390 PSYCHOLOGY. 



The case of tliis proteiform individual would seem, theii), 

 nicely to corroborate M. P. Jauet's law that anaesthesias and 

 gaps in memor}^ go together. Coupling Janet's law with 

 Locke's that changes of memory bring changes of personal- 

 ity, we should have an apparent explanation of some cases at 

 least of alternate personality. But mere anaesthesia does 

 not sufficiently explain the changes of disposition, which are 

 probably due to modifications in the perviousness of motor 

 and associative paths, co-ordinate with those of the senso- 

 rial paths rather than consecutive upon them. And indeed 

 a glance at other cases than M. Janet's own, suffices to show 

 us that sensibility and memory are not coupled in any 

 invariable way.* M. Janet's law, true of his own cases, 

 does not seem to hold good in all. 



Of course it is mere guesswork to speculate on what 

 may be the cause of the amnesias which lie at the bottom 

 of changes in the Self. Changes of blood-supply have 

 naturally been invoked. Alternate action of the two hemi- 

 spheres was long ago proposed by Dr. Wigan in his book 

 on the Duality of the Mind. I shall revert to this expla- 

 nation after considering the third class of alterations of the 

 Self, those, namely, which 1 have called 'possessions.' 



I have myself become quite recently acquainted with 

 the subject of a case of alternate personality of the ' ambu- 



reader will find information and references relative to the other known 

 cases of the kind. 



* His own brother's subject Wit. . . . .although in her anaesthetic waking 

 state she recollected nothing of either of her trances, yet remembered her 

 deeper trance (in which her sensibilities became perfect — see above, p. 207) 

 when she was in her lighter trance. Nevertheless in the latter she was aa 

 anaesthetic as when awake. {Loc. cit. p. 619.) — It does not appear that 

 there was any important difference in the sensibility of Felida X. between 

 her two states — as far as one can judge from ^l. Azam's account .she was to 

 some degree anaesthetic in both {op. cit. pp. 71, 96).— In the case of double 

 personality reported by M. Dufay (Revue Scientifique, vol. xvrn. p. 69), 

 the memory seems to have been best in the more anaesthetic condition.^ 

 Hypnotic subjects made blind do not necessarily lose their visual ideas. It 

 appears, then, both that amnesias may occur without anaesthesias, and anaes- 

 thesias without amnesias, though they may also occur in combinatioa 

 Hypnotic subjects made blind by suggestion will tell 3'ou that they clearlj 

 imagine the things which they can no longer see. 



