Organic Disorders

ORGANIC DISORDERS

What indeed is this demon that ravages our organs with the swiftness of lightning and the power of thunder? It is an idea a simple idea. DURAND DE GllOS.

THE physiologic process which creates false images within us does not differ greatly from that which transmits telepathic images. But the distinction between telepathy and hallucination is so easy
to establish that it is strange that cultivated minds have confused such different effects, even to the point of explaining the former by the latter and attributing to both the same origin.

Telepathy is authentic. Hallucination is false. Telepathy enters our being by no known material way ; hallucination enters by the usual channel of the senses.

Telepathy comes from an actual outward source ; hallucination wells up within ourselves.

Finally telepathy appears in quietude and meditation, and oftenest in connection with intimate circumstances, and is never repeated.
Hallucination, on the contrary, is manifested in excitement and persists or is subject to reappearance.

Example of an organic disorder

A little girl, nine or ten years old, had spent her birthday in company with several other children, in giving herself over to all the amusements of her age. Her parents, of very narrow religious
views, had constantly told her stories of the devil, hell and eternal damnation. That evening, upon entering her bedroom, the devil appeared and threatened to devour her. She uttered a loud cry, fled into her parents' room and fell at their feet as
though dead. A doctor was called and restored her to consciousness after several hours. The child then told what had happened to her, adding that she was certain of being damned. The occurrence was
immediately followed by a long and serious nervous illness.

This type of apparition was formerly very frequent.
Dr. Macario, in his Clinical Studies upon Demonimania expresses the opinion that this form of madness is common among the provincial mentally deranged, which he attributes to the fact that materialism has not become as deeply rooted in French soil as one might believe.

"Dread of the devil," declares de Boismont (p.134), "and fear of future punishment once exercised a powerful influence upon the mind. In the space of six years we observed about fifteen cases in our establishment."
The fixed idea also may create apparitions of the deceased. In this category fall the hallucinations of criminals pursued by their victims. Among other cases, Briere de Boismont cites that of Manoury, who had been guilty of the most egregious barbarism
toward Urbain Grandier.

(Obs. 124.) One evening, Manoury, returning from a visit to a patient in the outskirts of the town, suddenly cried out, "Oh, there is Grandier ! What do you want with me ?" He began
to tremble and fell into a frenzy from which his two companions could not restore him. They led him home, trembling and speaking to Grandier whom he believed he still saw.
During the few days that he lived, his state was unchanged. He died, always believing that Grandier was present and striving to ward off his approach while uttering terrible speeches.
The distinctly marked characteristic of hallucination is this persistence or repetition of the disturbance; and is an attribute lacking in telepathic visions.

"Sully," continues Briere de Boismont, "relates that the lonely hours of Charles IX became frightful because of the repetition of moans and shrieks that assailed his ears during the massacre of Saint Bartholomew."
If now we wish to consider apparitions, as observed to-day, we will find that they are always presented opportunely and in quiet. This is not the case with hallucinations. If the latter can be explained by illness, remorse, fright, etc., the former
are never due to similar causes. We find their incontestable
source in a telepathic action, distinct from cerebral activity each time that it is possible to trace back to the sources.

It seems to us, then, that we should apply the word hallucinations only to those images which have, for the deluded one, the same value as the objects, and which are internal in their origin. Another word is needed to designate the image transmitted by
the telepathic channel, that is to say, conveyed from
an exterior source.

True hallucination always has an internal cause; popular language instinctively words it thus: "To put the thought on yourself," and this phrase expresses it exactly.

The thought put on oneself is a self-created illusion, a sort of auto-suggestion which incites hallucination.
As a result of dwelling too much upon the devil, one ends by causing him to appear.

But it should be well understood that all of this may be explained by telepathy. We must not forget that there are within us unknown psychic centers, which under the stress of emotion become creators
of images. These psychic centers are qualified to perceive telepathic sensations, whether they be conveyed from our own brain or from an outside brain, and the difference is non-essential.
Ordinarily these centers communicate telepathically with us or at least we are only conscious of those images which we transmit to them, and of those to which we make a telepathic appeal in the
operations of memory.
This phenomenon suggests that these secondary centers can
be reached from external sources without our being
conscious of the fact.

