Chapter L: E. W., forty-nine years of age, farmer and lawyer by occupation, a (9)

The “shock” when more deeply analyzed proved to be the excitation of certain emotions which, besides a mild degree of fright, were intense repugnance or disgust. They were a reaction to or defense against another affect, which was also excited and which we will term, in deference to our subject’s good taste, X. The emotion of repugnance was so intense as to require considerable fortitude to withstand and gave rise to much agitation. It accompanied a cluster of “rebellious” ideas awakened by the realization of an unexpectedly disagreeable situation and relation. This cluster I shall call the _rebellious complex_ to distinguish it from the later B complex into which it became constellated. This rebellious complex with the emotion of repugnance (instinct of repulsion) was of necessity frequently excited by the conditions of life and, therefore, of frequent recurrence, after the fashion of an obsession. After the first shock the fright naturally subsided, for one reason, from habituation to the conditions. The X affect, never experienced before, from the very first was repressed by the inhibiting force of the more intense emotion of disgust.[277] Fear also was involved in this repression, for there was a conflict between the opposing forces of conflicting emotions; and in such a conflict—as, for example, between fear and anger—the stronger tends to repress its antagonist and whatever it conflicts with. Consequently the recurring rebellious complex was habitually accompanied by repugnance alone. The exact constitution of this rebellious complex I am not at liberty to mention. It may have been a matter of mother-in-law, or of social arrangements, or particular duties and responsibilities, or something else—it does not matter and it is not necessary to say. It was a shrinking from a particular condition of her life. It was certainly not a wish unless this repugnance and “kicking against the pricks” can be twisted into its opposite as a wish to be free from the objectionable condition. Still less was it a morally unacceptable unconscious, being just the opposite; for both the rebellious thoughts and the wish to be free from the condition objected to were acceptable and justified to herself in her mind, and, in her secret thoughts at least, tolerated as natural and reasonable.[278] Nor was the X affect an _intolerable_ wish. If a wish there was no reason why it should not have been gratified. Nevertheless, as B affirms, the rebellious thoughts were put out of mind, as thoughts of a disagreeable fact, as they arose from time to time; but this was only from a sense of duty in consideration of responsibilities undertaken. I could make this clearer if I were at liberty to enter into the details of these rebellious thoughts. Her life in every other respect was an unusually happy one, surrounded by all that one should desire, and included a devoted husband whom she loved, admired and respected. For these reasons alone she felt it a duty to suppress all expression of her rebellious feelings.

The main point, from the point of view of psychogenesis, is that at this early stage we have constantly _recurring conflicts between the conative forces pertaining to emotions linked with sentiments of duty, loyalty, and affection, on the one hand, and those pertaining to the rebellious thoughts with corresponding desires, impulses, etc., reinforced with the emotion of repugnance, on the other_. The former always won and the latter were inhibited or repressed into the unconscious. These were not the only rebellious thoughts that were repressed. There were others from which the original rebellion received accretions. That such constantly repressed thoughts with their strong feeling tones should be conserved in the unconscious was a psychological necessity, and also that they should emerge by the force of their own urge into consciousness from time to time like an obsession whenever stimulated by environmental and personal conditions. I may simply cite the two following simple examples.

The subject, governed by the maternal instinct, naturally loved to take care of her baby and “make things for him to wear, and fuss over them”; and yet there were “floating thoughts” of an opposite character which later, as will appear, emerged and became conspicuous in the B complex and B personality. “She was very fond of her father-in-law and did everything to make him happy,” and yet there were other thoughts which conceived of him as a “fussy old bother.” These again were represented later in the loss of sentiments of affection and in the point of view of the B phases. There was no real dissociation and doubling of consciousness; these conflicting attitudes and tendencies were, at least in the beginning until the later period of stress and strain when they eventuated in corresponding action, merely _evanescent thoughts, wishes and impulses which easily passed out of mind_, or an undercurrent of thought such as all of us have more or less.

Later, when they became more insistent and persistent, they had to be repressed by an effort of will.

Then it followed that C, conscious of these contrary impulses, reproached herself for them, thought herself wicked to have them, and when they became insistent repressed them. Their intrusion into consciousness was probably favored by a considerable degree of neurasthenia, for when she was ill they were more frequent and obtrusive, while with good health and happiness they disappeared, as is the case with all obsessing ideas.

