The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
It must be admitted, therefore, that _in certain persons_, at least,
_the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist
but mutually ignore each other,_ and share the objects of knowledge
between them. More remarkable still, they are _complementary_. Give an
object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it
from the other or others. Barring a certain common fund of information,
like the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the
under self is ignorant of, and _vice versâ_. M. Janet has proved this
beautifully in his subject Lucie. The following experiment will serve
as the type of the rest: In her trance he covered her lap with cards,
each bearing a number. He then told her that on waking she should
_not see_ any card whose number was a multiple of three. This is the
ordinary so-called 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' now well known, and
for which Lucie was a well-adapted subject. Accordingly, when she was
awakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said
she saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3. To the 12,
18, 9, etc., she was blind. But the _hand_, when the sub-conscious
self was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper
self in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's
lap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick
up all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others
lie. Similarly when the sight of certain things was suggested to the
sub-conscious Lucie, the normal Lucie suddenly became partially or
totally blind. "What is the matter? I can't see!" the normal personage
suddenly cried out in the midst of her conversation, when M. Janet
whispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The
anæsthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from
which hysterics suffer seem then to be due to the fact that their
secondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one
of a function which the latter ought to have retained. The curative
indication is evident: get at the secondary personage, by hypnotization
or in whatever other way, and make her _give up_ the eye, the skin, the
arm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon
regains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way
M. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salpétrière,
Wit...., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the
secret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. "Cessez
cette mauvaise plaisanterie," he said to the secondary self--and the
latter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock
of possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated
in this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible everywhere
except on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold
bracelet. This zone has feeling; but in the deepest trance, when all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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