Max Dessoir also makes use of automatic writing to prove his theory that two mental processes can go on simultaneously in the one individual in such a manner that we might almost refer them to two distinct personalities. Objections have, certainly, been raised to this theory. Schrenck-Notzing, in particular, thinks that if Max Dessoir does assume that a chaki of processes in the primary conscience co-exists with one in the secondary he quite overlooks the fact that we are not here dealing with the question of processes in the two consciousnesses running their respective courses simultaneously. In reality the point is that the attention should be directed now to the one series, now to the other. Even if Schrenck-Notzing does not deny the occurrence of automatic acts, he considers that only such are possible as may result from practice. Loewenfeld, however, rejects this objection, and with perfect right. "Schrenck-Notzing has never attempted to explain how it is possible for two series of ideas, whose members rapidly alternate in the consciousness, to continue so separate that the ego can only take cognizance of one of them with certainty." But other objections can be raised to Schrenck-Notzing's views apart from this.

He does not give us the least explanation how it is that post-hypnotic suggestions are carried out in spite of the loss of memory. I shall deal with this point in detail later on. Moreover, Schrenck-Notzing has done nothing whatever to elucidate those cases in which the two chains of memory are not simultaneous conscious processes.

There are cases in which the chains of memory follow one another, instead of both existing together in the way we have already seen. Max Dessoir tells of a person who took up his dream on a second night where he had left it off on the first. Here then, the dream-consciousness tended to form a new chain of memories. The same author puts the following case of Macario's with the last: - A girl who was outraged during an attack of spontaneous somnambulism knew nothing about it when she woke, and only told her mother of what had happened in her next attack. I have already mentioned (p. 126) that similar cases occur under pathological conditions. Gumpertz published a very interesting case a short time ago. A girl, nine-and-half years old, presented the phenomenon of double consciousness. At times she was transformed into her aunt who was dead but was supposed to appear as a spirit on such occasions. On returning to her normal condition, the child was quite oblivious of what had occurred and remained so until she again fell into a trance.

It has also been observed that during an epileptic fit the patient sometimes remembers what happened in previous seizures, though he knows nothing about them at other times; and a drunkard occasionally recollects the events of a previous carouse in a subsequent fit of drunkenness, but not when he is sober. It cannot, therefore, be denied that two distinct chains of memories are met with apart from hypnosis.

We have seen that in the double consciousness - also termed doubling of the consciousness - of hypnosis, the subject, when in the hypnotic state, remembers the events of preceding hypnoses and of waking life, but that in waking life he only remembers the events of waking life. But there is also another form of splitting of the consciousness. In this the life of the subject, X., is likewise divided into several periods - a, b, c, d, e,f. In the period e, X. only knows what happened in a and c, and in f only what happened in b and d, etc. - i.e., in each period X. only remembers the events of the corresponding period, whereas, as we have already seen, in hypnosis and similar abnormal states the memory remains intact not only for the events of the abnormal state, but for those of waking life as well. Die-May has described such a case of splitting of the consciousness in his story The Allard Case, which induced Paul Lindau to write a play entitled The Other One. In this piece a lawyer plans various crimes while in the somnambulic state, and finally breaks into his own house.

But we see that the lawyer has not the slightest knowledge of the existence of the criminal, nor the criminal of that of the lawyer, though at times there appears to be a kind of bridge connecting the two states of consciousness.

As regards the objections which have been raised by some investigators - e.g., that of Wundt and Hirschlaff, who think they are justified in placing the theory of the double ego on a level with the assumption of demoniacal possession - we must point out and emphasize the fact that when the theory is applied with just limitations it has nothing whatever to do with such assumptions. It must, of course, be understood that we cannot assume, as is done by some foreign psychologists, that the individualism is made up of several separate personalities - that, for instance, a gentleman whom we usually know as Mr.

M------ carries with him also the personality of Mr S------.

Any one who so conceives the theory of the double ego can only arrive at an absurd conception of human personality. For it stands to reason that the two chains of memories belong to one individual, although we are sometimes able to fix their boundaries. There need be no exaggeration with this theory.

We must consider it merely a diagram to demonstrate the fact that mental processes may go on within us unobserved, only at times giving evidence of themselves in a chain of memories which in point of time is distinct from the ordinary processes of the primary consciousness; it also serves to demonstrate the fact that when they occur simultaneously, though separated from the processes of the primary consciousness, those of the secondary consciousness often appear as though connected by a chain of memories of their own. The fact that under certain conditions we can prove the existence of a whole series of such chains of memories which are partially independent of one another favours the view that the whole theory should only be considered schematic. We see this, for example, under pathological conditions in the case of the insane, who sometimes represent different personalities at different periods of their disease, thus enabling us to distinguish more than two chains of memories. But the same phenomenon may also be observed in the sane, in whom it sometimes happens that several chains of memories exist together in the secondary consciousness quite distinct from the chain of memories in the primary consciousness. We are also able to demonstrate a similar condition in hypnosis.