| ZEN PHYSICS (what is this?) The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation David Darling 
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"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."
"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.
– Lewis Carroll
In the 1960s, having been diagnosed as a schizophrenic, Linda Macdonald was admitted to the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, a psychiatric clinic and research center established by the psychiatrist Ewan Campbell. Campbell had an interesting background and had managed to acquire some rather extreme views. While working as an adviser to the judges at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, he formed the opinion that the bitter rivalries of nationalism which had led to the Second World War had to be eradicated. Nationalism, he decided, was a product of people’s distorted historical memories. Therefore it was essential, in his opinion, to alter those memories in order to produce a rational world order, free of war.
Subsequently, Campbell joined Wilder Penfield’s team and became intrigued by Penfield’s concept (erroneous, as it turned out) of memories being stored in the brain as circuits which could be turned on and off by external means, such as the touching of an electrical probe. From this, he envisaged the real prospect of applying clinical techniques to the alteration of memory in mentally ill patients. Sick memories, he concluded, could be wiped clean and replaced with healthy ones. And it was with this extraordinary, disturbing goal in mind that he set up his Institute.
It was the chilliest period of the Cold War, and Campbell was not alone in being obsessed with mind control. The CIA had designs on it, too – but with the even more sinister possibility of using memory as a weapon. Paranoia was rife that the Soviets and Chinese had already developed powerful forms of mind manipulation that would enable them to program agents to infiltrate U.S. security. This fear was heightened by the observation that soldiers taken captive by the Communists showed evidence of altered behavior and often made false confessions, which they continued to repeat even after their release. Campbell became intrigued by how such mind control was being achieved, and whether it could be applied therapeutically. Not surprisingly, his efforts soon had the backing of CIA funds.
At the Allen Memorial Institute, Campbell subjected his patients to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on a massive scale. The shocks across the temples, often administered several times a day, day after day, progressively disrupted and erased the patients’ memories, just as music recorded on an audiotape is reduced to a vapid hiss by repeatedly passing the tape through a powerful magnetic field. Drugs, including LSD, were also used in large doses in an effort to wipe out memory traces. And, as a further weapon in his fight to eradicate “sick” memories, Campbell pioneered what he called psychic driving – the interminable repetition, night and day, over headphones, of persuasive, positive-reinforcement messages. The end results of this blitzkrieg on the mind were human beings stripped down to the most primitive, vegetable state. Nothing of their old personalities, behavior patterns, or memories remained. As conscious selves, as beings with identities, they had, effectively, been destroyed.
Mercifully, Linda Macdonald recalls none of her traumatic therapy – the miasmic haze of ECT, the relentless psychic driving, and the long periods of drug-induced sleep. All of her experiences during her time at the Allen Memorial Institute were scoured clean from her tortured brain. But erased, too, were her memories of her parents, her childhood, her own children, her home. Her “depatterning” was so comprehensive that, in the aftermath, she had to learn again how to speak and to behave and respond appropriately in a society that seemed utterly strange to her. “I felt like an alien from another world,” she commented in a television recording made years later. Of her old self, absolutely nothing remains.
The same is true of Patsy Cannon of Alabama, though for a very different reason. In 1986, a car crash left her with such severe retrograde amnesia that all of her past memories were rendered inaccessible. Whether, in fact, her brain still retains her old memories in some form is unknown – and entirely irrelevant. It may be that the principal damage is to connections to her hippocampus, in which case, even if the memories from before her accident survive in some latent biochemical form, they will never again be available to her conscious mind.
Patsy Cannon has had to discover how to speak again with the help of tapes and friends. But language is a subtle, complex affair, and its colloquial use especially can be bewildering to a neophyte. On one occasion a visitor casually mentioned to her that it was “raining cats and dogs,” whereupon, in a panic, she rushed to the window expecting to see animals literally falling from the sky. Upon seeing her nine-year-old daughter for the first time after the accident, she felt nothing – no twinge of recognition, no sense of attachment. Even the ability to love her own child had to be relearned.
Patsy Cannon has had to acquire a completely fresh ensemble of memories in order to function once more as a normal human being. But what she has learned the second time around has not made her into the same individual. She has a different character and different interests, wears different types of clothes, and enjoys different foods than before the accident. Even in her dreams she recalls nothing of the “old” Patsy Cannon and having seen photos of her, she maintains with unshakable conviction: “That person is dead; I am a new person.” And it seems for her, at least, there is no sense of loss.
