Léontine, the hypnotic or second self, knows Léonie, the original Mme. B., very well, and is very anxious not to be confounded with her. She always calls her “the other one,” and laughs at her stupidity. She says, “That good woman is not I, she is too stupid.” One day Prof. Janet hypnotized Léonie, and as usual at once Léontine was present. Prof. Janet then suggested to Léontine that when she awoke and Léonie had resumed the command, she (Léontine) should take off the apron of Léonie, their common apron, on their one physical personality, and then tie it on again. She was then aroused from her hypnotic condition, and at once Léonie was present without the slightest knowledge of Léontine, for she never knew of this second personality, nor of hypnotic suggestion in any form. Léonie, supposing the professor’s experiment was over, was conducting him to the door, talking indifferently in her slow, dull way, and at the same time unconsciously her fingers were working at her apron-strings. The loosened apron was falling off when the professor called her attention to it. She exclaimed, “Why, my apron is falling off!” and then, fully conscious of what she was doing, she replaced and tied it on again. She then continued her talk. She only supposed that somehow accidentally the apron had come untied and she had retied it, and that was all.
To the now submerged Léontine, however, this was not enough; her mission had not been completed, and at her silent prompting Léonie again fumbled at the apron-strings; unconsciously she untied and took off the apron, and then put it on again without her attention having been drawn to what she had now the second time done. The next day Prof. Janet again hypnotized Léonie and Léontine made her appearance.
“Well,” said she, “I did what you told me yesterday. How stupid ‘the other one’ looked while I took her apron off? Why did you tell her that her apron was falling off? Just for that, I had to do the job all over again.”
Here the hypnotic or secondary self, as in my own reported case, appears as a persistent entity, remembering and reasoning, while the primary self was at the same time in command of their common body. Léontine not only caused Léonie to untie and retie her apron, but she enjoyed the fun, remembered it, and told it the next day.
Again Léonore was as much ashamed of Léontine’s flippancy as Léontine was of Léonie’s stupidity.
“You see well enough,” she said, “that I am not that prattler, that madcap. We do not resemble each other in the least.”
In fact, she sometimes gave Léontine good counsel in regard to her behavior, and in a peculiar manner—by producing the hallucination of hearing a voice, thus again showing the conscious activity of the submerged self while a primary self was at the same time dominant and active. As Dr. Janet relates the incident, Léontine was one day in an excited, hysterical condition, noisy and troublesome with her chatter, when suddenly she stopped her senseless talk and cried out with terror:
“Oh! Who is it there talking to me like that?”
“No one was speaking to you.”
“Yes, there on the left.” And she opened a closet door in the direction indicated, to see that no one was hidden there.