Part 21
When the epochal amnesia follows psychical trauma the condition of memory is apt to present the following peculiarity and the personality may be altered. When the epoch is the immediate past, i.e., includes the experiences extending from a certain past date up to the present, it sometimes happens that memory reverts to that past date. That is to say, the personality goes back to the period last remembered in which he believes, for the moment, he is still living, the memory of the succeeding last epoch being dissociated from the personal consciousness. Under such conditions there is something more than amnesia. The neurographic residua of the remembered epoch are revived and its experiences remembered as if they had just been lived. There is not only a dissociation of the memories of one epoch, but a resurrection of the conserved and maybe forgotten experiences of a preceding one. The synthesis of these memories restores again the personal consciousness of that period. Before the cleavage took place the recollection of the resurrected epoch may have been very incomplete and vague; afterward the new personality remembers it as if just experienced. The personality is, however, in other respects generally (always?) something different from the personality of that particular epoch. The dissociation is apt to involve a certain number of acquired traits and certain innate dispositions and instincts, while other outlived and repressed traits and innate dispositions and instincts are apt to be reawakened and synthesized into an altered abnormal personality. But this is another story that does not concern us now.
As an example of epochal amnesia I may cite Mrs. J——, who, after dissociation occurs, has amnesia for all the events of several years succeeding a certain hour of a certain day when a psychical trauma (shock) occurred. She thinks she is living on that day and remembers in great detail its events as if they had just occurred.
Miss B. reverts on one occasion to a day, six years back, when she received a psychical shock; the complexes of her personality of that day are revived as if just lived, all the succeeding years being forgotten; on another occasion she reverts to a day when she was living in another city seven or eight years before.
M——l reverts to an early period of his life when he was living in Russia, and forgets all since including even his knowledge of English.
B. C. A. on several occasions reverts to different epochs of her life with complete amnesia for all after events. On each occasion she takes up the thread of her mental life as if living in the past, and recites the events as if just lived.
Likewise, after a subject reverts from the abnormal to the normal state, after a short or long condition of altered personality, there may be a complete amnesia for the abnormal epoch, and although now normal he thinks it the same day on which dissociation occurred.
Thus, Miss O. develops a condition of dissociated personality lasting six months during which, as it unfortunately happens, she falls in love with a man whom she had never known in her normal state. At the end of this period she “wakes up” with a complete loss of memory for the phase of altered personality and, therefore, to find that her fiancé is apparently a stranger to her (!).
The same amnesia in the normal state for prolonged epochs in which the personality was altered was conspicuous in the case of Miss B. In William James’ often-cited case of Ansel Bourne and Dr. E. E. Mayer’s case of Chas. W. the subjects returned to their normal states with complete amnesia for the abnormal epochs of two months and seventeen years respectively.
After all, the common _amnesia for the hypnotic state after waking is the same phenomenon_.
Such observations show the possible systematization of epoch complexes, although the determining conditions are not as yet understood.
3. _Disposition or Mood systems._—Among the loosely organized complexes in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations, desires, and modes of activity, which, for one reason or another, we tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals, for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life; and yet they may have a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately appeal to all mankind and which many actually pursue; in other words, to yield to the impulsive force of the innate disposition, or instinct, of play. But these desires are repressed. Nevertheless the longing for these pleasures, under the impulses of this instinct, recurs from time to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves a fabric of pictures, sentiments, thoughts, and emotions the whole of which thus becomes organized into a systematized complex.
There may be a conflict, a rebellion and “kicking against the pricks” and, thereby, a liberation of emotional force of the instinct, impressing, on the one hand, a stronger organization of the whole process, and, on the other, repressing all conflicting desires. Or, the converse of this may hold and a person who devotes his life to the lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for the more serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly build up a complex which may similarly express itself. The recurrence of such complexes is one form of what we call a “mood” which has a distinctively emotional tone of its own derived from the instincts and sentiments which are dominant. Such a “disposition” system is often spoken of as “_a side to one’s character_,” to which a person may from time to time give play. Thus a person is said to have “many sides to his character,” and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal states.
It may be interesting to note in passing that the well-known characteristics of people of a certain temperament, in consequence of which they can pursue their respective vocations only when they are “in the mood for it,” can be referred to this principle of complex formations and dissociation of rival systems. Literary persons, musicians, and artists in whom “feeling” is apt to be cultivated to a degree of self-pampering are conspicuous in this class. The ideas pertaining to the development of their craft form mixed subject and mood complexes which tend to have strong emotional and feeling tones. When some other affective tone is substituted, organized within a conflicting complex, it is difficult for such persons to revive the subject complex belonging to the piece of work in hand and necessary for its prosecution. “The ideas will not come,” because the whole subject complex which supplies the material with which the imagination is to work has been dissociated and replaced by some other. Certain elements in the complex can be revived piece-meal, as it were, but the complex will not develop in mass with the emotional driving energy which belongs to it. Not having their complexes and affects under voluntary control it is necessary for such persons to wait until, from an alteration in the coenesthesis or for some other reason, an alteration in the “feeling” has taken place with a revival of the right complex _in mass_.
No more exquisite illustration of these “disposition complexes” could be found than in the personality of William Sharp. Sharp’s title to literary fame very largely rests upon the writings which he gave to the world under the feminine name of Fiona Macleod. The identity of the author was concealed from the world until his death, and it is still a common belief that this concealment and the assumption of the feminine pseudonym were nothing more than a literary hoax. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There were two William Sharps; by which I mean, of course, there were two very strongly organized and sharply cut sides to his character. Each had its points of view, its complexes of ideas, its imaginings, and, above all, its creative tendencies and feeling tones. The one side—the one christened William Sharp—was the bread and butter earner, the relatively practical man who came in contact with the world—literary critic, “biographer, essay and novel writer as well as poet”—the experienced side which was obliged to correct its imagination by constant comparison with reality. The other side—Fiona Macleod—was the so-called inner man; what he himself called his “true inward self.” As Fiona he lived in his imagination and dreamed. The development of this side of his personality began while, as he said, “I was still a child.” “He found,” his biographer writes,[149] “as have other imaginative, psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious power of visions unshared by any one about him, so that what he related was usually discredited; but the psychic side of his nature was too intimate a part of his mind to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned to shut it away—to keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a mystery to himself.”
This inner life, as time went on, became a mood which he fostered and developed and in which he built up great complexes of fancies, points of view, and emotions, which, when the other side of his character came uppermost, remained neurographically conserved and dormant in the unconscious. The Fiona complexes he distinctly felt to be feminine in type so that when he came to give expression to them, as he felt he must, he concealed this side of his character under a feminine pseudonym. “My truest self,” he wrote, “the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life, and joys, and sufferings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”
“From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self, would sweep aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea that had lain dormant in what he called ‘the mind behind the mind’ would suddenly visualize itself and blot out everything else from his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed, hardly aware of what, or how, he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision with which for the moment he was identified.”
“All my work,” he said, “is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you about _Pharais_, etc., without telling you my whole life.”
William Sharp himself realized the two moods or “sides,” which became in time developed into two distinct personalities. These he distinctly recognized, although there was no amnesia. “Rightly or wrongly,” he wrote, “I am conscious of something to be done by one side of me, by one-half of me, by the true inward mind as I believe—(apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual mind, and a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within concurring with and oftenest dominating the other)....” This dual personality was so strongly realized by him that on his birthdays he wrote letters to himself as Fiona signed “Will,” and _vice versa_.
I have dwelt upon this historical example of the exaggerated development of mood complexes because, while well within the limits of normal life, it brings home to us the recognition of psychological facts which we all, more or less, have in common. But, more important than this, in certain abnormal conditions where the dissociation between systems of complexes becomes more exaggerated, mood, subject, chronological and other complexes, linked as each is with its own characteristic emotions and feelings—instincts and other innate dispositions—play a paramount part and dominate the personality. In the _hysterical personality_, in particular, there is more or less complete reversion to or a subconscious awakening of one or other such complex. Where the hysterical dissociation becomes so extreme as to eventuate in amnesia in one state for another the different systems of complexes are easily recognized as so many phases of _multiple personality_. But in so identifying the ideational content of phases of personality it should not be overlooked that intensive studies of multiple personality disclose the fact that the dissociation of one phase for another carries with it certain of the instincts innate in every organism. What I mean to say is, observation of psychopathological states has shown that instincts, such as play, hunger, anger, fear, love, disgust, the sexual instincts, etc., may be dissociated separately or in conjunction with complexes of ideas. In every case of multiple personality that I have had the opportunity to study each phase has been shorn of one or more of these inborn psycho-physiological dispositions and I believe this obtains in every true case. As a result certain sentiments and traits are lost while those that are retained stamp an individuality upon the phase. And as the conative forces of the retained instincts are not balanced and checked by the dissociated opposing instincts, the sentiments which they form and the emotional reactions to which they give rise stand out as dominating traits. Thus one phase may be characterized by pugnacity, self-assertion, and elation; another by submission, fear and tender feeling; and so on.
