Let us now return to C’s account of the shock which occurred at this
time, while the B complex was periodically dominant. It was the cause of
the final complete dissociation of personality and the eruption of the
secondary personality B.
The shock I received was of an intensely emotional nature. It brought
to me, suddenly, the realization that my position in life was entirely
changed, that I was quite alone, and with this there came a feeling of
helplessness and desolation beyond my powers of description. I felt,
too, angry, frightened, insulted. For a few minutes these ideas
flashed through my mind and then—all was changed. All the distressing
ideas of the preceding moments left me, and I no longer resented what,
a moment before, had caused me so much distress. _I became the
personality which we have since called_ “B.” I do not feel now that
the episode was of a character that would have affected a person of a
different nature, or even myself had I been in good health.
Psychologically speaking, I suppose I was already in a somewhat
disintegrated condition and therefore more susceptible. At any rate it
did affect me. _From the moment of that shock I was, literally, a
different person._ Even the episode itself now became of little or no
importance to me; indeed I looked upon it rather as a lark and really
enjoyed it, as I did, in this character, succeeding events. _With the
change to “B” there was no loss of memory as sometimes occurs under
such conditions._ It seems very curious to me that the effect of this
shock was to change me not to the despondent, despairing mood of “A”
which came later, but to the happy mood of “B.”
In describing the two personalities I shall sometimes have to refer to
them by the letters A and B to avoid the constant repetition of
“myself as A—myself as B.”
As B, I was, apparently, a perfectly normal person, as will be seen
from the description which follows, except that I was ruled by the
fixed idea that upon me, and me alone, depended the salvation, moral
and physical, of a person who was almost a perfect stranger to me and
who was the subject of a drug habit. I had known this person but a few
weeks. This idea became an obsession; all else sank into
insignificance beside it; _nothing_ else was of any consequence; I
went to all lengths to help this person, doing things which, though
quite right and proper, indeed imperative from my point of view as B,
were unwise and unnecessary. I believed that I was the only one in the
world who would stand by him; that every one else had given him up as
hopeless and that his one chance lay in his belief in me.
The writer neglects here to say that it was not only as B that she had
undertaken the “salvation” of the drug addict. As C she also shared in
this solicitude and had begun the reformation. B only continued it but
from different motives as later stated by C herself. B does not refer to
it in her story apparently not taking it very seriously. Of course in my
numerous interviews I heard an exhaustive account of the whole affair.
The marked change in health and strength for the better noted in those
phases, during period II, when the personality was dominated by the B
complex and mentioned in the last lecture was still more accentuated now
in the B personality. C thus refers to it:
With the change of personality, which will be clearer as you read,
there was also a complete change of physical conditions. _Previously
neurasthenic, I, as B, was perfectly well and strong and felt equal to
anything in the way of physical exercise._
You will also remember that in the last lecture I spoke of certain minor
traits which had been characteristic of C and which were markedly
altered in an opposite direction under the dominance of the B complex
and induced impulsive alterations of behavior. These changes were
accentuated in the B personality from the very first as C goes on to
describe.
The minor traits I have above mentioned were replaced by their
opposites. A walk of three or four miles did not tire me at all; I
tramped through the woods during the hottest days of summer, with
nothing on my head, feeling no discomfort from the heat and no
fatigue; I sat on the ground in the woods, hours at a time, not
minding in the least the bugs and the mosquitoes; canoeing I was very
fond of and felt no fear of the water. I also took long rides on the
electric cars and found them perfectly delightful. These are small
things but, as you see, it was a radical change and seems as strange
to remember as the more important ones.
The change in the emotional and feeling tones, the former representing a
different set of emotion-instincts, from those that were habitual, is
illustrated in the following passage:
As B, I was light-hearted and happy and life seemed good to me; I
wanted to live; my pulses beat fuller, my blood ran warmer through my
veins than it ever had done before. I seemed more alive. Nothing is
stranger to remember than the vigorous health of B. Never in my life
was I so well, before or since. I felt much _younger_ and looked so,
for the lines of care, anxiety, sorrow, and fatigue had faded from my
face and the change in expression was remarked upon. I neglected my
family and friends shamefully, writing short and unsatisfactory
letters which left them in ignorance of my health and plans; business
affairs I washed my hands of entirely. I lost the formality and
reserve which was one of my traits. My tastes, ideas, and points of
view were completely changed.
