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Title: The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal
Author: Prince, Morton
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.

Footnotes have been moved to follow the Lecture in which they are
referenced.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

THE UNCONSCIOUS

[Illustration]

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

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TORONTO

THE UNCONSCIOUS

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN
PERSONALITY NORMAL AND
ABNORMAL

MORTON PRINCE, M.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR (EMERITUS) OF DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM,
TUFTS COLLEGE MEDICAL SCHOOL; CONSULTING PHYSICIAN
TO THE BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL

SECOND EDITION
REVISED

=New York=
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921

-------

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1914.
New Edition, June, 1921.

PREFACE

This work is designed to be an introduction to abnormal psychology. The
problems considered, however, belong equally to normal psychology in
that they are problems of psycho-physiological functions and mechanisms.
I have made no attempt to develop any particular school of psychological
theory but rather, so far as may be, to gather together the knowledge
already gained and lay a foundation which can be built upon by any
school for the solution of particular problems, especially those of
special pathology. I have therefore endeavored to avoid controversial
questions although this, of course, has not been wholly possible, and
indeed so far as special pathological conditions (the psychoses) have
been considered, it has been for the purpose of providing data and
testing the principles adduced. The inductive method, alone, I believe,
as in the physical sciences, can enable us to arrive at sound
conclusions—justify the formulation of theories to explain psychological
phenomena. Because of the very difficulties of this field of
research—one of which is that of submitting to experimental conditions
complex psychological phenomena having so many factors—it is all the
more incumbent that the inductive method should be employed. To my way
of thinking we should begin at the bottom and build up bit by bit,
drawing, as we go, no wider conclusions than the facts developed
warrant; or if we do, these should be recognized clearly as working
hypotheses or speculative theories. Skyscrapers should not be erected
until the foundations have been examined to see if they will bear the
superstructure. That I have wholly succeeded in so rigorously
restricting my own endeavors I can scarcely hope. I trust, however, that
I have succeeded in consistently maintaining the distinction between
facts and their interpretations.

The present volume consists of selected lectures (with the exception of
four) from courses on abnormal psychology delivered at the Tufts College
Medical School (1908-10) and later at the University of California
(1910).[1] These again were based on a series of papers on the
Unconscious published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (1908-9) of
which they are elaborations. Since the lectures were delivered a large
amount of new material has been incorporated and the subject matter
considered in more detail and more exhaustively than was practical
before student bodies. The four additional lectures (X, XI, XII and
XIII) appeared in abbreviated form in the same Journal (Oct., Nov.,
1912) under the title “The Meaning of Ideas as Determined by Unconscious
Settings.” The lecture form has been retained, offering as it does many
advantages where, in the exposition of a difficult subject, much that is
elemental needs to be stated.

As the subconscious and its processes are fundamentals both in the
structure of personality and in the many mechanisms through which
personality, normal and abnormal, finds expression, the first eight
lectures are devoted to its exposition. Indeed, as has been said, the
subconscious is not only the most important problem of psychology, it is
_the_ problem. The study of its phenomena must be preliminary to that of
the functioning mechanisms of both the normal mind and of those special
pathological conditions—the psycho-neuroses—which modern investigators
are tracing to its perversions.

In a recently published article M. Bergson concludes with the following
prophesy: “To explore the most sacred depths of the unconscious, to
labor in what I have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will
be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening. I
do not doubt that wonderful discoveries await it there, as important
perhaps as have been in the preceding centuries the discoveries of the
physical and natural sciences. That at least is the promise which I make
for it, that is the wish that in closing I have for it.”[2]

And yet one reads and hears all sorts of contradictory statements, made
by those who it is presumed should know, regarding the actuality of the
subconscious. Thus one or another writer, assuming to know, states most
positively that there is no such thing as the subconscious. Others,
equally emphatic, postulate it as an established fact rather than a
theory, or assume it as a philosophical concept or hypothesis to explain
particular phenomena. One difficulty is that the term, as commonly used,
has many meanings, and it has followed that different writers have
assumed it with respectively different meanings. Consequently the
subconscious as an actuality has been unwittingly denied when the intent
has been really to deny some particular meaning or interpretation, and
particular meanings have been subsumed which are only philosophical
concepts.

There should be no difficulty in deciding what the facts permit us to
postulate. The subconscious is a theory based upon observed facts and
formulated to explain those facts. There are many precise phenomena of
different kinds which can only be explained as due to explicitly
subconscious processes, that is, processes which do not appear in the
content of consciousness; just as the phenomena manifested by radium can
only be explained by emanations (or rays) which themselves are not
visible and cannot be made the object of conscious experience. In each
case it is the manifestations of such processes of which we become
aware. Subconscious processes and radio-activity stand on precisely the
same basis so far as the determination of their actuality is concerned.
(The latter have the advantage, of course, in that being physical they
are subject to quantitative measurement.) Such being the case it ought
to be possible to construct the theory of the subconscious by inductive
methods on the basis of facts of observation just as any theory of the
physical sciences is constructed.

This task I have set before myself as well as that of giving precision
to our conception of the theory and taking it out of the domain of
philosophical concepts. With this purpose in view I have endeavored to
apply the method of science and construct the theory by induction from
the data of observation and experiment. I dare say this has been a
somewhat ambitious and some will say, perhaps, overbold undertaking.
Undoubtedly, too, this attitude toward this and other individual
problems has not been always consistently maintained, nor perhaps is it
completely possible in the present state of the science.

Our formulations should be as precise as possible and facts and concepts
of a different order should not be included in one and the same formula.
I have, accordingly, divided the subconscious into two classes, namely
(1) the _unconscious_, or neural dispositions and processes, and (2) the
_coconscious_, or actual subconscious ideas which do not enter the
content of conscious awareness. An unconscious process and a coconscious
process are both therefore _subconscious_ processes but particular types
thereof—the one being purely neural or physical and the other
psychological or ideational.

The soundness of the conclusions reached in this work I leave to the
judgment of my critics, of whom I doubt not I shall have many. I do not
hesitate to say, however, that it is only by practical familiarity with
the phenomena of mental pathology and artificially induced phenomena
(such as those of hypnosis, suggestion, etc.), requiring a long training
in this field of research (as in other scientific fields), that we can
correctly estimate the value of data and the conclusions drawn
therefrom; and even then many of our conclusions can be regarded as only
provisional.

In these lectures I have also endeavored (Lectures XIV-XVI) to develop
the phenomena of the emotional innate dispositions which I conceive play
one of the most fundamental parts in human personality and in
determining mental and physiological behavior.

Experimental methods and the well-known clinical methods of
investigation have been employed by me as far as possible. The data made
use of have been derived for the most part from my own observations,
though confirmatory observations of others have not been neglected.
Although a large number and variety of subjects or cases have been
studied, as they have presented themselves in private and hospital
practice, the data have been to a large extent sought in intensive
studies, on particular subjects, carried on in some cases over a period
of many years. These subjects, because of the ease with which
subconscious and emotional phenomena were either spontaneously
manifested or could be experimentally evoked, were particularly suitable
for such studies and fruitful in results. It is by such intensive
studies on special subjects, rather than by casual observation of many
cases, that I believe the deepest insight into mental processes and
mechanisms can be obtained.

In conclusion I wish to express my great obligation to Mrs. William G.
Bean for the great assistance she has rendered in many ways in the
preparation of this volume. Not the least has been the transcription and
typing of my manuscript, for the most part written in a quasi shorthand,
reading the printer’s proofs, and much other assistance in the
preparation of the text for the press. For this her practical and
unusually extensive acquaintance with the phenomena has been of great
value.

I am also indebted to Mr. Lydiard Horton for kindly reading the proofs
and for many helpful suggestions in clarifying the arrangement of the
text—a most difficult task considering the colloquial form of the
original lectures.

Boston.
458 Beacon Street.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

The favorable reception which was given to the first edition of this
work has tempted me in preparing a new edition at the request of the
publishers to incorporate four additional chapters dealing with the
general principles underlying the structure and dynamic elements of
human personality (Lecture XVII) and a study of a special problem in
personality in which these principles are involved, namely, the
psychogenesis of multiple personality as illustrated by a study of the
case known as B. C. A.[3] (Lectures XVIII-XX.) The latter study was
omitted (with other lectures) from the first edition in order to limit
the number of subjects treated and the size of the volume.

Although the theory of the subconscious and that of the dynamics of
specific conscious and subconscious processes (to the fundamental
principles of both of which these lectures were limited) owe their value
to our being able through them to explain many mental and physiological
abnormalities, they possess an equal value from the light they throw
upon the structure and dynamics of that composite whole best termed
human personality. Over and above a knowledge of the abnormal, what we
as human beings want to know is not only what sort of physiological
beings but what sort of conscious beings we are; and how we think and
act, and what motives and other impulses whether hidden or in the clear
light of awareness, regulate and determine our behavior; what are the
forces that do it and how. We want to know the answer to a lot of
problems of this character, all of which involve principles of innate
and acquired dispositions.

A comprehensive study of human personality would include, as far as may
be, answers to all these problems and would require a volume in itself.
I have, therefore, not been able more than to give an outline in Lecture
XVII of what seem to me to be the fundamental principles involved and
the dynamic unitary systems out of which the structure is built up.
There are various points of view from which the structure of the mind
may be considered, just as with the structure of a literary work of art,
or of a complicated mechanism like an automobile. We may consider the
structure of the latter, for instance, as an assembly of complex units
or mechanisms—cylinders, carburetors, ignition systems, etc.,—each
analyzed into its elements, without regard to the dynamic, integrative
functioning of the units in the total mechanism. This would be the
static point of view. Or we may consider these units as wholes from the
standpoint of the forces they generate, the processes they subserve and
the parts they play in the total functioning of the whole machine. This
is the dynamic point of view. It is this latter which alone has a vital
practical interest. The former is of interest only to the technician. So
with the mind. The dynamic point of view alone is of practical
importance and alone awakens fascinating interest of stirring intensity.
So long as psychology held to the static viewpoint it was only of
academic value. For submitted to the pragmatic test it made little
difference whether it was right or wrong. Nor could it become an applied
science. Consequently it is from the dynamic viewpoint that I have
sketched in—and it is little more than a sketch—the application of the
principles laid down in these lectures to the peculiarly appealing
problem of personality. Closely related to this is multiple personality,
for it is a special problem in personality, and one that is a
fascinating study in itself. But aside from its own intrinsic interest,
its practical interest, its chief value is derived from the fact that it
is a veritable vivisection of the mind by the mind’s own vital forces,
and as such gives us much more definite and precise data for the
determination of normal mental mechanisms and processes than can
introspective analysis; just as the vivisection of the body in the
laboratory and by disease has given us our most precise knowledge of
physiology. Consequently the phenomena acquire a greater interest and
value from the insight they give into the normal. For there is no more
fruitful material for the study of the mechanisms and processes of
personality than cases of this sort where there is a disintegration of
the normally integrated structural wholes and a reassembling of the
component elements into new composite wholes. In the construction of
these new personalities certain normal structures and mechanisms are
dissected out, so to speak, of the original composite by the stress of
the forces that cause the cleavage between systems and are then
reassembled into new functioning wholes. There is a veritable
vivisection of the mind. In a mind thus disassembled nearly every mental
phenomenon, conscious and subconscious—conflicts, hallucinations,
coconscious processes, defense reactions, etc.,—can be observed in an
isolated form and systematically studied. They are veritable gold mines
of psychological phenomena, as William James once expressed it to me in
reference to one of my cases. It is strange, therefore, that such cases
have been neglected by psychologists who would study mental mechanisms.
It is true that for a complete understanding of multiple personality a
study of a number of cases should be presented, particularly as many
variations are to be observed constituting differing types. But in a
volume of this kind this would be impracticable. I have, therefore,
limited myself to the psychogenesis of a single case, that of B. C. A.
This will I believe be of interest not only as illustrating the basic
principles underlying the pathology of multiple personality, but because
of the data it offers for the understanding of the structure and
mechanisms of the normal self, something that curiously appeals to the
egoistic interest of human nature.

MORTON PRINCE.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION v

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION xiii

LECTURE

I. THEORY OF MEMORY AS A PROCESS 1

II. CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, 15
ARTIFICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE

III. CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, 49
ARTIFICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE—(Continued)

IV. CONSERVATION A RESIDUUM OF EXPERIENCES 87

V. NEUROGRAMS 109

VI. SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES 147

VII. SUBCONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE 188

VIII. THE UNCONSCIOUS 229

IX. THE ORGANIZATION OF UNCONSCIOUS COMPLEXES 265

X. THE MEANING OF IDEAS AS DETERMINED BY SETTINGS 311

XI. MEANING, SETTINGS, AND THE FRINGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 338

XII. SETTINGS OF IDEAS AS SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN 363
OBSESSIONS

XIII. TWO TYPES OF PHOBIA 387

XIV. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF EMOTION 423

XV. INSTINCTS, SENTIMENTS AND CONFLICTS 446

XVI. GENERAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS 488

XVII. THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMIC ELEMENTS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 529

XVIII. THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY—THE CASE OF B. 545
C. A.

XIX. (The Same Continued)—THE B PERSONALITY 593

XX. (The Same Continued)—THE A PERSONALITY 614

SUMMARY AND GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 634

INDEX 645

THE UNCONSCIOUS

THE UNCONSCIOUS:

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY,
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL

LECTURE I
THEORY OF MEMORY AS A PROCESS

Gentlemen:

The subject which I have chosen for our first lecture is the theory of
the mechanism of memory. I begin with the study of this problem because
a knowledge of the facts which underlie the theory of memory is a
necessary introduction to an understanding of the Unconscious, and of
the part which subconscious processes play in normal and abnormal mental
life.[4] Speaking more specifically, without such a preliminary study I
do not believe we can interpret correctly a very large number of the
disturbances of mind and body which are traceable to the activity of
subconscious processes and with which we shall later have to do.

If we consider memory as a _process_, and not as specific phases of
consciousness, we shall find that it is an essential factor in the
mechanisms underlying a large variety of phenomena of normal and
abnormal life. These phenomena include those of both mind and body of a
kind not ordinarily conceived of as manifestations of memory. I would
have you dwell in your minds for a moment on the fact that I make this
distinction between memory as a process and memory as a phase of
consciousness or specific mental experience. What we ordinarily and
conventionally have in mind when we speak of memory is the conscious
thought of some past mental experience. But when we conceive of memory
as a process we have in mind the whole mechanism through the working of
which this past experience is _registered_, _conserved_, and
_reproduced_, whether such reproduction be in consciousness or below the
surface of consciousness.

Memory is usually looked upon as something that pertains solely to
consciousness. Such a conception is defensible if the meaning of the
term is restricted to those facts alone which come within our conscious
experience. But when we consider the mechanism by which a particular
empirical fact of this kind is introduced into consciousness we find
that this conception is inadequate. We find then that we are obliged to
regard conscious memory as only the end result of a process and, in
order to account for this end result, to assume other stages in the
process which are not phases of consciousness. Though the end result is
a reproduction of the ideas which constituted the previous conscious
experience, this reproduction is not the whole process.

More than this, the conscious experience is not the only experience that
may be reproduced by the process, nor is the end result always and
necessarily a state of consciousness. _Conscious memory is only a
particular type of memory._ The same process may terminate in purely
unconscious or physiological effects, or what may be called
physiological memory to distinguish it from conscious memory. Along with
the revived ideas and their feeling tones there may be a revival of the
physiological experiences, or processes, which originally accompanied
them; such as secretion of sweat, saliva and gastric juice, the
contraction and dilatation of the blood vessels, the inhibition or
excitation of the heart, lungs and other viscera, the contraction of
muscles, etc. These visceral mechanisms, being originally elements in a
complex process and accompaniments of the idea, may be reproduced along
with the conscious memory, and even without conscious memory. As this
physiological complex is an acquired experience it is entitled to be
regarded as memory so far as its reproduction is the end result of the
same kind of process or mechanism as that which reproduces ideas.

Then, again, investigations into the subconscious have shown that the
original experience may be reproduced subconsciously without rising into
awareness.

The more comprehensive way, then, of looking at memory is to regard it
as a process and not simply as an end result. The process, as we shall
see, is made up of three factors—Registration, Conservation, and
Reproduction. Of these the end result is reproduction; conservation
being the preservation of that which was registered.

This view is far more fruitful, as you will presently see, for memory
acquires a deeper significance and will be found to play a fundamental
and unsuspected part in the mechanism of many obscure mental processes.

From this point of view, upon memory, considered _as a process_, depend
the acquired conscious and subconscious habits of mind and body.

The process involves unconscious as well as conscious factors and may be
wholly unconscious (subconscious).

Two of its factors—registration and conservation—are responsible for the
building up of the unconscious as the storehouse of the mind and,
therefore, primarily for all subconscious processes, other than those
which are innate.

To it may be referred the direct excitation of many subconscious
manifestations of various kinds.

Consciously or subconsciously it largely determines our prejudices, our
superstitions, our beliefs, our points of view, our attitudes of mind.

Upon it to a large degree depend what we call personality and character.

It often is the unsuspected and subconscious secret of our judgments,
our sentiments, and impulses.

It is the process which most commonly induces dreams and furnishes the
material out of which they are constructed.

It is the basis of many hypnotic phenomena.

In the field of pathology, memory, through its perversions, takes part
in and helps to determine the form of a variety of disturbances such as
obsessions, impulsions, tics, habit psychoses and neuroses, many of the
manifestations of that great protean psychosis, hysteria, and other
common ailments which it is the fashion of the day to term neurasthenia
and psychasthenia. It is largely responsible for the conscious and
subconscious conflicts which disrupt the human mind and result in
various pathological states.

Finally, upon the utilization of the processes of memory modern
psychotherapeutics, or the educational treatment of disease, is largely
based. For many of these reasons an understanding of the mechanism of
memory is essential for an understanding of the subconscious. In short,
memory furnishes a standpoint from which we can productively study the
normal and abnormal processes of the mind—conscious and subconscious.

These somewhat dogmatic general statements—which I have put before you
much after the fashion of the lawyer who presents a general statement of
his case in anticipation of the evidence—I hope will become clear and
their truth evident as we proceed; likewise, their bearing upon the
facts of abnormal psychology. To make them clear it will be necessary to
explain in some detail the generally accepted theory of memory as a
process and to cite the numerous data upon which it rests.

There may be, as, indeed, you will find there are, wide differences of
opinion as to the exact psychological mechanism by which a
memory-process plays its part in the larger processes of mental life,
normal and abnormal, such as I have just mentioned, but that the
memory-process is a fundamental factor is revealed by whatever method
the problems are attacked. A study, therefore, of this fundamental
factor and a determination of its mechanism are a prerequisite for a
study of the more complex processes in which it takes part. For this
reason I shall begin the study of the Unconscious (subconscious), to
which I shall ask your attention in these lectures, with a consideration
of the processes of memory.

If you ask the average person, as I have often done, how or why he
remembers he will be puzzled and he is apt to reply, “Why, I just
remember,” or, “I never thought of that before.” If you push him a bit
and ask what becomes of ideas after they have passed out of mind and
have given place to other ideas, and how an idea that has passed out of
mind, that has gone, disappeared, can be brought back again as memory,
he becomes further puzzled. We know that ideas that have passed out of
mind may be voluntarily recalled, or reproduced, as memory; we may say
that meantime they have become what may be called dormant. But surely
something must have happened to enable these conscious experiences to be
conserved in some way and recalled. Ideas are not material things which,
like books, can be laid away on a shelf to be taken up again when
wanted, and yet we can recall, or reproduce, many ideas when we want
them just as we can go to a shelf and take down any book we want.

We learn the alphabet and the multiplication table in childhood. During
the greater part of our lives the sensory images, auditory language
symbols, etc., which may be summarized as ideas representing these
educational experiences, are out of our minds and do not form a
continuous part of our conscious experiences, but they may be recalled
at any moment as memory. In fact, try as hard as we may, we cannot
forget our alphabet or multiplication table. Why is this?

The older psychology did not bother itself much with these questions
which puzzle the average man. It was content for the most part with a
descriptive statement of the facts of conscious memory. It did not
concern itself with the process by which memory is effected; nor, so
long as psychology dealt only with phases of consciousness, was it of
much consequence. It has been only since subconscious processes have
loomed large in psychology and have been seen to take part on the one
hand in the mechanism of conscious thought and on the other to produce
various bodily phenomena, that the process of memory has acquired great
practical importance. For it has been seen that in these subconscious
processes previous conscious experiences are resurrected to take part as
subconscious memory, consequently a conscious experience that has passed
out of mind may not only recur again as conscious memory, but may recur
subconsciously below the threshold of awareness. The study of
subconscious processes therefore necessarily includes the processes of
memory. And so it has become a matter of considerable moment to follow
the fate of experiences after they have passed out of mind with a view
to determining the mechanism by which they can be reproduced consciously
and subconsciously. More than this it is important that the theory of
memory should be removed if possible from the domain of purely
speculative psychological concepts and placed on a sound basis of
observation and experiment like other accepted theories of science.

From the point of view of animism, and indeed of dualism, nothing
becomes of the ideas that have passed out of mind; they simply, for the
time being, cease to exist. Consciousness changes its form. Nothing is
preserved, nothing is stored up. This is still the popular notion
according to which a mental experience at any given moment—the content
of my consciousness, for instance, at this moment as I speak to you—is
only one of a series of kaleidoscopic changes or phases of my
self-consciousness. In saying this what is meant plainly must be that
the content of consciousness at any given moment is a phase of a
continuing psychical something. We may, perhaps, call this my
self-consciousness, and say that when I reproduce an experience as
memory I simply bring back (by the power of self-determination) that
same previous phase of the psychical something. If I cannot bring it
back my failure may be due to a failure of the power of
self-determination or—and here is a weak point—to a failure in the
formative cohesion of the elementary ideas of that experience. In this
latter alternative no note is taken of a seeming contradiction paradox.
If nothing is preserved, if nothing continues to exist, if memory is
only one of a series of kaleidoscopic phases of consciousness, how can
there be any cohesion or organization within what does not exist?
Consciousness according to this notion might be likened to the water of
a lake in which vortices were constantly being formed, either by the
current of inflowing springs from the bottom or the influences of
external agencies. One vortex would give place to a succeeding vortex.
Memory would be analogous to the reproduction of a previously occurring
vortex.

When, however, such a notion of memory is examined in the light of all
the facts which have to be explained it will be found to be descriptive
only of our conscious experiences. It does not explain memory; it does
not answer the question of the ordinary man, “How can ideas which have
ceased to exist be reproduced again as memory?” For, putting aside
various psychological difficulties such as, How can I determine the
reproduction of a former phase of consciousness—that is, memory—without
first _remembering_ what I want to determine?, or, if this be answered,
“By the association of phases (ideas),” how can there be any bond of
association between an existing idea and one that does not exist?, and,
therefore, how can association bring back that which has ceased to
exist?—putting aside such questions, there are a number of
psycho-physiological facts which this conception of memory will be found
inadequate to meet. As a matter of fact, investigations into the
behavior of mental processes, particularly under artificial and
pathological conditions, have disclosed certain phenomena which can be
adequately explained only on the supposition that ideas as they pass out
of mind—the mental experiences of the moment—leave something behind,
some residuum which is preserved, stored up as it were, and which plays
a subsequent part in the process of memory. These phenomena seem to
require what may be called a psycho-physiological theory of memory.
Although the theory has long been one of the concepts of normal
psychology it can be said to have been satisfactorily validated only by
the investigations of recent years in abnormal psychology.

The full significance as well as the validity of this theory can be
properly estimated only in the light of the facts which have been
revealed by modern technical methods of investigation. After all, it is
the consequences of a theory which count, and this will be seen to be
true particularly as respects memory. The pragmatic point of view of
counting the consequences, of determining the difference that the theory
makes in the understanding of the mental processes of normal and
abnormal life, reveals the importance to us of validating the theory.
The consequences of the psycho-physiological theory are so far-reaching,
in view of its bearing upon a large number of problems in normal and
abnormal psychology, that it is worthy of sustained and exhaustive
examination. I will, therefore, briefly résumé the various classes of
facts which support the theory and which any adequate theory of memory
must satisfactorily explain. For, as will appear, besides the common
facts of memory pertaining to everyday life, there are a large number of
other facts which can be observed only when the mind is dissected, so to
speak, by pathological processes, and by the production of artificial
conditions, and when investigations are carried out by special technic.
Irrespective of any theory of explanation, a knowledge of these facts is
extremely important for an understanding of many phenomena in the domain
of both normal and abnormal psychology.

=The meaning of conservation.=—We all know, as an everyday experience of
mankind, that at one time we can recall what happened to us at some
particular moment in the past, and at another time we cannot. We know
that when we have forgotten some experience if we stimulate or refresh
our memory, as the lawyers say to us on the witness-stand, by reference
to our notes, appropriately called memoranda, the original experience
may come back to mind. Often at one moment we cannot recall a verse, or
a name, or a piece of acquired knowledge, while at another time, a
little later, we can. We have a feeling, a perhaps justifiable belief,
that a desired piece of knowledge is not lost, that it is back somewhere
in our minds but we cannot get at it. If, sooner or later, under one
circumstance or another, with or without the aid of some kind of
stimulus, we can recall the desired knowledge we say it was preserved
(or conserved). If we continue, under all circumstances and at all
moments, to be unable to recall it we say it is lost, that our memory of
it is not conserved. So the notion of conservation of knowledge being
something apart from recollection enters even into popular language.
What sort of thing conservation is, popular language does not attempt to
define. It is clear, however, that we may with propriety speak of the
conservation of experiences, using this term in a descriptive sense
without forming any definite concept of the nature of conservation.
Provisionally, then, I shall speak of conservation of a given experience
in this sense only, meaning that the memory of it is not permanently
lost but that under certain particular circumstances we can recall it.

Now a large mass of observations demonstrate that there are an enormous
number of experiences, belonging to both normal and abnormal mental
life, which we are unable to voluntarily recall during any period of our
lives, no matter how hard we try, or what aids to memory we employ. For
these experiences there is life-long amnesia. Nevertheless, it is easy
to demonstrate that, though the personal consciousness of everyday life
cannot recall them, they are not lost, properly speaking, but conserved;
for when the personal consciousness has undergone a peculiar change, at
moments when certain special alterations have taken place in the
conditions of the personal consciousness, at such moments you find that
the subject under investigation recalls the apparently lost experiences.
These moments are those of hypnosis, abstraction, dreams, and certain
pathological states. Again, in certain individuals it is possible by
technical devices to awaken secondary mental processes in the form of a
subconsciousness which may manifest the memories of the forgotten
experiences without awareness therefor on the part of the personal
consciousness. These manifestations are known as automatic writing and
speech. Then, again, by means of certain post-hypnotic phenomena, it is
easy to study conservation experimentally. We can make, as you will
later see, substantially everything that happened to the subject of the
experiment in hypnosis—his thoughts, his speech, his actions, for all of
which he has complete and irretrievable loss of memory in a waking
state—we can make memory for all these lost experiences reappear when
hypnosis is again induced. Thus we can prove conservation when voluntary
memory for experiences is absolutely lost. These experiments, among
others, as we shall also see, also give an insight into the nature of
conservation which is the real problem involved in an investigation into
the process of memory.

Before undertaking to solve this problem—so far as may be done—it is
well to obtain a full realization of the extent to which experiences
which have been forgotten may be still conserved. I will therefore, as I
promised you, résumé the experimental and other evidence supporting this
principle, making use of both personal observations and those of others.

_NOTE—In the following exposition of the evidence for the theory of
memory it has been necessary to make use of phenomena subsuming
subconscious processes before the subconscious itself has been
demonstrated. A few words in explanation of the terms used is therefore
desirable to avoid confusing the reader._

_Dividing as I do the subconscious into the unconscious and the
coconscious, the former is either simply a neural disposition, or an
active neural process without any quality of consciousness; the latter
is an actual subconscious idea or a process of thought of which,
nevertheless, we are not aware. An unconscious and a coconscious process
are both, therefore, only particular types of a subconscious process. I
might have used the single term subconscious throughout the first seven
lectures, but in that case, though temporarily less confusing, the data
necessary for the appreciation of the division of the subconscious into
two orders would not have been at hand. Typical phenomena having been
described as unconscious or coconscious (instead of simply
subconscious), the reader will have already become familiar with
examples of each type and be thus prepared for the final discussion in
Lecture VIII. PROVISIONALLY, these three terms may be regarded as
synonyms. To indicate the synonym, the term “subconscious” has often
been added in parenthesis in the text to one or other of the
subdivisional terms, and vice versa._

-----

Footnote 1:

In this connection it is a satisfaction to the author to note that
more recently a committee was appointed by the American Psychological
Association (December, 1911) to investigate the relation of psychology
to medical education. This committee, after an extensive inquiry by
correspondence with all the medical schools of the country, has made a
report (Science, Oct. 17, 1913) based upon the preponderating opinion
of the best medical schools and of the schools as a whole. The second
(in substance) and third conclusions reached in the report were as
follows:

2nd: For entrance in certain schools requiring a preliminary college
training of greater or less length an introductory or pre-medical
course in psychology should be required in the same way as they now
require chemistry, biology, physics, etc., or, in lieu thereof, a
course in the medical schools.

3rd: “It is the belief of most of the best schools that a second
course in psychology should precede the course in clinical psychiatry
and neurology. This course should have more of a practical nature, and
should deal especially with abnormal mental processes and with the
application of psychological principles and facts to medical topics.
Although this course should deal chiefly with psychopathology, it
should not be permitted to develop, or degenerate, into a course in
psychiatry, neurology or psychotherapeutics. This course should be
clinical in the sense that, as far as possible, clinical material
should be the basis of the course, but it should not be clinical in
the sense that the students are given particular cases for the purpose
of diagnosis or of treatment. The functions of the courses in
psychiatry and neurology should not be assumed by this course.”

The courses, from which I have selected twelve lectures for my present
purpose, were designed for just such instruction as is recommended in
this report. They were, I believe, the first to be given on these
subjects in any medical school or college in this country. Necessarily
they covered a wider range of topics than the lectures now published
which more properly serve as an introduction to the general subject.

Footnote 2:

“The Birth of the Dream,” _The Independent_, Oct. 30, 1913.

Footnote 3:

A descriptive account of this case, written as a sort of autobiography
by the subject herself, was published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_ (Vol. 3, Nos. 4 & 5, 1908-1909) under the title “My Life
as a Dissociated Personality.” This remarkable account includes an
instructive description of the coconscious self of considerable value.

Footnote 4:

I divide the Subconscious into two parts, namely the Unconscious and
the Coconscious. See preface and Lecture VIII.

LECTURE II
CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND
PATHOLOGICAL LIFE

I. Normal Life

=Evidence obtained by the method of automatic writing.=—If we take a
suitable subject, one in whom “_automatic writing_”[5] has been
developed, and study the content of the script, we may find that to a
large extent it contains references to, i.e., memories of, experiences
which have long been forgotten by the subject and which cannot even by
the stimulus of memoranda be voluntarily recalled. These experiences may
be actions performed even as far back as _childhood_, _or_ passages read
in books, or fragments of conversation, etc. Thus B. C. A., who suffers
from an intense fear or phobia of cats, particularly _white_ cats, can
recall no experience in her life which could have given rise to it. Yet
when automatic writing is resorted to the hand writes a detailed account
of a fright into which she was thrown, when she was only five or six
years of age, by a white kitten which had a fit while she was playing
with it. The writing also describes in minute detail the furnishings of
the room where the episode occurred, the pattern of the carpet, the
decorative designs of the window shades, the furniture, etc. As this
observation is typical of many others, it may be well to dwell upon it
long enough to describe it in some detail for the benefit of those who
are not familiar with this class of phenomena.

After it had been determined, by a searching examination, that B. C. A.
could not recall any experience that might throw light upon her phobia,
an attempt was made to recover a possible memory in hypnosis. As is well
known, the memory often broadens in hypnosis and events which are
forgotten when “awake” may be recovered. In this instance the subject
was put into two different hypnotic states, but without success. This,
again, is a matter of some importance for the principle of conservation.
Different hypnotic states in the same individual may be distinguished in
that each, among other characteristics, may have different and
independent systems of memories, as we shall see later. The memories
which belong to one state cannot be recalled in another. Hence the fact
that a memory cannot be recovered in one state is not proof that it is
not conserved, nor is a failure to recover the memory of an episode in
all states of hypnosis evidence of failure of conservation, any more
than is the failure to recover a memory in the waking state at any given
moment.

In the experiment with B. C. A., after failing to awaken a possible
memory in either state of hypnosis, a pencil was put in her hand while
she was still hypnotized. The hand then wrote automatically, without the
knowledge of the hypnotized subject, the following account of this
childhood episode that I have just mentioned:[6]

“I think I know about the cats. I can remember myself, a little child,
playing on the floor with a kitten, and it began to run about the room
and had a fit, I think, and it jumped on me, and I was alone, and I
screamed and cried and called my mother, but no one came, and I was very
much frightened. I do not believe I ever told anyone. It was a white
kitten. It ran out of the room and after a bit I went on playing.”

To test the extent of the conserved memories still further the hand was
asked to describe the furnishings of the room and the plan of the house.
It wrote:

“There were two windows on the side of the room. The shades were gray, I
think, with a border of grapes, or something of that color. The carpet
was green or gray with green figures. There was a large old-fashioned
sofa between one window and the door which led into the dining-room. A
bookcase and desk-combination, you know. There was a mantle, I think,
between the windows. It was the ground floor.”

This childhood episode and the furnishings of the room were completely
forgotten by B. C. A. in the sense that they could not be voluntarily
recalled. Even after reading the script she could not remember them. She
had not seen the room since she was six years of age, the family having
removed at that time from the town in which the incident took place. As
to the accuracy of the “automatic” account and the possibility of
fabrication, the description of the room has been corroborated by the
independent and written testimony of an older member of the family. It
was not possible to confirm the incident of the kitten as there were no
witnesses. This portion of the account, therefore, cannot be proved not
to be a fabrication, but I have never known a fabricated statement to be
made in this subject’s automatic script, and I have obtained from her a
large number of statements of different kinds in the course of several
years’ observation.

