The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams, page 829

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE HUMAN MIND

Much later, under hypnosis in hospital, he recovered the lost memories; he recalled how he had asked questions and studied the sign-posts ; how he was actuated by a violent desire to get away from the zone of danger. Here natural fear, long honourably repressed, had got the upper hand, while the personal self was dazed and had split off all the memories of past existence, all the ideals of duty. But once he was well out of danger there was no longer the same urge to the instinct of self-preservation, and the normal self could again get the upper hand. The case is very like one of double personality, save that one of the “ personalities*? is a very minor and low type of mental being, with only the one impulse of self-preservation as its mainspring instead of a whole system of complex motives. It might well have been more powerful and more complete; if so, it might have held its own more or less permanently, and we should have had a typical case of total and long-continued loss of memory.

Thus the mechanism of hysteria, as of hypnosis and multiple personality, is a splitting, a dissociation ; in cases of hysterical blindness or paralysis just as much as in loss of memory. Let us add two further illustrations. A soldier was stooping to pick up a bomb, when it exploded. He was luckily not wounded ; but he found himself with mouth fixed open, tongue stuck out, and unable to move his jaws or utter a sound. He had begun to give vent to an instinctive cry ; but in the very act his control of the machinery of voice was cut off, dissociated, probably as a natural reaction to the extremity of fear and shock. The tongue and mouth came under control again in a few hours ; but the hysterical dumbness persisted. The Unconscious had used the paralysis of fear as its peg on which to hang the symptom which would withdraw the man from further danger.

One final case of great interest from McDougall. An Air Force cadet—keen, clever, athletic—fell and bruised his right arm as he was running to mess, and the arm was put in a sling for a few days. When the sling was removed, the arm was rigid, paralysed. ‘The boy denied that flying had “got on his nerve” and said how keen he was to go to the front. It turned out, however, that he had recently had a narrow escape from a serious accident while flying. McDougall put him into hypnosis ; but when he was then commanded to move his arm, a strange conflict was revealed. ‘“ The arm moved ** (we are quoting McDougall’s

words), “‘ but, instead of obeying my suggestions, it performed the most extraordinary contortions with tremendous energy. Very soon my ‘spell’ was broken; the patient came suddenly out of hypnosis; and then, in place of his usual cheerful friendliness, displayed a fierce resentment, told me he hated me, etc. On the following day he was his usual cheerful friendly self; but he reported that, when he woke from sleep, he had found his right arm interlaced among the bars at the head of his bed and had had the greatest difficulty in extricating it. These events were repeated with some variations. It was as though he were possessed by a devil. ,

“ There is no room for doubt that this was a case of strongly-repressed fear, generating a strong subconscious aversion from return to duty. When I tried to force him back to duty by removing the disability, the repressed fear broke through and (as in an animal brought to bay) generated anger against me. The significance of the contortions of the arm is less clear; we may fairly suppose that they expressed a conflict between the repressing forces and an impulse to strike me.”

Thus even in the finest characters the Unconscious may be busily at work as the conscious self’s antagonist. And the more strongly natural instinct is repressed, the deeper-buried is the conflict and the more difficulty is experienced in bringing it to the light of day. The repressed fear had used the accident and the sling for its own ends. The anger of the Unconscious, as it felt its unworthy drift resisted, was forced temporarily upon the whole personality. This throws a flood of light upon much of our ordinary experience. And finally the independent action of the arm is noteworthy. We have again a resemblance to dual personality ; but the minor personality here is in control only of a single limb. McDougall himself likens the symptoms to those of demoniac possession, and we cannot doubt that those who in other ages were described as possessed by evil spirits were in reality the sport of repressed parts of their own selves acting through their Unconscious.

Another interesting form of escape from the demons of an overwhelming situation is what is called Regression. The patient, so to speak, drops adult self-direction, abandons all memory of recent years and relapses towards childhood or infancy—and_ irresponsibility. ‘That is the fundamental wish of the worried spirit, childish irresponsi-

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