I remained in this state for some weeks, enjoying life to the utmost
in a way entirely foreign to my natural tastes and inclinations as
described above, walking, boating, etc., living wholly out of doors;
and also doing many irresponsible things which were of a nature to
cause me much distress later.
Some of this might, perhaps, be ascribed to improved health though
different from anything I had ever been before.[284]
A point of considerable significance is the youthfulness of this B
phase, a trait which the writer C notes and which B in her account
emphasizes. When later the case came under my observation this
phenomenon was so noticeable that it arrested the attention.
It may be interesting to hear B’s description of the shock, more
dramatically told than C’s, and of the changes above mentioned of the
personality (health, emotional tones, conduct, and youthfulness)
immediately following.
It runs as follows:
At this time there came to C a third shock of a strongly emotional
nature, giving rise to events which I call _period III_. It brought to
her the realization of a fact of which she had been unconscious; she
had never thought of the possibility of such a thing and she was
startled, frightened, angry, all in a flash—and I was there. James, in
explaining “Sudden Religious Conversion,” speaks of a “flowering of
the subconscious,”—well, I “flowered,” and C disappeared somewhere;
_the B complex had become a personality_ and I lived a life of my own
choosing.[285] How slowly this complex gathered form in this case may
be seen from the fact that it was five years from the time of the
beginning of her husband’s illness before I came as a personality.
Now, when I came as a personality, I felt much younger than C; my
ideas of what constituted pleasure were more like those of a girl of
twenty—as C was when she received the first shock (_period I_). But in
character, points of view, tastes, emotions, in everything that goes
to make up personality I was quite different from anything C had ever
been; also in health. I was strong and vigorous, taking long walks and
feeling no fatigue. I was also very happy. Life seemed so good to me;
everything was so beautiful; the outdoor world looked to me as it does
to one who has been for months shut in through illness. I loved the
trees, the sky, and the wind; but _I did not love people_. I felt no
care or responsibility—that is why I was so happy. I remained the only
personality for about _one month_, when there came the fourth
emotional shock producing _period IV_.
These accounts need further explanation. C remarks: “It seems very
curious to me that the effect of this shock was to change me not to the
despondent, despairing mood of A, which came later, but to the happy
mood of B.” A consideration of the facts in more detail renders the
reason obvious. It must be kept in mind that the dominant feature of the
B mood or personality was the B complex, and the nucleus of this system
of ideas was the “rebellion” I have described. This rebellion again had
its first beginnings 19 years before (period I). We have traced it
through the succeeding years, with its later accretions, growing and
expanding in intensity and extent, like a political insurrection, until
it had taken into itself a large field of ideas and became the B
complex. Bear in mind here that the primitive germinal first rebellion
was the reaction to an emotional shock in which fright and disgust as
elements occurred plus the X affect to which they were a defense
reaction. Now the second shock which was experienced at the third period
was fundamentally the same in nature as that of the first period. It
gave rise to the same _affect_, X, and mental awakening, to the same
kind of realization of her situation, and the reaction, particularly to
the affect, was the same rebellion. _But the rebellion had meantime, in
the years that had passed, grown into the B complex, and so it was this
B constellation of ideas which erupted into consciousness and dominated
the whole field of personality._ Though the second shock awoke the same
affect as did the original shock, it was consciously mild and probably
for the most part subconscious, being repressed and submerged by the
reacting emotions of fear and anger, which latter blazed forth. And in
the reaction there were, also, the emotions of disgust and
self-assertion and the vengeful emotion.
With such emotions, particularly anger and disgust, this affect was in
conflict as was also fear. When two primary emotions are in conflict
both cannot live; one will be suppressed. Fear will be suppressed by an
outburst of blazing anger, and anger cannot exist when an overwhelming
fear is excited. One will replace the other. So the mild X affect and
fear were immediately repressed by anger, disgust and the compound
vengeful emotion, the three not in any way conflicting with one another
but as allies reinforcing each other in the attack.
