Subject
Psychical Research Today & PF
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Date
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A little while back, Stephen Blackwell offered
us the tantalizing fact that VN paid special
attention to a book by Donald James West called
/Psychical Research Today/ (1954)and to the case
of Mrs. Curran, a midwestern woman who produced
through "automatic writing" a large number of poems
and prose pieces which, she claimed, were the work
of the spirit of a seventeenth century woman named
"Patience Worth."
For more, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_Worth
I have a copy of West's book, and I find the section
on Patience Worth very interesting, not only because it
relates to the idea of a spirit directing the pen of a
living person (Shade's ghost directing Kinbote's pen?)
but also because West discards that theory in favor of
the theory that Mrs. Curran had a "secondary personality."
What follows are several sections of the book that I
think might spark some discussion. I'll submit them
without comment, save for one: I think the age and
description of Ansel Bourne is very, very interesting.
Matthew Roth
Automatic writing done by persons interested in
Spiritualism sometimes purports to be dictated by an
outside personality or spirit. The writing may be
signed by some strange name and develop a style and
character of its own, a sort of secondary personality.
[F.W.H.]Myers took an intense interest in these
secondary personalities. He quoted cases in which
the secondary phase was not restricted to writing,
but for periods banished the primary personality
altogether, so that the individual lived a sort of
Jekyll and Hyde existence, now with one character,
now with another.
A case of this kind was Ansel Bourne, an American
preacher. He was a rather unhealthy man who had since
childhood suffered from depressed moods. When he was
sixty-one, he lost his sense of identity, wandered off
into a distant town, and set up as a store-keeper under
another name. After six weeks he suddenly reverted to
his old self and came back home. More interesting still
. . . was the case of "Miss Beauchamp". She developed a
secondary personality called Sally, and there were changes
from one to the other almost daily. Ordinarily Miss Beauchamp
was a shy, submissive creature who took pains to conduct
herself with propriety; but Sally was self-assertive, vain,
spiteful, and mischievous. (58)
It is clear that secondary personalities which manifest in
automatic writings, or in hysterics like Bourne and Beauchamp,
are not independent individuals, but dramatisations of repressed
tendencies. This is the reason why secondary personalities
often have characteristics seemingly opposite to those of the
primary individual. (59)
Spiritualists believe that dead authors have sometimes returned
and dictated posthumous works through mediums. One such case
concerned Charles Dickens, who died suddenly leaving unfinished
his last novel, _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. Four year later
there was published a completion of the story, supposedly
written automatically by the medium T.P. James, an uneducated
mechanic of Brattleboro, Vermont. The style was in many ways
an excellent parody of Charles Dickens. . . . Many years after
Dickens's death, a manuscript was discovered containing a later
portion of Edwin Drood. This portion does not feature at all
in the James version. (64)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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us the tantalizing fact that VN paid special
attention to a book by Donald James West called
/Psychical Research Today/ (1954)and to the case
of Mrs. Curran, a midwestern woman who produced
through "automatic writing" a large number of poems
and prose pieces which, she claimed, were the work
of the spirit of a seventeenth century woman named
"Patience Worth."
For more, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_Worth
I have a copy of West's book, and I find the section
on Patience Worth very interesting, not only because it
relates to the idea of a spirit directing the pen of a
living person (Shade's ghost directing Kinbote's pen?)
but also because West discards that theory in favor of
the theory that Mrs. Curran had a "secondary personality."
What follows are several sections of the book that I
think might spark some discussion. I'll submit them
without comment, save for one: I think the age and
description of Ansel Bourne is very, very interesting.
Matthew Roth
Automatic writing done by persons interested in
Spiritualism sometimes purports to be dictated by an
outside personality or spirit. The writing may be
signed by some strange name and develop a style and
character of its own, a sort of secondary personality.
[F.W.H.]Myers took an intense interest in these
secondary personalities. He quoted cases in which
the secondary phase was not restricted to writing,
but for periods banished the primary personality
altogether, so that the individual lived a sort of
Jekyll and Hyde existence, now with one character,
now with another.
A case of this kind was Ansel Bourne, an American
preacher. He was a rather unhealthy man who had since
childhood suffered from depressed moods. When he was
sixty-one, he lost his sense of identity, wandered off
into a distant town, and set up as a store-keeper under
another name. After six weeks he suddenly reverted to
his old self and came back home. More interesting still
. . . was the case of "Miss Beauchamp". She developed a
secondary personality called Sally, and there were changes
from one to the other almost daily. Ordinarily Miss Beauchamp
was a shy, submissive creature who took pains to conduct
herself with propriety; but Sally was self-assertive, vain,
spiteful, and mischievous. (58)
It is clear that secondary personalities which manifest in
automatic writings, or in hysterics like Bourne and Beauchamp,
are not independent individuals, but dramatisations of repressed
tendencies. This is the reason why secondary personalities
often have characteristics seemingly opposite to those of the
primary individual. (59)
Spiritualists believe that dead authors have sometimes returned
and dictated posthumous works through mediums. One such case
concerned Charles Dickens, who died suddenly leaving unfinished
his last novel, _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. Four year later
there was published a completion of the story, supposedly
written automatically by the medium T.P. James, an uneducated
mechanic of Brattleboro, Vermont. The style was in many ways
an excellent parody of Charles Dickens. . . . Many years after
Dickens's death, a manuscript was discovered containing a later
portion of Edwin Drood. This portion does not feature at all
in the James version. (64)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm