576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Professor Pierce's thoughtful contribution to the Garman Commemo- 

 rative Volume, the extreme cases of splitting that attract so much for- 

 ensic attention under the names of double or alternating personality, 

 are psychologically continuous with divisions of personality that are 

 quite usual and normal. We sometimes think of systematic amnesia as 

 the criterion of a real alternation of personality. The lives of many 

 normal persons, however, are so ordered that they at various times make 

 a total change of environment to another to which they are equally 

 accustomed, but with practically no associative links between them. In 

 such cases the abandoned mode of life may be lost sight of with truly 

 hysterical completeness, and its most common passages require distinct 

 effort for recall. The differences between these normal alternations of 

 personality and those of hysteria are simply that the latter are more 

 independent of environmental change, less subject to voluntary control, 

 and in that the associations from the other personality or association 

 system are more difficult of recall, they are more complete alternations. 

 The pathological condition simply brings about the fuller working out 

 of a tendency that in some degree is common to all of us, though never 

 quantitatively measured. 



The same is true of those splittings of personality where we do not 

 have two or more associative systems alternating, but running side by 

 side, and contending for expression in action; as in some reported hys- 

 terical automatisms, where the patient is said to write answers to one set 

 of questions, and answer another by mouth. It has been remarked that 

 all of us are a little hysterical, and it is again true that all of us are a 

 little schizophrenic. Every one carries about with him numerous sys- 

 tems of likes and dislikes, attractions and counter-attractions, impulses 

 and counter-impulses. Some of these favor the social adaptations of the 

 personality, and others are in truly Mephistophelian opposition to it. 

 The discipline of the former and the control of the latter are the balance 

 of the personality. The lack of these qualities, with the conspicuous 

 preservation of other mental functions, gives us some of the most 

 striking features of dementia precox. Here we observe that certain 

 egocentric, sometimes formulated as autoerotic, tendencies, that all 

 persons have in some degree, acquired a markedly independent organiza- 

 tion, and crush the objective, social instincts of normal personality; 

 covering it with hallucinatory insult, picturing to the mind's eye offen- 

 sive scenes, preventing the personality from doing as it would, forcing 

 it to think and do things which are hateful. The acutest mental suffer- 

 ing that occurs seems to ensue when the main personality attempts the 

 unequal contest against them ; sentiment can paint a lurid picture of its 

 tortures in the death-grip of the destroying " complex." But as a rule 

 these trends gain the mastery without the struggle; and we see simply 

 the general failure of reaction to external things that gives us the ap- 

 parent apathy of these cases. 