However that may be, the point is not essential, for the minute
description, by a special technic, of the furnishings of a room which
had not been seen since childhood, a matter of some thirty-five years,
and which were totally forgotten, is a sufficient demonstration of the
principle of conservation of conscious experiences that cannot be
voluntarily recalled. The reproduction of the conscious experience by
automatic writing was, of course, an act of memory effected by a special
device, and this fact compels us to postulate the conservation of the
experience during this long period of time, notwithstanding that the
experience could not be recalled voluntarily. Although the conserved
experience could not be awakened into memory by voluntary processes of
the personal consciousness it could be so awakened by an artificial
stimulus under artificial conditions.

An observation like this, dealing with the conservation of long
forgotten childhood or other experiences, is not unique. Quite a
collection of recorded cases might be cited. Mr. C. Lowe Dickinson has
put on record[7] one of a young woman (Miss C.), who, in an hypnotic
trance, narrated a dream-like fabrication of a highly imaginative
character. On one occasion, through the imaginary intermediation of the
spirit of a fictitious person, who was supposed to have lived in the
time of Richard II, she gave a great many details about the Earl and
Countess of Salisbury, “and other personages of the time, and about the
manners and customs of that age. The personages referred to, the details
given in connection with them, and especially the genealogical data,
were found on examination to be correct, although many of them were such
as apparently it would not have been easy to ascertain without
considerable historical research.” Miss C. after coming out of the
hypnotic trance was in entire ignorance of how she could have obtained
this knowledge and could not recall ever having read any book which
contained the information she had given. Through automatic writing,
however, it was discovered that it was to be found in a book called _The
Countess Maud_, by E. Holt. It then appeared—and this is the point of
interest bearing on the conservation of forgotten knowledge—that this
book had been read to her by her aunt _fourteen years previously, when
she was a child about eleven years old_. Both ladies had so completely
forgotten its contents that they could not recall even the period with
which it dealt. Here were conscious experiences of childhood which, if
voluntary recollection were to be made use of as a test, would be
rightly said to have been extinguished, but that they had only lain
fallow, conserved in some unconscious fashion, was shown by their
reproduction in the hypnotic trance.[8]

In this connection I may instance the case of Mrs. C. D., who suffers
from a fixed fear of fainting. She cannot recall, even after two
prolonged searching examinations, the first occasion when this fear
developed, or why she has it, and is, therefore, ignorant of its
genesis. Yet put into abstraction or light hypnosis she recalls vividly
its first occurrence as the effect of an emotional scene of twenty years
ago. The details of its psychological content come clearly into
consciousness, and its meaning, as a fear of death, is remembered as a
part of the original episode. That the fixed idea is a recurrence or
partial memory of the original complex becomes logically plain and is
recognized as such.

Instances of the reproduction in automatic script of _forgotten passages
from books_ are to be found in Mrs. Verrall’s[9] elaborate records of
her own automatic writings. Investigation showed that numerous pieces of
English, Latin, and Greek script were not original compositions but only
forgotten passages from authors previously read.

Mrs. Holland’s script records, as investigation seemed to show, the
exact words expressing a personal sentiment contained in a letter
written to her _twenty years_ before and long forgotten. The letter
proving this was accidentally discovered.[10]

The following instance of a forgotten experience is, in itself, common
enough with everybody, but its recovery by automatic writing illustrates
how conservation of the thousand and one simply _forgotten acts of
everyday life_ may still persist. It forces, too, a realization of the
reason why it is possible that though an act may be forgotten at any
given moment it may later at any time flash into the mind. It is still
conserved.

B. C. A. had been vainly hunting for a bunch of keys which she had not
seen or thought of for four months, having been in Europe. One day, soon
after her return, while writing a letter to her son she was interrupted
by her hand automatically and spontaneously writing the desired
information. The letter to her son began as follows: “October 30, 19—.
Dear Boy: I cannot find those keys—have hunted everywhere”.... [Here the
hand began to write the following, automatically.] “_O, I know—take a
pencil_” [Here she did as she was bidden] “_you put those keys in the
little box where X’s watch is._”

In explanation B. C. A. sent me the following letter: “The keys were
found in the box mentioned. I had hunted for them ever since coming
home, October 4th. One key belonged to my box in the safety deposit
vault and I had felt very troubled and anxious at not being able to find
them. I have no recollection now of putting them where I found them.”
[Nor was recollection subsequently recovered.]

I could give from my own observation if it were necessary as many
instances as could be desired of “automatic” reproductions of forgotten
experiences of one kind or another the truth of which could be verified
by notebook records or other evidence. By a forgotten experience of
course is meant something more than what cannot for the moment be
voluntarily recalled. I mean something that cannot be remembered at any
moment nor under any conditions, _even after the memory has been prodded
by the reproduction in the script_—something that is apparently
absolutely forgotten. The experience may not only be of a trivial nature
but something that happened long in the past and of the kind that is
ordinarily absolutely forgotten. I have often invoked the automatic
writing (memories) of the subject to recover data elicited in the past
in psychological examinations but which both I and the subject had
forgotten. Reference to notes always verified the automatic memories.
The records of automatic writing to be found in the literature are rich
in reproductions showing conservation of forgotten experiences. In fact,
given a good subject who can write automatically it is easy to obtain
experimentally evidence of this kind at will.

=Evidence from abstraction.=—One of the most striking of artificial
memory performances is the recovery of the details of inconsequential
experiences of everyday life by inducing simple states of _abstraction_
in normal people. It is often astonishing to see with what detail these
experiences are conserved. A person may remember any given experience in
a general way, such as what he does during the course of the day, but
the minute details of the day he ordinarily forgets. Now, if he allows
himself to fall into a passive state of abstraction, simply
concentrating his attention upon a particular past moment, and gives
free rein to all the associative memories belonging to that moment that
float into his mind, at the same time taking care to forego all critical
reflection upon them, it will be found that the number of details that
will be recalled will be enormously greater than can be recovered by
voluntary memory. Memories of the details of each successive moment
follow one another in continuous succession. This method requires some
art and practice to be successfully carried out. In the state of
abstraction attention to the environment must be completely excluded and
concentrated upon the past moments which it is desired to recall. For
instance, a young woman, a university student, had lost some money
several days before the experiment and desired to learn what had become
of it. She remembered, in a general way, that she had gone to the bank
that day, had cashed some checks, made some purchases in the shops of
the town, returned to the university, attended lectures, etc., and later
had missed the money from her purse. Her memory was about as extensive
as that of the ordinary person would be for similar events after the
lapse of several days. I put her into a state of abstraction and evoked
her memories in the way I have just described. The minuteness and
vividness with which the details of each successive act in the day’s
experiences were recovered were remarkable, and, to the subject, quite
astonishing. _As the memories arose she recognized them as being
accurate, for she then remembered the events as having occurred_, just
as one remembers any occurrence.[11] In abstraction, she remembered with
great vividness every detail at the bank teller’s window, where she
placed her gloves, purse, and umbrella, the checks, the money, etc.;
then there came memories of seating herself at a table in the bank, of
placing her umbrella here, her purse there, etc.; of writing a letter,
and doing other things; of absent-mindedly forgetting her gloves and
leaving them on the table;[12] of going to a certain shop where, after
looking at various articles and thinking certain thoughts and making
certain remarks, she finally made certain purchases, giving a certain
piece of money and receiving the change in coin of certain
denominations; of seeing in her purse the exact denominations of the
coins (ten and five-dollar gold pieces and the pieces of subsidiary
coinage) which remained; then of going to another shop and similar
experiences. Then of numerous details which she had forgotten; of other
later incidents including lectures, exercising in the gymnasium, etc.
Through it all ran the successive fortunes of her purse until the moment
came when, looking into it, she found one of the five-dollar gold pieces
gone. It became pretty clear that the piece had disappeared at a moment
when the purse was out of her possession, a fact which she had not
previously remembered but had believed the contrary. The hundred and one
previously forgotten details which surged into her mind as vivid
conscious recollections would take too long to narrate.

(I have made quite a number of experiments of this kind with similar
results. That the memories are not fabrications is shown by the fact
that, as they arise, they become recollections in the sense that the
subject can then consciously recall the events and place them in time
and space as one does in ordinary memory, and particularly by the fact
that many of them are often capable of confirmation.

I would here point out that the recovery of forgotten experiences by the
method of _abstraction_ differs in one important psychological respect
from their recovery by _automatic writing_. In the former case the
recalled experiences being brought back by associative memories enter
into the associations and become true conscious recollections, like any
other recollections, while in automatic writing the memories are
reproduced in script without entering the personal consciousness at all
and while the subject is still in ignorance. Often even after reading
the script his memory still remains a blank. It is much as if one’s
ideas had been preserved on a phonographic record and later reproduced
without awakening a memory of their original occurrence.[13] The
significance of this difference for the theory of conservation I will
point out later after we have considered some other modes of
reproduction.)

Among the conserved forgotten experiences are often to be found fleeting
thoughts, ideas, and perceptions, so insignificant and trifling that it
would not be expected that they would be remembered. Some of them may
have entered only the margin or fringe of the content of consciousness,
and, therefore, the subject was only dimly aware of them. Some may have
been so far outside the focus of awareness that there was no awareness
of them at all, i.e., they were subconscious. Instructive examples of
such conserved experiences may be found in persons who suffer from
attacks of phobia, i.e., obsessions. The experiences to which I refer
occur immediately before and during the attacks. After the attack the
ideas of these periods are usually largely or wholly forgotten,
particularly the ideas which were in the fringe of consciousness and the
idea which, according to my observation, was the exciting cause of the
attack. By the method of abstraction I have been able to recover the
content of consciousness during the periods in question, including the
fringe of consciousness, and thus discover the nature of the fear of
which the patient was unaware because the idea was in the fringe.

Mrs. C. D., whom I have mentioned as having suffered intensely from
attacks of fear, and Miss F. E., who is similarly afflicted with such
attacks accompanied by the feeling of unreality, are instances in point.
As is well known such attacks come on suddenly in the midst of mental
tranquillity, often without apparent cause so far as the patient can
discover. While in the state of abstraction the thoughts, perceptions,
and acts of the period just preceding and during the attack, as they
successively occurred, could be evoked in these subjects in great detail
and with striking vividness. The recovery of these memories has been
always a surprise to the patient who, a moment before, had been utterly
unable to recall them, and had declared the attack had developed without
cause. In the case of Mrs. C. D. it was discovered in this way the real
fear was of fainting and death, and in that of Miss F. E. of insanity.
These ideas having been in the fringe of consciousness, or background of
the mind, the subjects were at the time scarcely aware of them and,
therefore, were ignorant of the true nature of their phobias,
notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of the attacks. Among the
memories recovered in these and other cases I have always been able to
find one of a thought or of a sensory stimulus from the environment
which immediately preceded and which through association occasioned the
attack. When this particular memory was recovered the patient, who had
declared that the attack had developed without cause, at once recognized
the original idea which was the cause of the attack, just as one
recognizes the idea which causes one to blush. The idea sometimes has
been a thought suggested by a casual and apparently insignificant word
in a sentence occurring in a conversation on indifferent matters, or by
a dimly conscious perception of the environment, sometimes an idea
occurring as a secondary train of thought perhaps bearing upon some
future course of action, and so on.

As instances of such dimly-conscious perceptions of the environment
which I have found I may mention a gateway through which the subject was
passing, or a bridge about to be crossed; these particular points in the
environment being places where previous attacks had occurred. The
perceptions which precipitated the attack may have been entirely
subconscious and yet may be brought back to memory. With the
pathogenesis of the attacks we are not now directly concerned. The point
of interest for us lies in the fact that such forgotten casual ideas and
perceptions, some of which had been actually subconscious and some had
only entered the margin of the focus of attention may, notwithstanding
the amnesia, be conserved; and the same is true of any succession of
trivial ideas occurring at an inconsequential moment in a person’s life.

However that may be, if you will try to recall in exact detail the
thoughts and feelings which successively passed through your mind at any
given moment say three or four weeks ago—or even days ago—and their
accompanying acts, and then (if you can do this, which I very much
doubt) try to give them in their original sequence, I think you will
realize the force of these observations and appreciate the significance
of the conservation of such minute experiences and of their reproduction
in abstraction.

=Evidence furnished by the method of hypnosis.=—It is almost common
knowledge that when a person is hypnotized—whether lightly or deeply—he
may be able to remember once well-known events of his conscious life
which he has totally forgotten in the full waking state. It is not so
generally known that he may also be able to recall conscious events of
which he was never consciously aware, that is to say, experiences which
were entirely subconscious. The same is true, of course, of forgotten
experiences which originally had entered only the margin of the content
of consciousness and of which he was dimly aware. Among the experiences
thus recalled may be perceptions of minute details of the environment
which escape the attentive notice of the individual, or they may be
thoughts which were in the background of the mind and, therefore, never
in the full light of attention. You must not fall into the common error
of believing every hypnotized person can do this, or that any person can
do it in any state of hypnosis. There are various “degrees” or states of
hypnosis representing different conditions of dissociation and
synthesis. One person may successively be put into several different
states; many persons can be put into only one, but the degree of
dissociation and capacity for synthesis in each state and in every
person varies very much, and, indeed, according to the technical devices
employed. Each state is apt to exhibit different systems of memories,
that is, to synthesize (recall) past conserved experiences in a
different degree. What cannot be recalled in one state may be in
another. We may say as a general principle that _theoretically_ any
experience that has been conserved can be recalled in some state, and,
conversely, there is theoretically some state in which any conserved
experience can be recalled. Practically, of course, we can never induce
a state which synthesizes all conserved experiences, nor always one in
which any given experience is synthesized. I shall later, in connection
with particular types of conscious states, give examples of hypnotic
memories showing conservation of such experiences as I have just
mentioned. The point you will not lose sight of is that we are concerned
with hypnotic phenomena only so far as they may be evidence of the
conservation of forgotten experiences.

There is a class of hypnotic memory phenomena which acquire additional
importance because of the bearing they have upon the _psycho-genesis_ of
certain pathological conditions. They show the conservation of the
details of an episode in their original chronological order with an
exactness that is beyond the powers of voluntary memory to reproduce.
These phenomena consist of the realistic reproduction of certain
emotional episodes which as a whole may or may not be forgotten. The
reproduction is realistic in the sense that the episodes are acted over
again by the individual as if once more he were actually experiencing
them. Apparently every detail is reproduced, including the emotion with
its facial expressions and its other physiological manifestations, and
pathological disturbances like pain, paralysis, anesthesia, movements,
etc. I will cite the following three examples:

M——l, a Russian, living in this country, suffers from psycholeptic
attacks dating from an episode which occurred seven years previously and
_which he has completely forgotten_. At that time he was living in
Russia. It happened that after returning from a ball he was sent back
late at night by his employer, a woman, to look for a ring which she had
lost in the ballroom. His way led over a lonely road by a graveyard. As
he was passing this place he heard footsteps behind him and became
frightened. Overcome with terror he fell, partially unconscious, and his
whole right side became affected with spasms and paralysis. He was
picked up in this condition and taken to a hospital. Each year since
that time he has had recurring attacks of spasms and paralysis.[14]

In _hypnosis_ he remembers and relates a dream. This dream is one which
recurs periodically but is _forgotten after waking from sleep_. This is
the dream: He is back in his native land; it is the night of the ball;
he sees his employer with outstretched hand commanding him to go search
for the ring. Once more he makes his way along the lonely road; he hears
footsteps; he becomes frightened, falls, and then awakes, with entire
oblivion for the dream, to find his right side paralyzed and in spasms.

The following experiment is now made. By suggestion in hypnosis he is
made to believe that he is fifteen years of age. As a consequence in his
hypnotic dream he is once more living in Russia before he had learned
English. It is now found that he has spontaneously lost all knowledge of
the English language and can speak only Russian. He is told it is the
night of the ball and, as in a dream, he is carried successively through
the different events of that night. Finally he returns in search of the
ring, passes again over the lonely road, hears the footsteps and becomes
frightened. At this point his face is suddenly contorted with an
expression of fright, the whole right side becomes paralyzed and
anesthetic, and the muscles of face, arm, and leg affected with clonic
spasms. At the same time he moans with pain which he experiences in his
side, which he hurt when he fell. Though consciousness is confused he
answers questions and describes the pain which he feels. On being
awakened all passes off.

Mrs. W. on her return to Boston after an absence in Europe happened to
pass by a certain house on her way to her hotel; the house (a private
hospital) was one with which she had very distressing associations. On
leaving the steamer she took a street car which she left a block distant
from the hotel. She walked this distance and as she passed the house she
was seized with a sudden attack of fear, dizziness, palpitation, etc.
Although it is beside the point I may say that she had not noticed the
locality and did not consciously recognize the house until the attack
developed. The attack was, therefore, induced by a subconscious
perception.[15] She recalls the incident and describes the attack,
remembers that it occurred at this particular spot, but without further
detail.

Now in hypnosis she is taken back to the day of her arrival on the
steamship. In imagination, as in a sort of dream, she is living over
again that day; she disembarks from the ship, enters the street car in
which she rides a certain distance; she leaves the car at the point
nearest her destination and proceeds to walk the remainder of the
distance; suddenly her face exhibits the liveliest emotion; she becomes
strongly agitated and her respiration is short and quick; her head and
eyes turn toward the left and upward, as if in search of a cause, and
she exclaims, “Yes, that’s it, that’s it,” as she recognizes in
imagination the house which had been the scene of her previous distress.
Then the attack subsides as she passes by, continuing her way toward her
hotel.

Mrs. E. B. suffers from traumatic hysteria as the result of a slight but
emotional accident—a fall—when alighting from a railway train. The
accident resulted in a sprained shoulder and neuritis of the arm. She
fully remembers the accident and describes it as any one might.

When put into hypnosis, however, the memory assumes a different
character. She is taken back in imagination to the scene of the
accident. Once more the train is entering the station; she leaves the
car, steps from the platform upon a truck; then, unawares, steps off the
truck and falls to the ground. As she falls her face suddenly becomes
distorted with fear; tears stream down her cheeks, which become
suffused; her heart palpitates; she suffers again acute pain in her arm,
and so on. Her physical and mental anguish is painful to look upon.
Though I try to persuade her that she is not hurt and that the accident
is a delusion my effort is not very successful.

In this experiment, as in the others, there is substantially a
reproduction in all its details of the content of consciousness which
obtained at the time of the accident, and also of the emotion and its
physiological manifestations—all were faithfully conserved. Further,
each event follows in the same chronological sequence as in the original
experience.

But in these observations the reproduction differs somewhat from that of
ordinary memory. It is in the form of a dream, hypnotic or normal, and
the subject goes back to the time of the experience, which he thinks is
the present, and actually lives over again the original episode. Unlike
the conditions of ordinary memory the whole content of his consciousness
is practically limited to that which originally was present, all else,
the present and the intervening past, being dissociated and excluded.
The original psychological processes and their psycho-physiological
accompaniments (pain, paralysis, anesthesia, spasms, etc.) repeat
themselves as if the present were the past. Plainly, for such a
reproduction, the original episode must have left conserved dispositions
of some kind which when excited were capable of reënacting the episode
in all its psycho-physiological details. From a consideration of such
phenomena it is easy to understand how certain psycho-neuroses may be
properly regarded as memories of certain past experiences. The
experiences are conserved and under certain conditions reproduced from
time to time.

I may cite one other experiment dealing with the conservation of the
details of a day’s experiences after the lapse of several months. The
subject was a little girl who suffered from hysterical tics. Hoping to
discover the exciting cause of her nervous disturbance, I put her into
deep hypnosis, and evoked the memories of the events of the day on which
her disease developed, _about six months previously_. It was astonishing
to hear her recall a continuous series of precise thoughts and acts,
many of them trivial, of the kind that would be transient and forgotten
by anybody. She began with the events of the early morning, giving her
own thoughts and acts; the remarks of her father and mother, describing
exactly the location in the house at the time of each member of the
family; her arrival at school; the several lessons of the day; the
remarks of the teacher; the happenings during recess; her final entry
into the laboratory; and the sudden onset of the tic. Everything was
given in chronological order. The memories were vivid and, as they came
up into her mind, were recognized as true recollections.[16] All this
was forgotten when she was awake, that is to say, although conserved, it
could not be reproduced. There was no way, of course, of determining the
accuracy of these memories and, therefore, their correctness lacks
scientific proof. On the other hand, the facts, which are in entire
correspondence with similar results obtained under conditions where
confirmation is possible, have value as cumulative evidence.[17]

It is not difficult to arrange experiments which will test the accuracy
with which the minute details of experiences may be conserved when
reproduction is at fault. A simple test is to have a suitable subject
endeavor to repeat _verbatim_ the contents of a letter written by him at
some preceding time—one week, two weeks, a month, or more. Few people,
of course, can do this. If, now, the subject is a suitable one for the
abstraction or hypnotic method it may be that he will be able to
reproduce by one or the other method the test letter, word for word; a
comparison of the reproduction with the letter will, of course,
determine the accuracy of the memory. In such an experiment I have
succeeded in getting two subjects, Miss B.[18] and B. C. A., to repeat
_verbatim_ the contents of fairly long letters, and this even, on
certain occasions, when, on account of the subject being a dissociated
personality, there was no recollection of the letter at all, not even
that it had been written. Such minute reproduction affords further
evidence that the conservation of experiences may be much more complete
and exact than ordinary conscious memory would lead us to suppose.

=Evidence from hallucinatory phenomena=.—I may mention one more example
of conservation of a forgotten experience of everyday life as it is an
example or mode of reproduction which differs in certain important
respects both from that of ordinary memory and that observed under the
artificial methods thus far described. This mode is that of a _visual_
or an _auditory hallucination_ which may be an exact reproduction in
vividness and detail of the original experience. It is a type of a
certain class of memory phenomena. One of my subjects, while in a
condition of considerable stress of mind owing to the recurrence of the
anniversary of her wedding-day, had a vision of her deceased husband,
who addressed to her a certain consoling message. It afterwards
transpired that this message was an actual reproduction of the words
which a friend, in the course of a conversation some months previously,
had quoted to her as the words of her own husband just before his death.
In the vision the words were put into the mouth of another person, the
subject’s husband, and were actually heard as an hallucination. Under
the peculiar circumstances of their occurrence, however, these words
awakened no sense of familiarity; nor did she recognize the source of
the words until the automatic writing, which I later obtained, described
the circumstances and details of the original episode. Then the original
experience came back vividly to memory. On the other hand, the
“automatic writing” not only remembered the experience but recognized
the connection between it and the hallucination. (The truth of the
writing is corroborated by the written testimony of the other party to
the conversation.)

Although such types of hallucinatory memories are not actual
reproductions of an experience but rather translated representations,
yet they show the experience must have been conserved in order to have
determined the representation. The actual experience, as we shall see
later, is translated into a visual or auditory form which pictures or
verbally expresses it, as the case may be. This type of hallucination is
common. That which is translated may be previous thoughts, or
perceptions received through another sense. Thus Mrs. Holland records a
visual hallucination which pictured a verbal description previously
narrated to her by a friend, but forgotten. The hallucination included
“the figure of a very tall thin man, dressed in gray, standing with his
back to the fire. He had a long face, I think a mustache—certainly no
beard—and suggested young middle age.”... On a second occasion “the tall
figure in gray was lying on the bed in a very flung-down, slack-jointed
attitude. The face was turned from me, the right arm hanging back across
the body which lay on the left side. I started violently and my foot
seemed to strike an empty bottle on the floor.”

There is very little doubt that these visions of Mrs. Holland’s
represented Mr. Gurney, who had died from an accidental dose of
chloroform. Mrs. Holland “took very little interest” in Mr. Gurney,
hence she had entirely forgotten that the main facts of his death had
been told to her a few months previously by the narrator, Miss Alice
Johnson.[19]

In an hallucination of this sort we have a dramatic pictorial
representation of previous though forgotten knowledge which must have
determined it. In order to have determined the hallucination the
knowledge must have been conserved somehow. I have frequently observed a
similar reproduction of a forgotten experience, which was not visual,
through translation into a newly created _visual_ representation in the
form of an artificial hallucination. The following is of this kind: Miss
B., looking into a crystal,[20] saw a scene laid in a wood near a lake,
etc. Several figures appeared in this scene, which was that of a murder.
Although she had no recollection of anything that could have given rise
to the hallucination, investigation showed that the original experience
was to be found in one of Marie Correlli’s novels which she had read but
forgotten. The vision was a correct representation of the scene as
described in the book.

In suitable subjects almost any past experience, whether forgotten or
not, can be reproduced in this way if conserved, and observation shows
that the number which are conserved is enormous. I shall have occasion
to cite further examples in other connections. The phenomenon of
translation we shall find when we come to study it, as we shall do in
another lecture, throws light upon the nature of conservation for here
we are dealing with something more than simple reproduction; what is
conserved becomes elaborated into a new composition.

=Evidence obtained from dreams.=—Another not uncommon mode in which
forgotten experiences are recovered is through dreams. The content of
the dream may, as Freud has shown, be a cryptic and symbolical
expression or representation of the experience,[21] or a visualized
representation or obvious symbolism, much as a painted picture may be a
symbolized expression of an idea,[22] or it may be a realistic
reproduction in the sense that the subject lives over again the actual
experience. A relative of mine gave me a very accurate description of a
person whom she had never seen from a dream in which he appeared. After
describing his hair, eyes, contour of face, mouth, etc., she ended with
the words, “He looks like a cross between a Scotchman and an Irishman.”
After she had most positively insisted that she had never seen this
person or heard him described—against my protest to the contrary—I
reminded her that I had myself described him to her only a few days
before in the identical words, ending my description with the remark,
“He looks like a cross between a Scotchman and an Irishman.” Even then
she could not recall the fact. Von Bechterew has recorded the case of a
man who frequently after hearing an opera dreamed the whole opera
through.[23] One subject of mine frequently dreamed over again in very
minute detail, after an interval of eight or nine months, the scenes
attending the deathbed of a relative. Indeed, in the dream she
realistically lived them again in a fashion similar to that of hypnotic
dreams such as I have related. Although she had not forgotten these
scenes it is highly improbable that she could have voluntarily recalled
them, particularly after the lapse of so long a time, without the aid of
the dream, so rich was it in detail, with each event in its
chronological order.

Dream reproductions, whether in a symbolic form or not, are too common
to need further statement. I would merely point out that the frequency
with which childhood’s experiences occur in dreams is further evidence
of the conservation of these early experiences. The symbolic dream,
cryptic or obvious, deserves, however, special consideration because of
the data it offers to the problem of the nature of conservation which we
shall later study. In this type of dream, if the fundamental principle
of the theory of Freud is correct, the content is a symbolical
continuation in some form of an antecedent thought (experience) of the
dreamer.[24] When this thought, which may be forgotten, is recovered the
symbolic character of the dream, in many cases, is recognized beyond
reasonable doubt.[25] If this principle is well established, and nearly
all investigators are in accord on this point, though we need not always
accept the given interpretation of individual dreams—if the principle is
sound, then it follows that symbolism includes memory of the original
experience which must be conserved. So that even this type of dream
offers evidence of conservation of experiences for which there may be
total loss of memory (amnesia).

Before closing this lecture I will return to the point which I
temporarily passed by, namely, the significance of the _difference in
the form of reproduction_ according as whether it is by automatic
writing or through associative memories in abstraction. In the latter
case, as we have seen, the memories are identical in form and principle
with those of everyday life. They enter the personal consciousness and
become conscious memories in the sense that the individual personally
remembers the experience in question. Abstraction may be regarded simply
as a favorable condition or moment when the subject remembers what he
had at another previous moment forgotten. We have seen also that the
same thing is true of remembering in hypnosis (excepting those special
realistic reproductions when the subject enters a dream-like or
somnambulistic state and lives over again the past experience in
question). In automatic writing, on the other hand, the reproduction is
by a secondary process entirely separate and independent of the personal
consciousness. In the examples I cited the latter was in entire
ignorance of the reproduction which did not become a personally
conscious memory. At the very same moment when the experiences could not
be voluntarily remembered, and without a change in the moment’s
consciousness, something was tapped, as it were, and thereby they were
graphically revealed without the knowledge of the subject, without
memory of them being introduced into the personal consciousness, and
even without the subject being able to remember the incident after
reading the automatic script. Even this stimulus failed to bring back
the desired phase of consciousness. It was very much like
surreptitiously inserting your hand into the pocket of another and
secretly withdrawing an object which he thinks he has lost. What really
happened was this: a secondary process was awakened and this process (of
which the principal or personal consciousness was unaware) revealed the
memory lost by the personal consciousness. At least this is the
interpretation which is the one which all the phenomena of this kind
pertaining to subconscious manifestations compel us to draw.[26] At any
rate the automatic script showed that somehow and somewhere _outside the
personal consciousness_ the experiences were conserved and under certain
conditions could be reproduced.

We now also see that the same principle of reproduction by a secondary
process holds in hallucinatory phenomena whether artificial or
spontaneous, and in many dreams. When a person looking into a crystal
sees a scene which is a truthful pictorial representation of an actual
past experience which he does not consciously remember, it follows that
that visual hallucination must be induced and constructed by some
secondary subconscious process outside of and independent of the
processes involved in his personal consciousness. And, likewise, when a
dream is a translation of a forgotten experience into symbolical terms
it follows that there must be, underlying the dream consciousness, some
subconscious process which continues and translates the original
experience into and constructs the dream.

This being so we are forced to two conclusions: first, in all these
types of phenomena the secondary process must in some way be closely
related to the original experience in order to reproduce it; and,
second, a mental experience must be conserved in some form which permits
of a subconscious process reproducing the experience in one or other of
the various forms in which memory appears. Further than this I will not
go at present, not until we have more extensively reviewed the number
and kinds of mental experiences that may be conserved. This we will do
in the next lecture.

-----

Footnote 5:

Automatic writing is script which has been produced unconsciously or
involuntarily, although the writer is in an alert state, whether it be
the normal waking state or hypnosis. The hand writes, though the
subject does not consciously direct it. Ordinarily, though not always,
the subject is entirely unaware of what the hand is writing, and often
the writing is obtained better if the attention is diverted and
directed toward other matters. The first knowledge then obtained by
the subject of what has been written, or that the hand has written at
all, is on reading the script. Some persons can cultivate the art of
this kind of writing. Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, for example,
deliberately educated themselves to write automatically, and each
published a volume of her records. In other normal people automatic
writing seems to develop accidentally or under special circumstances.
In certain types of hysteria it is very easily obtained. “Planchette,”
which many years ago was in vogue as a parlor game, was only a
particular device to effect automatic writing.

Footnote 6:

In this particular experiment, when the hand wrote “automatically,”
the second _hypnotic consciousness vanished_ and the subject went into
a _trance_ state, or what is equivalent to a third hypnotic state.
There was no consciousness present, excepting that which was
associated with the writing hand. At other times, in experiments of
this class with this same subject, the hypnotic or the waking
consciousness, as the case might be, persisted _alert_ while the hand
wrote. For the purpose of the experiment in recovering memories this
change in the psychological condition is not of importance, the
principle remains the same.

Footnote 7:

_Journal of the S. P. R._, July, 1906. A fuller account of this case
was later published in the same journal, August, 1911.

Footnote 8:

A remark made by the subject in the trance state, though passed over
in the report as apparently inconsequential, has really much meaning
when interpreted through that conception of the unconscious memory
process which will be developed in succeeding chapters. The subject,
while in the trance, claimed to be in a mental world wherein “is to be
found, it is said, not only everything that has ever happened or will
happen, but all thoughts, dreams, and imagination.” In other words, in
that psychical condition into which she passed, all the conserved
conscious experiences of her life could be awakened into memory.

Footnote 9:

_Proceedings of the S. P. R._, October, 1906, Chap. XII.

Footnote 10:

In the automatic script, which purported to be a spiritistic message
from a dead friend named Annette, occurred the enigmatical sentence:
“Tell her this comes from the friend who loved cradles and cradled
things.” The meaning of this was revealed by the above-mentioned
letter to Mrs. Holland, written twenty years previously. It was from a
friend of Annette’s, and quoted an extract from Annette’s will, which
ran, “because I love cradles and cradled things.” When Mrs. Holland
was tearing up some old letters she came across this one. (“On the
automatic writing of Mrs. Holland,” by Miss Alice Johnson:
_Proceedings of the S. P. R._, June, 1908, pp. 288, 289.)

Footnote 11:

It would have required a stenographer, whom I did not have, to record
fully all these recovered memories. They would fill several printed
pages, and I can give only a general résumé of them. Some weeks later
the experiment was repeated and a record taken as fully as possible in
long hand.

Footnote 12:

Later in the day she discovered the loss of her gloves and, not
remembering where she had left them, was obliged to retrace her steps
in search of them.

Footnote 13:

Of course the memories recovered by either method may be fabrications
as with ordinary voluntary memory, and the automatic script may
stimulate the conscious memory to recollect the experiences in
question. Nevertheless, while the memories are being recorded by the
script, no “conscious” memory is present with subjects who are unaware
of what the hand is writing.

Footnote 14:

Sidis, Prince, and Linenthal: A contribution to the Pathology of
Hysteria, _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, June 23, 1904.

Footnote 15:

The Dissociation of a Personality, by Morton Prince. (New York;
Longmans, Green & Co., 1906.) P. 77. Hereafter, when this work is
referred to, the title will be indicated simply by “The Dissociation.”

Footnote 16:

Undoubtedly much was forgotten and, therefore, there must have been
hiatuses of which she was not aware; but the remarkable thing is that
not only so much, but so much that was inconsequential and evanescent
was recalled. If additional technical methods had been employed
probably more memories could have been recalled.

Footnote 17:

The objection will probably be made that the memories and statements
of hypnotized persons are unreliable on several grounds, chiefly
suggestibility, liability to illusions and, in some cases, tendency to
fabrications. This criticism is more likely to come from those who
have had a special rather than a wide experience with hypnotism.

Footnote 18:

Miss B., in these pages, always refers to Miss Beauchamp, an account
of whose case is given in “The Dissociation.” In this connection cf.
pp. 501, 81 and 238 of that work.

