real Self, functioning independently. Let us now see how these splits or
dissociations take place.

Often they are the result of some shock to the emotional nature. In one
of Dr. Morton Prince's cases, the patient happened to look up and saw in
the window the face of a man whom she had known years before, and with
whom she had tragic emotional associations. It was storming at the time,
and a lightning flash revealed the face in the window. It was a highly
dramatic scene, and the shock to the patient's emotional nature caused
her consciousness to split-up or become dissociated into various selves;
and thenceforward for years these separate "selves" lived independent
lives, each ignorant of the life of the other. In this case, there were
several such personalities which alternated; and they were only finally
unified and the real Self again restored by means of hypnotic
suggestion, after a careful analysis of the various selves. This
synthesis of the various streams of consciousness, and their ultimate
unification into one primary normal self, is one of the most startling,
as it is one of the most interesting and suggestive, feats of modern
psychological medicine.

The principle upon which many of these cures rest, and the efficacy of
suggestion, is thus apparent. By its aid the skilled specialist in
abnormal psychology is enabled to gather up the "loose ends" of
conscious life, as it were, and unify and consolidate them into one
normal, healthy Self. He is enabled to weave them all together, and
again restore the "sheath" or "wrapper" of the individual human will,
keeping these threads in place henceforth, and restoring the healthy,
normal personality; the _mens sana in corpore sano_.

Exactly _how_ all this can come about I shall now endeavour to show.
Before any of the more complex and complicated disorders of the mind can
be understood, it will be necessary for us to discuss very briefly the
nature of the subconscious mind--since it is upon this that all modern
researches have in a great measure rested--upon the improved
understanding of its nature that many of these cures rest.

It has long been known that there is a sort of mind in us, capable, at
times, of performing complicated and intelligent actions without the
co-operation or knowledge of the conscious mind. We see examples of this
daily--in the absent-minded actions of certain individuals, in the dream
life, in hypnotic trance, and in many of the cases of no