ABSTRACT
THE terms double and multiple personality have been perhaps too freely applied to dissociations of consciousness whenever the accompanying amnesia is of any noticeable extent. But we are perhaps unduly reluctant to apply these terms when no amnesia is manifested, even although in other and more important respects there may appear to be a true change of personality. In the previous chapter some types of multiple personality have been considered mainly from the point of view of the memory relations existing between the different selves. In this chapter we shall look at the whole subject from another standpoint, and instead of asking, What does one personality know or remember of another personality, we shall rather ask, Wherein does the one differ from the other. Except in so far as change of character can be shown, in any particular case, to be directly due to amnesia, the memory, or absence of memory, of one personality for the other will not be taken much into account. We shall take for our touchstone of what constitutes a change of personality the differences of character exhibited rather than the presence or absence of amnesia. If we survey the records of double and multiple personality from this point of view, we shall find certain lines of cleavage along which the self seems specially liable to disintegrate.
