30 October: Boreham on Dual Personality

The Missing Equation
A good deal is said from time to time on what is called dual personality, but is there such a thing? In his "Random Reminiscences," Mr. Charles Brookfield, the anniversary of whose death we mark today, says that it was he who first suggested to Robert Louis Stevenson the idea that he developed in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." They were talking of a man named Samuel Creggan. "He's a man who trades on the Samuel," Stevenson declared in his musical Scottish voice. "He receives you with Samuel's smile on his face; with the gesture of Samuel he invites you to a chair; with Samuel's eyes cast down in self-depreciation he tells you how well satisfied his clients have always been with his dealings; but every now and again you catch a glimpse of the Creggan peeping out like a ferret; Creggan's the real man; Samuel's only superficial." The idea quickly captured Stevenson's imagination, and, very shortly afterwards "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" took the world by storm.

It does sometimes seem as if every man is two men. Ian Maclaren has told us how Drumsheugh fought the dealers at Drumtochty for every sixpence and earned for himself a miser's ill repute. But secretly he was helping with the money the woman whom he had once hoped to win, but who, rejecting him, had since married disastrously. "Drumsheugh," exclaimed Dr. Maclure when he discovered the truth, "ye're the most accomplished liar in Drumtochty and—the best man I ever saw!" In his Reminiscences, Sir Henry Hawkins, the great criminal lawyer, tells of a woman whom he once defended. Whilst her husband and son murdered a servant girl, she held the hands of the struggling victim. But when, in the course of the trial, she saw that all three of them would be convicted, she insisted that the deed was entirely hers and that neither her husband nor her son had anything to do with it. "Now here," says Sir Henry, "was a strange mingling of diabolical cruelty and noble self-sacrifice in one breast!" Cases like these do convey the impression that such a thing as dual personality really exists.

Two Selves Within A Single Skin
That a certain self-contradictory element does actually characterise our common humanity, it would be futile to deny. All the best expositors of life have stressed it. Take Fielding, for example. Fielding's supreme excellence lies in his intense humanness. His heroines, however lovable, are never angelic; his scoundrels, however detestable, are never fiendish. He did not believe in unadulterated virtue or unmitigated vice. He found men very much of a mixture and he so depicts them. His heroes are speckled by grevious faults, while his villains occasionally astound us by their genuine goodness of heart. He tells us of "the trembling wretch who has been hanged for a robbery, but to whom the judge spoke cordially because he had been a kind father, husband, and son. And his greatest creation of all, Tom Jones, is "a piebald miscellany," characterised by "bursts of great heart and slips of sensual mire." Each of us has but to turn his eyes inward in order to be convinced of the existence within us of these parallel factors.

It is for this reason that we resent both unqualified censure and unmodified praise. None of us deserves either. Whatever may be said to our credit or condemnation, there is always another aspect of the case to be considered. We feel like Woodbine Willie's famous Digger—

Our Padre, 'e says I'm a sinner, and John Bull says I'm a saint;
And they're
both of 'em downright liars, for I'm neither of them, I ain't.
I'm a man, and
a man's a mixture, right down from 'is very birth,
For part of 'im comes from
'eaven and part of 'im comes from earth.
There's summat as draws 'im upwards,
and summat as drags 'im down
And the consekence is 'e wobbles 'twixt muck and
a golden crown.

Out of this consciousness of inner conflict, this sense of continuous secret strife, has sprung the conception of dual personality. But does that conception cover all the ground?

Two Kingdoms Beneath A Single King
Is there not a missing equation, a third quantity, to be taken into account? Quite apart from the goodness of the man and the badness of the man, what of the man himself? There is his vital personality, his essential ego to be considered. Where do his deepest sympathies lie? In his "Pilgrim's Progress," Bunyan has nothing more suggestive or more penetrating than his treatment of this very problem. Christian and Pliable set out together from the City of Destruction as pilgrims to the Celestial City. Christian goes eagerly: Pliable is not so sure about it. They fall together into the Slough of Despond. Floundering in the filthy bog, their behaviour, whilst apparently similar, is marked by one fundamental distinction. Pliable automatically struggles towards the bank nearer the City of Destruction from which he had come; Christian instinctively turns towards the bank nearer the Celestial City on which his heart is set. In those differing attitudes, the two personalities stand revealed.

In the biography of the famous Bishop Westcott there occurs an account of Dr. Westcott's visit to the death bed of Bishop Lee of Manchester. In his closing days, Dr. Lee's mind became clouded and he confessed to Bishop Westcott that the only prayer that he could still offer was the dubious petition: "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." At first sight it appears to be the prayer of a man who is simultaneously a saint and a sceptic. "Lord, I believe!" there stands the saint; "help Thou mine unbelief!" there stands the sceptic. But Dr. Westcott pointed out to the dying bishop that, beneath both the saintliness and the scepticism, the element of personality dominates the situation. As anyone can see who glances at the personal pronouns in the wavering petition, the man in the gospel story and the sick prelate both took their stand beside their faith and repudiated their unbelief as a thing to be pitied and deplored. The key to the entire problem lies there.

F W Boreham

Image: Frank and Stella Boreham in their old age.