Hence it is that hysterics present the seeming paradox of having, as M. Janet observed, “in reality fewer emotions than is generally thought and [in] that their principal character is here, as it is always, a diminution of psychological phenomena. These patients are in general very indifferent, at least to all that is not directly connected with a small number of fixed ideas.” According to the view which we are maintaining, the “fewer emotions” are due to the dissociation of many sentiments and instincts by the dominating emotional complex.
5. Let us not forget that this explanation is a matter of interpretation, but the interpretation comports with what is common observation of what happens when a new emotion which is incompatible with an existing emotion (fear—anger) is excited. In the case of Miss B., the alternation of the personality coincident with the excitation of an emotion occurred with such frequency, not to say with regularity, that there seemed to be no room to doubt the causal factor and the mechanism.[[251]] Sometimes the dissociation resulted in the formation of new phases of personality in which Miss B. reverted to a past epoch of time in which she lived once more, the experiences of all later epochs being dissociated; sometimes in phases with a very contracted field of consciousness without orientation in time or place and with little knowledge of self or environment; sometimes—and in these instances the dissociation of organized systems could most clearly be recognized—in the substitution of one of the already established phases (BI, BIV, or BIII) for another. It is not always easy without intensive study, to determine the exact sentiment or instinct which is responsible for the dissociation, although the actual occurrence of the emotional state just preceding the development of the phenomenon is obtrusively obvious. “At various times as a result of emotionally disintegrating circumstances” at least eight different phases were observed in addition to the three regularly recurrent phases.[[252]]
In B. C. A. the gradual organization through the circumstances of life of a group of “rebellious” ideas, in which the dominating sentiments and instincts were intensely antagonistic to those previously peculiar to the subject, could be clearly determined. So antagonistic was this group that it was known as the rebellious complex but termed B complex for convenience. It became by successive accretions a large system and phase of personality. The details are too extensive to enter into at this time; suffice it to say that as the result of what is called an “emotional shock” the B system came into being. This interpreted means that the shock was really the excitation of the rebellious sentiments and other emotions belonging to the B system; there was a conflict; the habitual sentiments and the system to which they belonged were inhibited and replaced by the former (B). Later the displaced sentiments and their corresponding A system were awakened, the emotions giving rise to another shock, a conflict, and the B system, in turn, was inhibited. And so it could be recognized that alternations of systems could be evoked by the alternate excitation of sentiments and instincts—or complexes, if you prefer the term—pertaining to each.
6. This summary of the phenomena of conflict inducing dissociation of personality would be incomplete if the dissociations effected by entirely subconscious processes were not mentioned. These can be very neatly studied with coconscious personalities, as such personalities can give very precise information of the mode by which the displacement of the primary personality is effected. In the cases of Miss B. and B. C. A. “Sally” and “B,” respectively, have done this. It appears, according to this testimony, that coconscious “willing” or strong conation, even simply a wish to inhibit the principal consciousness, would effect that result. Thus, for instance, B testified: “When A is present I can ‘come’ voluntarily by willing, i.e., blot A out and then I ‘come.’... By willing I mean I would say to A: ‘... Go away’: ‘Get out of the way’: ‘Let me come: I will come,’ and then A disappeared. She was gone and I was there. It was almost instantaneous.... Sometimes the wish to change would blot out A without actual willing.”
In the case of Miss B. similar testimony of the effect of coconscious willing and wishes was obtained.
When the coconscious wishes, sentiments, etc., are not synthesized into a large self-conscious system (i.e., coconscious personality) which can give direct testimony as to the subconscious[subconscious] conflicts, the former and the process which they incite must be inferred from known antecedent factors and the observed phenomena of inhibition or dissociation. That general and systematized dissociation are phenomena which can be, and frequently are, induced by the conative force of purely subconscious processes, in view of the multiform data offered by hysterics can be open to no manner of doubt. The process may be also formulated in terms of conflict.
