The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

It is next to impossible to get a story of this sort accu rate in all its details, although it is the inessential details that suffer most change. f Dickens and Balzac were said to have constantly mingled their fictions with their real expe riences. Every one must have known some specimen of our mortal dust so intoxicated with the thought of his own person and the sound of his own voice as never to be able even to think the truth when his autobiography was in question. Amiable, harmless, radiant J. V. ! mayst thou ne'er wake to the difference between thy real and thy fondly-imagined self ! J

|For a careful study of the errors in narratives, see E. Gurney: Phan tasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 126-158. In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for May 1887 Mr. Richard Hodgson shows by an extraordinary array of instances how utterly inaccurate everyone's description from memory of a rapid series of events is certain to be. \ See Josiah Royce (Mind, vol. 13, p. 244, and Proceedings of Am. Soc. of Psych. Research, vol. i. p. 366), for evidence that a certain sort of hal lucination of memory which he calls ' pseudo-presentiment ' is no uncom mon phenomenon.

2. When we pass beyond alterations of memory to ab normal alterations in the present self we have still graver disturbances. These alterations are of three main types, from the descriptive point of view. But certain cases unite features of two or more types ; and our knowledge of the elements and causes of these changes of personality is so slight that the division into types must not be regarded as having any profound significance. The types are ;

1) In insanity we often have delusions projected into the past, which are melancholic or sanguine according to the character of the disease. But the worst alterations of the self come from present perversions of sensibility and impulse which leave the past undisturbed, but induce the patient to think that the present me is an altogether new personage. Something of this sort happens normally in the rapid expansion of the whole character, intellectual as well as volitional, which takes place after the time of puberty. The pathological cases are curious enough to merit longer notice.

The basis of our personality, as M. Bibot says, is that feeling of our vitality which, because it is so perpetually present, remains in the background of our consciousness. "It is the basis because, always present, always acting, without peace or rest, it knows neither sleep nor fainting, and lasts as long as life itself, of which it is one form. It serves as a support to that selfconscious me which memory constitutes, it is the medium of association among its other parts. . . . Suppose now that it were possible at once to change our body and put another into its place : skeleton, vessels, viscera, muscles, skin, everything made new, except the nervous sys tem with its stored-up memory of the past. There can be no doubt that in such a case the afflux of unaccustomed vital sensations would produce the gravest disorders. Between the old sense of existence en graved on the nervous system, and the new one acting with all the intensity of its reality and novelty, there would be irreconcilable con tradiction." *

* Maladies de la Memoire, p. 85. The little that would be left of per sonal consciousness if all our senses stopped their work is ingenuously shown in the remark of the extraordinary anaesthetic youth whose case "With the beginnings of cerebral disease there often happens something quite comparable to this : "Masses of new sensation, hitherto foreign to the individual, im pulses and ideas of the same inexperienced kind, for example terrors, representations of enacted crime, of enemies pursuing one, etc. At the outset, these stand in contrast with the old familiar me, as a strange, often astonishing and abhorrent thou. * Often their invasion into the former circle of feelings is felt as if the old self were being taken pos session of by a dark overpowering might, and the fact of such 'posses sion' is described in fantastic images. Always this doubleness, this struggle of the old self against the new discordant forms of experience, is accompanied with painful mental conflict, with passion, with violent emotional excitement. This is in great part the reason for the common experience, that the first stage in the immense majority of cases of mental disease is an emotional alteration particularly of a melancholic sort. If now the brain-affection, which is the immediate cause of the new abnormal train of ideas, be not relieved, the latter becomes con firmed. It may gradually contract associations with the trains ot ideas which characterized the old self, or portions of the latter may be ex tinguished and lost in the progress of the cerebral malady, so that little by little the opposition of the two conscious me's abates, and the emo tional storms are calmed. But by that time the old me itself has been falsified and turned into another by those associations, by that recep tion into itself of the abnormal elements of feeling and of will. The patient may again be quiet, and his thought sometimes logically correct, but in it the morbid erroneous ideas are always present, with the adhe sions they have contracted, as uncontrollable premises, and the man is no longer the same, but a really new person, his old self trans formed." f

