y of California irn Regional ,ry Facility BY ALFRED BINET DIRECTOR OF THE LABORATORY OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE SORBONNE (HAUTES ETUDES), PARIS TRANSLATED BY HELEN GREEN BALDWIN WITH NOTES AND A PREFACE BY J. MARK BALDWIN PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Ed./Pych. library EDITOR'S PREFACE. THIS book of M. Binet's has already rendered serv- ice in the original, both in the way which he indicates in his preface as a resume of results in the very inter- esting field which it covers and also as a handbook of the topic for the general reader. In this latter capaci- ty it is eminently suited to its place in this series. It should have a wide reading by educated persons who are not psychologists, but who yet wish to know the sort of experiments the psychologists and medical men are making in this extraordinary department of investi- gation. M. Binet, who is now Director of the Laboratory for Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne, Paris, is already so well known to readers of English that it would be quite out of place to speak either of his scien- tific position or of his power of popular statement ex- cept in reference to this particular book, now for the first time made accessible in English. The work ap- peared in France in 1891, and was at once welcomed as an authoritative statement of the best results by one of the investigators who had done much to discover them. M. Binet's moderation of statement and calm- ness of view, in a field where great extravagances have been witnessed and where controversy has been fierce, v i ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. will commend the book to all those who value these scientific qualities. The general hypothesis which M. Binet finds him- self driven to that of contemporary "personalities" in the same individual, even in normal life may seem to some unnecessary ; and indeed the evidence is at points not yet adequate to the conclusion, I think, un- less we admit the contention of M. Binet, that " persoi^- ality " is a thinff of relative synthesis which may be manifested in very varied degrees of completeness. Starting with the cases of " double personality " as lie does, cases in which the evidence is very strong, and working from these up, through the manifestations of subconscious action by hysterical patients, to the inter- pretation of certain phenomena of normal life it is certainly hard to draw a line anywhere, and the author seems justified in keeping throughout to the use of the word "personality," with which he sets out. But I confess that I have a certain hesitation as to whether the method might not the rather be reversed. Might we not say that the facts of the normal life may be very well explained by the theories of " nervous habit," " suggestion," etc., and that it is probable that the more exaggerated phenomena of the hysterical cases and the " double personality " instances are possibly " limiting cases " so that it is necessary to call in a real duality or plurality of personal mental lives only when these principles clearly break down ? It seems to me the safer course, from a scientific point of view, to carry the normal as far as possible before resorting to the abnormal as an explaning principle, rather than to begin with what is clearly abnormal and bring it up into the current mental life. This would seem to me especially the case where the Criteria of so-called.. EDITOR'S PREFACE. v ii " personalityjlarp so 1ftgggij""fl4forR of relative habit and !is are the variations in memory and character which M. .Biiiet uses to define differences of personality. ^ ^i a. > H- r/ This possible difference of interpretation is clearly recognised, however, by M. Binet, and those who are acquainted with the outlines of the theory of the Nancy school, who make so much of "suggestion," will be able to see how strong the case may be made against that point of view. Theories aside, moreover, the reader be he psychologist, medical man, a mem- ber only of the "intelligent public" will value the collected resources here presented for the study of the subject and admire the candour and ability with which the author has marshalled them. The best literature is still to be found in the works which the author cites in his pages : the books of Janet and Bernheim, the articles of Meyers in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, the great chapter on The Consciousness of Self in William James's Principles of Psychology. Later things from a critical point of view are "Wundt's Hypnotismus und Suggestion and Ladd's theoretical chapter on The Con- sciousness of Identity and Double Consciousness in his Philosophy of Mind. Dessoir's Das Dopple Ich may also be consulted. I have reported detailed observa- tions of " suggestive " phenomena in child life, in the chapter on Suggestion in my work on Mental Develop- ment. Hack Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medi- cine contains concise authoritative articles on Sugges- tion by Bernheim and Double Consciousness by Azam. The slight foot-notes which I have added here an3 there hardly justify the word " editor." J. MARK BALDWIN. PRINCETON, April, 1896. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. FIFTEEN years ago researches in pathological psy- chology, based upon the study of hysteria and suggestion, were begun in France, England, and other countries. Physiologists and philosophers gave themselves up en- thusiastically 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 fruit- fulness were hallucinations, paralysis by suggestion, alterations of personality, diseases of memory, muscular sense, suggestion both in the waking state and in hyp- nosis, unconscious suggestion, etc. As these researches were multiplied and extended, many discussions arose. Not only were there differ- ences 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 reachedln the ggjBbMMMM^MM^^BMMMMMMMMBMM Jx x ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. study of one question in order to find out wliich of the.se results naturally go together and allow themselves to be 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 wliich can not therefore as yet be brought into the class of known and accepted facts, and I shall subject iny 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 with- out knowing it ; and this result, reached by so many (Hire rent roads, and resting upon such a variety of men- tal 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 condi- tions 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, 1S01, TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE EDITOR'S PREFACE v AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix PART I. SUCCESSIVE PERSONALITIES. CHAPTER I. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM 1 II. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM (CONTINUED) ... 41 III. INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM 76 PART II. COEXISTENT PERSONALITIES. I. AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. REPETITION OF SUB- CONSCIOUS 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 .... 135 V. DISTRACTION 140 VI. VOLUNTARY AND UNCONSCIOUS ACTIONS . . . .155 VII. AUTOMATIC WRITING OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS . . 19 VIII. IDEAS OF SUBCONSCIOUS ORIGIN 204 IX. PLURALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESSES IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS 219 zi x ii ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. 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. HALLUCINA- TIONS .......... 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. 8383 PART I. SUCCESSIVE PERSONALITIES IN THE SAME ORGANISM. CHAPTEE 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 pa- tients 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 phe- nomenon 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. 1 2 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. nambulism. The term somnambulism is a proper one, provided it be defined. 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 func- tion 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 even- ing 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 somnambu- lists 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 SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 3 sleepwalkers, and that consequently a physiological " noctambulism " must exist. But the majority the great majority of somnambulists are undoubtedly af- flicted 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 per- sons. 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, how- ever, which we may study. It is "daytime" somnam- bulism or " vigilambulism." 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 sponta- neous somnambulism. The distinctions to be estab- lished 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 somnambulism which presents the following characteristics : It concerns hysterical patients who possess, besides their normal and regular life, an- other psychological existence or second state, so to speak, of which they retain no memory in their normal con- dition. 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 22, 1890. 4 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. the subject lives the everyday life, his mind is alive to all ideas and perceptions, and he is not delirious. Un- informed persons would never know that the subject is in a state of somnambulism. The best examples that can be cited of the somnam- bulism that we have just defined are found in observa- tions, now old, made by Azam, Dufay, and other phy- sicians. 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 experi- mental 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 disor- ders not uncommon in hysteria and similar conditions. One of the most celebrated cases is the American lady reported by MacNish : * " 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 neces- sary to teach her everything again ; she had to learn * MacNish, Philosophy of Sleep, 1830. The observation be- longs, it appears, to Mitchell and Nott, and appeared for the first time in 1816. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 5 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 ex- actly the same state in which she had been before her first sleep, but she had no memory of anything that had hap- pened 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 contin- ued separately and alternately in memory. " For more than four years these phenomena oc- curred 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 for- mer 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 every- thing. " In the first state her handwriting was beautiful, as it had always been, while in the other state her hand- writing 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 6 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. it presents is that it gives us a concise idea of the varia- tions of personality which we desire to study. We see at first sight that the characteristic of each of these per- sonalities, 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, con- versely, 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 ob- servations have been very long and minute. They were begun in 1858, and are still unfinished, stretching, there- fore, 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 haemor- rhage 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. 7 to wake, and passed into the " second state," as we may call 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 posi- tion. Her disposition is sad, even morose. She is very decided, and her eagerness for work_ia_gr.eat. Her higher feelings seem to be little developed. She is con- stantly thinking of her unhealthy condition, which to her suggests grave apprehensions ; and she suffers from 8haj*pjain8^n_various parts of her body, especially in " the head. The symptom of pain in the head called cla/vus 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 ; sud- 8 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. denly, 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 jier_head andj opening her eyes, smilingly salutes those around her as if they had just arrived. Her coun- tenance^ formerly sad jmd silent, brightens^ and is all gaie^^h^r_jzoicjB_js_strong^ and jhe_luims_wiiile she contmiiesjihe sewing wjbichjshejhad 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 un- usual about her. It is simply that her disposition is entirely changed,; from sad she has become gay, and her gaiety amounts almost toturbulence. Her imagi- nation 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 hap- pened 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, which- ever one it happens. to be in which she is when one SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 9 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 judg- ments, 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 de- veloped and more complete. This second life, where physicaljpain 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 what- ever of anything that has happened during her attacks. Presently, although the time varies somewhat, Fe- lida'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. Neverthe- less she continues as best she can, at the same time be- wailing her unhappy condition. Her family who are accustomed to this state help her to accommodate her- self 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 forgetfulness 10 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. 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 noth- ing 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, in- stead 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 sec- ond 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 hys- terical 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 par- ticular 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 con- finement, 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 12 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. equal to her normal life, then it exceeded it, and grad- ually 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 be- comes 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. Accus- tomed to such positions she waited ; by adroit questions she managed to understand the situation, and no one suspected what had happened. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 13 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 cir- cumstances 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 mor- tification 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 tran- sition 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, more- over, she is less laborious, but much more sensitive. It 14 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. seems as if in this state she has greater affection for those around her. In her normal state she is downcast almost to de- spair. 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 con- ceal. But if I wished to, I could not do it. It is cer- tain 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 SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 15 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 her- self 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 f orm. 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. In 1877 Felida was thirty-four years old. She lived at home with her husband and the two children who were left to her. From force of circumstances she had returned to her old trade of seamstress and conducted a little shop. Her general health was wretched, for she suffered from neuralgia, haemorrhages, contractures, and local paralysis. But she was very courageous, nevertheless, especially in the second condition, when her pains were less severe. 16 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. The period of transition by which Felida enters into the second condition becomes shorter and shorter. Although she has become more skilful at concealing it, the loss of consciousness is complete. " In these last periods, says M. Azam, at my request her husband proved, as I did formerly, that she was entirely unaware of all that was passing about her." Her waking and her sleep are normal, and the inci- dents described occur without distinction in the two states. As the second condition now constitutes almost the j whole of Felida's life, various most unusual hysterical i phenomena may be observed at leisure. I refer to spontaneous and partial congestion. At a given mo- ment, from no known cause, and every three or four days, Felida feels a sensation of heat in some part of her body; this part swells and reddens. It is often in her face, and then the phenomena is striking; but the skin of the surface is too thick to allow an actual exudation of blood. Only once did an ooz- ing of this kind take place during the night upon the skin of the occipital lobe, producing patches of blood. In 1878 Felida is, at first sight, like every one else. Her appearance is so normal that, having become very skilful in concealing her amnesia and the troubles which accompany it, she succeeds admirably also in hiding an infirmity of which she is ashamed. She dis- charges her duties as seamstress and mother of a family to the satisfaction of all. Naturally of a strong consti- tution, she has only become thin from nervous pains and frequent haemorrhages. In her second condition she is very like everybody. Sprightly and naturally happy, she suffers little ; her SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 17 intelligence and all her cerebral functions, including memory, are perfectly complete. Sometimes, usually when she has had some trouble, she feels a kind of pressure in her head, a sensation which she recognises, and by which she knows that a change into the next state is coming. Then she writes. If she is asked why she does so, she replies : " How shall I manage if I do not write down what I have to do ? I am a seamstress ; I am constantly working by given measures ; I should seem like an imbecile to all around me if I do not know the exact dimensions of the sleeves and waists that I am to cut out." Soon Felida entirely loses consciousness, but for so short a time (a fraction of a second) that she can conceal it from every one. She has scarcely closed her eyes before she comes to herself and continues her work without a word. Then she consults her writing to avoid the mis- takes she fears to commit ; but she is to a certain extent another person, for she is utterly unaware of all that she has said, all that she has done, all that has hap- pened during the preceding period, whether it has lasted two or three years. This other life is the normal state, the personality which characterized Felida when she was fourteen years old, and before she had her illness. This period, which to-day only occupies a thirtieth or fortieth part of her life, differs from the preceding period only in respect to her character. Now Felida is morose, despairing ; she is attacked by a deplorable intellectual infirmity, and experiences grief which drives her to despair and to a desire for suicide. Presently a transition period occurs, and our young woman comes into the second period again, which constitutes nearly her whole life. 3 18 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. One special fact, an inward drama, shows the extent of the separation that absence of memory causes be- tween the two existences of Felida. In April, 1878, when she was in the second condition, Felida was cer- tain that her husband had a mistress ; she burst out into threats against her, and, seized by frightful despair, hung herself. But she planned carelessly; her feet overturned a table ; the neighbours ran in and restored her to life. This terrible wrench did not change her state. She had hung herself in the second condition, and when she came to herself she was still in the second condition. " How happy I should be," said she two days later, " if I had my crisis [the name by which she designates the short periods of her normal life] ; then at least I should not be aware of my misfortune." She is so ignorant of it, in fact, that during the following periods of her normal state, meeting the same woman, she overwhelms her with attention and proofs of friendship. In 1882 Felida was almost always hi the second condition ; the normal lif e, with its characteristic loss of memory, only showed itself at intervals of from fifteen days to three weeks, and then lasted but a few hours. The transition periods, which only lasted some minutes, were reduced to some seconds, or to a duration so im- perceptible that Felida, who did not wish any one around her to know of her disease, could completely conceal them. After fifteen days, a month, or two months, short periods of normal Me appear, preceded and fol- lowed by imperceptible transitions. Their appearance is sometimes spontaneous, but it is more often induced by some annoyance, the spontaneous appearances inva- riably taking place in the night. During the first years of her disease Felida's every- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 19 day life was tormented by sorrowful manifestations of the most painful kind, and her disposition was sad, even gloomy and taciturn. This sadness was at one time so great that the patient attempted suicide, while, by con- trast, the periods of the second condition was charac- terized by the absence of sorrow and by unusual gaiety. In short, Felida had at once two existences and two totally different characters. Gradually, either from the influence of years and the trials of life, or from some other cause, the second states, which have become al- most her whole life, no longer present gaiety or light- ness of mind, but the gravity and seriousness of ordi- nary life. It might be said that the two characters have become equalized, and have merged into each other. Finally, in 1887, when Felida was forty-four years old, her condition was the same as in 1882, except that the periods of her normal life became less and less fre- quent. In summing up, the following facts from the pre- ceding observations should be borne in mind : The variation of personality shown by Felida is due to hys- terical nervous conditions ; that is indisputable. Felida has shown such a variety of hysterical phenomena boils, haemoptysis, changeableness of emotion, convul- sions, and attacks of lethargy that it is impossible to doubt it in this case. From time to time the mental condition of the patient changes ; one might even say her personality. Yet the transition is not gradual, but always accompanied by loss of consciousness. At first there was profound slumber, during which the patient felt no stimulation. As time went on this sleep be- came shorter, but there was always a loss of conscious- ness which caused the abyss between the two existences. 