Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/173

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CHAP. II
REALIZATION OF MEMORIES
151

he had learnt and poems he had written. Having begun to write again, he reproduced nearly the same lines. Moreover, in such cases the patient may often recover the lost memories. Without wishing to be too dogmatic on a question of this kind, we cannot avoid noticing the analogy between these phenomena and that dividing of the self of which instances have been described by Pierre Janet:[1] some of them bear a remarkable resemblance to the 'negative hallucinations,' and suggestions with point de repère, induced by hypnotizers.[2]—Entirely different are the aphasias of the second kind, which are indeed the true aphasias. These are due, as we shall try to show presently, to the progressive diminution of a well-localized function, the faculty of actualizing the recollection of words. How are we to explain the fact that amnesia here follows a methodical course, beginning with proper nouns and ending with verbs? We could hardly explain it if the verbal images were really deposited in

  1. Pierre Janet, État mental des hystériques. Paris, 1894, vol. ii, p. 263 et seq.—Cf. L'Automatisme psychologique, by the same author, Paris, 1889.
  2. See Grashey's case, studied afresh by Sommer, and by him declared to be inexplicable by the existing theories of aphasia. In this instance, the movements executed by the patient seem to me to have been signals addressed by him to an independent memory. (Sommer, Zur Psychologie der Sprache, Zeitschr. f. Psychol, u. Physiol, der Sinnesorgane, vol. ii, 1891, p. 143 et seq.)—Cf. Sommer's paper at the Congress of German Alienists, Arch, de Neurologie, vol. xxiv, 1892).