CHAPTER IX_Adventurings in the Psychical

THE LARGER SELF

It is barely fifty years since the problem of supreme interest to

mankind--the problem of the nature, possibilities, and destiny of

man--began to be studied in a really scientific way; yet in that half

century more progress has been made toward its solution than in all the

previous thousands of years that have elapsed since man first asked

himself: What am I? What are my capabilities? Shall I be, after I have

ceased to exist here on earth?

Armed with instruments of the most delicate precision, devising

novel methods for exploring the body and the mind in their mutual

ramifications, modern investigators have thrown a flood of new and

largely unexpected light on the great questions at issue, and have

opened vistas of hope and aspiration and actual achievement undreamed

of by the vanished peoples of bygone times.

At first sight, to be sure, much of their effort appears to be

irreparably, even wantonly, destructive, and perhaps nowhere more so

than in the blows they have dealt at the traditional conception of

the central fact in man's psychical make-up--that intangible entity

variously known as the ego, the self, the personality, animated and

governed by an indwelling, unifying principle, the soul. Every man

instinctively believes that there is only one of him. He feels that, no

matter how his thoughts, his sensations, his emotions may change in the

course of time, he himself will remain essentially and permanently the

same. Putting this belief into metaphysical language, he declares, with

the excellent Thomas Reid:

"The conviction which every man has of his identity ... needs no aid of

philosophy to strengthen it; and no philosophy can weaken it without

first producing some degree of insanity.... The identity of a person is

a perfect identity; wherever it is real it admits of no degrees; and

it is impossible that a person should be in part the same and in part

different, because a person is a monad, and is not divisible into

parts."[45]

[45] Thomas Reid's "Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man,"

pp. 228-231 (James Walker's edition of 1850).

But the modern explorer of the nature of man, replies:

"You are wrong, my friend. Your self is very far from being the simple,

stable unity that you imagine it to be. In reality it is most complex

and most unstable, easily breaking up, and sometimes breaking up so

completely that it may even be replaced by an entirely new self. You

do not believe this? I can prove it to you from the facts not only of

scientific experiment, but also of everyday observation."

Naturally, in support of this statement, stress would be laid on

instances resembling the strange case of BCA, just narrated. And

although cases at all similar to the BCA affair are extremely uncommon

there are a number on record evidencing in other ways so-called "total

dissociation of personality." For example:

A prosperous Philadelphia plumber, a man of exemplary habits and

seemingly in good health, left his home one day to take a short walk.

From that moment he disappeared as completely as though the earth had

opened and swallowed him. There was no reason why he should abscond or

commit suicide, and the general belief was that he had met with foul

play. Rewards were offered, and detectives employed, but no trace of him

could be found. His wife, giving him up for dead, sold his business and

removed with their children to Chicago.

Nearly two years later, the workmen in a tin-shop in a Southern city

were startled one morning by the conduct of one of their number, who,

dropping his tools and pressing his hand to his head in a bewildered

way, sprang to his feet, and cried:

"My God! Where am I? How did I get here? This isn't my shop!"

The foreman, thinking he was drunk, or had gone insane, ran forward to

pacify him.

"Steady, Smith, steady!" he exclaimed. "You'll be all right in a

minute."

The other only stared at him wildly.

"Why do you call me Smith?" he demanded. "That isn't my name."

"That's the name you've gone by since you came among us six months ago."

"Six months ago! You're crazy, man. It isn't half an hour since I left

my wife and little ones to get a breath of fresh air before dinner."

"Look here," said the foreman, pressing him gently into a seat, "where

do you suppose you are, anyway?"

"Why, in Philadelphia, of course."

It was indeed the Philadelphia plumber, whose missing self had returned

to him as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had vanished. A few days

more and he was happily reunited with the family that had so long

believed him to be among the dead.[46]

[46] Boris Sidis's "Multiple Personality," pp. 365-368. This

book, by one of the foremost American psychopathologists,

should be read by all students of abnormal psychology.

Where, it may well be asked, was this man's original self during these

two years? What had become of his normal ego, the ego of which alone he

had formerly been aware? Yet at no time throughout the period when he

lacked knowledge of his identity, and was without memory for his earlier

life and social relationships, did he display the slightest sign of

mental aberration. He was as sane and real to himself and to those with

whom he came into contact, and was as able to take care of himself and

earn a sufficient living, as he had ever been in the years before he

experienced the remarkable psychical upheaval that had substituted an

alien, a "secondary" self in the place of the self he had always been

and known.