Footnote 19:

_Proceedings of the S. P. R._, June, 1908.

Footnote 20:

Crystal or artificial visions are hallucinatory phenomena which, like
automatic writing, can be cultivated by some people. The common
technic is to have a person look into a crystal, at the same time
concentrating the mind, or putting himself into a state of
abstraction. Under these conditions the subject sees a vision, i.e.,
has a visual hallucination. The vision may be of some person or place,
or may represent a scene which may be enacted. Because of the use of a
crystal such hallucinations are called “crystal visions,” but a
crystal is not requisite; any reflecting surface may be sufficient, or
even the concentration of the attention. The crystal or other object
used of course acts only by aiding the concentration of attention and
by force of suggestion.—_The subconscious is tapped._

Footnote 21:

Freud: Traumdeutung, 2 aufl. 1909.

Footnote 22:

Morton Prince: The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams. _The
Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, October-November, 1910.

Footnote 23:

Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie; 1909, Heft 12.

Footnote 24:

According to Freud and his school it is always the imaginary
fulfilment of a suppressed wish, almost always sexual. For our
purposes it is not necessary to inquire into the correctness of this
interpretation or the details of the Freudian theory.

Footnote 25:

For an example, see p. 98.

Footnote 26:

If the physiological interpretation be maintained, i.e., that the
script was produced by a pure physiological process, this phenomenon
would be a crucial demonstration of the nature of conservation, that
it is in the form of physical alterations in nervous structure. I do
not believe, however, that this interpretation can be maintained.

LECTURE III
CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND
PATHOLOGICAL LIFE

I. Normal Life (Continued)

I have directed your attention up to this point to the conservation of
experiences which at the time of their occurrence, although lost beyond
voluntary recall, for the most part occupied the focus of attention of
the individual—were within the full light of consciousness. If these
experiences were the only ones which were subject to conservation—and I
would have you still bear in mind that I am using the term only in the
limited sense of the ability to recover an experience in some favorable
condition, or moment of consciousness, or through some fortunate or
technical mode of reproduction—if, I say, these were the only ones to be
conserved, then the conservation of the experiences which make up our
mental lives would be considerably curtailed. It so happens, however,
that a large part of our mental activity is occupied with acts of which
at the moment we are only dimly aware—or half aware—in that they do not
occupy the focus of attention. Some of these are what we call
absent-minded acts. Again, many sensations and perceptions do not enter
the focus of attention, so that we are either not aware of them, or, if
we are, there is so little vividness attached to them that they are
almost immediately lost to voluntary memory. The same is true of certain
trains of thoughts which course through the mind while one’s attention
is concentrated on some other line of thought. They are sometimes
described as being in the background of the mind. Then, again, we have
our dream life, and that of reverie, and the important artificial state
of hypnosis; also certain pathological states to which some individuals
are subject, such as intoxication, hysterical crises, deliria, and
multiple personality. Accordingly it is important in any investigation
into the extent of the field of conservation to inquire whether all this
mental life is only fleeting, evanescent, psychological experience, or
whether it is subject to the same principle of conservation. If the
latter be the case it presages consequences which are portentous in the
possible multiplicity and manifoldness of the elements which may enter
into and may govern the mechanism of mental processes. But let me not
get ahead of my exposition.

=Absent-minded acts.=—In a study made some time ago I recorded the
reproduction, as a crystal vision, of an absent-minded act, i.e., one
which had not fully entered the focus of consciousness during deep
concentration of the attention. It is a type of numerous experiments of
this kind that I have made. Miss B. is directed to look into a crystal.
She sees therein a vision of herself walking along a particular street
in Boston in a brown study. She sees herself take out of her pocket some
bank notes, tear them up, and throw them into the street. Now this
artificial hallucination, or vision, was a picture of an actual
occurrence; in an absent-minded reverie the subject had actually
performed this very act under the circumstances portrayed in the vision
and had retained no memory of it.[27]

Similarly I have frequently recovered knowledge of the whereabouts of
articles mislaid absent-mindedly. Sometimes the method used has been, as
in the above examples, that of crystal gazing or artificial
hallucinations; sometimes hypnotism, sometimes automatic writing, etc.
By the last two methods not only the forgotten acts but the ideas and
feelings which were outside the focus of attention, but in the fringe of
consciousness, and prompted the acts are described. It is needless to
give the details of the observations; it suffices to say that each
minute detail of the absent-minded act and the thoughts and feelings
that determined it are described or mirrored, as the case may be. The
point of importance is that concentration of attention is not essential
for conservation, and, therefore, among the vast mass of the conserved
experiences of life may be found many which, though once conscious, only
entered the margin of awareness (not the focus of attention) and never
were subject to voluntary recollection. In the absence of attentive
awareness at the time for such an experience (and therefore of
recollection), we often can only be assured that it ever occurred by
circumstantial evidence. When this assurance is wanting we are tempted
to deny its occurrence and our responsibility, but experiment shows that
the process of conservation, like the dictagraph, is a more faithful
custodian of our experiences than are our voluntary memories.

=Subconscious perceptions=.—It is not difficult to show that perceptions
of the environment which _never even entered the fringe of the personal
consciousness, i.e., of which the individual was never even dimly
aware_, may be conserved. Indeed, the demonstration of their
conservation is one of the important pieces of evidence for the
occurrence of coconscious perception and, therefore, of the splitting of
consciousness. Mrs. Holland, both by automatic writing and in hypnosis,
describes perceptions of the environment (objects seen, etc.) of which
she was not aware at the time. Miss B. and B. C. A. recall, in hypnosis
and by automatic writing, paragraphs in the newspapers read through
casual glances without awareness thereof. The same is true of
perceptions of the environment experienced under experimental conditions
as well as fortuitously. I have made a large number of experiments and
other observations of this kind, and have been in the habit of
demonstrating before the students at my lectures this evidence of
coconscious perception. A simple method is to ask a suitable subject to
describe the dress of some person in the audience, or of objects in the
environment; if he is unable to do this, then to attempt to obtain as
minute a description as possible by automatic writing or verbally after
he has been hypnotized. It is often quite surprising to note with what
detail the objects which almost entirely escaped conscious observation
are subconsciously perceived and remembered. Sometimes the descriptions
of my students have been quite embarrassing from their naïve
truthfulness to nature.

The following is an example of such an observation: I asked B. C. A.
(without warning and after having covered her eyes) to describe the
dress of a friend who was present and with whom she had been conversing
for perhaps some twenty minutes. She was unable to do so beyond saying
that he wore dark clothes. I then found that I myself was unable to give
a more detailed description of his dress, although we had lunched and
been together about two hours. B. C. A. was then asked to write a
description automatically. Her hand wrote as follows (she was unaware
that her hand was writing):

“He has on a dark greenish gray suit, a stripe in it—little rough
stripe; black bow-cravat; shirt with three little stripes in it; black
laced shoes; false teeth; one finger gone; three buttons on his coat.”

The written description was absolutely correct. The stripes in the coat
were almost invisible. I had not noticed his teeth or the loss of a
finger and we had to count the buttons to make sure of their number
owing to their partial concealment by the folds of the unbuttoned coat.
The shoe strings I am sure, under the conditions, would have escaped
nearly everyone’s observation.

Subconscious perceptions even more than absent-minded acts offer some of
the most interesting phenomena of conservation, for these phenomena give
evidence of the ability, under certain conditions, to reproduce, in one
mode or another, experiences which were never a phase of the personal
consciousness, never entered even the fringe of the content of this
consciousness and of which, therefore, we were never aware. For this
reason they are not, properly speaking, forgotten experiences. Their
reproduction sometimes produces dramatic effects. The following is an
instance: B. C. A., waking one night out of a sound sleep, saw a vision
of a young girl dressed in white, standing at the foot of her bed. The
vision was extraordinarily vivid, the face so distinct that she was able
to give a detailed description of it. She had no recollection of having
seen the face before, and it awakened no sense of familiarity.
Suspecting, for certain reasons, the figure to be that of a young girl
who had recently died and whom I knew that B. C. A. had never known and
was not aware that she had ever seen, I placed before her a collection
of a dozen or more photographs of different people among which was one
of this girl. This photograph she picked out as the one which most
resembled the vision (it was a poor likeness) and automatic writing
confirmed most positively the choice. Now it transpired that she had
passed by this girl on one occasion while the latter was talking to me
in the hall of my house, but she had purposely, for certain reasons, not
looked at her. Subconsciously, however, she had seen her since she could
give, both in hypnosis and by automatic writing, an accurate account of
the incident, which I also remembered. B. C. A., however, had no
recollection of it. The subconscious perception was later reproduced
(after having undergone secondary elaboration) as a vision.

Similarly I have known paragraphs read in the newspapers out of the
corner of her eye, so to speak, and probably by casual glances, not
only, as I have said, to be recalled in hypnosis and by automatic
writing, but to be reproduced with more or less elaboration in her
dreams. She had, as the evidence showed, no awareness at the time of
having read these paragraphs and no after recollection of the same.

Experimentally, as I have said, it is possible to demonstrate other
phenomena which are the same in principle. The experiment consists,
after surreptitiously placing objects under proper precautions in the
peripheral field of vision, in having the subject fix his eyes on
central vision and his attention distracted from the environment by
intense concentration or reading. Immediately after removing the objects
it is determined that the subject did not consciously perceive them. But
in hypnosis or by other methods it is found that memory for perceptions
of the peripheral objects returns, i.e., the perceptions are reproduced.
Auditory stimuli may be used as tests with similar results.

Likewise, with Miss B., I have frequently obtained reproductions of
perceptions of which at the time she was unaware. This has been either
under similar experimental conditions, or under accidental circumstances
when I could confirm the accuracy of the reproductions. For instance, to
cite one out of numerous examples, on one occasion I saw her pass by in
the street while I was standing on the door-step of a house some fifteen
or twenty feet away, well outside the line of her central vision. She
was in a brown study. I called to her three times saying, “Good morning,
Miss B.,” laying the accent each time on a different word. She did not
hear me and later had no recollection of the episode. In hypnosis she
recalled the circumstances accurately and reproduced my words with the
accents properly placed. Such observations and experiments I have
frequently made. They can be varied indefinitely in form and condition.

The phenomenon of subconscious perception of sensory _stimulations
applied to anesthetic areas_ (tactile, visual, etc.), in hysterics,
first demonstrated by Janet, is of the same order, but has been so often
described that only a reference to it is necessary. I mention examples
here merely that the different kinds of phenomena that may be brought
within the sphere of memory shall be mentioned. For instance, Mrs. E.
B.[28] has an hysterical loss of sensibility in the hand which, in
consequence, can be severely pinched or pricked, or an object placed in
it, etc., without her being aware of the fact. Notwithstanding this
absence of awareness these tactile experiences were conserved since an
accurate detailed memory of them is recovered in hypnosis, or manifested
through automatic writing. The same phenomenon can be demonstrated in
Mrs. R., whose right arm is anesthetic.[29] The same conservation of
subconscious perceptions can be experimentally demonstrated during
automatic writing. At such times the writing hand becomes anesthetic and
if a screen is interposed so that the subject cannot see the hand he is
not aware of any stimulations applied to it. Nevertheless such sensory
stimulations—a prick or a pinch or more complicated impressions—are
conserved, for the hand will accurately describe all that is done.

An observation which I made on one of my subjects probably belongs here
rather than to the preceding types. Several different objects were
successively brought into the field of vision, but so far toward the
periphery that they could not be sufficiently clearly seen to be
identified. In hypnosis, however, they were accurately described,
showing the conservation of perceptions that did not enter the vivid
awareness or clear perception of the subject.

It is true, as a study of the coconscious would show, that such
phenomena of anesthesia and unrecognized perceptions are dependent upon
a dissociation of consciousness and upon coconscious perception. But
this is a matter of mechanism with which we are not now concerned. The
point simply is that subconscious perceptions which never entered the
awareness of the personal consciousness may be conserved.

I will cite one more observation, one in which the reproduction was
through secondary translation, as we shall see later that it belongs to
a class which enables us to determine the nature of conservation.

B. C. A., actuated by curiosity, looked into a crystal and saw there
some printed words which had no meaning for her whatever and awakened no
memory of any previous experience. It was afterward found that these
words represented a cablegram message which she unconsciously overheard
while it was being transmitted over the telephone to the telegraph
office by my secretary in the next room. She had no recollection of
having heard the words, as she was absorbed in reading a book at the
time. The correctness of the visual reproduction is shown, not only by
automatic writing which remembered and recorded the whole experience,
but also by comparison with the original cablegram.

Again, in other experiments there appear, in the crystal, visions rich
in detail of persons whom she does not remember having seen, although it
can be proved that she actually has seen them.

The reproduction of subconscious perceptions and forgotten knowledge in
dreams, visions, hypnosis, trance states, by automatic writing, etc., is
interesting apart from the theory of memory. Facts of this kind offer a
rational interpretation of many well-authenticated phenomena exploited
in spiritistic literature. Much of the surprising information given by
planchette, table rapping, and similar devices commonly employed by
mediums, depends upon the translation of forgotten dormant experiences
into manifestations of this sort. In clinical medicine, too, we can
often learn, through reproductions obtained by special methods of
investigation, the origin of obsessions and other ideas which otherwise
are unintelligible.

=Dreams and somnambulisms=.—Many people remember their dreams poorly or
not at all, and, in the latter case, are under the belief that they do
not dream. But often circumstantial evidence, such as talking in their
sleep, shows that they do dream. Now, though ordinarily they cannot
remember the dreams, by changing the waking state to an hypnotic one, or
through the device of crystal visions or automatic writing, it is
possible in some people to reproduce the whole dream. Amnesia for
dreams, therefore, cannot be taken as evidence that they do not occur,
and forgotten dream consciousness is subject to the same principles of
conservation and reproduction as the experiences of waking life. Thus in
B. C. A. dreams totally forgotten on awakening are easily recovered in
hypnosis and in crystal visions.[30] In the case of M——l, which I cited
to you a little while ago, the forgotten dream in which he lived over
again the original episode which led to the development of his
hysterical condition and which when repeated in the dream induced each
successive attack, was easily recovered in hypnosis. The same was true
of the forgotten dreams of Mrs. H. and Miss B.

The reproduction of nocturnal somnambulistic acts and the ideas which
occupied the content of consciousness of the somnambulist can be
effected in the same manner. I have quite a collection of observation of
this kind. In the study of visions,[31] to which I have already
referred, may be found the observation where Miss B., looking into a
crystal, sees herself walking in her sleep and hiding some money under a
tablecloth and books lying on the table. The money (which was supposed
to have been lost) was found where it was seen in the vision.

In my notebook are the records of numerous artificial hallucinations of
this kind which reproduce sleep-walking acts of B. C. A. To cite one
instance: in the crystal she sees herself arise from her bed, turn on
the lights, descend the stairs, enter one of the lower rooms, sit by the
fire in deep, pensive reflection, then get up and dance merrily as her
somnambulistic mood changes. Presently, as the cinematograph-like
picture unfolds itself in the crystal, she sees herself go to the
writing table, write two letters, ascend the stairs, dropping one letter
on the way,[32] reënter her room, open a glove box, place the remaining
letter under the gloves, and finally put out the lights and get into bed
when, with the advent of sleep, the vision ends. In the vision the
changing expression of her face displays each successive mood. In
hypnosis also the scene is remembered and then even the thoughts which
accompanied each act of the somnambulist are described. Here again,
then, we have evidence that even forgotten dreams and somnambulistic
thoughts are not lost but under certain special conditions can be
revived in one mode or another.

II. Forgotten Experiences of Artificial and Pathological States

The experiences that I have thus far cited in evidence of the principle
of the conservation of dormant experiences that cannot be voluntarily
recalled have been drawn almost entirely from normal everyday life. We
now come to a series of facts which are very important in that they show
that what is true of the experiences of everyday life is also true of
those of _artificial_ and _pathological_ states of which the normal
personal consciousness has no cognizance. These facts are also vital for
the comprehension of post-hypnotic phenomena, of amnesia, multiple
personality, and allied dissociated states. Let us consider some of the
states from the point of view of conservation.

=Artificial states.=—After a person passes from one _dissociated state_
to another, or from a dissociated state to the full waking state, it is
commonly found that there is amnesia for the previous state. This is a
general principle. The forgetting of dreams is an example from normal
life. For the psychological state of sleep in which dreams occur is one
of normal dissociation of consciousness by which the perception of the
environment, and the great mass of life’s experiences, can no longer be
brought within the content of the dream consciousness. Hence there is a
general tendency to the development of amnesia for dreams after waking
when the normal synthesis of the personality has been established. Yet,
as we have seen, forgotten dreams can generally be recalled in hypnosis
or by some other technical method (e. g., crystal visions and
abstraction). Now _hypnosis_ is an artificially dissociated state. After
passing from one hypnotic state to another,[33] or after waking, it is
very common to find complete amnesia for the whole of the experience
belonging to the previous hypnotic state. By no effort whatsoever can it
be recalled and this inability persists during the remainder of the life
of the subject. And yet those hypnotic experiences may have been very
extensive, particularly if the subject has been hypnotized a great many
times. Nevertheless, it is easy to demonstrate that they are conserved
and therefore, like all conserved experiences, potentially still
existing, subject to recall under favoring conditions; for, as is well
known, if the subject be rehypnotized they are recalled as normal
memories. With the restitution of the hypnotic state the memories which
were dormant become synthesized with the hypnotic personality and
conscious.

The method of producing crystal visions may also be used to demonstrate
the dormant conservation of experiences originating in hypnotic states.
By this method and that of automatic writing, as I have already
explained, the memories may be made to reveal themselves, without
inducing recollection, at the very moment when the subject cannot
voluntarily recall them. The subject, of course, being ignorant of what
happened in hypnosis cannot recognize the visions as pictorial memories.
In illustration of this I would recall the observation in the case of
Miss B. where, in such an artificial vision, she saw herself sitting on
a sofa smoking a cigarette.[34] This vision represented an incident
which occurred during one of the subject’s hypnotic states when she had
smoked a cigarette. Naturally Miss B., in her ignorance of the facts,
denied the truthfulness of the vision. Other examples of a like kind
might be cited if it were necessary.

By automatic writing, also, evidence of the same principle may be
obtained. The conserved memories are _tapped_, so to speak. Thus I
suggest to Mrs. R. in hypnosis that after waking she shall write certain
verses or sentences. After being awakened she reproduces automatically,
as directed, the desired verses or sentences which, of course, belonged
to her hypnotic experiences.[35] In other words, although the personal
consciousness did not remember the hypnotic experience of having
received the command and of having given the promise to write the
verses, etc., the automatic writing by the act of fulfilling the command
showed that all this was conserved; here again was evidence of
conservation, in some form, of an experience at the very moment when the
personal consciousness was unable to voluntarily recall what had taken
place in hypnosis. Such experiments may be varied indefinitely.

The following is an instance of the same phenomenon obtained by tapping
without the use of previous suggestion in hypnosis: subject B. C. A. One
of the hypnotic states, b, was waked up to become B, this change being
followed, as usual, by amnesia. By means of automatic writing an
accurate account was now obtained of the experiences which had taken
place during the previous moments in hypnosis, the subject being unaware
of what the hand wrote. Here were complete memories of the whole period
of which the personal consciousness, B, had no knowledge. One of the
most striking, not to say dramatic, demonstrations of this kind can
sometimes be obtained in cases exhibiting several different hypnotic
states. For instance: “c” and “b” are two different hypnotic phases
belonging to the same individual (B. C. A.). c knows nothing of the
experiences of b, and b nothing of c, each having amnesia for the other.
Now one has only to whisper in the ear of c, asking a question of b, and
at once, by automatic speech, the dormant b phase responds, giving such
information as is sought in proof of the conservation of any given
experience belonging to the tapped b phase. The consciousness of c
apparently continues uninterruptedly during the experiment. The same
evidence could be obtained by automatic writing under the same
conditions. Again in the b phase another state known as “Alpha and
Omega” can be tapped, giving similar evidence of conservation. In the
case of Miss B. the same phenomena could be elicited. In this respect
hypnotic states may show the same behavior as alternating personalities
of which I shall presently speak.

Suggested _post-hypnotic phenomena_ depend, in part, on the conservation
of dormant complexes. In hypnosis I give a suggestion that the subject
on waking shall, at a given moment, take a cigarette and smoke it. There
is thus formed a complex of ideas which becomes dormant and forgotten
after waking. Later, by some mechanism which we need not inquire into
now, the ideas of the dormant complex enter the field of the personal
self; the idea of smoking a cigarette arises therein and the subject
puts the idea into execution. These consequences of the suggestion could
not occur unless the experiences were conserved. Or, we may take an
experiment where the hypnotic experiences are reproduced automatically
by writing. Here the conserved experiences form a secondary system split
off from the personal consciousness. This system reproduces the hypnotic
experiences as memory outside of the personal consciousness.

From a practical point of view this principle of the conservation of the
experiences of the hypnotic state is of the utmost importance. The fact
that a person does not remember them on waking—if such be the case—is of
little consequence in principle, and, practically, this amnesia does not
preclude these experiences from influencing the waking personality. _As
experiences and potential memories they all belong to and are part of
the personality._ The hypnotic experiences being conserved our
personality may still be modified and determined in its judgments,
points of view, and attitudes by them, as by other unrecognized memories
when such modifications have been effected in the hypnotic state. When
the last is the case the hypnotically modified judgments, etc., may
introduce themselves into the content of consciousness in the waking
state by association without being recognized as memories. There may be
no recollection of the source of the new ideas, of the reason for the
modification of a given judgment or attitude of mind, because there is
no recollection of the hypnotic state as a whole; but so far as the new
judgment or attitude is a reproduction of an hypnotic experience it is
memory, although not perfect memory or recollection in the sense of
localizing the experience in the past.

This principle can easily be demonstrated experimentally. It is only
necessary, for instance, to state to a suitably suggestible subject that
the weather, with which previously he was discontented is, after all,
fine; for although it is raining, still, the crops need rain; it will
allay the dust and make motoring pleasant, it will give him an
opportunity to finish his neglected correspondence, etc. The whole
prospect, he is told, is pleasing. He accepts, we assume, the new point
of view. He is then waked up and has complete amnesia for the
experience. Now these ideas, developed in the hypnotic state, are
conserved as potential memories. Though with the change of the
moment-consciousness they cannot be voluntarily recalled, they have
entered into associations to form a new viewpoint. Just speak to him
about the weather and watch the result. His discontent has disappeared
and given place to satisfaction. He expresses himself as quite pleased
with the weather and gives the same reasons for his satisfaction as were
suggested to and accepted by him in hypnosis. He does not recognize his
new views as reproductions, i.e., memories, of previous experiences
because he has no recollection of the hypnotic state. He does not
remember when and how he changed his mind; but these experiences have
determined his views because they have become a part of his conscious
system of thought. The principle applies to a large part of our
judgments not formed in hypnosis. There is nothing very remarkable about
it. The process is similar to that of ordinary thought though it has had
an artificial and different origin. The complex of ideas having been
formed in hypnosis still remains organized and some of its elements
enter the complexes of the personal consciousness, just as in normal
life ideas of buried experiences of which we have no recollection
intrude themselves from time to time and shape our judgments and the
current of our thoughts without our realizing what has determined our
mental processes. We have forgotten the source of our judgments, but
this forgetfulness does not affect the mechanism of the process.

=Pathological states.=—In the _functional amnesias_ of a pathological
character we find the same phenomenon of conservation. Various types of
amnesia are encountered. I will specify only the episodic, epochal, and
the continuous, so commonly observed in hysteria. This field has been
threshed over by many observers and I need refer only to a few instances
as illustrations. In the first two types the experiences which are
forgotten may have occurred during the previous normal condition. In the
episodic the particular episode which is forgotten may have been,
strangely enough, one which from the very important part it played in
the life of the subject and its peculiar impressiveness and significance
we should expect would be necessarily remembered, especially as memory
in other respects is normal. But for the same reasons it is not
surprising to find that the experience has been conserved somehow and
somewhere although it cannot be recalled. The classical cases of
Fräulein O. and Lucy R. reported by Breuer and Freud[36] are typical.

From my own collection of cases I will cite the following episode from
the case of B. C. A. This subject received a mental shock as the result
of an emotional conflict of a distressing character. This experience was
the exciting factor in the development of her psychosis, a dissociation
of personality. In the resulting “neurasthenic” state, although her
memory was normal for all other experiences of her life, this particular
episode with all its manifold details, notwithstanding its great
significance in her life, completely dropped out of her memory.[37]

This incident was a very intimate one and it is not necessary to give
the details. When put to the test all effort to recall the episode
voluntarily is without result, and even suggestions in two hypnotic
states fail to awaken it in those states. Yet when a pencil is put in
her hand these memories are made to manifest themselves by automatic
writing. During the writing the subject remains in a perfectly alert
state but is unaware of what her hand is doing. At a later period after
the subject had been restored to the normal condition she could
voluntarily recall these memories thus, again, showing their
conservation.

One other example of episodic amnesia I will cite, inasmuch as, aside
from the question of conservation, it is of practical importance, being
typical of experiences which lead to obsessions of phobia. The subject,
O. N., had an intense fear of towers such as might contain bells that
might ring. She had no recollection of the first occasion when the fear
occurred or of any experience which might have given rise to it, and, of
course, could give no explanation of the obsession. Neither in
abstraction or hypnosis could any related memories be evoked, but by
automatic writing she “unconsciously” described an emotional and
dramatic scene which was the occasion of the first occurrence of the
fear and which had taken place some twenty-five years previously when
she was a young girl.

With the reason for the amnesia we are not particularly concerned at
present excepting so far as it serves to make clear the distinction
between recollection and conservation, and to throw light on the nature
of the latter. The episodes in both these instances were of a strongly
emotional character. Now we have known for many years from numerous
observations that emotion tends to disrupt the mind and to dissociate
the experiences which give rise to the affective state so that they
cannot be brought back into consciousness. We may particularize further
and, making use of the known impulsive force of emotion, attribute the
dissociation (or inhibition) in many cases to a conflict between certain
ideas belonging to the experience and other opposing ideas which, with
the emotion, they have awakened. The impulsive force of the latter
ideas, being the stronger, dissociates, or, to use the expressive term
introduced by Freud, represses, the former. The principle of
dissociation by conflict has been formulated and elaborated by Freud in
his well-known theory which has been made use of to explain all
functional amnesias. It is not necessary to go as far as that, nor does
the theory as such concern us now. It is sufficient if in certain cases
the amnesia (or dissociation) is a dissociation (repression) induced by
the conative force of conflicting emotion. If so we should expect that
the amnesia would be of a temporary nature and would continue only so
long as the conflict and dissociating force continued. In any favorable
moment when repression ceased or failed to be operative, as in hypnosis
or abstraction, reproduction (recollection) could occur. But this
requires that the registration of the experience should be something
specific that can be dissociated without obliteration. And, further, it
must be something that can be so conserved, somehow and somewhere,
_during dissociation_ that, as in the case of reproduction by automatic
writing, it can escape the influence of the repressing force and express
itself autonomously, i.e., without the expressed memory of the
experience entering the personal consciousness. To this we shall return
later.

In the two examples I have cited, if my interpretation is correct, the
amnesia was due to dissociation by conflict and hence the conservation,
as is the rule in functional dissociation, and the reproduction by
automatic writing. This principle of dissociation by conflict and of
conservation of the dissociated remembrances is of great practical
importance as we shall see in later lectures. It can be best studied
experimentally with cases of multiple personality. In the case of Miss
B. numerous examples of amnesia from conflict were observed. Owing to
the precise organization of the consciousness into two distinct
personalities it was possible to definitely determine beyond question
the antagonistic ideas of one personality which voluntarily induced the
conflict and, by the impulsive force of their emotion, caused the
amnesia in the other personality.[38] The same phenomena were observed
in the case of B. C. A. As memory for the forgotten experiences in these
instances returned as soon as the conflict ceased, conservation of them
necessarily persisted during the amnesia.

Perhaps I may be permitted to digress here slightly to point out that
this same (in principle) phenomenon may be effected experimentally by
suggestion. The suggested idea which has the force of a volition or
unexpressed wish, coming in conflict with the knowledge of previously
familiar facts, inhibits or represses the reproduction in consciousness
of this knowledge as memory. It is easy to prove, however, that this
knowledge is conserved though it cannot be recalled. Thus, I give
appropriate suggestions to B. C. A. in hypnosis that she shall be
unable, when awake, to remember a certain unpleasant episode connected
with a person named “August.” After being awakened she has complete
amnesia, not only for the episode, but even for the name. The
suppression of the memory of the episode carries with it by association
the name of the person. In fact, the name itself has no meaning for her.
When asked to give the names of the calendar months after mentioning
“July” she hesitates, then gives “September” as the next. Even when the
name “August” is mentioned to her it has no meaning and sounds like a
word of a foreign language. The memory of the episode has become dormant
so far as volitional recollection is concerned. It can, however, be
_recalled as a coconscious process_ through automatic writing, as in the
preceding experiment, and then the word in all its meanings and
associations is also awakened in the coconsciousness.

The same phenomenon may be observed clinically in transition types
standing halfway between the amnesia following emotional episodes and
that produced by external suggestion. Auto-suggestion may then be a
factor in the mechanism, as in the following example: In a moment of
discouragement and despair B. C. A., torn by an unsolved problem, said
to herself after going to bed at night, “I shall go to sleep and I shall
forget everything, my name and everything else.” Of course she did not
intend or expect to forget literally her name, but she gave expression
to a petulant despairing conditional wish which if fulfilled would be a
solution to her problem; as much as if she said, “If I should forget who
I am my troubles would be ended.” Nevertheless the auto-suggestion with
its strong feeling tones worked for repression. The next day, when about
to give her name by telephone, she discovered that she had forgotten it.
On testing her later I found that she could not speak, write, or read
her name. She could not even understandingly read the same word when
used with a different signification, i.e., stone [her name, we will
suppose, is Stone], nor the letters of the same. This amnesia persisted
for three days until removed by my suggestion. That the lost knowledge
was all the time conserved is further shown by the fact that during the
amnesia the name was remembered in hypnosis and also reproduced by
automatic writing.

In the epochal type of amnesia a person, perhaps after a shock, suddenly
loses all memory for lost _epochs_, it may be for days and even for
years of his preceding life. In the classical case of Mr. Hanna, studied
by Boris Sidis, the amnesia was for his whole previous life, so that the
subject was like a new-born child. It is easy to show, however, that the
forgotten epoch is normally conserved by making use of the various
methods of reproduction at our disposal. In the case of Hanna, Sidis was
able through “hypnoidization” and suggestion to bring back memory
pictures of the amnesic periods. “While the subject’s attention is thus
distracted, events, names of persons, of places, sentences, phrases,
whole paragraphs of books totally lapsed from memory, and in language
the very words of which sounded bizarre to his ears and the meaning of
which was to him inscrutable—all that flashed lightning-like on the
patient’s mind. So successful was this method that on one occasion the
patient was frightened by the flood of memories that rose suddenly from
the obscure subconscious [unconscious] regions, deluged his mind, and
were expressed aloud, only to be forgotten the next moment. To the
patient himself it appeared as if another being took possession of his
tongue.”[39]

In another class of cases of epochal amnesia known as _fugues_ the
subject, having forgotten his past life and controlled by fancied ideas,
perhaps wanders away not knowing who he is or anything of the previous
associations of his life. The “Lowell Case” of amnesia, which I had an
opportunity to carefully observe and which later was more extensively
studied for me by Dr. Coriat, may be instanced.[40] A woman suddenly
left her home without apparent rhyme or reason. When later found she had
lost all recollection of her name, her personality, her family, and her
surroundings, and her identity was only accidentally discovered through
the publication of her photograph in the newspaper. She then had almost
complete amnesia for her previous life.

Another case, also studied by Dr. Coriat and the writer, was that of a
policeman who suddenly deserted his official duty in Boston and went to
New York, where he wandered about without knowledge of who he was, his
name, his age, his occupation, indeed, as there is reason to believe, of
his past life. When he came to himself three days later he found himself
in a hospital with complete amnesia for the three days’ fugue. When I
examined him some days later this amnesia still persisted but Dr. Coriat
was able to recover memories of his vagrancy in New York showing that
the experiences of this fugue were still conserved. It is hardly
necessary to remind you that, of course, the memories of his normal life
which during the fugue it might have been thought were lost were shown
to have been conserved, as on “coming to himself” they were recovered.
In the “Lowell Case” substantially similar conditions were found.

In _continuous or anterograde_ amnesia the subject forgets every
experience nearly as fast as it happens. The classical case of Mme. D.,
studied by Charcot and later more completely by Janet, is an example.
The conservation of the forgotten experiences was demonstrated by these
authors.

In _multiple personality_ amnesia for large epochs in the subject’s life
is quite generally a prominent feature. In one phase of personality
there is no knowledge whatsoever of existence in another phase. Thus,
for instance, all the experiences of BI and BIV, in the case of Miss B.,
were respectively unknown to the other. When, however, the change took
place from one personality to the other, with accompanying amnesia, all
the great mass of experiences of the one personality still remained
organized and conserved during the cycle of the other’s existence. With
the reversion to the first personality, whichever it might be, the
previously formed experiences of that personality became capable of
manifesting themselves as conscious memories. This conservation could
also be shown, in this case, by the method of tapping the conserved
memories and producing crystal visions or artificial hallucinations.
Those who are familiar with the published account of the case will
remember that BIV was in the habit at one time of acquiring knowledge of
the amnesic periods of BI’s existence by “fixing” her mind and obtaining
a visual picture of the latter’s acts. Likewise, it will be remembered
that by crystal visions I was enabled to bring into consciousness a
vision of the scene at the hospital which, through its emotional
influence, caused the catastrophe of dissociation of personality, and
also of the scene enacted by BI just preceding the awakening of BIV, of
all of which BIV had no knowledge.[41] As with Mr. Hanna sometimes these
memories instead of being complex pictures were scrappy—mere flashes in
the pan. The same condition of conservation of the experiences of one
personality during the existence of another obtained in the case of B.
C. A. and numerous cases recorded in the literature. In this respect the
condition is the same as that which obtains in hypnotic states and which
I mentioned a few moments ago.

