Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death

APPENDICES TO CHAPTER II

II. A. It is well known that a great variety of slight causes—hunger, fatigue, slight poisoning by impure air, a small degree of fever, etc.—are sometimes enough to produce a transient perturbation of personality of the most violent kind. I give as an instance the following account of a feverish experience, sent to me by the late Robert Louis Stevenson, from Samoa, in 1892 (and published in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 9). In Stevenson's paper on his own dreams, alluded to in Chapter III, we have one of the most striking examples known to me of that helpful and productive subliminal uprush which I have characterised as the mechanism of genius. It is therefore, interesting to observe how, under morbid conditions, this temperament of genius—this ready permeability of the psychical diaphragm—transforms what might in others be a mere vague and massive discomfort into a vivid though incoherent message from the subliminal storm and fire. The result is a kind of supraliminal duality, the perception at the same time of two personalities—the one rational and moral, the other belonging to the stratum of dreams and nightmare.

Vailima Plantation, Upoho, Samoan Islands,
July 14th, 1892.

Dear Mr. Myers,—I am tempted to communicate to you some experiences of mine which seem to me (ignorant as I am) of a high psychological interest.

I had infamous bad health when I was a child and suffered much from night fears; but from the age of about thirteen until I was past thirty I did not know what it was to have a high fever or to wander in my mind. So that these experiences, when they were renewed, came upon me with entire freshness; and either I am a peculiar subject, or I was thus enabled to observe them with unusual closeness.

Experience A. During an illness at Nice I lay awake a whole night in extreme pain. From the beginning of the evening one part of my mind became possessed of a notion so grotesque and shapeless that it may best be described as a form of words. I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted nor yet where it was, and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the pain would cease. Now all the time, with another part of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired sanity, and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict. Myself had nothing more at heart than to keep from my wife, who was nursing me, any hint of this ridiculous hallucination; the other was bound that she should be told of it and ordered to effect the cure. I believe it must have been well on in the morning before the fever (or the other fellow) triumphed, and I called my wife to my bedside, seized her savagely by the wrist, and looking on her with a face of fury, cried: "Why do you not put the two ends together and put me out of pain?"

Experience B. The other day in Sydney I was seized on a Saturday with a high fever. Early in the afternoon I began to repeat mechanically the sound usually written "mhn," caught myself in the act, instantly stopped it, and explained to my mother, who was in the room, my reasons for so doing. "That is the beginning of the mind to wander," I said, "and has to be resisted at the outset." I fell asleep and woke, and for the rest of the night repeated to myself mentally a nonsense word which I could not recall next morning. I had been reading the day before the life of Swift, and all night long one part of my mind (the other fellow) kept informing me that I was not repeating the word myself, but was only reading in a book that Swift had so repeated it in his last sickness. The temptation to communicate this nonsense was again strongly felt by myself, but was on this occasion triumphantly resisted, and my watcher heard from me all night nothing of Dean Swift or the word, nothing but what was rational and to the point. So much for the two consciousnesses when I can disentangle them; but there is a part of my thoughts that I have more difficulty in attributing. One part of my mind continually bid me remark the transrational felicity of the word, examined all the syllables, showed me that not one was in itself significant, and yet the whole expressed to a nicety the voluminous distress of one in a high fever and his annoyance at and recoil from the attentions of his nurses. It was probably the same part (and for a guess the other fellow) who bid me compare it with the nonsense words of Lewis Carroll as the invention of a lunatic with those of a sane man. But surely it was myself (and myself in a perfectly clear-headed state) that kept me trying all night to get the word by heart, on the ground that it would afterwards be useful in literature if I wanted to deal with mad folk. It must have been myself, I say, because the other fellow believed (or pretended to believe) he was reading the passage in a book where it could always be found again when wanted.

Experience C. The next night the other fellow had an explanation ready for my sufferings, of which I can only say that it had something to do with the navy, that it was sheer undiluted nonsense, had neither end nor beginning, and was insusceptible of being expressed in words. Myself knew this; yet I gave way, and my watcher was favoured with some references to the navy. Nor only that; the other fellow was annoyed—or I was annoyed—on two inconsistent accounts: first, because he had failed to make his meaning comprehensible; and second, because the nurse displayed no interest. The other fellow would have liked to explain further; but myself was much hurt at having been got into this false position, and would be led no further.