A blow, an illness, a fright, the stress of a prolonged emotion--any one

of several causes may bring about this weird condition, of which I could

give illustrative cases to a number that would fill many pages of this

book.[47] Sometimes, though fortunately seldom, there may be--as in the

case of BCA--a double or even a multiple dissociation, resulting in

the development of two, three, four, or more secondary selves, which

alternate with one another in a way productive of the most intense

mental agony to the helpless victim.

[47] A collection of such cases will be found in my book,

"Scientific Mental Healing," pp. 124-155.

But, after all, it is not necessary to insist on such extreme instances

in order to demonstrate the essential instability and divisibility of

that which we commonly have in mind when we speak of the "self."

Dissociation of personality is in evidence every day in the pathetic

symptomatology of the various insanities, and in the chronic, if often

masked and unrecognized, memory lapses universal among sufferers from

the manifold affections of hysteria, such as we dealt with in the

chapter on "Dissociation and Disease." It is in evidence in the victims

of alcoholic and drug excesses, who, in a very literal sense, may become

"another person," and say and do things quite alien from their usual

self, and concerning which their usual self afterward has no knowledge.

Even normal sleep, albeit a wise provision for the rest and

strengthening of the organism, involves dissociation. Still more

strikingly is dissociation evident in the phenomena of the state of

artificial sleep induced by hypnotism.

It would carry us too far from the point now under consideration to

enter here into any discussion of the nature and mechanism of hypnotism,

that still widely misunderstood but marvelous agency, not simply for

therapeutic purposes but for the study and exploration of man's inmost

being. The thing of immediate importance is the fact that under the

influence of hypnotism a person invariably develops a self more or less

different from his ordinary waking, conscious self.

Hypnotized, he is to all outward seeming oblivious to everything

transpiring around him. But let the hypnotist speak to him, question

him, and he instantly responds with answers so intelligent as to

indicate that, in some respects, at all events, he is more alert and

keen than when wide awake. Curiously enough, however, commands and

suggestions given to him are, within certain limitations, accepted and

acted upon, no matter how disagreeable or absurd they may be.

Later, when awakened, he is in precisely the same position as are

victims of spontaneous dissociation--such as the Philadelphia plumber,

and Doctor Prince's puzzling neurasthene, BCA. That is to say, he is

unable to give any account of what he has said and done during hypnosis.

Thus the effect of hypnotism is to produce a psychical cleavage so

profound as to involve the action, within a single organism, of two

separate selves.

This has been demonstrated by a long line of scientific investigators,

including physicians and psychologists of international reputation.

Moreover, these investigators have shown that, even after a person has

been brought out of the hypnotic state, the self evoked by hypnotism may

in some inscrutable way continue operant without his suspecting for a

moment its existence and influence.

Impressive proof of this is found in the execution of what are known as

post-hypnotic commands. A hypnotized person is told that, after being

de-hypnotized, he is to perform a certain act on receiving a certain

signal, or at the expiration of a certain time. As usual, when restored

to his conscious, waking state, he remembers nothing of the command

imposed on him; but when the signal is given, or the appointed time

arrives, he feels an irresistible, and to him inexplicable, impulse to

carry out the suggested idea.

Thus, in one series of fifty-five experiments made by the foremost

English authority on hypnotism, Doctor J. Milne Bramwell, the subject, a

young woman of nineteen, was ordered to perform a specified act at the

end of a varying number of minutes, ranging from three hundred to more

than twenty thousand. Not once, on being de-hypnotized, did she remember

what she had been told to do, although offered a liberal reward if she

could recall the commands given her.

Nevertheless, only two of the fifty-five experiments were complete

failures, while in forty-five she executed the commands at exactly the

moment designated, and in the remainder was at no time more than five

minutes out of the way. As to the complete failures, Doctor Bramwell

ascertained that in one instance she had mistaken the suggestion given,

and in the other the circumstances were such that the command might

have been executed without his being aware of it.[48]

[48] These experiments by Doctor Bramwell were first reported

by him in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical

Research_, vol. xii, pp. 176-203.

Equally astonishing results are reported by the brilliant group of

Frenchmen who, uniting under the direction of Doctor A. A. Liébeault,

were the first to make an organized investigation of the cause and

effects, the possibilities and limitations, of hypnotism. One of these

French investigators, Doctor Hippolyte Bernheim, once hypnotized an old

soldier, and asked him:

"On what day in the first week of October will you be at liberty?"

"On the Wednesday."

"Well," said Doctor Bernheim, "on that day you will pay a visit to

Doctor Liébeault; you will find in his office the president of the

republic, who will present you with a medal and a pension."

