SELF TORTURE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 559, 11 January 1929, Page 13

SELF TORTURE

WOMAN’S TERRIBLE ACT “FOR LOVE AND PURITY” Is it possible for a human being to thrust first feet, then head and arms, into a red-hot furnace, yet feel no pain? This question is agitating medical circles in New York. The case is that of Miss Elfrieda Knaak, a 33-year-old school teacher and mystic, who'was found nude and terribly burnt beside a furnace in the village hall and police station at Lake Bluff, Illinois, says the "Sunday News.” The woman, now dying in hospital, j says she burned herself “for faith, for purity and for love.” She insists that she felt no pain at any time, but the hospital medical staff are unable to believe this possible. Dr A. J. Rissenger, of that institution, says that to have burned herself iu this way Miss Knaak must first have placed her right foot in the furnace and have kept it there for several minutes. Then she must have stood on the burned foot and put the other iu the fire. After this, standing on two injured feet, she must have thrust her head and arms into the He and members of his staff refuse to believe that she could have stood the excruciating torture long enough to do these things herself, or without crying out or fainting. Yet no cries were heard, and apparently the woman at no time lost consciousness . before her discovery. I Dr. Clarence A. Neyman, a psychiatrist, of Chicago, who has figured as an expert in criminal cases, expresses the view that ' there need not necessarily have been any pain, “Persons may get into a mental condition, like a hypnotic state.” he savs “where they dissociate themseives with the world and enter the dream world.