Since telepathic action is a universal phenomenon, there is no smallest physiological center which has not of its own consciousness and sensitiveness, and which does not perceive the effects of our thought. Consequently, a man tormented by a fixed idea, by remorse or fear, for instance, deeply affects these
tiny organs, impressing thereon the creations of his thought. In them is produced an image or, rather, a sensation, analogous to that which exists when the individual is in the presence of a real image.

By reason of the intensity or persistence of the image created under force of a strong emotion, the secondary center holds this deeply cut image, and it only requires an occasion to arouse it, as a memory, in order to produce the appearance of reality.

Thus one would understand the psychologic automatism obedient to its own activities, reviving the image when the emotion recalls it, and sending it back in the manner of a cinematographic projection, to the brain of its creator.

It is thus that we might accept the theory of the overheated brain as an explanation of certain phenomena. But how may we apply the hallucination theory to images which are transmitted by others
and arise from realities? They act but feebly upon the organs which are not habitually influenced at a distance. Few subjects are capable of receiving them and usually it is an accident which happens but once in the lifetime of a percipient. These images are true, because the emotions which aroused them are not feigned. However, some mesmerists boast of having thus transmitted fictitious images.
From this they have drawn absurd conclusions which to their minds explain the illusion of spirits. But these experiences, if they could be taken up again experimentally, would prove only one thing: that thought-transference is perfectly true; if the mesmerist succeeded in deceiving the medium with a fictitious image, he would have been equally able to transmit a true one.

From this we could conclude that minds can communicate, and whether they be of the living or the dead is of no importance. We
have before us a fact there is a psychic element, and we should study this unknown element.

Organic disorders affect not only the sensory organs ; far more extraordinary are the disturbances manifested in the motive centers. Without doubt, from the moment we admit there is no smallest physiologic center without its own consciousness and
activity, it is easy to understand the spontaneous psychic action of the lower strata. Conceive a sort of psychic traumatism, some cause, physiological or otherwise, intercepting the communication between the little souls below and the unity that rules above ; telepathic transmission being once interrupted, each physiological center regains its independence.

It is these abnormal states which initiate automatic actions, and particularly the phenomenon known under the name of "automatic writing."
When we produce writing, the motive centers which receive our suggestions remain perfectly unaware of the current of our thought; they execute only movements, and the motion they produce is outside of our personal consciousness. Thus I do not need to know the special locations of the motive centers, to act upon them. I dictate the succession of letters, without being cognizant of the manner in which my organism obeys me. If this organism is
left to itself, and receives no further suggestion from without, since it is living it itself, it has a tendency to activity. It is reduced to its sole consciousness, that of movement, and produces the only movements known to its feeble memory down strokes, letters in incoherent succession and physiologists refuse to admit phenomena of a higher order.

It is true that organic disorders produce incoherent, childish or cryptic effects. But side by side with these are stupefying results, necessitating the active intervention of an understanding, inquiring intelligence that informs us of facts concerning which we had no knowledge. Therefore, here as before, we are obliged to admit two different motive powers for the same phenomenon.

We are then obliged through empiric demonstration to establish two classes of phenomena :

1. Those which are due to awakening of unconscious activities.
2. Those due to intelligences awake of themselves, but remaining unconscious for the subject who produces them.

Or better:

1.Incoherent movements from an internal source.
2. Coordinated movements from an external source.

This, as may be seen, is the distinction that we have already stated between hallucinations and telepathic phenomena which reach the sense organs, and it applies equally well to the same phenomenon capable of reading the motive organs.

It is a question of manifestations of different personalities
which are sometimes present in the same organism and appear as a division of personality.

The soul is complex, its unity exists only in relation with the individual who knows himself in what is called his ego. But the psychic realm is composed of a multitude of little souls whose mass is divisible and in which a certain disorder is manifested.