20 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. It should be noted that there never were convulsions at the tune of transition, although Felida had attacks of hysterical convulsions on other occasions. When she wakes in the new condition the patient has become another person. Her disposition is changed. It was sad and morose during her normal condition, and it has now become more tender, gay, and affectionate ; but, on the other hand, she is less active and less indus- trious. Her intelligence is more developed, and her feelings seem to be more refined (unfortunately, this important point has not been examined with sufficient care). A change of memory is added to the change of disposition during the second condition. Felida re- members all her states, and all the facts belonging to the two existences, her memory at this time showing the maximum range. Then at a certain tune there sud- denly occurs a new loss of consciousness similar to the first, the patient passes into the first condition again, regains her sad disposition and her activity, and at the same time shows a very curious loss of memory. She is unable to recall the facts belonging to her second condition, and we have already seen the numerous con- sequences, so painful for her, of these amnesic periods. The distinction of the two mental conditions rests, then, on two principal elements a change of dispo- sition and a variation of memory. It is this which shows that Felida is really two moral persons, that she has really two egos. Her second ego is by no means feigned, nor invented from a purely literary desire to be striking ; it is perfectly well formed, capable of con- tending with the first ego and even of replacing it, since we see the patient continuing her existence to-day with the second ego, which, at first accidental and abnormal, now constitutes the regular centre of her psychic life. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. gl It remains, in closing, to indicate definitely the psy- chological problem based on Felida's history. Here are two mental lives alternating, without being con- fused ; and each of these existences consists in a series of psychological events connected with one another. When Felida is in the first state she can remember the events of this state ; on the other hand, it is impossible for her without assistance to recover the memory of events that belong to the second state. Why is this ? This amnesia can by no means be explained psycho- logically by the well-known laws of association of ideas. According to these laws all memories can be stimulated by the influence of resemblance and contiguity. But we here see these two forces of association at fault. The memories of the second condition do not reappear during the normal condition, even when they should be called forth by certain adequate associations. We need no further proof than is found in the case of the little dog that Felida loaded with caresses during her second life and did not recognise in the first. I believe that it has not been sufficiently noticed how refractory this characteristic amnesia is to current theories of the as- sociation of ideas. It is a fact that between the two mental syntheses constituting the two existences of Fe- lida the association of ideas has no play. We shall often have occasion to repeat this remark. M. Dufay, of Blois, has published an observation simi- lar to the one which we have just considered.* I quote the most interesting parts of it. " About 1845 I began to see Mile. R. L 's at- tacks of somnambulism, and for twelve years I had occasion, almost daily, to study this singular phenome- * Revue Scientifique, July 15, 1876. 22 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. non. Mile. R. L - must have been at that time about twenty-eight years of age. She was tall, thin, and had brown hair ; her general health was habitually good, but her nervous sensitiveness was excessive. She had been a somnambulist from her infancy. Her child- hood was spent in the country with her parents ; after- ward she was successively governess and companion in several rich families with whom she travelled a great deal ; then at last she preferred a settled life, and ap- plied herself to her needle. " One night, while still with her parents, she dreams that one of her brothers had just fallen into a pond in the neighbourhood. She springs from her bed, goes out of the house, and jumps into the water to help her brother. It was in the month of February, the cold chilled her, she woke in terror, and trembled so that all her efforts were futile ; she would have perished if some one had not come to her assistance. She was confined to her bed by fever for fifteen days. After this event the attacks of somnambulism ceased for sev- eral years. She talked, laughed, or cried in her sleep, but did not leave her bed. Then gradually the noc- turnal wanderings recommenced, at first rarely, then more frequently, and at last they came to be of daily occurrence. " I might fill a volume with an account of the deeds and exploits performed by Mile. R. L during this active sleep. I will confine myself to the facts which are necessary to make us fully cognizant of her con- dition. " I copy from my notes : Her mother is the frequent object of her dreams. She wishes to go to the country, packs in great haste, ' for the carriage is waiting,' runs to say good-bye to the people in the house, not without SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 23 shedding a great many tears, astonished to find them in bed. She rapidly descends the staircase, and does not stop until she reaches the street door, the key of which she has taken the precaution to hide, and near which she sinks down in distress ; and for a long time resists any one who persuades her to rise and go back to bed, complaining bitterly (of the tyranny to which she is a victim). She ends, but not always, by returning to bed, usually without entirely undressing, and it is this which tells her on awaking that she has not slept quietly, for she has no memory of anything that has happened dur- ing the attack. " That is somnambulism, as it is frequently observed. It is a dream in action begun during the normal sleep, and ending by an awakening either spontaneous or pro- voked. " But that is not what usually happens in Mile R. L 's case. " I copy again : It is eight o'clock hi the evening, several women are working around a table on which is placed a lamp. Mile. R. L directs the work, and herself takes an active part, chatting gaily. Suddenly one hears the noise of her forehead falling sharply on the edge of a table ; her shoulders are also bowed. This is the beginning of the attack. " She straightens herself after a few seconds, snatches her eyeglasses spitefully, and continues the work which she had commenced. She no longer needs the glasses which considerable nearsightedness renders necessary in her normal state, even though she places herself so that her work is less exposed to the light of the lamp. If she needs to thread her needle, she throws both hands under the table, feeling in the dark, and in less than a second succeeds hi putting the silk through the 24: ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. eye a thing which she does with difficulty in her nor- mal state, even when aided by eyeglasses and a bright light. " She chats while she is working, and a person who has not seen the beginning of the attack would notice nothing unusual except that she speaks differently when in a somnambulistic state, i. e., ungrammatically, using me for /, as children do. For instance, she says ' When me is stupid.' That means, when I am not in a state of somnambulism. "Her intelligence, ordinarily above the average, reaches remarkable development during her attack ; her memory becomes extraordinary, and she can relate the most trifling events of which she has heard at any time whatever, whether the facts took place during her normal state or during an attack of somnambulism. "But of these memories all those relating to the period of somnambulism are completely hidden as soon as the attack is over, and I have often astonished Mile. R. L even to stupefaction by recalling to her certain facts, entirely forgotten, about the ' stupid girl,' to quote her own expression, with which the somnambulist had acquainted me. " The difference between these two manners is such that it could not be affected. " Mile. R. L was annoyed by her abnormal per- sonality up to the time of her menopause." We see that Mile. R. L has two personalities ; she is even conscious of this dualism, for she speaks of the other in the third person, and she ignores in her first state what the other has done in the second state. The remainder of this observation has no other interest than that of being a repetition, and consequently a con- firmation of the case of Felida. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 25 II. The case of Louis Y , an hysterical male patient who has shown a curious succession of personalities, has been frequently cited during the last few years. We quote the following extracts from the work of Bourru and Burot.* " The case of Louis Y ," they say, " is already known to science. M. Camuset f was the first to tell of it, and afterward M. Bibot, M. Legrand du Saulle, and P. Richer drew attention to it. J. Yoisin ^ has made two important notes on this patient. "He was born at 6 Rue Jean-Bart, Paris, on the 12th of February, 1863. His mother was hysterical and his father unknown. Part of his childhood was passed at Luysan, near Chartres. His mother mal- treated him and he became a vagrant. He seems to have had, from his earliest years, attacks of hysteria, accompanied by spitting of blood and momentary pa- ralysis. On the 23d of October, 1871, he was sentenced for stealing to serve in a house of correction until he was eighteen years of age. He was sent to the col- ony of the Douaires, then sent on to the agricultural colony of Saint- Urbain (Haute- Marne), where he re- mained from September 27, 1873, until March 23, 1880. He was busy several years with agricultural duties, and received primary instruction at the same time, from which he learned a good deal, for he was docile and intelligent. One day while he was in a vine- yard raking up the branches, a viper coiled itself around * Changeraents de Personnalite, p. 19. f Camuset, Annales Medico-psychologiques, Janvier, 1882. | J. Voisin, Archives de Neurologic, Septembre, 1885, p. 212. 26 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. his left arm without stinging him. He was extremely frightened, and that evening when he had returned to the penitentiary he fainted and began his attacks. The attacks succeeded one another until finally his lower limbs became paralyzed, his mind remaining unim- paired. " In March, 1880, he was transferred to the asylum of Bonneval (Eure-et-Loir). There, it is stated, the patient had an open and sympathetic countenance ; his disposition was gentle, and he was grateful for the trouble taken for him. He related the history of his life, including the most minute details, even his thefts, which he deplores, and of which he is ashamed. He laid the blame on his desertion and on his companions, who exerted evil influences over him. He deeply re- gretted his past and declared that in the future he would do better. He knew how to read and write a little. It was decided to teach him a trade consistent with his infirmity paraplegia. Every morning he was carried to the workroom of the tailors, was seated on a table, where he naturally assumed the proper position, thanks to his paralyzed and contracted lower limbs. At the end of two months Y knew how to sew quite well ; he showed much interest in his work, and his progress gave entire satisfaction. One day he was seized by an attack that lasted fifty hours, after which his pa- ralysis was found to have entirely disappeared. On reviving V wished to rise. He asked for his clothes, and succeeded in dressing himself, although doing it very clumsily ; then he took several steps in the room ; the paralysis of the limbs was gone. " When dressed, he asked to go with his comrades to the farm. It was at once seen that he believed he was still at Saint-Urbain, and that he wished to resume SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 27 his usual occupations. In fact, lie had no memory whatever of his attack, and did not recognise any one, not even the physician and hospital attendants or his companions in the dormitory. He would not admit that he had been paralyzed, and said they were making fun of him. It was thought to be a transient state of unbalance, not unlikely after a severe attack of hys- teria; but time passed and memory did not return. V- - very well remembers that he was sent to Saint- Urbain ; he knows that he was recently frightened by a snake ; but from that moment there is a blank. He remembers nothing more. He has not even the feeling that time has elapsed. " It was believed, naturally, that he was shamming, that there would be a return of hysteria, and every means was employed to make him contradict himself, but without success. For this reason he was taken, without being told where he was going, to the tailors' workroom. Some one walked beside him, taking care not to influence him. As for the direction to follow, V - did not know where he was going. When he reached the workroom he appeared not to know the place at all, and said that he had never been there be- fore. He was shown the clothing in which he had sewed the rough seams when he was paralyzed; he laughed doubtfully, but at last resigned himself to be- lieve it. " After a month of experiments, observations, and proofs of every kind, they were convinced that V remembered absolutely nothing. His disposition was also changed. He was no longer the same person ; he had become quarrelsome and greedy, and he answered rudely. He had not liked the wine and had usually given his allowance to his comrades, but now he stole 28 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. theirs. When he is reminded that he used to steal but that he ought not to begin to do so again, he gets haughty and says that if he did steal, he has paid the penalty since he has been put in prison. He was given occupation in the garden. One day he made his escape, carrying off his effects and sixty francs belonging to a hospital nurse. He was captured five miles from Bon- neval just when, after having sold his clothes to buy others, he was preparing to take the train for Paris. He did not allow himself to be taken easily, but fought and bit the keepers sent to search for him. Brought back to the asylum he was furious, screamed and rolled on the ground, and had to be confined in a cell. " During the rest of his stay at Bonneval he con- tinued to show some signs of neurosis, convulsive at- tacks, anaesthesia, and transient contraction. He left the asylum on June 24, 1881, seemingly cured. " He spent some time at his mother's at Chactres ; then he was sent to a large agricultural proprietor in a suburb of Macon. There he fell ill, remained a month at the Hotel Dieu at Macon, and was transferred to the asylum of Saint- George, near Bourg (Am), on Sep- tember 9, 1881. " During his eighteen months' stay in this asylum he was subject to attacks that were irregular some- times very severe, sometimes slight, sometimes occur- ring in series. At times he was exalted like a general paralytic, and again almost stupid and imbecile. In some circumstances he did not flinch before any re- sponsibility, obeying the most dangerous instincts and impulses, knowing how to cleverly conceal them in his capacity as madman, and with sense of responsibility resulting from his confinement in the lunatic asylum. Y left Saint Georges April 28, 1883, improved in SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 29 health, and provided with a sum of money to return to his own country. " He reached Paris how he did so is not known. He was admitted successively into various institutions ; finally, at Sainte-Anne and at Bicetre, where, on Au- gust 31, 1883, he entered the service of M. J. Yoisin, who recognised him as one of M. Camuset's patients, but without knowing what had occurred between Bon- neval and Bicetre. " From August, 1883, to January, 1884, his attacks were rare, and observed only by attendants. On Janu- ary 17, 1884, there was a new and very violent attack, which was repeated on following days with paroxysms of pain in the thorax, and alternate paralysis and con- traction of the left and right side. On April 17, after a light attack, the contraction of the right side dis- appeared. He went to sleep with his limbs folded, his hands behind his head, and slept quietly. In the morn- ing when he woke he asked the nurse for his clothes. He wanted to go to work. He was astonished to find that his clothes were not on the foot of his bed he thought that some one had hidden them as a joke. He improved until the 26th of January (the day the con- traction made its appearance). He was taken before the head of the department. He was amazed when he was told that the leaves were on the trees, that the cal- endar showed it to be the 17th of April, and that the hands of the service had been changed. His speech was normal. He