- seCtIon sIx: seLF AnD otHeR
if they could contact the dissociated personality.
When James put Bourne into a hypnotic trance,
Mr Brown reappeared, describing the places he
had stayed and seeming unaware of any connec-
tion with Bourne’s life. James and Hodgson tried in
vain to reunite the two personalities and Hodgson
concluded that ‘Mr. Bourne’s skull to-day still covers
two distinct personal selves’ (James, 1890, i, p. 392).
What does this extraordinary case of ‘fugue’ tell
us? At the time, doctors, psychologists, and psy-
chical researchers argued over whether it could
be explained by epilepsy, fraud, split personality,
psychic phenomena, or even spirit possession
(James, 1890; Hodgson, 1891; Myers, 1903). Bourne
had blackouts and seizures that might indicate
epilepsy, but they could not, on their own, explain
the extraordinary phenomena. Perhaps the most
obvious thing to note is the connection between
memory and selfhood. When the character of
Brown reappeared, the memories of that missing
time came back and the rest of life seemed vague or
non-existent. When Bourne reappeared, the mem-
ories of Mr Brown and the whole of his short and
simple life were gone. As far as we know Mr Brown
never returned, and by late 1887 this personality
was gradually disintegrating.
At about that time, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fantastic tale of The Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) was published. By then many real-life cases of what
became known as multiple personality had appeared. Hypnosis, or mesmerism, was
popular for treating such conditions as hysteria, and occasionally doctors or psychia-
trists found that hypnotised patients manifested a completely different personality.
These patients, almost always women, did not just reveal different personality traits
(the way we use the term ‘personality’ today), but appeared to be two or more dis-
tinct people inhabiting a single body (what we might call persons or selves).
Early in 1898, the Boston neurologist Dr Morton Prince was consulted by
Miss Christine Beauchamp (Prince, 1906). She had endured a miserable and
abusive childhood and was suffering from pain, fatigue, nervousness, and other
symptoms which he treated with both conventional methods and hypnosis.
Under hypnosis a second, rather passive, personality appeared (labelled BII),
but one day Miss Beauchamp began speaking about herself as ‘she’ and a third
personality called Sally had appeared (BIII). Sally was childish, selfish, playful, and
naughty, while Miss Beauchamp was religious, upright, reserved, and self-con-
trolled; Sally was fit and strong while Miss Beauchamp was weak and nervous.
During many years of treatment, several more personalities appeared with differ-
ent tastes, preferences, skills, and even states of health.
Sally used to delight in tricking Miss Beauchamp by taking a long walk in the
dark and then ‘folding herself up’ to leave poor Miss Beauchamp to walk home,
terrified and ill. Even worse, Sally tore up Miss Beauchamp’s letters, shockedFIGURE 16.2 • Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: good
doctor and evil murderer sharing
the same body, from Robert
Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886
novel, here in the film adaptation
directed by Rouben Mamoulian
and starring Fredric March
(1931).