A man may be seen under two very different aspects; a professor of mathematics in his class room reveals only a part of himself; he forgets momentarily all that is not related to his special subject. But perhaps outside of his class he may be a good musician; his family will see him oftener under the aspect of a violinist. Suppose, now, that as the result of an accident, this man has lost all memory of music ; he remains only a mathematician, and if you speak to him of his violin he does not
understand you, he has never even played one. But at the end of several days the memory of the musician returns and, on the other hand, mathematics is forgotten. Such is the aspect I do not say
explanation but it is the aspect under which a certain known phenomenon, called division of personality, is presented.

But it also may happen that a somnambulistic state may be revealed, during which, (as an actor plays a role), the subject embodies with marvelous success the type of personality that may be proposed to him. However, this effort does not bear examination, because the subject keeps to generalities and is
always incapable of giving evidence of special knowledge.
But a new personality appears who knows no one of those present, whose social condition is different, and who shows that he possesses certain knowledge which by no possible hypothesis could be attributed to the somnambulistic subject. He seems, therefore,
possessed by an influence foreign to himself.

Let us assume that an experiment made by competent authorities, however inexplicable it may be, becomes a truth, empirically stated, which suffices to admit it as a basis of future deductions. The case is inexplicable physiologically, yet remains a truth valuable to retain.

But to repeat, we fall here into an abyss of complexity; it seems sometimes that a partial amnesia occasions in the subject the effacement of an entire period of his existence and yet, what is more astonishing, there is nothing, aside from that to indicate
a disordered condition in the person. He is unaware that he does not remember.
Thus an educated and carefully reared person falls into a trance, from which he awakens with a changed character and with no recollection of his previous condition. He no longer knows his intimate friends, his writing even is changed; in short, he is another person. A new crisis occurs and he awakes in his
first state, entirely ignorant of the second state from
which he has just come.

There are numberless cases of division, in which the subject relives periods of his past existence and each period brings with it the corresponding morbid states. Occasionally we see a subject who has been extremely nearsighted and obliged to wear glasses,
enjoying excellent sight in one of these states.

Finally, this change in intellect, memory and morality remains a mystery, unexplained by physiology, and one which psychology is still far from elucidating.
The Alcan Publishing House brought out in 1911 * the French translation of the case of Miss Beauchamp.
Several personalities were manifested in this subject of Dr. Prince. Aside from the normal personality, we find three others, differing in ideas, belief and temperament. Memories are also distinct for each personality.

Therefore there are four personalities. The first, Miss Beauchamp, splendidly endowed and studious, suffers a nervous shock, to which the doctor attributes the appearance of the disorders which followed.
1 La Dissasociation d'une Personalite, by Morton Prince,
translated into French by Renee J. Ray and Jeaa Ray, Felix
Alcan, Paris, 1911.

The second, B2, is only Miss Beauchamp put into an hypnotic state by Dr. Prince, who is perhaps wrong in considering B2 as a personality of the same nature as the others.

The third, B3, seems the incarnation of a malicious spirit, who takes possession of the organs of Bl in order to live in a borrowed body and who thus deeply troubles her existence.

The fourth, B4, represents another enigmatic character, which is, perhaps, only a division of Bl, in a state of personal diminution B4 represents an ordinary woman, less refined than Bl, a frivolous
woman, living for herself.

In reality, there are, from our point of view, only two new persons. The somnambulistic state is well known and, we believe, has no great relation with the mysterious entities which are present. The mesmerized subject is incontestably a new form of the
subject, a new state of her ego.

We cannot make the same statement concerning B2 and B4, who present themselves as foreign influences. B3 received the name of Sally, and is a problem. She plays no part, she seems a distinct entity come into the body to amuse herself at her victim's expense, a parasite who wishes to enjoy life and substitute herself for Miss Beauchamp, while profiting by the latter's terrestrial relations.

She differs from the other personalities in that the doctor, while treating his subject by hypnotism, can, at pleasure, bring Miss Beauchamp to the state of B3 or B4, but he can neither call upon nor expel Sally, who resists his suggestions. Indeed, it is often
she herself who makes the suggestions; in her struggle against the doctor, she suggests to Miss Beauchamp to understand quite the opposite of whatever he may be saying to her.

