Observations placeholder
Azam, Dr Etienne Eugène - Hypnotism, Double Consciousness and alterations of personality – Speaking in unknown languages
Identifier
029248
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
HYPNOTISM, DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS and alterations of personality by Etienne Eugène Azam
I recall the well-known story of a 20-year-old girl, hysterical and spontaneous sleepwalker, who spoke Latin in her attacks. But she was an absolutely ignorant peasant woman, and as the sentences she said were borrowed from the liturgy, there was a cry for a miracle.
A pilgrimage was organized, when a doctor thought he recognized sentences from the breviary in this Latin; he searched the girl's background, and he was sure that at the age of 12, she had been taken to an old priest, who used to read his breviary aloud before her. This Latin was only a strange evocation of an ordinary erased memory.
Broca quoted to me a young sleepwalker, who, taken to a Protestant pastor's house, was said to speak Hebrew; it was probably the same way.