Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/90

78 Dr. Barrows himself believed that "Old Stump" possessed more intelligence and knowledge than the patient ever had, but the record is not extensive enough to pronounce on that point. It seems most probable that "Old Stump" expressed what remained of the patient's sane self, which still existed, although the incoherent mass had control of the rest of her body.

In the case of successive personalities, if no memory is retained, each synthesis has to learn of the existence of the others as of third persons, and may cherish friendly or unfriendly feelings toward them. When memory is retained, if the change is not very great, the patient often expresses it by saying that he is "asleep," which is doubtless a phrase borrowed from the hypnotizer. According to Prof. Janet, the more intelligent often say: "But I am not asleep, it is absurd to say that; only I am changed, I am queer; what have you done to me?" Rose, who has four or five states, says, "It is always I, but not always the same thing."

When the change is more extensive, the patient often hesitates or refuses to claim identity with her own past self. Leonie, another of Prof. Janet's patients, has two other states which can be evoked successively and which possibly exist simultaneously. The third, which calls itself Leonore, says of the first: "A good woman, but pretty stupid; she is not I"; while of the second state—Leontine—she says: "How can you think me like that madcap? Happily, I am nothing to her." Leontine several times wrote letters while Leonie's attention was distracted. One of these ran as follows: "My dear good sir: I must tell you that Leonie really, really makes me suffer a great deal. She can not sleep, she gives me much trouble; I shall destroy her; she makes me dull, I am also sick and very tired. This is from your most devoted Leontine." When Leonie discovered these missives she always destroyed them, so the writer adopted the further plan of concealing them—with Leonie's own hands, of course in a photograph album, into which Leonie never dared look, because it had once contained the portrait of Dr. Gibert, who used to hypnotize her. In short, whenever Leonie fell into a fit of abstraction, she, or at least her body, was apt to do things which bore evidence of intelligent purpose and often of wishes very much at variance with Leonie's.

Subconscious states, which exist at the same time as the upper consciousness, may cause it many perplexities. Said one patient:  " 'I can not in the least understand what is going on. For some