The occurrence of such contrary impulses would probably have been of no account and nothing more would have been heard from them, as in the case of ordinary mortals, if it had not been for a period of stress and strain which she was destined to undergo. As it was, the awakening of these contrary thoughts and impulses was fraught with a danger to the psychical unity, a danger that actually materialized, namely: as these conflicting impulses, being also rebellious against the conditions of life, were constantly awakened contemporaneously with the specialized frequently recurring “rebellious complex,” the whole tended to become synthesized into a large complex which later, during the second period of stress and strain, became in turn the nucleus of a still larger complex (B). During this latter period, as we shall see, like the forces of a growing political revolution, the rebellious thoughts and impulses increased in number, frequency and intensity, until there were times when they acquired the mastery in the conflicts and repressed the previously opposing thoughts of duty, affection, etc., and dominated the personality. The effect of such intense conflict was to cause by repression a rift in the personality, i.e., to dissociate a large system of ideas (with their emotions), from other systems. All this will appear as we go on.

There is another point which it is interesting here to note. The secondary phase B looking back recognizes (i.e., has a sense of awareness) that the “rebellious thoughts” and the various contrary impulses were herself. “_I was the rebellion_;” “I think of the rebellion as myself;” “I was the rebellion which she kept to herself;” “The first complex formed a something I am;” “I think I am made up of all the impulses which began to come then;” "It seems to me, as I think of it now, that I was always there—sometimes more, sometimes less—in the form of conflicting impulses.“ In these and similar phrases B, over and over again, in numerous analyses at widely separated intervals, identifies these early conscious processes with her own individuality. Nevertheless, ”_I was not an_ I _then_, you know," she explains, “but to understand what I write you will have to call me so. I remember them now as my thoughts, but at that time I never thought of myself as a self.” “I never thought, ‘I’ do not like this or that then; _it was like an impulse in the other direction_.” Let it not be forgotten, then, that at the beginning the rebellious complex and impulses were not synthesized and segregated as an ego. Nevertheless, in fact, whenever she attempts to describe the early rebellious complex and the impulses she drops into the mode of saying, “I felt so and so,” and finds herself obliged to use this personal pronoun when thinking of these past thoughts, and the same is true when she speaks of the more fully developed subsequent B complex.

You will say that there is nothing particularly remarkable or unusual in this. We all think of our past thoughts as our own, even when they occurred, say, in absent mindedness when there was no consciousness of self. _But the unusual thing is that B—the subject in the B phase of personality—does not think of C’s other thoughts or conscious experiences as her own._ In fact she persistently refuses to recognize these others as hers. She has no feeling of their having belonged to her own consciousness. “They were not my thoughts,” she says. This is true of this other content of the conscious life of the early first period as well as of the later periods when the B complex and the B personality appeared. “_She_ liked,” such and such a thing; “_I_ didn’t!” "_She_ thought,“ so and so; ”_I_ didn’t;" referring respectively to the thoughts of the dominant consciousness and the contrary thoughts. “Yet in referring to the B _complex_,” she writes of the second period, “I find myself continually saying ‘I’; it is difficult not to do so. This, I think, must show the intimate relation between the two. I think of the B complex and I find I think of it as myself, although I do not think of A and C as myself, and they do not seem to be my own personality.”

This feeling by a secondary personality that certain conscious experiences belong, or belonged, to her own personal consciousness or ego and that others do not, or did not, belong is a common phenomenon in such cases and is of great significance. It is a phenomenon which justifies the inference that the relation which one system of ideas bears to that which we call the ego is different from that of the other system; it is a phenomenon, too, which must be taken into account in solving the problem of the ego. When we study the records of cases of multiple personality we find as a frequent observation that the secondary personality distinguishes between the conscious experiences which belong to itself and those which belong to the principal personality, and to other secondary personalities, if more than one. This differentiation is based upon the feeling of a particular self-consciousness being attached to the former and not to the latter. The conception of self and the self-regarding sentiment differ markedly in their content in the different phases of personality. The analysis of their contents shows this to be the case: e. g., the contained images and affects. It is not, therefore, simply a matter of the experiences occurring at different chronological epochs. Indeed the two different sets of experiences may be synchronous, one being conscious and the other co-conscious.

I have passed over a question which is sure to be asked: Why did the “unexpectedly disagreeable” situation, whatever it was, occasion the “shock” and the rebellious complex? I may say frankly that the situation was not one which would induce such a disastrous effect in the ordinary individual. The answer is to be found in the principle of settings which give meaning to ideas. [Every idea over and above the sensory images which take part in its content has meaning; and the meaning is determined by antecedent experiences (thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc.) with which it is associated, i.e., in which it is set. An idea of a particular individual, for example, has one meaning for one person and another meaning for another according to the associated mental experiences of each. These experiences form the setting or context which determines the meaning, point of view, and attitude of mind towards any given object or situation presented to consciousness.][279] Whenever an emotional “shock” (one that is not a simple instinct reaction) occurs, this setting of antecedent experiences, organized with the idea and emotions, acts as a unitary complex, a psychic whole, and behaves as a sort of psychological torch which some later experience sets aflame, so to speak, as an emotional shock. Because of this setting the idea reacts in accordance with the emotions (fear, disgust, etc.) which the “meaning” includes, and induces a defense reaction. Now analytical investigation revealed settings to the “situation” dating in part from early childhood and in part from later experiences. An attitude of mind, therefore, already existed which was ready to react with the emotions (fear and disgust) which were excited by the meaning of the situation. It is easy to see, in the light of the actual facts, that if a certain factor of the situation had been altered, without altering the situation itself, its meaning would have been altered, i.e., it would not have awakened the setting built up by the experiences of life, and would not have excited the emotional response (shock) that ensued.

DISSOCIATION

But the organization of an emotional complex was not the whole effect of these experiences. In addition, if the memories of B can be trusted—and I believe they can—there resulted in a minor degree a cleavage or dissociation of personality. This was not so pronounced as to give rise to noticeable pathological manifestations, but apparently sufficient to make at least a line of indenture, so to speak, which afterwards was easily broadened and deepened into a complete dissociation. This is not easy to demonstrate at this late date, but there are certain facts that have some evidential value.

In the first place, according to the evidence, there developed a tendency in what we have called the rebellious complex to take on independent activity, or an automatism after the nature of an obsession, outside the domain of the will and self-control. No amount of reasoning or of self-reproach sufficed to change the point of view. Like an obsession it would not down and recurred automatically.

In the second place, it seems, according to B’s memories, that the activity of the rebellious complex of ideas began to take place to a certain extent outside the focus of the attentive consciousness, in the sense that the personal consciousness was not conscious or aware of their presence. This means that at times when the ideas in question were not in consciousness, and therefore might be supposed to be dormant in the unconscious, they recurred nevertheless and were in subconscious activity, i.e., were co-conscious. This statement is based upon the interrogation of B who to the best of her memory thought that the “rebellious ideas were split off and went on by themselves while the subject C was thinking of other things, without her being aware of them.” “They were co-conscious as I know it now.”

Too much weight should not be laid upon memories of this kind after such long intervals of time, and I would not be understood as doing so; but that the memories of this secondary personality may be given their just value it should be explained that, like some other secondary personalities, B’s memory embraces not only the mental states (thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc.,) of the principal personality which were within the focus of attention, but those which were in the fringe or margin of awareness and those which were entirely outside, i.e., fully subconscious. This has proved to be the case by numerous test observations and experiments. B might, therefore, remember split off (co-conscious) rebellious states if they existed. One reason for this enlargement of the field of memory of this phase of personality is that besides being an alternating personality[280] she is a co-conscious personality. But this is another story which we shall have to postpone for the present.

In the third place, the constant invasion of the field of the personal consciousness by the contrary impulses, which I have already spoken of, suggest, if they do not establish, a certain degree of automatic activity arising from the unconscious and dissociated from the rest of the conscious field. In the light of what has already been told and of later developments, to be described in the next lecture, the inference assumes a high degree of probability that these impulses were manifestations of ideas and feeling tones belonging to an earlier period of life—childhood or girlhood—which had been conserved in the unconscious and which now erupted into the field of the personal co-consciousness.

I do not want to make too much of these early tendencies to dissociation nor is the matter important. For historical comprehension, however, it is desirable that the facts should be mentioned for, if our interpretation be correct, they were evidently steps in the evolution of the final disintegration.

Thus matters went on during this first period, covering a span of 14 years; sometimes the rebellious complex, enlarged and constellated with conflicting thoughts, desires and impulses, recurred with frequency, and sometimes they remained dormant for considerable intervals, the state of general health apparently often being the conditioning factor.

