Alterations of personality

Front matter

Sol

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Author's Preface

Fifteen years ago researches in pathological psychology, based upon the study of hysteria and suggestion, were begun in France, England, and other countries. Physiologists and philosophers gave themselves up enthusiastically to this new line of work, and in a short time a very considerable number of observations and experiments of different sorts were collected. The principal questions taken up with more or less fruitfulness were hallucinations, paralysis by suggestion, alterations of personality, diseases of memory, muscular sense, suggestion both in the waking state and in hypnosis, unconscious suggestion, etc.

As these researches were multiplied and extended, many discussions arose. Not only were there differences of opinion on questions of theory, but important facts confirmed by some were denied by others ; and so various schools arose. These controversies, which are of course to be regretted, but which are nevertheless usual and even necessary in new branches of research, yet tended in this case to cast some doubt upon the real value of the material.

My intention in writing this book is not to keep up the discussions of the schools. Instead of opposing my experiments to those of other authors, I wish to gather together all the results that have been reached in the x ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY.

study of one question in order to find out which of these results naturally go together and allow themselves to he grouped under general principles. I shall cite only those experiments which have been confirmed by all and which give a constant result, no matter from what point of view they may be conducted. And I shall suggest merely, without any attempt at estimation, those phenomena which have been observed so far only by one person, and which can not therefore as yet be brought into the class of kn»wn and accepted facts, and I shall subject my own works to this rule just as I do those of others.

The occasion seems to me a favourable one to make such an attempt as this, for the situation is now very singular. Many observers who do not belong to the same school, nor even to the same country, and who are not even working in the same lines or with the same objects, and who, moreover, are largely ignorant of one another, are nevertheless reaching the same result without knowing it ; and this result, reached by so many different roads, and resting upon such a variety of mental phenomena, is the " alteration of personality," the division or dismemberment of the self. It is proved that in a great many cases and in very diverse conditions the normal unity of consciousness is broken up and several distinct consciousnesses are formed, each of which may have its own system of perceptions, its own memory, and even its own moral character. I propose to give a detailed account of the result of these recent researches on the alterations of personality.

A.B.

Saint- Valery, 1891,

Table Of Contents

PAQE

Editor's Preface ▼

Author's Preface ix

Part I. Successive Personalities

CHAPTER

I. — Spontaneous somnambulism 1

II. — Spontaneous somnambulism (continued) ... 41 HI. — Induced somnambulism 76

Part II. Coexistent Personalities

I. — Amnesia of hysterical patients. — Repetition of subconscious actions 91

II. — Insensibility of hysterical patients (continued). —

Subconscious acts of adaptation .... 110 III. — Insensibility of hysterical patients (continued). —

General characteristics of subconscious action 122 IV. — Insensibility of hysterical patients (concluded). — The threshold of consciousness .

V. — Distraction

VI. — Voluntary and unconscious actions . VII. — Automatic writing: of hysterical patients VIII. — Ideas of subconscious origin

135 140 155 189 204 IX. — Plurality of consciousnesses in healthy subjects 219 x ii ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY.

Part III. Alterations Of Personality In Experiments On Suggestion

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Artificial personalities created by suggestion . 247

II. — The recall of former personalities by suggestion 261

III. — Actions from suggestion ...... 271

IV. — Suggestions from unconscious stimuli. — Hallucinations 278

V. — Suggestions from unconscious stimuli (continued).

— Time measurements 286

VI. — Systematized anesthesia 292

VII. — Division of personality and spiritism . . . 325

VIII. — Conclusion 344

ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY.

Chapter I. Spontaneous Somnambulism

The value of spontaneous psychological phenomena consists in the fact that they are not influenced from outside. They are not arranged for and unconsciously influenced by an investigator whose mind is already made up, it may be ; they do not correspond to any one's preconceived ideas. It is with such phenomena, therefore, that we may begin our study.*

The variations of personality found in diseased patients take on a great number of forms. It is not my intention to study all of them, but only a single type of them — i. e., the variations which take the form of two or more personalities in the same individual, the cases of so-called "multiple personality." This phenomenon is found in many different classes of patients. It is common in hysteria, and the hysterical cases are those which have been most adequately investigated.

