[There are]...five cases
in which rape took place in hypnotic sleep and under the influence
of suggestion [and]... a theft on the large scale which was
effected solely by the instrumentality of suggestion. A person
who gave himself out as a doctor and hypnotised an ailing
woman was able to suggest her handing over to him a fairly
large sum of money on which he was able to keep his clutches.
- Janet, Psychological Healing, p. 312
In the past, writers have
always called her “Mrs. E.” I call her “Anna
Evan.” (It isn’t her real name; her real name is
unknown.) When this all began, in the 1920s in Germany, Anna
was not yet married to Mr. Evan. She had only just met that
nice young man. Mr. Evan had a steady job as a minor government
official, and had begun to court her. The criminal hypnotist’s
name was Franz Walter, but she knew him as “Walter Bergen”
and other aliases.
Later, under rehypnotization
by a police psychiatrist, Dr. Mayer, Anna relived her years
of hypnotic victimization. One day, she tried to explain to
Dr. Mayer how life as a conditioned, chronic hypnotic subject
had felt:
“I’m no longer
the same person as before. Something different controls
me. I don’t want to do something, but I do it. Or I
want to do something, and yet I don’t do it...in the
end I thought of nothing more than doing what Walter wanted.
If I obeyed I always felt more at ease. Within me I was
never free—there was always something oppressing me....I
can’t struggle against these pressures...the pressure
vanishes when I obey the commands of the inner voice.”
(Mrs. E., quoted in Hammerschlag, Hypnotism and Crime,
pp. 120-121)
When it was all over, she
had been the unknowing hypnotic subject of Bergen for seven
years, the wife of Mr. Evan for four. During those seven years,
Bergen extorted thousands of dollars from her, used her sexually,
sold her services as a prostitute, compelled her to attempt
murder on her husband six times, and caused her to attempt
suicide several times.
The Day It Began
Anna Evan, a naive farmer’s daughter, age 17, was riding
a train to the city on the day it all began. She intended
to find a doctor there who would help her with a minor stomach
problem. She traveled alone. Perhaps it was her first solo
trip, granted because she was a sensible girl with good values.
It can be assumed that she felt rather proud and adult to
be traveling alone to find a doctor and get treatment.
Anna found an empty train
compartment, entered, shut the door behind her, and seated
herself on one of its pair of facing seats. Shortly after,
a man opened the door and seated himself opposite her without
so much as a “Do you mind?” He introduced himself,
“Bergen.” She nodded and turned away.
Nothing that I have read about
her tells how she looked, so I must imagine that. I think
she was almost beautiful, but her nose was a little too broad
for perfect features. I think she had sky-blue eyes and thick
brown hair, worn long and loose under her demure traveling
hat.
Anna wanted to watch the lovely
German countryside roll by outside the window, but Bergen
pursued her with questions in a lively and friendly manner.
She was reluctant to talk to a strange man, but felt obliged
by her polite upbringing to answer all his direct questions.
Where are you going?”
he asked. She told him. “What is your purpose?”
he asked. She explained her intent to find a doctor and be
treated for her stomach ailment. It might be assumed that
she felt rather proud, and adult, to be traveling alone to
seek a doctor and receive treatment.
“How fortunate we have
met,” the man said. “I noticed, the moment I came
into your compartment, that you are ill. For, you see, I am
a nature healer, a homeopath, Dr. Walter Bergen. My office
is in Karlsruhe-Daxlanden. And yours is just the kind of illness
that I can treat very well.”
When the train stopped to
take on coal and water at Graben, Dr. Bergen invited Anna
to join him in the station for a cup of coffee. She demurred,
for he frightened her somewhat. He insisted, however, jovially
picking up her traveling bag and carrying it out the compartment
door. She stood up and followed her suitcase.
He picked a table for them
in the railway station restaurant and ordered coffee for Anna.
He made small talk while they waited for the beverage. The
waiter brought Anna’s cup of coffee and walked away.
