223. We must now go on to cases where the origin of the cleavage seems to us quite arbitrary, but where the cleavage itself seems even for that very reason to be more profound. It is no longer a question of some one morbidly exaggerated emotion, but rather of a scrap of the personality taken at random and developing apart from the rest. To recur to our physical simile, we are dealing no longer with a corn, a boil, a cancer, but with a tumour starting apparently from some scrap of embryonic tissue which has become excluded from the general development of the organism.

The commonest mode of origin for such secondary personalities is from some access of sleep-waking, which, instead of merging into sleep again, repeats and consolidates itself, until it acquires a chain of memories of its own, alternating with the primary chain.

An old case of Dr. Dyce's forms a simple example of this type. Dr. Mesnet's case also should be referred to here (see Appendices). In these instances the secondary state is manifestly a degeneration of the primary state, even when certain traces of supernormal faculty are discernible in the narrowed psychical field.

224. And here, as an illustration of a secondary condition purely degenerative, I may first mention post-epileptic states, although they belong too definitely to pathology for full discussion here. Post-epileptic conditions may run parallel to almost all the secondary phases which we have described. They may to all outward semblance closely resemble normality, - differing mainly by a lack of rational purpose, and perhaps by a recurrence to the habits and ideas of some earlier moment in the patient's history. Such a condition resembles some hypnotic trances, and some factitious personalities as developed by automatic writing. Or, again, the post-epileptic state may resemble a suddenly developed idee fixe triumphing over all restraint, and may prompt to serious crime, abhorrent to the normal, but premeditated in the morbid state. There could not, in fact, be a better example of the unchecked rule of middle-level centres; - no longer secretly controlled, as in hypnotic trance, by the higher-level centres; - which centres in the epileptic are in a state not merely of psychological abeyance, but of physiological exhaustion.

I give in an Appendix a remarkable narrative from the Zoist, which shows the inevitable accomplishment of a post-epileptic crime in such a way as to bring out its analogy with the inevitable working out of a post-hypnotic suggestion (224 A).

225. The case of Ansel Bourne, which I give next in an Appendix, is a very unusual one. It is perhaps safest to regard his change of personality as post-epileptic, although I know of no recorded parallel to the length of time during which the influence of the attack must have continued. The effect on mind and character would suit well enough with this hypothesis. The "Brown " personality showed the narrowness of interests and the uninquiring indifference which is common in such states. But on this theory the case shows one striking novelty, namely, the recall by the aid of hypnotism of the memory of the post-epileptic state. It is doubtful, I think, whether any definite post-epileptic memory had ever previously been recovered. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether serious recourse had ever been had at such times to hypnotic methods, whose increasing employment certainly differentiates the later from the earlier cases of split personality in a very favourable way. And this application of hypnotism to post-epileptic states affords us possibly our best chance - I do not say of directly checking epilepsy, but of getting down to the obscure conditions which predispose to each attack.

226. The two cases reported by Dr. Proust and M. Boeteau quoted in the next Appendices belong to the same general type as Ansel Bourne's. There does not seem, however, to be any definite evidence that the secondary state was connected with epileptic attacks. It was referred rather by the physicians who witnessed it to a functional derangement analogous to hysteria, though it must be remembered that there are various forms of epilepsy, which are not completely understood, and some of which may be overlooked by persons who are not familiar with the symptoms. In both these cases, again, the memory of the secondary states was recovered through hypnotism.

227. Another remarkable case was that of the Rev. Thomas C. Hanna,1 in whom complete amnesia followed an accident. By means of a method which Dr. Sidis (who studied the case) calls "hypnoidisation," he was able to prove that the patient had all his lost memories stored in his subliminal consciousness, and could temporarily recall them to the supraliminal. By degrees the two personalities which had developed since the accident were thus fused into one and the patient was completely cured.

228. The next case I give (228 A) is one reported by Dr. Drewry. This is of the "ambulatory" type, like Ansel Bourne's, but is remarkable in that it was apparently associated with a definite physical lesion - an abscess in the ear - the cure of which was followed by the rapid return of the patient to his normal condition. There was also in this case an inherited tendency to eccentricity, if not to insanity.

229. I may next cite a case in which the secondary state seems to owe its origination to a kind of tidal exhaustion of vitality, as though the repose of sleep were not enough to sustain the weakened personality, which lapsed on alternate days into exhaustion and incoherence (229 A).

230. The secondary personalities thus far dealt with have been the spontaneous results of some form of misère psychologique; of defective integration of the psychical being. We shall now see that when cohesion is thus relaxed a slight touch from without can effect dissociations which, however shallow and almost playful in their first inception, may stiffen by repetition into phases as marked and definite as those secondary states which spring up of themselves, that is to say, from self-suggestions which we cannot trace. I quote in Appendices some examples of these factitious secondary personalities, drawn from Dr. Pierre Janet, the most ingenious and indefatigable of workers in this field.

1 For full details of this, see Dr. Boris Sidis'work, "The Psychology of Suggestion. a Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society" (New York, 1898).

231. Up to this point the secondary states which we have considered, however startling to old-fashioned ideas of personality, may, at any rate, be regarded as forms of mental derangement or decay - varieties on a theme already known. Now, however, we approach a group of cases to which it is difficult to make any such definition apply. They are cases where the secondary state is not obviously a degeneration; - where it may even appear to be in some ways an improvement on the primary; so that one is left wondering how it came about that the man either originally was what he was, or - being what he was - suddenly became something so very different. There has been a shake given to the kaleidoscope, and no one can say why either arrangement of the component pieces should have had the priority.

In the classical case of Félida X. the second state is, as regards health and happiness, markedly superior to the first (see 231 A).