The Dissociation of a Personality a Biographical Study in Abnormal Psychology

ooks, her friends, and pursuing a hygienic régime. It must be borne in mind that as yet she had no knowledge whatsoever of the existence of any second self, or of any consciousness beyond her own waking one. Everything she said and did as B II, and as Chris, was kept strictly from her. Her knowledge was limited to the fact that she went to sleep by command and waked up again. She was therefore in complete ignorance of her subconscious mental life, and of the fact that there was reason to suspect that there were within her trains of thought entirely out of harmony with her waking consciousness. It will be remembered that both B II and Chris used to try to rub their closed eyelids with the hands, though, as far as possible, I prevented both from doing this, often using physical force. B II never could explain why she did it; but Chris, speaking for herself, always said up and down from the first that it was her deliberate purpose to get her eyes open, and even went so far as to threaten insubordination, insisting that she would see, and that she "had a right to see." She complained rather piteously that it was not fair Miss Beauchamp should be allowed to see, while she was forbidden. So sometimes when B II rubbed her eyelids, as Chris later confessed, it was not B II herself who did it but Chris, "inside," as it were, who took B II's hands and rubbed her eyes. At such times Chris thought that if her eyes were opened (the joint eyes of B II and herself), she (Chri... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.