Professor Strttmpell reports (in the Deulsches Archiv f. klin. Med., xxn. 847, 1878). This boy, whom we shall later find instructive in many con nections, was totally anaesthetic without and (so far as could be tested) within, save for the sight of one eye and the hearing of one ear. When his eye was closed, he said : !< Wenn ich nicM sehen kann, da BIN ich gar niclit—\ no longer am." * " One can compare the state of the patient to nothing so well as to that of a caterpillar, which, keeping all its caterpillar's ideas and remem brances, should suddenly become a butterfly with a butterfly's senses and sensations. Between the old and the new state, between the first self, that of the caterpillar, and the second self, that of the butterfly, there is a deep scission, a complete rupture. The new feelings find no anterior series to which they can knit themselves on ; the patient can neither interpret nor use them ; he does not recognize them ; they are unknown. Hence two conclusions, the first which consists in his saying, I no longer am; tbfl second, somewhat later, which consists in his saying, Tarn another person.* (H. Taine: de 1'Intelligence, 3me edition (1878), p. 462.

But the patient himself rarely continues to describe the change in just these terms unless new bodily sensations in him or the loss of old ones play a predominant part. Mere perversions of sight and hearing, or even of impulse, soon cease to be felt as contradictious of the unity of the me. What the particular perversions of the bodily sensibil ity may be, which give rise to these contradictions, is for the most part impossible for a sound-minded person to con ceive. One patient has another self that repeats all his thoughts for him. Others, among whom are some of the first characters in history, have familiar daemons who speak with them, and are replied to. In another someone * makes ' his thoughts for him. Another has two bodies, lying in different beds. Some patients feel as if they had lost parts of their bodies, teeth, brain, stomach, etc. In some it is made of wood, glass, butter, etc. In some it does not exist any longer, or is dead, or is a foreign object quite separate from the speaker's self. Occasionally, parts of the body lose their connection for consciousness with the rest, and are treated as belonging to another person and moved by a hostile will. Thus the right hand may fight with the left as with an enemy.* Or the cries of the patient himself are assigned to another person with whom the patient expresses sympathy. The literature of insan ity is filled with narratives of such illusions as these. M. Taine quotes from a patient of Dr. Krishaber an account of sufferings, from which it will be seen how completely aloof from what is normal a man's experience may suddenly be come :

" After the first or second day it was for some weeks impossible to observe or analyze myself. The suffering — angina pectoris — was too overwhelming. It was not till the first days of January that I could give an account to myself of what I experienced. . . . Here is the first tning of which I retain a clear remembrance. I was alone, and already a prey to permanent visual trouble, when I was suddenly seized with a visual trouble infinitely more pronounced. Objects grew small and re ceded to infinite distances — men and things together. I was myself im-

* See the interesting case of ' old Stump ' in the Proceedings of the Am. Soc. for Psych. Research, p. 052. measurably far away. I looked about me with terror and astonish ment ; the world was escaping from me. ... I remarked at the same time that my voice was extremely far away from me, that it sounded no longer as if mine. I struck the ground with my foot, and perceived its resistance ; but this resistance seemed illusory — not that the soil was soft, but that the weight of my body was reduced to almost nothing. ... I had the feeling of being without weight. . . ." In addition to being so distant, "objects appeared to me flat. When I spoke with anyone, I saw him like an image cut out of paper with no relief. . . . This sensation lasted intermittently for two years. . . . Constantly it seemed as if my legs did not belong to me. It was almost as bad with my arms. As for my head, it seemed no longer to exist. ... I appeared to my self to act automatically, by an impulsion foreign to myself. . . . There was inside of me a new being, and another part of myself, the old be ing, which took no interest in the new-comer. I distinctly remember saying to myself that the sufferings of this new being were to me indifferent. I was never really dupe of these illusions, but my mind grew often tired of incessantly correcting the new impressions, and I let myself go and lived the unhappy life of this new entity. I had an ardent desire to see my old world again, to get back to my old self. This desire kept me from killing myself. ... I was another, and I hated, I despised this other ; he was perfectly odious to me ; it was cer tainly another who had taken my form and assumed my functions." *

