The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-10-18
TWO BEINGS IN ONE BODY.
A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF ALTERA-
TIONS IN PERSONALITY.

Mr.. Alfred Binet on the Many Pecu-
liar DIR. JeIxyII and Mr.. Hyde Cases.
In Different Stages of Conscious
ness the Mind Has no Memory of
Its Other SeIf-Hysteria and Hyp-
nOsis.
From the New York Herald
Within the past week two extraordinary
cases have occurred to occupy the atten-
ton of the mental alienists. An appar-
emily inoffensive and good natured man
drinks a single glass of beer, becomes mo-
mentarlly transformed into a fend, brutal
ly murders a little girl, and the next min
ute has, or appears to have, entirely for
gotten an act which is at utter variance
with all that is known of his past. Another
man, of excellent reputation and position,
is charged with a burglary, committed, it
would seem, in a similar moment of men
tai alteration.
These cases serve to give special local
timeliness to a new book, now in press
with D. Appleton & Co., whose interest,
however, must remain of a perennial and
universal sort.
The book is a translation by Helen
Green Baldwin of alterations of Person
atty" by Alfred Binet, the director of the
laboratory for Physiological Psychology
at the Sorbonne, in Paris. By alteration
Of personality M. Binet means all that va
riety of mental phenomena which indi-
cate the possibility of a division or dis
memberment of self. He holds it as proved
that in d great many cases the normal
unity CT consciousness is broken up and
several distinct consciousness are form
ed. each of which may have it's own sys-
tenn of perceptions, its own memory, and
even it's owr moral character.
DR.. Jekyll, in short, may pass into Mr..
Hyde, do the criminal or other acts that
are only possible to Mr.. Hyde, and revert
to the DIR. Jekyll state without any con-
seriousness or remembrance of the Hyde
interregnum.
The variations of personality found in
diseased patients, NJ Binet explains, take
on a great number of forms. He selects
only a single TYPE e., the variations
which take form of two or more per-
sonalities in the same individual, the cases
of so-called multiple personality" This
phenomenon is found in many different
classes of patients. 1t is common in hys-
terra, and the hysterical cases are those
which have been most adequately inves-
tigated.
He deems the term "somnambulism" an
adequate one provided 1t is first intelli-
gently defined in its simplest form. In its
simplest form it occurs in the case of or
binary somnambulists, the persons who
rise in the night and perform automatic
and even intelligent acts without waking
They dress themselves, perhaps resume
their days work, solve problem to which
they had vainy sought the solution be-
fore, then return to bed and to sleep again
the next morning they have no memory
of having been up in the night. Indeed,
they are often much surprised to see a
piece of work finished which had been
unfinished the evening before. Or they
walk on the roof or perform some other
equally startling feat. 1t is still admit
ted, at least Professionally, that perfectly
healthy people may be found among these
sleepwalkers, and that. consequently, a
physiological ''noctambulism" must exist
But the majority-the great majority-of
somna mbulists are undoubtedly afflicted
with hysteria, and 1t is in crisis OF hys-
terics that this popularity of night walk
ing exists.
In these phenomena we may see an ex-
ample of double personality. These noe
tembulists are two persons. The person
who rises in the night is entirely distinct
from the one who is awake during the
day. since the latter has no knowledge Or
memory of anything that has happened
during the night Now, NJ. Binet extends
the meaning of the term somnambultsn
so as to cover all cases of variations of
personality. His first chapters deal with
historical patients. who possess, besides
their normal and regular life, another
psychological existence, or second state.
so to speak, of which they retain no
memory in their normal condition. The
peculiar characteristic of this second stare
is that It constitutes a complete psyche
logical existence; the subject lives the
every day life, his mind is alive to ali
ideas and perceptions, and he is not de-
lirious This state he calls natural, or
spontaneous, somnambulism. If the
stories told by our New York murderer
and our Perth Amboy burglar be true,
they performed their evil deeds in a con-
diton of natural somnambulism.
But according to their stories. these
were the first and only Instances in which
they ever lapsed from normal condition.
In the cases cited by NJ. Binet the iapses
were frequent and recurrent.
4 most remarkable instance is that OF
one Zelda, a seamstress, who from 1858