The soldier was then awakened and questioned as to what had been said to

him, but could remember nothing. However, on Wednesday, October 3,

Doctor Liébeault wrote to Doctor Bernheim:

"Your soldier has just called at my house. He walked to my bookcase,

and made a respectful salute; then I heard him utter the words: 'Your

excellency!' Soon he held out his right hand, and said: 'Thanks, your

excellency.' I asked him to whom he was speaking. 'Why, to the president

of the republic.' He turned again to the bookcase and saluted, then went

away. The witnesses to the scene naturally asked me what that madman was

doing. I answered that he was not mad, but as reasonable as they or I,

only another person was acting in him."[49]

[49] "De la Suggestion dans l'État Hypnotique," p. 29.

Compare with this an amusing little story told by Doctor Prince.

"Wishing to test the compelling influence of post-hypnotic commands," he

says,[50] "I suggested to one of my subjects, Mrs. R., after she was

hypnotized, that on the following day, when she went down to dinner,

she would put on her bonnet, and keep it on during the whole of dinner

time. The next day I received a letter from her in which she said:

[50] _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, vol. cxxii,

p. 463.

"'I think I am getting insane. At dinner time I would wear my hat during

the meal.'

"On further inquiry, I obtained the following story, which I give

substantially in the original language:

"'As I was going in to dinner, my girl asked me what I was going out

for. "I am not," says I. "I am going to eat my dinner." "Then what have

you got your hat on for?" says she. I put my hand to my head, and there

was my bonnet. "Lord, Mamie!" says I, "am I going crazy?" "No, mother,"

she says, "you often do foolish things." I began to get frightened, but

took off my bonnet and went into the next room to dinner.'

"Then the younger child similarly asked her where she was going, and

called attention to her having her bonnet on. A second time she raised

her hand to her head, and to her surprise found that her bonnet was

really there. She again took it off, and later, when her husband

entered, the same thing was repeated; but when she found her bonnet on

her head for the third time, she made excuse of the stormy words that

ensued to declare she would 'keep it on now till she was through.' After

dinner, being alarmed, she consulted a neighbor about it."

But the longest time on record for the carrying out of a post-hypnotic

suggestion was made by a subject of Doctor Liégeois, another of the

early French investigators. Doctor Liégeois hypnotized a young man, and

said to him:

"A year from to-day this is what you are going to do, and what you are

going to see: You will call at Doctor Liébeault's office in the morning,

and tell him that you have come to thank him and Doctor Liégeois for all

they have done to improve your health. While you are talking to him, you

will see enter the room a dog with a monkey riding on its back. They

will perform a thousand tricks that will amuse you very much.

"Then you will see a man come in, leading a great American grizzly bear,

which will also perform tricks. It will be a tame bear, so that you will

not be at all frightened. The man will be delighted at recovering his

trained dog and monkey, which he thought he had lost. Before he leaves

you will borrow a few cents from Doctor Liébeault to give to him."

Doctor Liégeois, after repeating these complicated and absurd

directions, awoke the young man, and by cautious questioning ascertained

that his memory was a perfect blank for all that had been said to him

while he was hypnotized. Great care was taken not to recall to his mind

at any time the command given to him, and which his hypnotic self was

expected to remember and perform on the appointed day.

Exactly a year later, at nine in the morning, Doctor Liégeois went

to Doctor Liébeault's office, where he waited half an hour, and then

returned home, thinking that the experiment had failed. But at ten

minutes to ten the young man arrived. There was nothing about his

appearance to indicate that he was in any abnormal condition.

He greeted Doctor Liébeault, explained that he had come to thank him for

his kindness to him, and inquired for Doctor Liégeois, whom he said he

had expected to find there. A few minutes afterward, Doctor Liégeois

having meanwhile been hastily summoned, the young man cried out that a

monkey had just come in, riding on the back of a dog. He watched

the antics of these imaginary animals with great interest, laughing

heartily, and describing the tricks he fancied he saw them performing.

After this, he announced the arrival of a man who was evidently the

owner of the monkey and the dog, and he begged Doctor Liébeault to lend

him a little money to reward the man for the amusement his animals had

given him. But he saw no bear.

A moment later he was conversing with the two physicians, in evident

ignorance of all that he had just been saying and doing. He angrily

denied that there had been any animals in the room. When asked why he

himself was there, he could give no definite reply. Doctor Liégeois

immediately put him into the hypnotic state, and demanded:

"Do you know why you came here this morning?"

"Of course I do."

"Why was it?"

"Because you told me to."

"When?"

"A year ago."

"But you did not come at nine o'clock?"

