Chapter 2

Louis V. and His Two Souls.

There is at present[2] a patient in France whose case is so
extraordinary that I cannot do better than transcribe the report of it
here, especially because it tends to show not only that we have two
personalities, but that each may use by preference a separate lobe of
the brain. The Conscious Personality occupies the left and controls the
right hand, the Unconscious the right side of the head and controls the
left hand. It also brings to light a very curious, not to say appalling,
fact, viz., the immense moral difference there may be between the
Conscious and the Unconscious Personalities. In the American case Bourne
was a character practically identical with Brown. In this French case
the character of each self is entirely different. What makes the case
still more interesting is that, besides the two personalities which we
all seem to possess, this patient had an arrested personality, which was
only fourteen years old when the age of his body was over forty. Here is
the report, however, make of it what you will.

[2] 1891.

"Louis V. began life (in 1863) as the neglected child of a turbulent
mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years of age, and there
showed himself, as he has always done when his organization had given
him a chance, quiet, well-behaved, and obedient. Then at fourteen years
old he had a great fright from a viper--a fright which threw him off his
balance, and started the series of psychical oscillations on which he
has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical,
epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the legs; and at the asylum of
Bonneval, whither he was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for
a couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-epileptic
attack--fifty hours of convulsions and ecstasy--and when he awoke from
it he was no longer paralysed, no longer acquainted with tailoring, and
no longer virtuous. His memory was set back, so to say, to the moment of
the viper's appearance, and he could remember nothing since. His
character had become violent, greedy, quarrelsome, and his tastes were
radically changed. For instance, though he had before the attack been a
total abstainer, he now not only drank his own wine, but stole the wine
of the other patients. He escaped from Bonneval, and after a few
turbulent years, tracked by his occasional relapses into hospital or
madhouse, he turned up once more at the Rochefort asylum in the
character of a private of marines, convicted of theft, but considered to
be of unsound mind. And at Rochefort and La Rochelle, by great good
fortune, he fell into the hands of three physicians--Professors Bourru
and Burot, and Dr. Mabille--able and willing to continue and extend the
observations which Dr. Camuset at Bonneval, and Dr. Jules Voisin at
Bicetre, had already made on this most precious of _mauvais sujets_
at earlier points in his chequered career.

"He is now no longer at Rochefort, and Dr. Burot informs me that his
health has much improved, and that his peculiarities have in great part
disappeared. I must, however, for clearness sake, use the present tense
in briefly describing his condition at the time when the long series of
experiments were made.

"The state into which he has gravitated is a very unpleasing one. There
is paralysis and insensibility of the right side, and, as is often the
case in right hemiplegia, the speech is indistinct and difficult.
Nevertheless he is constantly haranguing any one who will listen to him,
abusing his physicians, or preaching--with a monkey-like impudence
rather than with reasoned clearness--radicalism in politics and atheism
in religion. He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he
endeavours to caress him. He remembers recent events during his
residence at Rochefort asylum, but only two scraps of his life before
that date, namely, his vicious period at Bonneval and a part of his stay
at Bicetre.

"Except this strange fragmentary memory, there is nothing very unusual
in this condition, and in many asylums no experiments on it would have
been attempted. Fortunately the physicians at Rochefort were familiar
with the efficacy of the contact of metals in provoking transfer of
hysterical hemiplegia from one side to the other. They tried various
metals in turn on Louis V. Lead, silver, and zinc had no effect. Copper
produced a slight return of sensibility in the paralysed arm, but steel
applied to the right arm transferred the whole insensibility to the left
side of the body.

"Inexplicable as such a phenomenon is, it is sufficiently common, as
French physicians hold, in hysterical cases to excite little surprise.
What puzzled the doctors was the change of character which accompanied
the change of sensibility. When Louis V. issued from the crisis of
transfer with its minute of anxious expression and panting breath, he
might fairly be called a new man. The restless insolence, the savage
impulsiveness, have wholly disappeared. The patient is now gentle,
respectful, and modest, can speak clearly, but he only speaks when he is
spoken to. If he is asked his views on religion and politics, he prefers
to leave such matters to wiser heads than his own. It might seem that
morally and mentally the patient's cure had been complete.

"But now ask what he thinks of Rochefort; how he liked his regiment of
marines. He will blankly answer that he knows nothing of Rochefort, and
was never a soldier in his life. 'Where are you then, and what is the
date of to-day?' 'I am at Bicetre; it is January 2nd, 1884, and I hope
to see M. Voisin, as I did yesterday.'

"It is found, in fact, that he has now the memory of two short periods
of life (different from those which he remembers when his right side is
paralysed), periods during which, so far as now can be ascertained, his
character was of this same decorous type, and his paralysis was on his
left side.

"These two conditions are what are called his first and his second, out
of a series of six or more through which he can be made to pass. For
brevity's sake I will further describe his fifth state only.

"If he is placed in an electric bath, or if a magnet is placed on his
head, it looks at first sight as though a complete physical cure had
been effected. All paralysis, all defect of sensibility, has
disappeared. His movements are light and active, his expression gentle
and timid, but ask him where he is, and you will find that he has gone
back to a boy of fourteen, that he is at St. Urbain, his first
reformatory, and that his memory embraces his years of childhood, and
stops short on the very day on which he had the fright from the viper.
If he is pressed to recollect the incident of the viper, a violent
epileptiform crisis puts a sudden end to this phase of his personality."
(Vol. IV. pp. 497, 498, 499, "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research").