Consequently from the B personality, which sprang to life as the
reaction to the X affect, this affect itself, was completely repressed
and dissociated, so that this personality _is entirely without this_ and
other traits of the C personality. Likewise, although this is not so
easy to determine, owing to the impossibility of reproducing all
conditions under which a given individual would react normally to any
given emotion, _fear_ and _tender feeling_ (love) seem to have been
dissociated from the B personality. It is certainly true that B
experienced no fear and other emotions with which C habitually reacted
to certain situations. This question of the involvement of the emotions
in dissociation will be discussed in another place.
As to the X affect, it is of some significance that later, after the
development of the third personality, A, which alternated with B, this
personality retained this affect (as well as fear and others lost to B)
and the awakening of this affect in A would regularly change this
personality to B; that is, repress the A personality and awaken B. Many
times other emotions, particularly anxiety (fear), would have the same
effect, but the affect in question would always induce the change,
apparently as a defense reaction.
From one point of view it may be maintained that all this emotional
reaction, called “shock,” (that primarily called into being the B
personality) was a defense reaction. It certainly was, as any outburst
of anger may be a defense reaction, as it is in the bull in the ring of
a Spanish bull-fight. Under other conditions anger as an element in the
pugnacity instinct may, like other emotional impulses, be an attacking
reaction.
But labelling with names does not give us any insight into the mechanism
of a reaction any more than labelling a machine an automobile gives us
any idea of its mechanism. It gives only a teleological meaning to the
machine.
What is a fruitful question, however, is whether the “shock” was a
defense to an external aggression or to the urge of an unacceptable
subconscious _wish_ containing the repressed affect X. Some will _wish_
to make this latter interpretation. It is entirely incompatible,
however, with the fact that the same conflict and “shock” had previously
occurred under conditions when, even if there had been such a wish, it
could not have been unacceptable, as there was no reason therefor, but
on the contrary it would have been her duty to have fulfilled it. It is
useless in this case to work that trumpery affect business in this way.
Furthermore, as a matter of experience, we find from a study of cases of
multiple personality that after two independent systems of ideas have
been formed, almost any emotional shock is liable to cause the
displacement of one system and the substitution of the other system.
This was observed over and over again in the case of Miss
Beauchamp,[286] as it was in this case. Why it should be so is not
always obvious at the time of any given occurrence. That there is a
specific psychological reason and dynamic mechanism we cannot doubt.
Undoubtedly if we could probe sufficiently extensively into the
unconscious in each instance we should find that subtile associations in
the substituted systems had been struck and that the change was thereby
determined. When the associated element is organized with strong
emotions the discharge of the emotion more easily represses and
dissociates the rival conflicting systems. This gives the appearance
that it was the emotion alone, as an isolated factor, which induced the
alternation of personality.
What happened then when the change of personality took place was this:
The acquired B complex, which had been developing in content and
conative intensity, surged up as a reaction from the unconscious (where
it had been conserved during the normal mood in a dormant condition),
came into conflict with the systems of the normal self and repressed and
replaced this previously dominating side of her nature. By this
dissociation this side was put out of commission so to speak. In turn it
remained dormant, of course, conserved as unconscious neurograms, ready
to be _resurrected_ under favoring conditions by appropriate stimuli.
But in the formation of the B personality there was more than this;
otherwise there would not have been generated a personality; the
alteration would have been limited to the incursion into the field of
consciousness only of the B complex as had so often happened before. On
the one hand a larger synthesis took place. The B complex dragged out of
the storehouse of the unconscious the acquired and conserved ideas and
other experiences of childhood and girlhood that had an associative
relation to the system which formed the B complex. In this respect it
was a _reversion_ to the earlier period of life.
On the other hand, there was, as we shall see, a dissociation and
suppression of certain _innate_ dispositions, instincts and sentiments
belonging to normal personality that were in conflict with the B phase.
