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A MIND THAT FOUND ITSELF
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY CLIFFORD WHITTINGHAM BEERS

SECOND EDITION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1910

Dedicated
TO THE MEMORY OF MY UNCLE
SAMUEL EDWIN MERWIN
WHOSE TIMELY GENEROSITY I BELIEVE SAVED MY LIFE,
AND WHOSE DEATH HAS FOREVER ROBBED
ME OF A SATISFYING OPPORTUNITY
TO PROVE MY GRATITUDE

INTRODUCTION

A STORY so strange as to challenge belief must needs be presented in a way especially calculated to inspire confidence. Thanks to Professor William James of Harvard University, I am able to cut off incredulity at its source by quoting his opinion. That which has already enlisted the support of one of the most eminent psychologists in America is entitled at least to a respectful hearing from laymen.

95 IRVING ST., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
July 1, 1906.

DEAR MR. BEERS:

Having at last "got round" to your MS., I have read it with very great interest and admiration for both its style and its temper. I hope you will finish it and publish it. It is the best written out "case" that I have seen; and you no doubt have put your finger on the weak spots of our treatment of the insane, and suggested the right line of remedy. I have long thought that if I were a millionaire, with money to leave for public purposes, I should endow "Insanity" exclusively.

You were doubtless a pretty intolerable character when the maniacal condition came on and you were bossing the universe. Not only ordinary "tact," but a genius for diplomacy, must have been needed for avoiding rows with you; but you certainly were wrongly treated nevertheless; and the spiteful Assistant M.D. at ---- deserves to have his name published. Your report is full of instructiveness for doctors and attendants alike.

The most striking thing in it to my mind is the sudden conversion of you from a delusional subject to a maniacal one -- how the whole delusional system disintegrated the moment one pin was drawn out by your proving your brother to be genuine. I never heard of so rapid a change in a mental system.

You speak of re-writing. Don't you do it. You can hardly improve your book. I shall keep the MS. a week longer as I wish to impart it to a friend.

Sincerely yours,
WM. JAMES.

95 IRVING ST., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
November 10, 1907.

DEAR MR. BEERS:

You are welcome to use the letter I wrote to you (on July 1, 1906) after reading the first part of your MS. in any way your judgment prompts, whether as preface, advertisement, or anything else. Reading the rest of it only heightens its importance in my eyes. In style, in temper, in good taste, it is irreproachable. As for contents, it is fit to remain in literature as a classic account "from within" of an insane person's psychology.

The book ought to go far toward helping along that terribly needed reform, the amelioration of the lot of the insane of our country, for the Auxiliary Society which you propose is feasible (as numerous examples in other fields show), and ought to work important effects on the whole situation.

You have handled a difficult theme with great skill, and produced a narrative of absorbing interest to scientist as well as layman. It reads like fiction, but it is not fiction; and this I state emphatically, knowing how prone the uninitiated are to doubt the truthfulness of descriptions of abnormal mental processes.

With best wishes for the success of the book and the plan, both of which, I hope, will prove epoch-making, I remain,

Sincerely yours,
WM. JAMES.

CLIFFORD W. BEERS, Esq.,
30 Trumbull Street,
New Haven, Connecticut.

CONTENTS

PART I. CHAPTERS I-XXV. Page 1
PART II. CHAPTERS XXVI-XXXI. Page 212
PART III. CHAPTERS XXXII-XXXV. Page 256
PART IV. CHAPTERS XXXVI-XXXIX. Page 291
APPENDICES. PAGES 319-363
POSTSCRIPT. PAGE 319

THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN BY ONE WHOSE RARE EXPERIENCES IMPEL HIM TO PLEAD FOR THOSE AFFLICTED THOUSANDS LEAST ABLE TO SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

A Mind That Found Itself

PART I

I

THIS story is derived from as human a document as ever existed; and, because of its uncommon nature, perhaps no one thing contributes so much to its value as its authenticity. It is an autobiography, and more: in part it is a biography; for, in telling the story of my life, I must relate the history of another self -- a self which was dominant from my twenty-fourth to my twenty-sixth year. During that period I was unlike what I had been, or what I have been since. The biographical part of my autobiography might be called the history of a mental civil war, which I fought single-handed on a battle-field that lay within the compass of my skull. An Army of Unreason, composed of the cunning and treacherous thoughts of an unfair foe, attacked my bewildered consciousness with cruel persistency, and would have destroyed me, had not a triumphant Reason finally interposed a superior strategy that saved me from my unnatural self.