Observations placeholder

HYPNOTISM, DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS and alterations of personality by Etienne Eugène Azam

I. HISTORY OF FELIDA X... FROM 1858 TO 1877

Félida X... was born in 1843 in Bordeaux to healthy parents; her father, a captain in the merchant navy, died when she was young, and her mother, left in a precarious situation, had to work to raise her children.

Félida's early years were difficult, but her development was steady.

At around the age of thirteen, shortly after puberty, she presented symptoms indicating early hysteria, various nervous accidents, vague pain, pulmonary hemorrhage, which were not explained by the condition of the organs of respiration.

Good worker and of a developed intelligence, she worked by the day at sewing workshops.

Around the age of fourteen and a half, the phenomena that are the subject of this story became apparent.

Without a known cause, sometimes under the influence of an emotion, Felida X... felt pain in both temples and fell into a deep overwhelming, sleep-like state. This state lasted about ten minutes; after that time and spontaneously she opened her eyes, appearing to awaken, and entered for the second state that we agreed to name it: the second state that I will describe later; it lasted an hour or two, then the exhaustion and sleep returned and Felida entered into the ordinary state.

This kind of seizure came back every five or six days or more rarely; her parents and the people around her, considering the change in her pace during this kind of second life and her forgetting when she woke up, thought she was a madwoman.

Soon the accidents of hysteria itself worsened. Felida had convulsions, and the phenomena of so-called madness became more worrying; I was then called upon to give her my care (June 1858); for, being an assistant doctor at the public asylum for insane women, it was natural for me to be asked to treat an illness that was thought to be mental.