There is at present[2] a patient in France whose case is so extraordinary that I cannot do better than transcribe1 the report of it here, especially because it tends to show not only that we have two personalities2, but that each may use by preference a separate lobe3 of the brain. The Conscious Personality occupies the left and controls the right hand, the Unconscious the right side of the head and controls the left hand. It also brings to light a very curious, not to say appalling4, fact, viz., the immense moral difference there may be between the Conscious and the Unconscious Personalities. In the American case Bourne was a character practically identical with Brown. In this French case the character of each self is entirely5 different. What makes the case still more interesting is that, besides the two personalities which we all seem to possess, this patient had an arrested personality, which was only fourteen years old when the age of his body was over forty. Here is the report, however, make of it what you will.
"Louis V. began life (in 1863) as the neglected child of a turbulent mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years of age, and there showed himself, as he has always done when his organization had given him a chance, quiet, well-behaved, and obedient. Then at fourteen years old he had a great fright from a viper6—a fright which threw him off his balance, and started the series of psychical7 oscillations on which he has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical, epilepsy and hysterical8 paralysis9 of the legs; and at the asylum10 of Bonneval, whither he was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily11 for a couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-epileptic attack—fifty hours of convulsions and ecstasy—and when he awoke from it he was no longer paralysed, no longer acquainted with tailoring, and no longer virtuous12. His memory was set back, so to say, to the moment of the viper's appearance, and he could remember nothing since. His character had become violent, greedy, quarrelsome, and his tastes were radically13 changed. For instance, though he had before the attack been a total abstainer14, he now not only drank his own wine, but stole the wine of the other patients. He escaped from Bonneval, and after a few turbulent years, tracked by his occasional relapses into hospital or madhouse, he turned up once more at the Rochefort asylum in the character of a private of marines, convicted of theft, but considered to be of unsound mind. And at Rochefort and La Rochelle, by great good fortune, he fell into the hands of three physicians—Professors Bourru and Burot, and Dr. Mabille—able and willing to continue and extend the observations which Dr. Camuset at Bonneval, and Dr. Jules Voisin at Bicetre, had already made on this most precious of mauvais sujets at earlier points in his chequered career.
"He is now no longer at Rochefort, and Dr. Burot informs me that his health has much improved, and that his peculiarities15 have in great part disappeared. I must, however, for clearness sake, use the present tense in briefly16 describing his condition at the time when the long series of experiments were made.
"The state into which he has gravitated is a very unpleasing one. There is paralysis and insensibility of the right side, and, as is often the case in right hemiplegia, the speech is indistinct and difficult. Nevertheless he is constantly haranguing17 any one who will listen to him, abusing his physicians, or preaching—with a monkey-like impudence18 rather than with reasoned clearness—radicalism in politics and atheism19 in religion. He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he endeavours to caress20 him. He remembers recent events during his residence at Rochefort asylum, but only two scraps21 of his life before that date, namely, his vicious period at Bonneval and a part of his stay at Bicetre.
"Except this strange fragmentary memory, there is nothing very unusual in this condition, and in many asylums22 no experiments on it would have been attempted. Fortunately the physicians at Rochefort were familiar with the efficacy of the contact of metals in provoking transfer of hysterical hemiplegia from one side to the other. They tried various metals in turn on Louis V. Lead, silver, and zinc23 had no effect. Copper24 produced a slight return of sensibility in the paralysed arm, but steel applied25 to the right arm transferred the whole insensibility to the left side of the body.
"Inexplicable26 as such a phenomenon is, it is sufficiently27 common, as French physicians hold, in hysterical cases to excite little surprise. What puzzled the doctors was the change of character which accompanied the change of sensibility. When Louis V. issued from the crisis of transfer with its minute of anxious expression and panting breath, he might fairly be called a new man. The restless insolence28, the savage29 impulsiveness30, have wholly disappeared. The patient is now gentle, respectful, and modest, can speak clearly, but he only speaks when he is spoken to. If he is asked his views on religion and politics, he prefers to leave such matters to wiser heads than his own. It might seem that morally and mentally the patient's cure had been complete.
"But now ask what he thinks of Rochefort; how he liked his regiment31 of marines. He will blankly answer that he knows nothing of Rochefort, and was never a soldier in his life. 'Where are you then, and what is the date of to-day?' 'I am at Bicetre; it is January 2nd, 1884, and I hope to see M. Voisin, as I did yesterday.'
"It is found, in fact, that he has now the memory of two short periods of life (different from those which he remembers when his right side is paralysed), periods during which, so far as now can be ascertained32, his character was of this same decorous type, and his paralysis was on his left side.
"These two conditions are what are called his first and his second, out of a series of six or more through which he can be made to pass. For brevity's sake I will further describe his fifth state only.
