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The Life of a Sensitive – Madame Michael Bouissou

It must not be forgotten that the sleeping medium cannot spontaneously and of his own accord communicate his sensations, for he is under the complete domination of the hypnotist and can only reply to the questions he is asked.

The best analogy is probably that of a diver in communication with the land merely by his life line. Actually the sleeper under the influence of hypnosis dives through layers of oblivion to ever greater depths.

In the course of these dives a diversity of personalities frequently appears. We are neither spiritually nor mentally "all of a piece". Often, in a state of full consciousness, one of our spontaneous actions, thoughts, or feelings surprises us and does not seem to belong to us, It is these differences of personality which, liberated by hypnotic sleep, seem to make the sleeper several individuals in one. In my experiments four personalities, differing by their voices, their expressions and their desires, in fact by a psychology which seemed suitable for each of them, appeared in the course of the trance. They each had a different name; they were of different ages and tastes and the youngest of them complained bitterly of the discipline enforced by the two other personalities, which it called "the crones", while it called itself "green".

Often one of them expressed desires and regrets which the medium, on waking, recognised as having in fact crossed her conscious mind.

One can segregate through this experiment the different personalities, the mental ages and the different tendencies discovered in the same individual by psycho-analysis.

It must be mentioned that the medium on waking has no memory of what he said or felt during his sleep. (I myself only learned what had transpired from the very detailed notes taken at each session by Madame E-.)