We may, in fact, lay it down as a general law that during any
dissociated state, no matter how extensive or how intense the amnesia,
all the experiences that can be recalled in any other state, whether the
normal one or another dissociated state, are conserved and,
theoretically at least, can be made to manifest themselves. And,
likewise and to the same extent, during the normal state the experiences
which belong to a dissociated state are still conserved, notwithstanding
the existing amnesia for those experiences. Furthermore, if we were
dealing with special pathology we would be able to show that many
pathological phenomena are due to the subconscious manifestations of
such conserved and forgotten experiences.

Observation shows that the experiences of _trance states_ and allied
conditions are similarly conserved. Fanny S., as the result of an
emotional shock, due to a distressing piece of news, goes into a
trance-like state of which she has no memory afterwards. Later, a
recollection of this supposedly unconscious state, including the content
of her trance thoughts and the sayings and doings of those about her, is
recovered by a special device. B. C. A. likewise fell into a trance of
which there was no recollection. The whole incident was equally fully
recovered in a crystal vision, and also conscious memory of it brought
back to personal consciousness by a special technic. In the vision she
saw herself apparently unconscious, the various people about her each
performing his part in the episode; the doctor administering a
hypodermic dose of medicine, etc. In hypnosis she remembered in addition
the thoughts of the trance consciousness and the various remarks made by
different people in attendance.

Even _delirious states_ for which there is complete amnesia may be
conserved. I have observed numerous instances of this in the case of
Miss B. For instance, the delirious acts occurring in the course of
pneumonia were reproduced in a crystal vision by Miss B. and the
delirious thoughts as well were remembered by the secondary personality,
Sally.[42] I have records of several examples of conservation of
delirium in this case. Quite interesting was the repetition of the same
delirium due to ether narcosis in succeeding states of narcosis as
frequently happened. A very curious phenomenon of the same order was the
following: After the subject had been etherized a number of times I
adopted the ruse of pretending to etherize one of the secondary
personalities, using the customary inhaler but without ether. The
efficient factor was, of course, suggestion. The subject would, at least
apparently, become unconscious, passing into a state which had all the
superficial appearances of deep etherization. At the end of the
procedure she would slowly return to consciousness, repeat the same
stereotyped expletives and other expressions which she regularly made
use of when ether was actually used, and make the same grimaces and
signs of discomfort, etc. This behavior would seem to indicate that the
mental and physical experiences originally induced by a physical agent
were conserved and later reproduced under imaginary conditions.

Mental experiences formed in states of _alcoholic intoxication_ without
delirium may be conserved as dormant complexes. Dr. Isador Coriat,[43]
in his studies of _alcoholic amnesia_, was able to restore memories of
experiences occurring during the alcoholic state showing that they were
still conserved. The person, during the period for which later there is
amnesia, may or may not be what is ordinarily called drunk, although
under the influence of alcohol. Later, when he comes to himself, he is
found to have forgotten the whole alcoholic period—perhaps several days
or a week—during which he may have acted with apparently ordinary
intelligence, and perhaps have committed criminal acts. By one or
another of several technical methods memory of the forgotten period may
often be recalled. Dr. C. W. Pilgrim[44] also has reported two cases of
this kind in which he succeeded in restoring the memories of the
forgotten alcoholic state. I might also recall here the case, cited by
Ribot, of the Irish porter who, having lost a package while drunk, got
drunk again and remembered where he had left it.

Of course, in order to demonstrate the conservation of forgotten
experiences it is necessary, when abstraction is not sufficient, to
employ subjects in whom more profound dissociation of consciousness can
be produced by one or another of the artificial means described so as to
permit of the reproduction of the hidden (conserved) experiences of
mental life. Such subjects, however, are sufficiently common. Often the
passive state of abstraction after some practice is sufficient.

Summary

Although in the above résumé of the phenomena of memory I have for the
most part made use of personal observations, these, so far as the
phenomena themselves are concerned, are in accord with those of other
observers. It would have been easy to have drawn for corroboration upon
the writings of Gurney, Janet, Charcot, Breuer, Freud, Sidis, Coriat,
and others.

A survey of all the facts which I have outlined in this lecture forces
us to ask ourselves the question: To what extent are life’s experiences
conserved? Indeed it was to meet this question that I have reviewed so
large a variety of forgotten experiences which experiment or observation
in individual cases has shown to be conserved. If my aim had been to
show simply that an experience, which has been lost beyond all possible
voluntary recall, may still be within the power of reproduction when
special devices adapted to the purpose are employed, it would not have
been necessary to cover such a wide field of inquiry. To meet the wider
question it was necessary to go farther afield and examine a large
variety of experiences occurring in multiform conditions of mental life.

After doing this the important principle is forced upon us in strong
relief that it matters not in what period of life, or in what state,
experiences have occurred, or how long a time has intervened since their
occurrence; they may still be conserved. They become dormant, but under
favorable conditions they may be awakened and may enter conscious life.
We have seen, even by the few examples I have given, that childhood
experiences that are supposed to have long been buried in oblivion may
be conserved. We have seen that the mental life of artificial and
pathological states is subject to the same principle; that the
experiences of hypnosis, trance states, deliria, intoxication,
dissociated personality—though there may be absolute amnesia in the
normal waking state for them—may still be capable of reproduction as
memory. Yet of the vast number of mental experiences which we have
during the course of our lives we can voluntarily recall but a
fractional part. What proportion of the others is conserved is
difficult, if not impossible, to determine. The difficulty is largely a
practical one due to the inadequacy of our technical methods of
investigation. In the first place, our technic is only applicable to a
limited number of persons. In the second place, it is obvious that when
an episode—occurring in the course of everyday life—is forgotten, but is
recovered under one or another of the conditions I have described, it is
only in a minority of instances that circumstances will permit
confirmation of this evidence by collateral and independent testimony.
Still, if we take the evidence as a whole its cumulative force is such
as to compel the conviction that a vast number of experiences, more than
we can possibly voluntarily recall, are conserved, and that it is
impossible to affirm that any given experience may not persist in a
dormant state. It is impossible to say what experiences of our daily
life have failed to be conserved and what are awaiting only a favorable
condition of reproduction to be stimulated into activity as memory. Even
if they cannot be reproduced by voluntary effort, or by some one
particular device, they may be by another and, if all devices fail, they
may be recovered in pathological conditions like delirium, trance,
spontaneous hallucinations, etc., or in normal dissociated states like
dreams. The inability to recall an experience is no evidence whatever
that it is not conserved. Indeed, even when the special methods and
moments fail it is still not always possible to say that it is not
conserved.

It would be a gross exaggeration to say, on the basis of the evidence at
our disposal, that all life’s experiences persist as potential memories,
or even that this is true of the greater number. It is, however,
undoubtedly true that of the great mass of experiences which have passed
out of all voluntary recollection, an almost incredible, even if
relatively small, number still lie dormant, and, under favoring
conditions, many can be brought within the field of conscious memory.
The significance of this fact will become apparent to us later after we
have studied the nature of conservation. Still more significant,
particularly for abnormal psychology, is the fact we have brought out by
our technical methods of investigation; namely, that almost any
conserved experience under certain conditions can function as a
subconscious memory and become translated into, i.e., produce sensory
and motor automatic phenomena, such as hallucinations, writing, speech,
etc. It will not be surprising if we shall find that various other
disturbances of mind and body are produced by such subconscious
processes.

Two striking facts brought out by some of these investigations are the
minuteness of the details with which forgotten experiences may be
conserved and the long periods of time during which conservation may
persist. Thus, as we have seen, experiences dating back to early
childhood may be shown to be preserved in extremely minute detail though
the individual has long forgotten them. Furthermore, it has been shown
that even remembered experiences may be conserved in far more elaborate
detail than would appear from so much of the experience as can be
voluntarily recalled. Probably our voluntary memory is not absolutely
perfect for any experience in all its details but the details that are
conserved often far exceed those that can be recalled.

In the survey of life’s experiences which we have studied we have, for
the most part, considered those which have had objective relation and
have been subject to confirmation by collateral testimony. But we should
not overlook the fact that among mental experiences are those of the
inner as well as outer life. To the former belong the hopes and
aspirations, the regrets, the fears, the doubts, the self-communings and
wrestlings with self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that we are
not willing to give out to the world, and all that we would forget and
would strive not to admit to ourselves. All this inner life belongs to
our experience and is subject to the same law of conservation.

Finally, it should be said that much of what is not ordinarily regarded
as memory is made up of conserved experiences. A large part of every
mental content is memory the source of which is forgotten. Just as our
vocabulary is memory, though we do not remember how and where it was
acquired, so our judgments, beliefs, and opinions are in large part made
up of past experiences which are forgotten but which have left their
traces as integral parts of concepts ingrained in our personalities.

-----

Footnote 27:

For a full account of this experiment, see An Experimental Study of
Visions, _Brain_, Winter Number, 1898; The Dissociation, pp. 81, 82.

Footnote 28:

The Dissociation, p. 77.

Footnote 29:

For numerous observations of this kind, see Pierre Janet: The Mental
States of Hystericals.

Footnote 30:

The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams, loc. cit.

Footnote 31:

Loc. cit. See p. 51.

Footnote 32:

See Lecture VI, p. 185.

Footnote 33:

Gurney was among the first to demonstrate the induction of several
states in the same subject. He was able to obtain three different
hypnotic states (Proceedings S. P. R., Vol. IV, p. 515), and Mrs.
Sidgwick and Miss Johnson eight in one individual, each with amnesia
for the other. Janet, of course, demonstrated the same phenomena. In
the cases of Miss B. and B. C. A. I obtained a large number of such
states.

Footnote 34:

Morton Prince: The Dissociation, p. 55; also An Experimental Study of
Visions, _Brain_, Winter Number, 1898.

Footnote 35:

Some of the Revelations of Hypnotism, _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, May 22, 1890.

Footnote 36:

Studien über Hysterie.

Footnote 37:

Of course I am not discussing here the genetic mechanism of the
amnesia, being concerned only with the principle of conservation.

Footnote 38:

The Dissociation, pp. 284-5, 456-9.

Footnote 39:

Boris Sidis: The Psychology of Suggestion, p. 224; see also Multiple
Personality, p. 143.

Footnote 40:

_The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 93.

Footnote 41:

The Dissociation, pp. 220, 221, 255, 531, 532.

Footnote 42:

The Dissociation, p. 83.

Footnote 43:

_The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. I, No. 3.

Footnote 44:

_American Journal of Insanity_, July, 1910.

LECTURE IV
CONSERVATION A RESIDUUM OF EXPERIENCES

A consideration of all the facts of observation and experiment of the
kind which I have recited in the last two lectures—and I might have
multiplied them many times—forces us to the conclusion that whether or
not we can recall any given experience it may be still conserved. Bear
in mind that I have used conservation, thus far, only in the sense that
under favoring changes in the moment’s consciousness, or by special
methods of stimulation, a past experience may reproduce itself, or may
be made to reproduce itself, in one form or another of memory.

It may be, for example, that you have to-day only a vague and general
recollection of the last lecture and if you should endeavor to write an
account of it from memory the result would be but a fragmentary report.
And yet it is quite possible that, if one or another of the various
technical methods I have described could be applied to some one of you,
we should be able to recover quite exact memories, of certain portions
at least, of the lecture—perhaps _verbatim_ transcripts of certain
portions, and large numbers of facts which are quite beyond your present
recollection.

Our study of those phenomena of memory which I cited in the last lecture
was carried only so far as to allow us to draw the conclusions as to
conservation which I have just stated. And, in drawing these
conclusions, let me repeat—we have provisionally limited the meaning of
the term conservation simply to the potential ability to reproduce
experiences, with or without recollection, either in their original
form, or translated into a graphic, visual, or auditory expression of
them. We have not attempted from these phenomena to draw conclusions as
to the nature of conservation, or as to whether it is anything apart
from reproduction under favorable conditions. If we do not look below
the surface of the phenomena it might be held that memory is only a
recurrent phase of consciousness, and that the term conservation is only
a figure of speech to express the ability to determine that recurrence
in our self-consciousness.

Let us examine now a little more closely some of the phenomena we have
already examined but inadequately.

=Residual processes underlying automatic motor phenomena: writing,
speech, gestures, etc.=—We will take writing as a type and the following
as an example: In a state of hypnosis a subject learns a verse by heart.
It is then suggested that this verse shall be written automatically
after he has been awakened. (By arranging the conditions of the
experiment in this way we make certain that the script afterwards
written shall express a memory and not a fabrication.) After the subject
returns to the normal waking state he has complete amnesia for the whole
hypnotic state and therefore for the verse. Now, if the experiment is
successful, his hand writes the given verse without the subject being
aware of what his hand is writing, and it may be without being aware
that his hand is writing anything at all. The whole thing has been done
without participation of his consciousness and without his knowing that
any such phenomenon was to occur. (Of course any of his conscious
experiences while in the hypnotic state might have been used as a test,
these being known to the experimenter as well.) Now the things to be
noted are:

1, that the script expresses a memory; that is, reproduces previous
_conserved_ conscious ideas—the verse. It expresses memory just exactly
as it would express it if it had been consciously and voluntarily
written.

2, that these ideas _while in a state of conservation_ and without
entering consciousness—i.e., becoming conscious memory—express
themselves in written language.

3, that this occurs while the subject has complete amnesia for the
conserved ideas and therefore he could not possibly reproduce them as
conscious memory.

4, that that which effects the writing is not a recurring phase of the
self-consciousness which is concerned at the moment with totally
different ideas.

5, that the “state of conservation” is, at least during the writing, a
specific state existing and functioning independently and outside of the
personal self-consciousness.

6, that in functioning it induces specific processes which make use of
the same organized physiological mechanisms which ordinarily are made
use of by conscious memory to express itself in writing and that these
processes are not in, but independent of, consciousness.

We are forced to conclude therefore that a conscious experience—in this
case the ideas of the verse—is conserved through the medium of some kind
of residuum of itself capable of specific functioning and inducing
processes which reproduce in the form of written symbols the ideas of
the original experience.

We need not consider for the present the nature of the residuum, and its
process, whether it is the ideas themselves or something else.

=Residual processes underlying hallucinations.=—We will take the
observation of B. C. A. looking into a crystal and reading some printed
words—a cablegram—which she had previously unconsciously overheard.[45]
The words were, let us say, “Best Wishes and a Happy New Year.” This
visual picture was not a literal reproduction of the original
experience, which was a subconscious _auditory_ experience of the same
words, of which she was not aware; but plainly, nevertheless, the visual
picture must have been determined somehow by the auditory experience.
Equally plainly the visual image was not a recurrent phase of the
consciousness, for the words of the message had not been previously
_seen_. What occurred was this: the antecedent auditory perception
manifested itself in consciousness _after an interval of time_ as a
visual hallucination of the words. There was a reproduction of the
original experience but not in its original form. It had undergone a
_secondary alteration_ by which the visual perception replaced the
auditory perception. As a memory it was a conversion or _translation_ of
an auditory experience into terms of another sense. Now the conversion
must have been effected by some mechanism outside of consciousness; that
is to say, it was not an ordinary visualization, i.e., intensely vivid
secondary images pertaining to a _conscious_ memory, as when one thinks
of the morning’s breakfast table and visualizes it; for there was no
conscious memory of the words, or knowledge that there ever had been
such an experience. The visualization therefore must have been induced
by something not in the content of consciousness,—something we have
called a secondary process, of which the individual is unaware.

We can conceive of the phenomenon originating in either one of two
possible modes. Either the hallucination was a newly fabricated
conscious experience; or it was a reproduction of secondary visual
images originally belonging to the auditory perception at the time of
its occurrence and now thrust into consciousness in an intensely vivid
form. In either case, for this to have taken place something must have
been left by the original experience and conserved apart from and
independent of the content of the personal consciousness at any and all
moments—something capable of functioning after an interval of time as a
secondary process _outside of the personal consciousness_. The only
intelligible explanation of the phenomenon is that the original auditory
impression persisted, somehow and somewhere, in a form capable of
conservation as a specific and independent residuum during all
subsequent changes in the content of consciousness. This residuum either
fabricated the hallucination or thrust its secondary images into
consciousness to become the hallucination.

The phenomenon by itself does not permit a conclusion as to the nature
of the residuum, whether it is psychological or neural; i.e., whether an
auditory perception, as perception, still persists subconsciously
outside the focus of awareness of consciousness, or whether it has left
an alteration of some kind in the neurons. Whatever the inner nature of
the conserved experience it _obviously must have a very specific and
independent existence, somehow and somewhere, outside of the awareness
of consciousness, and one capable of secondary functioning in a way that
can reproduce the original experience in terms of another sense. In
other words, conservation must be in the form of some kind of residuum,
psychological or neural_. It must be, therefore, something very
different from reproduction or a recurrent phase of consciousness.
Further, it must form a stage in the process of memory of which
reproduction is the final result.

This observation of course does not stand alone. I have cited a number
of observations and might cite many more in which the same phenomenon of
transformation or conversion of sensory images of one sense into images
of another sense was prominent. Indeed a study of hallucinations,
artificial or spontaneous, which are representations of former
experiences and where the determining factors can be ascertained, will
show that in most, if not all, of them this same _mechanism of
conversion_ is at work. Take, for instance, the experiment cited in our
last lecture, the one in which Miss B. was directed to look into a
crystal for the purpose of discovering the whereabouts of some money she
had lost without being aware of the fact. In the crystal she sees a
vision of herself walking along a particular street in Boston absorbed
in thought. She sees herself in a moment of absent-mindedness take some
banknotes out of her pocket, tear them up, and throw them into the
street.

Now this artificial hallucination was, as we have seen, a picture of an
actual occurrence for which there was amnesia. It must, therefore, have
been determined by that experience. The psychological phenomena
manifested, however, were really much more complicated than would appear
at first sight. An analysis of this vision, which unfolded itself like a
cinematograph picture, would show that it was a composite visual
representation of several different kinds of experiences—of past
perceptions of her body and face, of her conscious knowledge of her
relation to the environment (in the street), of muscular movements, and
of her knowledge derived from subconscious tactile impressions of the
act. Of these last she was not aware at the time of their occurrence.
Much of this knowledge must have persisted as a residuum of the original
experience and functioned subconsciously. Thereby, perhaps, the original
secondary visual images were reproduced and emerged into consciousness
as the hallucination or pictorial memory.

Similar phenomena indicative of conservation being effected by means of
a residuum of the original experience may be produced experimentally in
various ways. For instance, in certain hysterics with anesthesia if you
prick a number of times a part of the body—say the hand—in which all
tactile sensation has been lost, and later direct the subject to look
into a crystal, he will see a number, perhaps written on a hand. This
number, let us say five, will correctly designate the number of times
the hand was pricked. Now, because of the loss of sensibility, the
subject was unaware of the pin-pricks. Nevertheless, of course, they
were recorded subconsciously, coconsciously). Their subsequent
transformation into a visual hallucination not only shows that they were
conserved, but that they left something which was capable of taking
part, outside of consciousness, in a secondary process which gave rise
to the hallucination.

An examination of all crystal visions, so far as they are translated
memories of actual experiences, will show this same evidence for a
conserved residuum.

That _conservation is not merely a figure of speech_ to express the
ability to determine the recurrence of a previous experience, but means
a specific residuum capable of independent and elaborate functioning, is
brought out more conspicuously in those visions which are elaborately
fabricated symbolisms of an antecedent experience. In other words, the
vision is not a literal recurrence of a previous phase of consciousness,
in that the latter has been worked over, so to speak, so as to appear in
consciousness in a reconstructed form. Though reconstructed it either
still retains its original meaning or is worked out to a completion of
its thoughts, or to a fulfilment of the emotional strivings pertaining
to them (anxieties, wishes, etc.). These visions, perhaps, more
frequently occur spontaneously, often at moments of crises in a person’s
life, but also are observed under experimental conditions. Sometimes
they answer the doubts, scruples and other problems which have troubled
the subject, sometimes they express the imaginary fulfilment of intense
longings or of anxieties and dreads which have been entertained, or
disturbing thoughts which have pricked the conscience.[46] We are
obliged to conclude, in the light of experimental observations of the
same class, that such phenomena are determined by the specific residua
of antecedent thoughts which must be conserved and function in a
specific manner to appear in this metamorphosed form.

=Similar residual processes underlying post-hypnotic
phenomena.=—Conserved experiences which give rise to more complicated
secondary elaboration may be observed in suggested post-hypnotic
phenomena. Experiments of this kind may be varied in many ways. The
phenomenon may be an hallucination similar to the one I have just
described in hysterics, or a so-called subconscious calculation. You
suggest in hypnosis to a suitable subject that he shall multiply certain
numbers, or calculate the number of seconds intervening between certain
hours—let us say between 10:43 and 5:13 o’clock—the answer to be given
in writing on a certain day. The subject is then awakened immediately,
before he has time to do the calculation while in hypnosis. Later, if
the experiment is successful, at the time designated the subject will
absent-mindedly or automatically write the figures giving the answer.

There are two modes in which these calculations may be accomplished. In
a special and limited class of cases, where there is a large split-off
subconscious personality, or doubling of consciousness, the calculation
may be made entirely by this secondary subconscious self, in the same
fashion as it would be made by the principal personality if the problem
were given in the waking state. The subconscious personality will go
through each conscious step in the calculation in the same way.[47] In a
second class of cases the _calculations are worked out, apparently,
unconsciously_, without participation in the process by a subconscious
personality even when such exists. At most it would seem that isolated
numbers representing different steps in the calculation arise from time
to time coconsciously as a limited secondary consciousness (of which the
personal consciousness is unaware) until finally the figures of the
completed answer appear therein. The calculation itself appears to be
still another process outside both the personal and the secondary
consciousness. When the problem has been finished the answer is finally
given automatically. The whole process is too complicated to go into at
this time before we have studied the problems of the coconscious.[48] It
is enough to say that it is plain that the hypnotic experience—the
suggested problem—must be considered as some kind of specific residuum,
psychological or neural, and that this residuum must be one capable of
quite elaborate independent and subconscious intellectual activity
before finally becoming transformed into the final answer.

=Residual processes underlying dreams.=—When citing the evidence of
dreams for the conservation of forgotten experiences I spoke of one type
of dream as a symbolical memory. I may now add it is more than this; it
is a fabrication. The original experience or thought may appear in the
dream after being worked over into a fantasy, allegory, symbolism, or
other product of imagination. Such a dream is not a recurrent phase of
consciousness, but a _newly fabricated phase_. Further, analytical and
experimental researches go to show that the fabrication is performed by
the original phase without the latter recurring in the content of the
personal consciousness. The original phase must therefore have been
conserved in some form capable of such independent and specific
functioning, i.e., fabrication below the threshold of consciousness. For
instance:

The subject dreamed that she was standing where two roads separated.
One was broad and bright and beautiful, and many people she knew were
going that way. The other road was the rocky path, quite dark, and no
one was going that way, but she had to go. And she said, “Oh, why must
I go this way? Will no one go with me?” And a voice replied, “I will
go with you.” She looked around, and there were some tall black
figures; they all had names across their foreheads in bright letters,
and the one who spoke was Disappointment; and all the others said, “We
will go with you,” and they were Sorrow, Loss, Pain, Fear, and
Loneliness, and she fell down on her face in anguish.

Now an analysis of the antecedent thought of this subject and a
knowledge of her circumstances and mental life, though we cannot go into
them here, make it perfectly clear that as a fact, whether there was any
causal connection or not, this dream _was_ a symbolic expression of
those thoughts. The rocky path has been shown to be symbolic of her
conception of her own life entertained through years—the other road
symbolic of the life longed for and imagined as granted to others.
Likewise the rest of the dream symbolized, in a way which any one can
easily recognize, the lot which she had in her disappointment actually
fancied was hers. The thoughts thus symbolized had been constantly
recurring thoughts and therefore had been conserved. They were
reproduced in the dream, not in their original form, but translated into
symbols and an allegory. Something must, therefore, have effected the
translation. In other words, the dream is not a recurrent phase of
consciousness but _an allegorical fabrication_ which expresses these
thoughts, not literally as they originally occurred, but in the form of
an imaginative story. Now the similarity of the allegorical dream
thoughts to the original thoughts can be explained only in two ways:
either as pure chance coincidence, or through a relation of cause and
effect. In the latter case the dream might have been determined either
by the specific antecedent thoughts in question—those revealed as
memories in the analysis, or both series might have been determined by a
third, as yet unrevealed, series. For the purposes of the present
problem it is immaterial which so long as the dream was determined by
some antecedent thought. The very great frequency, not to say
universality, with which this same similarity or a logical relation with
antecedent thoughts is found in dreams after analysis renders chance
coincidence very improbable. We must believe, therefore, that the dream
was determined by antecedent experiences. It is beyond my purpose to
enter here into an exposition of the theory of the mechanism of dreams,
although I shall touch upon it later in some detail in connection with
subconscious processes. We need here only concern ourselves with this
mechanism so far as it bears upon the principle of conservation. Suffice
it to say that analytical observations (Freud) have, it seems to me,
conclusively shown that conserved experiences may be not only the
determining factors in dreams, but that _while in a state of
conservation they are capable of undergoing elaborate fabrication and
afterwards appearing so thoroughly transformed in consciousness as not
to be superficially recognizable_. I have also been able to reach the
same conclusions by the method of experimental production of dreams.

The only question is, in what form can a thought be so conserved that it
can, _while still in a state of conservation_, without itself rising
into consciousness, fabricate a symbolism, allegory, or other work
requiring imagination and reasoning? The only logical and intelligible
inference is that the antecedent conscious experience has been either
itself specifically conserved as such outside of the personal
consciousness, or has left some neural residuum or disposition capable
of functioning and constructing the conscious dream fabrication.

=Residual processes underlying physiological bodily
disturbances.=—Before proceeding further I would invite your attention
to another class of facts as these facts must be taken into
consideration in any theory of conservation. These facts show that the
residua can, by subconscious functioning, induce _physiological bodily
manifestations_ without reproducing the original mental experience as
conscious memory. In certain abnormal conditions of the nervous system,
i.e., in certain psychoneuroses, we meet with certain involuntary
actions of the limbs or muscles known as spasms and contractures; also
with certain impairment of functions such as blindness, deafness, loss
of sensation (anesthesia), paralysis, etc. These disturbances are purely
functional, meaning that they are not due to any organic disease. Now
the evidence seems to be conclusive that these physiological
disturbances are caused sometimes by ideas after they have passed out of
consciousness and become, as ideas, dormant, i.e., while they are in a
state of conservation and have ceased to be ideas—or, at least, ideas of
which the subject is aware. A moment’s consideration will convince you
that this means that ideas, or, at least, experiences in a state of
conservation, and without being reproduced as conscious memory, can so
function as to affect the body in one or other of the ways I have
mentioned. To do this they must exist in some specific form that is
independent of the personal consciousness of the moment. To take, for
example, an actual case which I have elsewhere described:

B. C. A., in a dream, had a visual hallucination of a flash of light
which revealed a scene in a cave and which was followed by blindness
such as would physiologically follow a tremendous flash. In the dream
she is warned that if she looks into the cave, she will be blinded. She
looks; there is a blinding flash and loss of vision follows; after
waking she was still partially blind, but she continued from time to
time to see momentary flashes of light revealing certain of the objects
seen in the dream in the cave, and these flashes would be succeeded
temporarily by absolute blindness as in the dream. She had no memory of
the dream. Now psychological analysis disclosed the meaning of the
dream; it was a symbolical representation of certain conserved
(subconscious) previous thoughts—thoughts apprehensive of the future
into which she dared not look, thinking she would be overwhelmed. _While
in a state of conservation_ the residua of _these_ antecedent thoughts
had translated themselves into the symbolical hallucination of the dream
and the loss of vision. Similarly after waking, although she had no
memory of the dream, the conserved residua of the same thoughts
continued to translate themselves into visual hallucinations and to
induce blindness.[49] It would take too long for me to enter here into
the details of the analysis which forces this conclusion.[50]

Similarly, as is well known, convulsions resembling epilepsy, paralysis,
spasms, tics, contractures, etc., may be caused directly or indirectly
by ideas, after they have passed out of consciousness and ceased to take
part in the conscious processes of thought. At least that is the
interpretation which the facts elicited by the various methods of
investigation seem to require.

There is an analogous class of phenomena which ought to be mentioned
among the possible data bearing upon the theory of memory, although too
much weight cannot be placed upon them as their interpretation is not
wholly clear. I will discuss them in detail later in connection with the
phenomena of the emotions. They are certain _emotional phenomena_ which
are attributed by some writers to ideas in a state of conservation. It
has been demonstrated that ideas to which strong feeling tones are
attached are accompanied by such physiological effects as disturbance of
respiration, of the heart’s action, of the vaso-motor system, of the
secretions, etc., and also by certain _galvanic phenomena_ which are due
to the diminution of the electrical resistance of the body, probably
caused by increased secretion of sweat.[51]

Now the point is that such phenomena are sometimes experimentally
obtained in connection with certain test words[52] spoken to the subject
experimented upon, although he has no recollection of any incident in
his life which could have given an emotional tone to the word and,
therefore, can give no explanation of the physical reaction. By various
technical methods, however, memories of a forgotten emotional experience
in which the idea (represented by the word) plays a part and through
which it derived its emotional tone are resurrected. I have been able to
obtain such reactions from test words which investigation showed
referred to the incidents of terrifying dreams which were _completely
forgotten_ in the waking state. When the test word was given, the
subject might, for instance, exhibit a respiratory disturbance—a sudden
gasp—without conscious knowledge of its significance, and the
galvanometer, with which the subject was in circuit, would show a wide
deflection. Recovery of the dream in hypnosis would explain the meaning
of the emotional disturbance excited by the word. The interpretation
which has been put upon such phenomena is that the residua of the
forgotten experience are “struck” by the test word. As the forgotten
experience originally included the emotion and its physiological
reaction, so the residua are linked by association to the emotional
mechanism and when stimulated function as a subconscious process and
excite the reaction. If this interpretation, strongly held by some, be
correct, the phenomena are important for the support they give to the
theory of conservation. They would indicate that conscious experiences
must be conserved in a very specific subconscious form, one that is
capable, without becoming conscious memory, of exciting the
physiological apparatus of the emotions in a manner identical with that
of conscious emotional ideas. They are open, however, to a simpler
explanation, whether more probable or not: namely, that it is not the
residua of the forgotten experience which unconsciously excite the
physiological reaction, but the auditory symbol, the test word itself.
The symbol having been once associated with the emotional reaction, it
afterwards of itself, through a short circuit so to speak, suffices to
induce the reaction, though the origin of the association has been
forgotten and, therefore, the subject is in entire ignorance of the
reason for the strong feeling manifestation. On the other hand, in some
instances test words associated with emotional experiences which
_originally_ were entirely coconscious and _had never entered conscious
awareness at all_ give the reactions in question.[53] As coconscious
memories of such experiences can be demonstrated it would seem at first
sight as if under such conditions the word-reactions must come from a
true subconscious process—the subconscious memory. And yet even here it
is difficult to eliminate absolutely the possibility of the second
interpretation. There are, however, a large number of emotional
phenomena occurring in pathological conditions which can only be
intelligibly interpreted as being due to the residua of previously
conscious experiences functioning as a subconscious process. These
phenomena we shall have occasion to review in succeeding lectures. They
are too complex to enter upon at this stage.

Aside, then, from these word-reactions we have a sufficient number of
other phenomena, such as I have cited, which indicate that conscious
experiences when conserved must persist in a form capable of exciting
purely physiological reactions without the experiences themselves rising
into consciousness again as memory. The form must also be one which
permits of their functioning as intelligent processes although not
within the conscious field of awareness of the moment.

As a final summing up of the experiments and observations of the kind
which I have thus far cited, dealing with forgotten experiences, we may
say that they lead us to the following conclusions:

1. That conservation is something very different from reproduction.

2. A given experience is conserved through the medium of some kind of
residuum of that experience. This residuum must have a specific
existence independent of consciousness, in that it is capable of
specific and independent functioning, coincidentally with and outside of
the consciousness of any given moment. Its nature must be such that it
can incite through specific processes the following phenomena in none of
which the conscious processes of the moment take part as factors:

(a) Specific memory for the given experience expressed through the
established physiological mechanisms of external expression (speech,
writing, gestures) after the manner of a mnesic process.

(b) A mnesic hallucination which is a representation of the antecedent
perceptual experience but after having undergone translation into terms
of another sense.

(c) A mnesic hallucination in which the original experience appears
synthesized with various other experiences into an elaborate
representation of a complex experience, or secondarily elaborated into a
symbolism, allegory or other fabrication.

(d) Mnesic phenomena which are a logical continuation of the antecedent
conscious experiences and such as ordinarily are produced by conscious
processes of thought—reasoning, imagination, volition (mathematical
calculations, versification, fabrication, etc.).

(e) Physical phenomena (paralyses contractures, vasomotor disturbances,
etc.).

In other words a specific experience while in a state of conservation
and without being reproduced in consciousness can incite or induce
processes which incite these and similar phenomena.

-----

Footnote 45:

Lecture III, p. 58.

Footnote 46:

For specific instances, see Lecture VII.

Footnote 47:

Morton Prince: Experimental Evidence for Coconscious Ideation,
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1908.

Footnote 48:

For further details, see Lecture VI, p. 169.

Footnote 49:

Prince: Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams, _Jour. of Abn.
Psych._, October-November, 1910.

Footnote 50:

If, lacking this knowledge of the data, any one chooses to insist that
it was not the conserved residua of previous thoughts, but of the
dream itself (the only alternative entertainable explanation) which
induced, _after waking_, the hallucinatory phenomena and blindness, we
still fall back upon the same principle, namely, that of the
subconscious functioning of conserved residua of a conscious
experience producing a physiological (and psychological) effect.

Footnote 51:

According to recent researches of Sidis in conjunction with Kalmus,
and later with Nelson (The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic
Phenomenon, Psychological Review, March, 1910) similar galvanic
phenomena under similar conditions may be caused by the _generation_
of an electric current within the body.

