These thoughts, however, were not tolerated by the subject and were put out of mind and repressed into the unconscious by her rightmindedness. It thus became a matter of conflict between the light-hearted gay sentiments and temperament of inexperienced youth which, in ignorance of life, finds it difficult to accept its serious responsibilities, and the sentiments of honor, duty, and affection which were the dominating traits. These facts are too intimate to go into in greater detail, but each one will probably recognize in himself some such conflicting desires and tendencies.
This is the place to point out certain major traits in the character of B. C. A. which enable us to recognize more clearly the source of the conflicting impulses and help to make intelligible their uprushes. There were two strongly marked elements in her character which had always been noticeable and which, given the appropriate conditions, were almost bound to come in conflict. B. C. A. during all her girlhood days and early married life was noted for her happy, buoyant, lively, light-hearted disposition. She was ready at all times for pleasure and could not bear to give it up, and she had an unusually intense desire to be happy; she loved happiness and wanted happiness, and when happiness dominated, as it generally did in a person of such a disposition, she was filled with the “joy of life.” Responsive to her environment,[[281]] when her surroundings were sympathetic all the joy and mirth of her own personality was given out and reflected upon others. She was of an intense nature in that she felt all the anxieties, sorrows, and joys of life with great and equal intensity. But it was joy and happiness which appealed to her as the one thing she must preserve. This was one of her character traits.
On the other hand, the second trait was equally strong, namely, unreasonably high moral ideals, so high even in the little every day affairs of life that only a strong stern fanatic or ascetic could live consistently and perpetually up to them; she was intensely conscientious and high-minded with an almost inordinate sense of honor and duty; and there was also an overweening pride in her rectitude and moral ideals which sometimes seems to have transcended common-sense; and there was pride in her pride. Reserved and rather unapproachable to strangers she was affectionate to relatives and intimates.
These two traits of character if analyzed would be seen to be two great strongly contrasted unitary systems of ideas and sentiments with their respective emotions and feelings. They formed two sides to her personality, and the conflicts that ensued could be said to have been between the two sides.
To say that these two traits or groups of traits—love of the joy of life and conscientious devotion to duty—were combined in one person is not of course to mention anything out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was the intensity with which each existed. Now that she has recovered from her illness and has reverted to the normal synthesized personality these traits are still easily noticeable. None but a person of unusually strong, fixed character, capable of holding an ideal continuously in mind, subordinating all else, could have downed the cry for happiness and lighter pleasures of life. When we come to the secondary split personalities we shall see that the splitting was between these two traits or systems; the elements of one gathering about itself associated elements, formed one personality with corresponding reactions to the environment, and the elements of the other in similar fashion formed the other personality. Thus stronger conflicts arose.
The recognition of mental conflicts as disturbances of personality and determinants of conduct is as old as literature itself. They have been the theme of poets, dramatists and fiction writers of every age. It has remained for modern dynamic psychology to study and determine with exactness the phenomena, discover the mental mechanisms involved and formulate the laws. One school, the so-called psycho-analysts, claims to find in practically all conflicts, a very complicated mechanism involving repression, unconscious processes (generally a sexual wish for the most part from infantile life) a “censor,” a compromise, conversion and disguisement of the repressed factor in the form of a psycho-neurosis, or other mental and physiological phenomena, substitution, etc. I have no intention of entering into a discussion of the correctness of such mechanisms. The sole point I wish to make is that, even if so, to find such mechanisms and results to be universal is the reductio ad absurdum just as it would be to find that a conflict between a policeman and a resisting rioter is always carried out by a process which is manifested by a black eye and cracked skull, arrest, trial and conviction of the rioter. The process of the physical conflict may be simple or complex and be manifested and terminated in many ways. It may be carried out by and result in simple dissociation of the rioter from the crowd and sending him home about his business.
So with mental conflicts which may be manifested in many ways and have various results. In previous lectures we have considered some of these ways and results. One way and mechanism is, as in the latter example of the rioter, the simple repression and dissociation of the weaker factor resulting in the domination of the stronger, and the determination of conduct according to the impulses and tendencies organized within the mental system that has gained the ascendency. But in maintaining social law and order we may have to deal, not with a single rioter, but with a mob or organized rebellion. Then the repression of the uprising may bring into action more men and more systematized forces and may result in the repression of organized factions and an alteration of the social system. So mental conflicts may involve large systems and result in extensive rearrangements and repressions; in other words, an alteration with dissociation of personality. This was the mechanism and result in the case now under examination.
The conflicts were between the impulses or conative forces discharged from the emotions pertaining to youthful sentiments of pleasure and joy and play and ideas with exalting pleasure-feeling tones, all constituting wishes for the pleasures and happiness of youth—conflicts, I mean, between these forces and those of ethical sentiments of duty, together with other sentiments involving the emotions of affection, anxiety, sympathy, admiration, and depressing pain-feeling tones. For the time being, at least, the latter won and the former were repressed. But they were still there, conserved in the unconscious, ready to spring to life in response to a stimulus at any favorable opportunity when the repressing force of the will power was weakened by stress and strain. So we see that the conflicting wishes and impulses which jarred and threatened the mental equilibrium of the subject were, after all, only impulses or incursions from the unconscious of repressed antecedent mental experiences (wishes and conative tendencies) which were elements in the normal character.
Thus it came about that the original complex of rebellious thoughts against a particular condition had become slowly enlarged into a rebellion against general conditions, and constellated with a number of specific wishes for pleasure (which were incompatible with her life) and their corresponding impulses into a still larger complex.
It is this latter that we have called the B complex.