III
THE EVOLUTION OF THE B COMPLEX

PERIOD II

At the end of the 14-year span—when the _second period_ begins—the subject “received a great shock in the sudden illness of her husband. This illness was of such a nature that she knew no complete recovery was possible and that death might result at any time.” This second shock aroused once more the emotion of fright, and the old rebellion and a certain apprehensiveness, a trait which is inherent to a marked degree in her character. During the following four years which covered the illness of her husband she was almost literally torn to pieces mentally by this apprehensiveness—always anticipating the inevitable hanging over her.

After the first two weeks, when her husband’s temporary recovery took place, the same old rebellious complex returned with intensified force as the condition that gave rise to it returned. But she repressed all expression of it, resolved that no one should guess her secret because she did not wish to give pain to another. So she kept her secret to herself, and what she kept to herself became the _beginnings_ of a new personality. “Then came the nervous strain of sorrow, anxiety, and care, and the inability to reconcile herself to the inevitable. This nervous strain continued for four years. C’s life during this time was given up entirely to the care of her husband; she tried to live up to her ideal—which was a high one—of duty and responsibility, and always having the sense of failure, discouragement and apprehension.” Necessarily she was cut off from the social world of gaiety by the care that devolved upon her or, considering her temperament, thought she was. A person of less intense feeling and governed by pure intellect quite likely might have reasonably arranged her life so that she could have both given all the care she wished to the invalid, on the one hand, and participated in the pleasures of social life, on the other. But, like many anxious wives and mothers whom all physicians see, her anxiety and feelings were too intense for such cool reasoning, her mind became single tracked and she shut herself off from the world she loved. Consequently, during this period of stress and strain the old rebellious complex not only became intensified and more persistent, but also became enlarged and systematized with a still larger cluster of rebellious thoughts. To the old rebellion there was now added a rebellion against the hardness of fate which was about to cheat her out of the happiness which belonged to her, and still more against the new conditions of life as she found them. This is what the incurable illness of her husband meant to her.

She rebelled bitterly [B writes in a letter;] she _could_ not have it
so and it _was_ so. No one knew what his illness was and she bent
every energy to conceal his true condition. She blamed herself for his
illness [in her ignorance of the pathology of disease], and after a
time she began to have that sense of being double. More than anything
else she wanted to be happy; she saw all happiness going and she could
_not_ let it go—it _must_ not—she _would_ be happy, and she
_couldn’t_. It was a fight with herself all the time. We were A and B
then just as much as we are now. The part that afterwards became A
doing all that a devoted conscientious wife could do, determined that
her husband should never miss anything of love and care; and the part
that afterwards became B rebelling against it all, not willing to give
up her youth, longing for pleasure, and above all for happiness. To be
happy, that was always the cry, and it was not possible.

It was a longing for conditions which in her mind seemed essential, and she could not accept the conditions as they were. “It was a rebellion, a longing for happiness, a disinclination to give up the pleasures of life which the conditions required; and there was a certain _determination to have these pleasures in spite of everything_, and this resulted in a constant struggle between C and this complex.” It was that inability, which is so common and causes so much mental disturbance and unhappiness in so many people, to reconcile and adjust oneself to the actual situation of one’s life and accept it. And here, in the case of B. C. A., we recognize in the center of the rebellion of this second period of stress and strain, the same thoughts which had cropped up evanescently during the first period but now become more intense and persistent, more disturbing and the fundamental, cause of the inability to adjust herself to the situation.

These thoughts, however, were not tolerated by the subject and were put out of mind and _repressed into the unconscious by her rightmindedness_. It thus became a matter of conflict between the light-hearted gay sentiments and temperament of inexperienced youth which, in ignorance of life, finds it difficult to accept its serious responsibilities, and the sentiments of honor, duty, and affection which were the dominating traits. These facts are too intimate to go into in greater detail, but each one will probably recognize in himself some such conflicting desires and tendencies.

This is the place to point out certain major traits in the character of B. C. A. which enable us to recognize more clearly the source of the conflicting impulses and help to make intelligible their uprushes. There were two strongly marked elements in her character which had always been noticeable and which, given the appropriate conditions, were almost bound to come in conflict. B. C. A. during all her girlhood days and early married life was noted for her happy, buoyant, lively, light-hearted disposition. She was ready at all times for pleasure and could not bear to give it up, and she had an unusually intense desire to be happy; she loved happiness and wanted happiness, and when happiness dominated, as it generally did in a person of such a disposition, she was filled with the “joy of life.” Responsive to her environment,[281] when her surroundings were sympathetic all the joy and mirth of her own personality was given out and reflected upon others. She was of an intense nature in that she felt all the anxieties, sorrows, and joys of life with great and equal intensity. But it was joy and happiness which appealed to her as the one thing she must preserve. This was one of her character traits.