This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated personality, but I may point out, in anticipation of a deeper discussion of the subject, that, in accordance with these two principles, in such conditions we sometimes find that disposition and other complexes conserved in the unconscious come to the surface and displace or substitute themselves for the other complexes which dominate a personality. A complex or system of complexes that is only a mood or a “side of the character” of a normal individual, may in conditions of dissociation become the main complex and chief characteristic of the new personality. In Miss B., for instance, the personality known as BI was made up almost entirely of the religious and ethical ideas with corresponding instincts which formed one side of the original self. In the personality known as Sally we had for the most part the chronological and mood complexes of youth representing the enjoyment of youthful pleasures and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and artificial restraints generally imposed by duties and responsibilities; she was a resurrection of child life. In BIV the complex represented the ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss B., as a whole, normal, without disintegration, it was easy to recognize all three dispositions as sides of her character, though each was kept ordinarily within proper bounds by the conflicting influence of the others. It was only necessary to put her in an environment which encouraged one or the other side, to associate her with people who strongly suggested one or the other of her own characteristics, whether religious, social, pleasure-loving, or intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI, Sally, or BIV stand out in relief as the predominant personality. Then we had the alternating play of these different sides of her character.
Likewise in B. C. A. In each of the personalities, B and A, similar disposition complexes could be recognized each corresponding to a side of the character of the original personality C. In A were represented the complexes formed by ideas of duty, responsibility, and moral scruples; in B were represented the complexes formed by the longing for fun and the amusements which life offered. When the cleavage of personality took place it was between these two complexes, just as it was in Miss B. between the several complexes above described. This is well brought out in the respective autobiographies of B[150] and Sally[151] in these two cases. In many cases of hysteria in which dissociation of personality can be recognized the same phenomenon is often manifest. A careful study will reveal it also, I believe, in other cases of multiple personality, although, of course, as we have seen, the dissociation may be along other lines; that is, between other complexes than those of disposition.
This principle of the conservation, as neurograms in the unconscious, of complexes representing “sides” to one’s character, gives a new meaning to the saying _In vino veritas_. In alcoholic and other forms of intoxication there results a loss of inhibition, of self-control, and the disposition complexes, which have been repressed or concealed by the individual as a matter of social defense, arise out of the unconscious, and, for the time being, become the dominant mood or phase of personality. When these complexes represent the true inner life and nature of the individual, freed from the repressing protection of expediency, we can then truly say “In vino veritas.”
=Complexes organized in hypnotic and other dissociated conditions.=—1. We have been speaking thus far of complexes formed in the course of every-day life and which take part in the composition of the normal personality. But it is obvious that a complex may be organized in any condition of personality so long as we are dealing with consciousness, however limited or disturbed. Thus in _artificial states_, like hypnosis and the subconscious process which produces automatic writing, ideas may be synthesized into systems as well as in normal waking life. This is exemplified by the fact that in hypnosis the memories of past hypnotic experiences are conserved and form systems of memories dissociated from the memories of waking life. When the subject regains the normal condition of the personal self, though there may be amnesia for the hypnotic experiences their neurograms remain conserved to the same extent and in the same fashion as do those of the waking life. Consequently on the return to the hypnotic state the memories of previous hypnotic experiences are recovered.