Footnote 52:

The test word (e. g., boat, stone, hat, etc.) of course represents an
idea which may have various associations in the mind of the subject.

Footnote 53:

Morton Prince and Frederick Peterson: Experiments in Psycho-Galvanic
Reactions from Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideas in a Case of Multiple
Personality, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1908.

LECTURE V
NEUROGRAMS

We have got as far as showing that the phenomena of memory to be
intelligible require that ideas which have passed out of mind must be
conserved through some sort of residuum left by the original experience.
But this as a theory of memory is incomplete; the question remains,
_How_, and in what form, manner, or way, are they conserved? In other
words, What is the nature of the residuum? Is it psychical or
physical?[54] As we have seen, from the fact that something outside of
the personal consciousness can manifest memory of a given experience at
the very same moment when the personal consciousness has amnesia for
that experience, we are compelled to infer that conservation must be by
a medium, psychological or physiological, capable of being excited as a
specific secondary process. Now this medium must be either an
undifferentiated “Psyche” or specific differentiated residua. In the
former case we postulate a concept of a transcendental something beyond
experience and of which, like the soul after death, we have and can have
no knowledge. To this concept of an undifferentiated Psyche we shall
return presently.

If the second alternative—specific differentiated residua—be the medium
by which experiences are conserved, then the residua must be either
specific psychological states, i.e., the original psychological
experience itself as such; or neural residua (or dispositions) such as
when excited are ordinarily correlated with a conscious memory. In
either case the medium would be such as to permit of the experiences
manifesting themselves, while so conserved outside of the personal
consciousness, as a very specific secondary process, not only
reproducing the original experience as memory, but elaborating the same
and exhibiting imagination, reasoning, volition, feeling, etc. Unless
the doctrine of the undifferentiated Psyche be accepted it is difficult
to conceive of any other mode in which conservation can be effected so
as to permit of the phenomena of memory outside of consciousness.

=Conservation considered as psychological residua.=—It is hypothetically
possible that our thoughts and other mental experiences after they have
passed out of mind, out of our awareness of the moment, may continue
their psychological existence as such although we are not aware of them.
Such an hypothesis derives support from the fact that researches of
recent years in abnormal psychology have given convincing evidence that
an idea, under certain conditions, after it has passed out of our
awareness may still from time to time take on another sort of existence,
_one in which it still remains an idea, although our personal
consciousness of the moment is not aware of it_. A coconscious idea, it
may be called. More than this, in absent-mindedness, in states of
abstraction, in artificial conditions as typified in automatic writing,
and particularly in pathological conditions (hysteria), it has been
fairly demonstrated, as I think we are entitled to assert, that
coconscious ideas in the form of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, even
large systems of ideas, may function and pursue autonomous and
contemporaneous activity outside of the various systems of ideas which
make up the personal consciousness. It usually is not possible for the
individual to bring such ideas within the focus of his awareness.
Therefore, there necessarily results a doubling of consciousness,—two
consciousnesses, one of which is the personal consciousness and the
other a coconsciousness. These phenomena need to be studied by
themselves. We shall consider them here only so far as they bear on the
problem of conscious memory. Observation has shown that among ideas of
this kind it often happens that many are memories, reproductions of
ideas that once belonged to the personal consciousness. Hence, on first
thought, it seems plausible that conservation might be effected by the
content of any moment’s consciousness becoming _coconscious_ after the
ideas have passed out of awareness. According to such an hypothesis all
the conscious experiences of our lives, that are conserved, would form a
great coconscious field where they would continue their existence in
specific form as ideas, and whence they could be drawn upon for use at
any future time.

Various difficulties are raised by this hypothesis. In the first place,
there is no evidence that coconscious ideas have a continuous existence.
The technical methods of investigation which give evidence of such ideas
functioning outside of the awareness of the personal consciousness do
not show that at any given moment they are any more extensive than are
those which fill the field of the personal consciousness. Indeed,
usually, the coconscious field is of very limited extent. There remains
an enormous field of conserved experiences to be accounted for. So far
then as coconscious ideas can be discovered by our methods of
investigation they are _inadequate to account for the whole of the
conservation of life’s experiences_.

In the second place, these ideas come and go in the same fashion as do
those which make up the content of the main personal consciousness; and
many are constantly recurring to become coconscious memories. The same
problem, of the nature of conservation, therefore confronts us with
coconscious ideas in the determination of the mechanism of coconscious
memory. To explain conservation through coconscious ideas is but a
shifting of the problem. If a broader concept be maintained, namely,
that this coconsciousness, which can be demonstrated in special
conditions, is but a fraction of the sum total of coconscious ideas
outside of the personal awareness, we are confronted with a concept
which from its philosophical nature deals with postulates beyond
experience. We can neither prove nor disprove it. There is much that can
be said in its support for the deeper we dive into the subconscious
regions of the mind the more extensively do we come across evidences of
coconscious states underlying specific phenomena. Nevertheless, the
demonstration of coconscious states in any number of specific phenomena
does not touch the problem of the nature of conservation. In weighing
the probability of the hypothesis on theoretical grounds it would seem,
as I have already said in a preceding lecture, to be hardly conceivable
that ideas that had passed out of mind, the thoughts of the moment of
which we are no longer aware, can be treasured, conserved as such in a
sort of psychological storehouse or reservoir of consciousness, just as
if they were static or material facts. Such a conception would require
that every specific state of consciousness, every idea, every thought,
perception, sensation and feeling, after it had passed out of mind for
the moment, should enter a great sea of ideas which would be the sum
total of all our past experiences. In this sum-total millions of ideas
would have to be conserved _in concrete_ form until wanted again for use
by the personal consciousness of the moment. Here would be found, in
what you will see at once would be a real subconscious mind beyond the
content or confines of our awareness, stored up, so to speak, ready for
future use, the mass of our past mental experiences. Here you would
find, perhaps, the visualized idea of a seagull soaring over the waters
of your beautiful bay conserved in association with the idea of the
mathematical formula, a + b = c; the one having originated in a
perception of the outer world through the window of your study while you
were working at a lesson in algebra which gave rise to the latter. And
yet conserved as ideas, as such vast numbers of experiences would be, we
should not be aware of them until they were brought by some mysterious
agency into the consciousness of the moment. The great mass of the
mental experiences of our lives which we have at our command, our
extensive educational and other acquisitions from which we consciously
borrow from time to time, as well as those which, we have seen, are
conserved though they cannot be voluntarily reproduced, all these mental
experiences, by the hypothesis, would still have persisting conscious
existences in their _original concrete psychological form_.

Such an hypothesis, to my mind, is hardly thinkable, and yet this very
hypothesis has been proposed, though in less concrete form perhaps, in
the doctrine of the “subliminal mind,” a particular form of the theory
of the subconscious mind. This doctrine, which we owe to the genius of
the late W. H. H. Meyers, has more recently appeared, without full
recognition of its paternity, in the writings of a more modern school of
psychology. According to this doctrine our personal consciousness, the
ideas which we have at any given moment and of which we are aware, are
but a small portion of the sum total of our consciousness. Of this
sum-total we are aware, at any given moment, of only a fractional
portion. Our personal consciousness is but sort of up-rushes from this
great sum of conscious states which have been called the subliminal
mind, the subliminal self, the subconscious self. These conscious
up-rushes make up the personal “I,” with the sense of awareness for
their content.

The facts to be explained do not require such a metaphysical hypothesis.
All that is required is that our continuously occurring experiences
should be conserved in a _form_, and by an arrangement, which will allow
the concrete ideas belonging to them to reappear in consciousness
whenever the conserved arrangement is again stimulated. This
requirement, the theory of conservation, which is generally accepted by
those who approach the problem by psycho-physiological methods, fully
satisfies. Before stating this theory in specific form let me mention to
you still another variety of the subliminal hypothesis, metaphysical in
its nature, which appeals to some minds of a philosophical tendency.

=Conservation considered as an undifferentiated psychical something or
“psyche.”=—It is difficult to state this hypothesis clearly and
precisely for it is necessarily vague, transcending as it does human
experience. It is conceived, as I understand the matter, or at least the
hypothesis connotes, that ideas of the moment, after ceasing to be a
part of awareness, subside and become merged in some form or other in a
larger mind or consciousness of which they were momentary concrete
manifestations or phases. This consciousness is conceived as a sort of
unity. Ideas out of awareness still persist as consciousness in some
form though not necessarily as specific ideas. According to this
hypothesis, it is evident that when the ideas of the moment’s awareness
subside and become merged into the larger consciousness either one of
two things must happen; they must either be conserved as specific ideas,
or lose their individuality as states of consciousness, and become fused
in this larger consciousness as an undifferentiated psychical something.
Some like to call it a “psyche,” apparently finding that by using a
Greek term, or a more abstract expression, they avoid the difficulties
of clear thinking.

The first alternative is equivalent to the hypothesis of conservation in
the form of coconscious specific ideas which we have just discussed. The
second alternative still leaves unexplained the mechanism by which
differentiation again takes place in this psychical unity, how a
conscious unity becomes differentiated again into and makes up the
various phases (ideas) of consciousness at each moment; that is, the
mechanism of memory.

But, aside from this difficulty, the hypothesis is opposed by evidence
which we have already found for the persistence of ideas (after
cessation as states of consciousness) in some concrete form capable of
very specific activity and of producing very specific effects. We have
seen that such ideas may under certain conditions continue to manifest
the same specific functionating activity as if continuing their
existence in concrete form (e. g., so-called subconscious solution of
problems, physiological disturbances, etc.). This phenomenon is scarcely
reconcilable with the hypothesis that ideas after passing out of
awareness lose their concrete specificity and become merged into an
undifferentiated psychical something.[55]

Furthermore, for a concept transcending experience to be acceptable it
must be shown that it adequately explains all the known facts, is
incompatible with none, and that the facts are not intelligible on any
other known principle. These conditions seem to me far from having been
fulfilled. Before accepting such a concept it is desirable to see if
conservation cannot be brought under some principle within the domain of
experience.

=Conservation considered as physical residua.=—Now the theory of memory
which offers a satisfactory explanation of the mode in which
registration, conservation, and reproduction occur postulates the
conserved residua as physical in nature. Whenever we have a mental
experience of any kind—a thought, or perception of the environment, or
feeling—some change, some “trace,” is left in the neurons of the brain.
I need not here discuss the relation between brain activity and mind
activity. It is enough to remind you that, whatever view be held, it is
universally accepted that every mental process is accompanied by a
physical process in the brain; that, parallel with every series of
thoughts, perceptions, or feelings, there goes a series of physical
changes of some kind in the brain neurons. And, conversely, whenever
this same series of physical changes occurs the corresponding series of
mental processes, that is, of states of consciousness, arises. In other
words, physical brain processes or experiences are correlated with
corresponding mind processes or experiences, and vice versa.[56] This is
known as the doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism. Upon this doctrine
the whole of psycho-physiology and psycho-pathology rests. Mental
physiology, cerebral localization, and mental diseases excepting on its
assumption are unintelligible—indeed, the brain as the organ of the mind
becomes meaningless. We need not here inquire into the nature of the
parallelism, whether it is of the nature of dualism, e. g., a
parallelism of two different kinds of facts, one psychical and the other
physical; or whether it is a monism, i.e., a parallelism of two
different aspects of one and the same fact or a parallelism of a single
reality (mind) with a mode of apprehending it (matter)—mind and matter
in their inner nature being held to be practically one and the same. The
theory of memory is unaffected whichever view of the mind-brain relation
be held.

Now, according to the psycho-physiological theory of memory, with every
passing state of conscious experience, with every idea, thought, or
perception, the brain process that goes along with it leaves some trace,
some residue of itself, within the neurons and in the functional
arrangements between them. It is an accepted principle of physiology
that when a number of neurons, involved, let us say, in a coördinated
sensori-motor act, are stimulated into functional activity they become
so associated and the paths between them become so opened or, as it
were, sensitized, that a _disposition_ becomes established for the whole
group, or a number of different groups, to function together and
reproduce the original reaction when either one or the other is
afterward stimulated into activity. This “disposition” is spoken of in
physiological language as a lowering of the threshold of excitability—a
term which does not explain but only describes the fact. For an
explanation we must look to the nature of the physical change that is
wrought in the neurons by the initial functioning. This change we may
speak of as a _residuum_.

Similarly a system of brain neurons, which in any experience is
correlated in activity with conscious experience, becomes, so to speak,
sensitized and acquires, in consequence, a “disposition” to function
again as a system (lowering of thresholds?) in a like fashion; so that
when one element in the system is again stimulated it reproduces the
whole original brain process, and with this reproduction (according to
the doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism) there is a reproduction of
the original conscious experience. In other words, without binding
ourselves down to absolute precision of language, it is sufficiently
accurate to say that every mental experience leaves behind a residue, or
a trace, of the physical brain process in the chain of brain neurons.
This residue is the physical _register_ of the mental experience. _This
physical register may be conserved or not._ If it is conserved we have
the requisite condition for memory; the _form_ in which our mental
experiences are conserved. But it is not until these physical registers
are stimulated and the original brain experience is reproduced that we
have memory. If this occurs the reproduction of the brain experience
reproduces the conscious experience, i.e., conscious memory (according
to whatever theory of parallelism is maintained). Thus in all ideation,
in every process of thought, the record of the conscious stream may be
registered and conserved in the correlated neural process. Consequently,
the neurons in retaining residua of the original process become, to a
greater or less degree, _organized into a functioning system_
corresponding to the system of ideas of the original mental process and
capable of reproducing it. When we reproduce the original ideas in the
form of memories it is because there is a reproduction of the
physiological neural process.

It is important to note that just as, on the psychological side, memory
always involves the awakening of a previous conscious experience by an
associated idea, one that was an element in the previous system of
associated sensations, perceptions, thoughts, etc., making up the
experience, so, on the physiological side, we must suppose that it
involves stimulation of the whole system of neurons belonging to this
experience by the physiological stimulus corresponding to the conscious
element or stimulus. For instance, if I see my friend A, the image is
not a memory, though it is one I have had many times before and has left
residua of itself capable of being reproduced as memory. But if I see
his hat, and immediately previously linked pictorial images of him arise
in my mind; or, if, when I see him, there arise images of his library in
which I have previously seen him, these images are memory. A conscious
memory is always the reproduction of an experience by an associated idea
or other element of experience (conscious or subconscious). Similarly we
must infer that the neurons correlated with any past mental experience
are stimulated by associated neuron processes. This is the
foundation-stone of mental physiology; for upon the general principle of
the correlation of mental processes with neural processes rests the
whole of cerebral localization and brain physiology.

Although we assume newly arranged dynamic associations of neurons
corresponding to associations of ideas, we do not know how this
rearrangement is brought about, though we may conceive of it as
following the physiological laws of lowering of thresholds of
excitability. Nor do we know whether the modifications left as residua
(by which the thresholds are lowered) are physical or chemical in their
nature, though there is some reason for believing they may be chemical.

=Chemical and physical theories of residua.=—It is possible that,
through chemical changes of some kind left in the system of neurons
corresponding to an experience, the neurons may become sensitized so as
to react again as a whole to a second stimulus applied to one element.
In other words a hyper-susceptibility may become established. There is a
physiological phenomenon, known as anaphylaxis, which may possibly prove
more than analogous, in that it depends upon the production, through
chemical changes, of hyper-susceptibility to a stimulus which before was
inert. The phenomenon is one of sensitizing the body to certain
previously innocuous substances. If, for instance, a serum from a horse
be injected into a guinea pig no observable reaction follows. But, if a
second dose be injected, a very pronounced reaction follows and the
animal dies with striking manifestations called anaphylactic shock. This
consists of spasm of the bronchioles of the lungs induced by contraction
of their unstriated muscles and results in an attack of asphyxia.[57]

The mechanism of anaphylaxis is a very complicated one involving the
production in the blood of chemical substances called antibodies, and is
far from being thoroughly understood. One theory is that sensitization
consists in the “fixing” of the cells of the tissues with these
antibodies. This may or may not be correct—probably not—and I am far
from wishing to imply that sensitization of the neurons, as a
consequence of functioning, has anything in common with the mechanism of
sensitizing the body in anaphylaxis. I merely wish to point out that
sensitizing nervous tissue through chemical changes is a physiological
concept quite within the bounds of possibility; and, as all functioning
is probably accompanied by metabolic (chemical) changes, such metabolic
changes may well persist in neurons after brain reactions produce
sensitization.

If this hypothesis of sensitization should be proven it would offer an
intelligible mechanism of the phenomenon of memory. If the system of
neurons engaged in any conscious experience were sensitized by chemical
changes it would acquire a hyper-susceptibility. The system as a whole
would consequently be excited into activity by any other functioning
system of neurons with which it was in anatomical association and might
reproduce the originally correlated conscious experience.

Various theories based on known or theoretical chemical or physical
alterations in the neurons have been proposed to account for memory on
the physiological side. Robertson[58] has proposed that it is of the
nature of autocatalysis. Catalysis is the property possessed by certain
bodies called catalyzers of initiating or accelerating chemical
reactions which would take place without the catalyzer, but more slowly.
“A catalyzer is a stimulus which excites a transformation of energy. The
catalyzer plays the same rôle in a chemical transformation as does the
minimal exciting force which sets free the accumulation of potential
energy previous to its transformation into kinetic energy. A catalyzer
is the friction of the match which sets free the chemical energy of the
powder magazine.”[59]

Numerous examples of catalytic actions might be given from chemistry.
The inversion of sugar by acids, the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide
by platinum black, fermentation by means of a soluble ferment or
diastase, a phenomenon which may almost be called vital, are all
instances. According to Leduc “the action of pepsin, of the pancreatic
ferment, of zymase and other similar ferments has a great analogy with
the purely physical phenomenon of catalysis.”

In auto-catalysis one of the _products_ of the reaction acts as the
catalyzer. Now Robertson concluded, as a result of his experiments
carried out on frogs, that the processes which accompany the excitation
of the cells of the neurons are of the nature of catalysis; for he found
that they have as one effect the production of an acid; and he also
found that acids accelerate such processes which he concludes to be
probably of the nature of oxidations. “The chemical phenomena which
constitute the activity of a neuron cell,” he says, “seem to us then an
_auto-catalytic oxidation_, that is to say, an oxidation in which one of
the products of the reaction acts as a catalyzer in the reaction.” It
occurred to him then that the physiological correlate of memory might be
explained on the principle of auto-catalysis. When, to test this
hypothesis, he came to compare the results of certain psychological
experiments on memory, made by two different experimenters (Ebbinghaus
and Smith), with the law characteristic of auto-catalytic chemical
reactions, he found that they corresponded in a surprisingly close way
with this law. That is to say, assuming the value of the residua of
memory (measured by the number of syllables learnt by heart) to be
proportional to the mass of the chemical product of auto-catalysis, we
should expect that the increase of the number of syllables or other
experiences retained by memory following increase of repetitions would
obey the law of catalytic reaction as expressed in the mathematical
formula established for the reaction. Now, as a fact, he found that the
number of syllables that should be so retained in memory, as calculated
theoretically by the formula, corresponded in a remarkable way with the
actual number determined by experiment. “The agreement was closer,” the
author states, “than that which generally obtained in experiments in
chemical dynamics carried out _in vitro_.” Robertson sums up his
conclusions as follows:

“5th. We have shown that the phenomenon of which the subjective aspect
is called ‘memory’ is of a nature indicating that the autocatalyzed
chemical reactions form the mechanism conditioning the response of the
central nervous system to stimuli.

“6th. In admitting that the extent of the trace of memory may be
proportionate to the mass of a product of an autocatalyzed chemical
reaction unfolding itself in the central nervous system as the result of
the application of a stimulus, we have shown that the relation which one
theoretically deduces between the mass of memory material and the number
of repetitions corresponds to that which has been found by experience.

“7th. On the basis of the hypothesis above mentioned we have shown that
the law of Weber-Fechner admits of a rational physico-chemical
interpretation, and that the result thus obtained, provided the
hypothesis above mentioned be an exact representation of facts, is that
the intensity of the sensation is at each instant proportionate to the
mass of the product of the autocatalyzed chemical reaction above
mentioned and, consequently, to the extent of the trace of memory.”

While it is easy to understand that auto-catalysis may take part in the
chemical process which underlies the performance of simple volition, as
inferred by Robertson,[60] and perhaps reproduction in the memory
process, it is difficult to understand how such a chemical action can
explain conservation. The problem is not that of acceleration of an
action, but of something like the storing up of energy.

Rignano[61] has proposed an hypothesis according to which the cells of
the nervous system are to be considered as so many accumulators,
analogous to electric accumulators or storage batteries. “The
similarities and differences which nerve currents present in comparison
with electric currents warrant us in assuming in nerve currents some of
the properties of electric currents, and in attributing at the same time
to the first other properties which the electric do not possess,
provided these qualities are not incompatible with the others.”

Now, according to the hypothesis, the specific nervous current set up by
any stimulus forms and deposits in the nucleus of the cells (through
which the current flows) a _substance_ which adds itself to the others
already there without changing them and which is capable, under
appropriate conditions, of being discharged and restoring the same
_specific_ current by which it was produced. Each cell thus becomes what
Rignano calls an _elementary nervous accumulator_. He points out that
“both the conception of _accumulators of nervous energy in tension_, and
that of _accumulators of a specific nervous energy constituting their
specific irritability_,” which the hypothesis includes, are not new but
“an ordinary conception very generally employed.”... “The only new thing
which the above definition includes is the hypothesis that the
substance, which is thus capable of giving as a discharge a given
nervous current, _was produced and deposited_ only by a nervous current
of the same specificity, but in the inverse direction, and could have
been produced and deposited only by such a current.” "In just this
capacity of restoring again the same specificity of nervous current as
that by which each element had been deposited one would look for the
cause of the mnemonic faculty, in the widest sense, which all living
matter possesses. And further the very essence of the mnemonic faculty
would consist entirely in this restitution.“

”_The specific elementary accumulators_ (previously termed specific
potential elements) are thus susceptible now of receiving a third name,
namely, that of _mnemonic elements_." “The preservation of memories is
to be ascribed to the accumulations of substance,” while “the
reawakening of these memories consists in the restitution of the same
currents [by discharge of the substance] as had formerly constituted the
actual sensation or impression.”

By this hypothesis Rignano explains not only memory but the inheritance
of acquired characters and the whole process of specialization of cells,
all of which phenomena are special instances of such elementary
accumulators of organic energy being formed and discharged.

Any attempt, with our present knowledge, to postulate particular kinds
of chemical or physical changes in the nervous system as the theoretical
residua of physiological dispositions left by psychological experiences
must necessarily be speculative. And any hypothesis can only have so
much validity as may come from its capability of explaining the known
facts. It is interesting, however, to note some of the directions which
attempts have taken to find a solution of the problem. For the present
it is best to rest content with the theory to which we have been led,
step by step, in our exposition, namely, that conservation is effected
by some sort of physiological residua. This theory, of course, is an old
one, and has been expressed by many writers. What we want, however, is
not expressions of opinion but facts supporting them. It would seem as
if the facts accumulated in recent years by experimental and abnormal
psychology all tended to strengthen the theory, notwithstanding an
inclination in certain directions to seek a psychological interpretation
of conservation.

Some minds of a certain philosophical bent will not be able to get over
the difficulty of conceiving how a psychological process can be
conserved by the physical residuum of a physiological process. But this
is only the old difficulty involved in the problem of the relation
between mind and brain of which conservation is only a special example.
That a mind process and a brain process are so intimately related that
either one determines the other there is no question. It is assumed in
every question of psycho-physiology. The only question is the How. I may
point out in passing, but without discussion, that if we adopt the
doctrine of panpsychism for which I have elsewhere argued[62]—namely,
that there is only one process—the mental—in one and the same
individual, and that what we know as the physical process is only the
mode of apprehending the mental process by another individual; if we
adopt this doctrine of monism the difficulty is solved. In other words,
the psychical (and consciousness) is reality, while matter (and physical
process) is a _phenomenon_, the disguise, so to speak, under which the
psychical appears when apprehended through the special senses. According
to this view in their last analysis all physical facts are psychical in
nature, although not psychological (for psychological means
consciousness), so that physiological and psychical are one. To this
point I shall return in another lecture.

=Neurograms.=—Whatever may be the exact nature of the theoretical
alterations left in the brain by life’s experiences they have received
various generic terms; more commonly “brain residua,” and “brain
dispositions.” I have been in the habit of using the term _neurograms_
to characterize these brain records. Just as telegram, Marconigram, and
phonogram precisely characterize the form in which the physical
phenomena which correspond to our (verbally or scripturally expressed)
thoughts, are recorded and conserved, so neurogram precisely
characterizes my conception of the form in which a system of brain
processes corresponding to thoughts and other mental experiences is
recorded and conserved.[63]

Of course it must not be overlooked that such neurograms are pure
theoretical conceptions, and have never been demonstrated by objective
methods of physical research. They stand in exactly the same position as
the atoms and molecules and ions and electrons of physics and chemistry,
and the “antibodies” and “complements” of bacteriology. No one has seen
any of these postulates of science. They are only inferred. All are
theoretical concepts; but they are necessary concepts if the phenomena
of physical, chemical, and bacteriological science are to be
intelligible. The same may be said for brain changes if the phenomena of
brain and mind are to be intelligible.

And so it happens that though our ideas pass out of mind, are forgotten
for the moment, and become dormant, their physiological records still
remain, as sort of vestigia, much as the records of our spoken thoughts
are recorded on the moving wax cylinder of the phonograph. When the
cylinder revolves again the thoughts once more are reproduced as
auditory language. A better analogy would be the recording and
reproducing of our thoughts by the dynamic magnetization of the iron
wire in another type of the instrument. The vibration of the voice by
means of a particular electrical mechanism leaves _dynamic traces_ in
the form of corresponding magnetic changes in the passing wire, and when
the magnetized wire again is passed before the reproducing diaphragm the
spoken thoughts are again reproduced. So, when the ideas of any given
conscious experience become dormant, the physiological records, or
dynamic rearrangements, still remain organized as physiological
unconscious complexes, and, with the excitation of these physiological
complexes, the corresponding psychological memories awake.

It is only as such physiological complexes that ideas that have become
dormant can be regarded as still existing. If our knowledge were deep
enough, if by any technical method we could determine the exact
character of the modifications of the dispositions of the neurons that
remain as vestiges of thought and could decipher their meaning, we could
theoretically read in our brains the record of our lives, as if
graphically inscribed on a tablet. As Ribot has well expressed it: “...
Feelings, ideas, and intellectual actions in general are not fixed and
only become a portion of memory when there are corresponding residua in
the nervous system—residua consisting, as we have previously
demonstrated, of nervous elements, and dynamic associations among those
elements. On this condition, and this only, can there be conservation
and reproduction.”[64] _Dormant ideas are thus equivalent to conserved
physiological complexes._ We may use either term to express the fact.

The observations and experiments I have recited have led us to the
conclusion that conservation of an experience is something quite
specific and distinct from the reproduction of it. They compel us to the
conclusion that we are entitled, as I pointed out at the opening of
these lectures, to regard memory as a _process_ and the result of at
least two factors—conservation and reproduction. But as conservation is
meaningless unless there is something to be conserved, we must also
assume _registration_; that is, that every conserved mental experience
is primarily registered somehow and somewhere. Conservation implies
registration.

Such is the theory of memory as a _process of registration,
conservation, and reproduction_. Thus it will be seen (according to the
theory) that ideas which have passed out of mind are preserved, if at
all, not as ideas, but as physical alterations or records in the brain
neurons and in the functional dynamic arrangements between them.

From this you will easily understand that while, as you have seen from
concrete observations, we can have conservation of experiences without
memory (reproduction) we cannot have memory without conservation. Three
factors are essential for memory, and memory may fail from the failure
of any one of them. Unless an experience is registered in some form
there will be nothing to preserve, and memory will fail because of lack
of registration. If the experience has been registered, memory may fail,
owing to the registration having faded out, so to speak, either with
time or from some other reason; that is, nothing having been conserved,
nothing can be reproduced. Finally, though an experience has been
registered and conserved, memory may still fail, owing to failure of
reproduction. The neurographic records must be made active once more,
stimulated into an active process, in order that the original experience
may be recalled, i.e., reproduced. Thus what we call conscious memory is
the final result of a process involving the three factors, registration,
conservation, and reproduction.

=Physiological memory.=—Memory as commonly regarded and known to
psychology is a _conscious_ manifestation but, plainly, if we regard it,
as we have thus far, as a process, then, logically, we are entitled to
regard any process which consists of the three factors, registration,
conservation, and reproduction of experiences, as memory, whether the
final result be the reproduction of a conscious experience, or one to
which no consciousness was ever attached. In other words, theoretically
it is quite possible that acquired physiological body-experiences may be
reproduced by exactly the same process as conscious experiences, and
their reproduction would be entitled to be regarded as memory quite as
much as if the experience were one of consciousness. In principle it is
evident that it is entirely immaterial whether that which is reproduced
is a conscious or an unconscious experience so long as the mechanism of
the process is the same.

Now, as a matter of fact, there are a large number of acquired
physiological body-actions which, though unconscious, must be regarded
quite as much as manifestations of memory as is the conscious repetition
of the alphabet, or any other conscious acquisition. Having been
acquired they are _ipso facto_ reproductions of organized experiences.
We all know very well that movements acquired volitionally, and perhaps
laboriously, are, after constant repetition, reproduced with precision
without conscious guidance.

They are said to be automatic; even the guiding afferent impressions do
not enter the content of consciousness. The maintaining of the body in
one position, sitting or standing, though requiring a complicated
correlation of a large number of muscles, is carried out without
conscious volition. It is the same with walking and running. Still more
complicated movements are similarly performed in knitting, typewriting
and playing the piano, shaving, buttoning a coat, etc. We do not even
know the elementary movements involved in the action, and must become
aware of them by observation. The neurons remember, i.e., conserve and
reproduce the process acquired by previous conscious experiences. But
though it is memory it is not conscious memory, it is unconscious
memory, i.e., a physiological memory. The acquired dispositions repeat
themselves—what is called habit. Precision in games of skill largely
depend upon this principle. A tennis player must learn the “stroke” to
play the game well. This means that the muscles must be coordinated to a
delicate adjustment which, once learned, must be unconsciously
remembered and used, without consciously adjusting the muscles each time
the ball is hit. Indeed some organic memories are so tenacious that a
player once having learned the stroke finds great difficulty even by
effort of will in unlearning it and making his muscles play a different
style of stroke. Likewise one who has learned to use his arms in
sparring by one method finds difficulty in learning to spar by another
method. In fact almost any acquired movement is compounded of elementary
movements which by repetition were linked and finely adjusted to produce
the resultant movement, and finally conserved as an _unconscious
physiological arrangement_. As one writer has said, the neuron
organization “faithfully preserves the records of processes often
performed.”

In what has just been said the fact has not been overlooked that the
initiation or modification of any of the movements which have been
classed as physiological memory (knitting, typewriting, games of skill,
etc.), even after their acquisition, is necessarily voluntary and
therefore, so far, a conscious memory, but the nice coördination of
afferent and efferent impulses for the adjustment of the muscles
involved becomes, by repetition, an unconscious mechanism, and is
performed outside the province of the will as an act of _unconscious
memory_. By repeated experience the neurons become functionally
organized in such a way as to acquire and conserve a functional
“disposition” to reproduce the movements originally initiated by
volition.

Physiological memory has indeed, as it seems, been recently
experimentally demonstrated by Rothmann, who educated a dog from which
the hemispheres had been removed to perform certain tricks; e. g., to
jump over a hurdle.[65]

Still another variety of memory is _psycho-physiological_. This type is
characterized by a combination of psychological and physiological
elements and is important, as we shall see later, because of the
conspicuous part which such memories play in pathological conditions.
Certain bodily reactions which are purely physiological, such as
vaso-motor, cardiac, respiratory, intestinal, digestive, etc.,
disturbances, become, as the result of certain experiences, linked with
one or another psychical element (sensations, perceptions, thoughts),
and, this linking becoming conserved as a “disposition,” the
physiological reaction is reproduced whenever the psychical element is
introduced into consciousness. Thus, for example, the perception or
thought of a certain person may become, as the result of a given social
episode, so linked with blushing or cardiac palpitation that whenever
the former is thrust into consciousness, no matter how changed the
conditions may be from those of the original episode, the physiological
reaction of the blood vessels or heart is reproduced. Here the original
psycho-physiological experience—the association of an idea (or psychical
element) with the physiological process is conserved and reproduced.
Such a reproduction is essentially a psycho-physiological memory
depending wholly upon the acquired disposition of the neurons.[66]

Thus, to take an actual example from real life, a certain person during
a series of years was expecting to hear bad news because of the illness
of a member of the family and consequently was always startled, and her
“heart always jumped into her throat,” whenever the telephone rang.
Finally the news came. That anxiety is long past, but now when the
telephone rings, although she is not expecting bad news and no thought
of the original experience consciously arises in her mind, her “heart
always gives a leap and sometimes she bursts into a perspiration.”

A beautiful illustration of this type of memory is to be found in the
results of the extremely important experiments, for psychology as well
as physiology, of Pawlow and his co-workers in the reflex stimulation of
saliva in dogs. These experiments show the possibility of linking a
physiological process to a psychological process by education, and
through the conservation of the association reproducing the
physiological process as an act of unconscious memory. (The experiments,
of course, were undertaken for an entirely different purpose, namely,
that of studying the digestive processes only.) It should be explained
that it was shown that the salivary glands are selective in their
reaction to stimuli in that they do not respond at all to some (pebbles,
snow), but respond to others with a thin watery fluid containing mere
traces of mucin or a slimy mucin-holding fluid, according as to whether
the stimulating substance is one which the dog rejects, and which
therefore must be washed out or diluted (sands, acids, bitter and
caustic substances), or is an eatable substance and must as a food bolus
be lubricated for the facilitation of its descent. Dryness of the food,
too, largely determined the quantity of the saliva.