On the other hand, the second trait was equally strong, namely, unreasonably high moral ideals, so high even in the little every day affairs of life that only a strong stern fanatic or ascetic could live consistently and perpetually up to them; she was intensely conscientious and high-minded with an almost inordinate sense of honor and duty; and there was also an overweening pride in her rectitude and moral ideals which sometimes seems to have transcended common-sense; and there was pride in her pride. Reserved and rather unapproachable to strangers she was affectionate to relatives and intimates.

These two traits of character if analyzed would be seen to be two great strongly contrasted unitary systems of ideas and sentiments with their respective emotions and feelings. They formed two sides to her personality, and the conflicts that ensued could be said to have been between the two sides.

To say that these two traits or groups of traits—love of the joy of life and conscientious devotion to duty—were combined in one person is not of course to mention anything out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was the intensity with which each existed. Now that she has recovered from her illness and has reverted to the normal synthesized personality these traits are still easily noticeable. None but a person of unusually strong, fixed character, capable of holding an ideal continuously in mind, subordinating all else, could have downed the cry for happiness and lighter pleasures of life. When we come to the secondary split personalities we shall see that the splitting was between these two traits or systems; the elements of one gathering about itself associated elements, formed one personality with corresponding reactions to the environment, and the elements of the other in similar fashion formed the other personality. Thus stronger conflicts arose.

The recognition of mental conflicts as disturbances of personality and determinants of conduct is as old as literature itself. They have been the theme of poets, dramatists and fiction writers of every age. It has remained for modern dynamic psychology to study and determine with exactness the phenomena, discover the mental mechanisms involved and formulate the laws. One school, the so-called psycho-analysts, claims to find in practically all conflicts, a very complicated mechanism involving repression, unconscious processes (generally a sexual wish for the most part from infantile life) a “censor,” a compromise, conversion and disguisement of the repressed factor in the form of a psycho-neurosis, or other mental and physiological phenomena, substitution, etc. I have no intention of entering into a discussion of the correctness of such mechanisms. The sole point I wish to make is that, even if so, to find such mechanisms and results to be universal is the reductio ad absurdum just as it would be to find that a conflict between a policeman and a resisting rioter is always carried out by a process which is manifested by a black eye and cracked skull, arrest, trial and conviction of the rioter. The process of the physical conflict may be simple or complex and be manifested and terminated in many ways. It may be carried out by and result in simple dissociation of the rioter from the crowd and sending him home about his business.

So with mental conflicts which may be manifested in many ways and have various results. In previous lectures we have considered some of these ways and results. One way and mechanism is, as in the latter example of the rioter, the simple repression and dissociation of the weaker factor resulting in the domination of the stronger, and the determination of conduct according to the impulses and tendencies organized within the mental system that has gained the ascendency. But in maintaining social law and order we may have to deal, not with a single rioter, but with a mob or organized rebellion. Then the repression of the uprising may bring into action more men and more systematized forces and may result in the repression of organized factions and an alteration of the social system. So mental conflicts may involve large systems and result in extensive rearrangements and repressions; in other words, an alteration with dissociation of personality. This was the mechanism and result in the case now under examination.

The conflicts were between the impulses or conative forces discharged from the emotions pertaining to youthful sentiments of pleasure and joy and play and ideas with exalting pleasure-feeling tones, all constituting wishes for the pleasures and happiness of youth—conflicts, I mean, between these forces and those of ethical sentiments of duty, together with other sentiments involving the emotions of affection, anxiety, sympathy, admiration, and depressing pain-feeling tones. _For the time being, at least, the latter won and the former were repressed._ But they were still there, conserved in the unconscious, ready to spring to life in response to a stimulus at any favorable opportunity when the repressing force of the will power was weakened by stress and strain. So we see that the conflicting wishes and impulses which jarred and threatened the mental equilibrium of the subject were, after all, only impulses or incursions from the unconscious of repressed antecedent mental experiences (wishes and conative tendencies) which were elements in the normal character.

Thus it came about that the original complex of rebellious thoughts against a _particular_ condition had become slowly enlarged into a rebellion against _general conditions_, and _constellated with a number of specific wishes for pleasure (which were incompatible with her life) and their corresponding impulses into a still larger complex_.