did not remember that his right side was contracted. He walked feebly and swayed some- what when he wished to stand. The dynamometric pressure of the right hand was more feeble than that of the left. The cuticular hemianaesthesia continued. " lie was calm during the following months and 30 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. walked in the ward. On June 10th he had a series of attacks followed by a return of the contraction of the right side. He stayed in bed several days, and re- mained in the same state from January until April. He improved on April 17th. He spoke ungrammat- ically, as formerly. The next day the contraction dis- appeared, and the patient returned to his original state. "During the last six months of the year 1884 Y 's condition showed no new phenomenon. His disposition changed. He was docile during the period of contraction, but at other times he was undisciplined, a tease, and a thief. He worked irregularly. The attacks were frequent. The contraction did not once return, but the hemianaesthesia was branded indelibly upon him. He retained some delirious ideas. On January 2, 1885, after a scene of provoked somnam- bulism, followed by an attack, he escaped from Bicetre with stolen clothing and silver belonging to a hospital nurse an event similar to his flight from Bonneval. "He remained some weeks in Paris with an old friend from the asylum, whom he had happened to meet. On the 29th of January, 1885, he enlisted in the marines, and reached Rochefort the, 31st of Janu- ary. During his stay at the barracks he committed thefts. Brought before the council of war he was discharged the 23d of March, 1885, and on the 27th of March sent to an institution. After his admission he was seized by a series of attacks of hysterical epilepsy. The 30th of March a contraction of the whole of the right side showed itself, but disappeared at the end of two days ; but it left him paralyzed and unconscious of the entire right half of his body." The case of Louis Y is certainly the most com- plex and the richest in details of any that we have, SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 31 although it includes some obscure features. One im- portant fact is clear, that at certain times Louis Y suddenly loses his memory of important periods of his former existence, and comes into a new psychological state with a total change of character, and a different distribution of feeling and movement in his body. The new state can then be distinguished from the former by three chief characteristics : first, the con- dition of the memory ; second, the state of his per- sonality; third, the state of sensibility and move- ment. This last point is one of those which serves to establish the orginality of the observation of this patient. With the other hysterical patients whose cases have been reported so far, the change of sensibility which accompanies the change of the psy- chological state has never been studied. M. Azam, in his report of the case of Felida, hardly refers to it; he alludes to it briefly, whereas a systematic study would have been desirable. The case of Louis V - thus fills an important blank in our information. In all probability his case is not exceptional in this respect, and, therefore, all patients having " second states " like his must also, like him, have peripheral sensory modifications which signalize the transition to a new state. This is logically necessary. From the moment that the character is modified and the span of memory is changed, it is natural to expect that the ability to perceive sensations should be equally affected. It is the contrary that should surprise us. Authors have availed themselves of these variations of sensi- bility in order to make a series of experimental re- searches on their patients ; they have succeeded in call- ing forth at will, to some degree, some one of the per- sonalities of the patient a thing which had not been 32 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. done before to the same extent or in a methodical way. Finally, it is in this fact that the great interest of this observation lies, and from it we glean the latest infor- mation on this subject. I shall consider it again in the part of this book that is devoted to experimental phe- nomena. It remains to define and classify the pathological state of Y . This case we have compared to that of Felida. This comparison is justified by many of the facts, and the analogies are striking. There are changes of psychological state shown in the general disposition and in memory. These states are undoubtedly more numerous with V ; as many as six can be counted, each having its own memory, as experiments on the patient have shown ; but this question of numbers has no general importance, and as a matter of fact Felida had at least three distinct states. M. Proust has recently published a curious case of automatic walking by a hysterical patient. I give his observation : " Emile X - is thirty-three years old. His father is eccentric and a drunkard. His mother is nervous, and a younger brother must be classed as backward. He, on the contrary, is of normal intelligence. He did very well in classical studies, and even won some dis- tinction in academic examinations. After studying medicine for some months he passed to the study of law, took his degree, and has for several years been registered on the rolls of the lawyers of Paris. " Emile X has shown the most marked symp- toms of hysteria (crises, disorders of sensibility, move- ment, etc.). He can be hypnotized almost instantane- ously. It is only necessary for him to gaze at a given point in space, to hear a moderately loud noise, to ex- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 33 perience a sharp and sudden sensation, to fall immedi- ately into the hypnotic sleep. One day he was in a cafe in the Place de la Bourse. He looked at him- self in the glass and immediately fell asleep. Aston- ished and frightened, the people with whom he hap- pened to be took him to the Hopital de la Charite, where he was awakened. "Another time, while he was arguing a case in court, the judge looked at him steadily. He stopped short, fell asleep, and was unable to resume his speech until one of his colleagues, who knew his failing, awoke him. " But that is not all. "At certain times Emile X - completely loses his memory. Then all his recollections, the most recent as well as the oldest, are obliterated. He has entirely forgotten his past life. He has even forgotten himself. Nevertheless, as he has not lost consciousness, and as during the whole duration of this sort of state or second condition which may last for several days he will have, as Leibnitz says, 'the apperception of his per- ceptions,' a new life, a new memory, a new ego com- mence for him. So he walks, gets on the cars, pays visits, makes purchases, engages in sports, etc. " When suddenly, by a kind of awaking, he returns to the first condition, he is ignorant of all that has happened during the days that have just passed that is to say, during the whole time of the second condition. " Thus, on the 23d of September, 1888, he had an altercation with his stepfather. He is strongly im- pressed by this altercation, the memory of which he keeps vividly in mind. But he is in ignorance of what he has done from this date, September 23d, until the middle of the following October. At this latter date 4 34: * ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. that is to say, three weeks after the quarrel with his relative he is again found at Yillars-Saint-Marcelin (Haute-Marne). He does not know how he has lived or where he has been. All that he does know con- cerning that time he has since learned by reports from different sources. He has been told that he went to the curate at Yillars-Saint-Marcelin, ' who thought him queer ' ; that he went to make a visit at one of his un- cles, an ecclesiastic in Haute-Marne, and that there he had destroyed various objects, and torn books and even manuscripts belonging to his uncle. He has since found out that he contracted a debt of five hundred francs during his perigrinations, and that he had been brought before the court of Yasey'for stealing, and found guilty. " Still another episode : " On the llth of May, 1889, he breakfasted hi a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Two days afterward he found himself in a square at Troyes. What had he done during those two days ? He had not the remotest idea. All that he remembers is, that on coming to himself he discovered that he had lost his overcoat and his pocketbook containing two hundred and twenty-six francs. " In the observation of fimile X , as in similar observations, the two following points should be par- ticularly remarked : " 1. A break in the continuity of the phenomena of consciousness, although the individual during this break- goes, conies, and acts in conformity with the habits of his daily life. " 2. If there is discontinuity between the phenom- ena of consciousness in the period of the second condi- tion and those of the normal life, there is, on the con- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 35 trary, continuity between the phenomena of conscious- ness of the periods of the second condition. " Thus, Emile X in his normal state is igno- rant of what he has done during the periods of auto- matic walking ; but it is enough to replace him in the second condition by plunging him into the hypnotic sleep, when he immediately remembers the minutest details of his peregrinations. Awake, he does not know what he has done from the 23d of September until the 15th of October ; asleep, he relates the incidents of his journey. The five hundred francs he lost at gam- bling. He tells the sums he has lost, and at what game. He gives the name of his partner. He tells all that he has done and said at his friend the curate's and at his uncle the bishop's. " The same thing holds true regarding his flight to Troyes. During the induced sleep he says : ' The 17th of May, on coming out of the restaurant, I took a car- riage and drove to the Great Eastern depot. I boarded the 1.25 train and arrived at Troyes at 5.27". I went to the Hotel du Commerce, room No. 5. I put my over- coat, which contained my purse, on the back of an arm- chair. I next went to a cafe on the Place Notre Dame ; then I came back and dined at half -past six. I called on a merchant of my acquaintance, M. C , and I spent the evening with him until nine o'clock. Then I returned and went to bed. I rose the next morning at eight o'clock and breakfasted with M. C. . I left him 'after breakfast, turned into the Rue de Paris, and began to feel ill. I then appealed to a policeman, who brought me to the superintendent of police, and from there to the hospital at Troyes, where I was wakened.' " To make the information complete I may add the following detail : 36 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. " After having learned from the sleeping patient the place where he had left his overcoat, we advised him, when he awoke, to write to the Hotel du Com- merce. The next day but one, to his great astonish- ment, he received his overcoat and his purse with the two hundred and twenty-six francs which it contained. These objects, as I said, had been lost more than six months, and our patient needed money. " Emile X had been condemned by the court at Yassy for theft committed during his period of auto- matic walking. The judgment was annulled when the circumstances under which the offence was committed were known. " More recently Emile X has again been ac- cused of swindling. He tried to borrow a trifling sum from an official in the law court by misrepresentations about his property. " In consequence of a report from Messrs. Motet and Ballet a discharge was granted him." This observation of M. Proust's closely resembles that of Felida change of disposition during the second states followed by loss of memory. But all this should be studied with the greatest care, and a large number of details are lacking. We note in passing an interest- ing point, which we do not find in the preceding ob- servations, viz., when thrown into the hypnotic sleep Emile X recalls the memories of the second state. An observation published by "Weir Mitchell should be added to those we have just read ; it also constitutes an interesting repetition of the case of Felida. It is about a young girl, twenty years old, of a sad, melan- choly, and timid disposition. This person was seized by a sleep which lasted more than twenty hours. When she awoke it became apparent that she had totally for- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 37 gotten her previous existence, her parents, her country, the house where she lived. She might be compared, says the author, to an immature child. It was necessary to recommence her education. She was taught to write, and wrote from right to left as in the Semitic lan- guages. t She had only five or six words at her command real reflexes of articulation which were, to her, devoid of meaning. The labour of re-education, conducted methodically, lasted from seven to eight weeks. Her character had experienced as great a change as her mem- ory ; timid to excess in the first state she became gay, unreserved, boisterous, daring even to rashness. She strolled through the woods and the mountains, attracted by the dangers of the wild country in which she lived. Then she had a fresh attack of sleep, and returned to her first condition ; she recalled all the memories and again assumed a melancholy character, which seemed to be aggravated. No conscious memory of the second state existed. A new attack brought back the second state, with the phenomena of consciousness which ac- companied it the first time. The patient passed .successively a great many times from one of these states to the other. These repeated changes stretched over a period of sixteen years. At the end of that time the variations ceased. The patient was then thirty-six years of age ; she lived in a mixed state, but more closely resembling the second than the first ; her character was neither sad nor boisterous, but more reasonable. She died at the age of sixty-five years.* I must here close the catalogue of observations. * Cited by William James, Psychology, i, p. 383. 38 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. Those that have been given, apart from some diverg- ence in details, are remarkably similar, and others that we might add would teach us nothing new. Not that everything has been said about these pathological cases ; I believe, on the contrary, that there is every reason to pursue the study further, and suspect that the sec- ond state presents a great number of interesting psy- chological characteristics. One finds, unfortunately, lit- tle light thrown on this point by the observations pub- lished up to the present ; they seem to be almost copied from the same model, that of Felida.* In general, observers have only noted two different conditions of existence in their subjects ; but this num- ber two is neither fixed nor prophetic. It is not, per- haps, even usual, as is believed ; on looking closely we find three personalities in the case of Felida, and a still greater number in that of Louis Y . That is sufficient to make the expression " double personality " inexact as applied to these phenomena. There may be duplication, as there may be division into three, four, etc., personalities.! I am persuaded that the alternations and successions of personality in the case of hysterical patients is by no means exceptional. What really is exceptional is to find typical subjects like Felida and Louis Y , whose variations were so marked as to strike uninstructed * See observations by Myers, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1870, p. 230, and Ladame, Rev. de 1'hypn., Janu- ary 30, 1888, etc. [See also the case reported by Dana, Psycho- logical Review, I, p. 570. ED.] f It has been attempted to explain the variations of personality by the duality of the cerebral hemispheres. M. Ribot has refuted this odd conception in a manner which seems to me to be deci- sive. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 39 minds. It may even be possible that by close attention to hysterical patients many cases totally at variance with the preceding ones might be found. In any case, the succession of distinct personalities must exist in some degree in many cases. The phenomena ought to be explained, not by gross symptoms, but by amnesia and changes of character recalling in kind those of Fe- lida and Louis Y . These symptoms may be sys- tematized and attached to certain periods of life. They are symptoms that must be sought for, as Lasegue says, in speaking of anaesthesia. We have until now been occupied with cases of hysteria. All the patients whose cases we have re- ported have been indisputably hysterical. The ques- tion arises whether apart from this disorder analogous divisions of consciousness and personality are to be met with. If the state of memory is taken as a sign of these divisions and it is always easier to verify it exactly than changes of character the question must be answered in the affirmative. We find in very diverse condi- tions fragments of psychological life, each of which possesses a memory. We mean by this that these states are not remembered in the normal life, but that the return of the state recalls the memories of its previous manifestation, so that the person remem- bers all the facts that had been forgotten during the normal lif e. Occasionally, the existence of a memory peculiar to these second states shows itself in a slightly different and more elementary form ; the subject always recom- mences the same actions. Examples of similar psycho- logical changes are known in dreams, intoxication by ether, hasheesh, alcohol, etc., in recurrent mania and 40 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. epilepsy. In the case of some epileptic patients there even exists a double psychological life presenting the same characteristics that we have seen in hys- teria.* * Medical Bulletin, 1889, No. 18. CHAPTEK II. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM (CONTINUED). SPONTANEOUS somnambulism may present, in the case of hysterical patients, a slightly different character from that which we have just described. In all the observations that we have cited up to the present the second state of the subject has certain general points in common with the first, considered as the normal state. The subject's mind is alive to all ideas and perceptions ; he is capable of living his normal life in short, he is not delirious. It has already been remarked that sub- jects of this kind, to an unprejudiced observer, appear normal ; and they are found to be in the second state without previous symptoms or warning of any kind. It is not always so, however. We have seen that in circumstances a little different from those which we have studied the psychological character of the subject in the second state is totally different from that of the first. He no longer lives his usual life ; he is domi- nated by an idea, or by a group of ideas, which tends to give his whole existence a special orientation. He does not hear what is said to him when the words spoken have no connection with his fixed idea, and can not be incorporated with it ; the objects which surround him make no impression upon him, or are not consciously 42 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. perceived, when they bear no relation to his habitual occupations. These phenomena constitute, indeed, a variation of personality by a kind of spontaneous breaking up ; they constitute the body of this chapter. We have seen that the case typical of the first series of observations is that of Felida. It might be said that this new series also possesses a typical case, well known to-day, that of the sergeant of Bazeilles, published by M. Mesnet.