Identity

On August 28, 1887, a man was found wandering the streets of Norristown, Pennsylvania, disoriented and unable to say who he was. He knew his name was “A.J. Brown.” He knew he was a stationer. But he had no memory of where he came from, why he was there, or how he’d arrived. Eventually, his identity was discovered: he was Ansel Bourne, a 61-year-old preacher from Rhode Island. Two months earlier, Ansel had left his home to run errands. He withdrew $551 from the bank, boarded a train, and vanished. ...

A woman looks at her husband of 30 years. She recognizes his face. She knows it’s him. The features, the voice, the mannerisms—everything looks exactly right. But she knows he’s not her husband. She’s absolutely certain. This person is an imposter. An identical copy. A replacement. Her real husband has been taken, and this lookalike has been put in his place. She knows how it sounds. She knows it’s irrational. But the certainty is overwhelming. ...

On September 13, 1848, a three-foot-seven-inch iron rod weighing thirteen pounds shot through Phineas Gage’s skull at the speed of a cannonball. It entered below his left cheekbone, passed behind his left eye, tore through the front part of his brain, and exploded out through the top of his head, landing about 80 feet away, covered in blood and brain matter. Gage was packing explosives into a rock using a tamping iron when a spark ignited the powder charge prematurely. The rod became a projectile, and Gage became the most famous patient in the history of neuroscience. ...

In July 1959, social psychologist Milton Rokeach gathered three psychiatric patients in a room at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan. Each man had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And each man believed, with absolute conviction, that he was Jesus Christ. Rokeach’s hypothesis was straightforward: when confronted with two other people making the same claim, at least one of them would experience cognitive dissonance strong enough to crack their delusion. Face-to-face with contradictory evidence, reality would reassert itself. ...