Laws governing the lines of cleavage of personality.—In systematized dissociation there is a cleavage between certain organized systems of experiences and functions and the remainder of the personality. The contracted personality is consequently shorn of much. But we understand only very incompletely the laws which determine the direction of the line of cleavage and the consequent extent of the dissociated field. Unquestionably this follows the law of organization of complexes in a general way, but not wholly so. For instance, it is impossible by this law or by any known mechanism to explain the anesthesia which sometimes, apparently spontaneously, appears in certain hypnotic states. A given subject, e. g., B. C. A., is simply hypnotized by suggestion and successively falls into two different states. In one state the subject is found to be completely anesthetic and in the other normally esthetic. The subject is one and the same and the dissociating suggestion, which is the same in each case, contains nothing specifically related to sensation; and yet the line of cleavage is within the field of sensation in the one case and without it in the other; i.e., that which is dissociated includes the sensory field in the one state and not in the other. Similarly when the disaggregation of personality is brought about by the force of a conflicting emotion, the resulting hysterical state or dissociated personality may be robbed of certain sensory or motor functions, although these functions are not as far as we can see logically related to the emotion or the ideas coupled with it. Thus a person receives an emotional shock and develops a one-sided anesthesia and paralysis—a very common phenomenon. Louis Vivé used to pass into one state in which he had left hemiplegia and into another in which he had right hemiplegia, another with paraplegia. Each state had its own systematized memories, but why each had its own and different motor and sensory dissociations cannot be explained. In Miss B. the dissociation which resulted in the formation of the secondary personality, Sally, withdrew, without apparent rhyme or reason, the whole general field of sensations so that Sally was completely anesthetic.[[253]] The sensory functions seemed to be wantonly ejected along with the repressed complexes of ideas. Per contra, by the same process which results in dissociation, lost functions are often paradoxically synthesized. Mrs. E. B. and Mrs. R., anesthetic when “awake,” are found to be normally esthetic in hypnosis; i.e., the sensory functions are spontaneously synthesized with the hypnotic personality. In other words, in hypnosis the personal synthesis is in this respect more normal than in the “waking” state.
Again, when amnesia results it may cover a past epoch—retrograde amnesia—without obvious reason for the chronological line of cleavage. In short the suppression by dissociation of a specific psychological element—remembrance, perception, sentiment, etc.—not only tends to rob the personality of a whole psychological system in which it is organized but of other faculties, the relation of which to the specifically dissociated element is obscure. It seems as if the dissociation sometimes followed physiological as well as psychological lines.[[254]] It is in accordance with this principle that instincts and sentiments which are not immediately concerned in the specific conflict nor antagonistic to the dissociating emotion are often suppressed. Thus it is that hysterics, as we have seen by examples, have lost so many emotions (instincts) and the sentiments involving them, though they are so excitable to the emotions that are retained. In the case of B. C. A. the secondary personality B, the resultant (as I interpret the case) of the conflict between the play instinct and sentiments of duty, responsibility, etc., lost the parental instinct with the emotion of tender feeling (McDougall) and that of fear, with their corresponding sentiments. She was shockingly devoid of filial and maternal love and, indeed, of affection, in the true sense, for her friends. Likewise Sally (in the case of Miss B.), also the product of conflict between the impulses of the play instinct and those of the religious emotions, was entirely devoid of fear, of the sexual, and of certain other instincts not antagonistic to the dominating play instinct. She had lost also a great many, if not all, sentiments involving the tender feeling. As in the examples given of dissociation of motor, sensory, and other functions, the dissociative line of cleavage had excluded more than was engaged in the conflict. Of course, there always must be some reason for the direction taken by any line of cleavage, following the application of force, whether the fracture be of a psycho-physiological organism or of a piece of china; but when the conditions are as complex as they are in the human organism their determination becomes a difficult problem. When we come to study multiple personality we shall see that the suppression of instincts plays an important rôle.
Amnesia.—It is a general rule that when a person passes from a condition of extreme dissociation to the normal state there is a tendency for amnesia to supervene for the previous dissociated state (multiple personalities, epileptic and hysterical fugues, hypnotic and dream states, etc.). Likewise in everyday life it frequently happens, when the dissociation effected by emotion results in an extremely retracted field of consciousness, that, after this emotional state has subsided and the normal state has been restored, memory for the excited retracted state, including the actions performed, is abolished or impaired. Even criminal acts committed in highly emotional states (anger, “brain storms,” etc.) may be forgotten afterwards. In other words, in the normal state there is in turn a dissociation of the residua of the excited state. The experiences of this latter state are not lost, however, but only dissociated in that they cannot be synthesized with the personal consciousness and thereby reproduced as memory. That they may be still conserved as neurographic residua is shown in those cases suitable for experimental investigation where they can be reproduced by artificial devices (hypnotism, abstraction, etc.).
Thus B. C. A. could not recall a certain emotional experience although it made a tremendous impression upon her, disrupted her personality, and induced her illness. In other respects her memory was normal. Janet has described this amnesia following emotional shocks, notably in the classical case of Mme. D.