Case History: Mrs. E
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[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 hypnotized 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 1920’s 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 re-hypnotization 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 post-hypnotically 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 re-hypnotized 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 re-hypnotizations, 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 re-hypnotization 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 seized 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 hypnosis that Anna had not consciously remembered.
Mayer chose the cue words from what Anna already had remembered. For 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. However 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.