Thus the life of Miss Beauchamp alternates between three different conditions, which render her existence all the more difficult, as the doctor who hypnotizes her seems not to have acquainted her connections with these changes. We can understand the forlorn existence of one who, knowing nothing of her periods of absence, awakens in an unknown place, talking with people whom she does not know, or at least perceiving that she is not in touch with the
questions under discussion, and who keeps apart, wondering always if she is not going mad.

But Sally is a veritable little demon; unknown to Miss Beauchamp, and possessing all her organs, she writes letters, and makes appointments. We may imagine the astonishment of poor Bl who finds these inexplicable letters and believes herself possessed of
the devil ! One thing alone moves Sally, the fear of losing this body which she abuses. The thought that the death of Miss Beauchamp would deprive her of her pleasures, makes her slightly more reasonable. Therefore she made a compact with the doctor, who
had been unable to command her.
Naturally, a professor of pathology of the nervous system would put forth the thesis that there is no distinction to be made among these several personalities, all of which he considers as divisions of the ego. However, I should like to present some
objections in behalf of the unity and indivisibility of
the human being, which theory it seems is rather lightly handled, when similar cases are treated.

The different aspects of the ego do not necessarily pertain to division. Mons. de Roches has distinctly shown in his studies upon the regression of memory, that the same subject, carried back by hypnotism through previously lived years, is seen under varying
aspects and with different characteristics. Here, however, there is neither change nor dissociation of personality; there is return to a former state, differing greatly from the present state, by reason of his changed life and progress of his education. Here
is nothing to lead one to infer a division of the ego.

B4, one of the personalities who appeared, is, according to Dr. Prince, a person of this kind, seized with an amnesia that veils from her for the time being an entire period of her life. The subject takes up her life when she was eighteen years old, and is
unaware of all that Miss Beauchamp has accomplished and learned since then. Therefore there is no change in the ego. There are the same will, emotion and sensibility that live and move in a group
of images and recollections common to both personalities up to the eighteenth year, but which differ from the moment when B4 manifests a lapse of memory.

Until now we have called this central seat of conscious life which manifests itself as an indivisible entity, the ego.
If It is used in another sense, it is necessary to warn the reader. Arms and legs have nothing in common with the ego, and I confess that I do not understand this hypothesis of dissociation.

When one speaks of a division of the ego, it ap pears to me senseless; the subconscious ego itself seems to be nonsense; subconsciousness, simply, suffices for me. The subconsciousness which acts unknown to a conscious subject is not himself, since by
himself, I mean his conscious part. In short, I have need of a comprehensible hypothesis, and I cannot allow discussion of an ego that is outside of myself.
My subconsciousness is the under-being, beyond my consciousness.
To express an hypothesis upon dissociation, there must be clarity of image. If the ego should be considered as a part of the material being, dissociation would be none other than a traumatic
nervous affection, causing local paralysis. If it belongs to the psychic center which is self-cognizant, it is indivisible. In the first case, there can only be a mutilation of the being, and the parts are less than the whole; in the second, there can be but alternations of the personality.

In the case of Miss Beauchamp, certain persons speak ingenuously of the coexistence of several egos forming the different personalities. This recalls the mystery of the Trinity, according to which there are three Gods in One Person, each co-equal.
Let us admit that the course of life is an aggregate of ideas and memories that form strata, as a tree whose years are counted by the rings, but this aggregate is distinct from the ego. It is only in conceiving the subject as in touch with several of these concentric strata, that I can create for myself an objective representation of what a change of personality might be.

Thus we may imagine the life of Miss B. as concentric circles representing the years she has lived and we shall see that B4 is only the subject herself, presenting a lapse of several years.

The problem, as concerning Miss B., is truly more complex and offers so strange an assemblage, that we may well imagine that a foreign manifestation has been introduced among the other phenomena.

B3, called Sally, is not explicable by a redoubling of the ego, a formula which presents nothing tangible to the imagination. In order to express a concrete thought it was necessary to
imagine groups of states of consciousness, which would have created a second ego unknown to the first. But these dissociated states cannot create a being ex nihilo, without the affinity of the conscious ego.

