Research source

VI. Other forms of involuntary indications; "involuntary whispering;" the subconscious 334

Date of account: Published 1900
Source: Fact and Fable in Psychology
Reference: Fact and Fable in Psychology · selected passage 107
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

From such experiments, ingeniously devised and varied, the commissioners concluded that the effects witnessed were due to an overstimulated imagination, to an anticipation of the result, to excitement and contagion. "Let us represent to ourselves," they say, "the situation of a person of the lower class, and in consequence ignorant, attacked with a distemper and desirous of a cure, introduced with some degree of ceremony to a large company partly composed of physicians, where an operation is performed upon him, totally new, and from which he persuades himself beforehand that he is about to experience prodigious effects. Let us add to this that he is paid for his compliance, that he thinks he shall contribute more to our satisfaction by professing to experience sensations of some kind, and we shall have definite causes to which to attribute these effects."

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.

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