"If he is placed in an electric bath, or if a magnet is placed on his head, it looks at first sight as though a complete physical cure had been effected. All paralysis, all defect of sensibility, has disappeared. His movements are light and active, his expression gentle and timid, but ask him where he is, and you will find that he has gone back to a boy of fourteen, that he is at St. Urbain, his first reformatory, and that his memory embraces his years of childhood, and stops short on the very day on which he had the fright from the viper. If he is pressed to recollect33 the incident of the viper, a violent epileptiform crisis puts a sudden end to this phase of his personality." (Vol. IV. pp. 497, 498, 499, "Proceedings34 of the Society for Psychical Research").
This carries us a good deal further. Here we have not only two distinct personalities, but two distinct characters, if not three, in one body. According to the side which is paralysed, the man is a savage reprobate35 or a decent modest citizen. The man seems born again when the steel touches his right side. Yet all that has happened has been that the Sub-conscious Personality has superseded36 his Conscious Personality in the control of Louis V.
2 (Return)
1891.
Lucie and Adrienne.
The next case, although not marked by the same violent contrast, is quite as remarkable37, because it illustrates38 the extent to which the Sub-conscious Self can be utilized39 in curing the Conscious Personality.
The subject was a girl of nineteen, called Lucie, who was highly hysterical, having daily attacks of several hours' duration. She was also devoid40 of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that she "lost her legs in bed," as she put it.
On her fifth hypnotisation, however, Lucie underwent a kind of catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of assent41 or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she executed them infallibly, whether they were to take effect immediately, or after waking.
In Lucie's case this went further, and the suggested actions became absolutely a portion of the trance-life. She executed them without apparently42 knowing what she was doing. If, for instance, in her waking state she was told (in the tone which in her hypnotic state signified command) to get up and walk about, she walked about, but to judge from her conversation she supposed herself to be still sitting quiet. She would weep violently when commanded, but while she wept she continued to talk as gaily43 and unconcernedly as if the tears had been turned on by a stop-cock.
Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a brusque tone of command reached the Unconscious Self alone; and other remarks reached the subject—awake or somnambulic—in the ordinary way. The next step was to test the intelligence of this hidden "slave of the lamp," if I may so term it—this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all that was bidden. How far was its attention alert? How far was it capable of reasoning and judgment44? M. Janet began with a simple experiment. "When I shall have clapped my hands together twelve times," he said to the entranced subject before awakening45 her, "you will go to sleep again." There was no sign that the sleeper46 understood or heard; and when she was awakened47 the events of the trance were a blank to her as usual. She began talking to other persons. M. Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not seem to be attending to him, he went up to her and said, "Did you hear what I did just now?" "No; what?" "Do you hear this?" and he clapped his hands once more. "Yes, you clapped your hands." "How often?" "Once." M. Janet again withdrew and clapped his hands six times gently, with pauses between the claps. Lucie paid no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of this second series—making the twelfth altogether—was reached, she fell instantly into the trance again. It seemed, then, that the "slave of the lamp" had counted the claps through all, and had obeyed the order much as a clock strikes after a certain number of swings of the pendulum48, however often you stop it between hour and hour.
Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the unconscious element in Lucie was not direct, but inferential. The nature of the command which it could execute showed it to be capable of attention and memory; but there was no way of learning its own conception of itself, if such existed, or of determining its relation to other phenomena49 of Lucie's trance. And here it was that automatic writing was successfully invoked51; here we have, as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new attention directed to this seldom-trodden field. M. Janet began by the following simple command: "When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was done in the usual scrawling52 script of automatism, and Lucie, though fully50 awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all.
M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a persistent53 effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter54 as usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many cases, a new and invading separate personality is assumed.
A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory intelligence, an identity sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in order to answer one must hear." "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?" "I don't know." "There must be somebody that hears me." "Yes." "Who is it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes, Blanche." Blanche, however, had to be changed. Another name had to be chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must, it will be more convenient." "Well, then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality had less spontaneity about it.
Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper down than Lucie. She could get at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations55 of which Lucie experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient was subject.
Lucie's special terror, which recurred56 in wild exclamation57 in her hysterical fits, was in some way connected with hidden men. She could not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an illness in consequence. Now, during these "crises" Lucie (except, presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty constant element in such attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at; could no longer obey orders, and if she wrote, wrote only "J'ai peur, j'ai peur."
M. Janet, however, waited until the attack was over, and then questioned Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated58 scene. Adrienne was able to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations; but she knew what Lucie saw, and why she saw it; nay59, indeed, it was Adrienne, rather than Lucie, to whom the hallucination was directly visible.
Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously amiss. One conspicuous60 symptom was an almost absolute defect of sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned, an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state, not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but the corresponding or complimentary61 movements, the corresponding facial expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments. Thus, if M. Janet clenched62 her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?" "Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."
In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were—as the pure experimentalist might say—only too sanative, only too rapidly tending to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries63 with therapeutic64 suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the unconscious again—must I say?—for ever more.
Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport65 quite outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own identity.
And we must remember that Adrienne—while she was, if I may say so, the Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression—did, nevertheless, manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated, might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different, though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more—and this last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative conclusions—Adrienne possessed66 a faculty67, the muscular sense, of which Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly68 open as regards the relative faculties69 of the Conscious and the Unconscious Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate70 being.
