For the time being, however, mesmerism is dead. But in its place, there arose other dangerous notions which detracted scientific attention from more tenable explanations of suggestion and hypnosis. Charcot and his Salpêtrière School, assuming that the trance is nothing but a state of artificial hysteria, have created the unfortunate concept of "mental dissociation." In this view, the mind can be divided into two (or more) practically independent parts and function as such, though only one will command consciousness at a time. Today this concept of dissociation is being used in a variety of ways and under the guise of erudite language, as when it is said: "Hypnosis may best be characterized as a phenomenon entailing a splitting of consciousness in which the simultaneous and successive nexus of mental life is partially deranged." I have read many a modern book on psychology but, heaven knows, I have not yet discovered what such phrases really mean. The idea of "split" and "divided" personality was made fashionable by striking studies of Morton Prince (particularly, in connection with the famous case of Miss Beau-champ), and further popularized by the psychoanalytic theory of the Unconscious. So-called "shell-shocks" of the war-time and hysterical amnesias seemed only to confirm this interpretation.
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