The cases referred to often go by the name of som-

* Ribot has urged this thought in the preface to his book on Diseases of Personality, and I think it is very important. 2 1 nambulism. The term somnambulism is a proper one, provided it be denned. It is not always kept to a strictly exact meaning, and some confusion has arisen from the great variety of the instances brought to light by recent research. The case is similar to that of aphasia. When Broca studied it, aphasia was capable of one simple definition. It meant the loss of articulate speech. But now that so many other forms of defect of the function of speech have been discovered and analyzed — such as agraphia, verbal blindness, deafness, etc. — there is no longer aphasia only, but aphasias. Just so the term somnambulism now gets a broader meaning. It is no longer one particular and unchanging mental condition ; there are many somnambulisms.

In popular usage somnambulism is the state of those who rise in the night and perform automatic and even intelligent acts without waking. They dress themselves perhaps, resume their day's work, solve a problem to which they had vainly sought the solution before, then return to bed and to sleep again ; the next morning they have no memory of having been up in the night. Indeed, they are often much surprised to see a piece of work now finished which had been unfinished the evening before. Or they walk on the roof or perform some other equally startling feat. Authors are not as yet entirely agreed upon the nature of this sleepwalking, but the general tendency of the day is to admit that it covers a mass of irregular phenomena which resemble one another in appearance only, being really quite distinct in nature. Among the nocturnal somnambulists we must first consider the epileptics, of whom a certain number do show " itinerant automatism," so to speak. It is still admitted, at least provisionally, that perfectly healthy people may be found among these sleepwalkers, and that consequently a physiological " noctambulism " must exist. But the majority — the great majority— of somnambulists are undoubtedly afflicted with hysteria, and it is in a crisis of hysterics that this peculiarity of night walking occurs.*

In these phenomena we may see an example of double personality. These noctambulists are two persons. The person who rises in the night is entirely distinct from the one who is awake during the day, since the latter has no knowledge or memory of anything that has happened during the night. But it is not possible to make an adequate analysis of this state ; the elements are too obscure.

^Another form of natural somnambulism exists, however, which we may study. It is " daytime " somnambulism or " vigilambuhsm." "We shall confine ourselves to the consideration of this phase of the subject. We should be on our guard, as we have seen above, against confounding the various forms of natural or spontaneous somnambulism. The distinctions to be established depend upon the peculiar conditions in which these particular states of somnambulism are found, and also upon the characteristics which they present. We shall apply ourselves in this chapter to the study of a phase of natural somnambuhsm which presents the following characteristics : It concerns hysterical patients who possess, besides their normal and regular life, another psychological existence or second state, so to speak, of which they retain no memory in their normal condition. The peculiar characteristic of this second state is that it constitutes a complete psychological existence ;

* Consult on this subject a lecture of M. Charcot, reported by M. Blocq, in the Gazette hebd. de Med. et de Chir., March 23, 1890.

the subject lives the everyday life, his mind is alive to all ideas and perceptions, and he is not delirious. "Uninformed persons would never know that the subject is in a state of somnambulism.

The best examples that can be cited of the somnambulism that we have just defined are found in observations, now old, made by Azam, Dufay, and other physicians. These observations are to-day well known and trite. They have been published and analyzed in a number of medical journals, and even in some literary ones ; but we hope that recent researches of experimental psychology on the variations of consciousness will throw new light on these old facts. We shall study them from a little different standpoint than that from which they have been regarded until now, and perhaps we shall come to understand them better. Considered formerly as rare, exceptional phenomena, as genuine pathological curiosities, calculated to astonish rather than to instruct, these variations of personality now appear to us as the magnifying of mental disorders not uncommon in hysteria and similar conditions.

One of the most celebrated cases is the American lady reported by MacMsh : * " A young lady, well informed, well bred, and with a good constitution, was suddenly and without any preliminary warning overpowered by a deep sleep which lasted several hours beyond the usual time. "When she awoke she had forgotten all she knew. Her memory had retained no notion whatever of words or objects ; it was necessary to teach her everything again ; she had to learn

* MaoNish, Philosophy of Sleep, 1830. The observation belongs, it appears, to Mitchell and Nott, and appeared for the first time in 1816.

again to read, to write, and to count ; little by little she became familiar with persons and objects around her, although to her it was like seeing them for the first time. Her progress was rapid.

" After some time — several months — she was, from no known cause, attacked by a sleep similar to that which had preceded her new life. On waking she was in exactly the same state in which she had been before her first sleep, but she had no memory of anything that had happened during the interval ; in a word, during the former state she knew nothing of the later state. It is in this way that she mentions her two lives, which are continued separately and alternately in memory.