Erode memories and you wear a person away, bit by bit. Erase all memories and you erase a person completely. Then replace the lost memories with fresh ones and you create someone new. In the event of such extreme memory erasure and substitution, there is surely justification in speaking of the death of one individual and the coming into being of another. And, most tellingly, it is precisely in these terms, and without any hesitation, that people to whom this catastrophe has happened described their inner experience.
Selves are defined by memories. So, if a brain’s memory chain is badly disrupted or destroyed, the brain will feel very different. It may feel afraid and even panic-striken if the memory loss is severe but not total, because under such circumstances the brain may no longer be able to reconcile what it sees from one moment to the next with what it falsely believes (due to its damaged memory) the world and itself should be like. Such is the terrible predicament of the Korsakov’s or Alzheimer’s victim. On the other hand, if all memories are lost, the accompanying self is lost too.
Instances of total, permanent amnesia challenge us to reevaluate our concept of death. For if we consider the most relevant aspect of death to be “what it feels like” (the subjective experience) rather than “what it looks like” (the objective view) then total memory loss does seem to qualify as an event remarkably similar – and, indeed, ontologically identical – to death as we normally understand it. If the experience of being a particular person, say person A, is contingent upon having a particular stock of memories, then if this stock is irretrievably lost the feeling of being person A must be lost as well. Person A, as a psychological entity, has effectively died – died, that is, as far as the victim and the victim’s family and friends are concerned. Medically, genetically, legally – objectively – it is a different story, and someone whose memories have gone but who remains cortically alive is considered by society at large to be still the same person. However, to those who know the individual well, and, most importantly, as actually experienced by the victim of total memory loss, it is clear that there has been a radical, irreversible change.
Yet the brain, as a result of its evolutionary heritage, is a resilient organ. And, if it remains fully functional, then no sooner has it been deprived of one complete set of memories than it begins to lay down a fresh set, like a camcorder that keeps on running. This reacquisition of memory takes place automatically, just as it does in the case of an infant. Moreover, it involves an actual physical change in the brain – a major regrowth and rearrangement of neural connections. As the brain that once generated the feeling of being a person builds up its new collection of archives so, at a conscious level, it begins to give rise to the feeling of being a different individual, person B. And, significantly, this is not a problem or a concern either for person A or for person B. At the time at which the old memories are lost (which in an accident is more or less instantaneous), person A ceases to exist and so cannot subsequently experience any regret, sadness, fear, or sense of loss at what has happened. (These negative feelings can only be experienced by others who knew person A.) Person B, on the other hand, emerges gradually as new memories are acquired and, having no recollection or sense of attachment to person A, has no cause to be troubled by A’s demise. B’s main problem will be that, as an adult rather than an infant, she will almost inevitably have commitments carried over from her previous “life” to which she has to readjust. New attachments may have to be forged to children and to a spouse who, to begin with, may just as well be anyone else in the world. And it is during this period of recovery, this time of reentry into the human atmosphere, that the extent to which all of us are culturally conditioned becomes starkly apparent. A brain that has been wiped clean has lost its social acumen, its knowledge of how to behave and function appropriately in a particular “civilized” (and highly artificial) setting with other people. This cultural veneer has to be reacquired. And during the process of reacquisition, the new, emerging person, who looks like an adult but unfortunately acts like an infant, has ample opportunity to feel bewildered and out of place – a stranger in a very strange land.
Our awareness of others stems, in the first instance, from an awareness of their physical presence. We see and define a particular person by the physical continuity of their bodies. And so, however differently an individual may behave from one day to the next, we maintain that it is nevertheless the same person. Our society revolves around, and inculcates in us, this fundamental belief. Exceptions are rare: we sometimes make comments like “She’s not herself today,” but without any serious conviction that a new self has temporarily taken over. More importantly, the outcome of a criminal trial may hinge upon whether an individual is judged to have committed a serious offense while mentally disturbed and therefore not responsible for his or her actions. Yet, for the most part, our identification of other selves and our belief in their stability rests firmly upon bodily appearance and continuity.
