Page:A case of double consciousness Albert Wilson 1904 MPD in a child.djvu/11

Rh stealing, and defended it partly on so-called Socialistic principles. Thus she argued, "If people don't give you things, why, nick them. Quite right too, if you are not found out." She also carried her object into practice, and one day took an orange from a shop door, but seeing a policeman approach went back and replaced it and made off. Here is exhibited also the protective instinct after the act.

I stated before that pain might occur in one sub-stage and be absent in the normal. This was demonstrated in the case of toothache. Whilst in B 2 sub-stage ("a thing") she had a good deal of toothache. It always disappeared when she became normal. On one occasion we gave her chloroform during B 2 stage and extracted the tooth. She was very unwilling at first, but most pleased to be free from the pain afterwards. Her father coaxed her to the normal state (A), and this lasted for ten minutes. She at once detected the gap and the blood, and was quite surprised, and asked how it was she never felt any pain or knew anything of the chloroform.

A nerve specialist, the late Dr. Althaus, witnessed this performance, and was greatly interested in it. About a year later, when B 3, or "Old Nick," she again had toothache, but the toothache left her if she went into any other condition.

Another illustration of the isolation of different sub-stages was shown by the following occurrence:—Once, whilst showing me a toy wigwam which had been given to her in the B 3 or "Old Nick" stage, she being then in that state, she suddenly dropped the toy and passed into a new stage, a variation of "Good thing" or "Good creature" (B6). In this new personality she commenced talking, but could not be induced to take any interest in the wigwam, which she declared she had never seen or handled before. As soon as she returned to B 3 she resumed her interest in the toy.

Another minor detail bearing on the same point was that some sub-stages feared thunder, others did not, and so on. When she grew up to be about sixteen, the normal stage (A) had practically gone for ever. She was sometimes B 3 ("a thing"), but more usually B 6 ("good creature"), a very nice docile child. I instructed the parents as to careful training, and they had broken the habit of baby talk and the forward free manner which belonged to almost every abnormal personality. They also called her by her proper name, and she would say, "I sup-