Observations placeholder

As quoted in Professor Ernest Bozzano Les phénomènes de bilocation Traduit de l’italien par Gabriel Gobron and translated further into English by Serge Patlavskiy

Second category - Cases where the subject sees his own double while maintaining full self-awareness (autoscopy)

Dr. Sollier [notes] the existence of anesthesia in the process of the phenomenon of "autoscopy". Here are some facts reported by him:

Case V. - She is a young woman of twenty-eight years old, a high-dose morphinomaniac. At the time of withdrawal from morphine she exhibited, as happens quite often, hysteriform phenomena, without her ever having had any before....

The next day, at night, she seems to be falling asleep, but in reality she is in a slightly cataleptic state, as can be ascertained when the position of her limbs is changed. Suddenly she complains and makes the gesture of pushing someone away. She then tells us that she has a person next to her who is exactly her, who is lying like her, and that she has to step back to make room for her. "It's boring, she says, to be double like that..."

After a few minutes of this scene with her eyes open and looking awake, I had an idea - finding that she was still insensitive - to blow into her eyes and tell her energetically to wake up. She jumps, looks at me and only then seems to see me:

"Hello, were you there?" she says to me.

She feels much less like her double. I then insisted on closing her eyes, and blowing on her again, ordering her to wake up. She stretches her limbs and trunk, yawns, and has a much clearer look. She still sees her double, but she can't see her arms or feet. However, I see that she is beginning to regain the sensitivity of her arms and legs and that she now feels when she is pinched.

But the trunk and head are still anesthetized....

The next morning after a contracture crisis I wake her up, that is, I make her regain more sensitivity. It appears to the limbs and most of the trunk. Only the upper part of the chest and head remain insensitive. However, she hardly sees her double anymore, which is in a vaporous state and hovers far above her.... The next day the sensitivity came back completely, even to the head, and since then the hallucination has never happened again." (Dr. Sollier, Bulletin de l'institut Général Psychologique, 1902, p. 48).