Dr. Bergen suddenly seized her hand and stared into her eyes.
He was channeling so much mental command through that gaze
that, after a moment, Anna felt as if she no longer had a
will of her own. She felt so strange and giddy.
Bergen’s shocking hand-grab,
plus stare, technique may never before have elicited such
a quick and profound induction response as Anna’s. He
probably was secretly delighted and amazed at his success.
Actually, he had merely lucked onto a genetic somnambulist,
10 to 25% of the population.
Bergen had accomplished a
first induction. He probably now considered the delicious
long-term possibilities of controlling this young woman through
trance and did not let this opportunity escape. It can be
assumed that he next pushed her deeper into trance, deep as
he could. Then he suggested posthypnotic amnesia, and a posthypnotic
re-induction cue: “Whenever I say ‘Loxitov,’
you will immediately return to this deep trance state, and
you will never remember what happens in this state.”
Perhaps he brought her back to a waking state, then re-inducted
using his cue--several times. That training would have strengthened
her conditioning, for each re-induction usually causes a subject
to go deeper.
He gave further posthypnotic
instructions, telling her to obey either verbal or written
orders from him. He would use this means to cause her to come
back to future meetings with him. He also gave hypnotic suggestions
that her stomach would no longer trouble her. He collected
the money that she had brought to pay a doctor.
Bergen was not a real doctor.
“Bergen” was not his real name. He was a genuine
con artist. He could have been reading books on hypnosis for
years. Europe of that era had hypnosis texts aplenty. A scholar
named Max Dessoir had published a Bibliography of Modern Hypnotism
listing the numerous books on hypnosis that were published
after Mesmer first focused public attention on this subject.
Many books were in French, but some were in German. In 1888,
Dessoir listed 801 titles. By 1890, there were 1183. Many
authors discussed the possibility of abuse of hypnotic subjects,
even crime caused by suggestions under hypnosis.
Over the next seven years,
Bergen often instructed his unknowing hypnotic subject to
meet him at the train station of Karlsruhe, or Heidelberg.
He would then hypnotize her, lead her where he chose, do with
her as he wanted. He gave Anna suggestions to act in a way
that would appear normal to other persons (waking hypnosis),
although she was hypnotized and amnesic during those visits.
Suggested Sickness,
Suggested Healing
The “doctor” angle was very profitable for Bergen.
(It is possible to cause paralysis, muscle cramps, and every
sort of pain by hypnotic suggestion. Over and over,
he gave Anna psychosomatic ailments. Some of them were very
painful. If paid what he demanded, he then cured her by releasing
the previous hypnotic suggestion that had made her “sick.”
One time, he instructed her, “All the fingers of your
left hand, except the little finger, will become stiff. You
cannot move them any more.” (Hammerschlag, p. 107)
Bergen’s suggestion was
cloaked by amnesia from Anna’s conscious mind. So, after
he was done with her, Anna did not know why she could not
unclench her left hand, except for its little finger. No matter
how much effort she exerted, it remained shut tight. That
painful, inconvenient condition continued for months—until
her family gave her the money to pay Bergen’s past bill
and hire him to renew her “treatment.”
When she, at last, was able
to pay, Bergen pretended to massage her hand until she could
open it. (And he counteracted his previous suggestion that
had caused the clenching.) Once her hand could open again,
she saw that the growing fingernails had bruised and inflamed
her palm. Bergen then splinted and bandaged her hand. After
removing the splint, her hand still felt so tired that she
could hardly use it.
Mr. Evan remembered that incident
too. He told Dr. Mayer, “For...about 8 to 10 weeks, my
wife’s hand had a cramp. It was impossible to bend her
fingers. Another time, for 14 days, her hand was so firmly
locked that the inner side was all bruised as a result.”
(Mayer, p. 182) Anna learned to bring Dr. Bergen every dollar
she could get. If she did not bring money, he would subject
her, by posthypnotic suggestion, to dreadful new pains.
In trance, by Dr. Ludwig Mayer,
Anna later exclaimed, “Now I know where all those pains
came from!...Sometimes I didn’t bring money—because
I couldn’t get any from my parents or my husband. Then
Walter would say, “You will get so ill that they will
prefer to pay!” After that, I got the most awful pains,
which only vanished when he took them away by magnetic stroking
of me.” (Mayer, p. 131)
Bergen also used Anna sexually--free
for himself, and in paid service to other men. He also shared
his mental access to her with friends. If one of them spoke
Bergen’s posthypnotically designated cue word to her,
rapport temporarily shifted from Bergen to whoever had spoken
that word. Bergen’s friend then could use all the powers
over her that Bergen had developed. One of Bergen’s friends
began frequently to participate in her hypnotic exploitation.
How
Intense Can Hallucinated Pain Be?
Raymond
Wells did an experiment on creating imaginary pain in a hypnotic
subject. He pressed a fifty-cent piece onto a deeply entranced
subject’s bare arm. Wells told his subject that the place
where he was pressing the metal coin was going to feel first
warm, then hot--hot as if the coin he was pressing there was
a branding iron. He said the sensation of extreme heat in
that place would then remain steady for the next 24 hours.
Wells
then brought the student out of hypnosis. He told him to write
down his experiences during the next 24 hours, and to report
to him the next day. The subject wrote:
2:26-Red,
slightly swollen center. (He was apparently having a visual
hallucination or illusion of redness and swelling on his
arm—Wells)...Center of circle so hot it will not bear
touching. Cannot raise left arm above head without increased
pain. Pain interferes with holding card to write...Blister
more distinct now—at 2.35...Pain severe. Hot. Writhing.
So hot, consciousness almost blank. Will not stand this
longer than this evening. Can do nothing but try to relieve
pain. Hot, sizzling...2.40—Am crying with pain. Can
write no more.(Wells, "The Hypnotic Treatment of the
Major Symptoms of Hysteria," J. Psychol, 17:269,
1944.)
At
that point, the suffering hypnotic subject stopped writing
and started looking for the Professor. When he found him,
Wells rehypnotized the student and removed the pain-causing
mental instructions. The pain stopped immediately and completely.
Wells later wrote:
I am
convinced that he would not have suffered more if there
had been an actual hot iron pressed against his forearm
all the time. (Ibid.)
Murder Suggestions
It took a long time, but Mr. Evan finally began to voice suspicion
of Anna’s “doctor.” The husband had acquired
private evidence that her “treatment” included sexual
encounters, of which his wife seemed completely unaware. When
Walter Bergen realized that Mr. Evan was changing from a convenient
supplier of cash to pay Anna’s doctor bills into an active
threat, the “healer” began to give Anna hypnotic
suggestions to murder her husband.
Bergen tried six times; he
failed six times. The failures were partly blind luck, or
the grace of God, but also due partly to Anna’s unconscious
resistance to this most heinous suggestion. She described
all six murder attempts later, under Dr. Mayer’s rehypnotizations,
in the presence of her astonished husband.
First, Bergen told her (under
hypnosis as always), that she would go to a drug store and
buy a poisonous chemical used for furniture cleaning. She
would then add that poison to Mr. Evan’s food. When she
got home, however, Anna was gripped by such a mysterious,
extreme excitement that her concerned husband would not allow
her to leave the house to go shopping. Since Bergen’s
hypnotic instructions had been specifically cued for enactment
that particular evening, putting them off until the next day
disempowered the urge.
Bergen’s second murder
scenario was a shooting. He instructed the hypnotized woman,
“When you get home, you will take the Browning out of
the desk and hide it in a more convenient place. When your
husband is sleeping, get the gun, draw the safety catch, and
pull the upper barrel back. Hold the pistol at his temple
and press the trigger. Then place the weapon in his hand,
so that it will seem that he had committed suicide.”