Now the experiments of the St. Petersburg laboratory brought out another
fact which is of particular interest for us and which is thus described
by Pawlow. “In the course of our experiments it appeared that all the
phenomena of adaptation which we saw in the salivary glands under
_physiological_ conditions, such, for instance, as the introduction of
the stimulating substances into the buccal cavity, reappeared in exactly
the same manner under the influence of _psychological_ conditions—that
is to say, when we merely drew the animal’s attention to the substances
in question. Thus, when we pretended to throw pebbles into the dog’s
mouth, or to cast in sand, or to pour in something disagreeable, or,
finally, when we offered it this or that kind of food, a secretion
either immediately appeared or it did not appear, in accordance with the
properties of the substance which we had previously seen to regulate the
quantity and nature of the juice when _physiologically_ excited to flow.
If we pretended to throw in sand a watery saliva escaped from the mucous
glands; if food, a slimy saliva. And if the food was dry—for example,
dry bread—a large quantity of saliva flowed out even when it excited no
special interest on the part of the dog. When, on the other hand, a
moist food was presented—for example, flesh—much less saliva appeared
than in the previous case however eagerly the dog may have desired the
food. This latter effect is particularly obvious in the case of the
parotid gland.”[67]

It is obvious that in these experiments, when the experimenter pretended
to throw various substances into the dog’s mouth, the action was
effective in producing the flow of saliva of specific qualities because,
through repeated experiences, the pictorial images (or ideas) of the
substance had become associated with the specific physiological salivary
reaction, and this association had been conserved as a neurogram.
Consequently the neurographic residue when stimulated each time by the
pretended action of the experimenter reproduced reflexly the specific
physiological reaction and, so far as the process was one of
registration, conservation, and reproduction, it was an act of
psycho-physiological memory.

That this is the correct interpretation of the educational mechanism is
made still more evident by other results that were obtained; for it was
found that the effective psychical stimulus may be part of wider
experiences or a complex of ideas; everything that has been in any way
psychologically associated with an object which physiologically excites
the saliva reflex may also produce it; the plate which customarily
contains the food, the furniture upon which it stands; the person who
brings it; even the sound of the voice and the sound of the steps of
this person.[68]

Indeed, it was found that any sensory stimulus could be educated into
one that would induce the flow of saliva, if the stimulus had been
previously associated with food which normally excited the flow. “Any
ocular stimulus, any desired sound, any odor that might be selected, and
the stimulation of any part of the skin, either by mechanical means or
by the application of heat or cold, have in our hands never failed to
stimulate the salivary glands, although they were all of them at one
time supposed to be inefficient for such a purpose. This was
accomplished by applying these stimuli simultaneously with the action of
the salivary glands, this action having been evolved by the giving of
certain kinds of food or by forcing certain substances into the dog’s
mouth.”[69] It is obvious that reflex excitation thus having been
accomplished by the education of the nerve centers to a previously
indifferent stimulus the reproduction of the process through this
stimulus is, in principle, an act of physiological memory.[70]

The experiences of the dogs embraced quite large systems of ideas and
sensory stimuli which included the environment of persons and their
actions, the furniture, plates, and other objects; and various ocular,
auditory, and other sensory stimuli applied arbitrarily to the dogs. All
these experiences had been welded into an associative system and
conserved as neurograms. Consequently it was only necessary to stimulate
again any element in the neurogram to reproduce the whole process,
including the specific salivary reaction.

We shall see later that these experiments acquire additional interest
from the fact that in them is to be found the fundamental principle of
what under other conditions can be recognized as a _psycho-neurosis—an
abnormal or perverted association and memory_. The effects produced by
this association of stimuli may be regarded as the germ of the habit
psychosis, and in these experiments we have experimental demonstration
of the mechanism of these psychoses—but this is another story which we
will take up by and by.

=Recollection.=—This is as good a place as any other to call attention
to a certain special form of memory. Recollection and memory are not
synonymous terms. We are accustomed to think of memory as including, in
addition to other qualities, recollection, i.e., what is called
localization of the experience in time and space. It connotes an
awareness of the content of the memory having been once upon a time a
previous experience which is more or less accurately located in a given
past time (yesterday, or a year ago, or twenty years ago), and in
certain local relations of space (when we were at school, or riding in a
railway car with so and so). But, as Ribot points out, this (relatively
to physiological memories) is ... “only a certain kind of memory which
we call perfect.” For we have just seen that, when memory is considered
as a process, reproduced physiological processes, which contain no
elements of consciousness and therefore of localization, may be memory.
But more than this, I would insist, _recollection is only a more perfect
kind of conscious memory_. Ribot would make recollection a peculiarity
of all conscious memory, but this is plainly an oversight. As we saw in
previous lectures there may be _conscious memories which do not contain
any element of recollection_, or, in other words, such conscious
memories resemble in every way, in principle, the reproduction of
organic neuron processes in that they have no conscious localization in
the past. In dissociated personalities, for instance, and in other types
of _dissociated conditions_ (functional amnesia, post-hypnotic states,
etc.), the names of persons, places, faces, objects, and even complex
ideas may flash into the mind without any element of recollection. The
person may have no idea whence they come, but by experiment it is easy
to demonstrate that they are automatic memories of past experiences.[71]
In the sensory automatisms known as _crystal visions_, pictures which
accurately reproduce, symbolically, past experiences of which the
subject has no recollection may vividly arise in the mind. Such pictures
are real conscious symbolic memories. _Dreams_, too, as we have seen,
may be unrecognized memories in that they may reproduce conscious
experiences, something heard or seen perhaps, but which has been
completely forgotten even when awake. Again, modern methods of
investigation show that numerous ideas that occur in the course of our
_everyday thoughts_—names, for instance—are excerpts from, or vestiges
of, previous conscious experiences of which we have no recollection,
that is to say, they are memories, reproductions of formerly experienced
ideas. In the absence of recollection they seem to belong only to the
present. Memories which hold an intermediate place between these
automatic memories and those of true recollection are certain memories,
like the alphabet or a verse or phrase once learned by heart which we
are able at best to localize only dimly in the past. Indeed, the greater
part of our _vocabulary_ is but conscious memory without localization in
the past. So we see that recollection is not an essential even for
conscious memories. It is only a particular phase of memory just as are
automatic conscious memories.

-----

Footnote 54:

I use this term physical in the sense in which it is used in the
physical sciences without reference to any metaphysical concept or the
ultimate nature of matter or of a physical process.

Footnote 55:

The psyche would have to be one which would be capable of becoming
differentiated at one and the same moment into two independent
consciousnesses—the personal and the secondary; a soul split into two,
so to speak. The desire to explain a secondary consciousness by this
doctrine has probably given rise to the popular notion of two souls in
a single body!

Footnote 56:

If the theory of the unconscious presented in these lectures be firmly
established this doctrine will have to be modified to this extent,
that, while all mental processes are accompanied by brain processes,
brain processes that ordinarily have conscious equivalents can within
certain limits occur without them and exhibit all the characteristics
of intelligence—unconscious cerebration. _Indeed, it becomes probable
that every mental process is a part of a larger mechanism in which
unconscious brain processes not correlated with the specifically
conscious processes are integral factors._

Footnote 57:

Dr. S. J. Meltzer has pointed out in a very suggestive article
(_Journal American Medical Association_, Vol. IV, No. 12) that the
anaphylactic attack resembles that of bronchial asthma in man, and
argues that this latter disease may be the same phenomenon.

Footnote 58:

T. Brailsford Robertson: Sur la Dynamique chimique du système nerveux
central, Archiv. de Physiol. v. 6, 1908, p. 388. Ueber die Wirkung von
Säuren auf das Athmungs Zentrum, Arch. f. die Gesammte Physiologie,
Bd. 145, Hft. 5 u. 6, 1912.

Footnote 59:

Stéphane Leduc: The Mechanism of Life.

Footnote 60:

Further studies in the chemical dynamics of the central nervous
system, Folio Neuro-Biologica, Bd. VI, Nos. 7 and 8, 1912.

Footnote 61:

Eugenio Rignano: Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters. Trans.
by Basil C. H. Harvey, Chicago. Open Court Publishing Co., 1911.

Footnote 62:

Prince: The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism, 1885:
Hughlings-Jackson on the Connection between the Mind and Brain,
_Brain_, p. 250, 1891; The Identification of Mind and Matter,
_Philosoph. Rev._, July, 1904.

Footnote 63:

Richard Semon (Die Mneme, 1908) has adopted the term Engramm with much
the same signification that I have given to Neurogram, excepting that
Engramm has a much wider meaning and connotation. It is not limited to
nervous tissue, but includes the residual changes held by some to be
left in all irritable living substances after stimulation. All such
substances are therefore capable of memory in a wide sense (Mneme).

Footnote 64:

Th. Ribot: Diseases of Memory, pp. 154, 155. Translation by William
Huntington Smith. D. Appleton & Co.

Footnote 65:

Cf. Lecture VIII, p. 238.

Footnote 66:

Emotion is a factor in the genesis of such phenomena, but may be
disregarded for the present until we have studied the phenomena of the
emotions by themselves.

Footnote 67:

The Work of the Digestive Glands (English Translation), p. 152.

Footnote 68:

Psychische Erregung der Speicheldrusen, J. P. Pawlow. Ergebnisse der
Physiologie, 1904, I Abteil., p. 182.

Footnote 69:

Huxley Lecture, _Br. Med. Jour._, October 6, 1906.

Footnote 70:

Pawlow overlooked in these experiments the possible, if not probable,
intermediary of the emotions in producing the effects. The principle,
however, would not be affected thereby.

Footnote 71:

Compare “The Dissociation,” pp. 254, 261. For examples, see also
“Multiple Personality,” by Boris Sidis, and “The Lowell Case of
Amnesia,” by Isador Coriat, _The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol.
II, p. 93.

LECTURE VI
SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES

In what I have said thus far I have had another purpose in view than
that of a mere exposition of the psycho-physiological theory of memory.
This other and chief purpose has been to lay the foundation for a
conception of the _Unconscious_ in its larger aspect. We have seen that
thoughts and other conscious experiences that have passed out of mind
may be and to an enormous extent are conserved and, from this point of
view, may be properly regarded as simply _dormant_. Further we have seen
that all the data collected by experimental pathology and other
observations lead to the conclusion that conservation is effected in the
form of neurographic residua or brain neurograms—organized physiological
records of passing mental experiences of all sorts and kinds. We have
seen that these neurographic records conserve not only our educational
acquisitions and general stock of knowledge—all those experiences which
we remember—but a vast number of others which we cannot spontaneously
recall, including, it may be, many which date back to early childhood,
and many which we have deliberately repressed, put out of mind and
intentionally forgotten. We have also seen that it is not only these
mental experiences which occupied the focus of our attention that leave
their counterpart in neurograms, but those as well of which we are only
partially aware—absent-minded thoughts and acts and sensations and
perceptions which never entered our awareness at all—subconscious or
coconscious ideas as they are called. Finally, we have seen that the
mental experiences of every state, normal, artificial, or pathological,
whatever may be the state of the personal consciousness, are subject to
the same principle of conservation. In this way, in the course of any
one’s natural life, an enormous field of neurograms is formed
representing ideas which far transcend in multitude and variety those of
the personal consciousness at any given moment and all moments, and
which are far beyond the voluntary beck and call of the personal
consciousness of the individual.

Neurograms are concepts and, by the meaning of the concept, they are
unconscious. It is not necessary to enter into the question whether they
are in their ultimate nature psychical or physical. That is a
philosophical question.[72] They are at any rate unconscious in this
sense; they are devoid of consciousness, i.e., have none of the
psychological attributes of any of the elements of consciousness, and in
the sense in which any physiological arrangement or process is not
conscious, i.e., is unconscious. We have here, then, in the concept of
brain residual neurograms the fundamental meaning of the
_Unconscious_.[73] _The unconscious is the great storehouse of
neurograms which are the physiological records of our mental lives._ By
the terms of the concept neurograms are primarily passive—the potential
form, as it were, in which psychical energy is stored. This is not to
say, however, that, from moment to moment, certain ones out of the great
mass may not become active processes. On the contrary, according to the
theory of memory, when certain complexes of neurograms are stimulated
they take on activity and function—the potential energy becomes
converted into dynamic energy. In correlation with the functioning of
such neurographic complexes, the complexes of ideas which they
conserve—the psychological equivalents—are reproduced (according to the
doctrines of monism and parallelism) and enter the stream of the
personal consciousness. The unconscious becomes the conscious (monism),
or provided with correlated conscious accompaniments (parallelism), and
we may speak of the ideas arising out of the unconscious.

=Neurograms may also function as subconscious processes exhibiting
intelligence and determining mental and bodily behavior.=—Here two
important questions present themselves. Is it a necessary consequence
that when unconscious neurograms become active processes psychological
equivalents must be awakened; and when they are awakened, must they
_necessarily_ enter the stream of the personal consciousness? If both
these questions may be answered in the negative, _then plainly in either
case such active processes become by definition subconscious
processes_—of an _unconscious_ nature in the one case and of a
_coconscious_ nature in the other. They would be subconscious because in
the first place they would occur outside of consciousness and there is
no awareness of them, and in the second place they would be a
dissociated second train of processes distinct from those engaged in the
conscious stream of the moment. Theoretically such subconscious
processes, whether unconscious or coconscious, might perform a variety
of functions according to the specificity of their activities.

Now, in preceding lectures, when marshalling the evidence for
conservation, we met with a large number and variety of phenomena
(automatic writing, hallucinations, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams,
“unconscious” solution of problems, etc.), which clearly demonstrated
that memory might be manifested by processes of which the individual was
unaware and which were outside the content of consciousness. Hence these
phenomena presented very clear evidence of the occurrence of processes
that may be properly termed _subconscious_.[74] Attention, however, was
primarily directed to them only so far as they offered evidence of
conservation and of the mode by which conservation was effected. But
necessarily these evidences were subconscious manifestations of
forgotten experiences (memory), and in so far as this was the case we
saw that unconscious neurograms can take on activity and function
subconsciously; i.e., without their psychological equivalents (i.e.,
correlated conscious memory) entering the stream of the personal
consciousness. We may now speak of these processes as =subconscious
memory=. But when their manifestations are carefully scrutinized they
will be found to exhibit more than memory. They may, for instance,
exhibit logical elaboration of the original experiences, and what
corresponds to fabrication, reasoning, volition and affectivity.
_Theoretically_ this is what we should expect if any of the conserved
residual experiences of life can function subconsciously. As life’s
experiences include fears, doubts, scruples, wishes, affections,
resentments, and numerous other affective states, innate dispositions,
and instincts, the subconscious memory process necessarily may include
any of these affective complexes of ideas and tendencies. An affective
complex means an idea (or ideas) linked to one or more emotions and
feelings. In other words, any acquired residua drawn from the general
storehouse of life’s experiences may be systematized with feelings and
emotions, the innate dispositions and instincts of the organism. Now it
is a general psychological law that such affective states tend by the
force of their conative impulses to carry the specific ideas with which
they are systematized to fulfilment through mental and bodily behavior.
Consequently, theoretically, it might thus well be that the residua of
diverse experiences, say a fear or a wish, by the force of such impulses
might become activated into very specific subconscious processes with
very specific tendencies expressing themselves in very specific ways,
producing very specific and diverse phenomena. Thus memory would be but
one of the manifestations of subconscious processes.

Now, as a matter of fact, there are a large number of phenomena which
not only justify the postulation of subconscious processes but also the
inference that such processes, activated by their affective impulses,
may so influence conscious thought that the latter is modified in
various ways; that it may be determined in this or that direction,
inhibited, interrupted, distorted, made insistent, and given
pathological traits. There is also a large variety of bodily phenomena
which can be explicitly shown to be due to subconscious processes, and
many which are only explicable by such a mechanism. Indeed, a
subconscious process may become very complex and constellated with any
one or many of the psycho-physiological mechanisms of the organism. In
special artificial and pathological conditions where such processes
reach their highest development, as manifested through their phenomena,
they may exhibit that which when consciously performed is understood to
be _intelligence_, comprising reasoning, constructive imagination,
volition, and feeling; in short, what is commonly called thought or
mental processes. Memory, of course, enters as an intrinsic element in
these manifestations just as it is an intrinsic element in all thought.
The automatic script that describes the memories of a long-forgotten
childhood experience may at the same time reason, indulge in jests,
rhyme, express cognition and understanding of questions—indeed (if put
to the test), might not only pass a Binet-Simon examination for
intelligence, but take a high rank in a Civil Service examination. In
these more elaborate exhibitions of subconscious intelligence it is
obvious that there is an exuberant efflorescence of the residua
deposited in many unconscious fields by life’s experiences and
synthesized into a _subconscious functioning system_.

It is beyond the scope of this lecture to examine into the particular
_mechanism_ by which a subconscious process is provoked at all—why, for
instance, a dormant wish or fear-neurogram becomes activated into a
subconscious wish or fear, or having become activated, the mechanism by
which such a wish or fear manifests itself in this phenomenon or that—or
to examine even any large number of the various phenomena which are
provoked by subconscious processes, and it is not my intention to do so.
Such problems belong to special psychology and special pathology. Of
recent years, for instance, certain schools of psychology, and in
particular the Freudian school, have attempted to establish particular
mechanisms by which subconscious processes come into being and express
themselves. We are engaged in the preliminary and fundamental task of
establishing, if possible, certain basic principles which any mechanism
must make use of, and, as a deeper-lying theoretical question, the
nature of such processes.

The subconscious now belongs to popular speech and it is the fashion of
the day to speak of it glibly enough, but I fear it means very little to
the average person. It is involved in vagueness if not mystery. Yet as a
necessary induction from observed facts it has a very precise and
concrete meaning devoid of abstruseness, just as the other has a precise
and concrete meaning. Although subconscious processes were originally
postulated on theoretical grounds, the theory is fortunately open to
experimental tests so that it is capable of being placed on an
experimental basis like other concepts of science. It is possible to
artificially create such processes and study their phenomena; that is to
say, the modes in which they manifest their activities, their influence
upon conscious and bodily processes. We can study their effect in
inhibiting and distorting thought, in determining it in this or that
direction, in creating hallucinatory, emotional, amnesic, and other
mental phenomena, in inducing physiological disturbances of motion,
sensation, of the viscera, etc. We can also study the capabilities and
limitations of the subconscious in carrying on intelligent operations
below the threshold of consciousness. Again, we can investigate the
phenomena of this kind as met with in the course of clinical
observations, and by technical methods of research explore the
subconscious and thus explicitly reveal the process underlying and
inducing the phenomena. By such methods of investigation the
subconscious has been removed from the field of speculative psychology,
and placed in the field of experimental research. We have thus been
enabled to postulate a subconscious process as a _definite concrete
process producing very definite phenomena_. These processes and their
phenomena have become a field of study in themselves and, from my point
of view, the determination of the laws of the subconscious should be
approached by such experimental and technical methods of research. After
its various modes of activity, its capabilities and limitations have
been in this way established, its laws can then be applied to the
solution of conditions surrounding particular problems. Though we can
determine the actuality of a particular subconscious process this does
not mean that we can determine all the components of that process; we
may be able to determine many or perhaps none of these: just as among
the constituents of a crowd we may discern an active, turbulent group
creating a disturbance, though we may not be able to recognize all the
components of the group or the scattered individuals acting in
conjunction with it. Nor may we be able to determine the intrinsic
nature of a subconscious process—whether it is a conscious or
unconscious one, but only the actuality of the process, the conditions
of its activity, and the phenomena which it induces.

_A subconscious process may be provisionally defined as one of which the
personality is unaware, which, therefore, is outside the personal
consciousness, and which is a factor in the determination of conscious
and bodily phenomena, or produces effects analogous to those which might
be directly or indirectly induced by consciousness._ It would be out of
the question at this time to enter into an exposition of the larger
subject—the multiform phenomena of the subconscious, but as its
processes are fundamental to an understanding of many phenomena with
which we shall have to deal, we should have a clear understanding of the
grounds on which such processes are postulated as specific, concrete
occurrences. The classical demonstration of subconscious occurrences
makes use of certain phenomena of hysteria, particularly those of
subconscious personalities and artificial “automatic” phenomena like
automatic writing. The epoch-making researches of Janet[75] on hysterics
and almost coincidently with him of Edmund Gurney on hypnotics very
clearly established the fact that these phenomena are the manifestations
of _dissociated_ processes outside of and independent of the personal
consciousness. Among the phenomena, for example, are motor activities of
various kinds such as ordinarily are or may be induced by conscious
intelligence. As the individual, owing to anesthesia, may be entirely
unaware even that he has performed any such act, the process that
performed it must be one that is subconscious.

=The intrinsic nature of subconscious processes.=—Janet further brought
forward indisputable evidence showing that in hysteria these
subconscious processes are real coconscious processes. It is only
another mode of expressing this to say that there is a dissociation or
division of consciousness in consequence of which certain ideas do not
enter the content of the personal consciousness of the individual. It is
possible, as he was the first to show, to communicate with and, in
hypnotic and other dissociated states, recover memories of these
split-off ideas of which the individual is unaware, and thereby
establish the principle that these ideas are the subconscious process
which induces the hysterical phenomena. (These phenomena are of a great
many kinds and include sensory as well as motor automatisms, inhibition
of thought and will, deliria, visceral, emotional, and other
disturbances of mind and body.) The hysterical subconscious process is
thus determined to be a very specific concrete _coconscious_ process,
one, the elements of which are memories and other particular ideas. This
type of subconscious process, therefore, may be regarded as the
activated residua of antecedent experiences with or without secondary
elaboration. All subsequent investigations during the past twenty-five
years have served but to confirm the accuracy of Janet’s observations
and conclusions. It would be out of the question at this time, before
coconscious ideas have been systematically studied, to attempt to
present the evidence on which this interpretation of certain
subconscious phenomena rests. This will be done in other lectures.[76] I
will simply say that this evidence for coconsciousness occurring in
certain special conditions, artificial and pathological, and perhaps as
a constituent of the normal content of consciousness, is of precisely
the same character as that for the occurrence of consciousness in any
other individual but one’s self. If we reject the evidence of hysterical
phenomena, of that furnished by a coconscious personality, and by
automatic script and speech, etc., we shall have to reject precisely
similar evidence for consciousness in other people than ourselves.[77]
The evidence is explicit and not implied.

A subconscious personality is a condition where complexes of
subconscious processes have been constellated into a personal system,
manifesting a secondary system of self-consciousness endowed with
volition, intelligence, etc. Such a subconscious personality is capable
of communicating with the experimenter and describing its own mental
processes. It can, after repression of the primary personality, become
the sole personality for the time being, and then remember its previous
subconscious life, as we all remember our past conscious life, and can
give full and explicit information regarding the nature of the
subconscious process. By making use of the testimony of a subconscious
personality and its various manifestations, we can not only establish
the actuality of subconscious processes and their intrinsic nature in
these conditions, but by prearrangement with this personality
predetermine any particular process we desire and study the modes in
which it influences conscious thought and conduct. For instance, we can
prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal
consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or
volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which
may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena,
etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in
this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities,
therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the
mind.[78]

The conclusion, then, seems compulsory that the subconscious processes
in many conditions, particularly those that are artificially induced and
those that are pathological, are _coconscious_ processes.

There are other phenomena, however, which require the postulation of a
subconscious process, yet which, when the subconscious is searched by
the same methods made use of in hysterical phenomena, do not reveal
explicit evidence of coconsciousness. An analysis of the subconscious
revelations as well as the phenomena themselves seems to favor the
interpretation that in some cases the underlying process is in part and
in others wholly _unconscious_. The only ground for the interpretation
that all subconscious processes are wholly conscious is the assumption
that, as some are conscious, all must be. This is as unsound as the
assumption that, because at the other end of the scale some complex
actions (e. g., those performed by decerebrated animals) are intelligent
and yet performed by processes necessarily unconscious, therefore all
actions not under the guidance of the personal consciousness are
performed by unconscious processes.

If some subconscious processes are unconscious they are equivalent to
physiological processes such as, _ex hypothesi_, are correlated with all
conscious processes and perhaps may be identified with them. In truth,
they mean nothing more nor less than “unconscious cerebration.”

We can say at once that considering the complexity and multiformity of
psycho-physiological phenomena there would seem to be no _a priori_
reason why all subconscious phenomena must be the same in respect to
being either coconscious or unconscious; some may be the one and some
the other. It is plainly a matter of interpretation of the facts and
there still exists some difference of opinion. The problem is a very
difficult one to settle by methods at present available; yet it can only
be settled by the same methods, in principle, that we depend upon to
determine the reality of a personal consciousness in other persons than
ourselves. No amount of _a priori_ argument will suffice. Perhaps some
day a criterion of a conscious state of which the individual is unaware
will be found, just as the psycho-galvanic phenomenon is possibly a
criterion of an effective state. Any conclusions which we reach at
present should be regarded as provisional.[79]

SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS

As one of our foremost psychologists has said, the subconscious is not
only the most important problem of psychology, it is _the_ problem. But
of course it involves many problems of practical and theoretical
interest. Among them are:

First of all the evidential justification of the postulation of
subconscious processes in general.

Second; the intrinsic nature of such processes. In other words and more
specifically, whether the neurograms of experiences after becoming
active subconscious _processes_ continue to be devoid of consciousness,
nothing but a brain process,—i.e., unconscious; or whether in becoming
activated they become conscious (monism), or acquire conscious
equivalents (parallelism), notwithstanding they are outside (dissociated
from) the content of the personal consciousness.

Third; the kind and complexity of functions a subconscious process can
perform. Can it perform the same functions as are ordinarily performed
by conscious _intelligence_ (as we commonly understand that term); that
is to say memory, perception, reasoning, imagination, volition,
affectivity, etc.? If so, to what extent?

Fourth; are the processes of the conscious mind only a part of a larger
mechanism of which a submerged part is a subconscious process?

Fifth; to what extent can and do subconscious processes determine the
processes of the conscious mind and bodily behavior in normal and
abnormal conditions?

These are some of the problems of the subconscious which for the most
part have been only incompletely investigated.

It is, of course, beyond the scope of these introductory lectures to
discuss with any completeness the evidence at hand bearing upon these
problems or to even touch upon many of the points involved. We may,
however, study more deeply than we have done some of the phenomena with
which we have become familiar with a view to seeing what light they
throw upon some of these problems, particularly the first three.

=1, 2, and 3; Actuality, Intrinsic Nature and Intelligence of
Subconscious Processes.=—As to the first question, whether subconscious
processes can be established in principle as a sound induction from
experimental and clinical facts and not merely as a hypothetical
concept, I have already pointed out that many manifestations of
conservation already cited in the exposition of the theory of memory are
of equal evidential value for the _actuality_ of such processes. Let us
now consider them in more detail from the point of view, more
particularly, of the second and third questions—the _intrinsic nature_
(whether coconscious or unconscious) and _intelligence_ of the
underlying processes at work. In any given case however the actuality of
the subconscious process must always be first demonstrated.

If we leave aside those conditions (hysteria, coconscious personalities)
wherein specific memory of a coconscious process can be recovered, or
such a process can be directly communicated with (automatic writing and
speech), the conditions required for the valid postulation of a
subconscious process underlying any given phenomenon are: first, that
the causal factor shall be positively _known_; second, that it shall be
an antecedent experience; and, third, that it shall not be in the
content of consciousness at the moment of the occurrence of the
phenomenon. If the causal factor and the phenomenon are both known, then
the only unknown factor to be determined is the process, if any,
_intervening between the two_. If this is not in consciousness, a
subconscious process must be postulated.

Obviously, if the known causal factor is _immediately_ related to the
caused phenomenon, the subconscious process must be the causal factor
itself. But if the known causal factor is _not immediately_ related to
the caused phenomenon, there must be an intervening process which must
be subconscious, perhaps consisting of a succession of processes
eventuating in the final phenomenon. For instance, if the causal factor
is a hypnotic suggestion (for which there is afterwards amnesia) that
the subject when awake shall automatically raise the right arm, a
subconscious process which is the memory of that suggestion immediately
provokes the automatic phenomenon. If, however, the suggestion is that
of a series of automatic actions involving complicated behavior, or if
it is a mathematical calculation, the intervening process which provokes
the end result must not only be subconscious but must be a more or less
complicated succession of processes.

When, on the other hand, the causal factor is not known but only
inferred with greater or less probability, the justification of the
postulation of a subconscious process may be invalidated by the
uncertainty of the inference. If for example a person raises his right
hand or has a number come into his head without obvious cause, any
_inferred_ antecedent experience as the causal factor must be open to
more or less doubt, and, therefore, a subconscious process cannot be
postulated with certainty. This uncertainty seriously affects the
validity of conclusions drawn from clinical phenomena where the
antecedent experience as well as a subconscious process must be inferred
and perhaps even a matter of guesswork.

Let us examine then, a few selected phenomena where the causal factor in
the process is a known antecedent conscious experience, one which can be
logically related to the succeeding phenomenon only by the postulation
of an intervening process of some kind. By an analysis of the antecedent
experience and the caused phenomenon into their constituent elements we
shall often be able to infer the functional characteristics of this
intervening process. Then, if the subject is a favorable one, by the use
of hypnotic and other methods we may be able to obtain an insight into
the intrinsic nature of the subconscious process and determine how far
it is conscious and how far unconscious. Necessarily the most available
phenomena are those experimentally induced. We can arrange beforehand
the causal experience and the phenomenon which it is to determine—an
hallucination, a motor automatism, a dream, a conscious process of
thought, or the product of an intellectual operation. The number of
observations we shall examine might be made much larger and the types
more varied. Those I have selected have such close analogies with
certain experiences of everyday and pathological life that what is found
to be true of them will afford valuable fundamentals in the elucidation
of these latter experiences.[80]

=Subconscious processes in which the causal factor was antecedently
known.=—I. The evidential value of _post-hypnotic phenomena_ ranks
perhaps in the first place for our purpose as the conditions under which
they occur are largely under control. Among these showing subconscious
processes of a high order of intelligence are:

(a) The well-known subconscious mathematical calculations which I cited
in a previous lecture (p. 96). There is no possible explanation of this
phenomenon except that the calculation was a subconscious process and
done either coconsciously or unconsciously. That it may be done, in some
cases, by coconscious processes of which the subject is unaware is
substantiated by the evidence.[81] In other cases this does not appear
to be wholly the case if we can rely upon hypnotic memories. We will
examine this process in connection with:

(b) A second class of post-hypnotic phenomena, namely, those of
suggested actions carried out by the subject more or less automatically,
in a sort of absent-minded way, without his being aware of what he is
doing. The subject is directed in hypnosis to perform such or such an
action after being awakened. Sometimes the suggested action is performed
consciously, the suggested ideas with their impulses arising in his
mind, but without his knowing why. In other instances, however, he
performs the action automatically without being consciously aware at the
moment that he is doing it, his attention being directed toward
something else. Such actions must be performed by some kind of
subconscious processes instigated by the ideas suggested in hypnosis.

Now hypnotic and other technically evoked memories sometimes reveal the
conscious content of the processes involved in both classes of
phenomena. For instance: two intelligent subjects, who have been the
object of extensive observations on this point, are able to recall in
hypnosis the previous occurrence of coconscious ideas of a peculiar
character. The description of these ideas has been very precise and has
carried a conviction, I believe, to all those who have had an
opportunity to be present at these observations that these recollections
were true memories and not fabrications.[82] The statements of these
subjects is that in their own cases, under certain conditions of
everyday life, coconscious ideas _of which the principal consciousness
is not aware_ emerge into the subconscious, persist for a longer or
shorter time, and then subside to be replaced by others. So long as the
conditions of their occurrence continue these coconscious ideas keep
coming and going, interchanging with one another. Sometimes these ideas
take the form of images, or what is described as visual “pictures.” When
the conditions are those of the subconscious solution of a mathematical
calculation then the same “pictures” occur and take the form of the
figures involved in the calculation; the figures come and go, apparently
add, subtract, and multiply themselves until the final result appears in
figures. An example will make this clear.

While the subject was in hypnosis the problem was given to add 458 and
367, the calculation to be done _subconsciously_ after she was awake.
The problem was successfully accomplished in the usual way. The mode in
which the calculation was effected was then investigated with the
following result: In what may be termed for convenience the secondary
consciousness, i.e., the subconsciousness, the numbers 458 and 367
appeared as distinct visualizations. These numbers were placed one over
the other, “with a line underneath them such as one makes in adding. The
visualization kept coming and going; sometimes the line was crooked and
sometimes it was straight. The secondary consciousness did not do the
sum at once, but by piecemeal. It took a long time before it was
completed.” The sum was not apparently done as soon as one would do it
when awake, by volitional calculation, “but rather the figures _added
themselves_, in a curious sort of way. The numbers were visualized and
the visualization kept coming and going and the columns at different
times added themselves, as it seemed, the result appearing at the
bottom.” In another problem (453 to be multiplied by 6) the process was
described as follows: The numbers were visualized in a line, thus, 453 ×
6. Then the 6 arranged itself under the 453. The numbers kept coming and
going the same as before. Sometimes, however, they added themselves, and
sometimes the 6 subtracted itself from the larger number. Finally,
however, the result was obtained. As in the first problem, the numbers
kept coming and going in the secondary consciousness until the problem
was solved and then they ceased to appear. It is to be understood, of
course, that the _principal or personal consciousness was not aware of
these coconscious figures, or even that any calculation was being or to
be performed_.