By dissociation, we understand a group of isolated images ; the noise of the street that strikes our ear without attracting our attention, a detail mechanically observed, while the mind is busy elsewhere these are images which may survive in our subconsciousness in the state of dissociation. Yet these
images must rise to the higher consciousness, else they are as though dead; such a group of memories cannot animate itself to the point of creating a new, even though an artificial, personality.

Is Sally factitious?
All the personalities of Miss B. may be alternating states of a single ego, all save Sally. To call her the alter ego of Miss B., as does Dr. Prince, is to lay the problem but not to solve it.

Sally affirms her independence by her acts and Miss B., when in a state of hypnotic lucidity, declares: "We are all the same person, except Sally."

Dr. Prince refuses to admit Sally, but she has diabolical tricks and ruses. Herself rebellious to suggestion, it is she who imposes her will upon Miss Beauchamp, by means of hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions. She follows her whims, writing letters
which she posts, smoking cigarettes to annoy her medium, whose reserve and scruples she detests. Finally she wastes her money, destroys her bank notes, and treats Miss Beauchamp as a stupid victim.

When Miss B. is in her normal state, Sally is always there, as an exterior witness who later will be in touch with all her acts. In the same way Sally is aware of whatever the other personalities do. The others, on the contrary, are nonexistent and incapable
of knowing what Miss B. has done in her normal state. By means of her knowledge, Sally endeavors sometimes to conceal her coming and tries to play the part of Miss B. ; but as she has not the same
education the doctor unveils her ruse by causing her to speak French. Sally, who does not know French, seeing herself caught, bursts into laughter and exhibits her true colors, greatly pleased with the joke.

Sally can even recount dreams, which fact proves that she exists or coexists, at the time of the medium's conscious activity. Another peculiarity which distinguishes her from the other personalities is that physiologically she adopts herself with difficulty to the organs. Having much trouble to speak, she stammered terribly in the beginning; once she demanded the use of her eyes and opened the lids with her hands. She declares that this body is entirely foreign to her, as a garment, and that within it she feels no illness, neither fatigue, hunger nor
thirst.

The following is an example of the incarnations of Sally. On Christmas Eve Miss B. was at Church, seated on the right side of the nave. The choir was singing the processional. Suddenly she found herself on the left side and the choir still singing the processional.
Twenty-four hours had passed for her like twenty-four seconds; Sally had confiscated her and brought her back the next day to the spot where she had been seized. Sally had profited by the invitations sent to Miss B., taken to herself all the Christmas pleasures, and had enjoyed herself greatly.

There are other and even better illustrations. Once, when Miss B. was in the throes of the most violent delirium, Sally intervened, absolutely in her right mind, consented to be her nurse, and came at intervals to swallow the food or medicine, which the patient, in her delirium could not take.

The lucid mind appearing at the same time as the delirious state, is one of the facts which prove the presence of two distinct entities. It is impossible to conceive of the ego thus severed in half.
The conception that we have of an ego will not permit us to imagine the simultaneousness of these two contrary states in a single unity. To declare that Miss B. and Sally act under the influence of a single ego is to say there are two egos of the
same person, which is accepting words whose meaning is inconceivable.

It was easy to speculate concerning the arbitrary divisions of personality, but it is not so easy to give them an appearance of reality; Sally is too large a part to have been detached from the principal consciousness of Miss B. without the latter having been
diminished; the disintegration of Miss B.'s personality into so many small parts is purely arbitrary.

Sally does not find her place in this scheme. No ego is found to which she is akin, and the mystery has not been elucidated. It is true we cannot say that she is a spiritual entity of the nature of those who give proofs ; but there is here a mysterious entity
which might have been studied with profit. Here we have the manifestation of a foreign activity, whose secret lies in the unknown. All this proves, at least, the existence of a new world, which has not as yet been sufficiently explored.

This article has been edited by Jade Ashcroft
Sourced from Proofs of the Spirit World, by Chevruil Leon, 1920

If you have read this article and are interested in the subject of obsessions, or entity attachment then I would like to hear from you. Also if you know someone who you think has been misdiagnosed with a mental illness, who may be under the influence of a disembodied spirit or entity please email Jade Ashcroft at etimes@surgeryforthesoul.co.uk