Furthermore, as a matter of experience, we find from a study of cases of multiple personality that after two independent systems of ideas have been formed, almost any emotional shock is liable to cause the displacement of one system and the substitution of the other system. This was observed over and over again in the case of Miss Beauchamp,[[286]] as it was in this case. Why it should be so is not always obvious at the time of any given occurrence. That there is a specific psychological reason and dynamic mechanism we cannot doubt. Undoubtedly if we could probe sufficiently extensively into the unconscious in each instance we should find that subtile associations in the substituted systems had been struck and that the change was thereby determined. When the associated element is organized with strong emotions the discharge of the emotion more easily represses and dissociates the rival conflicting systems. This gives the appearance that it was the emotion alone, as an isolated factor, which induced the alternation of personality.
What happened then when the change of personality took place was this: The acquired B complex, which had been developing in content and conative intensity, surged up as a reaction from the unconscious (where it had been conserved during the normal mood in a dormant condition), came into conflict with the systems of the normal self and repressed and replaced this previously dominating side of her nature. By this dissociation this side was put out of commission so to speak. In turn it remained dormant, of course, conserved as unconscious neurograms, ready to be resurrected under favoring conditions by appropriate stimuli.
But in the formation of the B personality there was more than this; otherwise there would not have been generated a personality; the alteration would have been limited to the incursion into the field of consciousness only of the B complex as had so often happened before. On the one hand a larger synthesis took place. The B complex dragged out of the storehouse of the unconscious the acquired and conserved ideas and other experiences of childhood and girlhood that had an associative relation to the system which formed the B complex. In this respect it was a reversion to the earlier period of life.
On the other hand, there was, as we shall see, a dissociation and suppression of certain innate dispositions, instincts and sentiments belonging to normal personality that were in conflict with the B phase. Specifically the most important of these were, the instinct of self-abasement and its corresponding self-regarding sentiment, the “tender emotion” (affection) and its parental instinct (McDougall), the X affect and its instinct, fear (instinct of flight) and vengeful emotion.
The emotions and their instincts and the innate dispositions, appetites and tendencies, being psycho-physiological arrangements inborn in the organism and not acquired, are the very foundations of human personality. Without a recognition of them and without assigning to them their proper parts and due weight in determining mental traits and behavior alterations of personality cannot be explained or understood.[[287]]
The justification for the interpretation I have given of the genesis of the B personality is found in an analysis of its manifested characteristics. In the first place this B phase by common consent, even in the opinion of those who were in entire ignorance of what had psychologically occurred—i.e., the alteration of personality,—was much younger in character than the mature C. She appeared to be a young girl of 18 or 19 years of age. Her friends spoke of her, when remarking on her improved health, as “being as she used to be.” She looked younger.[[288]] As I myself observed her on, I might almost say, hundreds of occasions, the contrast between the actual age of the subject and the apparent age of B as indicated by expressions of face, the vivacious mannerisms, the girlish attitude of mind, points of view, tastes, etc., was remarkable.
All this together with the lack of appreciation of many of the responsibilities of life and of the duties and conditions which pertain to motherhood, social relations and conventions, the loss of sentiments acquired after marriage, etc., made up a picture of youth that was unmistakable. The contrast between the mature C and the girlish B became almost dramatic when the change of personality took place suddenly as it later frequently did in my presence.
When we come to analyze the traits which gave this impression of youth we see that it was justified. One side of C’s character, as we have seen, was a love of happiness and the pleasures which induce the joy of life. This side was dominant in B; but the kind of pleasure which appealed to B was not only that which appeals to youth but that which had particularly appealed to the subject when a young girl. It was “tramping through the woods in the hottest days of summer,” canoeing and rowing in boats, walking, riding in electric cars—in fact, the out-door life that appealed to her most strongly and was her greatest enjoyment. “Oh, wouldn’t I just love to tramp through the woods or sail off over the waves, or anything exciting,” she wrote. Such of these things as she had been able when a little girl to indulge in she then enjoyed. As a child and during girlhood she liked camping out and sailing, but as she grew older, say about sixteen or eighteen, she became afraid of the water and row boats. Canoeing she had never done before her marriage and then was afraid of it.
We have seen that childhood’s experiences are largely conserved, when not modified by the growth of personality, in the unconscious (neurographic residua) although they may never come to the surface of consciousness unless resurrected by some device or accident; and repression tends to conserve them as unitary complexes maintaining their own urges. Accordingly in the case of B everything points to the conclusion that the repressed, conserved sentiments with their organized emotions and feelings, of the pleasure of childhood and adolescent life, sentiments by which the young girl was governed, erupted into consciousness. The play-instinct, or innate disposition, long repressed, particularly was revived and played a large part in determining behavior. The B personality was thus a reversion to an early period of life. The rearrangement of the play-instinct and other innate dispositions will be more conveniently discussed later in connection and contrast with the A personality.
Of course there is no sharp line of division between different periods of life, one running into the other, and the ideas, sentiments, desires, habits, etc., of one period may continue more or less unchanged well into another and beyond. Or, as usually happens, they may be modified by the successive experiences of life. So obviously we cannot ascribe with precision to a past definite age traits of character of the kind we are considering. Such traits belong to the evolutional development of the individual; they tend to become modified by the clash with new experiences, or, when incompatible with the knowledge and habits acquired by new experiences, to become repressed—when not incompatible they may persist late into adult life. So some of these traits have persisted as a side to, or as elements in the character of B. C. A. into her present life; some, however, have been modified or repressed into the unconscious. As age advances, as the child passes into adolescence and then into maturity, there comes wider knowledge of the facts of the environment, of its dangers and other relations, a more true and complete conception of the meaning of life, a more extensive world view, and a recognition and assumption of duties, cares, and responsibilities. And all these acquisitions tend to form a conscious organism with new sentiments which give new acquired reactions to stimuli in place of the old reactions (traits and other conative tendencies). Activities, for example, which once received their impulses from play dispositions are later inhibited by sentiments invested with the instinct of fear (flight). So B. C. A. acquired a fear of the water (boats, canoeing) and a dislike of bugs and mosquitoes and electric cars. Why these changes in her mental reactions took place we cannot say without making a more extensive search into the experiences of her past life, and the information when acquired would hardly repay the time and labor of the inquiry. We cannot say, for example, why she has disliked electric cars without resurrecting the memories of past experiences pertaining to them and other associated ideas. Perhaps the dislike arose simply out of the noise and resulting discomfort and headaches; or it may have had a more subtile cause in associated ideas of danger which would not appeal to a girl, or possibly such objects may more subtilely still be the symbolic expression of some unconscious process. It does not bear upon our present problem. (The dislike of mosquitoes and bugs very probably arose from having been bitten and poisoned badly by them when a child.)