Impressionable Peter

Dr. Leopold Thoma. a rugged and persevering psychologist of the University of Vienna, has for some 30 years been exploring the therapeutic uses of hypnosis on stammering, neuroses, childbirth pain. He holds the record for mass hypnosis, having once entranced 180 people at a crack. Reflecting that the nature of hypnosis is not well understood. Dr. Thoma some years ago decided to see what he could learn by applying hypnotic technique to highly intelligent animals. He chose the chimpanzee.

Scientists have induced a sort of frozen trance in chickens, rabbits, partridges and sea lions by suddenly forcing them into unnatural positions. Many a hunter has watched bird-dog trainers tuck a pigeon's head under its wing, plant it for the dogs to find. Dr. Thoma now believes that this state is probably not hypnosis at all. but a form of cataplexy (fear-rigidity). When he tried such crude tactics on chimpanzees in London. Vienna. Berlin and South America, the apes simply got up from their unnatural positions with an air of patient boredom. He then concluded that the intelligence of his subjects called for human methods. By this time Britain's gaunt Biologist Julian Huxley, interested in the experiments, had made it possible for the Austrian to carry on at the London Zoo.

Last week U. S. readers of the Illustrated London News were apprised of Dr. Thoma's success in being the first man to hypnotize a chimpanzee. Not wishing to waste time on aloof or doltish subjects,

Dr. Thoma conducted a musical test in the zoo to determine which chimpanzee was the most impressionable. "When the animals' curiosity toward the instruments." he reported, "had abated somewhat-they tried to tear the instruments away from us and play on them themselves-I discovered, to my surprise, that a soulful modern tango made a greater impression than an equally modern but turbulent foxtrot." Most fascinated by the music was a 7-year-old male named Peter. Dr. Thoma therefore went to work on Peter. The psychologist succeeded in fixing Peter's attention on a shiny metal knob, which he gradually withdrew, adroitly transferring the ape's gaze to his own intently staring eyes. In a monotonous voice the operator intoned. "Ooh-aah-ooh-aah." making "magnetic passes" from Peter's head down to his middle, while an attendant held the creature. Peter smirked a little at first as if he were invulnerable, but presently his eyelids drooped and he slowly collapsed in a trance, with one arm outstretched like a dozing farmhand's and one foot comfortably resting on the opposite thigh (see cuts). In this "torpid condition" he remained for seven minutes-a spectacle at which Biologist Huxley goggled in utter astonishment. Dr. Thoma had no way of ascertaining what was going on in Peter's subconscious mind during the experiment, but smilingly declared: ''This initial success with the chimpanzee fills me with optimism. . . .

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