The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams, стр. 826

BOOK 8

B1, partly because B4 was a stronger nature, partly because Sally had direct access to Bi’s thoughts but not to B4’s.

Later, Dr. Prince got Sally to write her autobiography. This unique document claims to be the record of a soul suppressed for all its early life, at long last finding access to the world of human beings and human communication. In it Sally maintained that she had hada separate conscious existence right back to Miss B’s infancy, and that even when the little girl was learning to walk, Sally’s tastes and ideas were different from those of the main personality. It is, of course, impossible to say how much of this autobiography is true in detail ; but it seems clear that Sally had existed as a more or less distinct and organized mental being, but subordinate and suppressed, for a long time.

Then came the denouement. Dr. Prince, by the aid of suggestion in deep hypnosis, was able gradually to fuse the two antagonistic personalities Br and B4 and weld them together into one. The more successful the fusion, the more thoroughly was Sally suppressed. Her own description was that she felt ‘‘ squeezed.’ The rebuilding of a single healthy personality was much delayed by Sally. She had at last tasted the joys of full existence. She had been given the privilege of controlling the body in which she had lived for years as an irresponsible but helpless passenger—a transformation more dazzling than Cinderella’s. And she was not going to surrender without a struggle. Repeatedly she would force herself up into control to prove that she was not going to be squeezed out of existence ; and each time this happened, the amalgamation of Br and B4 was hindered. But eventually she began to grow discouraged, and at last, as the result of appeals by Dr. Prince to her better nature, consented to give up the struggle. From that moment the restoration of the single and unitary personality went rapidly forward. As Dr. Prince writes, ‘ The resurrection of the real Miss B was through the death of Sally.” Since the synthesis, it has been impossible to communicate with her ; but we may presume she lives once more an obscure and powerless existence, suppressed by the maturer organization in control.

The final outcome was a restored Miss B, who commanded the memories both of Br and B4, but not of Sally. She was a wellbalanced personality, who “ lived normally ever after.”

So far Dr. Prince’s account—we hope not stripped of too much of its absorbing interest

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THE SGIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 7

in the process of boiling down. It remains to ask what are its general bearings.

Dr. Prince interprets it, as we have seen, in terms of dissociation of different parts of the personality. B4 and Sally were both mind-systems organized round tendencies which were more or less antagonistic to the dominant tendencies of the growing girl, and which were finally excluded by her from any participation in the control of the body. But while Sally seems to have been in the nature of a left-over, a set of childish tendencies which never got incorporated in the main organization, B4 was organized round maturer ideas and desires which had to be definitely fought against. As result, Sally retained some degree of independent and simultaneous consciousness—she was **co-conscious ” with the main personality ; but B4 was driven out of consciousness, though the system still existed in the Unconscious and could still be stimulated there. With much of her energies thus devoted to repressing half her own nature, Br grew weak and neurotic ; and first one and then the other of the repressed systems managed to burst up into full consciousness again.

The main criticism which has been made of Dr. Prince’s views is that, since he used hypnosis and suggestion as his main method, he himself suggested, without intending to, many of the symptoms which he afterwards sets out to explain.

Some critics, for instance, maintain that the very sharpness and distinctness of the three alternating personalities, and their long-continued separate existence, were due to the treatment employed and to the unconscious bias of Dr. Prince in favour of an interpretation in terms of split personality. When psychological analysis, Freudian or otherwise, is used, we are told that such marked and long-continued dissociation of personality is not seen. There is perhaps an element of truth in this criticism. It is possible that had Dr. Prince adopted other methods of treatment, he would have been able to restore Miss B to a balanced mental existence without her passing through a long period in which her body was the prize of rival personalities. But under the conditions of the experiment she did pass through such a period, and antagonistic personalities did alternately take control of her organism. We are for the moment naturalists of the mind ; and the case of Miss B assures us that the strange mental creatures called multiple and alternating personalities can in certain circumstances exist.