Specifically the most important of these were, the instinct of
self-abasement and its corresponding self-regarding sentiment, the
“tender emotion” (affection) and its parental instinct (McDougall), the
X affect and its instinct, fear (instinct of flight) and vengeful
emotion.
The emotions and their instincts and the innate dispositions, appetites
and tendencies, being psycho-physiological arrangements inborn in the
organism and not acquired, are the very foundations of human
personality. Without a recognition of them and without assigning to them
their proper parts and due weight in determining mental traits and
behavior alterations of personality cannot be explained or
understood.[287]
The justification for the interpretation I have given of the genesis of
the B personality is found in an analysis of its manifested
characteristics. In the first place this B phase by common consent, even
in the opinion of those who were in entire ignorance of what had
psychologically occurred—i.e., the alteration of personality,—was much
younger in character than the mature C. She appeared to be a young girl
of 18 or 19 years of age. Her friends spoke of her, when remarking on
her improved health, as “being as she used to be.” She looked
younger.[288] As I myself observed her on, I might almost say, hundreds
of occasions, the contrast between the actual age of the subject and the
apparent age of B as indicated by expressions of face, the vivacious
mannerisms, the girlish attitude of mind, points of view, tastes, etc.,
was remarkable.
All this together with the lack of appreciation of many of the
responsibilities of life and of the duties and conditions which pertain
to motherhood, social relations and conventions, the loss of sentiments
acquired after marriage, etc., made up a picture of youth that was
unmistakable. The contrast between the mature C and the girlish B became
almost dramatic when the change of personality took place suddenly as it
later frequently did in my presence.
When we come to analyze the traits which gave this impression of youth
we see that it was justified. One side of C’s character, as we have
seen, was a love of happiness and the pleasures which induce the joy of
life. This side was dominant in B; but the _kind_ of pleasure which
appealed to B was not only that which appeals to youth but that which
had particularly appealed to the subject when a young girl. It was
“tramping through the woods in the hottest days of summer,” canoeing and
rowing in boats, walking, riding in electric cars—in fact, the out-door
life that appealed to her most strongly and was her greatest enjoyment.
“Oh, wouldn’t I just love to tramp through the woods or sail off over
the waves, or anything exciting,” she wrote. Such of these things as she
had been able when a little girl to indulge in she then enjoyed. As a
child and during girlhood she liked camping out and sailing, but as she
grew older, say about sixteen or eighteen, she became afraid of the
water and row boats. Canoeing she had never done before her marriage and
then was afraid of it.
We have seen that childhood’s experiences are largely conserved, when
not modified by the growth of personality, in the unconscious
(neurographic residua) although they may never come to the surface of
consciousness unless resurrected by some device or accident; and
repression tends to conserve them as unitary complexes maintaining their
own urges. Accordingly in the case of B everything points to the
conclusion that the repressed, conserved sentiments with their organized
emotions and feelings, of the pleasure of childhood and adolescent life,
sentiments by which the young girl was governed, _erupted into
consciousness_. The play-instinct, or innate disposition, long
repressed, particularly was revived and played a large part in
determining behavior. The B personality was thus a _reversion_ to an
early period of life. The rearrangement of the play-instinct and other
innate dispositions will be more conveniently discussed later in
connection and contrast with the A personality.
Of course there is no sharp line of division between different periods
of life, one running into the other, and the ideas, sentiments, desires,
habits, etc., of one period may continue more or less unchanged well
into another and beyond. Or, as usually happens, they may be modified by
the successive experiences of life. So obviously we cannot ascribe with
precision to a past definite age traits of character of the kind we are
considering. Such traits belong to the evolutional development of the
individual; they tend to become modified by the clash with new
experiences, or, when incompatible with the knowledge and habits
acquired by new experiences, to become repressed—when not incompatible
they may persist late into adult life. So some of these traits have
persisted as a side to, or as elements in the character of B. C. A. into
her present life; some, however, have been modified or repressed into
the unconscious. As age advances, as the child passes into adolescence
and then into maturity, there comes wider knowledge of the facts of the
environment, of its dangers and other relations, a more true and
complete conception of the meaning of life, a more extensive world view,
and a recognition and assumption of duties, cares, and responsibilities.