As each of us perceives our own self, however, it is a very different matter. We naturally care about the looks and health of our bodies. But what is of paramount concern to us is the psychological continuity that we habitually feel. Most of us would probably not recoil in horror at the prospect of having a new (healthy) body and brain, providing that we could transfer to it our mental selves.
Now, under normal circumstances in life, we are not moved to think deeply about the distinction between our outer and inner conceptions of self. This is because there does indeed appear to be a one-to-one correspondence between particular bodies and particular selves. But abnormal and pathological situations compel us to reexamine this most basic assumption. These unusual situations reveal clearly that there is a difference, a very great difference, between the objective and subjective viewpoints of a person – one, moreover, that is pivotal to any exploration of issues surrounding death and individual survival.
When I talk about “you,” I implicitly refer to a particular body and brain, and to what I perceive as being a certain, unique, reasonably consistent personality that is projected to the outside world. But as far as you are concerned, “you” are what it is like to be a certain stream of consciousness. My view (which forms part of my stream of consciousness!) is of a specific organic machine and its persona, its outward face. Your view – your direct experience – is of being the subjective entity that the machine gives rise to. It cannot be emphasized enough that these two phenomena – the machine and the feelings of this machine – must be considered with the utmost care with regard to both how they are distinct and how they interrelate. The brain and the mind belong to two different categories of existence, different facets of reality. And although all the evidence of science is that there is a clear dependent relationship (in particular, “you” cannot exist without a brain – or an adequate substitute for a brain) there is nothing prima facie that insists there must be a unique correspondence between the feeling of being you and a particular brain, or vice versa.
If we are to take both objective and subjective factors into account then our definition of what it means to be a specific person must involve two separate criteria. That is, given A at one time and B at some later time are both persons, it appears reasonable to suppose they are the same if (1) they have the same physical body, and (2) B, at the later time, has memories of A’s activities and memories. This definition seems to be consistent with the belief we each individually hold that from birth to death we remain one and the same person. But the reality of the situation is not so simple.
There are, undoubtedly, times in the past of “your” body of which you have no conscious recollection. Indeed, if you are anything like me (which I assume in many ways you are), you can’t actually remember most of what has happened during your life. So, from the apparently commonsense definition of what is involved in remaining the same person, it appears to follow that there were many occasions in the past when you were not who you are now! The fact that we all suffer numerous minor bouts of natural amnesia every minute of every day suggests that despite the strong impression we have of smooth continuity and personal sameness we are actually, to a large degree, psychologically disconnected. And this being so, the possibility emerges of seeing our lives in a different way: not as one unbroken unit but as divided into the lives of many successive selves.
Again, focusing on examples beyond the commonplace helps us get to grips with this elusive problem of who we are. In the case of the amnesia-inducing sleeping pill, mentioned in the last chapter, there is clearly a break in psychological continuity caused by the drug’s influence on the brain. Label as A1 the person who lived up to the point of taking the drug, A2 the person who lived through the subsequent hour up to the moment of falling asleep, and A3 the person who awoke eight hours later. At a casual glance, we would tend to assume that A1, A2, and A3 were one and the same person (and if it happened to us, we would certainly take this view). But A3 has no memories at all of what happened throughout the hour when A2 was alive. From the subjective viewpoint of A3, A2 never existed and may just as well have been someone else entirely. The criterion of bodily continuity has been satisfied. But if a person cannot remember anything about themselves during a particular waking period, then mentally the person who was conscious during this period is a being apart. Evidently, for as long as A2 existed he felt himself to be a continuation of the stream of consciousness of A1. But at the moment of falling asleep, A2 curiously disappeared from the chain of continuity to be replaced by A3. Who, then, in retrospect, was A2? Wouldn’t it have felt a little strange to have been A2 and to have been told that all the fresh memories you were laying down during the hour the drug was taking effect would shortly be lost forever and that you were effectively traveling down a cul-de-sac of consciousness? Possibly, it might have felt strange. But it wouldn’t have been a cause for great fear, like the fear of being someone who knew he was soon going to die – for a simple reason.
