PLURAL STATJbJS OF BEING. 541 



first is liysterical insensibility. If a part of a person's body is in- 

 sensible, lie is not aware of what happens to it ; and, on the other 

 hand, the nervous centers in relation with this insensible region 

 may continue to act, as is the case in hysteria. The result is that 

 certain actions, more often simple, but sometimes very compli- 

 cated, can be performed subconsciously by a hysterical patient ; 

 further, these actions may have a psychical nature, and show 

 intellectual processes distinct from those of the subject, thus 

 constituting a second ego, which coexists with the first. 



A second condition that may occasion the division of con- 

 sciousness is the concentration of attention on a single thing. The 

 result of this state of concentration is that the mind is absorbed 

 to the exclusion of other things, and to such a degree insensible 

 that the way is opened for automatic actions ; and these actions, 

 becoming more complicated, as in the preceding case, may assume 

 a psychical nature and establish intelligences of a parasitic kind, 

 existing side by side with the normal personality, which is not 

 aware of them. 



The real nature of hysterical anaesthesia has long been misap- 

 prehended, and it has been compared to common ansBsthesia from 

 organic causes, as, for example, from the interruption of the 

 afferent nerve tracts. This way of considering it should be com- 

 pletely abandoned, for we now know that hysterical anaesthesia 

 is not a real local insensibility, but an insensibility due to uncon- 

 sciousness, to mental disintegration ; in short, it is psychical in- 

 sensibility, arising simply because the personality of the patient 

 is impaired, or even entirely divided. 



The existence of unconscious phenomena in the case of hys- 

 terical patients need not astonish us, for each one of us may, if 

 we watch ourselves with sufficient care, detect in ourselves a 

 series of automatic actions, performed involuntarily and uncon- 

 sciously. To walk, to sit down, to turn the page of a book these 

 are actions which we perform without thinking of them. But it 

 is difficult to study unconscious activity in a normal man, for this 

 activity shows itself chiefly in routine, in formed habits, kept go- 

 ing by repetition : in general, it does little new. Sometimes it 

 seems to judge and reason, but these are old judgments and 

 reasons which it repeats. At all events, it seldom acquires any 

 considerable development, and almost never, one might say, 

 amounts to the dignity of an independent personality. The con- 

 ditions of study are much more favorable when we apply our- 

 selves to hysterical subjects. 



Among these unconscious phenomena are those known as 

 movements of repetition, and these are often provoked by sugges- 

 tion as when an order or suggestion is given to a person awake 

 or in a somnambulistic state to imitate all movements that are 



