Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/102

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84
ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

has since gone abroad. We should not underestimate the importance of the fact that her character has become pleasanter and more stable. Here we may recall the cases cited in which the second state gradually replaced the first state. Perhaps this is a similar phenomenon.

It is well known that somnambulic manifestations are commenced at puberty.[1] The attacks of somnambulism in Dyce’s case[2] began immediately before puberty and lasted just till its termination. The somnambulism of H. Smith is likewise closely connected with puberty.[3]

Schroeder von der Kalk’s patient was 16 years old at the time of her illness; Felida 14½, etc. We know also that at this period the future character is formed and fixed. In the case of Felida and of Mary Reynolds we saw that the character in state II. replaced that of state I. It is not therefore unthinkable that these phenomena of double consciousness are nothing but character-formations for the future personality, or their attempts to burst forth. In consequence of special difficulties (unfavourable external conditions, psychopathic disposition of the nervous system, etc.), these new formations, or attempts thereat, become bound up with peculiar disturbances of consciousness. Occasionally the somnambulism, in view of the difficulties that oppose the future character, takes on a marked teleological meaning, for it gives the individual, who might otherwise be defeated, the means of victory. Here I am thinking first of all of Jeanne d’Arc, whose extraordinary courage recalls the deeds of Mary Reynolds’ II. This is perhaps the place to point out the similar function of the “hallucination téléologique” of which the public reads occasionally, although it has not yet been submitted to a scientific study.


The Unconscious Additional Creative Work.

We have now discussed all the essential manifestations offered by our case which are of significance for its inner

  1. Pelman, Allg. Zeit. f. Psych., XXI., p. 74.
  2. Allg. Zeit. f. Psych., XXII., p. 407.
  3. Flournoy, l.c., p. 28.