* I shall reproduce this important obser- vation at length : " F , twenty-seven years of age, sergeant in the army in Africa, in one of the battles fought at Sedan received a ball which penetrated his left parietal brain lobe. The ball, passing obliquely, made a wound from eight to ten centimetres long, parallel to the temporal suture, and situated about two centimetres below this suture. " After receiving this wound F had still suf- ficient strength to overpower by a blow of his bayonet the Prussian soldier who rushed to smite him; but almost immediately his right arm was paralyzed, and he was obliged to abandon his weapon to escape from the fire of shot and shell which was raining down on the village of Bazeilles. He was able to go about two hundred metres, when his right leg became paralyzed in its turn, and he completely lost consciousness. It was not until three weeks later that F , recovering the use of his senses, found himself at Mayence, where he had been brought by a Prussian ambulance. " At this time hemiplegia of the right side was com- plete, the loss of movement absolute. Six months later * De 1'automatisme, etc. (Union Medicale, July 21 and 23, 1874). SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 43 he was brought to France and placed in various mili- tary hospitals of Paris, where he remained paralyzed about a year. Nevertheless he was fortunate enough to get over his paralysis, of which there is to-day no trace other than a slight weakness of the right side, scarcely perceptible to the patient and just appreciable by the dynamometer tests. " From the time when the patient was still at Mayence, about three or four months after receiving his wound, he exhibited mental disturbances, shown by attacks at regular intervals, characterized especially by the partial deadening of the organs of sense and by cerebral activity at variance with the normal waking state. Since this time, even after the curing of the hemiplegia, these attacks have not ceased always re- sembling each other even to the intervals of time (be- tween them the average being fifteen to thirty hours) and the duration of the crisis (the average being also fifteen to thirty hours). " The nervous troubles which we propose to study in the case of F have then undeniably a point of material departure a fracture in the parietal region, with destruction of the bone in a place which it is easy to locate still, and on account of this fracture a brain lesion in the left hemisphere, as the hemiplegia of the whole of the right side of the body for more than a year proves. What caused this brain lesion ? Probably a local inflammation or an abscess in the nervous substance; for the external wound and the paralysis were cured almost simultaneously, after last- ing a year, and the feelings and movement so long absent from the right side of the body resumed their normal condition. To-day he has a simple functional trouble, which made its appearance when the brain was 44 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. physically affected, and still persists, although all the physiological functions are re-established.* " For four years F 's life has shown two essen- tially distinct phases, one normal, the other patho- logical. " In his ordinary state F is a man of sufficient intelligence to provide for himself and-to gain a liveli- hood. He has been a clerk in various houses, a singer in a cafe in the Champs-Elysees, and his official acts as sergeant, when he was. in the regiment, revealed cer- tain aptitudes which attracted notice from his superiors. Since he came into my department in the hospital he has shown himself obliging, friendly with the other patients, and his conduct has given no occasion for any serious rebuke. His health leaves nothing to be de- sired, and his habit of life is regular. " The point of interest which this patient presents is found in the pathological phase which we are about to study, and in the confusion which suddenly befell the exercise of his intellectual faculties. The transition from the normal state to the diseased state is made in an instant, almost unconsciously. His senses are closed to stimulations from without, the external world ceases to exist for him, he no longer lives except in the nar- row limits of his exclusively personal life, he no longer acts except by proper stimulations, and by auto- matic movements of his brain. Although he no longer receives anything from without, and though his person- ality is completely isolated from the sphere in which he is placed, he is seen to go and come, to attend to his affairs, and to act as if he had full power over his senses * The case of F may be classified as traumatic hysteria (see G. Guinon, Progres Medical, 1891, No. 20). SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 45 and intellect, to such a degree that a person ignorant of his condition would pass him on his walks, meet him on his way, without suspecting the curious phenomena which he presents. " His gait is natural, his attitude calm, his counte- nance peaceful, his eyes wide open, the pupils dilated, his forehead and eyebrows contracted, and he has an incessant movement of nystagmus, betraying a state of suffering in his head. He is continually chewing. If he walks, he goes among those near whom he lives and whose tastes he knows. He acts with all the free- dom of demeanour that he has in his usual life ; but if he is placed in another sphere where he does not know the people, if obstacles obstruct his way, he stumbles a great deal, stops at the slightest contact, and feeling the object with his hands, explores the outlines in or- der to pass around it. He offers no resistance to movements which one may give him. Even though he is stopped, made to change his direction, hurried, or hindered, he allows himself to be managed like an au- tomaton, and continues his movements in the direction which has been given him. " While his attacks last his instincts and appetites operate just as in health; he eats, drinks, smokes, dresses, walks, undresses in the evening, and retires, all at the usual hours. " Under what influence, we may ask, are these acts performed ? Are they provoked by real needs, or by or- ganic sensations; or, rather, are they not themselves quite automatic, the simple result of waking habits continued in sleep ? I should be disposed to accept this last interpretation,* for each time that I have seen * I shall show later that this interpretation is probably not exact, and that F is not unconscious during his attack. 46 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. the patient eat he ate gluttonously, without discrimina- tion, scarcely chewing his food, swallowing everything set before him without ever getting enough a sure proof that he was not led on by appetite. In the same way he drank all that was given him vin ordinaire, quinine, water, asafoetida without giving any sign as to whether it was agreeable, painful, or indifferent to him. " An examination of the general sensibility and of the special sensibility of the senses reveals a consider- able disturbance. The general sensibility of the skin and muscles is absolutely dead ; one can prick the skin of the different parts of the body, hands, arms, feet, legs, chest, and face with impunity. The patient felt no sensation also if one drew a pin or knitting needle across the skin or plunged it deep into the muscles. " It is the same with experiments made with a strong electric current. The patient is insensible to the action of the current passed through the arms, chest, and face, although the electric stimulation produces energetic con- traction of the muscles. " General sensibility is lost. " Muscular sensibility is retained. " Hearing is completely obstructed. He receives no impression whatever of noises around him. The audi- tory passage is, in its whole extent, insensible to tickling and pricks. " Taste no longer exists. He drinks water, wine, vinegar, asafoetida indiscriminately. The mucous mem- branes of the mouth and tongue are insensible to pricks. " No odour, good or bad, is perceived by the patient, neither of vinegar nor of asafostida. The whole ex- tent of the mucous of the nasal chambers is insensible. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 47 A foreign body can be forced through the nasal cham- bers as far as the soft palate without producing tickling or sneezing. " Sight, like the other senses, is closed to external impressions, but perhaps less completely. The patient seemed to us, on several trials, to be not altogether insensible to effects from brilliant objects; but the sensations which they cause in him give him such con- fused notions that he immediately summons touch to his aid to explore their form, size, outlines, etc., more fully. "Touch is of all the senses the only one which persists and puts the patient in relation with the ex- ternal world. The delicacy with which he moves his hands over objects, the use which he makes of touch on a thousand occasions when we were present, attest a re- finement and acuteness of this sense above the normal average. " The isolation in which F finds himself placed is, then, the result of a considerable disturbance in the exercise of his nervous functions. He is a patient with whom brain action costs him temporarily the exercise of the general and special sensibilities which place man in his position of constant rapport with external things. He is attacked by a functional trouble which presents all the characteristics of neurosis, and which, although very singular, very exceptional in its manifestations, is not, for that very reason, without example and without precedent in the history of diseases of the nervous system. " The nervous trouble with which F is affected is only shown by attacks or paroxysms, which are of short duration in comparison with the intermediate period. The first of these attacks dates back to the 48 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. early months of the year 1871, when he was still a prisoner in Germany, and had hemiplegia in his right side. At this time the attacks returned at shorter in- tervals, and by reason of them the wound in his skull remained open for a little more than a year. Reckoning from that time, they then occurred at longer intervals, and the intermediate period, which was originally from five to six days, became on an average from fifteen to thirty days. For about two years the intervals have been the same, unless some deviation from rule or some excess of the patient has occurred to hasten their return. At all events, they always resemble one another, and bear the stamp of unconscious activity. The beginning of the attack is preceded by a certain uncomfortableness, a weight on the forehead, which the patient compares to the pressure of a ring of iron ; he feels the effects of it even after the attack has passed, and he still complains several hours afterward of heaviness and weakness in his head. The transition from health to disease is made rapidly, in a few minutes, almost imperceptibly, with- out convulsions, without a crisis of any kind. He jumps from one to the other without advancing through the slow stages of lapsing consciousness and judgment that one finds at the approach of sleep the being who is conscious, responsible, in full possession of his senses, is an instant later only a Hind instru- ment, an automaton obedient to tlie unconscious activity of his brain. He acts with a show of liberty which he does not possess ; he seems to will, but his will is un- conscious and powerless to overcome the slightest ob- stacles which oppose his movements. " All the actions which he performs, all the activity which he shows during his attack, are nothing more than the repetition of his waking habits. He is as in- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 4.9 capable of inventing as of imagining ; and yet there is one act which we shall study later by itself a singular tendency which showed itself from the first attack, when he was still a soldier, and which was each time reproduced under the same conditions, and seemed the special feature of his disordered state the irresistible desire to steal, or rather to get hold of any objects which fall in his way ; these he takes indiscriminately and hides wherever he happens to be. The necessity of stealing and concealing is such a dominant fact with this patient that, after it once appeared in the first attack, it continued to show itself in subsequent attacks. He considers everything worth taking, even the most insignificant things ; and if he finds nothing on his neighbour's table, he hides objects which belong to himself, such as watch, knife, pocketbook, etc., with a great show of mystery, even when a large company of people surround and watch him. "The entire duration of the attack constitutes a period of his existence, of which he has no memory in his waking state. The forgetfulness is so complete that he expresses the greatest surprise when he is told what he has done. He has no idea, not even the vaguest, of the time, place, movement, experiments of which he has been the object, nor of the different per- sons who have been present. " The separation between the two phases of his life health and sickness is then absolute ! "Let us come now to the psychological study of this man, and interpret the facts which occur during the attack, without, however, neglecting the details gained from daily observation, and which we shall consider later on in another part of this memoir. " General sensibility is, as we have said, completely 50 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. obliterated. Muscular sensibility is retained. Hearing, smell, taste, are closed to stimulations from without. Sight conveys vague impressions only without recogni- tion. Touch is retained, and even seems to acquire an exaggerated acuteness and refinement. "And it is with a view to this great nervous pertur- bation that we have to determine the value and mean- ing of the actions that we are about to describe. "F 's activity during his attack is nearly the same as in his normal state, except that movement is less rapid. He walks with open eyes, looking steadily before him. If he is directed toward an obstacle he stumbles against it carelessly, and goes around it. A tree, a chair, a bench, a man or woman they are no more to him than so many obstacles in which he sees no dif- ference. The expression of his face is usually un- moved, impassive, and yet it occasionally reflects the ideas which present themselves spontaneously to his mind, or which the impressions of touch awake in his memory. His expressions, his gestures, his imitations have all ceased to have any relation with the external world ; they are exclusively at the service of his new personality or, better still, of his memory. The fol- lowing incident occurred when 1 was present : " He was walking in the garden, under a clump of trees. His cane, which he had dropped a few minutes before, was placed in his hand. He felt it; passed his hand several times over the crooked handle, became at- tentive, seemed to listen, and suddenly called ' Henry.' Then, ' There they are ; there must be at least a score of them. We two, we will settle them.' And then, put- ting his hand behind his back as if to take a cartridge, he went through the motion of loading his gun, lay down in the grass at full length, his head hidden by a SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 51 tree, in the position of a sharpshooter, and followed, with his gun at his shoulder, all the movements of the enemy, whom he believed he saw at a short distance. This scene, full of details, as given, was to each of us the most perfect indication of a hallucination provoked by an illusion of touch, which, giving to the cane the attributes of a gun, awoke in this man the memories of his last campaign, and reproduced the conflict in which he was so seriously wounded. I wished, in the attack occurring fifteen days later, to confirm this interpreta- tion, and seemed to succeed completely, since the patient, being again placed in the same condition, re- peated the scene exactly. So it was possible to direct the activity of the patient by a series of ideas that I managed to orginate, by putting in play certain im- pressions of touch, although all the other senses per- mitted no communication with him. " All F 's actions, all his expressions, are either the repetition of what he is accustomed to do every day or are provoked by impressions that objects produce on the sense of touch. It is only necessary to observe this patient for several hours to gain full conviction on this point. In following him in his peregrinations across the hospital at Saint- Antoine, M. Maury and I have wit- nessed a thousand such facts, accidentally produced, it is true, but all interesting from a psychological point of view. " "We were once at the end of a corridor, before a closed door. F passed his hands over this door, found the knob, seized it, and wished to open the door, but it resisted his efforts. He sought the lock and then the key but did not find it. He then passed his fingers over the screws which held the lock, tried to seize them and make them turn, and finally attempted to break the 52 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. lock. AU this series of actions testified to certain mental movements in relation to the objects before him. He was about to leave the door, and turned in another direction, when I placed before his eyes a bunch of seven or eight keys. He did not see them, so I shook them noisily at his ear. He did not hear them. I put them in his hand ; he seized them immediately, and tried them, one after the other, in the keyhole, without finding one that fitted. He then left the place and went into a patient's room, taking on his way several objects with which he filled his pockets, and came to a little table that answered the purpose of a writing desk in the room. " He passed his hands over this table and found it was empty. While feeling it he came across the knob of a drawer with which he opened the drawer and took a pen. Instantly this pen awoTce in him, the idea of writing, for he immediately rummaged in the drawer, drew out several sheets of paper, then an inkstand, and placed them on the table. Then he took a chair and began a letter, in which he recommended himself to his general for his good conduct and his courage, and asked him to remember him when bestowing the medals for service. "This letter was written very incorrectly, but it was similar in expression and spelling to what we had seen him do hi his normal state. The experiment in which we had taken unconscious part led us forthwith to investigate to what degree the sense of sight co-oper- ated to accomplish the result. The facility with which he traced the characters and followed the lines of the paper left no doubt of the use of vision in his writing ; but to make the proof irrevocable, we placed at differ- ent times a thick plate of sheet iron between his eyes and the hand with which he was writing, so that all SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 53 the visual rays were intercepted. He did not immedi- ately stop the line he had commenced, but traced a few more words ; they were written, however, almost illeg- ibly, with the downward strokes running into one another. Then he stopped without showing vexation or impatience. When the obstacle was taken away he resumed the unfinished line and went on. " The sense of sight was then in full operation, and necessary for his spontaneous writing. " It was easy for us to apply a second proof no less conclusive ; while the patient was writing we substi- tuted water for the ink he was using. The first time that he dipped his pen in it enough ink remained on it to make his writing still visible ; but the second time the pen traced invisible characters, and he noticed it at once. He stopped, wiped the end of his pen, rubbed it on the sleeve of his coat, and again tried to write, with the same results. Then followed a new examina- tion of his pen. He looked more closely than he did the first time, making a new and ineffectual effort. But he did not for an