In cases A and C the illusion was amorphous. I knew it to be so, and yet succumbed to the temptation of trying to communicate it. In case B the idea was coherent, and I managed to hold my peace. Both consciousnesses, in other words, were less affected in case B, and both more affected in cases A and C. It is perhaps not always so: the illusion might be coherent, even practical, and the rational authority of the mind quite in abeyance. Would not that be lunacy?

In case A I had an absolute knowledge that I was out of my mind, and that there was no meaning in my words; these were the very facts that I was anxious to conceal; and yet when I succumbed to the temptation of speaking my face was convulsed with anger, and I wrung my watcher's wrist with cruelty. Here is action, unnatural and uncharacteristic action, flowing from an idea in which I had no belief, and which I had been concealing for hours as a plain mark of aberration. Is it not so with lunatics?

I have called the one person myself, and the other the other fellow. It was myself who spoke and acted; the other fellow seemed to have no control of the body or the tongue; he could only act through myself, on whom he brought to bear a heavy strain, resisted in one case, triumphant in the two others. Yet I am tempted to think that I know the other fellow; I am tempted to think he is the dreamer described in my Chapter on Dreams to which you refer. Here at least is a dream belonging to the same period, but this time a pure dream, an illusion, I mean, that disappeared with the return of the sense of sight, not one that persevered during waking moments, and while I was able to speak and take my medicine. It occurred the day after case B and before case C.

Case D. In the afternoon there sprang up a storm of wind with monstrous clouds of dust; my room looked on a steep hill of trees whose boughs were all blowing in the same direction; the world seemed to pass by my windows like a mill-race. By this turmoil and movement I was confused, but not distressed, and surprised not to be distressed; for even in good health a high wind has often a painful influence on my nerves. In the midst of this I dozed off asleep. I had just been reading Scott's "Life of Dryden," and been struck with the fact that Dryden had translated some of the Latin hymns, and had wondered that I had never remarked them in his works. As soon as I was asleep I dreamed a reason why the sound of the wind and the sight of the flying dust had not distressed me. There was no wind, it seemed, no dust; it was only Dryden singing his translated hymns in one direction, and all those who had blamed and attacked him after the Revolution singing them in another. This point of the two directions is very singular and insane. In part it meant that Dryden was continuously flying past yet never passing my window in the direction of the wind and dust, and all his detractors similarly flying past yet not passing towards the other side. But it applied, besides this, both to the words and to the music in a manner wholly insusceptible of expression.

That was a dream; and yet how exactly it reproduces the method of my other fellow while I was awake. Here is an explanation for a state of mind or body sought, and found, in a tissue of rabid, complicated, and inexpressible folly.—Yours very sincerely.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

II. B. A good example of the application of true scientific method to problems which doctors of the old school did not think worth their science is Dr. Janet's treatment of a singular problem which the mistakes of brutal ignorance turned in old times into a veritable scourge of our race. I speak of demoniacal possession, in which affliction Dr. Janet has shown himself a better than ecclesiastical exorcist.

I give here a typical case of pseudo-possession from NÉvroses et IdÉes fixes (vol. i. pp. 377-389): Achille, as Professor Janet calls him, was a timid and rather morbid young man, but he was married to a good wife, and nothing went specially wrong with him until his return from a business journey in 1890. He then became sombre and taciturn—sometimes even seemed unable to speak—then took to his bed and lay murmuring incomprehensible words, and at last said farewell to his wife and children, and stretched himself out motionless for a couple of days, while his family waited for his last breath.

"Suddenly one morning, after two days of apparent death, Achille sat up in bed with his eyes wide open, and burst into a terrible laugh. It was a convulsive laugh which shook all his limbs; an exaggerated laugh which twisted his mouth; a lugubrious, satanic laugh which went on for more than two hours.

"From this moment everything was changed. Achille leapt from his bed and refused all attentions. To every question he answered, 'There's nothing to be done! let's have some champagne; it's the end of the world!' Then he uttered piercing cries, 'They are burning me—they are cutting me to pieces!'"