And all these acquisitions tend to form a conscious organism with new
sentiments which give new acquired reactions to stimuli in place of the
old reactions (traits and other conative tendencies). Activities, for
example, which once received their impulses from play dispositions are
later inhibited by sentiments invested with the instinct of fear
(flight). So B. C. A. acquired a fear of the water (boats, canoeing) and
a dislike of bugs and mosquitoes and electric cars. Why these changes in
her mental reactions took place we cannot say without making a more
extensive search into the experiences of her past life, and the
information when acquired would hardly repay the time and labor of the
inquiry. We cannot say, for example, why she has disliked electric cars
without resurrecting the memories of past experiences pertaining to them
and other associated ideas. Perhaps the dislike arose simply out of the
noise and resulting discomfort and headaches; or it may have had a more
subtile cause in associated ideas of danger which would not appeal to a
girl, or possibly such objects may more subtilely still be the symbolic
expression of some unconscious process. It does not bear upon our
present problem. (The dislike of mosquitoes and bugs very probably arose
from having been bitten and poisoned badly by them when a child.)
There were certain other youthful traits and tastes in B which are worth
mentioning. This personality was extravagant in money matters. “She,”
the personality A wrote, “spends money as I used to, and will not
acknowledge the necessity of economizing.” That is to say, the
regulation of the household and personal expenses, according to the
requirements of business sense, and proper appreciation of the financial
management was scarcely recognized by B who desired to spend money as B.
C. A. had done as a girl, before being initiated into the
responsibilities of domestic management. Like such a girl, to the
discomforture of the other personality, she spent money as if all were
pin money, without appreciation of making ends meet in the management of
the household.
Another and what will seem a strange peculiarity of B was the feeling
that she was not the mother of her child. “I am not his mother,” she
would say. “He is not my son”—“_I_ never was married.” “I know all her
experiences,” she wrote me in a letter, “but they are _her_ experiences
not _mine_. Why! _I_ was never married, Dr. Prince, and I am not
Willie’s mother. All those experiences belong to A. I know she _had_
them, but then, so do you. The only difference is that I know exactly
what she thought about them.” Indeed she carried this so far as to
entirely neglect the responsibility of looking after his life. This was
true also of the time when B. C. A. was ruled by the B complex before
the change to the B personality. On one such occasion for example, she
allowed this young boy to take a long journey of many hundred miles
through the west, roughing it in the woods and canoes, without a care or
anxious thought on her part during the whole time he was gone. All the
arrangements were made by others while she herself did not even go to
the station to see him off. Previously she had always felt the greatest
motherly solicitude for the boy, even foolishly devoted to him, and
could not bear to be parted from him even to accompany her husband on a
journey.
This peculiar trait is easily understood on the theory that rebellious B
was largely a systematized resurrection of pre-marital complexes but
with a dissociation of the tender emotion (parental instinct). I have
already pointed out that B regarded the “rebellious” complexes as
herself, but not the other ideas of B. C. A. In referring to the former,
as I have said, she used the word I, saying, I thought so and so, but
she did not use such expressions regarding the other systems of B. C.
A.’s thought after the genesis of these rebellious complexes. Likewise
she regarded as her own the earlier youthful experiences before
dissociation occurred. In the constellation of her complexes none of the
experiences of maternity (which occurred after the development of the
rebellious complex) were synthesized, any more than the sentiments and
other conflicting thoughts of the A phase. Even in the embryonic
contrary impulses of the B complex, it will be remembered, there were
dislikes to “fuss” over the baby conflicting with the maternal instinct.
She never, therefore, felt that motherhood was a part of her own
experience. And so her _conception of self_ in its content differed
materially from that of C and A, in that it contained references to
entirely different experiences, and, therefore, included entirely
different images and feelings. And it was organized with a
self-regarding sentiment in which the instinct of self-assertion
predominated instead of that of self-abasement.
