DUAL PERSONALITY.
SOME REMARKABLE CASES. STRANGER THAN FICTION. Ansel Bourne, a well-known preacher in the United Status, went one morning to his bank, drew out some money, paid a bill, and entered a tramway-car. 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 the preacher's sudden flight. One day a man called A. J. Brown, who had opened a small confectioner's shop in Norristown, Pennsylvania, suddenly "awoke" in utter astonishment ftt his surroundings and announced that he was the misaipig minister, Ansel Bourne, of Prividence. He was quite unable to explain how he "became '•Brown," A QUICK CHANGE. Stranger still is the case of varying personality carefully studied by Dr. Morton Prince. Miss Beauchamp, a teacher, possessed 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 mischievous, ill-educated person. Miss Beauchamp was an amiable, cultivated, 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 than fiction, and often more "improbable." A girl of normal mind, to all appearances awakens from sleep and finds herself an entire stranger in her own home. She does not know her names, and cannot read, write, or name common things. She remains in this state for some weeks, and then awakens to her real self, and' without any memory of the extraordinary phase through which she has passed. PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. In most of the instances of alternating personality investigated by psychologists the subjects have no clear knowledge of '.heir other helves. They suddenly become another person with a mind entirely blank as to the past, and they come to themselves as suddenly and astoundiugly. Many of us who are apt to scoff at a suggestion of abnormality in ourselves are 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 detachj ment from one's normal self and a loss J of interest in the present. We often approach the border-line of dissociation 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 shoek, or a few seconds under an anaesthetic, a man will awaken and say, "Where am IV From this state may ensue that deeper perplexity when a man forgets who he is—W.M. in the Dailv Mail.
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Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1919, Page 11
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526DUAL PERSONALITY. Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1919, Page 11
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