Bergen’s hypnotic command
sequence had omitted an important detail. Anna did take the
gun out of the desk. She did hide it in a handy place. While
her husband slept, she did get the gun. She released the safety
catch as instructed, and she pulled the upper barrel back.
She held the pistol to husband’s temple and then pressed
the trigger. But the gun was not loaded, so her husband was
unharmed!
The next time Mrs. Evan was
compelled to meet Bergen, she told him her husband was very
upset and was seriously considering going to the police. Walter
then came up with a third plan: “Give him mushrooms,”
he ordered. “Cook harmless ones for yourself in one pan.
Cook poisonous ones for him in a different pan--the type with
a red skin.”
Consciously ignorant of the
murder plan, Anna cooked the two kinds of mushrooms. She served
herself the nonpoisonous ones. She gave her husband the poisonous
ones. He swallowed two spoonfuls, then left the rest on his
plate because of their disgusting taste. Two hours later,
the poison took effect: stomach pains, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Anna had no idea what why her husband was sick. She gave him
some mint tea. After a while, he felt better.
The next murder “failure”definitely
was caused by Anna’s unconscious fighting of Bergen commands.
The hypnotist had given her a packet of white powder and instructions
to slip the powder into her husband’s coffee. He warned
her that the powder would cause a little bubbling in the coffee,
and that she should take precautions so Mr. Evan would not
notice the effervescing. As she was traveling home, Anna took
the powder out to look at it. Then she “accidentally”
spilled most of it. That evening, obeying the posthypnotic
compulsion, she put the remainder in his coffee. Even that
little caused him severe stomach pain. He went to the doctor
for treatment.
When Mayer hypnotized Anna,
Mr. Evan was present every session. He was so astonished,
during her hypnotic regressions and recall of these murder
attempts, that he could hardly stay calm. He confirmed the
history of each incident (at last fully explained) for Dr.
Mayer. He had, indeed, been sick after the two teaspoons of
mushrooms, and after that cup of coffee.
Bergen tried again, switching
to a different, even more deadly, method of hypnotic manipulation.
He changed from direct murder instructions to an indirect,
deceitful presentation of those instructions. He now gave
Anna instructions under hypnosis which he claimed would keep
her husband safe.
Mr. Evan rode a motorcycle.
It had a hand brake and a foot brake. Under deep hypnosis,
Bergen told Anna to cut the hand brake’s cable because
that would force Mr. Evan to use the foot brake which was
“less dangerous.” He then instructed her to “turn
the screw of the foot brake several times to the left.”
He explained that turning the screw in that direction would
tighten it, and thus keep her husband safer. Anna objected.
She knew how the mechanism worked.
Walter said, “Your analytical
powers are disappearing. You must do exactly as I say!”
Then, he repeated the full set of commands again, plus his
reassurances that obedience would protect her husband.
Anna carried out the two acts.
Mr. Evan sat, amazed, listening
to his hypnotized wife tell all this to Dr. Mayer. Now he
understood the why and how of those strange brake failures
on his motorcycle! He told Mayer what had happened next. “I
was driving after dark, with a friend on my motorcycle. Just
before coming to the railroad, which had its barricade down,
the headlights of an approaching car blinded me. I didn’t
realize how close I was to the barricade. When the oncoming
car dimmed its lights, and I could see again, I was only 20
meters from the barricade! I jammed my foot down on the brake.
It didn’t hold. It tore through. I pulled the hand brake.
It didn’t hold either. I tried to get into first gear,
but accidentally went into neutral instead. I hit the barricade,
and crashed. Both my friend and I were hurt.”
Though his plan had failed
again, Bergen was encouraged by having come so close to succeeding.
After Mr. Evan was well enough to ride again, and his motorcycle
was back from the mechanic’s shop, the hypnotist gave
Mrs. Evan the same set of instructions, again.
Mr. Evan had another motorcycle
accident. Both brakes tore through again. He was perplexed
because both brakes had just been repaired. When his motorcycle
crashed this time, he was riding alone. His arm and knee were
injured, but he lived.