This carries us a good deal further. Here we have not only two distinct
personalities, but two distinct characters, if not three, in one body.
According to the side which is paralysed, the man is a savage reprobate
or a decent modest citizen. The man seems born again when the steel
touches his right side. Yet all that has happened has been that the
Sub-conscious Personality has superseded his Conscious Personality in
the control of Louis V.

_Lucie and Adrienne._

The next case, although not marked by the same violent contrast, is
quite as remarkable, because it illustrates the extent to which the
Sub-conscious Self can be utilized in curing the Conscious Personality.

The subject was a girl of nineteen, called Lucie, who was highly
hysterical, having daily attacks of several hours' duration. She was
also devoid of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that she
"lost her legs in bed," as she put it.

On her fifth hypnotisation, however, Lucie underwent a kind of
catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that
state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of
assent or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she
executed them infallibly, whether they were to take effect immediately,
or after waking.

In Lucie's case this went further, and the suggested actions became
absolutely a portion of the trance-life. She executed them without
apparently knowing what she was doing. If, for instance, in her waking
state she was told (in the tone which in her hypnotic state signified
command) to get up and walk about, she walked about, but to judge from
her conversation she supposed herself to be still sitting quiet. She
would weep violently when commanded, but while she wept she continued to
talk as gaily and unconcernedly as if the tears had been turned on by a
stop-cock.

Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a brusque tone of command reached
the Unconscious Self alone; and other remarks reached the subject--awake
or somnambulic--in the ordinary way. The next step was to test the
intelligence of this hidden "slave of the lamp," if I may so term
it--this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all that was bidden.
How far was its attention alert? How far was it capable of reasoning and
judgment? M. Janet began with a simple experiment. "When I shall have
clapped my hands together twelve times," he said to the entranced
subject before awakening her, "you will go to sleep again." There was no
sign that the sleeper understood or heard; and when she was awakened the
events of the trance were a blank to her as usual. She began talking to
other persons. M. Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands
feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not seem to be attending
to him, he went up to her and said, "Did you hear what I did just now?"
"No; what?" "Do you hear this?" and he clapped his hands once more.
"Yes, you clapped your hands." "How often?" "Once." M. Janet again
withdrew and clapped his hands six times gently, with pauses between the
claps. Lucie paid no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of this
second series--making the twelfth altogether--was reached, she fell
instantly into the trance again. It seemed, then, that the "slave of the
lamp" had counted the claps through all, and had obeyed the order much
as a clock strikes after a certain number of swings of the pendulum,
however often you stop it between hour and hour.

Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the unconscious element in Lucie
was not direct, but inferential. The nature of the command which it
could execute showed it to be capable of attention and memory; but there
was no way of learning its own conception of itself, if such existed, or
of determining its relation to other phenomena of Lucie's trance. And
here it was that automatic writing was successfully invoked; here we
have, as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new attention
directed to this seldom-trodden field. M. Janet began by the following
simple command: "When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was
done in the usual scrawling script of automatism, and Lucie, though
fully awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all.

M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all
questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a
persistent effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter as
usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling
responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many
cases, a new and invading separate personality is assumed.

A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory
intelligence, an identity sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you
hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in
order to answer one must hear." "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?"
"I don't know." "There must be somebody that hears me." "Yes." "Who is
it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes,
Blanche." Blanche, however, had to be changed. Another name had to be
chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must, it will be more
convenient." "Well, then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality
had less spontaneity about it.

Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper down than Lucie. She could get
at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations of which Lucie
experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded
by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient
was subject.

Lucie's special terror, which recurred in wild exclamation in her
hysterical fits, was in some way connected with hidden men. She could
not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she
only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an
illness in consequence. Now, during these "crises" Lucie (except,
presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty
constant element in such attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to
her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at; could no longer obey
orders, and if she wrote, wrote only "J'ai peur, j'ai peur."

M. Janet, however, waited until the attack was over, and then questioned
Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne was able
to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which
had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the
attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations;
but she knew what Lucie saw, and why she saw it; nay, indeed, it was
Adrienne, rather than Lucie, to whom the hallucination was directly
visible.

Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously
amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of
sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted
both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned,
an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were
shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was
remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state,
not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but
the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial
expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments.
Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm
began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The
suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had
operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other
ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be
communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution
of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched
her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her
right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued
to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand
wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but
I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and
put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face
smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?"
"Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."

In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were--as the pure
experimentalist might say--only too sanative, only too rapidly tending
to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with
therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he
clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease
having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal
sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the
rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day
came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him
who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but
Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the
unconscious again--must I say?--for ever more.

Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied
with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably
what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence
manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite
outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence
was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own
identity.

And we must remember that Adrienne--while she was, if I may say so, the
Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression--did, nevertheless,
manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated,
might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different,
though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in
automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in
Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more--and this
last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative
conclusions--Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which
Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be
firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as
regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious
Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for
evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate
being.

_Felida X. and her Submerged Soul._

Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious
Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the
Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by
Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The
woman in question, Felida X., has been transformed.

In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second
state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has
gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs but for a few
hours at long intervals. Felida's second state is altogether superior to
the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had
troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior,
inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a
cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her
shop much more effectively than when she was in the _etat bete_, as
she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this
case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the
spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no
memory of which remains in the first state--has 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 Felida's
normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which
seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life
of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average
women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)