In suggested post-hypnotic actions, the pictures that come and go
correspond to and represent the details of the action as it is carried
out. Each detail is preceded or accompanied by its coconscious image or
picture. Likewise, when somatic phenomena have followed dreams, pictures
representing certain elements of the dream have appeared as secondary
conscious states. When the subject has been disturbed by some unsolved
moral or social problem (not suggested) the pictures have been symbolic
representations of the disturbing doubts and scruples.[83]

One of these two subjects, while in hypnosis and able to recollect what
goes on in the secondary consciousness, thus describes the coconscious
process during the _spontaneous_ subconscious solution of problems.
“When a problem on which my waking self is engaged remains unsettled, it
is still kept in mind by the secondary consciousness even though put
aside by my waking self. My secondary consciousness often helps me to
solve problems which my waking consciousness has found difficulty in
doing. But it is not my secondary consciousness that accomplishes the
final solution itself, but it helps in the following way: Suppose, for
instance, I am trying to translate a difficult passage in Virgil. I work
at it for some time and am puzzled. Finally, unable to do it, I put it
aside, leaving it unsolved. I decide that it is not worth bothering
about and so put it out of my mind. But it is a mistake to say you put
it _out_ of your mind. What you do is, you put it _into_ your mind; that
is to say, you don’t put it out of your mind if the problem remains
unsolved and unsettled. By putting it _into_ your mind I mean that,
although the waking consciousness may have put it aside, the problem
still remains in the secondary consciousness. In the example I used the
memory of the passage from Virgil would be retained persistently by my
secondary consciousness. Then from time to time a whole lot of
fragmentary memories and thoughts connected with the passage would arise
in this consciousness. Some of these thoughts, perhaps, would be
memories of the rules of grammar, or different meanings of words in the
passage, in fact, anything I had read, or thought, or experienced in
connection with the problem. These would not be logical, connected
thoughts, and they would not solve the problem. My secondary
consciousness does not actually do this, i.e., in the example taken,
translate the passage. The translation is not effected here. But later
when my waking consciousness thinks of the problem again, these
fragmentary thoughts of my secondary consciousness arise in my mind, and
with this information I complete the translation. The actual translation
is put together by my waking consciousness.[84] I am not conscious of
the fact that these fragments of knowledge existed previously in my
secondary consciousness. I do not remember a problem ever to have been
solved by the secondary consciousness.[85] It is always solved by the
waking self, although the material for solving it may come from the
secondary. When my waking consciousness solves it in this way, the
solution seems to come in a miraculous sort of way, sometimes as if it
came to me from somewhere else than my own mind. I have sometimes
thought, in consequence, that I had solved it in my sleep.”[86]

A series of observations conducted with a fourth subject (O. N.) gave
the following results, briefly summarized. (This subject, like the
others, is practiced in introspection and can differentiate her memories
with precision.) She distinguishes “two strata” in her mental processes
(an upper and lower). The “upper stratum” consists of the thoughts in
the focus of attention. The lower (also called the background of her
mind) consists of the perceptions and thoughts which are not in the
focus. This stratum, of course, corresponds with what is commonly
recognized as the fringe of consciousness, and, as is usual, when her
attention is directed elsewhere she is not aware of it. She can,
however, bring this fringe within the field of attention and then she
becomes aware of, or rather remembers, its content during the preceding
moment. To be able to do this is nothing out of the ordinary, but what
is unusual is this: by a trick of abstraction which she has long
practiced, she can bring the memory of the fringe or stratum into the
full light of awareness and then it is discovered that it has been
exceedingly rich in thoughts, far richer than ordinary attention would
show and a fringe is supposed to be. It is indeed a veritable
coconsciousness in which there goes on a secondary stream of thoughts
often of an entirely different character and with different affects from
those of the upper stratum. It is common for thoughts which she _has
resolutely put out of her mind as intolerable or unacceptable, or
problems which have not been solved, to continue functioning in the
lower stratum without entering awareness_.[87] She can, however, at any
time become aware of them by the trick of abstraction referred to, and
sometimes they emerge apparently spontaneously and suddenly[88] replace
the “upper stratum.” In hypnosis also the content of the lower stratum
can be distinctly recalled.

Now the point I have been coming to is, the subject has acquired the
habit of postponing the decision of many everyday problems and giving
them, as a matter of convenience, to this second stratum or fringe to
solve. She puts one aside, that is out of (or _into_) her mind and it
goes into this stratum. Then, later, when the time for action comes, she
voluntarily goes into abstraction, becomes aware of the subconscious
thoughts of the second stratum and, lo and behold! the problem is found
to be solved. If a plan of action, all the details are found arranged as
if planned “consciously.” If asked a moment before what plans had been
decided upon and decision reached she would have been obliged in her
conscious ignorance to reply, “I don’t know.”[89]

An analysis of these different observations shows, first, that the
post-hypnotic phenomena—calculations (a) and actions (b)—were performed
by a subconscious process. Of this there can be no manner of doubt, even
if the subsequent hypnotic memories of the process be rejected as
untrustworthy. The phenomenon—the answer to the mathematical problem in
the one case and the motor acts in the other—is so logically related to
the suggestion, and can be predicted with such certainty, that only a
causal relation can be admitted.

Second, in the calculation phenomena the process is clearly of an
intellectual character requiring _reasoning_ and the coöperation of
mathematical _memory_. (Reasoning is more conspicuous when the problem
is more complicated, as in the calculation of the number of seconds
intervening between, say, twenty-two minutes past eleven and seventeen
minutes past three o’clock.)[90] The phenomenon is the solution of a
problem.

The final phenomenon was not _immediately_ related to the suggested
idea. It was the final result of a quite long series of logical
processes of a more or less complex character occurring over a period of
time as in conscious calculation. _Conation_ (volition?) would seem also
to be essential to carry the suggested idea to fulfilment. _Subconscious
cognition_ would seem also to be required. There must have been an
intelligent appreciation of what the problem was and as soon as the
solution was accomplished the process stopped. Random figuring did not
continue.

In the post-hypnotic motor acts conation is obvious. Here too there is a
series of subconscious processes covering a period of time and carrying
out a purpose. The suggested causal idea did not include the acts
necessary for the fulfillment of the idea. Each step was adapted to an
end, ceased as soon as it accomplished that end, and was followed by
another in logical sequence, the whole taking place as if performed by
an intelligence. Reasoning may or may not be involved according to the
complexity of the actions.

Third; _the coconscious figures in the calculation experiments do not
constitute the whole of the process_. They would seem to be the product
of some deeper underlying process. The figures “kept coming and going”
and seemed to “add themselves.” There was no conscious process that
related the figures to one another and determined whether the problem
was one of addition or multiplication—as is the case when we do a
calculation consciously; that is to say, of course, if the hypnotic
personality remembered the whole of the conscious calculation. It was
more as if there was an underlying unconscious process which did the
calculation, certain final results of which appeared as dissociated
states of consciousness, i.e., figures which did not enter the personal
consciousness. The process reminds us of the printing of visible letters
by the concealed works of a typewriter; or of visible letters of an
electrically illuminated sign appearing and disappearing according as
the concealed mechanism is worked. This interpretation is in entire
accord with the spontaneous occurrence of the coconscious images during
the everyday life of these subjects. These images were pictorial
representations of antecedent thoughts and seemed to be the products or
elements of these thoughts apparently functioning as underlying
unconscious processes. Likewise, in post-hypnotic suggested actions, I
have not been able to obtain memories of coconscious thoughts directing
the actions, but only the images described. These behave as if they were
the product of another underlying process determining the action.
Inferences of this sort are as compulsory as the inference that the
illumination of a sensitive plate observed in the study of
radio-activity must be due to the bombardment of the plate by invisible
particles emitted by the radio-active substance. These particles and the
process which ejects them can only be inferred from the effects which
they produce. So, in the above observations, it would seem as if the
coconscious figures, and other images involved, must be ejected as
conscious phenomena by an underlying process. There is no explicit
evidence that this is conscious.

I said advisedly, a moment ago, “if the hypnotic personality remembered
the whole of the conscious calculation,” for, as a matter of fact, we
find, when we examine several different hypnotic states in the same
subject, that their memories for coconscious ideas are not coextensive,
one (or more) being fuller than another. Indeed in certain states there
may not be any such memories at all. It is necessary, therefore, to
obtain by hypnosis a degree of dissociation which will allow the
complete memories of this kind to be evoked. In the subjects I made use
of this procedure was followed. Theoretically it might be held that, no
matter how complete the memories evoked in the various states, some
other state might possibly be obtained in which still more complete
memory would be manifested. Theoretically this is true and all
conclusions are subject to this criticism. Practically, however, I
found, when making these investigations, that I seemed to have come to
the limit of such possibilities, for, obtain as I would new dissociated
arrangements of personality, after a certain point no additional
memories could be evoked. There is still another possibility that there
may be coconscious processes for which no memories can be evoked by any
method or in any state.

II. _Artificially induced visual hallucinations_ with which we have
already become familiar can, as we have seen, only be interpreted as the
product of subconscious processes. If only because of the important part
that hallucinations play in insanity and other pathological states and
of the frequency with which they occur in normal people (mystics and
others), the characteristics of the subconscious process are well worth
closer study. What is found to be true of the experimental type is
probably true of the spontaneous variety whether occurring in
pathological or normal conditions. Indeed, as we shall see, spontaneous
hallucinations have the same characteristics. We have considered them
thus far only from two points of view, viz. (1) as evidence of
conservation of forgotten experiences, and (2) as evidence for specific
residua of such experiences functioning as subconscious processes. Now,
artificial visual hallucinations, like the spontaneous ones, may be
limited—relatively speaking—to what is apparently little more than an
exact reproduction of an antecedent visual perception, e. g., a person
or object. But, generally speaking, it is more than this and when
analyzed will be found almost always to be the expression of a
complicated process. For instance, take the relatively simple crystal
vision, of the subject smoking a cigarette in a particular situation
during hypnosis, which I have previously cited. (Lecture III.) As a
matter of fact, the subject had no primary visual perceptions at the
time of the original episode at all. She was in hypnosis, her eyes were
closed, and she did not and could not see herself (particularly her own
face) or the cigarette or her surroundings. And yet the vision pictured
everything exactly as it had occurred in my presence, even to the
expression of her features. Looking into the crystal the subject saw
herself sitting in a particular place, enacting a series of movements,
talking and smoking a cigarette with a peculiar smile and expression of
enjoyment on her face.[91] For this experience there was complete
amnesia after waking from hypnosis and at the time of the vision.

Now consider further the facts and their implications. In the mechanism
of the process eventuating in the visual phenomenon we obviously have
two known factors: the antecedent causal factor—the hypnotic
episode—and, after a time interval, the end result—the vision. As there
was no conscious memory of the hypnotic episode the neurograms of the
latter must have functioned subconsciously to have produced the vision.
But what particular neurograms? As the subject’s eyes had been closed in
hypnosis, and, in any event, as she could not have seen her own face,
there were at the time no _visual_ perceptions of herself smoking a
cigarette, and therefore the vision could not have been simply a
reproduction of a visual experience. There were, however, tactual,
gustatory, and other perceptions and ideas of self and environment, and
these perceptions and ideas of course possessed _secondary visual
images_.[92] The simplest mechanism would be that the neurograms of this
complex of perception and ideas of self, etc., functioned subconsciously
and their _secondary_ visual images emerged into consciousness to be the
vision. I give this as the simplest mechanism by which we can conceive
of a visual representation of an antecedent experience emerging out of a
subconscious process.[93] There is a considerable body of data
supporting this interpretation.

But the original experiences of the episode included more than the mere
perceptions and movements of the subject. They included trains of
thought and enjoyment of the cigarette smoking experience. All formed a
complex of which the tactual and other perceptions of self were
subordinate elements. At one moment, of course, one element, and, at
another moment another element, had been in the focus of awareness, the
others becoming shifted into the fringe _where at all times were
secondary visual images of herself_. Did the subconscious process
underlying the vision include the whole of this complex? As to this, one
peculiarity of the vision has much significance. In behavior it acted
after the manner of a cinematographic or “moving picture,” and
delineated each successive movement of the episode, as if a rapid series
of photographs had been taken for reproduction. In this manner even the
emotional and changing play of the features of the vision-self,
expressive of the previous thoughts and enjoyment, were depicted. Such a
cinematographic series of visual images would seem to require a
concurrent subconscious process to produce the successive changes in the
hallucinatory images. As these changes apparently correspond from moment
to moment with the changes that had occurred in the content of
consciousness during the causal episode, it would also seem that the
subconscious process was a reproduction in subconscious terms of
substantially the whole original mental episode. This conclusion is
fortified by the following additional facts: In many experiments of this
kind, if the subject’s face be watched during the visualization, it will
be observed that _it shows the same play of features as is displayed by
the vision face_,[94] and the visualizer at the same moment _experiences
the same emotion as is expressed by the features of the vision
face_,[95] and sometimes knows “what her [my] vision self is thinking
about.” In other words, _in particular instances_, sometimes the
feelings alone and sometimes both the thoughts and feelings expressed in
pantomime in the hallucination arise at the same moment in
consciousness. This would seem to indicate that the same processes which
determined the mimetic play of features in the _hallucination_ were
determining at the same moment the same play in the features of the
visualizer, and that these processes were a subconscious memory of
substantially all the original perceptions and thoughts. That is to say,
this memory in such cases remains sometimes entirely subconscious and
sometimes emerges into consciousness. The hallucination is simply a
projected visualization induced by what is taking place subconsciously
in the subject’s mind at the moment. Whether this shall remain entirely
subconscious or shall emerge partially or wholly into consciousness
depends upon psychological conditions peculiar to the subject.

That even when the thoughts of the causal experience emerge in
consciousness along with the vision a portion of the functioning
complex—e. g., the perceptual elements—may still remain submerged is
shown by the following example: The vision, one of several of the same
kind, portrayed in pantomime an elaborate nocturnal somnambulistic act.
It represented the subject walking in her sleep with eyes closed; then
sitting before the fire in profound and depressing thought; then
joyously dancing; then writing letters, etc., and finally ascending the
stairs, _unconsciously dropping one of the letters from her hand on the
way_,[96] and returning to bed. During the visualization the thoughts
and feelings of the vision-self, even the contents of the letters, arose
in the mind of the visualizer whose features and tone of voice betrayed
the feelings.

The point to be noted in this observation is that the _vision reproduced
as a detail of the somnambulistic act the accidental dropping of a
letter from the hand of the somnambulist who was unaware of the fact_;
it reproduced what was not in conscious experience. How came it that an
act for which there had been no awareness could appear in the vision?
The only explanation is that originally in the somnambulistic state, as
is so commonly observed in hypnotic somnambulism, there was a
subconscious tactual perception (with secondary visual images?) of
dropping the letter and now the memory of this antecedent perception,
functioning subconsciously, induced this detail of the vision. The
general conclusion then would seem to be justified that this
hallucination was determined by a fairly large complex of antecedent
somnambulistic experiences of which a part emerged as the hallucination
and the thoughts of the somnambulist into consciousness, and a part—the
tactual and other perceptions—remained submerged as the subconscious
process. How much more may have been contained in this process the facts
do not enable us to determine.

An examination, then, of even the more simple artificial hallucinations
discloses that underlying them there is a residual process which is
quite an extensive subconscious memory of antecedent thoughts,
perceptions and affective experiences. Whether this memory is only an
unconscious functioning neurogram or whether it is also a coconscious
memory, or partly both, cannot be determined from the data.[97] The
bearing of these results upon the interpretation of _insane
hallucinations_ is obvious.

Our examination of subconscious processes in the two classes of
phenomena thus far studied—post-hypnotic phenomena and artificial
hallucinations—permits the following general conclusions: First, there
is positive evidence to show that in some instances, in their intrinsic
nature, they are coconscious. In other instances, in the absence of such
evidence, it is permissible to regard them as unconscious. Second, that
in the quality of the functions performed they frequently exhibit that
which is characteristic of Intelligence. This characteristic will be
seen to be still more pronounced in the phenomena which we shall next
study.

-----

Footnote 72:

I forbear to enter into the question of the nature of consciousness
and matter. In the last analysis, matter and mind probably are to be
identified as different manifestations of one and the same
principle—the doctrine of monism—call it psychical, spiritual, or
material, or energy, as you like, according to your fondness for
names. For our purpose it is not necessary to touch this philosophical
problem as we are dealing only with specific biological experiences.

Footnote 73:

Also quite commonly termed the Subconscious. Unfortunately the term
unconscious, as noun or adjective, is used in two senses, viz., (1)
pertaining to unawareness (for example, I am unconscious of such and
such a thing), and (2) in the sense of not having the psychological
attribute of consciousness, i.e., non-conscious.

In the first sense the adjective is used, as in the phrase
“unconscious process” to define a process of which we are unaware
without connotation as to whether it is a psychological process or a
brain process; also the noun (The Unconscious) is used to signify
something not in awareness regardless of whether that something is
psychological or not; on the other hand, as an adjective it is also
used, as in the phrase “unconscious ideas,” to specifically signify
real ideas of which we are unaware.

In the second sense, as noun or adjective, it is used to denote
specifically brain residua or processes, which, of course, are devoid
of consciousness. With this interchange of meaning the term is apt to
be confusing and is lacking in precision. _In the text unconscious
will be used always with the second meaning, unless inverted commas or
the context plainly indicate the first meaning._ (Cf. Lecture VIII,
pp. 248-254).

Footnote 74:

Also termed by some writers _unconscious_. (See preceding footnote.)

Footnote 75:

Pierre Janet: L’automatisme psychologique, Paris, 1889, and numerous
other works.

Footnote 76:

Not included in this volume.

Footnote 77:

Cf. Prince: The Dissociation; also A Symposium on the Subconscious,
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, June-July, 1907; Experiments to
Determine Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideation, _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, April-May, 1908; Experiments in Psycho-Galvanic Reactions
from Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideas in a Case of Multiple
Personality, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, June-July, 1908; The
Subconscious [_Rapports et Comptes Rendus, 6me Congrès International
de Psychologie_, 1909]; also, My Life as a Dissociated Personality, by
B. C. A., _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, October-November, 1908.

Footnote 78:

The value of subconscious personalities for this purpose has been
overlooked, owing, I suppose, to such conditions being unusual and
bizarre, and the assumption that they have little in common with
ordinary subconscious processes. But it ought to be obvious that _in
principle_ it makes little difference whether a subconscious system is
constellated into a large self-conscious system called a personality,
or whether it is restricted to a system limited to a few particular
coconscious ideas. In the former case the possibilities of its
interfering with the personal consciousness may be more extended and
more influential, that is all.

Footnote 79:

Of course, from a practical (clinical) point of view, it is of no
consequence whether given phenomena are induced by coconscious or
unconscious processes; the individual is not aware of either. Let me
answer, however, a strange objection that has been made to such an
inquiry. It has been objected that as it makes no practical difference
whether the subconscious process, which induces a given phenomenon, is
coconscious or unconscious, and as in many given cases it is difficult
or impossible to determine the question, therefore, that such
inquiries are useless. Plainly such an objection only concerns applied
science, not science itself. It concerns only the practicing physician
who deals solely with reactions. Likewise it makes no difference to
the practicing chemist whether some atoms are positive and some
negative ions, and whether on further analysis they are systems of
electrons, and whether, again, electrons are points of electricity.
The practical chemist deals only with reactions. Such questions,
however, having to do with the ultimate nature of matter are of the
highest interest to science. Likewise the nature of subconscious
processes is of the highest interest to psychological science.

Footnote 80:

I have passed over the classical hysterical phenomena as they open a
very large subject which needs a special treatment by itself. The
subconscious processes underlying them, so far as they have been
determined, are, as I have explained, admittedly coconscious, though
some may be in part unconscious. They are too complicated to be
entered into here.

Footnote 81:

Prince: Experiments to Determine Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideation,
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1908.

Footnote 82:

Among these I might mention the names of a dozen or more well-known
psychologists and physicians of experience and repute who have
observed one or both of these cases. Through the kindness of Dr. G. A.
Waterman I have had an opportunity to investigate a third case, one of
his patients, who described similar coconscious “pictures”
accompanying certain impulsive conscious acts. The pictures, when of
persons, were described as “life size,” and were likened to those of a
cinematograph. Also, as with one of my cases, suggested post-hypnotic
actions were accompanied by such coconscious pictures representing in
successive stages the act to be performed. An analysis of both the
impulsive and the suggested phenomena seemed to clearly show that the
pictures emerged from a deeper lying submerged process induced by the
residuum of a dream and of the suggestion, respectively.

Footnote 83:

Cf. Lecture IV. These coconscious pictures are so varied and occur in
so many relations that they need to be studied by themselves.

Footnote 84:

This, of course, so far as she could determine from the data of
memory. The more correct interpretation probably is that the thoughts
of the “secondary consciousness” were supplied by a still deeper
underlying subconscious process, certain elements of which emerged as
dissociated conscious states (not in the focus of attention). This
same process probably was the real agent in doing the actual
translation, and later thrust the necessary data into awareness in
such fashion that the translation seemed to be performed consciously.
If all the required data is supplied to consciousness the problem is
thereby done.

Footnote 85:

The subject here, of course, refers not to experimental but to
spontaneous solutions. When experimentally performed the whole problem
was solved subconsciously. Furthermore, a memory of a detail of this
kind of remote experiences obviously would not be reliable, but only
immediately after an experience. In fact, spontaneous solutions
sometimes occurred entirely subconsciously. (Cf. Lecture VII.) In the
experimental calculation experiments the solution is made
subconsciously in accordance with the prescribed conditions of the
experiment. In other observations on this subject the coconscious
pictures represented past experiences of the subject, much as do
crystal visions, and suggest that these past experiences were
functioning unconsciously.

Footnote 86:

Prince: Some of the Present Problems of Abnormal Psychology, Congress
of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904, V. 5, p. 770.

Footnote 87:

Practically similar conditions I have found in B. C. A., and Miss B.,
though described by the subjects in different phraseology.

Footnote 88:

For instance, to take a sensational example, on one occasion in the
midst of hilarity while singing, laughing, etc., she suddenly became
depressed and burst into tears. What happened was this: It was a
sorrowful anniversary, and in the “lower stratum” sad memories had
been recurring during the period of hilarity. These memories had come
into consciousness early in the morning, but she had resolutely put
them out of her mind. They had, however, kept recurring in the lower
stratum, and suddenly emerged into the upper stratum of consciousness
with the startling effect described. More commonly, however, the
emergence of the lower stratum is simply a shifting play of thought.
It is interesting to note that censored thoughts and temptations are
apt to go into the lower stratum and here with their affects continue
at play. _These sometimes reappear as dreams._

Footnote 89:

The validity of the evidence of memory as applied to subconscious
processes needs to be carefully weighed. It is a question of method,
and if the method is fallacious all conclusions fall to the ground. In
the sciences of normal psychology and psychiatry and psychopathology,
the data given by memory are and necessarily must be relied upon to
furnish a knowledge of the content of mental processes and the mental
symptoms, and all methods of psychological analysis are based on the
data of memory. Without such data there could be no such sciences. As
a matter of experience the method is found to be reliable when
properly checked by multiple observations. If by special methods of
technique mental processes, which do not enter the awareness of the
moment, are later brought into consciousness as data of memory, are
these data _per contra_ to be rejected as hallucinatory? This is what
their rejection would mean. Now, as a fact, there are phenomena, like
coconscious personalities, which compel the postulation of coconscious
processes. If this is the case, if there are coconscious processes
which do not enter awareness, it would be the strangest thing if there
were not conditions of the personality in which a memory of these
processes could be obtained. This fact would have to be explained. The
bringing of coconscious processes into consciousness as data of memory
does not seem therefore to be anything _a priori_ improbable and there
would seem to be no reason why the memory of them should be more
unreliable than that of conscious processes in the forms of attention.
Indeed, if the fringe of consciousness be regarded as coconscious, it
is an every-day act common to everybody. Such data necessarily should
be checked up by multiple observations.

Footnote 90:

For examples of this kind, see Prince, Experiments to Determine
Coconscious Ideation, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May,
1908.

Footnote 91:

The Dissociation, pp. 55, 56.

Footnote 92:

It is only necessary to close one’s eyes, then grimace and move one’s
limbs to become conscious of these secondary images which picture each
movement of the features, etc.

Footnote 93:

The mechanism is probably not quite so simple as this, probably past
visual perceptions of self and the environment took part, so that the
vision was a fusion or composite of these older primary images and the
secondary images. The principle of mechanism, however, would not be
affected by this added element. Sidis (The Doctrine of Primary and
Secondary Sensory Elements, _Psych. Rev._, January-March, 1908) has
maintained that all hallucinations are the emerging of the secondary
images of previous perceptions. If, on the other hand, the vision be
interpreted as something fabricated by the subconscious process—as
must be the case with some hallucinations—then this process must have
been much more complicated than memory. Something akin at least to
constructive imagination and intelligence that translated the
experiences into visual terms.

Footnote 94:

That is to say, as described by the visualizer.

Footnote 95:

Cf. The Dissociation, pp. 211-220.

Footnote 96:

At this point the subject watching the vision remarked, “I drop one of
the letters, but I do not know I have done so.” In other words,
conscious of the content of the somnambulist’s consciousness, the
visualizer knows that there is no awareness of this act. The letter
was afterward found by the servant on the stairs.

Footnote 97:

Coconscious ideas may provoke hallucinations. (For examples consult
“Hallucinations” in Index to The Dissociation.)

LECTURE VII
SUBCONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE
(Continued)

III. _Subconscious intelligence underlying spontaneous
hallucinations._—Spontaneous hallucinations often offer opportunities to
study subconscious processes exhibiting constructive intelligence.
Although properly belonging to clinical phenomena, they often can be so
clearly related to an antecedent experience as to allow us to determine
the causal factor with the same exactness as in the experimental type,
and, therefore, to infer the connecting subconscious link with equal
probability. Some of these spontaneous visions indicate that the
subconscious link must be of considerable complexity and equivalent to
logical processes of reasoning, volition, and purposive intelligence.
Sometimes the same subconscious processes which fabricate the vision
determine also other processes of conscious thought and movements.

In illustration I may cite an incident in the life of Miss B., which I
have previously described:

“Miss B., as a child, frequently had visions of the Madonna and
Christ, and used to believe that she had actually seen them. It was
her custom when in trouble, if it was only a matter of her school
lessons, or something that she had lost, to resort to prayer. Then she
would be apt to have a vision of Christ. The vision never spoke, but
sometimes made signs to her, and the expression of His face made her
feel _that all was well_. After the vision passed she felt that her
difficulties were removed, and if it was a bothersome lesson which she
had been unable to understand it all became intelligible at once. Or,
if it was something that she had lost, _she at once went to the spot
where it was_.”... [For example, while under observation.] "Miss B.
had lost a bank check and was much troubled concerning it. For five
days she had made an unsuccessful hunt for it, systematically going
through everything in her room. She remembered distinctly placing the
check between the leaves of a book, when some one knocked at her door,
and this was the last she saw of the check. She had become very much
troubled about the matter, and in consequence, after going to bed that
night she was unable to sleep, and rose several times to make a
further hunt. Finally, at 3 o’clock in the morning, she went to bed
and fell asleep. At 4 o’clock she woke with the consciousness of a
presence in the room. She arose, and in a moment saw a vision of
Christ, who did not speak, but smiled. She at once felt, as she used
to, _that everything was well_, and that the vision foretold that she
should find the check. All her anxiety left her at once. The figure
retreated toward the bureau, but the thought flashed into her mind
that the lost check was in the drawer of her desk. A search, however,
showed that it was not there. She then walked automatically to the
bureau, opened the top drawer, took out some stuff upon which she had
been sewing, unfolded it, and there was the check along with one or
two other papers.

“Neither Miss B. nor BII [hypnosis] has any memory of any specific
thought which directed her to open the drawer and take out her sewing,
nor of any conscious idea that the check was there. Rather, she did
it, so far as her consciousness goes, automatically, as she used to do
automatic writing.”[98]

Further investigation revealed the fact that the money had been put away
absent-mindedly and “unconsciously”; in hypnosis the memory of this act
was recovered.

In this observation we have two so-called automatic phenomena of
different types—one a sensory automatism, the vision, the other a motor
automatism or actions leading to the finding of the money. The motor
acts being automatic were necessarily determined by subconscious
processes and plainly required a knowledge of the hiding-place. This
knowledge also plainly must have been conserved in the unconscious and
now, in answer to her wish to find the lost money, acting as a
subconscious process, fulfilled her wish in a practical way.

The vision was of Christ smiling. Seeing it the subject at once “felt
that all was well,” and her anxiety vanished. It was plainly therefore a
fabricated visual symbolism though one which she had frequently before
experienced. It may be taken as a message sent by subconscious processes
to her anxious consciousness and it is not too much to say had a
purposive meaning, viz., to allay her anxiety. The question is, What was
the causal factor which determined this symbolism? Logically it is a
compulsory inference that the same conserved knowledge and subconscious
processes, which eventuated in the motor automatisms, must have been the
causal factor that determined the visual symbolism which carried the
reassuring message to consciousness. This subconscious knowledge first
allayed her anxiety and then proceeded to answer her problem of the
whereabouts of the lost money. More specifically, the primary causal
factor was the preceding anxious wish to find the money; the resulting
phenomena were the sensory and motor automatisms, allaying the anxiety
and fulfilling the wish; _between the two as connecting links were
subconscious processes of an intelligent, purposive, volitional
character which first fabricated a visual symbolism as a message to
consciousness and then made use of the conserved knowledge of her
previous absent-minded act to solve her problem_. The subconscious
process as a whole we thus see was of quite a complicated character. In
this example it is impossible to determine from the data at hand whether
the subconscious process was coconscious or unconscious.

The observation which I have elsewhere described as “an hallucination
from the subconscious”[99] is an excellent example of an intelligent
subconscious process indicative of judgment and purpose. The
hallucination occurred in my presence as a result of an antecedent
experience for which I was a moment before responsible. It was therefore
of the nature of an experiment and the causal factor was known. The
antecedent experience consisted of certain remarks and behavior of the
subject while under the influence of an illusion during a dissociated
state for which there was subsequent amnesia. The vision was of a friend
whose face was sad, as of one who had been injured, and seemed to
reproach her. At the same moment she heard his voice which said, “How
could you have betrayed me?” The hallucinatory words and the visual
image were in no sense a reproduction of the causal, i.e., antecedent,
experience. They were the expression of a _subconscious self-reproach_
in consequence of that experience. This reproach connoted a subconscious
belief or logical judgment, drawn from the experience, that she had
broken a promise.[100] It was a subconscious reaction to a subconscious
belief. I say both the reproach and the judgment were subconscious
because, in the dissociated state, owing to the illusion, and in the
normal after-state owing to the amnesia, she was entirely ignorant of
having done anything that could be construed into breaking a promise.
This interpretation of the episode must therefore have been entirely
subconscious. The self-reproach emerged into consciousness but
translated into visual and auditory hallucinations. These were plainly a
condemnatory message sent from the subconscious to the personal
consciousness and might aptly be termed “the prickings of a subconscious
conscience.” The primary causal factor was simply certain statements
(conserved in the unconscious) made to me by the subject and for which
afterwards there was amnesia. Intervening between this antecedent
experience and the resulting hallucinatory phenomena a subconscious
process must be postulated as a necessary connecting link. This process
plainly involved memory and an intelligent judgment, an emotional
reaction, and an expression of this judgment and reaction translated
into hallucinatory phenomena. Apparently also a distinct purpose to
upbraid the personality was manifested.

The accounts of _sudden religious conversion_ are full of instances of
hallucinations occurring at the time of the “crisis” and these—visions
and voices—are often logical symbolisms of antecedent thoughts of the
subject. By analogy with similar experimental phenomena we are compelled
to interpret them in the same way and postulate these antecedent
experiences as the causal factors. If this postulation is sound then the
connecting subconscious link is often a quite complicated process of an
intelligent character.

In one instance in which the occurrence was similar in principle to
sudden religious conversion I was able to determine beyond question the
causal antecedents of the hallucinatory phenomenon. I will not repeat
the details here;[101] suffice it to say that the hallucination,
consisting of a vision and an auditory message from the subject’s
deceased husband (see p. 40), answered the doubts and scruples with
which the subject had been previously tormented. It was a logical answer
calculated to allay distressing memories against which she had been
fighting, “the old ideas of dissatisfaction with life, the feelings of
injury, bitterness, and rebellion against fate and the ‘kicking against
the pricks’ which these memories evoked.” It expressed previously
entertained ideas which she had tried to accept but without success. The
exposition of this answer in the _hallucinatory symbolism_ required a
subconscious process involving considerable reasoning. _The phenomenon
as a whole was a message addressed to her own consciousness by
subconscious processes to answer her doubts and anxious questionings of
herself, and to settle the conflict going on in her mind._ The logical
connection between the different elements of this hallucination and
certain antecedent experiences which had harassed the subject are so
close that there is no room left for doubting that these experiences
were the causal factors. And so I might analyze a large number of
spontaneous hallucinations wherein you would find the same evidence for
subconscious processes _showing intelligent constructive imagination,
reasoning, volition, and purposive effort_, and expressing themselves in
automatisms which either solve a disturbing problem or carry to fruition
a subconscious purpose.

I offer no excuse for multiplying these observations of hallucinatory
phenomena, even at the expense of tedious repetition, for such studies
give an insight into the mechanism of the hallucinations met with in the
insanities and other pathological states. They offer, too, an insight
into the basic process involved in dreams as these are a type of
hallucinatory phenomena. It is by a study of hallucinations
experimentally created, and others where we are in a position to know
the causal factors, that we can learn the mechanisms underlying similar
phenomena occurring in normal pathological conditions. As a rule in the
latter conditions it is difficult to determine beyond question the true
causal factors and, therefore, the particular subconscious processes
involved. Such phenomena as I have presented justify the conclusion of
the “new psychology” that the _hallucinations of the insane_ are not
haphazard affairs but the resultant of subconscious processes evoked by
antecedent experiences. In conclusion, then, we may say that _in
artificial hallucinations as experimentally conducted, and in certain
spontaneous hallucinations, we have two known factors; the causal factor
(the antecedent experience) and the hallucinatory phenomenon—the effect.
Intervening between the two is an inferred subconscious process of
considerable complexity which is required to explain the causal
connection_. With the exact mechanism of hallucinatory phenomena we are
not at present concerned, but only with the evidence of the actuality of
a subconscious process, of its character as an intelligence, and with
its intrinsic nature.

As to the last problem it is plain that further investigations are
required and that the methods at present at our disposal for its
solution leave much to be desired. All things considered a conservative
summing up would be that the subconscious process may be both
coconscious and unconscious.