In cases similar to tliis, it is as certain that the / is un altered as that the me is changed. That is to say, the pres ent Thought of the patient is cognitive of both the old me and the new, so long as its memory holds good. Only, within that objective sphere which formerly lent itself so simply to the judgment of recognition and of egoistic appro priation, strange perplexities have arisen. The present and the past both seen therein will not unite. Where is my old me ? What is this new one ? Are they the same ? Or have I two ? Such questions, answered by whatever theory the patient is able to conjure up as plausible, form the begin ning of his insane life.f

f Sudden alterations in outward fortune often produce such a change in the empirical me as almost to amount to a pathological disturbance of self-consciousness. When a poor man draws the big prize in a lottery, or unexpectedly inherits an estate ; when a man high in fame is publicly disgraced, a millionaire becomes a pauper, or a loving husband and fathet sees his family perish at one fell swoop, there is temporarily such a rupture A case with which I am acquainted through Dr. C. J. Fisher of Tewksbury has possibly its origin in this way. The woman, Bridget F.,

1 ' has been many years insane, and always speaks of her supposed self as 'the rat, 'asking me to 'bury the little rat,' etc. Her real self she speaks of in the third person as ' the good woman,' saying, 'The good Woman knew Dr. F. and used to work for him,' etc. Sometimes she sadly asks: 'Do you think the good woman will ever come back ?' She works at needlework, knitting, laundry, etc. , and shows her work, say ing, ' Isn't that good for only a rat? ' She has, during periods of depres sion, hid herself under buildings, and crawled into holes and under boxes. * She was only a rat, and wants to die,' she would say when we found her."

2. The phenomenon of alternating personality in its sim plest phases seems based on lapses of memory. Any man becomes, as we say, inconsistent with himself if he forgets his engagements, pledges, knowledges, and habits ; and it is merely a question of degree at what point we shall say that his personality is changed. In the pathological cases known as those of double or alternate personality the lapse of memory is abrupt, and is usually preceded by a period of unconsciousness or syncope lasting a variable length of time. In the hypnotic trance we can easily produce an alteration of the personality, either by telling the subject to forget all that has happened to him since such or such a date, in which case he becomes (it may be) a child again, or by telling him he is another altogether imaginary personage, in which case all facts about himself seem for the time being to lapse from out his mind, and he throws himself into the new character with a vivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which he possesses.* But in the pathological cases the transformation is spontaneous. The most famous case, perhaps, on record is that of Felida X.>

between all past habits, whether of an active or a passive kind, and the exigencies and possibilities of the new situation, that the individual may find no medium of continuity or association to carry him over from the one phase to the other of his life. Under these conditions mental derangement is no uu frequent result. * The number of subjects who can do this with any fertility and exu berance is relatively quite small. reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux.* At the age of four teen this woman began to pass into a ' secondary ' state characterized by a change in her general disposition and character, as if certain 'inhibitions,' previously existing, were suddenly removed. During the secondary state she remembered the first state, but on emerging from it into the first state she remembered nothing of the second. At the age of forty-four the duration of the secondary state (which was on the whole superior in quality to the original state) had gained upon the latter so much as to occupy most of her time. During it she remembers the events belonging to the original state, but her complete oblivion of the sec ondary state when the original state recurs is often very distressing to her, as, for example, when the transition takes place in a carriage on her way to a funeral, and she hasn't the least idea which one of her friends may be dead. She actually became pregnant during one of her early sec ondary states, and during her first state had no knowledge of how it had come to pass. Her distress at these blanks of memory is sometimes intense and once drove her to attempt suicide.

To take another example, Dr. Rieger gives an account t of an epileptic man who for seventeen years had passed his life alternately free, in prisons, or in asylums, his character being orderly enough in the normal state, but alternating with periods, during which he would leave his home for several weeks, leading the life of a thief and vagabond, be ing sent to jail, having epileptic fits and excitement, being accused of malingering, etc., etc., and with never a memory of the abnormal conditions which were to blame for all his wretchedness.

u I have never got from anyone," says Dr. Rieger, " so singular an impression as from this man, of whom it could not be said that he had any properly conscious past at all. ... It is really impossible to think one's self into such a state of mind. His last larceny had been per formed in Nurnberg, he knew nothing of it, and saw himself before the * First in the Revue Scientifique for May 26, 1876, then in his hook, Hypnotisme, Double Conscience, et Alterations de la Persoimalite (Paris, f Der Hypnotismus (1884), pp. 109-15.

court and then in the hospital, but without in the least understand ing the reason why. That he had epileptic attacks, he knew. But it was impossible to convince him that for hours together he raved and acted in an abnormal way." Another remarkable case is that of Mary Keynolds. lately republished again by Dr. Weir Mitchell.* This dull and melancholy young woman, inhabiting the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1811, " was found one morning, long after her habitual time for rising, in a profound sleep from which it was impossible to arouse her. After eighteen or twenty hours of sleeping she awakened, but in a state of unnatural consciousness. Memory had fled. To all intents and pur poses she was as a being for the first time ushered into the world. 'All of the past that remained to her was the faculty of pronouncing a few words, and this seems to have been as purely instinctive as the wailings of an infant ; for at first the words which she uttered were connected with no ideas in her mind.' Until she was taught their significance they were unmeaning sounds.

