It runs as follows:
At this time there came to C a third shock of a strongly emotional nature, giving rise to events which I call period III. It brought to her the realization of a fact of which she had been unconscious; she had never thought of the possibility of such a thing and she was startled, frightened, angry, all in a flash—and I was there. James, in explaining “Sudden Religious Conversion,” speaks of a “flowering of the subconscious,”—well, I “flowered,” and C disappeared somewhere; the B complex had become a personality and I lived a life of my own choosing.[[285]] How slowly this complex gathered form in this case may be seen from the fact that it was five years from the time of the beginning of her husband’s illness before I came as a personality.
Now, when I came as a personality, I felt much younger than C; my ideas of what constituted pleasure were more like those of a girl of twenty—as C was when she received the first shock (period I). But in character, points of view, tastes, emotions, in everything that goes to make up personality I was quite different from anything C had ever been; also in health. I was strong and vigorous, taking long walks and feeling no fatigue. I was also very happy. Life seemed so good to me; everything was so beautiful; the outdoor world looked to me as it does to one who has been for months shut in through illness. I loved the trees, the sky, and the wind; but I did not love people. I felt no care or responsibility—that is why I was so happy. I remained the only personality for about one month, when there came the fourth emotional shock producing period IV.
These accounts need further explanation. C remarks: “It seems very curious to me that the effect of this shock was to change me not to the despondent, despairing mood of A, which came later, but to the happy mood of B.” A consideration of the facts in more detail renders the reason obvious. It must be kept in mind that the dominant feature of the B mood or personality was the B complex, and the nucleus of this system of ideas was the “rebellion” I have described. This rebellion again had its first beginnings 19 years before (period I). We have traced it through the succeeding years, with its later accretions, growing and expanding in intensity and extent, like a political insurrection, until it had taken into itself a large field of ideas and became the B complex. Bear in mind here that the primitive germinal first rebellion was the reaction to an emotional shock in which fright and disgust as elements occurred plus the X affect to which they were a defense reaction. Now the second shock which was experienced at the third period was fundamentally the same in nature as that of the first period. It gave rise to the same affect, X, and mental awakening, to the same kind of realization of her situation, and the reaction, particularly to the affect, was the same rebellion. But the rebellion had meantime, in the years that had passed, grown into the B complex, and so it was this B constellation of ideas which erupted into consciousness and dominated the whole field of personality. Though the second shock awoke the same affect as did the original shock, it was consciously mild and probably for the most part subconscious, being repressed and submerged by the reacting emotions of fear and anger, which latter blazed forth. And in the reaction there were, also, the emotions of disgust and self-assertion and the vengeful emotion.
With such emotions, particularly anger and disgust,[disgust,] this affect was in conflict as was also fear. When two primary emotions are in conflict both cannot live; one will be suppressed. Fear will be suppressed by an outburst of blazing anger, and anger cannot exist when an overwhelming fear is excited. One will replace the other. So the mild X affect and fear were immediately repressed by anger, disgust and the compound vengeful emotion, the three not in any way conflicting with one another but as allies reinforcing each other in the attack.
Consequently from the B personality, which sprang to life as the reaction to the X affect, this affect itself, was completely repressed and dissociated, so that this personality is entirely without this and other traits of the C personality. Likewise, although this is not so easy to determine, owing to the impossibility of reproducing all conditions under which a given individual would react normally to any given emotion, fear and tender feeling (love) seem to have been dissociated from the B personality. It is certainly true that B experienced no fear and other emotions with which C habitually reacted to certain situations. This question of the involvement of the emotions in dissociation will be discussed in another place.
As to the X affect, it is of some significance that later, after the development of the third personality, A, which alternated with B, this personality retained this affect (as well as fear and others lost to B) and the awakening of this affect in A would regularly change this personality to B; that is, repress the A personality and awaken B. Many times other emotions, particularly anxiety (fear), would have the same effect, but the affect in question would always induce the change, apparently as a defense reaction.
From one point of view it may be maintained that all this emotional reaction, called “shock,” (that primarily called into being the B personality) was a defense reaction. It certainly was, as any outburst of anger may be a defense reaction, as it is in the bull in the ring of a Spanish bull-fight. Under other conditions anger as an element in the pugnacity instinct may, like other emotional impulses, be an attacking reaction.
But labelling with names does not give us any insight into the mechanism of a reaction any more than labelling a machine an automobile gives us any idea of its mechanism. It gives only a teleological meaning to the machine.
What is a fruitful question, however, is whether the “shock”[“shock”] was a defense to an external aggression or to the urge of an unacceptable subconscious wish containing the repressed affect X. Some will wish to make this latter interpretation. It is entirely incompatible, however, with the fact that the same conflict and “shock” had previously occurred under conditions when, even if there had been such a wish, it could not have been unacceptable, as there was no reason therefor, but on the contrary it would have been her duty to have fulfilled it. It is useless in this case to work that trumpery affect business in this way.