228 PSYCHOLOGY. 



in conversation with a tliiid party, lier anaesthetic hand 

 would write simple answers to questions Avhispered to her by 

 himself. " Do you hear ?" he asked. " No,'' was the uncon- 

 sciously written reply. "But to answer you must hear." 

 " Yes, quite so." "Then how do you manage?" " I don't 

 hioioJ" " There must be some one who hears me." " Yes" 

 " Who ?" " Someone other than Lucie." " Ah ! another per- 

 son. Shall we give her a name ?" " No." " Yes, it will 

 be more convenient." " Well, Adrienne, then." " Once bap- 

 tized, the subconscious personage," M. Janet continues, 

 " grows more definitely outlined and displays better her 

 psychological characters. In particular she shows us that 

 she is conscious of the feelings excluded from the conscious- 

 ness of the primary or normal personage. She it is who 

 tells us that I am pinching the arm or touching the little 

 linger in which Lucie for so long has had no tactile sensa- 

 tions." * 



In other cases the adoption of the name by the second- 

 ary self is more spontaneous. I have seen a number of 

 incipient automatic Avriters and mediums as yet imperfectly 

 * developed,' who immediately and of their own accord 

 write and speak in the name of departed spirits. These 

 may be public characters, as Mozart, Faraday, or real per- 

 sons formerly known to the subject, or altogether imagi- 

 nary beings. Without prejudicing the question of real 

 ' spirit-control ' in the more developed sorts of trance- 

 utterance, I incline to think that these (often deplorably 

 unintelligent) rudimentary utterances are the work of an 

 inferior fraction of the subject's own natural mind, set free 

 from control by the rest, and working after a set pattern 

 fixed by the prejudices of the social environment. In a 

 spiritualistic community we get optimistic messages, whilst 

 in an ignorant Catholic village the secondary personage 

 calls itself by the name of a demon, and proffers blas- 

 phemies and obscenities, instead of telling us how happy it 

 is in the summer-land.f 



* L' Automatisme Psychologique, p. 318. 



f Cf. A. Constans ; Relation sur uue Epidemie d'hysteio-denimiopathie 

 en 1861. 2me ed. Paris, 1863.— Chiap e Franzolini: L'Epidemia d'istero- 

 demonopatie iu Verzegnis. Reggio, 1879. — See also J. Kerner's little 

 v\-f>rk : Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Besessenseins. 1836. 