I said that the parental instinct with the emotion of tender feeling was
dissociated. This absence of tender emotion (affection) was also
manifested in her attitude towards the different members of her family
and her friends. As a girl she was markedly affectionate just as A and
later C was, but as B she had lost this trait. She neglected her family
most shockingly, in a way that showed complete absence of the impulses
that come from tender feeling, and without the slightest compunction or
recognition of the fact that she was wanting in affection. I might give
numerous specific instances of this but refrain from doing so for
obvious reasons.[289] B liked people but for other reasons than those
which depend on personal affection. This absence, then, of the tender
emotion with its impulses was the second factor in determining the
feeling that B had of not being the mother of her child. It also, of
course, prevented the building up a new sentiment of maternal affection
through experience. All this is in conformity with our interpretation.
The way other instincts and innate dispositions were affected will be
better described in connection with the A personality for contrast.
Another peculiarity of B was the change in literary taste. The lighter
reading in which B found pleasure contrasted strongly with the
literature dealing with the deeper problems of life that appealed to A.
This difference has been touched upon by C in her account. It would take
us too far afield to enter into the psychological reasons for it.
It remains to point out that the reactions of the personality in
accordance with the new synthesis were intensified and became the sole
reactions by the fact of the dissociation of those systems of ideas
which represented the wider world view and which were organized with
instincts and innate dispositions now inhibited. Those systems were the
outcome of the cares, anxieties, responsibilities, and sorrows of later
life. All these, which were acquired and had their origin at a
comparatively late period, had subsided into the unconscious and ceased
to influence the conscious life and give rise to their corresponding
reactions. The emotions and sentiments of anxiety, remorse,
self-reproach and despair, so conspicuous in the A phase, were
completely dissociated from the B phase and formed no part of it. Though
there was no amnesia for them as past experiences they were dissociated
in the sense that they did not take part as psycho-physiological
dispositions in the personality. They could be voluntarily recalled in
an intellectual way as memories, but like many memories they had lost
their emotional tones and were not awakened by any contemplated or
actual line of conduct. Not entering the new B synthesis there was no
clash by which the reactions might be modified. The sole reactions were,
therefore, those of the B synthesis and were mostly those of pleasure
and joy. You must not overlook the fact, however, that the dissociated
elements of personality were still conserved and, as we shall see,
capable of being resurrected and thereby taking part in the reproduction
of the original personality, or of forming by themselves another
dissociated one.
The _temperament_ of the B personality is in accord with the conception
of a modified reversion to the conserved unconscious personality of
early life. B. C. A. “was naturally very light-hearted, happy, buoyant.”
Later when going through the stress and strain of her husband’s illness,
and later still after becoming neurasthenic, she became apprehensive and
given to self-reproaches, worry, and depression. She was racked by
emotions of an anxious depressing kind. All this was enormously
accentuated in the secondary personality A, (to be presently described)
whom in banter I used to call “Mrs. Gummidge.” Now B reverted in
temperament to the earlier period; she was free from depression; “had
more courage, was light-hearted, merry; conditions did not seem so
dreadful as they did to A,” and she “took things as they were”; “this
was the way she used to be.”
If I may anticipate a little the development of the A personality, a
passage or two from letters will show this difference in temperament as
manifested by the emotions. B wrote, “A is nearly crazy about those
papers. She simply ‘tears her hair’ and groans, and then, presto!
change! and I am here.” Again in a note to her other self (A) she
writes: “I suppose you have a ‘deep-horror-then-my-vitals-froze’
expression on your face now. Really, you suffer more to the square inch
than any one I ever knew.” Although it is hardly fair to ascribe these
emotional traits of A—a disintegrated personality—to the normal C, still
they were and are at times noticeable in C as moods, or when under
stress and strain. (C of course has pleasant affects and joyous moods as
well.) B on the other hand was a perfect stranger to such feelings; she
did not know the meaning of them; they were completely dissociated from
her ideas. B’s sole emotions were those of pleasure and exaltation; C’s
emotions included unpleasant and depressing ones as well, while A’s
stock was made up almost entirely of the latter. This dissociation of
unpleasant and depressing emotions from B is well manifested by her
memories. When C (or A) recalled (and it is still true) an unpleasant
experience the memory was accompanied by the original emotion in its
full intensity. She lived over again the original experience and
manifested all the feeling in the expression of her face and in gesture.
