230 A. We next come to cases of factitious secondary personalities, developed apparently from self-suggestions in the hypnotic state. I give first the classic case of Professor Pierre Janet's patient, Mme. B. (or Léonie), the subject of the experiments in telepathic hypnotisation described in 568 A. The summary here given is founded on a paper by Professor Janet, entitled "Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme," in the Revue Philosophique, March 1888, with comments of my own. The case is also constantly referred to in Professor Janet's L'Automatisme Psychologique1 (1889).

I may begin with a trivial incident, containing nothing new to students of hypnotism, but well illustrating the concurrent action of the supraliminal and the hypnotic personality - the hidden criticism which the subliminal self seems to be ever exercising upon the words and actions which our supraliminal selves fondly suppose to be the full expression of what we are.

In these researches Mme. B. in her everyday condition is known by the name of Léonie. In the hypnotic trance she has chosen for herself the name of Léontine, which thus represents her secondary personality. Behind these two, this triple personality is completed by a mysterious Léonore, who may for the present be taken as non-existent. A post-hypnotic suggestion was given to Léontine, that is to say, Léonie was hypnotised and straightway became Léontine, and Léontine was told by Professor Janet that after the trance was over, and Léonie had resumed her ordinary life, she, Léontine, was to take off her apron - the joint apron of Léonie and Léontine - and then to tie it on again. The trance was stopped, Léonie was awakened, and conducted Professor Janet to the door, talking with her usual respectful gravity on ordinary topics. Meantime her hands - the joint hands of Léonie and Léontine - untied her apron, the joint apron, and took it off. Professor Janet called Léonie's attention to the loosened apron. "Why, my apron.is coming off!" Léonie exclaimed, and with full consciousness and intention she tied it on again. She then continued to talk, and for her - for Léonie - the incident was over. The apron, she supposed, had somehow come untied, and she had retied it.

This, however, was not enough for Léontine. At Léontine's prompting the joint hands again began their work, and the apron was taken off again and again replaced, this time without Léonie's attention having been directed to the matter at all.

1 In this work and in most of the later references to the case by other writers, the three stages of personality are designated: Léonie 1, Léonie 2, Léonie 3. I use here the corresponding nomenclature of Dr. Janet's earlier report - Léonie, Léontine, and Léonore.

Next day Professor Janet hypnotised Léonie again, and presently Léon-tine, as usual, assumed control of the joint personality. "Well," she said, "I did what you told me yesterday! How stupid the other one looked " - Pontine always calls Lénie " the other one " - " while I took her apron off! Why did you tell her that her apron was falling off? I was obliged to begin the job over again".

This trifling incident well illustrates the important point which M. Janet in France and Gurney in England have largely helped to establish, namely, the persistence of the hypnotic self, as a remembering and reasoning entity, during the reign of the ordinary self.

Thus far we have dealt with a secondary personality summoned into being, so to say, by our own experiments, and taking its orders entirely from us. It seems, however, that, when once set up, this new personality can occasionally assume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say without any prompting. This is curiously illustrated by what may be termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Mme. B., and her secondary personality, Léntine. "She had left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. On the first page was a short note, written in a serious and respectful style. She was unwell, she said, worse on some days than on others, and she signed her true name, Mme. B. But over the page began another letter in a quite different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity, My dear good sir, I must tell you that B. really, really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me; I am going to demolish her, she bores me, I am ill also, this is from your devoted Léontine.' When Mme. B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her about this singular missive.

She remembered the first letter very distinctly,... but had not the slightest recollection of the second.... I at first thought that there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope.... But afterwards these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study their mode of production. I was fortunately able to watch Mme. B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in her left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic air; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round, wide awake, but surprised to see me, for in her state of distraction she had not noticed my approach.

Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever".

Léontine's independent action is not entirely confined to writing letters. She observed (apparently) that when her primary self, Léonie, discovered these letters, she (Léonie) tore them up. So Léontine hit on the plan of placing them in a photographic album into which Léonie could not look without falling into catalepsy (on account of an association of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose portrait had been in the album). In order to accomplish an act like this Léontine has to wait for a moment when Léonie is distracted, or, as we say, absent-minded. If she can catch her in this state Léontine can direct Léonie's walks, for instance, or make her start on a railway journey without luggage, in order to get to Havre as quickly as possible.

It will be observed that Léntine has now arrived at a point midway between the mere stages - which cannot be called personalities - through which Gurney's hypnotic subjects could be led backwards and forwards at pleasure (see 523 A), and, on the other hand, the fully-developed alternating personalities of such a case as Féida X. (see 231 A). If Léntine were habitually encouraged, if a large part of Mme. B.'s life were passed in that hypnotic stage in which Léntine holds unchecked dominion, we must suppose that Léontine would acquire more and more power of intervening in Mme. B.'s waking state - her Léonie state - also; until perhaps the relapses from Léontine into Léonie, from the secondary into the primary personality, - might become as brief and rare as they have become in the often-cited case of Féida X. And thus the whole personage might undergo profound alteration by gradual steps leading on from what was at first a mere momentary experiment.