Part 19 (1/2)

CHAPTER IX

THE LARGER SELF

It is barely fifty years since the problem of supreme interest to mankind--the problean to be studied in a really scientific way; yet in that half century ress has been made toward its solution than in all the previous thousands of years that have elapsed since man first asked himself: What am I? What are my capabilities? Shall I be, after I have ceased to exist here on earth?

Ar novelthe body and the ators have thrown a flood of new and largely unexpected light on the great questions at issue, and have opened vistas of hope and aspiration and actual achieveone tiht, to be sure, much of their effort appears to be irreparably, even wantonly, destructive, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the blows they have dealt at the traditional conception of the central fact in ible entity variously known as the ego, the self, the personality, ani principle, the soul Every man instinctively believes that there is only one of hihts, his sensations, his ee in the course of time, he himself will re this belief into e, he declares, with the excellent Thomas Reid:

”The conviction which every man has of his identityneeds no aid of philosophy to strengthen it; and no philosophy can weaken it without first producing soree of insanity The identity of a person is a perfect identity; wherever it is real it adrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same and in part different, because a person is a monad, and is not divisible into parts”[45]

[45] Thomas Reid's ”Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man,”

pp 228-231 (James Walker's edition of 1850)

But the modern explorer of the nature of ,the siine it to be In reality it isup, and so up so completely that it may even be replaced by an entirely new self You do not believe this? I can prove it to you from the facts not only of scientific experiment, but also of everyday observation”

Naturally, in support of this statee case of BCA, just narrated And although cases at all similar to the BCA affair are extre in other ways so-called ”total dissociation of personality” For example:

A prosperous Philadelphia pluood health, left his home one day to take a short walk

Froh the earth had opened and sed him There was no reason why he should abscond or coeneral belief was that he had met with foul play Rewards were offered, and detectives e him up for dead, sold his business and reo

Nearly two years later, the work by the conduct of one of their nu his hand to his head in a bewildered way, sprang to his feet, and cried:

”My God! Where aet here? This isn't one insane, ran forward to pacify him

”Steady, Sht in a minute”

The other only stared at him wildly

”Why do you call me Smith?” he deone by since you cao! You're crazy, man It isn't half an hour since I left et a breath of fresh air before dinner”

”Look here,” said the foreently into a seat, ”where do you suppose you are, anyway?”

”Why, in Philadelphia, of course”

It was indeed the Philadelphia plu self had returned to him as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had vanished A few days more and he was happily reunited with the fa the dead[46]

[46] Boris Sidis's ”Multiple Personality,” pp 365-368 This book, by one of the foreists, should be read by all students of abnory

Where, itthese two years? What had becoo of which alone he had forhout the period when he lacked knowledge of his identity, and ithout memory for his earlier life and social relationshi+ps, did he display the slightest sign of mental aberration He was as sane and real to himself and to those hom he came into contact, and was as able to take care of hi, as he had ever been in the years before he experienced the remarkable psychical upheaval that had substituted an alien, a ”secondary” self in the place of the self he had always been and known

A blow, an illness, a fright, the stress of a prolonged e about this weird condition, of which I could give illustrative cases to a nues of this book[47] Soh fortunately seldom, there may be--as in the case of BCA--a double or even ain the development of two, three, four, or more secondary selves, which alternate with one another in a way productive of the ony to the helpless victim