"You did not tell me to come at nine o'clock. You said to come at

exactly a year from the time you were talking to me. It was ten minutes

to ten when you gave me your command."

"And why did you not see the bear?"

"Because you said nothing about a bear when you repeated your orders.

You spoke only once of a bear. Everything else you spoke of twice. I

thought you had changed your mind about the bear."[51]

[51] Dr. Liégeois's account of his many hypnotic experiments,

as given in his "De la Suggestion et du Somnambulisme dans

leurs Rapports avec la Jurisprudence et la Médecine légale,"

forms one of the most striking contributions to the

literature of hypnotism.

Obviously, the hypnotic self, distinct and different though it is from

the primary, waking self, can reason, can analyze, can draw conclusions

as readily as the conscious self, and is, to put it otherwise, as truly

a self as the conscious self.

Facts like these, as was said, have caused numerous investigators

to question the validity of the hitherto prevailing view of human

personality. The self, they affirm, is no single, continuous, permanent

entity. On the contrary, it is merely a loosely coördinated aggregation

of mental states, forever shifting and changing, so that the self of

to-morrow may be vastly different from the self of to-day. To quote

Professor Ribot, the famous scientist, and one of the most distinguished

exponents of this new view of the self:

"The unity of the ego is not the unity of a single entity diffusing

itself among multiple phenomena; it is the coördination of a certain

number of states perpetually renascent, and having for their sole,

common basis the vague feeling of the body. This unity does not diffuse

itself downward, but is aggregated by ascent from below; it is not an

initial, but a terminal point."

And Ribot adds emphatically:

"It is the organism, with the brain, its supreme representative, which

constitutes the real personality; comprising in itself the remains of

all that we have been and the possibilities of all that we shall be.

The whole individual character is there inscribed, with its active and

passive aptitudes, its sympathies and antipathies, its genius, its

talent or its stupidity, its virtues and its vices, its torpor or its

activity."[52]

[52] Ribot's "Les Maladies de la Personalité." Quoted from

F. W. H. Myers's translation in his "Human Personality and

its Survival of Bodily Death," vol. i, p. 10.

Or, as the eminent psychologist, Alfred Binet, declares:

"We have long been accustomed by habits of speech, fictions of law,

and also by the results of introspection, to consider each person as

constituting an indivisible unity. Actual researches utterly modify this

current notion. It seems to be well proven nowadays that if the unity of

the ego be real, a quite different definition should be applied to it.

It is not a single entity; for, if it were, one could not understand how

in certain circumstances some patients, by exaggerating a phenomenon

which obviously belongs to normal life, can unfold several different

personalities. A thing that can be divided must consist of several

parts. Should a personality be able to become double or triple, this

would be proof that it is compound, a grouping of, and a resultant from,

several elements."[53]

[53] "Les Altérations de la Personnalité," p. 316.

But the brain, which Ribot identifies with the personality, is a mere

organ of the body, perishing with the body. Does it follow that the self

perishes with bodily death? Is it really without an abiding, indwelling

principle superior to, and independent of, the physical organism--in

short, a soul--that would enable it to survive the final catastrophe of

earthly existence? Is man soulless? Does death end personality?

Aye, those who hold with Ribot would reply. To speak of a soul is, in

their view of the case, sheer mysticism, since "the ego in us is nothing

more than the functional result of the arrangement for the time being of

the molecules or ions of our brain matter."

That is why, at the beginning of this chapter, I stated that, of all the

labors of the modern investigators of the nature of man, none would seem

to be so irreparably destructive as the blows they have dealt at the

traditional conception of human personality.

Yet, when we probe a little deeper, it will be found that the damage is

not so irreparable as would at first appear; nay, it will even be found

that by their searching inquiries, the advocates of the brain-stuff

theory have unwittingly provided stronger reasons than were at any

previous time available for insisting both on the actuality of the soul

and the fundamental unity and continuity of the ego.

Undeniably, it is necessary to modify the old conception in some

important respects. After the discoveries that have been made as to the

disintegrating effects of natural and artificially induced sleep, of

disease, of sudden frights, of profound emotional shocks, of alcohol

and drugs, etc., it is idle to pretend that unity and continuity are

distinctive characteristics of the ordinary self of waking life. So far

as that self is concerned, its instability and divisibility are now

plainly evident.

What, however, if it can be shown that, equally with the secondary

selves that may and so often do replace it, the primary self is only

part of a larger self--a self which persists unchanged beneath all the

mutations of spontaneous and experimental occurrence? In that case

it will at once become clear that the situation has again changed

completely, and that we are back to the traditional, the intuitive, the

"common-sense" conception of personality, with the single difference

that the term "self" means something broader and nobler than when we

limit it to the now demonstrated unstable, and ever-changeable self of

ordinary consciousness.

