“One day,” B writes, “it was raining and she did not want to go out, but I felt that I could not stay in the house another minute. So I willed that she should go to walk, and she changed her clothes and went out. She thought: ‘What nonsense this is to go out in this rain! I wish I knew what I wanted to do five minutes at a time.’ She would think: ‘I guess I will go to walk.’ And then she would think: ‘No, I don’t want to go out in all this rain.’ Then, in a few minutes: ‘I believe I will go to walk,’ etc. And finally she went, more for peace of mind than anything else.”
Frequently, moreover, the subconscious willing to affect A’s conduct, resulted in completely effacing A, and allowing B to reëmerge spontaneously, in full control.
Thus, there was a dinner party which B was anxious to attend, but while A was dressing she—A—decided she would not go, and started across the room to telephone and say she would not be present. At once B subconsciously began to think: “I want to go,” “You must go.” And poor A first became very much confused, then faded away entirely, with the result that the telephone message was not sent, and B was free to attend the party, and enjoy another of the “good times” that meant so much to her.
Where A suffered most of all by reason of this subtle power of B to influence her actions, lay in the difficulty she had in communicating with Doctor Prince, and in going to him for treatment. B well knew that her career would come to an end the moment Doctor Prince succeeded in reassociating his patient’s disintegrated personality, and she fought desperately to preserve her existence, repeatedly preventing A, as mentioned in the extracts quoted from the diary, from telephoning to Doctor Prince, writing to him, or visiting him; all of which greatly increased A’s confusion, misery, and unhappiness.
But, as it chanced, although Doctor Prince was earnestly desirous of effectually and forever suppressing B, he was not at all desirous of doing this for A’s sake; and was, in fact, as anxious to get rid of A as he was to get rid of B.
For, to inject a new complication into this most complicated affair, he had by this time discovered that A had no more right to consideration than B, since A no more than B represented the patient’s normal personality. His searching study of the case—the duel between A and B lasted a year or more—had convinced him that there had been not a single, but a double, dissociation of personality; and that the normal self, in consequence first of the shock occasioned by the husband’s illness and death, and afterward of the shock that brought the B personality to the fore, had been violently relegated to some obscure department of the patient’s subconsciousness, where, however, it assuredly was existent, and where it was an intensely interested, if helpless, spectator of the struggle being waged for control by the two usurping selves.
To recall this lost self, which he designated as C, was Doctor Prince’s paramount object; and, after many months of weary and futile effort, he ultimately succeeded. One day, after he had plunged his patient into deep hypnosis, he saw that she had undergone a striking change. Physically she seemed much as in the B state, though not so boisterously vigorous; mentally she was like A, thoughtful and intellectual, but happily devoid of the vacillation and morbid overconscientiousness that had made A’s life a misery to herself, and most difficult to all who came in contact with her.
Questioned, she showed that in this new state she possessed a complete memory for both the A and the B states, and was closer to normal than either. In Doctor Prince’s mind, no doubt remained—he had found C, the missing self, the self which, after nearly two years of exile, had promise of coming once more into its own.
It had yet to be reëstablished in sovereignty—no easy task, as the event proved. Not many hours after its first emergence, B once more put in an appearance, wrathful, vehement, and defiant, angrily challenging Doctor Prince to suppress it if he could. Then came A, and soon a momentary return of C, quickly put to flight, however, by the still powerful will of B. In short, the conflict now became triangular, with B and C active opponents, and A a participant because she could not help herself.
The invaluable diary affords a clear view of the chaos that prevailed, and of the increasing effectiveness of Doctor Prince’s vigorous reënforcement, by hypnotic suggestion, of the claims of C. We find, for instance, B lamenting, after several days’ banishment: