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Morton Prince (1854-1929) was Professor of Nervous Diseases at Tufts from 1902-1912. He was the founder and editor of The Journal of Abnormal Psychology. His other major books include Nature of Mind and Human Automatism, The Unconscious, and The Psychology of the Kaiser. His famous hypnotic investigation and treatment of Miss Beauchamp were carried on from 1898 to 1903 and first published two years later. For his contemporaries the thoroughness and resourcefulness with which Prince approached his patient must have seemed a tour de force; it has remained the classic example of a multiple personality. The three major personalities and two 'subconscious' states are traced from their clinical origin, correlated with each other, and sketched in a biographical format. Recorded observations of speech, handwriting, and automatisms are used to delineate the personalities vividly; three contrapuntal dissociations tempted Prince to think of them as 'The Saint, The Woman, and The Devil'.
B I, or Miss Beauchamp, was 'the typical saint of literature'. B IV, the Woman, had as her idea in life the accomplishment of her own ends regardless of the consequences to others or the means employed. B III, or Sally as the Devil, was a mischievous imp rather than an immoral devil, whose pranks caused the moral suffering of B I and the social difficulties of B IV. B I had poor health; B IV was capable of mental and physical exertion much beyond the powers of B I without ill effects; B III had never known pain. These three personalities and the two 'subconscious' states, B IA and B IVA, existed simultaneously as well as alternately and were capable of independent activity unknown to the main stream of consciousness. Such dissociations were considered to be the result of strain and painful experience, but no indication of any specific, dynamic cause-and-effect influences illuminate the account. The author takes pains to dissect these personalities from the educational and artificial