It is this latter that we have called the _B complex_.

It had become evolved and organized out of the original “rebellious” complex as its nucleus by receiving successive accretions from later rebellious ideas and wishes in conflict with the personality, much as the pearl in the oyster grows by successive accretions.

From one point of view it was a highly developed “mood.”

It was still under control but later, as we shall find, it was destined to assume autonomous activity and play a dominant rôle.

“C was still conscious of these thoughts, [B wrote in her account], but they represented to her the selfish and weak part of her nature and she tried to suppress them; tried to put them out of her mind but they still persisted, and she was always to a greater or less extent aware of them. There was no lack of awareness and no amnesia. As the months and years went on the sorrow and anxiety of the C group increased, and the conflicting thoughts and _rebellion_ of the B group increased. C was ashamed of the latter and always tried to suppress such thoughts as they arose. If during those years anything happy had come to C the formation of this rebellious complex would, I believe, have been retarded, perhaps stopped altogether, but nothing pleasant happened; it was all grief, and everything went wrong.”

Notwithstanding the continuing stress and strain and lack of joy all probably would have gone well if C’s husband had recovered and she had retained her physical health. Returning to her normal life, she would have been only one more of those who have lived through a period of anxious perturbation. But unfortunately, as it happened, “C’s husband died suddenly away from home, the one thing she had [dreaded and] felt she could not bear.” She received the news over the telephone.

She did not recover [B states] from the shock and became more and more
nervous, was very much depressed, easily fatigued, suffered constantly
from headache, and was possessed by all sorts of doubts and fears,
reproaching herself for things done and undone. She also overtaxed her
strength in attending to business matters.

C’s physical health immediately and suddenly gave way. Her own account, already given, goes more into detail and lets us see the extent to which she was handicapped by physical and mental ill-health in her struggle against her rebellious impulses—against fate. She was not given half a chance. Her description of her condition at this period, as noted at the beginning of this account, is worth repeating here in this connection:

I was at that time in good physical health, though nervously worn, but
this death occurred in such a way as to cause me a great shock and
within the six days following I lost twenty pounds in weight. For
nearly three months I went almost entirely without food, seemingly not
eating enough to sustain life, and I did not average more than three
or four hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, but I felt neither hungry
nor faint, and was extremely busy and active, being absorbed both by
home responsibilities and business affairs. The end of the year,
however, found me in very poor health physically and I was nervously
and mentally exhausted. I was depressed, sad, felt that I had lost all
that made life worth living and, indeed, I wished to die. I was very
nervous, unable to eat or sleep, easily fatigued, suffered constantly
from headache, to which I had always been subject, and was not able to
take much exercise. The physician under whose care I was at this time
told me, when I asked him to give my condition a name, that I was
suffering from “nervous and cerebral exhaustion.”

It is always the case in so-called neurasthenic states that the power of self-control is weakened, resistance to obsessing thoughts diminishes and the latter tend to take on automaticity and invade and dissociate the personality. And there is also a certain degree of repression and dissociation of previously dominant systems of ideas. In other words every case of real so-called “neurasthenia” and hysteria is a greater or less alteration of personality.[282]

Accordingly, although at the beginning of period II the B complex was only a loosely organized system of rebellious thoughts, wishes and impulses recurring from time to time, this system now began in her physically and mentally weakened condition to acquire increased force, to invade the personal consciousness, and breaking through the repressing force of the will to gain autonomous sovereignty and temporarily to dominate the conduct. In the prolonged conflict the rebellion with its contrary wishes was at moments to gain the ascendency. In other words, these other elements came to the surface and gathered to themselves all the discordant elements of personality, much as a radical political party gathers to itself all the rebellious discordant factions that are in antagonism to the governing conservative party. In one sense another side to the character had become crystallized and autonomous, and, through the intensity of its feeling tones, became periodically dominant. But not without protest from the previously dominant elements of personality. This protest, however, had certain psychological peculiarities which show that the conditions were not quite as simple as this. I will speak of them later.

