gayety, the men by sudden disproportionate alcoholic and other excesses (also fugues!). These transferences and simulations may, as is known, produce real double personalities, which have long excited the interest of writers with a psychological trend (see Goethe's "Zwei-Seelen-Problem," and among the modern writers Herman Bahr, Gorki, et al.). "Double personality" is not a mere literary term, it is a fact in natural science of general interest to psychology and psychiatry, especially when it manifests itself in the form of double consciousness or dissociation of personality. The dissociated complexes are always differentiated by peculiarities of mood and character, as I have shown in a case of the kind.[1]
It happens not seldom that the transference gradually becomes stable and at least superficially replaces the original character. Every one knows people who when judged by their exterior are considered very gay and entertaining. Inwardly, or under circumstances seen in private life, they are sullen grumblers nurturing an open wound. Frequently the true nature suddenly breaks through the artificial investment, the assumed blithesomeness suddenly disappears and we are then confronted with a new person. A single word, a gesture, striking this wound, shows the complex lurking within the soul. Such imponderabilities of human emotional life must be borne in mind when we enter with our coarse experimental methods into the complicated mind of the diseased. In association experiments with patients who suffer from marked complex-sensitiveness (as in hysteria and dementia præcox) we find exaggeration of these normal mechanisms; hence their description and discussion will require more than a mere psychological aperçu.
- ↑ Jung: Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter okkulter Phänomene. Leipzig, 1902.
Comp. also Paulhan: La simulation dans le caractère.