This systematization of hypnotic experiences is easily recognized in those cases where several different hypnotic states can be obtained in the same individual. Each state has its own system of memories differing from, and with amnesia for, those of the others. Each system also has its own feeling tones, one system, for example, having a tone of elation, another, of depression, etc. The systematization is still more accentuated in cases like the one mentioned in the second lecture (p. 19), where the subject goes into a hypnotic state resembling a trance, and lives in an ideal world, peopled by imaginary persons, and in an imaginary environment, perhaps a spirit world or another planet. The content of consciousness consists of fabrications which make up a fancied life. In the instance I have mentioned the subject imagined she was living in a world of spirits; in Flournoy’s classical case, Mlle Hélène Smith imagined she was an inhabitant of the planet Mars, and spoke a fabricated language. In these states the same systems of ideas invariably appeared.
2. In consequence of this principle of systematization it is in our power by educational suggestion in hypnosis to organize mental processes and _build complexes_ of the same kind and in the same way as when the subject is awake. In fact, it is more readily done, inasmuch as in hypnosis the critical judgment and reflection tend to be suspended. The suggested ideas are accepted and education more easily accomplished. While in hypnosis the individual may thus be made to accept and hold new beliefs, new judgments, in short, new knowledge.[152] After waking he may or may not remember his hypnotic experiences. Generally he does. If he does the new knowledge, if firmly organized (by repetition and strong affective tones) is still retained, and if accepted (i.e., not repressed by conflicting ideas) shapes his views and conduct in accordance therewith. Even if his hypnotic experiences are not remembered, they still belong to his personality, inasmuch as they are neurographically conserved, and, experience shows, may still influence his stream of consciousness. His views are modified by his unconscious personality. His ideas may and generally do awaken the neurograms of associated systems created in hypnosis. Not remembering the hypnotic state as a whole he does not remember the _origin_ of his new knowledge; that is all.
One point to be borne in mind is that conserved ideas, whether we can recall them or not, so long as they are conserved are a part of our personality, as I have previously pointed out, and ideas can emerge from the unconscious into the field of the conscious though we have completely forgotten their origin. It requires but a single experiment in the induction of suggested post-hypnotic phenomena to demonstrate these principles.
3. As to those _pathological states_ where there is a splitting of personality—hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance states, certain types of epilepsy, etc.—complexes may similarly be formed in them. In these conditions there is a dissociation of a large part of the normal mental life, and that which is left is only a limited field of consciousness. A new synthesis comes into being out of the unconscious to represent the personal self. Though the content of consciousness is a reproduction of, or determined by certain previous experiences, it is also true that in these states new experiences may result in new complexes which then take part in the personality as with hypnotic experiences.
=Personality as the survival of organized antecedent experiences.=—Of course all our past mental experiences do not persist as organized complexes. The latter, after they have served their purpose, tend to become disaggregated, just as printer’s type is disaggregated or distributed after it has served its purpose in printing. In the organization and development of personality the elements of the mental experiences become sifted, as it were. Normally, in the adaptation of the individual to the environment, the unessential and useless, the intermediate steps leading to the final and useful, tend to drop out without leaving surviving residua, while the essential and useful tend to remain as memories capable of recall. In the unconscious these remain more or less permanently fixed as limited ideas, sentiments, and systems of complexes. Further, those complexes of experiences which persist not only provide the material for our memories, but tend, consciously or unconsciously, to shape the judgments, beliefs, convictions, habits, and tendencies of our mental lives. Whence they came, how they were born, we have long ceased to remember. We often arrive at conclusions which we imagine in our ignorance we have constructed at the moment unaided out of our inner consciousness. In one sense this is true, but that inner consciousness has been largely determined by the vestiges furnished by forgotten experiences. Many of these we imbibed from our environment and the experiences of our fellows; in this sense we are all plagiarists of the past.
Furthermore, we react, to a large extent, to our environment in a way that we do not thoroughly understand because these reactions are determined by the impulses of unconscious complexes organized with innate dispositions. Indeed, our reactions to the environment, our moral and social conduct, the affective reactions of our sentiments, instincts, feelings, and other conative tendencies, our “habits,” judgments, points of view, and attitudes of mind—all that we term character and personality—are predetermined by the mental experiences of the past by which they are developed, organized, and conserved in the unconscious. Otherwise all would be chaos. We are thus the offspring of our past and the past is the present.