DUAL PERSONALITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1987, 7 June 1919, Page 1

DUAL PERSONALITY.

SOME REMARKABLE CASES

STRANGER THAN FICTION,

Ansel Bourne, a well-known preacher in the United States, went one morning to his bank, drew out some money, paid a bill, and entered a tramway ear. After getting into the car, Mr Bourne disappeared from his native town and was lost. Anxious friends used every possible means to discover his whereabouts, but without, discovering any clue to the mystery. There was no apparent cause for (he preacher's sudden ilight. One day a man called A. J. Brown, who had opened a small confectioner’s shop in Norristown, Pennsylvania, suddenly ‘'awoke" in utter astonishment at his surroundings, and announced that he was the missing minister’, Ansel Bourne, of Providence. He was quite unable to explain how he became “Brown.” A QUICK CHANGE. Stranger still is (he case of varying personality carefully studied by Dr. Morton Prince. Miss Beauchamp, a teacher, possessed of three distinct personalities, each a stranger to the other, and singularly unlike in character. In one of her remarkable quick changes, Miss Beauchamp became “Sally,” a mischevious, ill-educated person. Miss Beauchamp was an amiaidc, . aliivafed, and refined woman. “Sally" was a coarse shrew. Miss Beauchamp could write shorthand and talk French. “Sally” had no knowledge of shorthand or of any other language than her own imperfect English. When Miss Beauchamp became her original self she had no recollection of her behaviour as “Sally.” Fact is far more mysterious them fiction, and often more “improbable.” A girl of normal mind, to all appearance, awakens from her sleep, and finds herself an entire stranger in her own home. She does not know her name, and cannot read, write, or name common things. She remains in this state for some weeks, and then a.wakens to her real self, and without'any memory of the extraordinary phasethrough which she has passed.

P H YCHOLOGICAL PROP.LEMS

In most of the instances of alternating personality investigated by psychologists the subjects have no clear knowledge of their other lives. They suddenly become another person with a mind entirely blank as to the past, and they come to themselves as suddenly and astounding-

Many of ns who are apt- to scoff at a suggestion of abnormality in ourselves arc nevertheless dual personalities in a minor degree. Very few persons are entirely free from moods. It is frequently difficult to account for an attack of the “blues,” during which there Is sometimes a vague sense of detachment from one's normal sense and a loss of interest in the present. We often approach the border line of disassoeiation from our actual selves. We marvel at the sleepwalker who can unlock doors and perform intricate actions subconsciously. But, in a sense, we are dual personalities when we subconsciously steer a bicycle, carry on a conversation with a companion, and consciously note objects and admire the landscape. There is a vast unrecognised mental activity in that greater part of the mind below the conscious. After a shock, or a few seconds under an anaesthetic, a man will awaken and say, “Where am I?” Prom this .statement ensue that deeper perplexity when.a man forgets who he is.—W.M. in the Dailv Mail.