Year: 1876

Iue IL.


Two Personalities in one Person.


The record books of the medical pro-


fession contain not few reports of pa


tients living double lives cases in which


there is periodical loss of one phase of


mental life and the assumption ofresump-


ton of another very different one For


example, an hysterical subject will have


a fit, and on coming out of it will be


found to have lost all memory of the


past. The mental faculties remain un-


impaired, 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 be the same; but the person


ality is entirely different, with different
| temperament, different habits, different


tastes, and So on.


Matters will continue alter this fashion


for an indefinite period; and then the
patient will go into another fit, emerging
just as she was originally. Ali 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 1t


may have lasted years, is annibilated, and
! the current of her original life flows on


as serenely and naturally as if it mad


never been broken-until another fit sets


her back to the end of her second life,


which she takes up again in utter uncon-
sciOusness of a 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 tempter
might indicate. In our more scientific and
materialistic days, the spiritual hypoth-
esis has few retainers: the phenomena
in question being much more satisfactory
ly explainable by suPposing that the
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 contin-
ues until another paroxysm shifts the
responsibility to the first used side. So |
the two lives alternate with the alUernat-
ing functional activity of the two
brains; the reassn 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 a loss of continuity in the
life only when the state recurs in which
the patients life began. The case is re-
ported at length in the Revue Scientif-
ique by Prof. Azam, of Bordeaux, where
the patient lives. The patient is a mar
ried woman, now about thirty-fOur
years old, and has been living double
lie since she was fourteen years old.
For brevitv, we will call he first state
of consciousness and its repetitions, A,
and the second state and repetitions, B.


At first B came on at intervals of days,
and lasted for few hours only. Twice
it was absent for three years at a time,
from the age of seventeen and half to
twenty and halt, and again from twenty
four to twenty-seven. Latterly she has
lived the life of B most of the time, A
recurring at intervals of two or three
months, and remaining but for a few
hours. Formerly the transition occurred
during some minutes of unconscious
sleep following violent pain in the tenn
piles; now it is almost instantaneous. In
A, the patient has always been quiescent
and somewhat morose in disposition; in
B, she has always been bright, gay and
In A, she has no memory
of events which happen in B but in B,
she has a full recollection of her lie in
both states-a remarkable popularity in
her caSe "a already observed In b. her
distress, on discovering that there have
been blanks in her conscious experience,
is extreme; but the practical inconven-
lence of such loss of memory, formerly
great, has become less with the predomi-
nance of B. On rare occasions on passing
out of B. the patient suffers a brief period
Of agitation and extreme terror, during
which her knowledge is somewhat dis
ordered; at other times there is no appa
rent arrangement except such as COM
monty appears in hysterical patients


In her passage from B to A (Prof.
Azam remarks), she does not emerge
from dream, for dream, however inco-
herent, is always something. She
emerges from nothing. The time elapsed
may be an hour, or it may be months, it
is all the same to her; an entire section
of her conscious life has dropped out.
% To compare her existence to book
from which some pages have been torn is
not enough. An intelligent reader
might fill the blank, but she can have
no notion of anything that
happened in her secondary state"


A world of curious problems and COM
plications, social, theological and
others, are suggested by such case as
this.