FROM ACCOUNT GIVEN BY THE NORMAL PERSONALITY C AFTER RECOVERY
My dear Dr. Prince,
You have asked me to give you an account of my illness as it seems to me now that I am myself and well; describing myself in those changes of personality which we have called “A” and “B.”
It is always difficult for one to analyze one’s self accurately and the conditions have been very complex. I think, however, that I have a clear conception and appreciation of my case. I remember myself perfectly as “A” and as “B.” I remember my thoughts, my feelings, and my points of view in each personality, and can see where they are the same and where they depart from my normal self. These points of view will appear as we go on and I feel sure that my memory can be trusted. I recall clearly how in each state I regarded the other state and how in each I regarded myself.
As I have said, I have now, as “C,” all the memories of both states (though none of the co-conscious life which, as B, I claimed and believed I had). These memories are clearly differentiated in my mind.[[270]] It would be impossible to confuse the two as the moods which governed each were so absolutely different, but it is quite another thing to make them distinct on paper. I have, however, been so constantly under your observation that you can, no doubt, correct any statement I may make which is not borne out by your own knowledge.
I am, perhaps, of a somewhat emotional nature, and have never been very strong physically though nothing of an invalid. I have always been self-controlled and not at all hysterical, as I would use the word. On the contrary, I was, I am sure, considered a very sensible woman by those who know me well, though I am not so sure what they may think of me now. I am, however, very sensitive and responsive to impressions in the sense that I am easily affected by my environment. For instance, at the theatre I lose myself in the play and feel keenly all the emotions portrayed by the actors. These emotions are reflected vividly in my face and manner sometimes to the amusement of those with me and, if the scene is a painful one, it often takes me a long time to recover from the effect of it. The same is true of scenes from actual life.[[271]]
Before this disintegration took place I had borne great responsibility and great sorrow with what I think I am justified in calling fortitude, and I do not think the facts of my previous life would warrant the assumption that I was naturally nervously unstable. It does not carry great weight, I know, for one to say of one’s self,—I am sensible, I am stable, I am not hysterical,—but I believe the statement can be corroborated by the testimony of those who have known me through my years of trial. The point I wish to make is that my case shows that such an illness as I have had is possible to a constitutionally stable person and is not confined to those of an hysterical tendency.
A year previous to this division of personality a long nervous strain, covering a period of four years, had culminated in the death of one very dear to me—my husband. I was, at the end of that period, in good physical health, though nervously worn, but this death occurred in such a way as to cause me a great shock, and within the six days following I lost twenty pounds in weight. For nearly three months I went almost entirely without food, seemingly not eating enough to sustain life. I did not average more than three or four hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, but I felt neither hungry nor faint, and was extremely busy and active, being absorbed both by home responsibilities and business affairs. The end of the year (5 years after the beginning of my husband’s illness), however, found me in very poor health physically and I was nervously and mentally exhausted. I was depressed, sad, felt that I had lost all that made life worth living and, indeed, I wished to die. I was very nervous, unable to eat or sleep, easily fatigued, suffered constantly from headache, to which I had always been subject, and was not able to take much exercise. The physician under whose care I was at this time told me, when I asked him to give my condition a name, that I was suffering from “nervous and cerebral exhaustion.”
It was at this time that the shock which caused the division of personality occurred [resulting in period III].
Although this last statement is true so far as concerns the complete dissociation of personality which resulted in the birth of an independent alternating personality, the first beginning of the genesis of that personality can be traced back to a far earlier period when she was about twenty years of age, that is to say nineteen years before the final cleavage. These beginnings were an embryonic cluster or unitary complex of rebellious ideas, “floating thoughts, impulses, desires, inclinations” and intense feelings which came into being at this early period in consequence of an emotional trauma.