Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/230

210 210 PSYCHOLOGY. mand her to weep, and when awake she really sobs, but continues in the midst of her tears to talk of very gay matters. The sobbing over, there remained no trace of this grief, which seemed to have been quite sub-conscious." The primary self often has to invent an hallucination by which to mask and hide from its own view the deeds which the other self is enacting. Leonie 3 * writes real letters, whilst Leonie 1 believes that she is knitting ; or Lucie 3 really comes to the doctor's office, whilst Lucie 1 believes herself to be at home. This is a sort of delirium. The alphabet, or the series of numbers, when handed over to the attention of the secondary personage may for the time be lost to the normal self. Whilst the hand writes the alphabet, obediently to command, the ' subject,' to her great stupefaction, finds herself unable to recall it, etc. Few things are more curious than these relations of mutual exclusion, of which all gradations exist between the several partial consciousnesses. How far this splitting up of the mind into separate con- sciousnesses may exist in each one of us is a problem. M. Janet holds that it is only possible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect of unifying or co-or- dinating power. An hysterical woman abandons part of her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it together. The abandoned part meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or sub-conscious self. In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand, what is dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the next. The whole fund of experiences and knowledges remains integrated, and no split-off portions of it can get organized stably enough to form subordinate selves. The stability, monotony, and stupidity of these latter is often very striking. The post- hypnotic sub-consciousness seems to think of nothing but the order which it last received ; the cataleptic sub-con- sciousness, of nothing but the last position imprinted on the limb. M. Janet could cause definitely circumscribed red- dening and tumefaction of the skin on two of his subjects, subject may display.
 * M. Janet designates by numbers the different personalities which the