If a brain suffers only a minor, localized form of amnesia then it still retains more than enough information about its past to be able to reconstruct a self virtually indistinguishable from the one in prior residence. And so if you or I “lost” merely an hour from our memories we would not, in practice, be inclined to think of the person who lived during that missing hour as being someone else. We could conveniently and easily gloss over the hiatus. But imagine now extending the period of amnesia back in time from a given point – a week, a year, ten years, twenty years, and, ultimately, to the moment of birth. This brings us back to cases of total amnesia such as those of Linda Macdonald and Patsy Cannon. And while it is true that these are extreme pathological examples, we can see now that in principle they are no different from instances of more confined memory loss. The fact is that whenever there is a memory loss, however great or small, there must inevitably be a corresponding break in psychological continuity. So, what may seem from the inside to be a coherent, continuous self – the “I” with which we are all intimately familiar – is in reality highly disjointed. How can two such radically different perspectives on the self both be valid?
To make matters clearer, suppose I were to keep a diary of your consciousness in objective (clock) time. It might run something like this”
7:30 A.M. After a good night’s rest, you wake up.According to these records, there were five periods (of three minutes, three hours and fifteen minutes, one hour and thirty minutes, one hour and fifty-five minutes, and one hour, respectively) during this twenty-four hour span, when you were completely unconscious. And by referring to your watch throughout the day you would have been able approximately to verify these times. But this objective view of your day is not what you would actually have experienced. By definition, you cannot experience or be aware of the passage of time during spells of total unconsciousness. So, as it actually felt to you, you were always there. In subjective time, there are no breaks – there can be no breaks, otherwise there is no subject. If you are knocked out or faint or fall asleep (except for intervals of dreaming in which there is an attenuated form of self-consciousness), you don’t notice any gaps. One instant you lose consciousness and the very next instant you regain it. Subjectively, there is no – can be no – hiatus. Subjectively, you never disappear, for who would there be on the inside to notice the disappearance?
3:00 P.M. While doing work outside, you unfortunately stumble and bump your head, rendering you temporarily unconscious.
3:03 P.M. You recover, take two aspirins for your headache, and spend the rest of the day indoors.
11:00 P.M. You go to sleep and quickly fall into a deep sleep.
2:15–2:30 A.M. You have the first of three dreams during the night (as registered on an EEG).
4:00–4:20 A.M. Second dream.
6:15–6:30 A.M. Third dream.
7:30 A.M. Your alarm goes off and you wake up.
It is easy to understand, then, why there should be such a great contrast between the objective and subjective views of self. The objective or conventional scientific notion of the self is illusory in the sense that it doesn’t correspond with anything definite either in substance or duration. Moreover, from an objective standpoint the consciousness of an individual is repeatedly punctuated. It comes and goes on a macroscopic level as a result of incursions such as sleep and general anesthesia. And there is every reason to suppose that it flickers in and out at a microscopic level, too. From your internal perspective, however, “you” are never unconscious – for this represents a contradiction in terms. There has never been a moment in your life when subjectively you have not been present. And nothing will or can happen in the future to change this fact.
“The feeling of being you” is a persistent phenomenon. It is simply not possible from your point of view to know or experience or even conceive what it would be like not to be you. And this applies to everyone else. It is true even for people who have suffered the most profound forms of amnesia. Before the onset of the amnesia there was “the feeling of being you” (in other words, a specific self-awareness). Then, an instant later in subjective time (though possibly months later in objective clock time), there was “the feeling of being you” again – only a different you based on a different set of memories.
The persistence of “you” is a phenomenon of vital concern to us. But at any given moment, what seems crucial to us is being and remaining precisely who we happen to be – not just any old “you.” Our overwhelming desire is to stay who we are now, not to become some other “you” that our present self wouldn’t be able to identify with and that would inevitably involve us becoming someone else. The thought of changing triggers our anticipatory fear of death, of losing our present selves. What we fail to properly recognize, though, is that we are always changing. And when we do become someone else – as happens every moment, whether we realize it or not – then we no longer hanker for the preservation of the self we used to be. The desire for self-preservation automatically transfers to whatever new “you” we have become.
We dread the prospect of becoming someone else because this would mean ceasing to be whoever we are now. Had Patsy Cannon, for instance, known in advance that she would be in an accident that would rob her of all her memories she would doubtless, like any normal person, have been just about as afraid of this as of actual physical death. But in the event, she had no such foreknowledge and therefore no anticipatory fear. Nor was there ever any internal feeling of loss of her “old” self, because there was never any break, subjectively, in her self-awareness. In subjective time, there was no experienced gap between the instant of her accident and the subsequent emergence of her new self – her new “feeling of being you.” And this new self, like any self, wanted above anything else to continue as it was,* not revert to being the stranger who had lived before.
