Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore
hitherto but little studied) comprise two classes: (1) hallucinations of purely subjective origin; and (2) hallucinations of telepathic origin—i.e., “phantasms of the living” which have an objective basis in the exceptional condition of the person whom they recall or represent. Comparing the two classes, we should expect to find a large amount of resemblance, and a certain amount of difference, between them
§ 2. Certain marked resemblances at once present themselves; as that (generally speaking) neither sort of phenomenon is observably connected with any morbid state; and that each sort of phenomenon is rare—occurring to a comparatively small number of persons, and to most of these only once or twice in a lifetime
§ 3. But in pressing the comparison further, we are met by the fact that the dividing line between the two classes is not clear; and it is important to realise certain grounds of ambiguity, which often prevent us from assigning an experience with certainty to this class or that
§ 4. Various groups of hallucinations are passed in review;—“after images”; phantasmal objects which are the result of a special train of thought; phantasms of inanimate objects, and of animals, and non-vocal auditory phantasms; visual representations of fragments of human forms; auditory impressions of meaningless sentences, or of groaning, and the like; and visions of the “swarming” type. Nearly all specimens of these types may safely be referred to the purely subjective class
It is when we come to visual hallucinations representing complete and natural-looking human forms, and auditory hallucinations of distinct and intelligible words, (though here again there is every reason to suppose the majority of the cases to be purely subjective,) that the ambiguous cases are principally to be found; the ground of ambiguity being that either (1) the person represented has been man only slightly unusual state; or (2) a person in a normal state has been represented in hallucination to more than one percipient at different times; or (3) an abnormal state of the person represented has coincided with the representation loosely, but not exactly; or (4) the percipient has been in a condition of anxiety, awe, or expectancy, which might be regarded as the independent cause of his experience
§ 5. The evidence that mere anxiety may produce sensory hallucination is sufficient greatly to weaken, as evidence for telepathy, any case where that condition has been present
§ 6. The same may be said of the form of awe which is connected with the near sense of death; and (except in a few “collective” cases) abnormal experiences which have followed death have been excluded from the telepathic evidence, if the fact of the death was known to the percipient. As to the included cases that have followed death by an appreciable interval, reasons are given for preferring the hypothesis of deferred development to that of post mortem influence—though the latter hypothesis would be quite compatible with the psychical conception of telepathy
§ 7. There is definite evidence to show that mere expectancy may produce hallucination
One type which is probably so explicable being the delusive impression of seeing or hearing a person whose arrival is expected
§ 8. There is, however, a group of arrival-cases where the impending arrival was unknown or unsuspected by the percipient; or where the phantasm has included some special detail of appearance which points to a telepathic origin
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS.
§ 2. Gradual development is briefly illustrated in the purely subjective class
§ 3. And at greater length in the telepathic class. It may exhibit itself (1) in delayed recognition of the phantasm on the part of the percipient
Or (2) in the way in which the phantasm gathers visible shape
Or (3) in the progress of the hallucination through several distinct stages, sometimes affecting more than one sense
§ 4. Originality of construction is involved to some extent in every sensory hallucination which is more than a mere revival of familiar images; but admits of very various degrees
§ 5. In telepathic hallucinations, the signs of the percipient’s own constructive activity are extremely important. For the difference from the results of experimental thought-transference, which telepathic phantasms exhibit, in representing what is not consciously occupying the agent’s mind—to wit, his own form or voice—ceases to be a difficulty in proportion as the extent of the impression transferred from the agent to the percipient can be conceived to be small, and the percipient’s own contribution to the phantasm can be conceived to be large
It may be a peculiarity of the transferred idea that it impels the receiving mind to react on it, and to embody and project it as a hallucination; but the form and detail of the embodiment admit—as in dream—of many varieties, depending on the percipient’s own idiosyncrasies and associations
§ 6. Thus the percipient may invest the idea of his friend, the agent, with features of dress or appurtenance that his own memory supplies. (One of the examples given, No. 202, illustrates a point common to the purely subjective and to the telepathic class, and about equally rare in either—the appearance of more than one figure)
§ 7. Or the investing imagery may be of a more fanciful kind—sometimes the obvious reflection of the percipient’s habitual beliefs, sometimes the mere bizarrerie of what is literally a “waking dream.” Arany difficulties vanish, when the analogy of dream is boldly insisted on
Examples of phantasmal appearances presenting features which would in reality be impossible
The luminous character of many visual phantasms is specially to be noted, as a feature common to the purely subjective and to the telepathic class
Examples of imagery connected with ideas of death, and of religion
§ 8. Sometimes, however, the phantasm includes details of dress or aspect which could not be supplied by the percipient’s mind. Such particulars may sometimes creep without warrant even into evidence where the central fact of the telepathic coincidence is correctly reported; but where genuinely observed, they must apparently be attributed to a conscious or sub-conscious image of his own appearance (or of some feature of it) in the agent’s mind, to which the percipient obtains access by what may be again described as telepathic clairvoyance. Examples
In cases where the details of the phantasm are such as either mind might conceivably have supplied, it seems simpler to regard them as the contributions of the percipient, than to suppose that a clean-cut and complete image bas been transferred to him from indefinite unconscious or sub-conscious strata of the agent’s mind
§ 9. The development of a phantasm from the nucleus of a transferred impression is a fact strongly confirmatory of the view maintained in the preceding chapters, as to the physiological starting point of many hallucinations. Especially must the hypothesis of centrifugal origin (of a process in the direction from higher to lower centres) commend itself in cases where the experience seems to have implied the quickening of vague associations and distant memories, whose physical record must certainly lie in the highest cerebral tracts
§ 10. Summary of the various points of parallelism between purely subjective and telepathic phantasms, whereby their identity as phenomena for the senses seems conclusively established. But they present also some very important contrasts