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

  • Prince, Morton, 1854-1929.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    reminded of it by the sound, as well as Miss Beauchamp. ' She' heard the music, and I heard it, too, Chris ex- plained. When ' she ' heard it last night' she ' saw the whole thing over again, and.' she ' wanted to sit down and cry, but' she ' would n't. ' She ' just sat in the chair and looked like a fool. ' She' sat down, and dropped back, and did so — [illustrates position]. 'Her' eyes were not shut. What were you doing ? I was meditating. What about? How silly ' she ' looked. Chris could not say what her other self's psychical state was while in the trance, excepting that she denied it was herself (Chris). Later investigations seemed to show that at such times it was neither of the other selves; that is to say, the spontaneous somnambulistic condition is a state by itself. As will appear in the course of this biography, a sugges- tibility of the degree indicated by these observations would necessarily also mean so great an instability and lack of resistance to the environment that ideas, feelings, and emotions would acquire such a degree of fixity and inten- sity that they would tend from moment to moment to dominate a person's life. Therefore Miss Beauchamp, like many other people with the hysterical temperament, would tend to become the slave of her own mind. That instability and suggestibility should persist, no matter how well she might be physically, was difficult to understand; for during all this time there was no reason to suspect that Miss Beauchamp was not what might be called, with- out using particularly figurative language, a real person; a complete and normal personality, excepting so far as she was affected by physical infirmities. It was not until a year later that the secret leaked out.