AMAZING PUZZLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21529, 29 December 1931, Page 4

AMAZING PUZZLE

WOMAN WITH EIGHT SELVES RIDDLE FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS. The amazing case of a woman with eight distinct personalities is described in the Lancet by Dr Robert M. Riggall, of London, clinical psychologist to the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases. _ The patient—“ Mabel ” —an unmarried woman of 37, complained of complete lapses of consciousness, during which she found that someone was performing actions and writing letters antagonistic to As a result 6f inducing hypnosis Mabel’s eight personalities, all of whom were ignorant of what the others did, were revealed. Any one of them could be evoked at any time. Their habits and even their/handwriting differed. The various personalities discovered were as follows: 1. Mabel herself, good, patient, moral, and economical, without many faults, but usually unhappy. 2. Miss Dignity, who considered it her duty to do all in her power to hurt Mabel. 3. Biddy, bright, cheerful, laughing, and helpful. 4. 5, and 6. Hope, Faith, and Dame Trot, harmless, and appearing but seldom. 7. Miss Take, so named because when she first appeared she said that she did not know what her name was and added that she was “just a mistake.” 8. Another unnamed personality with an evil expression. “ Miss Dignity ” was constantly antagonistic to Mabel, periodically tearing up the latter’s clothes and throwing away her money and jewellery—“of malice aforethough.” At one time so much money was destroyed that Mabel had to live on bread and one cup of tea a day; at another so much of her underclothing was torn up that she was unable to keep warm. “Miss Dignity ” even wrote a letter to her urging suicide and saying that she enclosed a packet of poison. Mabel was herself a strict Christian, with high ideals and anxious to live up to her principles. In “Miss Dignity,” however, she appeared to find an outlet through which fulfilment of repressed wishes could be satisfied. The object of the treatment of the case was to explain to the various personalities their identity with Mabel and to attempt to "fuse” them. This was effected to some extent by psycho-analysis, which, according to Dr Riggall, offers the only hope of effecting a complete cure. But “Miss Dignity” continually resisted the attempts to destroy her particular personality.