C in her written statement does not give the nature of the “strong emotion which swept over” her when the “revelation came in a flash.” It was very different in character from the other. It was apprehension—the apprehension of moral disaster to the person whom she was trying to save. There was no resentment at the discovered deception, no thought of wounded self, no feeling of injury as might be inferred from the language of the writer, but only the thought of her own responsibility in the circumstances, and of duty undertaken, and the feeling of anxiety for the future of this other person; and there was a sense of disappointment and failure. These erupted from the submerged A system.
It was this same system of ideas, but organized about her husband as their object, which had been dominant in C during the four years period of stress-and-strain and “neurasthenia.” They had lain dormant in the unconscious during the B period. Now they are struck and excited to activity. There is a conflict. The impulses from the conflicting A emotions, being the stronger, repress the B impulses and the A system is awakened as a personality.
The question at once comes to mind whether the object of B. C. A.’s solicitude was not a surrogate for her deceased husband, a sort of symbol, and had not become the object of the transference (to use the language of the psycho-analysts) of the solicitude which had previously been bestowed upon her husband’s health and future well-being; whether this new person had not been substituted for the ill husband in that A system of ideas which during four years had been characterized by responsibility, duty, anxiety, disappointment, failure, etc.; whether, indeed, it might not be held that the solicitude for the salvation of this drug addict was not a defense reaction against self-reproach for an imaginary responsibility for the illness of her husband. Such self-reproaches she describes.
If this were true, the awakening of the A system by the discovery of the deception (which was only the banal one of money matters) and realization of failure, disappointment, etc., would be all the more comprehensible in view of the very strong and close associations which the new object would have in the system. But if true I cannot see that it would have any further or deeper significance. There was no need for disguisement. Certainly solicitude for a husband, disguised in another person, needs no disguisement and could not be unacceptable. But painful self-reproaches for former failure could not be faced, and satisfaction could be found in the performance of a new duty as a sort of atonement.
Again was there any subconscious sex wish or urge that could not be admitted to herself and to which the change to A was a defense reaction? I have been unable to discover any. And if there were I am unable to see how the revelation of deception in money matters required a defense reaction against the fulfillment of this wish. That sounds like Alice in Wonderland.
But why did the revelation shock B, who with her traits would not have cared? I can answer this from my intimate and fuller knowledge of C’s and A’s ideas. It was a revelation of the truth. The true character of the object of their solicitude, “whom everyone else had given up as hopeless,” was revealed in a flash, and this “revelation” had struck, not B, but the submerged A (or C) system, which immediately emerged in an uprush from the unconscious. The shock was not to B but to subconscious A. And the reaction was “disappointment,” “failure,” “apprehension,” etc. Similar phenomena have been observed over and over again in psychological studies as I have frequently witnessed them in this case.
III
In a previous lecture[[299]] I called attention to the fact that emotions (instincts) innate dispositions and tendencies are fundamental to personality and I pointed out that in abnormal alterations the dissociation may involve one or more of these. Certain of these innate psycho-physiological systems were cited as having been repressed or dissociated in this case. It remains to study this phenomenon a little more closely.
Psychologists are generally agreed that of the emotions some are primary, or elementary, and others are complex, that is compounded of two or more emotions. Fear and anger, for example, are primary and the conscious elements, like all primary emotions, in biological instincts. These instincts serve a purpose in the preservation of the species. Of the complex emotions scorn and loathing may be taken as examples, the former, it is believed, being compounded of anger and disgust and the latter of fear and disgust. There is not a general agreement in regard to all the emotions that should be regarded as primary. Joy and sorrow, for example, are classed by some as primary and by some as complex. I made an effort to note and classify in a tentative way the emotions that were present and absent in the two personalities A and B and have arranged them in the following table. In this table the classification of the primary and complex emotions of McDougall has been followed in the main.
Of course it is very difficult to determine with certainty if any given emotion is absolutely absent, as it depends upon suitable conditions being present for its excitation. An emotion that is repressed might still be excited if the stimulus were sufficiently strong. Still, it is significant that emotions which would ordinarily excite a given emotion, say, tender feeling, or sorrow or fear, in the ordinary normal person, or did do so in this subject in the A personality, did not do so in the B personality, or would awaken in the latter only an emotion of joy or mirth. Under these circumstances, when the A and B personalities respectively came into being, these differences were easily observed, and it is noteworthy that then certain emotions were never in evidence in each respectively, whether potentially present or not.