And it is precisely to such a view of the self that the discoveries of

the modern investigators, when closely scrutinized, irresistibly impel

us. If, I repeat, they have shown that what we usually look upon as the

self is liable to sudden extinction, they have likewise brought to light

abundant evidence to prove that there is none the less an abiding self,

a self not dominated by but dominating the organism, and unaffected by

any vicissitudes that may befall the organism.

To be sure, it must be said that, as yet, comparatively few of those

to whom we owe this evidence are prepared to admit that such is the

ultimate outcome of their efforts. All the same, the evidence is there,

not simply justifying, but rendering logically necessary, the hypothesis

of a continuous, unitary ego, inclusive of, and superior to, all

changing selves of outward manifestation, and possessing powers thus

far little utilized; but, under certain conditions, utilizable for our

material, intellectual, and moral betterment.

I have, in fact, in the previous chapters presented much of the evidence

supporting this view.[54] All the phenomena of subconscious mental

action--as variously exhibited in telepathy, crystal vision, automatic

writing and speaking, the cure of disease by wholly mental means--point

unmistakably, I am persuaded, to the existence of a superior self

to which the ordinary self of everyday life stands in much the same

relation as does the secondary self of a hysterical patient to the

ordinary, normal self of a healthy person.

[54] See also my book, "The Riddle of Personality,"

especially pp. 69-70, 159-162.

Not all the faculties of the larger self--for instance, the faculty

involved in telepathic action--seem to be adapted for ready employment

here on earth. Which would argue, of course, for a future state in

which, freed from all hampering limitations of the body, such faculties

will have full manifestation.

But most assuredly, as the findings of the psychopathologists indicate

plainly, some among these hidden powers are amply available for use

here and now, and may be so employed as to enable the self of ordinary

consciousness to become less liable to disintegration, to ward off and

conquer disease, to develop mental attainments of a high order, to solve

life's varying problems with a sureness and success sadly lacking to

most of us at present.

INDEX

Aboulia, case of, 259-264.

Angus, Miss, crystal-visions of, 154-156.

Automatism, 134-170.

Badger, R., and case of BCA, 273 _n_.

Barrett, W. F., and telepathy, 64, 100.

Barzini, Professor, and Eusapia Paladino, 173.

BCA, case of, 265-289;

also mentioned, 292, 295, 298.

Bernheim, H., hypnotic experiments by, 300-301.

Bettany, Mrs., vision seen by, 40-41.

Binet, A., on personality, 308-309.

Blakeway, W., telepathic experience by, 90-91.

Boyle, Mrs., case of, 4.

Bramwell, J. M., hypnotic experiments by, 299-300.

Brill, A. A., and psycho-analysis, 246-254.

Burt, F. R., telepathic experiments by, 74, 81-83.

Cahill, B. J. S., dream creation by, 210-211.

Carrington, H., and mediumistic frauds, 175-178.

Clairvoyance, 102-126.

Cleaveland, W. M., case reported by, 143-146, 148.

Cobbe, Miss, and the subconscious, 202-203.

Cock Lane ghost, 183.

Corliss, I. M., trance medium, 138-141, 147.

Cortachy Castle, Drummer of, 13-17, 47, 48.

Crawford, Lord, and D. D. Home, 173, 199.

Crookes, W., and telepathy, 63, 97, 98;

and mediumistic phenomena, 181.

Cross-correspondence, 160-170.

Crystal-gazing, 127-131, 154-156.

Dalrymple, Miss, and ghostly drummer, 14-15.

Dickinson, L., case reported by, 156-157 _n_.

Dissociation, 230-289.

Donley, J. E., and cases of dissociation, 242-245, 254-257.

Dreams, telepathic, 106-118;

of lost objects, 121-126;

problems solved in, 204-209;

creative imagination in, 209-214.

Dunraven, Lord, and D. D. Home, 173, 199.

Eardley, Lady, case of, 39-40, 56, 57, 90.

Eastlake, Lady, case of, 4-5.

Entwistle, J. S. W., apparition seen by, 29-31.

Flammarion, C., and telepathy, 63;

and mediumistic phenomena, 181.

Flournoy, T., and telepathy, 63.

Forbes, Mrs., automatic writer, 160, 167-168.

Genius, new theory of, 214-215.

Ghosts, premonitory, 12-26;

coincidental, 26-35;

house-haunting, 35-38;

experimental, 42-45;

of inanimate objects, 49-52.