" For more than four years these phenomena occurred at about the same intervals with this young lady. In either state she has no more remembrance of her double nature than two distinct persons have of their separate natures. For example, during the former state she possesses all the information that she acquired in her childhood ; in the other state she only knows what she has learned since her first sleep. If any one is introduced to her in one of these states she has to study and recognise him in both of them to have a complete idea of him. And it is the same with everything.

" In the first state her handwriting was beautiful, as it had always been, while in the other state her handwriting was poor, awkward, and unformed, because she had neither time nor ability to improve it.

"This series of phenomena continued four years,

and Madame X learned to manage very well in her

intercourse with her family."

It is needless to detain ourselves with the analysis of this incomplete observation. The only advantage which it presents is that it gives us a concise idea of the variations of personality which we desire to study. We see at first sight that the characteristic of each of these personalities, the distinguishing mark, that which decides whether they are many or one, is a peculiar state of memory. In the first state the patient remembered nothing that happened in the second state, and, conversely, when she was again in the second state she forgot the first. Nevertheless the memory belonging to each of these states is well organized and connects all the parts, so that the moment the patient is in a given state he recalls the environment incident to it.

"We shall consider at greater length the observations on Felida, made by M. Azam, of Bordeaux. The observations have been very long and minute. They were begun in 1858, and are still unfinished, stretching, therefore, over a period of more than thirty years. "We shall reproduce the case here in full.*

Felida was born in Bordeaux, of well-to-do parents. Her development was normal. "When she was about thirteen she showed symptoms of incipient hysteria, various nervous troubles, uncertain pains, and haemorrhage from the lungs which was not explained by the condition of the organs of respiration.

She was a competent and skilful workwoman, and worked by the day as seamstress. "When she was about fourteen and a half, from no known cause, sometimes under the control of an emotion, Felida felt a pain in her temples, and fell in a profound languor similar to sleep. This state lasted about ten minutes. After that, and spontaneously, she opened her eyes, seemed

* Hypnotisme, double conscience, et alterations de la Personalite, Paris, 1887.

SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. f

to wake, and passed into the " second state," as we maycall it, that lasted an hour or two ; then the languor and sleep reappeared, and Felida became normal. This kind of attack recurred every five or six days, or more seldom. Her parents and those about her, seeing her changeable ways during this sort of second life and her forgetfulness on awaking, believed her to be insane.

Soon the symptoms of hysteria, so-called, became worse. Felida had convulsions, and the signs of lunacy became more alarming.

M. Azam was called to take the case in June, 1858. This is what he stated in October of that year :

Felida is a brunette, of average height, robust, and neither stout nor thin. She is subject to frequent blood spitting, probably merely symptomatic. She is very intelligent, and fairly well informed for her social position. Her disposition is sad, even morose. She is very decided, and her eagerness for work is great. Her higher feelings seem to be little developed. She is constantly thinking of her unhealthy condition, which to her suggests grave apprehensions ; and she suffers from sharp pains in various parts of her body, especially in the head. The symptom of pain in the head called clamus hystericus is well developed in her case.

Her gloomy manner and disinclination to talk are particularly noticeable ; she answers questions, but that is all.

"When carefully examined from an intellectual point of view her actions, ideas, and conversation are found to be perfectly rational.

She is attacked almost daily, from no known cause, or perhaps under the control of an emotion, by what she calls her crisis. In fact, she passes to the " second state." She is seated, her sewing in her hand; suddenly, without the slightest premonition, and after a pain in her temples more violent than usual, her head falls forward, her hands remain inactive and drop by her side, she sleeps or seems to sleep ; but it is a peculiar kind of slumber, for no noise or stimulus, pinch, or prick is able to rouse her ; and, further, this kind of sleep is almost instantaneous. It lasts two or three minutes ; formerly it was much longer.

After that period of time Felida wakes, but she is no longer in the same intellectual state in which she was when she fell asleep. Everything appears different. She raises her head and, opening her eyes, smilingly salutes those around her as if they had just arrived. Her countenance, formerly sad and silent, brightens, and is all gaiety; her voice is strong; and she hums while she continues the sewing which she had commenced in the previous state. She rises; her gait is brisk, and she scarcely complains of the various woes from which she had suffered a few minutes before. She attends to the usual household duties, goes out about the town, makes visits, will undertake any kind of work, and her gaiety and whole appearance is that of any healthy young girl of her age. No one would notice anything unusual about her. It is simply that her disposition is entirely changed; from sad she has become gay, and her gaiety amounts almost to turbulence. Her imagination is overexcited. From the slightest cause she is affected to sadness or joy ; instead of being indifferent to everything she has become alive to excess. In this state she remembers perfectly everything that has happened in the other similar states that have preceded it, and also during her normal life. It is well to add that she has always maintained that the state, whichever one it happens to be in which she is when one speaks to her, is the normal one which she calls her rational state, in opposition to the one which she calls her crisis.