After an agitated sleep, Achille woke up with the conviction that he was possessed with a devil. And in fact his mouth now uttered blasphemies, his limbs were contorted, and he repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts at suicide. Ultimately he was taken to the SalpÊtriÈre, and placed under Professor Janet, who recognised at once the classic signs of possession. The poor man kept protesting against the odious outrages on religion, which he attributed to a devil inside him, moving his tongue against his will. "Achille could say, like a celebrated victim of possession, PÈre Surin, 'It is as though I had two souls; one of which has been dispossessed of its body and the use of its organs, and is frantic at the sight of the other soul which has crept in.'"

It was by no means easy to get either at Achille or at his possessing devil. Attempts to hypnotise him failed, and any remonstrance was met with insult. But the wily psychologist was accustomed to such difficulties, and had resort to a plan too insidious for a common devil to suspect. He gently moved the hand of Achille in such a way as to suggest the act of writing, and having thus succeeded in starting automatic script, he got the devil thus to answer questions quietly put while the raving was going on as usual. "I will not believe in your power," said Professor Janet to the malignant intruder, "unless you give me a proof." "What proof?" "Raise the poor man's left arm without his knowing it." This was done—to the astonishment of poor Achille—and a series of suggestions followed, all of which the demon triumphantly and unsuspectingly carried out, to show his power. Then came the suggestion to which Professor Janet had been leading up. It was like getting the djinn into the bottle. "You cannot put Achille soundly to sleep in that arm-chair!" "Yes, I can!" No sooner said than done, and no sooner done than Achille was delivered from his tormentor—from his own tormenting self.

For there in that hypnotic sleep he was gently led on to tell all his story; and such stories, when told to a skilled and kindly auditor, are apt to come to an end in the very act of being told.

Achille had been living in a day-dream; it was a day-dream which had swollen to these nightmare proportions, and had, as it were, ousted his rational being; and in the deeper self-knowledge which the somnambulic state brings with it the dream and the interpretation thereof became present to his bewildered mind.

The fact was that on that fateful journey when Achille's troubles began he had committed an act of unfaithfulness to his wife. A gloomy anxiety to conceal this action prompted him to an increasing taciturnity, and morbid fancies as to his health grew on him until at last his day-dream led him to imagine himself as actually dead. "His two days' lethargy was but an episode, a chapter in the long dream."

What then was the natural next stage of the dream's development? "He dreamt that, now that he was dead indeed, the devil rose from the abyss and came to take him. The poor man, as in his somnambulic state he retraced the series of his dreams, remembered the precise instant when this lamentable event took place. It was about 11 A.M.: a dog barked in the court at the moment, incommoded, no doubt, by the smell of brimstone; flames filled the room; numbers of little fiends scourged the unhappy man, or drove nails into his eyes, and through the wounds in his body Satan entered in to take possession of head and heart."

From this point the pseudo-possession may be said to have begun. The fixed idea developed itself into sensory and motor automatisms—visions of devils, uncontrollable utterances, automatic script—ascribed by the automatist to the possessing devil within.

And now came the moment when the veracity, the utility, of this new type of psychological analysis was to be submitted to yet another test. From the point of view of the ordinary physician Achille's condition was almost hopeless. Physical treatment had failed, and death from exhaustion and misery seemed near at hand. Nor could any appeal have been effective which did not go to the hidden root of the evil, which did not lighten the load of morbid remorse from which the whole series of troubles had developed. Fortunately for Achille, he was in the hands of an unsurpassed minister to minds thus diseased. Professor Janet adopted his usual tactics—what he terms the dissociation and the gradual substitution of ideas. The incidents of the miserable memory were modified, were explained away, were slowly dissolved from the brooding brain, and the hallucinatory image of the offended wife was presented to the sufferer at what novelists call the psychological moment, with pardon in her eyes. "Such stuff as dreams are made of!"—but even by such means was Achille restored to physical and moral health; he leads now the life of normal man; he no longer "walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