Félida X. and her Submerged Soul.
Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The woman in question, Félida X., has been transformed.
In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs71 but for a few hours at long intervals72. Félida's second state is altogether superior to the first—physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior, inasmuch as her morose73, self-centred disposition74 is exchanged for a cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her shop much more effectively than when she was in the état béte, as she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing75, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities—the second state, no memory of which remains76 in the first state—has resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Félida's normal state was in fact her morbid77 state; and the new condition which seemed at first a mere78 hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life of bodily and mental sanity79, which makes her fully the equal of average women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)
点击收听单词发音
1 transcribe | |
v.抄写,誉写;改编(乐曲);复制,转录 | |
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2 personalities | |
n. 诽谤,(对某人容貌、性格等所进行的)人身攻击; 人身攻击;人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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3 lobe | |
n.耳垂,(肺,肝等的)叶 | |
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4 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
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5 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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6 viper | |
n.毒蛇;危险的人 | |
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7 psychical | |
adj.有关特异功能现象的;有关特异功能官能的;灵魂的;心灵的 | |
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8 hysterical | |
adj.情绪异常激动的,歇斯底里般的 | |
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9 paralysis | |
n.麻痹(症);瘫痪(症) | |
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10 asylum | |
n.避难所,庇护所,避难 | |
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11 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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12 virtuous | |
adj.有品德的,善良的,贞洁的,有效力的 | |
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13 radically | |
ad.根本地,本质地 | |
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14 abstainer | |
节制者,戒酒者,弃权者 | |
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15 peculiarities | |
n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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16 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
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17 haranguing | |
v.高谈阔论( harangue的现在分词 ) | |
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18 impudence | |
n.厚颜无耻;冒失;无礼 | |
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19 atheism | |
n.无神论,不信神 | |
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20 caress | |
vt./n.爱抚,抚摸 | |
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21 scraps | |
油渣 | |
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22 asylums | |
n.避难所( asylum的名词复数 );庇护;政治避难;精神病院 | |
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23 zinc | |
n.锌;vt.在...上镀锌 | |
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24 copper | |
n.铜;铜币;铜器;adj.铜(制)的;(紫)铜色的 | |
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25 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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26 inexplicable | |
adj.无法解释的,难理解的 | |
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27 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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28 insolence | |
n.傲慢;无礼;厚颜;傲慢的态度 | |
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29 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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30 impulsiveness | |
n.冲动 | |
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31 regiment | |
n.团,多数,管理;v.组织,编成团,统制 | |
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32 ascertained | |
v.弄清,确定,查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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33 recollect | |
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34 proceedings | |
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35 reprobate | |
n.无赖汉;堕落的人 | |
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36 superseded | |
[医]被代替的,废弃的 | |
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37 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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38 illustrates | |
给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 ); 说明; 表明; (用示例、图画等)说明 | |
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39 utilized | |
v.利用,使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40 devoid | |
adj.全无的,缺乏的 | |
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41 assent | |
v.批准,认可;n.批准,认可 | |
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42 apparently | |
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43 gaily | |
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44 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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45 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
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46 sleeper | |
n.睡眠者,卧车,卧铺 | |
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47 awakened | |
v.(使)醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 );(使)觉醒;弄醒;(使)意识到 | |
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48 pendulum | |
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49 phenomena | |
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50 fully | |
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51 invoked | |
v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 );行使(权利等);祈求救助;恳求 | |
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52 scrawling | |
乱涂,潦草地写( scrawl的现在分词 ) | |
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53 persistent | |
adj.坚持不懈的,执意的;持续的 | |
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54 chatter | |
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战 | |
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55 manifestations | |
n.表示,显示(manifestation的复数形式) | |
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56 recurred | |
再发生,复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 ); 治愈 | |
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57 exclamation | |
n.感叹号,惊呼,惊叹词 | |
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58 agitated | |
adj.被鼓动的,不安的 | |
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59 nay | |
adv.不;n.反对票,投反对票者 | |
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60 conspicuous | |
adj.明眼的,惹人注目的;炫耀的,摆阔气的 | |
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61 complimentary | |
adj.赠送的,免费的,赞美的,恭维的 | |
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62 clenched | |
v.紧握,抓紧,咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63 inquiries | |
n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 );疑问;探究;打听 | |
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64 therapeutic | |
adj.治疗的,起治疗作用的;对身心健康有益的 | |
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65 purport | |
n.意义,要旨,大要;v.意味著,做为...要旨,要领是... | |
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66 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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67 faculty | |
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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68 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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69 faculties | |
n.能力( faculty的名词复数 );全体教职员;技巧;院 | |
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70 corporate | |
adj.共同的,全体的;公司的,企业的 | |
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71 recurs | |
再发生,复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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72 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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73 morose | |
adj.脾气坏的,不高兴的 | |
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74 disposition | |
n.性情,性格;意向,倾向;排列,部署 | |
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75 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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76 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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77 morbid | |
adj.病的;致病的;病态的;可怕的 | |
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78 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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79 sanity | |
n.心智健全,神智正常,判断正确 | |
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