After all, the common amnesia for the hypnotic state after waking is the same phenomenon.
Such observations show the possible systematization of epoch complexes, although the determining conditions are not as yet understood.
3. Disposition or Mood systems.—Among the loosely organized complexes in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations, desires, and modes of activity, which, for one reason or another, we tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals, for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life; and yet they may have a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately appeal to all mankind and which many actually pursue; in other words, to yield to the impulsive force of the innate disposition, or instinct, of play. But these desires are repressed. Nevertheless the longing for these pleasures, under the impulses of this instinct, recurs from time to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves a fabric of pictures, sentiments, thoughts, and emotions the whole of which thus becomes organized into a systematized complex.
There may be a conflict, a rebellion and “kicking against the pricks” and, thereby, a liberation of emotional force of the instinct, impressing, on the one hand, a stronger organization of the whole process, and, on the other, repressing all conflicting desires. Or, the converse of this may hold and a person who devotes his life to the lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for the more serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly build up a complex which may similarly express itself. The recurrence of such complexes is one form of what we call a “mood” which has a distinctively emotional tone of its own derived from the instincts and sentiments which are dominant. Such a “disposition” system is often spoken of as “a side to one’s character,” to which a person may from time to time give play. Thus a person is said to have “many sides to his character,” and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal states.
It may be interesting to note in passing that the well-known characteristics of people of a certain temperament, in consequence of which they can pursue their respective vocations only when they are “in the mood for it,” can be referred to this principle of complex formations and dissociation of rival systems. Literary persons, musicians, and artists in whom “feeling” is apt to be cultivated to a degree of self-pampering are conspicuous in this class. The ideas pertaining to the development of their craft form mixed subject and mood complexes which tend to have strong emotional and feeling tones. When some other affective tone is substituted, organized within a conflicting complex, it is difficult for such persons to revive the subject complex belonging to the piece of work in hand and necessary for its prosecution. “The ideas will not come,” because the whole subject complex which supplies the material with which the imagination is to work has been dissociated and replaced by some other. Certain elements in the complex can be revived piece-meal, as it were, but the complex will not develop in mass with the emotional driving energy which belongs to it. Not having their complexes and affects under voluntary control it is necessary for such persons to wait until, from an alteration in the coenesthesis or for some other reason, an alteration in the “feeling” has taken place with a revival of the right complex in mass.
No more exquisite illustration of these “disposition complexes” could be found than in the personality of William Sharp. Sharp’s title to literary fame very largely rests upon the writings which he gave to the world under the feminine name of Fiona Macleod. The identity of the author was concealed from the world until his death, and it is still a common belief that this concealment and the assumption of the feminine pseudonym were nothing more than a literary hoax. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There were two William Sharps; by which I mean, of course, there were two very strongly organized and sharply cut sides to his character. Each had its points of view, its complexes of ideas, its imaginings, and, above all, its creative tendencies and feeling tones. The one side—the one christened William Sharp—was the bread and butter earner, the relatively practical man who came in contact with the world—literary critic, “biographer, essay and novel writer as well as poet”—the experienced side which was obliged to correct its imagination by constant comparison with reality. The other side—Fiona Macleod—was the so-called inner man; what he himself called his “true inward self.” As Fiona he lived in his imagination and dreamed. The development of this side of his personality began while, as he said, “I was still a child.” “He found,” his biographer writes,[[149]] “as have other imaginative, psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious power of visions unshared by any one about him, so that what he related was usually discredited; but the psychic side of his nature was too intimate a part of his mind to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned to shut it away—to keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a mystery to himself.”
This inner life, as time went on, became a mood which he fostered and developed and in which he built up great complexes of fancies, points of view, and emotions, which, when the other side of his character came uppermost, remained neurographically conserved and dormant in the unconscious. The Fiona complexes he distinctly felt to be feminine in type so that when he came to give expression to them, as he felt he must, he concealed this side of his character under a feminine pseudonym. “My truest self,” he wrote, “the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life, and joys, and sufferings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”
“From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self, would sweep aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea that had lain dormant in what he called ‘the mind behind the mind’ would suddenly visualize itself and blot out everything else from his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed, hardly aware of what, or how, he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision with which for the moment he was identified.”
“All my work,” he said, “is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you about Pharais, etc., without telling you my whole life.”
William Sharp himself realized the two moods or “sides,” which became in time developed into two distinct personalities. These he distinctly recognized, although there was no amnesia. “Rightly or wrongly,” he wrote, “I am conscious of something to be done by one side of me, by one-half of me, by the true inward mind as I believe—(apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual mind, and a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within concurring with and oftenest dominating the other)....” This dual personality was so strongly realized by him that on his birthdays he wrote letters to himself as Fiona signed “Will,” and vice versa.