C.Kunin In the context of Charcot and Bernheim, both
of whom used hypnosis extensively in their work, I would like to remind the list
of a few of the references to hypnosis in PF. In the archives I found this
speculation of my own: [...] As has been noticed from the beginning,
Kinbote's notes do not annotate the poem[...] If John Shade has gone mad and has
been institutionalized, could the "commentary" not be a record of his therapy?
[...]His therapist, in other words, uses snippits of the poem to induce
Shade/Kinbote to free-associate, and the result is the "Commentary". There are
several references to mesmerism/hypnosis in the novel, including a trilby worn
by Gradus. Is Shade under hypnosis? [...]To this I would add that Kinbote's
annotation to l. 949 is actually addressed to a doctor. Also note
Nabokov's neologism "autoneurypnological" shows that he was aware of a very
early work on hypnosis, Neurypnology or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep (London,
1843) by James Braid, who later coined the simpler word
"hypnosis."
JM: The question
[ "I read somewhere that VN was acquainted with Charcot's
experiments with hysterics. He also seems to have made reference to the famous
umbrella experiment by Bernheim, but I cannot remember where and in what
context"] was posed by me, not SB.
Here is one of
the descriptions of hypnosis/umbrella that so fascinated Freud -
inserted because one of VN's comments seemed to allude to this hypnotic
experience. Unfortunately
the two garbled references to umbrellas found in Pnin and in
LATH are unrelated to the one I had in mind - and I'll keep
looking for it.
S.Soloviev noted that
"multiple personality theory has this weakness - you just don't see what
pieces of true gold you throw away because you underestimate their
meaning.Is it because you don't have this emigrant experience yourselves?".
In one way or another there seems to be an implicit agreement that there is
something farsical in the prevalence of a "multiple personality
theory" reading of PF.
Joseph Wortis: Fragments of an analysis with
Freud (January 25, 1935)
I had recently seen a demonstration
of hypnosis, and Freud told me how hypnosis was the phenomenon which first
convinced him of the existence of the unconscious and stimulated the first
growth of psychoanalysis. He told me in vivid detail of the
demonstration of Bernheim at Nancy, especially
of the phenomenon of
post-hypnotic suggestion. Bernheim had told a man, for example, that he
would open an umbrella and walk around the room with it on
wakening which
the man did, and then attempted to explain rationally: he just
wanted to see if the umbrella was intact. When Bernheim insisted however
that that was not the real reason, the man slowly and with difficulty
finally said he was doing it upon command; this proved to Freud that it
was possible to elicit nconscious material by coaxing and
encouraging a patient. "There has to this day", he said, "never been a
better demonstration of the existence of the unconscious than the
phenomenon of hypnosis. When philosophers talk about the
impossibility of the unconscious, one can only advise them to witness an
hypnosis; but people don't want to be shown that is the way human beings
are".
www.archive.org/stream/fragmentsofanana011502mbp/fragmentsofanana011502mbp_dj...
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LATH: (a) I recollect that I had
an umbrella... the scene is not sufficiently abstract and
schematic, so let me retake it. I...Vadim Vadimovich, lying in bed
on my back in ideal darkness [...] imagine diurnal Vadim
Vadimovich crossing a street[...] encased in my vertical self [...]
I imagine myself walking the twenty paces needed
to reach the opposite sidewalk, then stopping with an
unprintable curse and deciding to go back for the umbrella I left in the
shop;
(b) Louise [...]a silver-plated umbrella
stand in the shape of a giant jackboot - there was
"something about rain strangely attractive to her" as her "analyst" wrote me in
one of the silliest letters that man ever wrote to
man.
PNIN: Nothing of the slightest interest to
therapists could Victor be made to discover in those beautiful, beautiful
Rorschach ink blots, wherein children see, or should see, all kinds of
things, seascapes, escapes, capes, the worms of imbecility, neurotic tree
trunks, erotic galoshes, umbrellas, and dumb-bells...The Sterns reported that'
unfortunately the psychic value of Victor's Mind Pictures and Word Associations
is completely obscured by the boy's artistic
inclinations.'