DUAL PERSONALITY

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 10

DUAL PERSONALITY

SOME REMARKABLE CASES

STRANGER THAN FICTION.

Ansel Bourne, a well-known, preacher in the. United States, went one .morning to his bank, drew out some money, paid a bill, and entered a tramway-car. After getting '-into tho car Mr. Bourne disappeared from his native town and was test. 'Anxious friends used every possible means to discover his whereabouts, but without discovering any clue to the mystery. There was no apparent cause for the preacher's sudden flight. One day a- man called.A. J. Brown, who had opened a .small confectioner's ,shop in Norristown, Pennsylvania, suddenly "awoke" in utter astonishment at his surroundings and'announced that he was the missing minister, Ansel Bourne., of Providence. He was quite unable to explain how be became "Brown." "A QUICK CHANGE. Stranger still is the case of varying personality carefully studied by Dr. Morton Prince. Miss Beauchamp, a teacher, possessed three distinct personalities, each a stranger to the other, and singularly unlike in character. In one of her remarkable quick changes Miss Beauchamp became "Sally," a mischievous, ill-edu-cated person. Miss Beauchamp was an amiable, cultivated, and refined woman*. | "Sally" was a coarse shrew. Miss Beauchamp could write shorthand and talk French. "Sally" had no knowledge of shorthand or of any other language than her own imperfect English. When Miss Beauchamp became her original self she had no recollection of her behaviour as "Bally." Fact is far more mysterious than fiction, and often more "improbable." A girl of normal mind, to all appearance, awakens from sleep and finds herself an entire stranger in her own home. She does not know her name, and cannot read, write, or name common things. She remains in this state for some weeks, and then awakens to her real self, and without any memory of the extraordinary phase through which she has passed. PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. . Tn most of the instances of alternating personality investigated by psychologists the subjects have no clear knowledge of their other selves. They suddenly become another, person with a ntind entirely blank as to the past, and they come to themselves as suddenly and astouhdingly. Many of us who are apt to scoff at a suggestion of abnormality in ourselves are nevertheless dual personalities in a minor degree. Very few persons are entirely free from moods. It is frequently difficult to account for an attack of the "blues" during which there is" somutimes a vague sense of detachment from one's normal self and a loss of interest in the present. We often approach the border-line of dissociation from our actual selves.' We marvel at the sleepwalker who can unlock doors and perform intricate actions subconsciously. But, in a sense, we are dual personalities when we subconsciously steer a bicycle, carry on a conversation with a companion, and consciously; note objects and admire the landscape. There is a vast unrecognised mental activity in that greater part of the mind below the conscious. After,.a shock, or a few seconds under an anaesthetic, a man will.awaken and say, "Where am I?" From this state may ensue that deoper perplexity when a man forgets who he: is.--W.M. in the Daily Mail.