[257]. Cf. My Life as a Dissociated Personality, Jl. Abn. Psychol., October-November, 1908.
[258]. T. Brailsford Robertson, in a very recent communication on the “Chemical Dynamics of the Central Nervous System” and “The Physiological conditions underlying heightened suggestibility, hypnosis, multiple personality, sleep, etc.” (Folia Neuro-Biologica, Bd. VII, Nr. 4/5, 1913), has attempted to correlate these conditions and also amnesia (as one of their phenomena) with the isolation of paths “canalised” by auto-catalysed chemical reactions. These processes he concludes, from previous studies, “underlie and determine the activities of the central nervous system (and therefore the physical correlates of mental phenomena).” (See Lecture V, p. [124].)
[259]. The Dissociation, Chapter XXIX; My Life as a Dissociated Personality, pp. 39 and 41.
[260]. In this analysis I follow McDougall who seems to me to have analyzed clearly and adequately the emotional conditions. (Social Psychology, p. 145.)
LECTURE XVII
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMIC ELEMENTS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY
We ought to be able now to construct out of the various elements we have studied a general scheme, if not the details, of that composite whole which we call Personality. This should include its structure as well as its elements and dynamics.
It is obvious that we must have a fairly comprehensive and accurate conception of these factors if we would understand those alterations of personality which are met with as pathological conditions and particularly their psychogenesis. Multiple personality, for instance, as it occurs in the alternating and coconscious types can only be comprehended through a knowledge of the normal structure and dynamic mechanisms. On the other hand the phenomena of this latter pathological condition throw a flood of light upon the normal and can be utilized to test the validity of theories. I shall complete these lectures by a study from the psychogenetic point of view of a case of dissociated and multiple personality. Certain phenomena met with in this derangement of the normal have been frequently cited in the preceding lectures and certain general principles underlying them and the alterations giving rise to multiplication of the personality and character in one individual have been referred to. A study of the psychogenesis of a concrete case will on the one hand illustrate these principles and, on the other, the structure and dynamics of normal personality.
Before making such a study, however, we ought to have a working conception of the normal; and this we are entitled, from the point of view of dynamic psychology, to construct on the basis of data supplied by studies of abnormal and normal mental behavior. The older way of considering human personality was to conceive it as an “ego” with various faculties. We may now consider it as a composite structure built by experience upon a foundation of performed, inherited, psycho-physiological dynamic mechanisms (instincts, etc.), containing within themselves their own driving forces.
Let us glance for a moment at this foundation with a view to a full comprehension of the significance of the innate instinctive and other dispositions composing its structure. The structure and the dynamics of these dispositions themselves we have already studied (Chap. XV). Their teleological aspect needs further exposition for in their functioning the processes which they carry out have a distinctly purposive character for the personality.
Every instinct has an aim or end which it strives to fulfil and which alone satisfies it; and it contains in itself the driving force which, as an urge, or impulse, sets into activity the mechanism and carries the instinctive process, unless blocked by some other process, to completion and satisfies the aim of the instinct. Thus the instinct of flight impelled by the urge of fear has an aim to escape from danger and is not satisfied until the danger is escaped. Until that end is gained fear will not subside. If impeded in its activity it may awaken the pugnacity instinct which coming to the rescue may fight for safety. Similarly the instincts of acquisition and self-assertion are not satisfied and their urge persists until their ends are gained—the acquisition of certain objects in the one case and self-display or domination of other individuals or situations in the other case. Obviously the instincts and other innate dispositions have a biological significance, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, in that they serve the preservation of the individual and species and the perpetuation of the latter. And obviously in the drive to satisfy their aims they determine and govern behavior. But in doing this they become modified and controlled by experience—by the dispositions which are acquired by experience. In this way the behavior of the individual becomes adapted to the specific situations of the environment. Necessarily these modifications of the workings of the innate mechanisms by the imposition of experience upon and within them become very complicated and the problems of instinct and experience thereby evoked have been the object of much study and debate.