The dissociation of a personality : a biographical study in abnormal psychology / by Morton Prince.
- Morton Prince
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The dissociation of a personality : a biographical study in abnormal psychology / by Morton Prince. Source: Wellcome Collection.
554/594 page 540
![between the chimney breast and the end wall of the room. She placed her hand in mid-air on an imaginary line run- ning across the recess from the chimney-piece to the end wall, about twelve inches in front of the books. She in- sisted that the wood panels ran across the recess at the site of her imaginary line. I rapped on the books, thinking that the sound would enable her to distinguish the books from her hallucinatory panelling, but she explained the sound in an ingenious way. I then made an effort to force her hand against the books and past the imaginary line, but she resisted the force by muscular counter-effort. There was both a positive hallucination and a negative one, the former being the wood panel which was not there. All this, of course, increased her sense of discourtesy, and I could only insist she was mistaken. There was a twinkle in Sally’s eye when she was asked later if she could explain these hallucinations. “ No, it is a mystery,” she replied. A few days later she confessed her part in the trick, adding, “ The Idiot sha’n’t do anything that I can’t do. She sha’n’t read French. She may at home, but she sha’n’t here.” Sally further claimed — a point of importance — that she caused only the negative halluci- nation and had nothing to do with the positive hallucination, — that of the wood panel. This latter, then, was the logical expression of B IV’s belief that no bookcase was there. APPENDIX J Phenomena similar to the following have been observed on numerous occasions. B IV, who had been “ scrap- ping ” with Sally, suddenly, while describing the events of a morning, stopped abruptly, unable to go on. [Notebook.] “ She exhibits evidence of inward struggling. She has a distinct attack of aboulia, but manages in a disjointed](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28047849_0554.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