Suicide Suggestions
Frustrated by all those unsuccessful murder suggestions, frightened
by Mr. E’s reported thoughts of going to the police,
Bergen now began giving suicide commands to Anna. First, he
told her to obtain a prescription from her doctor for sleeping
pills and to swallow the whole bottleful the first night she
possessed them. She asked her doctor for sleeping pills. However,
he refused to give the visibly upset woman a prescription.
At their next meeting, she
told Bergen she had not acquired the tablets. He then “made
me feel dreadfully upset. He said I would die in terrible
torment, that my whole blood was becoming pus. He said it
would be better if I would kill myself rather than suffer
through that death. He advised me to jump off the train when
it was moving, but only when I was alone. He said such a death
would be painless. I was convinced and firmly decided to carry
this out on the way home, because I believed myself to be
terminally ill. But, on the train, I got into conversation
with an elderly lady to whom I confided my misery. She comforted
me and drove away the thoughts of self-destruction.”
(quoted in Mayer, 1937, p. 106)
Anna had chosen to converse
with the old lady. Almost anybody you discuss suicide with
will attempt to comfort you and drive away those thoughts.
Anna’s unconscious let them be driven away. Another suicide
set-up by Bergen was evaded.
The hypnotist did not give
up. On Anna’s next visit, he suggested that her husband
loved another woman and wished to divorce her--or somehow
get rid of her. In fact, Bergen said over and over to Anna
in his hypnotic urgings, her husband was secretly trying to
kill her because he was in love with that other woman. (In
fact, Mr. Evan had not considered leaving her, nor did he
have an affair.) Because of her husband’s (imaginary)
betrayals, Bergen said that she would drown herself in the
Rhine river.
On the way home, Anna did
feel utter despair. She made plans to drown herself in the
nearby Rhine River. Her unconscious saved her, this time,
by finding a way to alert the housekeeper to Anna’s state
of mind, and by picking a time to carry out the command when
the housekeeper and several other persons were around. The
housekeeper observed Anna’s depression, followed her,
and restrained her from drowning herself.
Anna obviously had a problem.
Up to this time, however, only her unconscious and Bergen
knew the real source of the terrible pressures on her. Mr.
Evan demanded, again and again, that she tell him what was
wrong. Anna could not tell. She did not know what the problem
was. She did not know that Bergen reinforced his amnesia commands
with threats to destroy her, if she betrayed him by revealing
anything to her husband. If she had consciously known what
was going on, she would have reacted immediately and correctly.
But her conflict was all unconscious, hidden from conscious
understanding, prevented from resolution by the amnesia.
Mr. Evan was married to Anna
during the last four years of her hypnotic abuse. At first,
he had no idea unethical hypnosis was involved in her situation.
Fortunately, he never doubted her sanity. He gradually realized
her true situation.
Mr. Evan Goes
to the Police
Mr. Evan tried, but he could not track down Bergen on his
own. Because of amnesia, Anna did not consciously know when
she was scheduled to see Bergen, what his real name was, where
she met him, or where he lived.
Walter Bergen was right to
fear Mr. Evan, for he finally went to the Heidelberg Criminal
Police office for help in solving the tragic mystery in his
wife’s life. He went in 1934, toward summer’s end.
He reported that his wife had been duped out of nearly 3,000
marks. He said the perpetrator was a man who had told Anna
that he was a doctor and who had given her hypnotic treatments
for various health problems. He said the doctor used several
names, all false. Neither he nor Anna knew the hypnotist’s
real name. Every effort he had made to discover the true name
and address of the hypnotist had failed. He told them that
he also suspected that the hypnotist had sex with his wife
while she was hypnotized, with neither her knowledge nor consent.
After hearing what Mr. Evan
had to say, the police called in a psychiatrist, Dr. Ludwig
Mayer, the most respected medical hypnotist in all Europe.
Dr. Mayer did not believe that unethical hypnosis was possible.
