The diseases of personality / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the French by J. Fitzgerald.
- Théodule-Armand Ribot
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The diseases of personality / by Th. Ribot ; tr. from the French by J. Fitzgerald. 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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![The hypnotized subject (usually a woman) is made to believe herself to be, now a peasant, again an actress, or a general, an archbishop, a nun, a sailor, a little girl, and so forth; and she acts her part without any misgiving. Here the psychological data are perfectly clear. In this state of artificially produced som- nambulism the real personality is intact; the organic, affective, and intellectual elements have undergone no considerable alteration, but they all remain in posse. A certain not well understood state of the nerve centers, an arrest of function, prevents them from passing into act. By suggestion an idea is evoked; in- stantly lay the mechanism of association, this awakens analogous states of con- sciousness, and no others, and in con- nection with them—always by associa- tion—the appropriate gestures, acts, speech and sentiments. In this way is constituted a personality external to the real personality, made up of borrowed elements and depending on automatism. This experiment shows what an idea may do when freed from control by other ideas, but at the same time reduced to its own sole forces, and no longer sup- ported and aided by the totality of the individual. In some cases of imperfect hypnotism dualism is produced. Dr. North, pro- fessor of physiology in the Westminster Hospital, says, in speaking of the period of hypnotization when he was being in- fluenced by the fixing of the gaze .— 1 was not unconscious, but it seemed as if I lived as two beings. I fancied that an inner Me was alive to all that was pass- ing, but that it took no part in the acts of the outer Me, nor had any care to control them. The repugnance or the inability of the inner Me to direct the outer Me seemed to increase as the situation was continued.* * Hack Tuke, On the Mental Condition in Hyp- notism, published in the Journal of Mental Sci- ence, April. 1SS3. We have also in this article the case of a physician who, during a troubled slumber after some twenty hours of climbing among the Alps, dreamt that he was twain • one Me had died, the other was making the autopsy. In some cases of intoxication and of delirium, the psychic coordination disappears, and there is a kind of scission of the personality in two. See the articles by Dr. Azarn on changes of personality (Revue Scienti/ujue, Nov. 17, 1883) and of Dr. Galicier \l\.evue Philosopkiqne, July, 1887). Taine gives a curious case of semi-pathological incoordination :— I have seen a person who, while singing or talking writes, without looking at the paper, consecutive phrases, even whole pages, quite unconscious of what she is writing. In my opinion she is per- fectly sincere, yet she declares that when she comes to the end of the page she has no idea what Can this inner personality—the true personality—ever be entirely suppressed ? Can the individual's proper character be reduced to nought, so as to be trans- formed into its opposite} No doubt it can : the operator, by persistent enforce- ment of his authority, succeeds in doing this, after more or less resistance. Richet impressed upon a woman who was a very strong Bonapartist strict re- publican convictions. Braid having hyp- notized a teetotaler, whose sobriety was without reproach, assured the man again and again that he was drunk. This assertion was strengthened by a feeling of staggering (produced by mus- cular suggestion) and it was amusing to see the man wavering between this im- posed idea and the conviction resulting from his habits. This momentary met- amorphosis however is perfectly innocu- ous. As Richet justly remarks :— In these curious modifications what changes is simply the outer form, the habits and general demeanor, and not the individu- ality proper. As for the question whether by repeated suggestions to sus- ceptible subjects, we might be able at length to produce a modification of the character . that is a problem to be solved by experiment alone, and that is beyond our present purpose. Here perhaps is the place to note the fact of the disappearance of personality, a phenomenon that has been described by the mystics of every age, according to their own experience, and often in ele- gant language.t The pantheistic meta- she has set down on the paper. On reading it she is amazed, sometimes alarmed. The handwriting differs from her ordinary style. The movement of the fingers and of the pencil is stiff and seems automatic. The writing always ends with a signa- ture, the name of one who is dead and it bears the impress of a mental background \arriere-fond mental] that the author would be unwilling to divulge.'- {De l^Intelligence, 3d edition, prefacel. t I will quote only one of these descriptions, and that one because by its style of language and its date it comes nearest to our own time. I seem, to have become a statue on the banks of the stream of time, and to be assisting at some mystery, whence I shall go forth aged or ageless. I feel my- self to be without name, impersonal, with the star- ing eyes of a corpse, with mind vague and universal like nothingness or the absolute; I am in suspense, I am as if non-existent. In such moments it seems to me that my consciousness withdraws into its eternity * * * it sees itself in its very essence, su- perior to every form containing its past, its present, and its future [sees itself as the] void which en- compasses ail, an atmosphere (7nilie2i) invisible and fecund, the virtuality of a world which detaches itself from its own existence to regain itself (se ressaisir) in its pure inwardness (intimitc pure). In those sublime moments the soul re-enters her- self, goes back again to indetermination ; she be- comes retro-Toluted {Sit venia tierho. The original has s'est reimpliguiie. Translator) beyond her own life, she becomes again a divine embryo. All isef-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21074409_0047.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
