Split or even disordered personality is not such a rare occurrence. Each of us seems to have several people who sometimes argue with each other. But in normal people, these inner people do not get out of control, and one part of the personality always dominates, which subdues the rest. But sometimes the psyche fails, and each of the inner personalities begins to live its own life, often not the most righteous …
Steal from yourself
At the beginning of the 16th century, the physician and alchemist Paracelsus described a case from his practice. A certain woman constantly complained that someone was constantly stealing her money. Later it turned out that she was stealing them from herself - or rather, her second self. It turned out that the woman periodically reincarnated into another person. Her alter ego was hiding the stolen in secluded places, and when the woman came to her senses, she did not remember it at all.
And this is far from an isolated case of a split personality in the past of mankind. Many such patients fell into the hands of doctors, but they only shrugged their shoulders - no one knew how to treat this strange disease. However, much more often such patients fell into the hands of witch hunters and possessed demons - and dealt with the unfortunate cruelly.
However, by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, medicine was already able to interpret the scattered facts of multiple personality disorder and even propose methods of treatment, which, however, in the modern view, give off quackery - for example, animal magnetism, which was fashionable at that time. But interestingly enough, the patients were healed!
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The many faces of Doris
In 1915, US physician Walter Franklin Prince published his article "The Case of Doris's Multiple Personality", in which he told the story of the patient Doris Fisher, who suffered not even a split, but, so to speak, "crucified" her personality.
Doris Fisher was born in Pittsburgh in 1889. When she was only three years old, a drunken father grabbed her from her mother's arms and threw her with all his might on the floor. The shock of the child was so strong that the girl's personality was divided into two parts: Doris - the "good" girl who is praised and caressed, and "Margaret" - the naughty, "bad" girl who is scolded and punished.
These two personalities turned out to be completely different from each other - Doris was fond of many things, she studied well, and Margaret did not want anything but to cause trouble for too correct Doris. She could steal something to punish the "true Doris", hid her books, stain her clothes, scratch her body so that Doris would suffer.
In 1906, the girl's mother died, and a new shock brought to life a third person - "sick Doris". She considered herself very sick and told everyone that she would soon die. Later, "sleeping Doris" and "sleeping Margaret" appeared. "Sleeping Margaret" tried to hurt "sleeping Doris" in her sleep, brushing her body until she blew.
Life with an alcoholic father became unbearable, and Doris and all her personalities ran away from home. The girl ended up in an asylum for the mentally ill, where Dr. Prince saw her.
All the usual treatments have failed. Prince turned to James Hislop, professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University, for help. Together they tried to "put" Doris together, but nothing worked.
Interestingly, both enlightened luminaries came to the conclusion that the point is not in the girl's sick psyche, but in the influence of a certain metaphysical external force, simply speaking, the same demons. The doctors turned to a medium for help, and he, using hypnosis and magnetism, healed Doris, bringing all her “I” together!
Sally's spirit
Another "textbook" case of the existence of two or more people in one is the story of Miss Buchamp, who was treated by the same Dr. Prince. Sally Beauchamp had four personalities, each of which was different from the others in character, temperament, interests and hobbies. The main controlling personality was "Sally", who claimed that she was a spirit and could control the rest of her personalities. But she understood management in a peculiar way - “Sally” tormented the others. For example, one of her essences was very afraid of spiders and mice, and Sally periodically stuffed them into boxes and cabinets to scare the cowardly Miss Beauchamp more.
Sally simply hated "co-workers", and could leave for the night looking far away in order to force one of her "second selves" to return home at night along completely gloomy and dangerous streets.
Dr. Prince tried to get to the real Miss Buechem, but Sally claimed that she was in charge here and would never leave. The doctor persuaded her, persuaded her, but Sally still said that she was a spirit that would not obey anyone. The usual methods of treatment did not help, and again I had to turn to a hypnotist. And once the spirit of Sally and her other essences left Miss Beauchamp, who turned into an ordinary person …
Less complex, but nevertheless, a classic case of split personality occurred with a young French woman named Felida, who lived in the early 20th century. She had only two hypostases, but they differed from each other as day and night. One was a very painful, timid, notorious and sad girl. And the other is cheerful, energetic, flirtatious and confident. The transition from one state to another was not so frequent and was accompanied by fainting, after which Felida forgot everything connected with her other self. So, once, having switched to another personality, she was surprised to find that she was pregnant, and already at the ninth month.
Maniac Allen
But the most unique case of splitting the human essence into a number of others is William Stanley Mulligan, who died in 2014 - within the walls of a psychiatric clinic. Mulligan "became famous" for committing a huge number of crimes, but at the same time was not subjected to any punishment.
He killed, robbed, raped, but when his cases were considered in court, the verdict was always the same - to continue treatment. For Mulligan had a very difficult case of split personality. Inside his body lived not one, not two, but as many as twenty-four people, with completely different nationalities and characters!
One of them is Arthur. This is a respectable Englishman, distinguished by enormous aptitude for science - he independently studied physics, chemistry and even wrote several scientific articles on these subjects.
American Danny, who lived inside Mulligan's body, very timid, intimidated, avoiding people, was distinguished by a tendency to homosexuality. David, on the contrary, was very fond of women, and, in addition, was famous for his great kindness and the ability to help his neighbor.
But the scoundrel Allen has absorbed all the worst human qualities and vices - it was he who robbed, killed and raped.
Natalia Trubinovskaya