In this life, as in the other, her intellectual and moral 'faculties, although different, are unquestionably complete ; there is no delirium, no mistaken judgments, no hallucination. In short, Felida is different. It can even be said that in this " second state," as M. Azam calls it, all her faculties seem to be more fully developed and more complete.

This second life, where physical pain is not felt, is much superior to the other ; and it is especially so on account of this fact, that while it lasts Felida not only remembers all that has happened during the former attacks, but also during the whole of her normal life ; whereas, in her normal life she has no memory whatever of anything that has happened during her attacks.

Presently, although the time varies somewhat, Felida's gaiety suddenly disappears, her head falls forward, and she relapses into a state of torpor. Three or four minutes elapse, and she opens her eyes and again takes up her ordinary life. It is scarcely noticeable, for she continues her work with eagerness, almost with frenzy. It is most frequently a piece of sewing, undertaken in the preceding period. She does not recognise it, and it costs her an effort of mind to understand it. Nevertheless she continues as best she can, at the same time bewailing her unhappy condition. Her family who are accustomed to this state help her to accommodate herself to it.

A few minutes ago she was singing a song, but when asked to repeat it she is utterly unable to do so. A visitor whom she has just received is mentioned to her, but she can not recall any one. Her forgetf ulness only applies to events that have happened during the second condition ; any general idea acquired before that time is not affected. She is perfectly able to read, write, count, cut out, sew, etc., and do a multitude of other things that she knew before she was sick or that she learned during the periods which preceded the normal state.

About 1858 a third state appeared, which was nothing more than an accidental symptom of her attack. M. Azam has only seen this state two or three times, and in sixteen years her husband has only seen it about thirty times. When she is in the second condition she falls asleep in the manner already described, and, instead of waking in her normal state as usual, she wakes in a peculiar state, of which the chief characteristic is an indescribable terror. Her first words are, "I am frightened ! ... I am frightened ! " She recognises no one except her husband. This quasi-delirious state is of short duration. Her two existences are perfectly distinct, as the following fact will show : A young man, about twenty years old, knew Felida very well, and often came to the house. These young people fell in love with each other and became engaged. In her second condition she became enceinte. In her period of normal life she was not aware of it.

One day Felida, who was more sad than usual, said to the physician with tears in her eyes, that "her malady was increasing, that she was becoming very large, and every morning she suffered from nausea "— in short, she correctly described her condition to him. During the attack which soon followed Felida said: " I remember perfectly what I have just said to you ; you must have easily understood me ; I frankly confess it. ... I am enceinte." In this second life her con-

SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. H

dition caused her no uneasiness, and she kept in good spirits. As she had become enceinte during the second condition, she was ignorant of it during her normal state, and only knew it during the other similar states. But this ignorance could not last. A neighbour, in whom she had confided, and who was more sceptical than she ought to have been, believed that Felida was shamming, and after the attack brutally reminded her of her confidence. This discovery affected the young girl so strongly that she was thrown into violent hysterical convulsions. When she was seventeen and a half years old Felida was confined, and during the two years which followed her health was excellent, no particular phenomena being observed.

When she was about nineteen and a half years old the symptoms reappeared in a moderately bad form. A year later she had a second and very difficult confinement, accompanied by expectoration of blood and many nervous symptoms connected with hysteria, such as attacks of lethargy, lasting three or four hours.

At this time, and when she was just twenty-four, the attacks became more frequent, and their duration, which was originally uniform with the periods of her normal life, began to exceed them. The pulmonary haemorrhages became more frequent and more severe and she had a stroke of partial paralysis, attacks of lethargy, trance, etc.

From her twenty -fourth to her twenty-seventh year the patient had three years of perfectly normal life ; then the disease reappeared. In sixteen years Felida had eleven confinements or miscarriages.

The second condition, the period of attack which in 1858 and 1859 only occupied about a tenth part of her life, gradually became of greater duration. It became equal to her normal life, then it exceeded it, and gradually reached such a pass that it almost entirely filled her existence.

In 1875 M. Azam, who had lost sight of Felida for a long time, again came across her, and found her to be a mother of a family, and keeping a grocery store. She was then thirty -two years old, and had but two children living. She was very thin, but did not look sickly. She was subject to a periodical loss of memory, which she erroneously termed a crisis.

