Psychical Duality

Psychical Duality, the phenomenon of division of personality into two, often mutually opposed complexes, is observed in the most varied psychopathological conditions. Even within the limits of normalcy, during attempts at self-contemplation, when reflecting on oneself and one's actions, a person ordinarily as if splits into two halves—the subject and the object. Some people have the habit of conducting all their reflections in the form of a dialogue with themselves. In conditions of psychical weakness caused by poisoning, infection, fatigue, etc., especially in certain groups of psychopaths (schizoids), more pronounced states of division may arise. Most frequently in such cases, on the one hand, the feeling of separateness from the external world weakens, and on the other—one's own personality is experienced as something distinct from oneself, as a foreign object of contemplation. Sometimes in similar states, hallucinatory visions of a double arise, a phenomenon however much more characteristic of schizophrenia, the psychopathological picture of which generally abounds in phenomena of P. d. These must first of all include ambivalence (see), which gives the personality polarly opposite impulses for action. Where the resulting struggle proceeds especially acutely, the personality divides into two halves with sharply hostile aspirations toward each other. Thus, in the initial period of the disease, many schizophrenics complain that they have a 'double soul,' simultaneously noble and base, or that some dark force has taken possession of them, pushing them toward actions that contradict their entire conscious existence. Some of them say that they constantly sense the presence of another person or an evil spirit beside them, hindering them from acting independently, suggesting repulsive thoughts, prompting them to absurd outbursts, to aggressiveness, to resistance to therapeutic measures. In others, the feeling of violation of spiritual unity results in the sensation of the presence of some repulsive creature within one's own body, as a result of which there arises the delusion of possession by an unclean force or the thought about the presence in the organism of some animal (e.g. a snake). Finally, some note that their personality has changed—there has been its transformation into another person with low and criminal inclinations. However, the former personality has not disappeared completely, but remained a passive spectator of what its substitute does. A special expression of P. d. is the delusion of simultaneous existence in different worlds (real and fantastic), on earth and in hell, etc. In many patients with disorganized speech, delusions, and hallucinations, Bleuler (Bleuler) described a special double orientation—excellent understanding of what is happening around, while at the same time apparently being completely immersed in the world of delusional fantasies and hallucinatory images. A related phenomenon is the so-called double thinking—two simultaneously proceeding series of thoughts: one relating to realistic, and the other to autistic (see Autism) thinking. In some patients, one can clearly trace how this second series is replaced by auditory hallucinations—voices that either repeat the patient's thoughts aloud or answer their delusional doubts and anxieties. The basis of the described phenomena apparently lies in the defeat of mechanisms whose regulatory activity, by displacing from consciousness elements not in agreement with its current content, ensures what is called the unity of personality. Due to the disruption of the activity of these mechanisms, consciousness loses its proper structure ^and is easily filled with unrelated or even standing in obvious contradiction to each other series of experiences. This circumstance acquires particularly important significance in relation to psychical formations that are products of the activity of the so-called lower, instinctual drives: undergoing in normality reworking in accordance with the ethical views prevailing in a given society, they now gain free access to consciousness in their primitive form. The disorder is further aggravated by the addition of automatically arising, beyond consciousness, impulsive acts, which, being incomprehensible to the patient himself and incompatible with his normal consciousness, urgently need explanation, which is given by the delusional thought about the presence in the patient or in his immediate vicinity of a hostile force compelling him to act against his own will. The main cause of such disorders in the activity of psychical regulators is apparently the general weakening of nervo-psychic energy. This explains the occurrence of phenomena of P. d., besides schizophrenia, also in various other conditions of psychical weakness (see above), as well as often during sleep. Double Consciousness. A different mechanism from the above-described disorders of the disruption of personality wholeness in changes of consciousness caused by hypnotic suggestion, as well as characteristic of certain types of hysterical 'twilight' states. The main difference is that, whereas in schizophrenia there takes place a splitting of personality with simultaneous retention in consciousness of the isolated psychical complexes, in hypnotic and hysterical states there occurs the switching off of normal consciousness with all its content and its replacement by another, filled with thoughts, feelings, and images either suggested or having been in repression, detached. This is most sharply manifested in the phenomenon that for a time attracted extremely great attention both from psychiatrists and psychologists and received the name of double or alternating consciousness (other terms: double or alternating personality, double 'I', second etat, second life, dual existence, dedoublement de la personnalite etc.). Its classic example is considered the case of Felida X described by Azam (Azam; 1876). This hysterical individual, in a normal state calm, serious, restrained, somewhat sad and hypochondriacal, from the age of 14 began from time to time to fall into a state resembling deep sleep. After 2-3 minutes she would awaken as a completely different person with a special 'I'. Preserving the general memory of her former personality, she did not remember what had happened to her immediately before falling asleep, related to those around her as if she had just seen them, and decisively changed in character and behavior, becoming lively, cheerful, frivolous, and coquettish. After some time her cheerfulness would suddenly be cut off, her head would droop, her whole body would stiffen, and then she, as if awakening, would return to her former state, in which she no longer remembered anything of what she had just experienced (thus, having become pregnant during one of such transformations, Felida later, upon returning to herself, for a long time could not understand the meaning of the changes developing in her organism). In old age the periods of existence of the second personality became more prolonged, and the first began to recede to the background, until finally it itself became an episodic phenomenon, arising always for a comparatively short time, once or twice a month. Very characteristic of such disorders of consciousness are the special amnesias (see), maintaining the separateness of the once-arisen two personalities, but not hindering each of them from remembering all their previous states; thus there arise as it were two parallel chains of memories, strung together by series consisting of fragments of psychical contents experienced under the sign of each of the isolated personalities (in some of the described cases not two, but three, four or more were formed). In a number of cases the second personality arose in such a way that a series of its experiences was attached to some long-forgotten (repressed from consciousness) experience of childhood or early youth, in accordance with which its psychical appearance bore the imprint of puerilism. In the patient Lemaitre (Lemaitre), who in the second state also changed her name (Azaila instead of Jenny), the splitting first occurred after she had experienced a psychical trauma; however, such a connection was far from always possible to discover. Some authors consider the constitutional 'lability of consciousness' a necessary prerequisite for the occurrence of such phenomena. Apparently a significantly more important role in their origin is played on the one hand—suggestion, and on the other—the desire of patients to be interesting to the studying physicians: in most cases the transformations occurred when the patients were objects of careful clinical observation, and sometimes, as with Janet (Janet), of numerous hypnotic experiments. This explains the circumstance that in the behavior of such patients there is much artificial, and often directly made, false. It must be added that in individual cases the formation of a 'second personality' was the direct result of hypnotic suggestion that set itself precisely this goal. In many respects related to 'double consciousness'—mediumistic and spiritualistic reincarnations, of course in those cases when they are not the product of conscious deception. Phenomena of psychical division have been the subject of description in many works of fiction; some of them give a very good and truthful depiction of them.

Such are: 'Aurelia' by Gérard de Nerval (a beautiful self-description of schizophrenic splitting), 'Golem' by Meyrink, 'The Devil's Elixir' by Hoffmann, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' by Stevenson, 'The Double' and Ivan's conversation with the devil in 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Dostoevsky, and others.