II. C. I give here the case of Dr. Azam's often quoted patient, FÉlida X.[216] In this case the somnambulic life finally became the normal life; as the "second state," which appeared at first only in short, dreamlike accesses, gradually replaced the "first state," which finally recurred but for a few hours at long intervals. But the point on which I wish to dwell is this: that FÉlida's second state was altogether superior to the first—physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood disappeared: and mentally superior, inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition was exchanged for a cheerful activity which enabled her to attend to her children and her shop much more effectively than when she was in the "État bÊte," as she called what was once the only personality that she knew. In this case, then, which at the time Dr. Azam wrote—1887—was of nearly thirty years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities—the second state, no memory of which remained in the first state—resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For FÉlida's normal state was in fact her morbid state: and the new condition, which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, brought her at last to a life of bodily and mental sanity which made her fully the equal of average women of her class.

A very complete account of the case, reproducing in full almost the whole of Dr. Azam's report, is given in Dr. A. Binet's AltÉrations de la PersonnalitÉ (pp. 6-20), and I briefly summarise this here:—

FÉlida was born at Bordeaux, in 1843, of healthy parents. Towards the age of thirteen years she began to exhibit symptoms of hysteria. When about fourteen and a half she used suddenly to feel a pain in her forehead, and then to fall into a profound sleep for some ten minutes, after which she woke spontaneously in her secondary condition. This lasted an hour or two; then the sleep came on again, and she awoke in her normal state. The change at first occurred every five or six days. As the hysterical symptoms increased, Dr. Azam was called in to attend her in 1858.

His report of that time states that in the primary state she appears very intelligent and fairly well educated; of a melancholy disposition, talking little, very industrious; constantly thinking of her maladies and suffering acute pains in various parts of the body, especially the head—the clou hystÉrique being very marked; all her actions, ideas, and words perfectly rational. Almost every day what she calls her crise comes on spontaneously—often while she is sitting at her needlework—preceded by a brief interval of the profound sleep, from which no external stimulus can rouse her. On waking into the secondary state, she appears like an entirely different person, smiling and gay; she continues her work cheerfully or walks about briskly, no longer feeling all the pains she has just before been complaining of. She looks after her ordinary domestic duties, goes out, walks about the town, and pays calls; behaves in every way like an ordinary healthy girl.

In this condition she remembers perfectly all that has happened on previous occasions when she was in the same state, and also all the events of her normal life; whereas during her normal life she forgets absolutely the occurrences of the secondary state. She declares constantly that whatever state she is in at the moment is the normal one—her raison—while the other one is always her crise.

The change of character in the secondary state is strongly marked; she becomes gay and vivacious—almost noisy; instead of being indifferent to everything, her sensibilities—both imaginative and emotional—become excessive. All her faculties appear more developed and more complete. The condition, in fact, is much superior to her ordinary one, as shown by the disappearance of her physical pains, and especially by the state of her memory.

She married early, and her crises became more frequent, though there were occasionally long intervals when they never came at all. But the secondary state, which in 1858 and 1859 only occupied about a tenth part of her life, gradually encroached more and more on the primary state, till the latter began to appear only at intervals and for a brief space of time.

In 1875 Dr. Azam, having for long lost sight of her, found her a mother of a family, keeping a shop. Now and then, but more and more rarely, occurred what she called her crises—really relapses into her primary condition. These were excessively inconvenient, since she forgot in them all the events of what was now her ordinary life, all the arrangements of her business, etc.; for instance, in going to a funeral, she had a crise, and consequently found it impossible to remember who the deceased person was. She had a great dread of these occurrences, though, by long practice, she had become very skilful at concealing them from every one but her husband; and the transition periods in passing from one state to another, during which she was completely unconscious, were now so short as to escape general notice. A peculiar feeling of pressure in the head warned her that the crise was coming, and she would then, for fear of making mistakes in her business, hastily write down whatever facts she most needed to keep in mind.

While the primary state lasted, she relapsed into the extreme melancholy and depression that characterised her early life, these being, in fact, now aggravated by her troublesome amnesia. She also lost her affection for her husband and children, and suffered from many hysterical pains and other symptoms which were much less acute in the secondary state. By 1887, however, the primary state only occurred every month or two, lasting only for a few hours at a time.

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