Soon the repressed wishes, impulses—the B complex—began to manifest themselves in a way which indicated that a definite dissociation had taken place, although as yet, as I have said, there was no secondary _self_ or _I_ properly speaking. All the previous undercurrents of thought—the intensified shrinking from the particular condition of life, the internal rebellion against the conditions in general, the disinclinations, longings, wishes, and determinations—had become synthesized, and began to form a separate train of thought, so that at one and the same time there was a sense, as is so commonly felt in such cases, of a double train of thought; she had “a sense of being double.” It seemed to her, C, that there was “all the time a pulling in a different way from the way she had to go, a not wanting to live the life she had to live.” This “sense of being double” seems to have been so pronounced that to B, looking back upon it, it seemed as if these two trains of thought (the C personality and the B complex) “occurred concurrently and simultaneously, so that it could be said that one was co-conscious with the other,” just as much as when there is loss of awareness on the part of the principal consciousness for the coconscious train. In this case there was, however, at this time, no lack of awareness and there is nothing to prove B’s view of concomitance of different trains of thought rather than that the two trains did not rapidly oscillate or alternate from instant to instant.

The self-accusations and self-reproaches of the principal consciousness, C, rendered the pleasure impulses still more intolerable and tended the more to repress the rebellious train and thereby to disrupt further the personality and to crystallize the secondary synthesis. It became more than a matter of inner behavior of mental systems: _the outward behavior became affected and changed_.

For corresponding to this invasion and domination of the ideas of the B complex the behavior of C became altered, much to her amazement. That is, her conduct at times was governed by the impulses of her once repressed wishes and she found herself then doing things which normally she had not enjoyed or done. _Her health and strength also, at such moments, became extraordinarily improved._

This alteration of conduct and character and health became more obtrusive and characteristic at a later date when the B complex had become developed into the B personality. But the alteration of conduct can be easily recognized at these earlier times if some of the previous minor characteristics of C in respect to this sort of behavior are understood.

Among these characteristics were a great dislike of riding on electric
cars, an almost abnormal nervousness about bugs and mosquitoes—I
always disliked going into the woods for this reason—an aversion to
exercise in summer, and a fear of canoeing. I had never enjoyed
sitting out from under cover or on the ground as the glare of the sun
was apt to cause headache and I abhorred all crawling things. I was
reserved with strangers and not given to making my friends quickly;
devoted to my family and relatives, fond of my friends, and not in the
habit of neglecting them in any way. I felt much responsibility
concerning business matters and had given a good deal of time and
thought to them. Many more peculiarities might be mentioned.

In the later B personality, as will be presently related, these and other traits were replaced by their opposites, but even at this earlier time the complete reversal of her tastes and behavior was obvious.

To my surprise [C states in her account] there were times when I did
some of the things above referred to, such as sitting in the woods,
etc. I felt a sense of wonder that I should be doing them and a still
greater wonder that I found them pleasant. There was also a sense at
times of impatience and irritation at being troubled with business
matters or responsibility of any kind and an inclination to throw
aside all care. I wondered at myself for feeling as I did and rather
protested to myself at many of my acts but still kept right on doing
them. It seems to me that these ideas and feelings formed a complex by
which I was more or less governed and that this complex gradually grew
in strength and can be identified with that of the personality (B)
which first developed.

A more interesting account of this change of conduct is given by B:

_As she grew more and more neurasthenic_, it seems to me as I look
back upon it, the _B complex grew stronger and more dominant_, and
with this increase of strength of this complex, C began to live a life
_corresponding to the impulses belonging to it_—staying out of doors
entirely—and then there followed much improvement in her health.[283]
She took long rides on the electric cars, which she had always
previously disliked intensively; she had always been very much afraid
of a canoe, but now she went canoeing often and enjoyed it. She was
surprised and astonished that she should enjoy these things, as it was
foreign to her natural and previous ideas and inclinations. There was
no change of character, properly speaking, but she did things she
disapproved of and knew at the time that she disapproved of them.
There was a recognition that she was doing things she would not
previously have done, and she protested to herself, but even this
half-protest was suppressed. She would say to herself, “Why am I doing
these things? I never cared for them before. Why should I care for
them now?” The old doubts and fears were at this time out of her mind.
The personality was C, but influenced and dominated by the B complex
of which, of course, she was perfectly aware.

What is here described is obviously a mood but a mood which included altered bodily as well as mental characteristics. The alternation of neurasthenic and healthy phases also became more obtrusive when the healthy mood became a personality. The apparent recovery then deceived the medical attendant.