instant think of looking in the ink- stand for the difficulty. His thought was incapable of spontaneity, and his sight, normal for the paper and the pen which he held in his hand, was useless with respect to the inkstand, which did not come into his thought. This second experiment confirms the first. Each shows us that sight really exists, but it seems to us that another fact follows, i. e., that the field of vision was exclusive and confined within a circle quite singular to this patient; that the sense of sight was roused only by touch, and that his use of it was con- fined entirely to the objects with which he was actually in contact by touch. Other observations will be cited later in support of this view ; but before passing to 54 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. a new order of facts I wish to mention a very curi- ous hallucination which was accidentally produced when F was occupied in writing. " He had taken several sheets of paper to write on, and had about ten, placed one upon another. He was writing on the first page when it occurred to us to draw it quickly away. His pen continued to write on the second page, as if he had not perceived that we had removed the first ; and he finished his sentence without pausing, and with only a slight movement of surprise. He had written ten words on the second sheet when we removed it rapidly as we had done the first, and he finished on the third sheet the line he had commenced on the preceding one, hi exact sequence. In the same way we took away the third sheet, then the fourth. When we came to the fifth he signed his name at the foot of the page, although all that he had written had disappeared with the preceding sheets. We then saw him raise his eyes to the top of this blank page, read all that he had written, forming each word with a move- ment of the lips, then repeatedly trace with his pen on different points of this blank page there a comma, there an , there a t, attentively following the spelling of each word, which he corrected to the best of Ids ability ; and each of these corrections corresponded to an incomplete word that we found in the same posi- tion, even to distance, on the sheets that we held in our hands. " What meaning shall we attach to this singular phenomenon ? It seems to me to have its solution in the hallucination state which creates an ideal image, and gives to this fancy or memory such a power of projection toward the periphery that it seems to be an external reality. It is hallucination as we shall find it SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 55 in sleep, in dreams, in cerebral disease. F re- reads by memory the letter he has just written, al- though his eyes rest on blank sheets of paper. He gets false sensations of lines which do not exist, just as in one of the former experiments he had present be- fore his eyes the Prussian soldiers whose movements he watched in order to surprise them at the proper time. " When he had finished his letter F left the table, moved about again, went through a long ward, taking indiscriminately all the small objects that he passed on the way. These he put into his pocket or hid under bedspread, mattress, haircloth, easy-chair, or a pile of cloth. When he reached the garden he took from his pocket a cigarette case, opened it, took out a paper and his bag of tobacco, and rolled a cigarette with the dexterity of a man accustomed to do this. He felt for his box of matches, struck one of them, lighted his cigarette, threw the match, which was still burning, on the ground, stepped on it to put it out, and smoked his cigarette while walking up and down the length of the garden, without deviating in the slightest degree from his accustomed manner of per- forming these acts in his normal state. All that he had just done was a faithful reproduction of his ordi- nary life. "When he had finished this first cigarette and was preparing to smoke another, I interfered and interposed obstacles. He had in his hand a new piece of paper ready to receive the tobacco. He felt in his pocket for the bag but did not find it, for I had stolen it. He searched other pockets through all his clothes, returned to his first pocket to search again, and his face expressed surprise. I reached out the bag 56 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. to him ; lie did not see it. I put it close to his eyes ; still he did not see it. I shook it as high as his nose ; he saw nothing. I touched his hand ; he seized it im- mediately and finished his cigarette. The moment he raised one of the matches, he had himself lighted, to his cigarette, I blew it out and gave him in place of it a burning match which I held in my hand. This he did not see. I put it near his eyes, so close that I burned his eyelashes; but he saw it no better he had not even an inclination to wink. He lighted another match himself, but I again blew it out again and substituted mine, with the same indifference on his part. I touched the cigarette which he held in his mouth with it, burning the tobacco in it ; he noticed nothing, and made no attempt at inspiration. This experiment, so remark- able for its simplicity and results, bears out the former one. Both prove to us that the patient sees certain ob- jects and does not see certain others ; that the sense of sight operates only for objects brought into personal relation with himself by touch, failing for other exter- nal objects. He sees his own match and does not see mine. I have, at different times, in subsequent attacks, repeated the same experiment and obtained the same results; the patient was indifferent in them all; his eye was dull and fixed ; it did not wink nor did the pupil contract. "For more than two hours M. Maury and I fol- lowed this patient, watching his movements, his be- haviour, and listening to his opinions. We traversed the greater part of the hospital with him, and finally found ourselves in the kitchen. I turned him toward the matron's private room, where he had never been ; he guided himself by his hands, made a tour of the room, touching everything as he went. He felt a cup- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 57 board and opened it, felt several vials, took them out, -examined them, saw some wine and drank it. "When he reached a small bureau his sight was arrested by some brilliant objects that were standing on a what-not. He took them, examined them, and put them one after the other in his pocket. I threw some pens on this bureau while he was feeling it with his hands, hoping they would give him the idea of writing as soon as his fingers touched them. " He had hardly touched them before he took a chair and began a letter addressed to one of his friends. He said to him the hour of their appointment must be changed, because he was to sing that evening in the cafe in the Champs-Elysees, and he would not reach home before eleven o'clock. We allowed him to finish this letter without interfering. He put it in an envel- ope, addressed it to Mile. X , and added l To be sent by a special messenger.'' This special direction evidently meant that this letter was important to him, and that he intended to forward it without delay. He put it in his pocket and rose, and at the same time I secured this letter, to which he attached some importance, without any difficulty. He did not even notice the theft that I had committed, although my hand, while reaching to his pocket, unintentionally pressed upon his chest and arm. The terms of the letter made me think that our patient was following a train of ideas that we would very much like to see him take, but which it was impossible for us to suggest to him. He had in his former attack sung several songs from his repertoire, at a time when memo- ries of his old profession as singer had spontaneously crossed his mind, and so we waited in the hope that some happy chance would induce him to sing again ; for we had no means of suggesting this line of thought 58 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. to him. He had only taken a few steps in the court when he commenced to hum the airs which seemed familiar to him, after which he turned toward the room he had occupied ever since his arrival in the hos- pital. When he reached his bed he took from his shelf his comb and glass, combed his hair, brushed his beard, adjusted his collar, opened his vest, paying the greatest attention to all the details of his toilet. "M. Maury reversed his glass. He was no less assiduous in his attention to his toilet, looking at him- self, as before, in a glass that no longer reflected any image. We were no longer in doubt then that he was preparing for a theatrical performance. He took from his bed the clothes which he had just laid aside, and immediately threw them down again it was his hos- pital dress. He then quickly felt all over the chair with his hands, and over the window sill, at the same tune manifesting some impatience. " The expression of the patient's dissatisfaction was too marked to leave room for any doubt that what he sought was clothing, connected with the idea that he was carrying out. His overcoat, which belonged on one of the pieces of furniture near at hand, could not be found when he wanted it. One of us took off his own and put it in his hands. He put it on at once. His eye was attracted by the brightness of a red ribbon ; he touched it, looked at it, and picked it up. He found on his bed several numbers of a serial story, which he turned over rapidly without finding what he was look- ing for. What could he be seeking so earnestly ? Ob- viously for sheet music. I took one of these numbers, rolled it, and putting it in his hand, all rolled as it was, I satisfied his desire by giving him the illusion of a roll of music. He immediately took his cane and crossed SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 59 the room with a free and easy step. On the way he was stopped to take off the overcoat he had on. He submitted without any resistance. The hospital nurse put his own overcoat in his hands ; he put it on, felt for the buttonhole, saw the ribbon of the military medal, and seemed to be satisfied. He nimbly de- scended the staircase to which he was accustomed in everyday use, crossed the court of the hospital with the air of a busy man, and turned toward the exit. When he reached it I barred the passage and turned him with his back to the door. He allowed me to do so without any resistance, and continued his walk in the new direc- tion which I had given him, groping his way into the lodge of the concierge, which opened on the passage where we were. " Just then the sun brightly illumined a glass parti- tion which inclosed the lodge on the court side. He seemed to be far from in sensible to the brilliancy of this light, which probably caused an illusion of sight by awaking a sensation suited to the idea which prompted his action. This light gave him the illusion of a stage, for he immediately placed himself opposite it, read- justed his toilet, opened the roll of paper that he had in his hand, softly hummed an air, glancing over the pages which he slowly turned, and marking time per- fectly with his hand. Then he sang skilfully and with expression a patriotic song, to which we all listened with pleasure. This first piece ended, he sang a second, then a third. We then saw him take his handkerchief to wipe his face. I gave him half a glass of water strongly flavoured with vinegar, but he did not see it. I placed the glass under his nose without his perceiv- ing the odour. I put it in his hand and he drank without betraying any sensation. 60 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. " What role, we may ask, did the sense of hearing absolutely closed to impressions from without play in the perfect performance of the three songs that we had just heard him sing ? Did he hear himself sing ? Had he any actual perception of his own voice while unable to hear mine when I talked to him, or the loud and varied noises that we sounded in his ears ? The case was similar to the former experiment on the sense of sight. We had proved that he saw the match that he held in his own hand while remaining in absolute igno- rance of the match which I held out to him. " The scene at which we had just been present did not give us data for solving the question ; for the mak- ing use of his songs might be a simple automatic move- ment, just as the energetic fight between himself and the Prussian soldiers was when he believed he was armed with a gun. Both these cases might only be memory in action. His gestures, his attitude, the in- flections of his voice, the shades of sentiment and of vivacity which he expressed in his song, being things learned long ago and repeated a great many tunes, might be only episodes of his ordinary life, simple reminiscences, unconscious vocal expressions of an auto- matic kind like a great many other facts that had oc- curred before our eyes. We had an intense desire to solve this new problem by a decisive experiment, and it was still by the medium of impressions of touch that we cast about to approach the sense of hearing. " We knew that F 's contact with a pen excited an idea of writing, and that tobacco put in his hand roused an idea of smoking. We might then expect that to cause him to chance upon a bow would suggest the idea of music, for he was accustomed to use a violin for practising his songs. We prepared for this purpose a SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 61 violin thoroughly out of tune, wishing to put it in his hands, and thus find in this experiment a conclusive demonstration of the reality or the nonreality of his hearing. Was F able to tune and use his violin as he was in the habit of doing or not ? But the attack ended before we were able to make this simple experi- ment. " This scene, which I have endeavoured to recount faithfully, is interesting by reason of the series of events that succeeded one another from the time that we saw him write the letter to his friend. The letter marked the moment when the idea of a concert pre- sented itself to his mind. From that time, until he realized it, everything harmonized and contributed to the same end. He followed the same idea for at least three quarters of an hour, and nothing could distract him from it for an instant. " Here lies one of the most interesting points of this observation, for it clearly shows the essential difference which exists between the psychological state of sleep and dreams and the special conditions which F 's malady produced in his brain and nerves." The history of the sergeant of Bazeilles presents striking analogies with the cases of the hysterical som- nambulists cited above, and, at the same time, we may point out the notable differences which prevent us from connecting this observation with the preceding ones. The analogy is seen in the existence of several sepa- rate psychological lives. F , after being wounded in the head, shows in his paroxysms a special psychical ac- tivity which differs from his normal life and constitutes, if we may use that phrase, a " second condition." The line of separation in the two existences lies here, as in 62 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. the case of Felida, in the memory. The patient re- turns to his normal life with no memory of what he has said or done during his attack, no memory of the spectators who surrounded him, or of the tests to which he has been subjected. His state during the attack differs also, it appears, from the normal by a change in his character, and notably by the persistent impulse to steal, which makes the patient seize and hide all the objects that he comes across. Here, then, are two ele- ments memory and character which clearly distin- guish the " second condition " from the first condition ; and in all the details the analogies between F and the other patients that we have described are, in these respects, remarkable. The differences consist in the form of mental activ- ity that F shows during his attack. While Felida, Louis Y , and the others show during their second condition an intelligence alive to all external stimula- tions, F 's mind, on the contrary, is closed to all stimulations that have no relation with the dominant idea of the moment. We have just seen him spend two hours going through an entire hospital, crossing the halls and the patients' rooms, and walking in the garden without suspecting that numerous persons were following and watching him. He did not see these people, because they had no part in the circle of his ideas. He did not even see any of the objects which had no relation with the inner romance which he car- ried in his head as he walked. When he felt the need of smoking, and M. Mesnet after extinguishing his match gave him one that was burning, he did not see it, and even allowed his eyebrows to be burned by the flame. But he saw the pen that he was using to write with and the letter paper on which he wrote, the hall SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 53 that he crossed, and the door that he opened. All these objects were in relation to his dominant ideas. This point M. Mesnet understood and described well ; and he also noted with care the prominent part per- formed by touch in the mental movements of his pa- tient. Thus F 's mental activity during his attacks shows a certain systematic development. M* Mesnet admits, moreover, and repeatedly affirms, that it is an unconscious activity, purely reflex and automatic. In that case he would not have a trace of conscious thought, judgment, or imagination. This explanation, emanating from an authority who had himself observed the facts, is presented with such conviction that several psychologists have had no difficulty in accepting it. It has thus been for some time currently believed that in the case of some patients an unconscious and blind mental activity may, at stated times, supersede consciousness, assuming control of the organism, and producing a series of complicated actions. This hypothesis for it is one has been adopted by the well-known English natu- ralist, Huxley, and has been used by him in constructing his theory that consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Of what use is consciousness, it is asked, if it can be so easily dispensed with ? if the brain, in its absence, can perform intelligent actions ? Consciousness is a luxury of the mind, a useless thing, a superadded phenomenon, which attends the physiological process, reveals it, but does not constitute it. Consciousness has been com- pared to the shadow that follows the path of the travel- ler, to the light emerging from the furnace of an en- gine, to the bell that by striking tells us the hour marked on the dial of a clock. Do away with the shadow, the light, the bell, all these external signs, the 64: ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. internal mechanism which they disclose will operate none the less. And so if consciousness, let us suppose, were suppressed, the brain would continue to operate, ideas to follow one another, and judgments to fall to- gether in arguments as they were accustomed to do before. We begin to see now, however, that these hy- potheses* are very rash, and that in every case the facts that served as the principal point of departure are ca- pable of a totally different interpretation. It is by no means proved that the mental activity of the sergeant of Bazeilles during his attacks is that of a pure autom- aton; far from it, if the observation be reread with care. One meets with signs of consciousness at every turn ; it is astonishing that it has not been taken into account. Let us look at it. At one time, dominated by the memory of his profession as a singer, he made his toilet to appear on the stage, and was looking for his overcoat. Groping about him he did not find the garment he sought and showed signs of displeasure. At another time, while he was occupied in writing a letter to his general, the sheet of paper on which he wrote was quickly removed, and he showed signs of surprise, displeasure. What are these, if not signs of consciousness ? And do not these facts suffice to throw the most serious doubts on the hypothesis which con- siders man a machine ? Accordingly, as we advance in our subject we shall have occasion to show again and again that conscious- ness does not renounce her rights as easily as has been sometimes admitted, and that she can exist even when psychological activity is very low. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 65 II. Since the publication of M. Mesnet's account a number of observations of the same kind have ap- peared to confirm its accuracy. The most important of these new observations are unquestionably those collected and published recently by M. Charcot and his pupils. M. Charcot was kind enough to show me his patients, and I found in them great psychological resemblance to M. Mesnet's case. These patients all show the exaggerated systematization of intellectual activity, which makes them perceive cer- tain objects with great acuteness, while others pass entirely unnoticed. I cite one of these observations, borrowed from a very interesting publication of M. Guinon's : * " The subject is a journalist, twenty-nine years old, named B . This man was not one of the class usually brought into the hospital. He was well brought up, having received a good education and an academic degree. His parents were well off, and left him some property that he squandered between his eighteenth and twentieth years. " At the age of twenty he went into military service for a year as a volunteer in the hussars. There he had a serious attack of typhoid fever, for which he was treated in the military hospital. During his conva- lescence he was a little deaf, his limbs were swollen, and he showed evident disturbances of memory. After two months of convalescence he was at last cured, but two months later certain nervous symptoms appeared. "The first appearance of these troubles could be * Progres Medical, 1891, No. 20 et seq. 6 66 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. traced to no known cause. One evening, at home after dinner, he felt a lump arise in his throat and suffocate him; then he fainted. For two or three hours he struggled, rolling on the floor, and his convulsions were broken by periods of slumber. After that he had no more attacks for eight years. " When he was twenty-four years old, completely ruined, having learned no trade, and obliged to work for his living, he took up journalism. He became a reporter of court news, the theatres, etc. "In May, 1890, he was sent to Marseilles by a Parisian paper to report the journey of the President of the repubh'c to Corsica. For some time he had had a kind of trembling in his right hand which greatly in- convenienced him in writing, and for this reason he was accompanied by a young secretary, to whom he dictated his despatches and articles. "While he was at Marseilles he was very much overworked, and this brought on a nervous attack of which he had premonitory symptoms. At this time the trembling of his hand was at its maximum. It was while he was in this city that he found out that he had right hemianaesthesia. "After continuing his work for a month he pre- sented himself at the Salpetriere for advice, on Tues- day, October 21, 1890, again feeling the symptoms of a nervous attack. " These symptoms are always the same. They con- sist of headaches, loss of appetite, nausea sometimes followed by vomiting, chills, and sensations of heat and cold. To these should be added a kind of disorder of memory; he no longer remembers anything forgets what he has done the evening before, and what he should do the next day. This kind of general discom- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 67 fort has preceded nearly all the attacks in the series which have occurred since that time. " When he presented himself to us he was a man of average strength, not very robust, a little pale, and with a depressed and sad air. All his physical functions were normal. There was no disease of the heart or lungs. " The right side of the body is the seat of anaes- thesia, which is absolute for touch, pain, and tempera- ture sensations. The loss of muscular sense of this side is not absolute ; he feels it when some one moves his finger, but without always being able to tell which finger. All deeper muscular and articular sensation is absent. "A painful spot exists in the right iliac passage. Pressure on this point, provided it be strong, occasions aural phenomena in the head (throbbing in the temples, ringing of the ears). Further, if it is continued, it stops the attack. Another such spot also exists about the in- ternal condyle of the femur of the right side. " Taste is wanting on the right side of the tongue ; smell is completely lost on the right side. Hearing is somewhat impaired on the same side. As to sight, a contraction of the right side of the field of vision to 30 is noted. On the left the field of vision is normal. Further, there is achromatopsia and monocular poly- opsia. " The patient told us that he was hypnotizable, and that in the hospital clinics where he had served as sub- ject for various experiments he had been hypnotized by means of pressure on the eyeballs. We shall see, later on, into what a state the patient had really been placed by this agency. " Two days after his admission the patient asked us 68 ALTERATIONS OP" PERSONALITY. to hypnotize him, as it had been done at Montpellier and elsewhere, because he felt a certain improvement after these induced sleeps. We willingly acceded to his wish, and after he was seated in a chair repeated the manoauvre that he said had been employed for this pur- pose closing the eyes with a slight pressure on the eyeballs. " After some seconds the patient went through the movements of swallowing and vomiting. We thought he was about to vomit, but he did not. Soon his limbs stiffened out and the body bent itself a little backward. His legs were half together and the feet extended stiffly. The arms were held against the body, the fore- arms held out, with the palm of the hand thrown back and out, and the fingers bent. If the arm was raised it remained in the position which was given it. Then the patient had a shivering attack and his limbs again became supple, and he sat up, calm, his head hanging a little forward on his chest, his eyes closed in the atti- tude of one who sleeps. " Some moments later, with his eyes still closed, he began to recite in a low voice some lines of Horace. Just then we called in his right ear, * Soldiers ! ' He stopped his quotation from Horace, and in a few sec- onds, after muttering some unintelligible words, he cried with a loud voice, and with the intonation of an order : ' Forward march ! Eight about ! right face ! ' Then he opened his eyes, and with a set look, as if gazing into the distance, his eyelids wide open, body bent forward and neck outstretched, he seemed to fol- low with eager attention everything that was happening in a scene afar off. " Some light rhythmical blows were then struck on a gong. The patient assumed a more quiet attitude, SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 69 which seemed to express contemplation, and said, ' Marguerite enters the chapel Mephistopheles ! ' " Just then some one pricked the right side of his face, which was anaesthesic the night before ; he imme- diately showed that the sensation was felt, for he made a grimace and put his hand on the place. The left side, on the contrary, was now ansesthesic, although it had not been so the night before. At the same time he cried ' Oh ! the flies ! ' " We opened his eyes and gave him a red glass. After a few minutes he cried out anxiously, ' Oh ! fire ! ' and then, talking to himself and changing his tone, ' There are at least five hundred lines to be copied ! ' " Three blows were struck on the table. The pa- tient cries with authority, 'To the stage, mademoi- selles ! ' Then, changing his tone, ' Well, well, little Elise where did she get her figure ? I didn't recog- nise her ; it must be her maid that arranged her to look like that.' Then, jokingly : ' X [an artist's name], who made Delaunay with the little foot 1 ' " The patient was now given a blue glass. He ex- claimed in admiration : ' Oh, how beautiful ! This last picture is superb ! The high lights it is the Exposi- tion of the Black and White ! ' " Given a red glass, he said, still with admiration, ' Beautiful colour ! ' Then changing his tone, he ex- claimed with anxiety, ' Fire ! ' " Then given a blue glass, the patient said, ironically and with emphasis : ' Well, I must be in one of Theo- phile Gautier's books ! I see my princess through a window. We will sing together the song of our twenty years ! ' " Three blows were struck on the table. The patient, changing his tone, and as if talking to himself 70 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. and listening : * There is the overture tremolo in the orchestra ! ' Then questioningly : ' What is it vaude- . ville ? ' Then, as if he were criticising the play : ' There is the plot, as Sarcey says the dialogue is slow.' "A magnet was struck, and gave a sound like a bell. The patient, imitating the tones of the guards, called: ' Chauteau Chillon ! Yevey! All aboard!' Then changing his tone, as if he were speaking to one of the guards, who hurried him, he said : ' They have g 0ne they are still embarking we are not going to have a ducking at least ! ' " The sound of a drum was imitated by striking on the table with our fingers. The patient, speaking sadly to himself, said : * It is a march to execution ; they are going to disgrace him, unfortunate wretch ! He is going to be punished, while the spy at Nancy will get off with five years in prison. This man, who rep- resents the head of the Government ! Such is justice ! ' " As we see, the delirious conceptions manifest the characteristics of the personality of the patient to the highest degree. He is a journalist, a ' literary man,' without money, living as best he can by his pen. He talks of nothing but reporting, theatres, and the misery of writing by the job. So much for the professional side. As for that which concerns his character, he is not inconsistent here, either. He is sceptical, disappointed, and all his delirious ideas conspicuously bear this stamp. Eventually new scenes will be added. After a period of sojourn at the Salpetriere, after having observed things and people about him, he often talked in his delirium of the hospital, patients, and physicians, al- ways with this sceptical and disappointed tone. " Some days after his admission into the hospital the patient, who noticed with interest all that happened SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 71 around him in the house, had repeatedly declared his intention to write something a novel, a little story about the Salpetriere. Taking advantage of a moment when he was in his delirious state, we drew his attention to this subject by repeatedly shouting in his ears, ' The Salpetriere ! ' placing pen, ink, and paper before him. In a few moments he began to write, and so filled twelve sheets of paper, forming a sort of prologue to his novel, without stopping, except to light some ciga- rettes which we offered him. He described the con- sultation for non-residents at the hospital on Tuesday morning ; the manners and appearance of the various patients and attendants. He did not dwell on the de- scription of the members of the medical staff, but re- lated his emotions, and the way of his admission to the bureau, etc. From time to time he talked to an imag- inary friend, as if he had met with a fellow-reporter in the office of an editor of some journal, complaining of the unreasonableness of the reader, who never has enough copy, asking advice, erasing wrong words, add- ing notes and references, regularly made out. These twelve pages are written in about an hour. " He was then roused by our fanning his face and pressing on an hysterogenic spot that he had in his left side. He came to himself after some convulsive move- ments, and his manuscript was put before him. He recognised his handwriting, and seemed much aston- ished to find that he had written so much in an hour. He thinks'some one made him do it while he "slept," for he had not composed anything on that subject in his waking state, and, besides, in his waking state he would require two full hours to write twelve pages without corrections. " Three days later the experiment was tried again. 72 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. The patient took the pen and deliberately, without hes- itation, numbered liis first sheet 13, and at the top of the page wrote the last word of his preceding manu- script.* That day he wrote seven pages consecutively, of which the last (No. 19) was only half finished. " The next day there was a new experiment. He began by numbering his page 19a, with the last word of the preceding page, and wrote half a page. The next day he began again, and continuing the unfinished page, 19a, he numbered the next 19b, then stopped at page 20. " We then left him twenty days without speaking to him again of his novel, and at the end of that time we again drew his attention to this subject. He took the pen, numbered his first sheet 21 without hesitation, writing at the top, as usual, the last two words of the last sheet written twenty days before." The patient observed by Charcot and Guinon dif- fers chiefly from M. Mesnet's by reason of greater sensorial activity. Touch has less importance, for sight and hearing are more alert. Moreover, the patient has the use of speech, and utters reflections that are often rational, sometimes spicy, clearly showing that he is not an automaton deprived of consciousness. Charcot's observations then remove all doubts which might have still existed on this important point. We think it use- less to insist upon it, as the demonstration appears to us to be so conclusive. Consciousness is as undoubt- edly present in the case of these patients during their attacks as in the cases of the somnambulists studied in the preceding chapter. * It is the custom of many writers for the press to repeat on the top of each page the last word of the preceding page. The patient always did this. SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 73 The journalist B also presents other psycholog- ical variations. He is less fixed in his delirium than the sergeant of Bazeilles ; the latter not only does not talk, but does not understand what is said to him, and consequently he is inaccessible to verbal suggestions. The journalist has a form of delirium with which one can enter into direct relation, since he hears and under- stands what is said to him ; but his intellectual condi- tion remains very different from that of the hypnotic somnambulists, nevertheless, for the hallucinations and delirious conceptions that are communicated to him develop independently of the will of the experimenter. Summing up, the somnambulism of the preceding subjects finds its fundamental characteristic psycholog- ically in delirium, while these subjects have properly two personalities that of the normal state and that of the second condition ; but this second condition is delirious. We have seen that in the case of the somnambules of our first type the different manifestations of the sec- ond state are themselves connected and unified by mem- ory. "When the patient is in one of these states he remembers what has occurred in the other states ; the second personality can then maintain its unity, and per- sists always the same, with the same character in the successive attacks of somnambulism. Does the same hold hi the case of the somnambule of the second type ? Does the second personality, which is delirious, retain memory of what has occurred in the former attacks ? In many cases it is difficult to tell, for the patient, dur- ing his delirium, can not be subjected to a regular ex- amination ; he does not engage in conversation with the experimenter, and he is even incapable of giving the information for which he is asked. But occasion- 74 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. ally the very form which his delirium takes on and the actions which he performs may enlighten us. So there are two principal proofs of the continuity of memory, as we have already remarked above. The first is the conscious testimony of the subject, and the second is the repetition or the continuation of an action com- menced in the preceding attack. The journalist B furnished this second proof, and from this standpoint the observation of his case is much more instructive than that of the sergeant of Bazeilles. We recall that B - began during one of his somnambulistic attacks to write a novel about the Salpetriere. In his subse- quent attacks he took up his work exactly at the point where he had left it, although he was not allowed to see the sheets he had already written, and following the usage of copyists, he repeated at the top of each page the last word of the preceding page. One day he re- membered the last word that he had written three weeks before. So it is undoubtedly the same person- ality which manifests itself in the successive attacks. Until now I have employed the word "attack" without attaching any very definite meaning to it. It would be interesting to know under precisely what con- ditions the mental activity of such patients as F shows itself. There has long been uncertainty on this subject, and the observation of M. Mesnet, although very detailed, teaches us nothing ; it only appears that the sergeant of Bazeilles experienced a sensation of dizziness and some other subjective sensations before the attack came on. Charcot's studies were under- taken chiefly for the purpose of arranging these facts in their proper pathological categories. He then ap- plied himself to determine precisely those physiological events on which the alterations of consciousness de- SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM. 75 pend. We shall speak very briefly of the conclusions which he has reached, but the exclusively psychological nature of our study obliges us to pass rapidly over medical details. Charcot admits that the somnambulistic or pseudo- somnambulistic phenomena of the class of those which we have just studied belong to the crisis of major hys- teria. They represent the intellectual phase of that crisis, which shows itself only after a convulsion of the limbs. It is the period of passional attitudes and of delirum, periods which in an ordinary attack are gen- erally little developed, but which here present so con- siderable an exaggeration that they themselves constitute nearly the whole of the crisis. One can always dis- cover on close inspection, in the cases which run their course, the existence of some convulsion of the limbs, and this convulsive element, although so slight, repre- sents the phases of tonic and clonic movement which are so important in the other crises of hysteria. CHAPTEK III. INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. WE may now leave the account of spontaneous alterations of consciousness and enter the domain of phenomena artificially induced. We shall thus en- deavour to study the divisions of personality which may be produced in the laboratory. The importance of these experiments, and, above all, their psychological value, have been very differently estimated within the last few years. At first, when studies on hypnotism and somnambulism were brought into favour by M. Charcot, there was a movement of great enthusiasm. Since then we may as well admit it enthusiasm has diminished a little. One may see for himself that these studies present a great many loop- holes to error, which very often perverts the results despite the precautions of the most careful experi- menter ; and no one can boast that he has never failed. One of the chief and constant causes of mistake, we know, is found in suggestion that is to say, in the influence that the operator exerts by his words, ges- tures, attitudes, even by his silence, on the subtle and alert intelligence of the person whom he has put in the somnambulistic state. But these causes of error should not lead us to 7 INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 77 abandon such a fruitful method. All processes of ob- servation are shown after long use to be defective from some standpoint. It is so in the case of the graphic method, which, though so wonderful in many cases, still gives rise to serious misapprehensions of the forms of movements. Anatomy itself, which of all the bio- logical sciences seems to be most firmly established, may be mistaken and take appearance for reality. The ob- server must be wide-awake and constantly on his guard in using his method and his apparatus. The chief precaution to be taken here consists, as I have already said, in selecting out those observations which are re- peated, which receive verification at other hands as well, and which are confirmed by different methods. Before considering this subject it may be of service to recall briefly what hypnotic somnambulism is, and what the means of inducing it. For all details into which I can not enter the reader is referred to one of my earlier works,* where induced somnambulism was studied for itself as well as in its psycho-pathological aspects. I shall not consider this state here except as it is connected with the theory of the alterations of consciousness ; and I shall not borrow from the former descriptions more than is necessary, f Effectual means of inducing somnambulism are very numerous, so numerous that it would take too * Binet and Fere, Animal Magnetism, in International Scientific Series. f The somnambulism which we are now to study differs from natural somnambulism, and from that of the hysterical crisis, only in that it is induced. This difference is very slight ; indeed both of these sorts of somnambulism may be artifically induced. There are other differences, but they are still obscure. To avoid confusion, the experimental somnambulism may be called hypnotic. 