PROBLEMS OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 759 



circular and so-called moral insanity. The lesser states of depres- 

 sion and exaltation as commonly observed in such conditions, each 

 accompanied or represented by altered points of view of the indi- 

 vidual, when closely studied seem not to differ essentially from 

 the similar conditions experienced by normal individuals and 

 called moods. These alterations of character can be studied most 

 advantageously in disintegrated personality where they can be 

 watched as they take place under the very eye of the observer. 

 They may include even changes in the physiological reactions, 

 like the effect of alcohol, tobacco, sunlight, and the environment, 

 and may or may not be accompanied by alterations of memory. 

 Thus, to take an actually observed example, an individual at one 

 moment amiable, religious, forbearing, the typical saint of litera- 

 ture, one who loves the quiet idealism and subdued light of the 

 cloister, and whose moral and physiological tastes lead her to dis- 

 like coffee, cigarettes, wine, the glare of sunlight, gaudy fashions 

 of dress, and a score of other pleasures of the flesh, becomes sud- 

 denly, in a moment of time, strong, resolute, "quick and sudden 

 in quarrel," without religious tastes, one who delights in cigarettes, 

 wine, the pleasure of the table, gay fashions of dress, and above 

 all, in the strenuous Rooseveltian life. More than this, the char- 

 acter of an individual of this instability can be modified almost at 

 will by artificial methods, or indirectly through the effect of fatigue 

 and emotion. A certain number of the traits of one state being 

 swapped for those of another, and vice versa. 



Similar alterations of character have been artificially brought 

 about by one experimenter in an individual with an apparently 

 healthy nervous system, five different character states being ob- 

 tained without changes of memory. 



Such phenomena as these raise the problem of what is character, 

 or more specifically, what is the fundamental process which brings 

 about the alterations observed in special diseased conditions? The 

 data at our disposal do not allow us to answer completely these 

 questions, but we have enough facts at hand to show that a very 

 large share in the process must be attributed to either psychical 

 dissociation, or incapacity to make complete syntheses, in con- 

 sequence of which the "personal perceptions" are very much re- 

 stricted. 



The fact that the same sort of alterations occur in the profound 

 psychoses, in hysteria, and even in the moods of normal life, suggest 

 that all are different types of disaggregation of the field of con- 

 sciousness and perversions of the same mechanism, though the 

 exciting cause may be different in each case. , 



The problems of functional dissociation, abnormal syntheses 

 and automatisms belong to those which are fundamental to ab- 



