380 PSYCHOLOGY. 



reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux.''^ At the age of four- 

 teeu this woman began to pass into a ' secondary ' state 

 characterized by a change in her general disposition and 

 character, as if certain 'inhibitions,' previously existing, 

 were suddenly removed. During the secondary state she 

 remembered the first state, but on emerging from it into 

 the first state she remembered nothing of the second. At 

 the age of forty-four the duration of the secondary state 

 (which was on the whole superior in quality to the original 

 state) had gained upon the latter so much as to occupy most 

 of her time. During it she remembers the events belonging 

 to the original state, but her complete oblivion of the sec- 

 ondary state when the original state recurs is often very 

 distressing to her, as, for example, when the transition 

 takes place in a carriage on her way to a funeral, and she 

 hasn't the least idea which one of her friends may be dead. 

 She actually became pregnant during one of her early sec- 

 ondary states, and during her first state had no knowledge 

 of how it had come to pass. Her distress at these blanks 

 of memory is sometimes intense and once drove her to 

 attempt suicide. 



To take another example, Dr. Kieger gives an account t 

 of an epileptic man who for seventeen years had passed his 

 life alternately free, in prisons, or in asylums, his character 

 being orderly enough in the normal state, but alternating 

 wdth periods, during which he would leave his home for 

 several weeks, leading the life of a thief and vagabond, be- 

 ing sent to jail, having epileptic fits and excitement, being 

 accused of malingering, etc., etc., and with never a memory 

 of the abnormal conditions which w^ere to blame for all 

 his wretchedness. 



" I have never got from anyone," says Dr. Rieger, " so singular an 

 impression as from this man, of whom it could not be said that he had 

 any properly conscious past at all. ... It is really impossible to think 

 one's self into such a state of mind. His last larceny had been per- 

 formed in Niirnberg, he knew nothing of it, and saw himself before the 



* First in the Revue Scientifique for May 26, 1876, then in his book, 

 Hypnotisme, Double Conscience, et Alterations de la Persounalite (Paris, 

 1887). 

 t Der Hypnotismus (1884), pp. 109-15. 