In his previous writings, he had always promoted the “dogma
of moral integrity,” that it is impossible to completely
annihilate a subject’s will by hypnosis.
When Dr. Mayer examined Anna,
he found no sign of any underlying illness, mental or physical.
Mr. Evan assured the doctor that his wife did not have sickly
relatives, was not sickly in her childhood, and had never
had mental problems. A series of other psychiatrists and neurologists--at
the Clinic for Women, the University of Heidelberg’s
Nerve Clinic, and the University of Freiberg’s Psychiatric
Clinic--also examined Anna. All agreed she was not mentally
ill.
On all topics, except events
having to do with Bergen, her memory was normal. Her only
mental abnormality was that she could remember nothing having
to do with the hypnotist. She had “forgotten everything.”
She was, however, able to tell Dr. Mayer the induction cue
which Bergen used on her! Bergen would put his hand on her
forehead. She would feel dizzy for a moment, and “tired,”
and then came the amnesic abyss.
Mayer Cracks
the Case
Dr. Mayer asked Anna’s permission to hypnotize her. She
gave it. The psychiatrist then used Bergen’s induction
cue: the hand on Anna’s forehead. If a hypnotist who
is attempting a rehypnotization uses the same induction or
deepening routine as the former hypnotist (deliberately or
accidentally), progress will be substantial. The first time
Mayer put his hand on her forehead, Anna went into trance,
but it was only a light state. (Perhaps Bergen had given her
sealing and depth-limiting suggestions.)
However, Mayer kept repeating
Bergen’s induction cue. Gradually, Anna’s trance
deepened. After several sessions of just repeating Bergen’s
induction cue, Mayer had this natural somnambulist deep enough
for hypnotic regressions. But she still couldn’t remember.
Bergen had threatened her
unconscious with the worst he could think of if she broke
his amnesia rule. If she remembered forbidden information
and betrayed his secret, he had warned that she would fall
dead, her father would die, and she would endure everlasting
damnation in this life--and hell in the next. Dr. Mayer found
it slow, tough going to fight those fear-based unconscious
amnesia commands and recover Anna’s memories. Bit by
bit, however, the memories did emerge.
Mayer’s first priority
was to identify the predatory hypnotist. He suggested that
Anna would hallucinate the hypnotist’s face. She did!
Bergen’s rules, which had made her unable to “remember”
his face, did not cover a request to “hallucinate”
it! She described that hallucinated face to Dr. Mayer.
The psychiatrist carefully
recorded her description, then turned it over to police experts.
They noticed that Anna’s description matched the face
of a man called Franz Walter who had just been arrested in
a nearby town for pretending to be a doctor! They put Walter
in a lineup and brought Anna in. She identified him as the
man she had met on the train, the man who had siezed her hand
and stared into her eyes.
Walter, of course, denied
everything. They locked him up anyway.
Dr. Mayer continued searching
Anna’s memory. One day, she visualized for him a letter
from Bergen containing instructions to come and meet him.
At Mayer’s suggestion, she “saw” the exact
words of the letter as a positive hallucination superimposed
over the blank whiteness of a piece of real paper he had handed
her. Anna held the blank page up before her, peered at it,
and “read”:
I order you herewith
to be in the station at Heidelberg on the 18th of this month
where I shall expect you at the exit at 4 o’clock.
Dr. Bergen. (Destroy this note.) (Hammerschlag, p. 106)
Another day, she relived him
taking her through the streets to an unknown place. She had
walked with her eyes open, but unable to see anything because
of his suggestions that she was blind. He took her to a room,
continuing to make those suggestions that she was “blind.”
He told her to lie down. He said, “You are receiving
treatment! Sleep quietly! You know nothing of what has happened
here, and you will not know later either!”
At this point, Mayer’s
hypnotic subject began to shake her head in a physical gesture
of “No, no” as she relived this event. She made
pushing-away movements with her hands. She began to cry softly.
After she awoke from the trance, Anna explained to the doctor,
“...now I know!...Through the hypnosis I suddenly know.”
She sobbed on and on. For a long time, she could not stop
crying.
Word Associations
Dr. Mayer made good use of the memory-recovery technique of
association, following the verbal, or imagery, linkages in
Anna’s unconscious memory. The result often was the uncovering
of some new fact about the criminal hypnoses that Anna had
not consciously remembered.
Mayer chose the cue words
from what Anna already had remembered. Fox example, after
Anna recalled being with Bergen in a swimming pool, Mayer
asked her to think of “swimming pool” and then describe
the next image that came into her mind. Anna said, “I
clearly remember a white Turkish towel. It has light blue
stripes at the top and bottom. I also saw a towel with lilac
stripes at Walter’s.” The police searched Bergen’s
room. They found both towels.
Dr. Mayer also obtained cue
words by hypnotizing Anna, then telling her to say every word
or thought which came into her mind--not regarding whether
it made sense to her or not. Her unconscious grabbed this
opportunity to provide evidence on Bergen, without breaking
his not-know, not-remember rules. It produced a string of
incriminating clues: “Shoe--Schuhmacher--5 Mark;. Auto--6071;
Combarus,” and so on. When Anna looked at the list of
the words which she had said, after waking up from hypnosis,
none of those words and phrases made any sense to her. Under
later hypnosis, however, when Dr. Mayer asked her about those
cue words, one by one, Anna was able to associate to them.
When Dr. Mayer said “Shoe—Schuhmacher—5
Mark,” Anna associated: “Walter bought the yellow
shoes in Speyer at the shoe shop. He left his old shoes there
and besides that paid another 5 Marks.” Police checked
it out and confirmed the accuracy of her memory. To “Auto—6071,”
she associated Bergen once coming to get her in a car with
that license number. Police established that Bergen had once
borrowed a car with that number.
The day that Dr. Mayer said
“Combarus” to her, and then asked what she remembered,
was a bad one for Anna. She had instantly plunged into the
midst of an intense experience of hypnotic reliving:
She is sitting with Bergen
in a hotel lobby. Another man walks up to them. He is a bank
branch manager named “Mr. B.” Bergen talks to Mr.
B. and tells him that Anna will satisfy him. Mr. B. hands
Walter twenty Marks (which Walter pockets). Mr. B. leaves.
Bergen keeps Anna sitting there a while.
They are alone now. He puts
his hand on her forehead. It is his usual cue, used both for
induction and deepening of a trance. He presses and says,
“Now, with no will of your own, you will do anything
the man asks you to do. You will remember nothing of what
happens. You will think of the word Combarus, and then go
into such a deep trance that you can no longer remember what
happens to you or where you have been.”
A female servant with strange,
brightly-colored hair comes and leads Anna away from pimp
Bergen, saying that she must go to Mr. B.
After awakening from that
chain of memories, an agonized Anna discovered that she could
now remember more. She told Mayer, “Walter did this often.
Every time he said the word ‘Combarus,’ I lost my
will power. Until today I knew nothing at all about this.
You must think I’m a terrible person. But I’m not
a slut and not a bad person. Right now I just want to go straight
into the river and drown myself. I’m so ashamed.”
Mayer learned that Bergen
often used cue words such as “Combarus” as a first
step in activating a complex sequence of posthypnotic suggestions
in Anna’s unconscious. Bergen would tell the hypnotized
woman that, under certain circumstances, she would think of
the cue word. She was further instructed that thinking of
the cue would then cause her to carry out some further command,
or commands.
Mayer’s
Book
In
his post-verdict German-language book about Mrs. E.’s
case, Mayer detailed twenty-one previous European court
cases which dealt with crimes caused by posthypnotic suggestion
(including Zebediah’s case). He warned the public of
the risks of being hypnotized:
...a
person in somnambulic hypnosis is not able to take up
a critical attitude on his own behalf...subordination
to the hypnotizer, and dulling of his consciousness takes
place, regardless of whether he is the subject of a legitimate
experiment or is being hypnotized for other purposes...Just
as suggestions can be employed therapeutically...they
can equally well be used for criminal purposes. (Mayer,
1937, p. 53)
His
book was enthusiastically reviewed in the German press.
