Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/629

 REVIEW 615

tell their own story in largest measure and however much one may feel that other interpretations are preferable to the one Professor Binet advocates, there is never any obtrusive suggestion that the facts are being distorted for the sake of theory. The work, which has already in its French form won for itself a dignified place in the opinion of psychologists beside Binet's other writings, belongs therefore to that very useful class of books, which from time to time attempts the synthesis of large bodies of new and rapidly gathered facts, such as at present characterize in so bewildering a fashion almost every branch of psychology.

The subject is treated under the three heads of (i) successive per- sonalities, (2) coexistent personalities and (3) alterations of personality. Spontaneous and induced somnambulism furnish the data for the first division. Azam's famous case of Fe*lida with her successive personali- ties, which have now been under observation upwards of thirty- five years, forms a fair example of the phenomena reported here. Under the second head are passed in review the more striking and familiar symptoms of hysteria, e. g., amenesias, anaesthesias, hyperaesthesias and unconscious coordinated activities, such as writing; while under the third head are cited the facts of altered personality as induced by suggestion in hypnosis, together with the facts of systematized anaes- thesias.

This meager statement of the contents of the book must suffice and I pass on to a brief consideration of the positive doctrine of personality maintained by the author.

Stated concisely the theory is this personality is altogether a relative matter of the synthesis of conscious conditions, cognitive, emotional and volitional. This synthesis may be broad and thorough- going, as in the case of the normal individual, overspreading and obscuring the presence of certain lesser synthesized experiences, or it may be relatively narrow and on a plane of essential equality with other like syntheses of mental conditions, each of which may then with equal propriety be regarded as a personality, each having in greater or lesser degree its own memory processes, emotions and character. The cases of double personality furnish the point of departure for this conception and on the whole its most convincing support.

Normal individuals on the basis of this doctrine really possess [potentially at least] an indefinite number of these selves, only it happm^ that one is distinctly predominant and the others, if recognized at all,