On Double Consciousness: Experimental Psychological Studies

"Binet is arguably France's best known psychologist...in 1890 Binet published a textbook in English titled On Double Consciousness." - Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology (2015)
"Remarkable...Binet's psychology resulted in a theory stating that the duality of consciousness works in a perfect and autonomous way within the individual." -Physis (2007)
"'On Double Consciousness' Binet discusses what he calls 'bipartition,' or "the duplication of consciousness." -Dusk of Dawn (2018)
"Binet, the great French experimental psychologist...discusses Azam's work and reports his own explorations." - Lines of Descent (2014)
"Binet's work is remarkable in many domains." -Dans L'Année psychologique (2014)

In 1890, psychologists of France had for the past few years been diligently at work studying the phenomena of "double consciousness" and double personality in hysterical individuals.

Groundbreaking French psychologist Binet sets out how he agrees, based on his experiment, that there are indeed individuals who exhibit "double consciousness" in his short 1890 English-only publication "On Double Consciousness." It was one of his few publications that appeared only in English, and which was not a translation from French.

According to one scholar, this double consciousness can be considered "an alternative both to Ribot's idea of dissociation and to Janet's idea of disaggregation."

In discussing his hypothesis, Binet writes:

"In all the experiments that I have hitherto presented, I have supposed in hysterical persons the existence of a double consciousness. This hypothesis possessed the advantage of explaining how it happens that we are able to provoke in the limbs of such individuals various complex movements of adaptation, which are performed without their knowledge; and we, accordingly, proceeded upon the assumption that these movements were regulated by a secondary consciousness, which does not amalgamate with the principal personality."

More about the author:

Alfred Binet (18571911) was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the BinetSimon test.

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