It was much discussed by criminologists all over Europe,
and became a best seller in the European nonfiction market.
It was never translated into English, but an English researcher
who read it in German called it “without doubt the
most authentic and carefully documented example of the use
of hypnosis for criminal purposes...” (Edmunds,
p. 145)
Bergen’s
Assistant
After six months of daily sessions, questioning Anna under
deep hypnosis, Mayer discovered that more than one hypnotist
was involved in her abuse. Hovever that information didn’t
come out under hypnosis. In January of 1935, Mrs. Evan mentioned
to him in a normal conversation that she had encountered one
of the “criminal police.” Anna said the policeman
had insisted that she give him extensive information about
her case. She had done that.
The incident sounded improbable
to Dr. Mayer, so he double-checked. He learned that, whoever
he was, Anna’s questioner was not a legitimate policeman.
Logic suggested it was Bergen, but her description did not
fit Bergen. Dr. Mayer then questioned Anna, under hypnosis,
about the mysterious event. She identified the imposter as
one of Bergen’s friends, Alfred. She remembered that
Bergen had told her under hypnosis to “comply unconditionally,
and without any will of your own, with Alfred’s wishes,
if you hear Alfred say ‘Filofi.’”1
Dr. Mayer learned that, after
Mr. Evan began talking to his wife about going to the police,
Walter and Alfred had planned ahead for that possibility.
Their plan was for Alfred to manage a private encounter with
Mrs. Evan, drop her into trance with the cue word, “Filofi,”
and then give her instructions. She would, as usual, have
complete amnesia for both the encounter and the suggestions.
By this means, Walter and Alfred intended to cause great confusion
and difficulties for the prosecution during its questioning
of her.
The Trial
It required nineteen months of daily hypnosis sessions, each
hours long, for Mayer to recover the complete details of all
Bergen had done to her from Anna’s unconscious. The police
had obtained physical evidence which corroborated her recovered
memories. There would be a trial.
Before the trial, Dr. Mayer
demonstrated to court personnel how it was possible for Bergen
to share with Alfred his hypnotic control of Anna. Dr. Mayer
hypnotized her. She went into deep trance. Mayer did not give
a suggestion that she would obey only his voice. Mayer’s
assistant then said to the hypnotized woman, “You will
immediately become hypnotized if I say ‘ten’.”
Mayer brought Anna out of hypnosis. His assistant began to
count aloud the pages of a manuscript which he held. When
he said the number “ten,” Anna’s eyes closed.
She was again in a deep trance.
The case went to trial in
June, 1936. Like Adam at Zebediah’s earlier trial, and
like Nielsen at Palle Hardwick’s later trial, Walter
Bergen insisted that he was innocent, totally ignorant about
hypnosis, and had never hypnotized the alleged victim. Like
Adam and Nielsen, Bergen secretly tried to manipulate his
subject’s court testimony using hypnosis. Unlike those
cases, however, he failed. One reason he failed was because
Dr. Mayer stayed with the case and continued hypnotizing Mrs.
Evan.
In trance, she remembered
another of Bergen’s cue words: “Leichtbino.”
Bergen had said, “If you start to reveal anything in
court that could harm me, the word ‘Leichtbino’
will come to mind. Then you will feel sick and will not say
anything against me. You will only speak in my favor.”
The trial lasted three weeks.
Bergen was sentenced to ten years in prison for larceny and
for practicing medicine without a license. Alfred was sentenced
to four years.
Mayer and the German police
did everything right in this case. They even kept Mrs. E’s
true identity private. I hope that she and Mr. E were able
to live out the rest of their lives in peace and security.
However, in 1937. Nazis controlled Germany and World War II
was beginning.
Z
CANTOR
|
MRS.
E
|
PALLE
|
CANDY