78 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. long to give a complete detailed list. One of the old- est known processes is that of Braid. It consists simply in the fixing of the gaze. The subject on whom the experiment is to be made is seated, every one remains quiet about him, and the experimenter asks him to look fixedly at a small object (brilliant or not) which he puts near his eyes, in a position to bring about a forced convergence and fatigue. After a while sight grows dim, the eyelids flutter and quiver, and the subject falls asleep. A person may also be hypnotized by a mo- notonous and prolonged noise, by a violent and sud- den noise, by a flash of electric light, by light or heavy pressure on some part of the body, such as the vertex (in the case of hysterical patients), by bind- ing the thumbs. Passes are often successful means to the end. The attempt has been made to classify these different processes of hypnotizing, and even to give them a physiological explanation ; but their diver- sity, the slight stimulus necessary to produce the effect (sometimes a whistle or a gesture is sufficient), and finally, the characteristic fact that in the case of a person who has often been put to sleep in this way all of these methods are successful these considerations lead to the supposition that psychological causes play the larger part. Yet it is very clear that this explanation does not -go far, and those who assert that suggestion is the only cause of hypnotism tell us very little about the mechanism of the operation. The majority of subjects sleep because they know that that is what is wanted ; that is evident, indisputable. But how does this idea produce somnambulism? It is very curious that a person who has never slept in this way, and to whom this idea of sleep is given, enters into this particular INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 79 state, which is by no means the normal sleep, and of which he has had as yet no experience. To explain that by suggestion is to be satisfied with a word. Let us acknowledge that we know very little about all these phenomena; for inducing hypnotic somnambu- lism we have some useful receipts, and that is all. But suppose that somnambulism has been induced, by suggestion or otherwise, in what does the new state consist ? . How does it differ from the waking state ? What transformation has the subject been made to undergo by commanding him to sleep ? It will, per- haps, be as difficult to reply to this question as to the former one. What we know best are the psychological modifications shown by the hypnotized subject that is to say, the alterations which are produced in his thought and feelings. It is probable, even certain, that these alterations have as a basis material modifi- cations which are produced in the nervous centres of the somnambulist and in other parts of his organism. But the nature of these purely physiological phenomena is quite unknown, and all that has been written on this subject seems to me to be fanciful. The psychology of hypnosis is as yet what we know best. It is the only light which can at present guide us in our researches. Without doubt it would be desirable to go further, to add to the study of psychic functions that of physiolog- ical functions ; to explain alterations of consciousness by experiments directed to the nervous centres ; for we can not conceal the fact that these phenomena of con- sciousness that we describe are often vague, indefinite, and without clearly defined outlines; and an exact mind could not be satisfied with their description and with the declaration that their study is not scientific. Yet we are obliged to be content with very vague 80 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. notions, since, all things considered, they are worth more than false notions, and we do not hesitate to prefer them to physiological hypotheses, which while seeming more exact are really much more hypo- thetical.* If, then, one comes to define somnambulism from a psychological standpoint he sees at once that it con- stitutes a new mode of mental existence. The old mesmerists were quite right when they described it as a second personality. Two fundamental elements constitute personality memory and character. In the latter respect, as to character, induced somnambulism is not perhaps always clearly distinguishable from the waking state. It frequently happens that the somnambulist does not relinquish the character that he had before he was put to sleep. The reasons are manifold. In the first place, experimenters who introduce a person into the state usually have some suggestion to give them. We are liable not to pause to study what is spontaneous in the state produced. Modifications of character, if they exist, may easily pass unnoticed. Then, it should be observed, that a modification of character, especially a modification of the emotional tone, is one of those im- portant phenomena which most frequently have an internal ground in unconscious sensations, and appear externally in important modification of the physical organism. "We have seen that such phenomena occur in spontaneous double personality, and particularly in cases where the second state lasts for years. Such a * Readers of my earlier works will see that I have altered my view on this important point. [See Animal Magnetism, by Binet and Fere. ED.] INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 81 radical modification is not generally produced in states of induced somnambulism, which last only a short time and are induced by stimuli that are sometimes extremely slight. This does not hold for the second element of personality memory. It has long been said that memory supplies the chief sign by which the new state may be distinguished from the normal state. The somnambulist shows, in fact, a curious modification in the range of his memory ; the same regular phenomena of amnesia may be produced in him as occur in the spontaneous variations of personality. Two propositions sum up the principal modifications of memory which accompany induced hypnotic som- nambulism ; first, the subject recalls during his waking state none of the events which happened during som- nambulism ; and second, on the other hand, when put in the somnambulistic state he may remember not only the previous somnambulistic states, but also events be- longing to his waking state. The accuracy of the first proposition can be easily proved by all those who have made experiments or as- sisted at them. Usually when a person is put in a som- nambulistic state he is kept in this state for an hour or more, and the tune is employed in making a multitude of experiments upon him. On awaking the subject remembers nothing ; he is obliged to look at the clock to know how long he has been in this state. If he has been introduced to people during his second state, he does not know on awaking that he has even seen them before ; and even if he is shown a letter that he has been made to write in his somnambulistic state, he easily recognises his handwriting, but he has no memory of having written it, and can not tell a word of r 82 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. the contents of the letter. We must hasten to add, however, that nothing is absolutely fixed among such delicate phenomena; there are memories which can sometimes be recovered especially in the case of those patients whose somnambulism is light by helping them a little, putting them on the right track. For example, by repeating to them the first words of a poem that some one has just recited to them, the awakening of somnambulistic memories is aided. If the subject be directed to remember, if he be given a positive sug- gestion to remember all when he awakes, or if, as M. Delbceuf has ingeniously imagined, he be suddenly roused while performing an action in the somnambulis- tic state which he has been ordered to do, being thus taken in the act just as he awakes, he may then remem- ber the action he was just about to perform or the order just received. In this way the physical continu- ity of the waking and somnambulistic states is estab- lished. But these are artifices which do not impair the ac- curacy of the rule formulated. Oblivion remains the truth in the immense majority of cases, and nearly all observers agree in recognising it. The book of som- nambulistic life is closed on awaking and the normal person is unable to read it. According to our second proposition, the subject recovers in a new somnambulistic state the memories of the previous ones, and he remembers equally well his waking state. It follows, therefore, that memory attains its maximum extent in somnambulism, since it then embraces two psychological existences at once as the normal memory never does. We have already dis- covered this superiority of somnambulistic memory in the observations on natural somnambulism. Felida, as INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 83 we have seen, when in the second state remembered at the same time this state and the first. It is a new anal- ogy to be added to a great many others. It may even be remarked that the somnambulist, when he endeavours to recollect certain particulars, has better memory than the same person awake. This collection of facts whose accuracy, I repeat, has been verified by so many authors that it is useless to cite their names amply suffices for the conclusion that induced somnambulism presents the same charac- teristics of memory as natural somnambulism. Braid was able to say with reason that artificial somnambulism is a division of consciousness. One last remark may be made on the alterations of personality which are produced by artificial somnam- bulistic states. Although the idea that an individual gets of his own personality does not constitute this per- sonality, but is only a single element in it, it is inter- esting to find out what some people in somnambulism imagine their condition to be. Unfortunately, the ques- tioning of somnambulists does not always bring out satisfactory answers, for frequently the reply is clearly dictated by former suggestions. We find, for example, patients who declare that they are in a somnambulistic state, simply repeating what they have heard. I may only suggest the curious fact that manj people, the first time that they come into the somnam- bulistic life, experience a f eeling of astonishment. They find everything changed. Some say they " feel queer, , strange " ; others, speaking more plainly, declare that they become an entirely different person. They speak of this person as they would of a stranger. I shall borrow an example from M. Pitres : " A young woman, named Marguerite X ,. whom 84 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. I was able to study at my leisure, very clearly illus- trates this phenomenon. When she was in the sleep she never spoke of herself except in the third person : ' Marguerite is suffering to-day,' she said ; ' she is not happy, she has been crossed, she had better be left alone.' ' But who then are you,' I asked her one day, ' that you speak in Marguerite's name ? ' 'I am her friend.' 'And may I ask your name ? ' 'I don't know ; but I am very fond of Marguerite, and when she is made unhappy it grieves me too.' " When in this condition she recognised every one with whom she was accustomed to have daily inter- course, but she did not speak to them with the same familiarity as in her normal condition. She no longer said ' thou ' in speaking to her parents. Her husband- was the husband of her friend Marguerite and not her own. She was very fond of wine, but usually denied herself so as not to trouble her mother. 'Will you have a glass of anisette" ? ' I asked, after hypnotizing her. ' Oh, yes,' she replied ; ' that will give me much pleasure. Marguerite does not drink, because she has been forbidden to ; but I am free to do as I like. Give me a glass right away.' ' ; We shall repeatedly see, under different conditions, consciousness distinguishing in this way by speech the different personalities who dwell in the same indi- vidual from each other. This leads to some very inter- esting psychological questions, to which I shall revert after giving more facts. II. Experimentation, which is for many reasons inf erior to the observation of spontaneous facts, nevertheless offers a great advantage, in that by infinitely multiply- INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 85 ing and varying the conditions of observation, it en- ables us to consider a fact under many aspects, and it sometimes gives rise to new phenomena which passive observation would have waited for in vain. It is a little that way here. By studying somnambulistic states ex- perimenters have discovered some extremely instructive phenomena, of which no one would dream from read- ing observations of natural somnambulists, but which nevertheless must exist in patients of that class. We have seen the separation of the two psycholog- ical existences which constitute, one the normal state and the other somnambulism. We have also seen that when the normal life develops, all memories of som- nambulism are for the time being effaced. What then becomes of this existence superadded during the tem- porary eclipse ? It had its memories, its character, its emotions, and its preoccupations. Does all this som- nambulistic activity disappear when the regular life re- sumes its course ? Simple observation tells us nothing. Experiment searching more profoundly shows us that a remnant of the somnambulistic life can exist during the waking state, although the normal patient may not in the least suspect it. One of the experiments which show it the best is the following, which we owe to Gurney, an English psychologist of much talent.* A name was pronounced, a number mentioned, a fact related, and a poem recited before a person who was in an artificial somnambulistic state, and she was not given any particular suggestion bearing on the words that were spoken. Then she was wakened, she remembered nothing, as is usually the case. It is not a simulated forgetfulness ; it is sincere, * Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, 1887, p. 294. 86 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. and so profound that notwithstanding the promise of a sovereign the means employed by Gurney as a test of sincerity the subject was unable to recollect a word of anything that had been said before her a few moments before. Then some one took her hand and placed a pencil between her fingers, or at least what amounted to the same thing she was made to put her hand upon a planchette provided with a pencil for the purpose, and her hand and the instrument were hidden from her by means of a large screen placed between. In less than a minute her hand moved, she began to write, and what she wrote was precisely what had just been said before her when she was in the somnambulistic state, and what her normal ego of the waking state had not remem- bered. The result of this experiment is so far very curious ; the special conditions under which it was produced are still more so. The subject's hand wrote, and she her- self did not know what her hand was writing ; so, al- though her hand and arm are not insensible to pressure and pricks, the subject perceives nothing. Sometimes with a little exertion such a patient is able to feel a movement and guess its nature ; but that is a modifica- tion of the phenomenon resulting from the fact that the subject gives his attention to it ; at first he perceives nothing, and there are persons who, do what they will, can never perceive anything. On the other hand, the subject experiences a rather peculiar subjective sensa- tion ; it seems to him, he says, that it is the instrument, the planchette, that is animated by a spontaneous move- ment and draws his hand along. The movement is some- times accompanied by painful tactile sensations which render the experience far from pleasant. I may be permitted to add a few more details INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 87 to complete the picture of this phenomenon. By the method which Gurney used, the subject when just wakened did not try to put his hand on the planchette, or to take a pencil, as he would certainly have done had he been obeying an explicit suggestion, as, for example, if some one had said to him, " "When you awake you will do thus and so." He gives no proof of sponta- neity. Passively, without knowing what is wanted of him, he allows his hand to be put on the instrument, and while the writing is being .traced his normal ego is completely disinterested ; he neither pays attention nor shows readiness to assist at the little operation which is being performed that is to say, he is now in a state of double personality. There are really two persons in him, one who is the normal person who chats with the assistants, and the other who writes ; the first pays no attention to what the second is doing. It is a condition of double personality, I say. The division of consciousness, in fact, closely resembles that which we have studied in the preceding chapters. All cases have this in common : that a collection of psycho- logical phenomena, well co-ordinated and self-support- ing, keeps apart and exists without normal conscious- ness. This secondary consciousness, in the case of natural somnambulists, does not become evident until the chief consciousness is effaced ; then the second con- dition succeeds to the first. In that case there is alter- nation ; in this case coexistence of the two conscious- nesses side by side. Gurney first attempted to show that the somnam- bulistic life does indeed survive in the midst of the re- established normal life; and to that end he observes that if the subject be again put in the somnambulistic state after the experiment of writing, he will not only 88 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. remember the words which he has written, but, further, he can then say that he availed himself of the use of the planchette, and that he certainly wrote those words. Memory then connects the two states and demonstrates their psychological unity. Gurney was also careful, in relating these curious experiments, to recognise the fact that the phenomenon of memory, shown by automatic writing, has by no means the character of mechanical and unintelligent repetition. Generally, it is true, automatic writing faithfully repeats the phrase said to the subject while he was in the somnambulistic state, and, even if he has been addressed by his name in telling him the phrase, the name is reproduced with the rest. But the use of certain devices of experiment show the part that intelli- gence clearly plays in these phenomena of handwriting. It is possible to suggest several figures to a subject in the somnambulistic state, asking him to make the addition ; then, if he be suddenly wakened afterward, without having been given the tune to finish his calcu- lation, he finishes it in the waking state when his hand is put on the planchette. He can also be made to do more complicated calculations, by asking him, for ex- ample, how many letters there are in such a sentence, and forcing him to make the calculation after he is waked, etc. I have placed Gurney's observations in this chapter, which deals only with hysterical patients, because in studying them it is easy to see their accuracy ; but it is important to add that Gurney did not study specially and solely this class of patients. People who submitted to his experiments are, he claims, people of good health. English authors, indeed, often make this statement; they are very discreet and reserved in speaking of their INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 89 patients, and often seem to be afraid to apply the name hysteria to persons who nevertheless clearly have nerv- ous attacks. However, it is of no consequence. I may say in this connection that hysterical patients have been my subjects from choice, because they magnify the phenomena that must necessarily be found to some degree in the case of many persons who have never shown hysterical symptoms. The importance of the results obtained by Gurney is increased by the fact that this learned author was the first in England to recognise the double personality which is realized in the case of a hypnotized person, and that he conducted his researches without any knowledge of those which were in progress in France about the same time.