ience may thus
be cut off from the continuity of conscious life. But to be in
consciousness, and therefore to be not-subconscious, does not mean to be
through memory ties connected with the idea of our own personality.

The somnanbulist, for instance, may get up at night time and write a
letter, then go to bed again and not know anything of the event when he
awakes in the morning. We have no reason to claim that he had no
knowledge of the letter in his consciousness when he wrote it. It is
exactly the same consciousness from a psychological standpoint as the
one with which he wakes up. Only that special content has in an abnormal
way entirely disappeared, has not left a possibility of awakening a
memory image, and the action of the personality in writing has thus
become separated and cut off from the connected experiences of the man.
But while the nocturnal episode may be entirely forgotten, it was not
less in consciousness for the time being, than if a normal man should
leave his bed hastily to write a letter. Moreover under abnormal
conditions, as for instance in severe hysteric cases, those dissociated
contents may form large clusters of mental experiences in the midst of
which a new idea of the own personality may develop. Considering that
through such disconnection many channels of discharge are blocked, while
others are abnormally opened, it seems only natural that the idea of the
own acting personality becomes greatly changed. Thus we have in such an
episode a new second personality which may be strikingly different in
its behavior and in its power, in its memories and in its desires, from
the continuous normal one, and this secondary personality may now
develop its own continuity and may arise under special conditions in
attacks which are connected among one another by their own memory bonds.

The two personalities may even alternate from day to day and the normal
one may itself become pathologically altered. In that case the two
alternating personalities would both be different from the original one.
But again we have even in such most complex and exceptional cases only
an alternation in the contents, not an alternation in the consciousness
itself. Different ideas of the own personality with different
associations and impulses follow each other in consciousness and the
abnormality of the situation lies in the lack of memory connections and
of mutual influences, but consciousness remains the same throughout. It