In these quoted passages we have a description of the uprush from the unconscious and successful sovereignty of the conflicting B complex. Before continuing with our analysis two points are worth noting. First: With the winning of sovereignty by this system of ideas, the previously dominating system—or self—sank to an inferior position and assumed the protesting, one may say, the rebellious attitude. Like two adversaries in a wrestling conflict, in which first one then the other holds the vantage and each in turn yields before the superior force of the other, so it was turn and turn about, and now the rebellious complex becoming the victor, repressed the protests, the self-reproaches, doubts, fears, and scruples of the regularly constituted government.

Second: With the eruption of the B complex into the C personality it is interesting once more to note the increase of physical strength, and improvement in the general health. It was thought by her physician that it was really a condition of health which had supervened but, as will be seen, this was far from being the case; it was one of psychological disintegration. Nevertheless with the one system of ideas—the B complex—there were associated all the mental and bodily reactions of health, with the other complex the reactions characteristic of the neurasthenic condition. This alteration was still more noticeable later when the B _personality_ erupted. The same phenomenon was observed in the case of Miss Beauchamp. With the appearance of the “Sally” complex all the neurasthenic symptoms vanished, and the personality became buoyant with health. Identical variations in health have been observed in other cases of dissociated personality; one phase of personality being characterized by an extreme hysterical condition, another by freedom from such symptoms (Felida X., Marcelline R., and others). This phenomenon is of great significance for the understanding of the neurasthenic and hysteric condition.

-----

Footnote 264:

This study was first published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, Oct., 1919, but originally was written for this volume.
It was omitted with other lectures from the first edition to limit the
size of the volume.

Footnote 265:

Dissociation and inhibition are not coextensive terms for although
inhibition implies dissociation, a dissociated element may not be
necessarily inhibited as it may function subconsciously or
independently of the personal consciousness.

Footnote 266:

Unfortunately most of the reported cases were not studied from a
genetic point of view and the reports are too meagre to afford
sufficient data for a study of this kind. But in many cases the
principles can be recognized. In the article “Hysteria from the Point
of View of Dissociated Personality,” _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_,
Oct., 1906, I have given a synopsis in tabulated form of the reports
accessible up to the date of publication.

Footnote 267:

I would refer those who are interested in this problem of personality
to a similar but more exhaustive study of the case of “Miss Beauchamp”
which I have recently published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, Vol. XV, Nos. 2 and 3, 1920. A descriptive account of the
case was published in 1906: _The Dissociation of a Personality_; New
York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1906.

Footnote 268:

Published under the title “My Life as a Dissociated Personality” in
the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_; Oct.-Nov., 1908 and Dec.-Jan.,
1909.

Footnote 269:

The broken lines indicate dissociation; the solid lines, synthesis.

Footnote 270:

I have italicized a number of words and sentences not thus emphasized
in the original account.

Footnote 271:

Sympathetically excited emotions (instincts).

Footnote 272:

The division into periods follows that given in the second account by
B.

Footnote 273:

_Journal Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. III, No. 5, p. 311.

Footnote 274:

Lecture IX.

Footnote 275:

Prince: _Jour. Abnormal Psychology_. Vol. I, No. 1, 1906. Also, _The
Dissociation of a Personality_, 2nd ed., Chap. XXI. James: _Varieties
of Religious Experiences_.

Footnote 276:

I. e., “Tried not to think of it”; “put it out of her mind as a
disagreeable fact.”

Footnote 277:

Instinct of repulsion (McDougall).

Footnote 278:

Nor were they the reaction to or the expression of a previously
repressed sexual wish as any such wish would have met no conscious
resistance. It is easy to see in the light of all the facts that,
given a certain change in the conditions, or point of view, there
would have been no shock and no rebellion.

Footnote 279:

Lecture X; also, “The Meaning of Ideas as Determined by Unconscious
Settings,” _Journal Abnormal Psychology_, Oct.-Nov., 1912.

Footnote 280:

I use the present tense as more convenient although I am speaking of a
past condition.

Footnote 281:

As illustrated by her responsive behaviour at the theatre (p. 558), as
I have witnessed it there and socially.

Footnote 282:

“Hysteria from the Point of View of Dissociated Personality.” _Journal
Abnormal Psychology_, 1906.

Footnote 283:

It is interesting to note the apparent paradox of an increasing
physically neurasthenic phase coincident with an increasing physically
healthy phase. With the subsidence of the latter the neurasthenic
state became obvious.

LECTURE XIX
(THE SAME CONTINUED)—THE B PERSONALITY

PERIOD III

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.