But these so-called crises, which are, after all, nothing more than the periods of her normal life, have become less frequent. The lack of memory which characterizes them has caused her to make so many blunders in her intercourse with her neighbours, that Felida has retained the most painful recollections and is afraid of being considered idiotic. She is very unhappy when she thinks of her normal condition, and occasionally has thoughts of suicide. She realizes that at such times her character changes very much. She says she becomes spiteful and provokes violent scenes in her home.

She relates various incidents which show clearly the cause of her trouble. One day when she was returning in a cab from the funeral of a lady of her acquaintance she felt the period coming on which she calls her crisis (normal state). She dozed several seconds, without the ladies who were in the cab with her noticing it, and awoke in the other state, absolutely at a loss to know why she was in a mourning carriage with people who, according to custom, praised the qualities of a deceased person whose name she did not even know. Accustomed to such positions she waited ; by adroit questions she managed to understand the situation, and no one suspected what had happened.

She lost her sister-in-law after a long illness, but during the few hours of her normal state she had the mortification of being absolutely ignorant of all the circumstances of her death ; it was only by her mourning dress that she knew that her sister-in-law, whom she had known to be ill, had died.

Her children attended 'their first communion while she was in the second condition ; she also had the mortification of being unaware of it during the period of the normal state.

"A certain change then occurred in the patient's condition. Formerly Felida entirely lost consciousness during the short periods of transition ; this loss was so complete that one day, in 1859, she fell in the street and was picked up by passers-by. After awaking in her other state she thanked them, laughing heartily all the while, and they were very naturally at a loss to understand her singular gaiety. This period of transition gradually became shorter, and although the loss of consciousness was complete, it was so short that Felida could conceal it wherever she Happened to be. Certain signs known to her, such as pressure in the temples, warned her of the approach of these periods. As soon as she felt them coming she pressed her hand to her head, complained of dizziness, and after an almost imperceptible length of time she passed into the other state. She could in this way conceal what she called an infirmity. But this concealment is so complete that among those that surround her her husband is the only one who is aware of her condition. The variations of disposition are very marked. In the period of attack or of the " second condition " she is more haughty, more heedless, more preoccupied with her toilet, and, moreover, she is less laborious, but much more sensitive. It seems as if in this state she has greater affection for those around her.

In her normal state she is downcast almost to despair. Her condition is really extremely sad, for every thing is forgotten — business, important circumstances, acquaintances made, information given. It is a vast blank, impossible to fill up. Memory only exists for facts which have happened in the similar state. Felida has been a mother eleven times. This has always taken place during her normal state. If she is asked point blank for one of the dates she tries to remember, but makes a mistake of almost a month.

Some one had given her a little dog, which followed her and caressed her constantly. After a while a period or normal life occurred. On her awaking in this life the dog caressed her, and she repelled him with horror ; she did not know she had ever seen him. She thought it was a lost dog that had strayed into her house by mistake.

Her emotions also differ in the two conditions. Felida has become indifferent, and shows little affection for those around her; she revolts against the natural authority that her husband has over her.

" He always says ' I will have,' " says she. " That does not suit me ; it must be that in my other state I have permitted this habit. What distresses me," she adds, " is that it is impossible for me to have any secrets from him, although there is nothing in my life to conceal. But if I wished to, I could not do it. It is certain that in my other life I tell him all I think." And, further, her disposition is more proud and more obstinate.

The most distressing thing to her is the comparative inability occasioned by the losses of memory, especially when it affects her business. " I make mistakes in the value of provisions, whose cost price I do not know, and am forced to a thousand subterfuges to prevent being taken for an idiot."

It has several times happened that she has gone to sleep in the evening in her normal state and in the morning has wakened in the attack, without either herself or her husband being aware of it, the transition having taken place in her sleep.

Felida sleeps like every one else, and at the usual time, only her slumber is always troubled by dreams or nightmares ; moreover, it is influenced by physical pain, so that she often dreams of slaughter houses and of murder. She frequently thinks she is laden with chains or bound with ropes that crush her limbs. This is accounted for by ordinary muscular pains which take this form.

It is well known what part habit plays in life. Does Felida retain the habits acquired in the second condition, during the short periods of the normal state, when everything seems to be entirely forgotten ? M. Azam has noticed that during the short periods of the normal state Felida has forgotten the hours for meals ; but to take her nourishment every day at the same time seems to be a habit.