" ' Her eyes were virtually for the first time opened upon the world. Old things had passed away : all things had become new.' Her parents, brothers, sisters, friends, were not recognized or acknowledged as such by her. She had never sesn them before,— never known them, — was not r.waro tha1*: cacii persons had been. Now for the first time she was introduced to their company and acquaintance. To the scenes by which she was surrounded she was a perfect stranger. The house, the fields, the forest, the hills, the vales, the streams, — all were novelties. The beauties o* fee landscape were ail unexplored.

" She had no1; the slightest consciousness that she had ever existed previous to tl:e moment in which she awoke from that mysterious slumber. ' 1'n a word, she was an infant, jus*; born, yet born in a state of maturity, with a capacity for relishing the rich, sublime, luxuriant wonders of created nature/ "Tho first lesson in Iier education was to teach her by what ties she was bound to those by v/hom she was surrounded, and the duties de volving upon her accordingly. This she was very slow to learn, and, ' indeed, never did learn, or, at least, never would acknowledge the ties of consanguinity, or scarcely those oi: friendship. She considered those she hud once known as for tho most part strangers and enemies, among wLcm she wa^, by some remarkable and unaccountable means, transplanted, though from what region or state of existence was a prob lem unsolved.'

" The next lesson was to re-teach her the arts of reading and writing. She was apt enough, and made such rapid progress in both that in a * Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, April 4, 1888. Also, less complete, in Harper's Magazine, May 1860. few weeks she had readily re-learned to read and write. In copying hei name which her brother had written for her as a first lesson, she took her pen in a very awkward manner and began to copy from right to left in the Hebrew mode, as though she had been transplanted from an Eastern soil. . . .

" The next thing that is noteworthy is the change which took place in her disposition. Instead of being melancholy she was now cheer ful to extremity. Instead of being reserved she was buoyant and social. Formerly taciturn and retiring, she was now merry and jocose. Her disposition was totally and absolutely changed. While she was, in this second state, extravagantly fond of company, she was much more en amoured of nature's works, as exhibited in the forests, hills, vales, and water-courses. She used to start in the morning, either on foot or horseback, and ramble until nightfall over the whole country ; nor was she at all particular whether she were on a path or in the trackless forest. Her predilection for this manner of life may have been occasioned by the restraint necessarily imposed upon her by her friends, which caused her to consider them her enemies and not companions, and she was glad to keep out of their way.

" She knew no fear, and as bears and panthers were numerous in the woods, and rattlesnakes and copperheads abounded everywhere, her friends told her of the danger to which she exposed herself, but it produced no other effect than to draw forth a contemptuous laugh, as she said, 'I know you only want to frighten me and keep me at home, but you miss it, for I often see your bears and I am perfectly convinced that they are nothing more than black hogs.'

" One evening, after her return from her daily excursion, she told the following incident : ' As I was riding to-day along a narrow path a great black hog came out of the woods and stopped before me. I never saw such an impudent black hog before. It stood up on its hind feet and grinned and gnashed its teeth at me. I could not make the horse go on. I told him he was a fool to be frightened at a hog, and tried to whip him past, but he would not go and wanted to turn back. I told the hog to get out of the way, but he did not mind me. "Well," said I, " if you won't for words, I'll try blows ; '' so I got off and took a stick, arid walked up toward it. When I got pretty close by, it got down on all fours and walked away slowly and sullenly, stopping every few steps and looking back and grinning and growling. Then I got on my horse and rode on.' . . .

