The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-09-28
Two Personalities in One Person.

llNluS lltCSj CuSCS Ill NHtH
there is periodical loss of one phase of
ton of another very different one. For
example, an hysterical subject will have
fit, and on coming out of it will be
found to have lost all memory of the past.
The mental faculties remain unimpaired,
but so far as knowledge goes the patients
mind is that of an infant. With more or
less delay she will learn to talk, and to
read and work, practically beginning life
again at the beginning, and sometimes
developing a character quite unlike her
first one. The physical basis appears to
he the same; but the personality Is entire
ly different, with different temperament,
different habits, different tastes, and 50
on.
Matters will continue after this fashion
for an indefinite period; and then the
patient will go into another fit, emerging
just as she was was originally. All the
life she has lived since the first fit is sud
denly wiped out. She can recall none of
it; for the time her second life, and it
may have lasted years, is annihilated, and
the current of her original life flows on
as serenely and naturally as if it had
never been brokcn-unti' another fit sets
her back to the end of her second life,
seriousness of break in it. And so her
existence alternates between two lives en-
tirely distinct and independent of each
other, save that the same body serves for
both.
Formerly such alterations of conscious
ness were explained by spiritual or de-
moniac possession. The body was sup
posed to be tenanted by two independent
spirits; or the patients soul was from
time to time ousted by some other malig-
nant or benevolent SOUL as the temptcr
might indicate. In our more scientific and
materialistic days, the spiritual hypoth-
esis has few retainers: the phenomena
in question being much more satisfactorily
expiainable by supposing that the patients
mental life has been carried on wholly or
chiefly by one side of her double brain,
and that, when the action of that side is
arrested by disease. the unused side takes
up the intellectual function and continues
until another paroxysm shifts the respon-
sibility to the first used side. So the two
tional activity of the two brains; the rca-
son that such lives are always double and
never triple or manifold lying in the fact
that we have only two Independent brain
lobes and no more.
The latest case reported of this sort is
exceedingly interesting, and peculiar in
that there is loss of continuity in the
life onl y when the state recurs In which
the patients life began. The case is re-
ported at length in the Rerue Scient!fque, by
Prof. Azam, of Bordeaux, where the pa
tient lives. The patient is married
woman, now about thirty-fOur years old,
and has been living a double life since she
was fourteen years old. For brcvity, we
will call her first state of consciousness
and its repetitions, A, and the second state
and repetitions, 3.
At first B came on at intervals of days,
and lasted for a few hours only. Twice
it was absent for three years at a time,
from the age of seventeen and a half to
twenty and half, and again from twenty
four to twenty-sevcn. Latterly she has
lived the life of B most of the time, A re-
curing at intervals of two or three months,
and remaining but for few hours. For
merly the transition occurred during some
minutes of unconscious sleep following
violent pain in the temples; now it is al,
most instantaneous. In A, the patient has
always been quiescent and somcw hat mo-
rose in disposition; in B, she has always
been bright, gay and atfectionate. In A,
she has no memory of events which hap
pen in 3 but in 3, she has full rccOl-
lection of her life in both statcs-a re-
markable peculiarly in her case, as al
ready observed. In d, her distress, on
discovering that there have been blanks
in her conscious experience, is extreme;
but the practical inconvenience of such
loss of memory, formerly great, has be-
come less with the predominance of
B. On rare occasions on passing out Of
| B, the patient suffers brief period Of
agitation and extreme terror, during which
her knowledge is somewhat disordered; at
other times there is no apparent dcrangc-
ment except such as commonly appears in
historical patients.
In her passage from 3 to A professor
Azam remarks), she does not emerge from
dream, for dream, however incohcr-
ent, is always something. She energies
from nothing. The time elapsed may be
same to her; an entire section of her con-
scious life has dropped out. ITO COM
pare her existence to a book from which
some pages have been torn is not enough.
An Intelligent reader might fill the blank,
but she can have absolutely no notion of
anything that happened in her secondary
state"
A world of curious problems and COM
plications, social, theological and other,
are suggested by such case as this.
Fancy person on trial for crime COM
mitted in previous state of which no
recollection remains, with no one aware
of the criminals peculiarly: or a woman
to find herself suddenly Ito herr sur
rounded by family of children, owning
her as a mother, yet utterly unknown to
her! There is splendid chance for u
sensational novelist.-ScientJfc american.