But when B recalled this same experience of C (or A) she simple
remembered it intellectually as a fact, without the feeling tone. In
fact she would recite a painful fact of C’s experience with a gaiety of
tone that betokened enjoyment at the other self’s expense. The same
phenomenon was still more striking in B as a co-conscious
personality.[290] As a co-consciousness she always insisted that while
she knew C’s (and A’s) thoughts she did not feel her emotions. “You see
I know all that A thinks but I do not _feel_ her emotions; she is all
emotion,” she wrote. This she insisted upon again and again. She only
knew what the other personalities felt by the way they acted. Similarly
the affect which was the cause of the “rebellion” was dissociated from
B. This same phenomenon was observed in the case of Miss Beauchamp.
Sally as a co-consciousness knew the thoughts of the personal
consciousness (B I or B IV) but she was not aware of the feelings that
accompanied the thoughts; the feelings she could only guess from the
actions of the principal personality, and as an alternating personality
Sally likewise was entirely devoid of certain emotions which were
strongly accentuated in the other personalities.[291] This dissociation
of affects from B helps us to understand the difference in the reactions
of B, C, and A to the same stimuli.
-----
Footnote 284:
The same as when dominated by the B complex but in a more extreme way.
(M. P.)
Footnote 285:
That is, the remainder of the C complex subsided into the
“unconscious,” where, of course, its experiences were conserved.
They could be recalled as a memory by B. As a system of ideas the B
complex had been “flowering” for five years. (M. P.)
Footnote 286:
See _Journal Abnormal Psychology_, 1920, Nos. 2 and 3.
Footnote 287:
The science of human personality is becoming a special branch of
psychology and is based upon the recognition and study of the innate
psycho-physiological systems of which a few are mentioned here. Of the
most recent works on this subject, those of Alexander F. Shand (The
Foundations of Character) and William McDougall (Social Psychology)
are the most important contributions. They are based on the study of
normal behavior. Abnormal alterations, such as are met with in the
psychoses and multiple personality, will prove to be a more fruitful
field for study and will provide more valuable contributions to our
knowledge of normal mechanisms, just as the pathology of the nervous
system has done for our knowledge of its anatomy and physiology.
Disease dissects the mind far better than can introspection or
observation.
Footnote 288:
In a letter written in the phase A to me she writes: “B seems to
revert to the time before all the sorrow and trouble. She writes in
the diary [kept at my direction by the different personalities] as I
used to feel. She ‘won’t be unhappy;’ she ‘will have a good time,’
etc. She seems younger than I, someway. I find that my friends often
think me more ‘like myself,’ when B is here; she also spends money as
I used to and will not acknowledge the necessity of economizing....”
In another letter she writes: “Then came the time when I was wholly B.
Everything but my own pleasure was cast to the wind. I felt and acted
like a girl of 18, and I know that I _looked_ years younger than I do
now.”
Footnote 289:
C writes: “To me this point of the affections is one of the most
interesting and curious. As a child and young girl I was affectionate,
shy, proud, and reserved—everything that B was not. I positively never
had in me any of these traits that B exhibited during those weeks ...
except gaiety.”
This statement, when analyzed, is in entire agreement with the results
of our study. The absence of affection is what would be expected from
the loss of the primary emotion “tender feeling,” the affective
element in the parental instinct. Shyness is determined by the
instinct of self-abasement which was dissociated from B. Likewise with
the self-regarding sentiment of pride in one of its varieties,
self-respect. According to McDougall this comprises two instincts:
that of self-assertion with its emotion of elation, and that of
self-abasement with its emotion of subjection. The latter instinct we
have seen reason to conclude was inhibited in B. Hence, on this theory
of pride, this sentiment was lost.
Footnote 290:
B later became co-conscious with the other personalities as well as
alternating.
Footnote 291:
“Miss Beauchamp,” etc.; _Jour. Abn. Psychol._, Vol. XV, p. 80.
LECTURE XX
(THE SAME CONTINUED)—THE A PERSONALITY