The dissociation of a personality : a biographical study in abnormal psychology / by Morton Prince.

  • Morton Prince
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The dissociation of a personality : a biographical study in abnormal psychology / by Morton Prince. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    567/592 (page 551)
    APPENDIX M James’ account (p. 223) of the Ratisbonne case, some- what abbreviated, is as follows: “ The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is that of M. Alphonse Ratisbonne, a free- thinking French Jew, to Catholicism, at Rome in 1842. In a letter to a clerical friend, written a few months later, the con- vert gives a palpitating account of the circumstances. “ The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elder brother who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother, and generally to his ‘ cloth.’ Finding himself at Rome in his twenty-ninth year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte of him, but who succeeded no farther, after two or three conversations, than to get him to hang (half jocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to accept and read a copy of a short prayer to the Virgin. M. Ratisbonne represents his own part in the conversation as having been of a light and chaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to banish the words of the prayer from his mind, and that the night before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imagery of which a black cross with no Christ upon it figured. Neverthe- less, until noon of the next day he was free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. I now give his own words. “ ^ . . . Coming out of the caf41 met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the proselyting friend]. He stopped and invited me in for a drive, but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended to some duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself to look at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe that I found myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted my attention ; and I passed my eyes mechanically over its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. I can only remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused.