Adventurings in the Psychical Part 19

CHAPTER IX

THE LARGER SELF

It is barely fifty years since the problem of supreme interest to mankind--the problem of the nature, possibilities, and destiny of man--began to be studied in a really scientific way; yet in that half century more progress has been made toward its solution than in all the previous thousands of years that have elapsed since man first asked himself: What am I? What are my capabilities? Shall I be, after I have ceased to exist here on earth?

Armed with instruments of the most delicate precision, devising novel methods for exploring the body and the mind in their mutual ramifications, modern investigators have thrown a flood of new and largely unexpected light on the great questions at issue, and have opened vistas of hope and aspiration and actual achievement undreamed of by the vanished peoples of bygone times.

At first sight, to be sure, much of their effort appears to be irreparably, even wantonly, destructive, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the blows they have dealt at the traditional conception of the central fact in man's psychical make-up--that intangible ent.i.ty variously known as the ego, the self, the personality, animated and governed by an indwelling, unifying principle, the soul. Every man instinctively believes that there is only one of him. He feels that, no matter how his thoughts, his sensations, his emotions may change in the course of time, he himself will remain essentially and permanently the same. Putting this belief into metaphysical language, he declares, with the excellent Thomas Reid:

"The conviction which every man has of his ident.i.ty ... needs no aid of philosophy to strengthen it; and no philosophy can weaken it without first producing some degree of insanity.... The ident.i.ty of a person is a perfect ident.i.ty; wherever it is real it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same and in part different, because a person is a monad, and is not divisible into parts."[45]

[45] Thomas Reid's "Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man,"

pp. 228-231 (James Walker's edition of 1850).

But the modern explorer of the nature of man, replies:

"You are wrong, my friend. Your self is very far from being the simple, stable unity that you imagine it to be. In reality it is most complex and most unstable, easily breaking up, and sometimes breaking up so completely that it may even be replaced by an entirely new self. You do not believe this? I can prove it to you from the facts not only of scientific experiment, but also of everyday observation."

Naturally, in support of this statement, stress would be laid on instances resembling the strange case of BCA, just narrated. And although cases at all similar to the BCA affair are extremely uncommon there are a number on record evidencing in other ways so-called "total dissociation of personality." For example:

A prosperous Philadelphia plumber, a man of exemplary habits and seemingly in good health, left his home one day to take a short walk.

From that moment he disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed him. There was no reason why he should abscond or commit suicide, and the general belief was that he had met with foul play. Rewards were offered, and detectives employed, but no trace of him could be found. His wife, giving him up for dead, sold his business and removed with their children to Chicago.

Nearly two years later, the workmen in a tin-shop in a Southern city were startled one morning by the conduct of one of their number, who, dropping his tools and pressing his hand to his head in a bewildered way, sprang to his feet, and cried:

"My G.o.d! Where am I? How did I get here? This isn't my shop!"

The foreman, thinking he was drunk, or had gone insane, ran forward to pacify him.

"Steady, Smith, steady!" he exclaimed. "You'll be all right in a minute."

The other only stared at him wildly.

"Why do you call me Smith?" he demanded. "That isn't my name."

"That's the name you've gone by since you came among us six months ago."

"Six months ago! You're crazy, man. It isn't half an hour since I left my wife and little ones to get a breath of fresh air before dinner."

"Look here," said the foreman, pressing him gently into a seat, "where do you suppose you are, anyway?"

"Why, in Philadelphia, of course."

It was indeed the Philadelphia plumber, whose missing self had returned to him as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had vanished. A few days more and he was happily reunited with the family that had so long believed him to be among the dead.[46]

[46] Boris Sidis's "Multiple Personality," pp. 365-368. This book, by one of the foremost American psychopathologists, should be read by all students of abnormal psychology.

Where, it may well be asked, was this man's original self during these two years? What had become of his normal ego, the ego of which alone he had formerly been aware? Yet at no time throughout the period when he lacked knowledge of his ident.i.ty, and was without memory for his earlier life and social relationships, did he display the slightest sign of mental aberration. He was as sane and real to himself and to those with whom he came into contact, and was as able to take care of himself and earn a sufficient living, as he had ever been in the years before he experienced the remarkable psychical upheaval that had subst.i.tuted an alien, a "secondary" self in the place of the self he had always been and known.

A blow, an illness, a fright, the stress of a prolonged emotion--any one of several causes may bring about this weird condition, of which I could give ill.u.s.trative cases to a number that would fill many pages of this book.[47] Sometimes, though fortunately seldom, there may be--as in the case of BCA--a double or even a multiple dissociation, resulting in the development of two, three, four, or more secondary selves, which alternate with one another in a way productive of the most intense mental agony to the helpless victim.

[47] A collection of such cases will be found in my book, "Scientific Mental Healing," pp. 124-155.

But, after all, it is not necessary to insist on such extreme instances in order to demonstrate the essential instability and divisibility of that which we commonly have in mind when we speak of the "self."