The dissolution and re-creation of personalities in the middle of a human lifespan following profound memory loss is remarkable enough. But there are even more bizarre and complex manifestations of this effect due to multiple personality syndrome, or MPS. In cases of MPS it is as if a group of individuals is vying for control of a single body. Different members of the group take it in turn to become conscious and decide what the body will do and say. Talking to someone with MPS can be disconcertingly like trying to hold a telephone conversation with a number of people fighting over a single receiver – you can converse with only one at a time and can never be sure who will answer next.
The story of one young man plunged into this extraordinary condition was told in Daniel Keye’s disturbing book The Minds of Billy Milligan. Billy was sadistically and sexually abused** by his stepfather when he was eight years old. As a result his schoolwork deteriorated, he began to suffer bouts of amnesia, and soon he was being accused of having done things he knew nothing about. Unbeknownst to Billy, he had developed alternative personalities who took over his body whenever Billy felt threatened. Eventually and incredibly, he was found to have acquired twenty-four distinct personalities who varied widely not only in character but also in nationality, age, and even sex. Billy himself was an American, but Arthur, who was normally the dominant personality, spoke with an English accent and was also fluent in Arabic. Ragen, a fiery Yugoslavian character, spoke both English (with a noticeable Slavic accent) and Serbo-Croat. His function, to take over in dangerous situations, was reflected in his name, which was a contraction of “rage again.” Allen was outgoing and manipulative and was the only right-handed personality. Christene, a little girl, was English and dyslexic. And Adalane, another female personality, was a lesbian whose loneliness and longing for physical contact eventually led Billy to be accused of rape. Only after his arrest was Billy’s problem discovered and, as a result, he was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. This situation can also work in reverse. Recently in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a man was arrested and put on trial for raping a woman with MPS by seducing one of her alternative personalities.
There was a period, earlier this century, when it was in vogue to criticize the status of multiple personality as a genuine clinical condition. But few researchers today seriously believe that all MPS sufferers are frauds or malingerers (though it certainly seems possible that additional personalities may be created by indirect suggestion from a therapist.) The real point of contention is to what extent the various personalities are separate, given that they are obviously products of the same brain. In most cases, the original or root personality is seldom aware that the newer personalities exist, though the latter are often aware of each other and of the original. One way to check for true separateness is to look for consistently differing brain wave patterns among the separate personalities. At the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C., Frank Putnam did this and discovered differences as great as those between separate individuals in electroencephalograms (EEGs), visually evoked cortical responses, and galvanic skin responses (as used in lie-detector tests). More controversial tests of personality and intelligence have produced similar results. And, most dramatically, 3-D scans have shown that entirely distinct regions of the brain are active depending upon which characters is in charge.
There seems to be no getting away from the fact tat the separate personalities inhabiting the brain of someone with MPS are real in the objective sense that they display measurable physiological states as diverse as those of a group of different people; and real in the subjective sense that they are experienced internally by the patient as distinct streams of conscious thought.
The core personality of someone with MPS may suddenly and alarmingly find that several hours or even days have elapsed without their knowledge. In an instant, it will seem to them as if they have leapt forward in time and been transported to a different, possibly unknown place. They may be wearing different clothes, be carrying unfamiliar objects, be facing strangers who act as if they are not strangers, and be somewhere they have never seen before. For a lost slice of their lives, they were literally not themselves; an alternative personality had taken control of their body, with a character and set of memories of his or her own.
One particularly astonishing and well-documented case of MPS, from around the turn of the century, was that of Miss Christine Beauchamp (a pseudonym) who was studied and treated by the American psychotherapist Morton Prince. As a child, Christine had been raised in a strict, stifling, puritanical atmosphere rent tragically by repeated abuses by her father. The fuse for MPS thus having been set in the most usual way, it took only a spark later on to lead to the explosion of her fragile personality. That spark came in 1893, when Christine was eighteen. She was working as a nurse in a hospital one terrible, stormy night when three separate events, any one of which would have proved unnerving, conspired to blow her world apart. A lightning flash illuminated a figure in white, a patient, who grabbed hold of her. Barely had she recovered from this when when she caught sight of a face staring in at her through a second-floor window. It turned out to be her boyfriend, who had climbed up a ladder and peered in as a prank. Finally, and most devastatingly, the boyfriend entered the hospital and, according to Christine, ended up almost raping her in a darkness broken only by occasional flashes from the storm. The combined effect of these shocking, nightmarish incidents was to immerse her further in abject depression, accompanied by severe headaches, insomnia, and nervousness. So, in desperation, she sought the help of Morton Prince.
