not know his business, he may cause evils of all sorts without knowing what he is doing. If he knows what he is doing, the result will depend on his character. In addition to these factors, proximity of a spirit to an impressionable subject may expose the latter to either intentional or unintentional influences from the transcendental world. Obsession may be accidental rather than purposive; but, when once invaded, the subject is an open door for the transmission of anything that comes his way.

 For all that we know consciousness is a form of energy with its own laws of transmission and inhibition. If it be such, we can well surmise how the way might often be accidentally opened to the reception of foreign influences which may lead to disastrous results. But these influences are as often purposive and malicious as accidental; the problem is to ascertain how we may practically deal with such cases. The orderly or disorderly impingement of the spiritual world upon the embodied soul in the physical world depends on a combination of circumstances which we have not yet exactly determined. The influence may be found to have analogies with mechanical forces; its benevolent or malevolent operation may depend on our ability to regulate the conditions that make the influence possible, or to guide the agencies into a course of action that will not interfere with the normal life of men. That is no easy task. The cures effected have required much time and patience, the use of psychotherapeutics of an unusual kind, and the employment of psychics to get into contact with the obsessing agents and thus to release the hold which such agents have, or to educate them to voluntary abandonment of their persecutions.

 This is not the place for details of this question. All that I desire to do in this discussion is to suggest the wide application of the hypothesis in the treatment of cases regarded as incurably insane. It is the consequence to the theories and therapeutics of insanity that is important here. Dr. Meyer Solomon of Chicago, when reviewing the case of Doris Fischer, said that if our explanation of that case be true, we should have "to apply it to all hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia, manic-depressive insanity, and genius." I am not yet prepared to generalize or to determine extensions of the hypothesis. But we have proved enough to suggest the possibilities; and any physician who recognizes them and the facts will open his mind to revolutionary possibilities in the diagnosis and cure of cases usually regarded as hopelessly insane. Doris Fischer was so regarded by the physicians who saw her. Dr. Walter Prince, however, cured her by care and suggestion; until she became so healthy and rational that she was able to manage a chicken farm of large dimensions, to serve as Vice President of the Poultry Association in her home county, and to preside at meetings with tact and control. One case that I myself cured by hypnotic suggestion in three days has been perfectly well for five or six years, earning his living with his violin on the stage. He was sent to Bellevue Hospital in the belief that he was incurable.