We may ask whether even the most sudden changes are, in truth, as much so as they seem, if they have not their antecedent conditions in the life of the individual in question, and are not the accelerated result of a subconscious process. Whatever we may think, the psychological mechanism of conversions is very similar to that of irresistible impulses. In its complete evolution it passes through three stages: (1) the conception of an opposite aim or ideal; this may happen to any one without lasting or leading to action; this state will produce no effect if it merely passes through the mind. (2) This conception must become a fixed idea, with the permanence, the predominance, the overmastering possession, which are the peculiarities of such ideas. (3) The action takes place because already included in the fixed idea, and because the fixed idea is a belief, and all beliefs presuppose something existing or about to exist. In short, there is no result till the idea becomes an impulse. In the cases where the individual is, so to speak, struck by lightning, the impetuous movement of the passion springs up suddenly and triumphs immediately. This is yet another point of resemblance to the irresistible impulses which pass into action, sometimes after a period of struggle, sometimes in a sudden ecstasy.
There is, in any case, this difference, that the new character—i.e., new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting—is lasting. This could not be, if in both stages, incubation and eruption, a profound change had not taken place in the individual constitution. Conversions do not create a new tendency, but they show that the greatest antitheses are latent in us, and that one may replace the other, not by an act of the will, which is always precarious, but by a radical transformation of our sensibility.
2. This division includes the alternating characters, whose phases sometimes succeed one another with such rapidity and frequency as to approximate to the simultaneous contradictory characters. Instead of two different characters, one before and one after the crisis, whose formula for the whole life of the individual would be A, B, we have the alternation of two forms of character, with or without intermediary crises, and the formula would be A, B, A, B, and so on.
This alternation is found in the normal or quasi-normal state, but is too fugitive or too difficult to fix, to be distinguished from the unstable characters; but the case is not the same with the morbid types which show it in an exaggerated form. Such are the phenomena so much studied in our own day, under the name of alterations, diseases, disorders of personality. They will be known to the reader, but they are not altogether germane to our subject, and I only touch upon them in order to elucidate a particular point, the variations of character.
In cases of alternating personality we may consider either the physiological changes, which are rather obscure, or the intellectual changes, which have been referred, on the whole, to the memory, or the emotional changes, which have been somewhat neglected and in some observations omitted altogether. It is these last alone which interest us, because they may be summed up as alternations of character.
If, in fact, we take complete observations, it will be seen that the two personalities (there are sometimes more) do not consist merely in the alternation of two memories, but also in that of two distinct and usually opposite affective dispositions. Azam’s celebrated Félida is, in her first state, gloomy, cold, and reserved; in her second, cheerful, talkative, lively to the point of coquetry and boisterousness. In the case of Mary Reynolds, reported by Weir Mitchell, we have first a melancholy, silent, retiring woman; then, in her new personality, “her disposition is totally and absolutely changed,” she is fond of pleasure, noisy, always seeking company, except when taking long rides and walks through the woods and over the mountains, delighting in the spectacle of nature and absolutely unconscious of fear. These alternations lasted for sixteen years, after which “the emotional opposition between the two states seems gradually to have effaced itself,” and resolved itself into a medium state between the two—"a well-balanced temperament," which for a quarter of a century coincided with her now permanent second state. We may also recall the well-known case of L. V., who spontaneously showed at the same time two opposite forms of character: at one time, talkative, arrogant, violent, brutal, insubordinate, a thief, ready to kill any one who gave him an order; at another, gentle, polite, silent, sober, of an almost child-like timidity. I say, spontaneously, for MM. Bourru and Burot have artificially produced physical modifications in V. which are accompanied by some modifications in his character; but I am only speaking of natural changes. For other instances I refer the reader to special works on the alteration of personality.
I am inclined to believe that alternations of memory, though the strongest and most disturbing phenomena, result from an alternation of the affective dispositions (in other words, of the character), which themselves result from physiological changes, so that, in the last resort, we arrive at cœnæsthesia as the ultimate cause. When we see, e.g., that in L. V. the violent character always accompanies hemiplegia and anæsthesia on the right side, and the gentle character, hemiplegia and anæsthesia on the left side, not to mention the partial modifications accompanying the paraplegia, total anæsthesia, etc., artificially produced in the hypnotic state, it is difficult not to admit that changes in memory, in character, and in physical habit form an almost indissoluble whole, which is also the conclusion drawn by Bourru and Burot from their experiments.
In default of positive proofs that the change of cœnæsthesia is primordial in these alternations of character, we may compare them with a mental disease, where the alternation, being still simpler, allows us more easily to detect its physiological conditions. This is that duplex form of madness, sometimes called folie circulaire, or “alternating insanity,” etc. It consists in the regular alternation of two periods, that of depression and that of exaltation. The transition from one to the other is instantaneous, or takes place by imperceptible gradations, but nothing can be clearer than the contrast between the two periods.
During the depression, the affective symptoms are: melancholy, feeling of fatigue, torpor, indifference, vague terror, uneasiness with regard to everything. Physically, the patient is emaciated, aged, broken down, the temperature is lowered, and there is an enormous decrease in the pulse, the secretions and excretions, and the weight of the body, the latter going down as much as ten pounds in one week.
During the period of excitement the reverse takes place, point for point: a feeling of well-being, joy, pride, exuberant activity; the patient looks younger, grows stout, and his organic functions go on extensively and regularly. “This contrast,” says an alienist, “is one of the most curious and interesting peculiarities of mental medicine.”[[252]]