Under hypnosis, Christine, who was normally painfully reticent, relaxed and became less restrained. Prince, in his analysis of the case, referred to her waking state as B1 and her trance B1A. B1A knew of and claimed as her own B1’s thoughts and actions, but B1 (in the usual manner of a hypnotized subject) could remember nothing of what she said and did as B1A. There was no reason, however, to suppose that B1 and B1A were different people. But then, one day, quite spontaneously, B1A started referring to B1 not as “I” but as “she.” This was to mark the emergence of a new personality – one who chose to call herself Sally.
From then one, whenever Prince hypnotized B1, Sally would be likely to appear. And Sally, it turned out, was not at all impressed by B1. In her words, “she [B1] is stupid; she goes around mooning, half asleep, with her head buried in a book; she does not know half the time what she is about.” Sally claimed to have lived passively alongside B1 since early childhood. And then, finally, Sally emerged. During one particular hypnosis she opened her eyes and stepped out into the waking world as a vibrant, vivacious, energetic, and (Prince thought) likable person in her own right. As far as B1 was concerned, Sally did not exist. But Sally knew all about B1 – her every thought, action, and dream. Sally could recall B1’s dreams better than B1 could herself, because Sally was there all the time, in the background, watching and monitoring B1 even when B1 had control of the body. (It is less confusing when discussing MPS cases to use terms like "the body" instead of "her body," since it is not clear who the "her" is referring to!) By contrast, when Sally was in charge, B1 was not merely pushed aside, she was not there at all. Times when Sally was “out” were times completely lost to B1. On one occasion, for instance, B1 plucked up courage and admitted herself into hospital to get treatment for her severe depression. But almost immediately, Sally took over, pretended to B1, convinced the hospital staff that she was much improved, and was discharged ten days later. When, shortly after, B1 “came back” it was as if the hospital stay had never happened, so that for all her efforts to improve her health she gained nothing.
B1 suffered terribly at Sally’s hands. When Sally was in charge of the body she would spend B1’s money on frivolous clothes, undo B1’s knitting and sewing, stitch up the ends of her sleeves, tear up her letters, and even mail packages to B1 containing spiders. Furthermore, Sally drank and smoked (which B1, being very proper and deeply religious, would never do) and kept her own circle of friends. And this often proved devastating and embarrassing to B1, who would abruptly regain consciousness in the midst of a social gathering with people she had never met, holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Prince maintained that Sally’s maliciousness to B1 was born of jealousy, because B1 was so much more refined and better educated (apparently Sally hadn’t bothered to pay attention in class when they had attended school “together”). In fact, to confound Sally and prevent her listening in on conversations Prince didn’t want her to hear, he would sometimes communicate with B1 in French, a language in which B1 was fluent but Sally could not understand a word.
Then B4 appeared – another personality with another highly individual set of character traits. B4 was impatient, short-tempered, and fiercely independent. It turned out that she knew nothing of what had happened since the traumatic night in the hospital six years earlier. In fact, on her first appearance in Prince’s office she thought it was that very night. Then, realizing her mistake, she quickly withdrew, became reserved and curt, and subsequently fantasized to try to conceal her amnesia. The ever-present, ever-watchful Sally (she claimed that she never slept) reacted strongly to B4’s arrival, regarding her as another, unwelcome rival for control of the body. Although Sally knew about B4’s actions, she did not, as it happened, have access to her thoughts. Even so, from listening to what B4 said, it didn’t take Sally long to realize that B4 was making up her own version of events from the last six years, and Sally started referring to her as “the idiot.”