" Thus it continued for five weeks, when one morning, after a pro tracted sleep, she awoke and was herself again. She recognized the parental, the brotherly, and sisterly ties as though nothing had hap pened, and immediately went about the performance of duties in cumbent upon her, and which she had planned five weeks previously. Great was her surprise at the change which one night (as she supposed) had produced. Nature bore a different aspect. Not a trace was left in her mind of the giddy scenes through which she had passed. Her ram-

blings through the forest, her tricks and humor, all were faded from her memory, and not a shadow left behind. Her parents saw their child ; her brothers and sisters saw their sister. She now had all the knowledge that she had possessed in her first state previous to the change, still fresh and in as vigorous exercise as though no change had been. But any new acquisitions she had made, and any new ideas she had obtained, were lost to her now — yet not lost, but laid up out of sight in safe-keep ing for future use. Of course her natural disposition returned ; her melancholy was deepened by the information of what had occurred. All went on in the old-fashioned way, and it was fondly hoped that the mysterious occurrences of those five weeks would never be repeated, but these antieipations were not to be realized. After the lapse of a few weeks she fell into a profound sleep, and awoke in her second state, taking up her new life again precisely where she had left it when she before passed from that state. She was not now a daughter or a sister. All the knowledge she possessed was that acquired during the few weeks of her former period of second consciousness. She knew nothing of the intervening time. Two periods widely separated were brought into contact. She thought it was but one night.

" In this state she came to understand perfectly the facts of her case, not from memory, but from information. Yet her buoyancy of spirits was so great that no depression was produced. On the contrary, it added to her cheerfulness, and was made the foundation, as was every thing else, of mirth. "These alternations from one state to another continued at intervals of varying length for fifteen or sixteen years, but finally ceased when she attained the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, leaving her permanently in her second state. In this she remained without change for the last quarter of a century of her life."

The emotional opposition of the two states seems, how ever, to have become gradually effaced in Mary Eeynolds : "The change from a gay, hysterical, mischievous woman, fond of jests and subject to absurd beliefs or delusive convictions, to one retain, hig the joyousness and love of society, but sobered down to levels of prac tical usefulness, was gradual. The most of the twenty-five years which followed she was as different from her melancholy, morbid self as from the hilarious condition of the early years of her second state. Some of her family spoke of it as her third state. She is described as becoming rational, industrious, and very cheerful, yet reasonably serious ; pos sessed of a well-balanced temperament, and not having the slightest indication of an injured or disturbed mind. For some years she taught school, and in that capacity was both useful and acceptable, being a general favorite with old and young.

" During these last twenty-five years she lived in the same house with the Rev. Dr. John V. Reynolds her nephew, part of that time keeping house for him, showing a sound judgment and a thorough acquaintance with the duties of her position. " Dr. Keynolds, who is still living in Meadville," says l>r. Mitchell, " and who has most kindly placed the facts at my disposal, states in his letter to me of January 4, 1888, that at a later period of her life she said she did sometimes seem to have a dim, dreamy idea of a shadowy past, which she could not fully grasp, and could not be certain whether it originated in a partially restored memory or in the statements of the events by others during her abnormal state.

" Miss Reynolds died in January, 1854, at the age of sixty-one. On the morning of the day of her death she rose in her usual health, ate her breakfast, and superintended household duties. While thus em ployed she suddenly raised her hands to her head and exclaimed : ' Oh ! I wonder what is the matter with my head ! ' and immediately fell to the floor. When carried to a sofa she gasped once or twice and died." In such cases as the preceding, in which the secondary character is superior to the first, there seems reason to think that the first one is the morbid one. The word inhi bition describes its dulness and melancholy. Felida X.'s original character was dull and melancholy in comparison with that which she later acquired, and the change may be regarded as the removal of inhibitions which had main tained themselves from earlier years. Such inhibitions we all know temporarily, when we can not recollect or in some other way command our mental resources. The systema tized amnesias (losses of memory) of hypnotic subjects or dered to forget all nouns, or all verbs, or a particular letter of the alphabet, or all that is relative to a certain person, are inhibitions of the sort on a more extensive scale. They sometimes occur spontaneously as symptoms of disease.* Now M. Pierre Janet has shown that such inhibitions when they bear on a certain class of sensations (making the sub ject anaesthetic thereto) and also on the memory of such sensations, are the basis of changes of personality. The anaesthetic and ' amnesic ' hysteric is one person ; but when you restore her inhibited sensibilities and memories by plunging her into the hypnotic trance — in other words, when