* The characteristic feature of Gurney's experiments consists in the study of the memory of a person to whom no special suggestion has been addressed. By the deli- cate and ingenious method of automatic handwriting, the English psychologist demonstrated that somnambu- listic states persist in the waking life. Let us pause a moment to consider this psycholog- ical situation, for it is the first time it has confronted us. The subject of the experiment is brought back to the waking state ; she has recovered her normal ego ; she has resumed her usual course of thought ; there still survives, without her being conscious of it, a remnant of the somnambulistic life which she has just passed through. It is a collection of psychological phenomena which remains apart from her normal consciousness, but which is nevertheless endowed with consciousness ; * Myers, The Work of Edmund Gurney, Proc. S. P. R., Decem- ber, 1888, p. 369. 90 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. it forms a little consciousness by the side of the greater a small luminous point by the side of a great focus of light. This example must serve as a transition between the studies with which we have been occupied hith- erto and those which will fill the second part of this book. We have become acquainted with the regular succession of personalities, their alternation in natural somnambulism and in hypnotic somnambulism. We have just seen that this succession can give place to a coexistent state. The somnambulistic ego, the second condition, is not always completely effaced when the waking state returns, but survives, coexists with normal thought, and gives rise to complex phenomena of divi- sion of consciousness. I shall now take up the study of coexistent per- sonalities. Leaving the preceding researches on som- nambulism, we are about to consider the subject in the waking state, and to describe processes calculated to show the divisions of consciousness which take place within him. PART II. COEXISTENT PERSONALITIES. CHAPTER I. AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. REPETITION OF SUBCONSCIOUS ACTIONS. THE question of multiple and coexistent personali- ties lias brought out a great number of works within the last few years in France, England, and elsewhere, but the history of the question is very brief. We need not / take account, of course, of the theories of the phi- losophers on the possibility of distinct consciousness and of double ego states before the time when it became possible to observe the facts of double personality di- rectly. These theories date from the time of Leibnitz, but recent criticism has shown that they do not belong to the history of a question which made no progress until the day when it assumed experimental form. Following the order adopted in the previous chap- ters, we may describe, in the first place, those spontane- ous phenomena which are found outside laboratories, for they are the most profound, lasting, and least modi- fied by the theories of schools, or of the leaders of schools, and which so reflect most faithfully the real facts. But there are reasons for abandoning this order of exposition. The chief one is that spontaneous phe- nomena of simultaneous doublement are specially asso- 91 92 ALTERATIONS OP PERSONALITY. ciated with spiritistic phenomena with turning tables and raising spirits. Now, it is clear that even if these phenomena contain, as we believe they do, a great deal of truth, nevertheless it has been so obscured by the simplicity of some people and the frauds of others that judicious minds have always been sceptical. Although it might be possible to disentangle the snarl, to classify the facts as demonstrated or demonstrable, and to dis- tinguish them from theories without foundation and from pure absurdities, yet I can not set out by begin- ning so difficult a task here. I am obliged, therefore, to postpone the study of spiritism till later on. This exclusion being made, it may suffice for us to mention a single observation serving as an introduction to recent researches. It is a very clear observation on spontaneous mental quality made by Taine. This emi- nent author published it in the preface of his work on the Intelligence,* a book which is more than twenty years old, but which nevertheless contains indications of nearly all the results of contemporary psychology. " In spiritistic manifestations themselves," says Taine, " we have shown the coexistence in the same in- dividual of two wills, of two distinct actions, of one of which the subject is conscious, but of the other of which he has no consciousness; this he attributes to invisible beings. " I have seen a person who, while chatting and sing- ing, wrote complete sentences without looking at the paper, without being conscious of what she wrote. I thoroughly believe in her sincerity. She declares that from the beginning to the end of the page she has no idea of what she had written on the paper. When she * De 1'Intelligence, i, p. 16. AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. 93 reads it she is astonished and sometimes alarmed. The handwriting is quite different from her usual style. The movement of the fingers and pencil is stiff and seems automatic. The writing always ends with a par- ticular signature that of a person already dead and gives the impression of conveying intimate thoughts, of having a mental background which the writer would not wish to divulge. We certainly find here a dual ego, the simultaneous presence of two parallel and in- dependent series, of two centres of action, or, if you will, two moral persons side by side in the same brain, each having its work and each a different work one on the stage and the other behind the scenes." I am now going on to study closely and hi all its details this curious psychological phenomenon of a per- son hi a dual state. To indicate the method of the exposition at once, I shall indicate the conditions under which the coexistence of two distinct egos may be most frequently observed. There are two cases. The first is hysterical insensibility. If a part of a per- son's body is insensible, he is not aware of what hap- pens to it ; and, on the other hand, the nervous cen- tres in relation with this insensible region may continue to act, as is the case in hysteria. The result is that certain actions, more often simple, but sometimes very complicated, can be performed subconsciously by a hysterical patient; further, these actions may have a psychical nature, and show intellectual processes dis- tinct from those of the subject, thus constituting a second ego, which coexists with the first. A second condition may also occasion the division of consciousness. It is not an alteration of sensibility, but it is rather a particular attitude of the mind the con- centration of attention on a single thing. The result 94 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. of this state of concentration is that the mind is ab- sorbed to the exclusion of other things, and to such a degree insensible that the way is opened for automatic actions ; and these actions, becoming more complicated, as in the preceding case, may assume a psychical nature and establish intelligences of a parasitic kind, existing side by side with the normal personality, which is not aware of them. We may study these two conditions of the division of consciousness in turn. Many others undoubtedly exist also, but those which we have just mentioned are the only ones that have been closely observed up to the present time.* II. We find that there exists in a great many hysterical patients, examined during their waking state and apart from their convulsive attacks, a certain so-called stigma or defect, long since remarked, but whose real nature was not understood until within the last few years. This stigma formerly called the brand of the possessed, or the clutch mark of the devil is insensibility. The seat and extent of hysterical insensibility is very varia- ble. Sometimes it invades the entire body ; more fre- quently it is on only half of the body for example, the left side and affecting in different degrees general sensibility, touch, muscular sense, and the special senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste. With others the in- sensibility whose distribution, indeed, can not be ac- * Numerous authors have studied these coexisting personalities in late years (see the observations which follow). We may cite espe- cially two critical studies Das Doppel Ich, by Max Dessoir, and a remarkable article by Hericourt on Activite" inconsciente de 1'Esprit, Revue Scientifique, August 31, 1889. AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. 95 counted for by any known anatomical or physiological peculiarity is confined to a small region of the trunk or to the limbs, as, for example, to a small insensible spot on the skin that can be pricked, pinched, burned,* stimulated in the most intense way without producing the least sensation of pain, and even without arousing any perception.* The genuineness of the anaesthesia is proved by various experiments, and also by certain physical signs which frequently accompany it. The most important of these signs are decrease in temperature of the non- sensitive parts, the absence of bleeding after pricking, the diminution of voluntary muscular force measured by the dynamometer, the form of muscular contrac- tions, the absence of fatigue, the lengthening of reac- tion time, and, lastly, the absence of any cry of pain or movement of surprise when the insensible region is roughly and vigorously stimulated unknown to the patient. No one of these phenomena is an invariable sign, but the presence of any of them is an important indication to the observer. The real nature of hysterical anaesthesia has long been misapprehended, and it has been compared to common anaesthesia from organic causes, as, for exam- ple, from the interruption of the afferent nerve tracts. This way of considering it should be completely aban- doned, for we now know that hysterical anaesthesia is not a real local insensibility, but an insensibility due to unconsciousness, to mental disintegration ; in short, it is psychical insensibility, arising simply because the personality of the patient is impaired, or even entirely * For more details the reader may consult the excellent pamphlet by Pitres Des Anesthesies hysteriques, Bordeaux, 1887. 96 ALTERATIONS OF PERSONALITY. divided. Moreover, by practical experimentation on this old phenomenon of hysteria, we are able to study closely certain quite remarkable cases of the disintegration of personality. Let us select for the experiments an hysterical wom- an, in whom this insensibility extends over an entire limb for example, her right arm. Frequently, in the case of these patients, the complex forms of sensibility of the skin are dissociated. The skin may continue sen- sible, while the subjacent tissues, the muscular parts, and the joints lose their sensibility and become painless when pressed hard ; or the reverse takes place feeling deserts the surface of the skin and persists in the deeper parts. Or again, by a new complication, certain re- gions seem never to lose sensibility to touch, pressure, temperature, and electric stimulation all at the same time, but remain accessible to a single kind of these stimulations. These numerous modifications of sensi- bility in the case of hysterical patients have often led unprejudiced observers to believe in a simulation which really did not exist. To be as careful as possible, we should take care to choose a patient whose arm is per- fectly and entirely insensible, showing a superficial and profound anaesthesia, and a loss of muscular sense. In this way we shall not have to guard against the sugges- tions that come to the subject by a remnant of sensi- bility. Further, it will be better if the sensibility of the patient chosen present a state relatively fixed, and be not subject to the fluctuations which are sometimes found, and for which it is so difficult to account. When experimenting upon hysterical patients it is impossible to take too many precautions. It is not necessary to put the subject to sleep. He is taken in his normal state while he is awake, without AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. 97 making him submit to any sort of preparation. The only preparation for the experiments consists in hiding his anaesthetic arm from sight, either by putting it be- hind his back or by using a screen. Things being so disposed, it is easy at least in some cases to bring out, without the patient's knowledge, intelligent move- ments in his insensible member.* We witness the awakening of an unconscious intelligence ; we can even communicate with it and direct it, hold a coherent con- versation with it, measure the extent of its memory and the acuteness of its perception. The existence of unconscious phenomena in the case of hysterical patients need not astonish us ; for each one of us may, if we watch ourselves with sufficient care, detect in ourselves a series of automatic actions, per- formed involuntarily and unconsciously. To walk, to sit down, to turn the page of a book these are actions which we perform without thinking of them. But it is difficult to study unconscious activity in a normal man, for this activity shows itself chiefly in routine, in formed habits, kept going by repetition ; in general, it does little new. Sometimes it seems to judge and reason, but * The study of the phenomena was first made by Fere and my- self (Arch, de Phys., October, 1887). I then pursued investigations alone, and my principal articles appeared in the Revue Philosophique (May, 1888 ; February and April, 1889 ; February and August, 1890), the Open Court (1889 f.) and Mind (January, 1890). It is impor- tant to note that before these different publications Pierre Janet, Myers, and Gurney, not to cite others, had already announced a theory of mental disaggregation, supported by many experiments. I have not followed strict historical order in my exposition, because I think that my own experiments lend themselves better than the others to a direct simple demonstration of double consciousness. 1 may take this occasion also to express my sincere thanks to M. Char- cot for allowing me so kindly to work for many years on his staff in the Salpetriere. 8 98 ALTERATIONS QP PERSONALITY. these are old judgments and reasons which it repeats. At all events, it seldom acquires any considerable de- velopment, and almost never, one might say, amounts to the dignity of an independent personality. The conditions of study are much more favourable when we apply ourselves to hysterical subjects, not in all cases indeed, but in some which we shall learn to recognise later ; so let us suppose that we have before us one of these choicest subjects, and see what happens. The term unconscious has often been applied to movements and actions which may occur under the preceding conditions. This simply means that these movements are not known to the subject, and are con- sequently unconscious. The word unconscious has only a relative sense. We shall have to examine, after de- scribing all the facts which we find, whether these phenomena, unconscious for the subject, are also un- conscious in themselves and for themselves, or whether it is not more probable that they belong to a second consciousness. I may say at once that I prefer this second hypothesis. At all events, to avoid presuppos- ing anything either one way or the other, I shall sub- stitute for the term unconscious that of subconscious. Let us commence by observing movements of repe- tition ; these are the simplest and perhaps the most easy to produce. The insensible arm of the subject, hidden from him by a screen, is made to perform slowly or rapidly a regular movement, a seesaw mo- tion toward the mouth ; or perhaps the forearm is twisted upon the elbow, or a finger is stimulated by alternate movements of flexion and extension. If the member be released suddenly in the midst of this ac- tion, the movement is seen to continue for a time which varies with the subject. With some the communicated AMNESIA OF HYSTERICAL PATIENTS. 99 movement is prolonged very little. The wrist which has been bent several times in succession scarcely rights itself when it is released. The movement is so slight and so short-lived that unless one is on the lookout it may not be noticed. On the other hand, with other patients the communicated movement may be repeated several times in succession ; and I have even seen hys- terical patients carry on such a repetition for over a hundred times the number one hundred not being an exaggeration, for the movements were counted. It is well known that the subject is unaware of these different movements. His arm is anaesthetic, and hid- den from him by a large screen. Sometimes he per- ceives a slight noise made by the rustling of his cloth- ing, and concludes that some one has touched his arm or moved it ; but he does not receive any direct impres- sion from the member itself. He is not conscious either of the movements which the experimenter gives to his hand or of those which his hand repeats after- ward, so of course he does not make any voluntary effort to move his hand ; his mind is practically un- aware of the experiment.* The same movements of repetition can be repro- duced in the limb by f aradic contractions or after reflex movements, and in this class of experiments the most delicate and interesting of all is the repetition of the movements of writing. As soon as a pencil is put in the insensible hand, by slipping it between the thumb and first finger these two fingers draw together to grasp the pencil, an