771 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



psychology go to show that the psychological disaggregation does 

 not follow as much psychical as physiological lines. The cleavage 

 is brought about by psychological influences trauma (ideas, 

 emotions, etc.); but when the fracture occurs, it tends to follow the 

 physiological map. Just as when a blow shatters a mineral, the 

 lines of fracture follow the natural lines of crystallization, so, while 

 a psychical trauma shatters a psycho-psychological system, the 

 cleavage follows very closely the neuron association systems. 



Thus when Louis Vive* passed into one state in which he had left 

 hemiplegia, into another in which he had right hemiplegia, another 

 with paraplegia, each with its own group of memories, the alterations 

 can only be explained on the ground that these states were deter- 

 mined by some sort of physiological dissociating system. Likewise, 

 when our subject M 1 developed a complete amnesia for the Eng- 

 lish language, and understood and spoke only German, if we take 

 into account all the phenomena, it would seem this amnesia was 

 determined by physiological dissociation excited by a primarily con- 

 scious and later subconscious fear of injury. 



Sally Beauchamp's 'general anesthesia is in no way the result of 

 ideas psychologically in association with it. When B I and B IV 

 exhibit a complete amnesia for each other's lives and exhibit their 

 contradictory traits of character and physiological reactions, it must 

 be because different neurons are brought into activity in each case. 



B IV in hypnosis, while slightly groggy from ether, talks intelli- 

 gently and narrates the history of an adventure of the preceding 

 day. I suggest to her that she shall open her eyes, wake up and be 

 herself, a suggestion I have given a hundred times successfully. She 

 opens her eyes and straightway she does not know me, or her sur- 

 roundings, or who she herself is. An enormous dissociation of psych- 

 ologically associated ideas has taken place, whether as the effect 

 of the ether or some other cause, I do not know, but according to 

 psychological laws her syntheses should have been enlarged. I close 

 her eyes again and she regains intelligence, remarking that " when 

 my eyes are open I do not know who I am." 



On the other hand, automatism and abnormal syntheses seem to 

 be affected by psychical laws, particularly that of the law of asso- 

 ciation of ideas. Abnormal psychology then points strongly to the 

 conclusion that there is a normal physiological dissociating mechan- 

 ism which is the function of the nervous organization. It is this 

 mechanism which brings about such spontaneous normal states as 

 absent mindedness, sleep, normal induced states, like hypnosis; and 

 through its perversions the dissociations underlying abnormal 

 phenomena. 