Dissociation of personality is in evidence every day in the pathetic symptomatology of the various insanities, and in the chronic, if often masked and unrecognized, memory lapses universal among sufferers from the manifold affections of hysteria, such as we dealt with in the chapter on "Dissociation and Disease." It is in evidence in the victims of alcoholic and drug excesses, who, in a very literal sense, may become "another person," and say and do things quite alien from their usual self, and concerning which their usual self afterward has no knowledge.

Even normal sleep, albeit a wise provision for the rest and strengthening of the organism, involves dissociation. Still more strikingly is dissociation evident in the phenomena of the state of artificial sleep induced by hypnotism.

It would carry us too far from the point now under consideration to enter here into any discussion of the nature and mechanism of hypnotism, that still widely misunderstood but marvelous agency, not simply for therapeutic purposes but for the study and exploration of man's inmost being. The thing of immediate importance is the fact that under the influence of hypnotism a person invariably develops a self more or less different from his ordinary waking, conscious self.

Hypnotized, he is to all outward seeming oblivious to everything transpiring around him. But let the hypnotist speak to him, question him, and he instantly responds with answers so intelligent as to indicate that, in some respects, at all events, he is more alert and keen than when wide awake. Curiously enough, however, commands and suggestions given to him are, within certain limitations, accepted and acted upon, no matter how disagreeable or absurd they may be.

Later, when awakened, he is in precisely the same position as are victims of spontaneous dissociation--such as the Philadelphia plumber, and Doctor Prince's puzzling neurasthene, BCA. That is to say, he is unable to give any account of what he has said and done during hypnosis.

Thus the effect of hypnotism is to produce a psychical cleavage so profound as to involve the action, within a single organism, of two separate selves.

This has been demonstrated by a long line of scientific investigators, including physicians and psychologists of international reputation.

Moreover, these investigators have shown that, even after a person has been brought out of the hypnotic state, the self evoked by hypnotism may in some inscrutable way continue operant without his suspecting for a moment its existence and influence.

Impressive proof of this is found in the execution of what are known as post-hypnotic commands. A hypnotized person is told that, after being de-hypnotized, he is to perform a certain act on receiving a certain signal, or at the expiration of a certain time. As usual, when restored to his conscious, waking state, he remembers nothing of the command imposed on him; but when the signal is given, or the appointed time arrives, he feels an irresistible, and to him inexplicable, impulse to carry out the suggested idea.

Thus, in one series of fifty-five experiments made by the foremost English authority on hypnotism, Doctor J. Milne Bramwell, the subject, a young woman of nineteen, was ordered to perform a specified act at the end of a varying number of minutes, ranging from three hundred to more than twenty thousand. Not once, on being de-hypnotized, did she remember what she had been told to do, although offered a liberal reward if she could recall the commands given her.

Nevertheless, only two of the fifty-five experiments were complete failures, while in forty-five she executed the commands at exactly the moment designated, and in the remainder was at no time more than five minutes out of the way. As to the complete failures, Doctor Bramwell ascertained that in one instance she had mistaken the suggestion given, and in the other the circ.u.mstances were such that the command might have been executed without his being aware of it.[48]

[48] These experiments by Doctor Bramwell were first reported by him in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xii, pp. 176-203.

Equally astonishing results are reported by the brilliant group of Frenchmen who, uniting under the direction of Doctor A. A. Liebeault, were the first to make an organized investigation of the cause and effects, the possibilities and limitations, of hypnotism. One of these French investigators, Doctor Hippolyte Bernheim, once hypnotized an old soldier, and asked him:

"On what day in the first week of October will you be at liberty?"

"On the Wednesday."

"Well," said Doctor Bernheim, "on that day you will pay a visit to Doctor Liebeault; you will find in his office the president of the republic, who will present you with a medal and a pension."

The soldier was then awakened and questioned as to what had been said to him, but could remember nothing. However, on Wednesday, October 3, Doctor Liebeault wrote to Doctor Bernheim:

"Your soldier has just called at my house. He walked to my bookcase, and made a respectful salute; then I heard him utter the words: 'Your excellency!' Soon he held out his right hand, and said: 'Thanks, your excellency.' I asked him to whom he was speaking. 'Why, to the president of the republic.' He turned again to the bookcase and saluted, then went away. The witnesses to the scene naturally asked me what that madman was doing. I answered that he was not mad, but as reasonable as they or I, only another person was acting in him."[49]

[49] "De la Suggestion dans l'etat Hypnotique," p. 29.

Compare with this an amusing little story told by Doctor Prince.

"Wishing to test the compelling influence of post-hypnotic commands," he says,[50] "I suggested to one of my subjects, Mrs. R., after she was hypnotized, that on the following day, when she went down to dinner, she would put on her bonnet, and keep it on during the whole of dinner time. The next day I received a letter from her in which she said:

[50] _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, vol. cxxii, p. 463.