Prince discovered that by putting either B1 or B4 into a deep hypnotic trance, yet another personality, B2, emerged who claimed to be both B1 and B4. Because B2 appeared to combine the virtues of B1 and B4 without their excesses, Prince decided that B2 was in some sense the real or whole Christine Beauchamp. Therefore he explained to B1 and B4 that he wished to awake B2 from the deep trance as a unified, fully conscious individual. But this immediately created problems. Although B1 and B4 were components of B2, they effectively ceased to exist as independent entities when B2 was present. To B1 and B4, life as B2 was the equivalent of death. In characteristic fashion, B1 was ready to meekly accept extinction. But not so B4. She formed an alliance with Sally, who, although not deprived of consciousness by the arrival of B2, was in her own words “squeezed” back to her previous state as a passive, coexisting awareness. Sally much preferred her active existence, in which she could, at least sometimes, be in full control of the body. And independent Ms. B4 was certainly in no mood to die for the greater good. So, in order to thwart Prince’s plans, both Sally and B4 broke appointments with him that B1 had previously made, and B4 even went so far as to book tickets for a passage to Europe. However, in the end they were defeated. Sally confessed that in B2 she recognized the pre-1803 Christine Beauchamp and that it had been she (Sally) who split B2 back into B1 and B4 whenever Prince tried to draw B2 into normal waking life. She withdrew her influence, and, after completing her autobiography and a Last Will and Testament, voluntarily committed herself to what she regarded as oblivion. And thus B2 awoke as Christine Beauchamp.
The epilogue is that B2 proved quite stable, though on occasions, at times of strain, she would temporarily split back into B1, B4, and Sally. And when B1 and B4 did reemerge, it was for them as if they had woken from a coma; months would have gone by as if in the wink of an eye. As for Sally, she returned to the state she had occupied since 1898 – an intraconsciousness, a passive, aware cohabitant alongside Christine.
A century on, MPS is still not fully understood. In particular, it is unclear whether the syndrome generally starts when a single personality is broken up or when a still developing personality fails to coalesce. The latter possibility is suggested by some recent work by Peter Wolff at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. Wolff’s research shows just how rapidly and easily young children switch moods. They laugh one moment, then cry the next, as if they haven’t yet learned how to integrate these different moods and feelings into a single self. It may well be that childhood abuse interferes with the normal process of integration , leading to fragmentary personalities that then evolve in isolation to become essentially separate (though pathological and highly depleted) selves.
The fast-changing moods of early childhood are indeed reminiscent of a mild form of MPS. But then so, too, are many examples of adult behavior. The psychologist Robert Jay Lifton pondered the mental state of doctors who committed atrocities on prisoners of the Auschwitz death camp in the name of science. How could these people, who had been trained to heal and cure, resume in the evening their role of kind fathers and husbands after hearing the screams of their victims during the day? Lifton concluded that they were essentially split personalities composed of two relatively autonomous selves: the prior “ordinary self,” which for doctors includes important elements of the healer, and the “Auschwitz self,” which includes all of the psychological maneuvers that help one avoid a conscious sense of oneself as a killer. The existence of an overall Auschwitz self more or less integrated all of these mechanisms into a functioning whole, and permitted one to adapt oneself to that bizarre environment. The prior self enabled one to retain a sense of decency and loving connection.
It is hard to imagine what goes on in the minds of torturers or brutal dictators who seem at times capable of genuine compassion toward their families. But to a lesser degree we are all split personalities, capable of love and thoughtlessness, moderation and indulgence, ambition and sloth. And our lives are further compartmentalized by the different hats we are expected to wear – those of friend, lover, partner, parent, child, leader, follower. Our behavior and personality change markedly depending on the social roles we play.
We start out from the assumption that we are each a single person with a definite, unique personality. We take our self to be a fixed entity (like a soul) that endures from womb to tomb. But MPS and various manifestations of amnesia, as well as apparently related conditions like sleepwalking, “automatic writing” under hypnosis, and schizophrenia, throw into question this standard folk psychology about who we really are. It seems that behind the stable facade we try to present to the world lies more than a touch of Jekyll and Hyde. We are far more fragmented and disconnected, less a single, smoothly flowing river of consciousness, than we conventionally imagine and project. And this realization has crucial implications for our quest to penetrate the mystery of death. To understand what will happen when we die we have to be clear about what it is that can die.
So far, the evidence presented that the self can be altered, fragmented, entirely destroyed, and remade during the course of life is primarily psychological. But there is also a wealth of intriguing data about the nature of self from a very different source – from people whose brains have been surgically partitioned or even partially removed.