IV. _Subconscious intelligence underlying dreams._ As is well known,
Freud advanced the theory, now well fortified by numerous observations
of others, that underlying a dream is a subconscious process which
fabricates the conscious dream. According to Freud and his followers
this subconscious process is always an antecedent wish and the dream is
an imaginary fulfillment of that wish. This part of the theory (as well
as the universality of an underlying process) is decidedly questionable.
My own observations lead me to believe that a dream may be also the
expression of antecedent doubts, scruples, anxieties, etc., or may be an
answer to an unsolved problem. We need not concern ourselves with this
particular question here. I refer to it simply to point out that its
correct solution depends upon the correct determination of the true
causal factor which is necessarily antecedently unknown and must be
inferred. It is inferred or selected from the associated memories evoked
by the so-called method of analysis. Hence it must be always an element
open to greater or less doubt. _Dreams are a type of hallucinatory
phenomena_ and therefore we should expect that their mechanism would
correspond more or less closely with that of other hallucinatory
phenomena.

With the object in view of determining whether a dream could be produced
_experimentally_ and brought within the category of phenomena where the
causal factor was antecedently known, and thus determine the actuality
of a subconscious process as a necessary intervening link between the
two, I made the following experiment. It should be noted that a wish
_fulfilment_ necessarily means a dream content so far different in form
from the content of the _wish itself_ that the postulation of a
connecting link, conscious or subconscious, is required. I also sought,
if a subconscious process could be postulated, to discover how elaborate
and what sort of a work of constructive imagination a subconscious wish
could evolve.

To a suitable subject while in a deep hypnotic trance state I gave a
suggestion in the form of a wish to be worked out to fulfilment in a
dream. It so happened that this subject was going through a period of
stress and strain for which she sought relief. I also knew that she had
a very strong desire to do a good piece of original psychological work
and had advised her to take up the work as a solution of her
difficulties. So, taking advantage of this desire, I impressed upon her,
for the purpose of emphasizing the impulsive force of the desire, that
she now had the longed-for opportunity as the culmination of her
previous years of training to do the work. I then gave her the following
suggestion: “You want to do a good piece of original work and your dream
to-night will be the fulfillment of the wish.” No hint as to what form
the dream fulfilment should take was given, nor had she any knowledge
before being put into the trance state that I intended to make an
experiment.

It is interesting to note how the dream has a logical form which is
unfolded as an argument. This itself is an allegorical transcript of the
reasons previously suggested to her for the particular solution of her
problem.

The dream was a long one and into it were logically introduced as a part
of the argument the actual distressing circumstances for the relief of
which I had advised taking up the piece of psychological work as an
outlet to her feelings and solution of her problem of life. I will give
in detail only so much of the dream as contains the wish fulfilment
(which became also a part of the dream argument), summarizing the
remainder. The dream begins with an allegorical description of the great
task involved in the study of psychology by all the workers of the
world. The science of psychology is symbolized by a temple. “I dreamed I
was where they were building a great temple or cathedral; an enormous
place covering many acres of ground. Hundreds of men were building. Some
were building spires, some were building foundations, and some were
tearing down what they had built, some parts had fallen down of
themselves. I was wandering around looking on.” Then she proceeds to
help one of the builders who was building a particular part of the
temple by bringing him material in the form of stones. This she had
actually done, in real life, contributing much psychological material
out of her own experiences. Many of these experiences had been very
intimate ones from her inner life and had involved much suffering; hence
the stones which she contributed in her dream were big and heavy and
were beyond her strength to carry, so that she could only roll them,—and
some were sharp and made her hands bleed, so that her contribution
involved much suffering. This part of the dream was not only a prelude
to the suggested wish fulfilment but, as interpreted, contained a wish
fulfilment in itself.

Then there was interjected an allegorical but very accurate description
of the distressing circumstances to which I have referred and for which,
as a problem of life, the suggested work was advised as a solution. Then
logically followed the wish fulfilment and solution. She heard the voice
of the builder whom she had been helping say to her, “‘Now, here are all
the materials and you must build a temple of your own,’ and I [she]
said, ‘I cannot,’ and he said, ‘you can, and I will help you.’ So I
began to build the stones I had taken him. It was hard work, but I kept
on, and a most beautiful temple grew up.... All the stones were very
brilliant in color, but each one was stained with a drop of blood that
came from a wound in my heart. And the temple grew up; and I handled all
the stones; but somehow the temple grew up of itself and lots of people
were coming from all directions to look at it, and someone, who seemed
to be William James, said, ‘It is the most valuable part of the temple,’
and I felt very proud....’” After another interjection of the
distressing problem of her life just alluded to, the dream ends with the
figure of “a beautiful shining angel with golden spreading wings and the
word ‘Hope’ written on his forehead.” This figure “spread his lovely
wings and rose right up through the temple and became the top of the
spire, a gorgeous shining figure of Hope.”[102]

After this dream was obtained the subject, who had no knowledge that any
suggestion had been given to induce the dream, was told to analyze the
dream herself by the method of associative memories. As is customary in
the use of this method, in which she had had considerable experience,
the memories associated with each element of the dream were obtained.
These memories all led back directly to her interest in psychology and
desire to contribute some original work, and to her own life’s
experiences. Every one of the dream-elements (temple, spires,
foundations, stones, bleeding hands, drop of blood from the wound in her
heart, etc.) evoked associative memories which justified the inference
that these elements were symbolisms of past experiences or of
constructive imagination.

That this dream was determined by, and the explicit imaginary fulfilment
of the antecedent wish made use of in the experiment and motivated by
the suggestion would seem to be conclusively shown.

If, then, in any case a causal relation between an antecedent wish and
its dream fulfilment exists, it follows that there must be some link
between that wish experienced in the past and the present dream
fulfilment, some mode, mechanism, or process by which a past thought,
without entering consciousness, can continue to its own fulfilment in a
conscious work of the imagination, the dream. I say without entering
consciousness because the original specific thought-wish does not appear
in the dream consciousness, which is only the fulfilment. The phenomenon
as a whole is also inexplicable unless there was some motivating factor
or force which determined the form of the dream just as in conscious
fabrication and argument “we” consciously motivate and arrange the form
of the product. The only logical and intelligible inference is that the
_original wish_, becoming reawakened (by the preceding suggestion)
during sleep, _continued to function outside of the dream consciousness,
as a motivating and directing subconscious process_.

But what was the content of this process, and to what extent can its
elements be correlated with those of the dream? The experimental data of
this dream do not afford an answer to this question. (Those of the
observation I shall next give will permit a deeper insight into the
character and content of their process.) It is a reasonable inference,
however, inasmuch as the different elements of the dream—temple, stones,
etc., the material out of which it is constructed—are found to be
logical symbolizations of their associative memories, that these
memories took part in the subconscious process and consequently may be
correlated with their dream-symbols. In other words the content of the
subconscious process was more than a wish, or wish neurogram, it
included a large complex of memories of diverse experiences that can be
recognized through their symbolizations in the dream. This complex,
motivated by a particular wish, fabricated the dream, just as in the
hallucinations I have cited an underlying process fabricated the
hallucination as a symbolic expression of a subconscious judgment,
self-reproach, etc. To do this a process that must be termed a
_subconscious intelligence_ was required. The dream was an allegory, a
product of constructive imagination in the logical form of an argument,
and if constructed by an underlying process the latter must have had the
same characteristics.[103]

This experimental dream confirms therefore the general principle
formulated by Freud from the analysis of dreams in which the causal
factor is an inferred wish. It is likewise on the assumption of my
having correctly inferred this factor that I have insisted that a dream
may be a fabricated expression of thoughts other than wishes or may be
the solution of an unsolved problem. In this last case _the dream
phenomena and mechanism seem to be analogous in every way to the
subconscious solution of mathematical problems_ which I have already
described. In such and other cases the subconscious process would seem
to be a continuation and elaboration of the antecedent suggested
problem.

In dreams, then, or, as we should strictly limit ourselves for the
present to saying, _in certain dreams_, there are, as Freud first
showed, two processes; one is the conscious dream, the other is a
subconscious process which is the actuated residuum of a previous
experience and determines the dream.[104] It would be going beyond the
scope of our subject to enter into a full exposition of this
interpretation at this time and I must refer you for a discussion of the
dream problem to works devoted to the subject.

We have not, of course, touched the further problem of the _How_: how a
subconscious intelligence induces a conscious dream which is not an
emergence of the elements of that intelligence into self-consciousness,
but a symbolization of them. This is a problem which still awaits
solution. From certain data at hand it seems likely that so far as
concerns the hallucinatory perceptual elements of a dream they can be
accounted for as the _emergence of the secondary images_ pertaining to
the subconscious “ideas.”

The following observation is an _example of subconscious versification
and_ also of _constructive imagination_. It also, I think, gives an
insight into the character and content of the underlying process which
constructs a dream. I give the observation in the subject’s own words:

"I woke suddenly some time between three and four in the morning. I
was perfectly wide awake and conscious of my surroundings but for a
short time—perhaps two or three minutes—I could not move, and I saw
this vision which I recognized as such.

"The end of my room seemed to have disappeared, and I looked out into
boundless space. It looked misty but bright, as if the sun was shining
behind a light fog. There were shifting wisps of fog blowing lightly
about, and these wisps seemed to gather into the forms of a man and a
woman. The figures were perfectly clear and lifelike—I recognized them
both. The man was dressed in dark every-day clothes, the woman in
rather flowing black; her face was partly hidden on his breast; one
arm was laid around his neck; both his arms were around her, and he
was looking down at her, smiling very tenderly. They seemed to be
surrounded by a sort of rosy atmosphere; a large, very bright star was
above their heads—not in the heavens, but just over them; tall rose
bushes heavy with red roses in full bloom grew up about them, and the
falling petals were heaped up around their feet. Then the man bent his
head and kissed her.

"The vision was extraordinarily clear and I thought I would write it
down at once. I turned on the light by my bedside, took pencil and
paper lying there and wrote, as I supposed, _practically what I have
written here_. I then got up, was up some minutes, went back to bed,
and after a while to sleep. The clock struck four soon after getting
back into bed. I do not think I experienced any emotion at the moment
of seeing the vision, but after writing it down I did.

"The next morning I picked up the paper to read over what I had
written and was amazed at the language and the rhythm. This is what I
had written:

"‘Last night I waked from sleep quite suddenly,
And though my brain was clear my limbs were tranced.
Beyond the walls of my familiar room
I gazed outward into luminous space.
Before my staring eyes two forms took shape,
Vague, shadowy, slowly gathering from the mists,
Until I saw before me, you—my Love!
And folded to your breast in close embrace
Was she, that other, whom I may not name.
A rosy light bathed you in waves of love;
Above your heads there shone a glowing star;
Red roses shed their leaves about your feet.
And as I gazed with eyes that could not weep
You bent your head and laid your lips on hers.
And my rent soul’ ... [Apparently unfinished.]

“The thoughts were the same as my conscious thoughts had been—the
vision was well described—but the language was entirely different from
anything I had thought, and the writing expressed the emotion which I
had not consciously experienced in seeing the vision, but which (I
have since learned) I had felt during the dream, and which I did
consciously feel _after_ writing. When I wrote I meant simply to state
the facts of the vision.”[105]

The subject was unable to give any explanation of the vision or of the
composition of the verse. She rarely remembers her dreams and had no
memory of any dream the night of this vision. By hypnotic procedure,
however, I was able to recover memories of a dream which occurred just
before she woke up. It appeared that in the dream she was wandering in a
great open space and saw this “picture in a thin mist. The mist seemed
to blow apart” and disclosed the “picture” which was identical with the
vision. At the climax of the dream picture the dreamer experienced an
intense emotion well described in the verse by the unfinished phrase,
“My rent soul...” The dreamer “shrieked, and fell on the ground on her
face, and grew cold from head to foot and waked up.”

The vision after waking, then, was a repetition of a preceding _dream_
vision and we may safely assume that it was fabricated by the same
underlying process which fabricated the dream, this process repeating
itself after waking.

So far the phenomenon was one which is fairly common. Now when we come
to examine the automatically written script we find it has a number of
significant characteristics. (1) It describes a conscious episode, (2)
As a literary effort for one who is not a poetical writer it is fairly
well written and probably quite as good verse as the subject can
consciously write; (3) It expresses the mental attitude, sentiments and
emotions experienced in the dream but not at the time of the vision.
_These had also been antecedent experiences_; (4) Both the central ideas
of the verse and the vision symbolically represented certain antecedent
presentiments of the future; (5) The script gives of the vision an
interpretation which was not consciously in mind at the moment of
writing.

Now, inasmuch as these sentiments and interpretations were not in the
conscious mind at the moment of writing, the script _suggests_ that the
process that wrote it was not simply a subconscious memory of the vision
but the same process which fabricated the dream. Indeed, the phenomenon
is open to the suspicion that this same process expresses the same ideas
in verbal symbolism as a substitution for the hallucinatory symbolism.
To determine this point, an effort was made to recover by technical
methods memories of this process; that is to determine what wrote the
verse and by what sort of a process. The following was brought out:

1. The script was written automatically. The subject thought she was
writing certain words and expressing certain thoughts and did not
perceive that she was writing different words. “Something seemed to
prevent her seeing the words she wrote.” There were two trains of
“thought.”

2. The “thoughts” of the verse were in her “subconscious mind.”[106]
These “thoughts” (also described as “words”) were not logically arranged
or as written in the verse, but “sort of tumbled together—mixed up a
little.” “They were not like the thoughts one thinks in _composing_ a
verse.” There did not seem to be any attempt at selection from the
thoughts or words. No evidence could be elicited to show that the
composing was done here.

3. Concurrently with these subconscious, mixed-up thoughts coconscious
“images” of the words of the verse came just at the moment of writing
them down. The images were bright, printed words. Sometimes one or two
words would come at a time and sometimes a whole line.

In other words all happened _as if_ there was a deeper underlying
process which did the composing and from this process certain thoughts
without logical order emerged to form a subconscious stream and after
the composing was done the words of the verse emerged as coconscious
images as they were to be written. This underlying process, then,
“automatically” did the writing and the composing. Hence it seemed to
the subject even when remembering in hypnosis the subconscious thoughts
and images that both were done unconsciously.

As to whether this underlying process was the same as that which
fabricated the dream and the hallucination, the evidence, albeit
circumstantial, would seem to render this almost certain. In the first
place the verse was only a poetical arrangement of the subconscious
thoughts disclosed; the vision was an obvious symbolic expression or
visual representation of the same thoughts (that is, of course, of those
concerned with the subject matter of the vision). The only difference
would seem to be in the form of the expression—verbal and visual imagery
respectively.[107] In the second place the vision was an exact
repetition of the dream vision. It is not at all rare to find certain
phenomena of dreams (visual, motor, sensory, etc.) repeating themselves
after waking.[108] This can only be explained by the subconscious
repetition of the dream process. Consequently we are compelled to infer
the same subconscious process underlying the dream-vision. More than
this, it was possible to trace these thoughts back to antecedent
experiences of the dreamer, so that in the last analysis the
dream-vision, waking-vision, and poetical expression of the vision could
be related with almost certainty to the same antecedent experiences as
the causal factors.

Certain conclusions then seem compulsory: underlying the dream, vision,
and script was a subconscious process in which the fundamental factors
were the same. As this process showed itself capable of poetical
composition, constructive imagination, volition, memory, and affectivity
it was a _subconscious intelligence_.

As to its intrinsic nature—coconscious or unconscious—according to the
evidence at least the process that wrote the script contained conscious
elements—the coconscious thoughts and images.

We may assume the same for the dream and the vision. As to the mechanism
of the vision it is quite conceivable, not to say probable, that,
corresponding to the coconscious images of the printed words during the
writing, there were similar images of the vision scene (both in the
dream and the waking state), but these _instead of remaining coconscious
emerged into consciousness to be the vision_.[109] Whether the still
deeper underlying process was conscious or unconscious could not be
determined by any evidence accessible and must be a matter of
hypothesis.

The chief importance that attaches to this observation, it seems to me,
is the insight it gives into the character of the underlying process of
a dream. If the conclusions I have drawn are sound, then the
subconscious process which determines the conscious dream may be what is
actually an _intelligence_ and it matters not whether a coconscious or
unconscious one. This seems to me to be a conclusion fraught with the
highest significance for the theory of dreams and hallucinatory
phenomena in general. Of course we all know well enough that dissociated
subconscious processes may be intelligent and influence the content of
the personal consciousness, as witness coconscious personalities. If the
underlying process of a dream may be something akin to such a
personality, something capable of reasoning, imagination and volition,
it renders intelligible the fundamental principle of the Freudian theory
of a double process—the “latent” and “manifest” dream. One of the
difficulties in the general acceptance of this theory has been, I think,
the difficulty of conceiving a subconscious process—the “latent
dream”—capable of the intelligent fabrication of a “manifest” dream
phantasy which is a cryptic symbolization of the subject’s thoughts.
Such a fabrication has all the earmarks of purpose, fore-thought and
constructive imagination. But if this underlying process can be
identified, even though it be in a single case, with such an
intelligence as that which wrote the poetical script we have studied, it
is plainly quite capable of fabricating the wildest dream phantasy.

I have suggested that the _subconscious intelligence_ may be _comparable
to the phenomenon of a coconscious personality_. It is worth noting in
this connection that in the case of Miss B. the coconscious personality,
Sally, who claimed to be awake while Miss B. was dreaming, also claimed
that Miss B. sometimes dreamed about what Sally was thinking of at the
moment.[110] In other words, the thoughts of a large systematized
coconscious intelligence determined the dream just as these thoughts
sometimes emerged into Miss B.’s mind when awake. That a coconscious
personality may persist awake while the principal personality is asleep
I have been able to demonstrate in another case (B. C. A.). It was also
noted in Dr. Barrows’ case of Anna Winsor. Moreover, Sally was shown to
be a persistent, sane coconsciousness while Miss B. was delirious and
also while she was apparently deeply etherized and unconscious.[111]
After all it is difficult to distinguish _in principle_ the condition of
sleep with a persisting coconsciousness from a state of deep hypnotic
trance where the subject is apparently unconscious. In this condition,
although the waking consciousness has disappeared, there can be shown to
be a persisting “secondary” consciousness which can be communicated with
by automatic writing and which later can exhibit memories of occurrences
in the environment during the hypnotic trance. (B. C. A.)

What has been said does not touch, of course, the other mechanisms of
the Freudian theory nor the unessential, greatly over-emphasized theory
that the subconscious dream is always a sexual wish. On the contrary,
the principle throws a strong, _a priori_ doubt upon the correctness of
this generalization. It is plainly, however, a matter of fact which
might be easily determined by observation were it not for the difficulty
of correctly referring clinical phenomena to the correct antecedent
experiences as their causal factors. In the last analysis it becomes
always a matter of interpretation.

=Applied psychology.=—Much has been discovered in recent years regarding
the part played by subconscious processes in the production of normal
and abnormal phenomena. But we do not as yet know the possibilities and
limitations of these processes. We have as yet but an imperfect
knowledge of what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they do do,
and of the mechanisms by which they are called into play and provoke
phenomena. _Many pathological phenomena_ have been shown to be due to
subconscious processes; and it is quite probable that these play an
important part in determining the mental processes of normal life, but
this is still largely theory. In applied psychology and psychopathology
the “subconscious” has been made use of to explain many phenomena with
which we have practically to deal. Assumed as a concept the phenomena
are explained by it with a greater or less degree of probability. In
those _hysterical conditions_ where the subconscious processes have been
shown to be split-off conscious processes, we can often recover memories
of the latter and demonstrate their relation to the hysterical phenomena
by the various technical methods already mentioned. But where this
cannot be done, as is ordinarily the case, some conserved antecedent
experience must be inferred as the causal factor and assumed to be the
functioning subconscious process which determines the phenomenon. To a
large extent, then, in applied psychology and psychopathology the
postulation in specific cases of a subconscious process is theoretical
and open to more or less doubt. In other words, although a principle may
be established, its application, as in all applied sciences, is apt to
meet with difficulties.

Now the application of the principle of a subconscious process to the
explanation of a given phenomenon is rendered peculiarly difficult
because for practical purposes it is not so much the question of a
subacting process that is at issue as it is of what particular
antecedent experience is concerned in the process. The question is of
the causal factor. For example, we may know from general experience in a
large number of instances that a given hysterical phenomenon—a tic or a
convulsive attack or an hallucination or a dream—must be in all
probability determined by a subconscious process derived from some
conserved experience, but what specific experience may be a matter of
considerable uncertainty. _Hence the different theories and schools of
interpretation_ that have arisen. The importance of clearly appreciating
the nature of such problems and properly estimating the different
theories at their true value is so great that I may be permitted a few
words in further explanation.

Let us take dreams as a type. The conscious dream may be made up of
fantastic imagery and apparently absurd thoughts without apparent
logical meaning. Now from general experience we may believe that the
dream is a cryptic symbolic expression of a logical subconscious
process—perhaps a wish. The question is, what wish? The symbolism cannot
be deciphered on its face. Now, by the analytic method associative
memories pertaining to each element of the dream are recovered in
abstraction. When a memory of antecedent thoughts of which the dream
element is a logical symbolism or synonym and which give an intelligent
meaning to the dream is recovered, we infer that these antecedent
thoughts are contained in the determining subconscious process. Further,
as it is found that certain objects or actions (e. g., snakes, flying,
etc.) frequently occur in the dreams of different people as symbolisms
of the same thoughts, it is inferred that whenever these objects or
actions appear in the dream they are always symbolisms of the same
underlying thoughts.

Obviously the mere fact of an antecedent experience arising as an
associative memory is not of itself evidence of its being the causal
factor. Hundreds of such memories might be obtained. To have evidential
value the memory must give logical meaning to the dream or dream element
under investigation. Now, as a matter of fact, more than one memory can
often be obtained which answers these conditions. Consequently it
becomes a matter of selection from memories, or interpretation, as to
which is the correct solution of a given dream problem—and _mutatis
mutandis_ of a pathological phenomenon. Naturally the selection is
largely determined by personal views and _a priori_ concepts. It also
follows that if one accepts the universality of a given symbolism and is
committed to a given theory one can, by going far enough, find
associations in vast numbers of dreams that will support that theory.
The correct solution of a dream problem, that is, the correct
determination of the specific underlying process, depends upon the
correct determination of the causal factor and this must be inferred.
The inferential nature of the latter factor therefore introduces a
possible source of error. There must frequently be considerable latitude
in the interpretation. This is not to gainsay that in a large number of
instances the logical relation between antecedent experiences (recovered
by associative memories) and the dream is so close and obtrusive that
doubt as to the true subconscious process can scarcely be entertained.

An example of a condensed _analysis of a dream_ will illustrate the
practical difficulty often presented in determining by clinical methods
the correct causal factor and subconscious process of a dream. I select
a simple one which consists of two scenes:[112]

"C. was somewhere and saw an old woman who appeared to be a _Jewess_.
She was holding a _bottle_ and a _glass_, and seemed to be drinking
whisky. Then this woman changed into her own _mother_, who had the
bottle and glass, and appeared likewise to be drinking whisky.

“Then the door opened and her _father_ appeared. He had on her
_husband’s dressing gown_, and he was holding _two sticks of wood_ in
his hand.”

Before interpreting this dream I will state that the subject had been
tormented (as was brought out by the associative memories) by the
question whether poor people should be condemned if they yielded to
temptation, particularly that of drinking. This problem she could not
answer satisfactorily to herself. It is the inferred causal factor in
the dream process. The dream gave an answer to this problem.

Let me also point out that the material, that is, the elements out of
which this dream was constructed (indicated by the words italicized),
was found in the thoughts of the dreamer on the preceding day and
particularly just before going to sleep. The first scene of the dream
ends with the mother drinking whisky: the second scene represents the
father appearing with two sticks of wood. For the sake of simplicity of
illustration I will confine myself to the _interpretation_ of this first
scene as it will answer our present purposes.

“As to the first scene” (by technical methods of analysis) “a rich
collection of memories was obtained. It appeared that on the previous
morning the subject had walked with a _poor Jewess_ through the slums,
and had passed by some men who had been _drinking_. This led her to
think at the time of the lives of these poor people; of the
_temptations_ to which they were exposed; of how little we know of
this side of life and of its _temptations_. She wondered what the
effect of such surroundings, particularly of seeing people _drinking_,
would have upon the child of the Jewess. She wondered if such people
ought to be condemned if they yielded to drink and other temptations.
She thought that she herself would not blame such people if they
yielded, and that we ought not to _condemn_ them. Then in the
psychoanalysis there came memories of her mother, whose character she
admired and who _never condemned any one_. She remembered how her
mother, who was an invalid, always had a glass of _whisky_ and water
on her table at night, and how the family used to joke her about it.
Then came memories again of her husband sending _bottles of whisky_ to
her mother; of the latter _drinking_ it at night; of the men whom she
had seen in the slums and who had been _drinking_. These, very
briefly, were the experiences accompanied by strong feeling tones
which were called up as associative memories of this scene of the
dream. With these in mind, it is not difficult to construct a logical,
though symbolic, meaning of it. In the dream _a_ Jewess (not _the_
Jewess, but a type) is in the act of drinking whisky—in other words,
the poor, whom the _Jewess_ represents, yield to the temptation which
the dreamer had thought of with considerable intensity of feeling
during the day. The dreamer’s own judgment, after considerable
cogitation, had been that such people were not to be condemned. Was
she right? The dream answers the question, for the Jewess changes in
the dream to her mother, for whose judgment she had the utmost
respect. Her mother now drinks the whisky as she had actually done in
life, a logical justification (in view of her mother’s fine character
and liberal opinion) of her own belief, which was somewhat intensely
expressed in her thoughts of that morning, a belief in not condemning
poor people who yield to such temptations. The dream scene is
therefore the symbolical representation and justification of her own
belief,[113] and answers the doubts and scruples that beset her mind.”

Whether or not this is the correct interpretation of this dream depends
entirely upon whether the true causal factors were found. If through the
analysis this was the case, as I believe—namely, the scruple or ethical
problem whether poor people who yield to temptation ought to be
condemned—then the interpretation given is logically sound and the dream
is an answer to the doubts and scruples that beset the dreamer’s mind.
But the answer is a pictorial symbolism and therefore requires an
intervening subconscious process which induces and finally expresses
itself in the symbolism. We may suppose that this process in response to
and as a subconscious incubation of the ethical problem took some form
like this: “Poor people like the Jewess are not to be condemned for
yielding to the temptation (of drinking) for my mother, who was beyond
criticism, showed by her life she would not have condemned them.”

This may or may not be the true subconscious process and the correct
interpretation of the dream. But it is one possible and logical
interpretation based upon the actually found antecedent experiences and
associative memories of the dreamer. Now it so happens that this
interpretation and that of other dreams[114] which I endeavored to trace
to antecedent experiences have been warmly challenged by certain
clinicians because the inferred causal factors were not found to be
antecedent repressed sexual wishes. It is insisted on theoretical
grounds that the content of the dreams plainly indicated that there must
have been such wishes and that if these had been found this dream would
have been unfolded as a logical symbolical fulfilment of a sexual wish.
Which interpretation is correct is inconsequential for our present
purpose. The controversy only relates to the universality of the sexual
theory of dreams. The point is that this difference in interpretation
shows the possibility of error in the determination of the causal factor
and the subconscious process by clinical methods. The dream may be
logically related to two or more antecedent experiences and we have no
criterion of which is the correct one. To insist upon one or the other
savors of pure dogmatism.[115] Indeed, the justification for the
postulation in a dream of any subconscious process in the last analysis
depends upon the soundness of the postulation of the antecedent
experience as the causal factor. If this factor falls to the ground the
subconscious process falls with it.

The second point to which this discussion leads us is that the latitude
of interpretation allowed by the method of analysis has given rise to
different views as to the specific character of the subconscious process
found in many dreams. According to the theory of Freud, to whose genius
we are indebted for the discovery of this process, it is almost always a
sexual wish and the dream is always the imaginary, even though cryptic,
fulfilment of that wish. On the other hand, as a result of my own
studies, if I may venture to lay weight upon them, I have been forced to
the conclusion that _a dream may be the symbolical expression of almost
any thought_ to which strong emotional tones with their impulsive forces
have been linked, particularly anxieties, apprehensions, sorrows,
beliefs, wishes, doubts, and scruples, which function subconsciously in
the dream. It may be a solution of unsolved problems with which the mind
has been occupied,[116] just as in the waking state a mathematical or
other problem may be solved subconsciously. In some subjects the problem
is particularly apt to be one involving a conflict between opposing
impulses, therefore one which has troubled the dreamer.[117]

We have seen that in experimental and spontaneous hallucinatory
phenomena, where the causal factor is known, a subconscious process is
the essential feature of the mechanism. In this respect the mechanism is
identical with that of certain dreams. Indeed, dreams are one type of
hallucinatory phenomena. In fact we met with one dream the chief element
of which was repeated afterward in the waking state as a vision. We are
justified, then, in applying the principle of a subconscious process to
the elucidation of the _visions of normal people_, although it may be
difficult to determine exactly the specific content of the process and
the antecedent thought from which it was derived. Sometimes the content
of a vision and the known circumstances under which it occurred are
sufficient to enable us to interpret the phenomenon with reasonable
certainty. In the following historical examples it is not difficult to
recognize that the vision was a symbolic answer to a problem which had
troubled the conscience of the Archduke Charles of Austria. Unable to
solve his problem consciously and come to a decision, it was solved for
him by a subconscious process. Indeed, as a fact, the vision was
accepted by Charles as an answer to his doubts and perhaps changed the
future history of Austria.

“The Archduke Charles (the father of the present Emperor of Austria)
was also greatly troubled in his mind as to the right to waive his
claim to the crown in favor of his son. According to his own statement
he only finally made up his mind when, while earnestly praying for
guidance in his perplexity, he had _a vision of the spirit of his
father, the late Emperor Francis, laying his hand on the head of his
youthful grandson and thus putting all his own doubts to rest_.”[118]

The likeness in type of the dream which we have just discussed to this
vision is instructive. In the former the mother of the dreamer answers
the question of conscience by drinking the whisky; in the latter the
father of the visualizer does the same by laying his hand on the head of
the object of the doubt.

I have already pointed out the evidence for a subconscious process
underlying the hallucinatory phenomena of sudden religious
conversion.[119] I may further cite here, as an analogous phenomenon,
the following historical example of not only hallucinatory symbolism,
but of _explicitly conscious processes of thought_ which were elaborated
by subconscious processes. It is Margaret Mary’s vision of the Sacred
Heart. Margaret earnestly desired (according to her biographer)——

“To be loved by God! and loved by him to distraction (aimé jusqu’à la
folie)!—Margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a thing.
Like St. Philip of Neri in former times, or like St. Francis Xavier,
she said to God: ‘Hold back, O my God, these torrents which overwhelm
me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception.’”

The answer and the form of the fulfilment of this wish came as an
hallucination. She had a vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart

“‘surrounded with rays more brilliant than the sun, and transparent
like a crystal. The wound which he received on the cross visibly
appeared upon it. There was a crown of thorns roundabout this divine
Heart, and a cross above it.’ At the same time Christ’s voice told her
that, unable longer to contain the flames of his love for mankind, he
had chosen her by a miracle to spread the knowledge of them. He
thereupon took out her mortal heart, placed it inside of his own and
inflamed it, and then replaced it in her breast, adding: ‘Hitherto
thou hast taken the name of my slave, hereafter thou shalt be called
the well-beloved disciple of my Sacred Heart.’”[120]

There is scarcely room to doubt, on the strength of the evidence as
presented, that the antecedent longings of Margaret impelled by the
conative force of their emotions were the causal factor of this vision.
These longings, organized in the unconscious, must have gone through
subconscious incubation (as William James has pointed out) and then
emerged after maturity into consciousness as a symbolic visualization
accompanied by hallucinatory words which were the expression of explicit
subconscious imagination. Indeed, all such hallucinatory symbolisms—like
the mental phenomena in general of sudden religious conversion—can only
be psychologically explained as the emergence into consciousness of
subconscious processes. The problem in each case is the determination of
the content of the process.[121]

_Reflection, consideration, meditation._—We are entering upon more
uncertain ground in attempting to apply the mechanism of subconscious
processes to every-day thought. There are certain types of thought,
however, which behave as if this mechanism were at work. When, for
instance, we take a problem “under advisement,” reflect upon it, give it
“thoughtful consideration,” it seems as if, in weighing the facts pro
and con, in looking at it from different points of view, i.e., in
switching it into different settings, in considering all the facts
related to it, we _voluntarily_ recall each fact that comes into
consciousness. Yet it is quite possible, and indeed I think more than
probable, reasoning from analogy, that the processes which present each
fact, switch each point of view, or setting into consciousness, are
subconscious and that what we do is chiefly to select from those which
are thus brought into consciousness the ideas, settings, etc., which
fulfil best the requirements of the question. In profound reflection or
attention to thought (a form of absentmindedness) it seems as if it were
more a matter of attention to and selection from the “free associations”
which involuntarily come into the mind than of determining voluntarily
what shall come in. If this be so, it is evident that the subconscious
plays a much more extensive part in the mechanism of thought than is
ordinarily supposed. We have not, however, sufficient data to allow us
to do much more than theorize in the matter. Yet there are certain data
which suggest the probability of the correctness of this hypothesis. In
this connection I would point out how entirely confirmatory of this view
is the testimony of the hypnotic consciousness which was cited in the
previous lecture and which I will ask you to recall. You will remember
that this testimony was to the effect that when a problem was under
consideration associative memories required for its solution kept
emerging out of the unconscious into the secondary consciousness.[122]

Consider certain facts of every-day experience. A novel and difficult
question is put up to us for decision. We have, we will say, to decide
whether a certain piece of property situated in a growing district of a
city shall be sold or held for future development: or a political
manager has to decide whether or not to pursue a certain policy to win
an election; or the President of the United States has to decide the
policy of the government in certain land questions in Alaska. Now each
of us would probably say that we could not decide such a question
offhand; we would want time for consideration. If we attempted
voluntarily, at the moment the question is put, to recall to mind all
the different facts involved, to consider the given question from all
aspects, to switch the main facts into their different settings, we
would find it an impossible thing to do. We consequently take the matter
“under advisement,” to use the conventional expression. We want time.
Now what we apparently, and I think undoubtedly, do is to put the
problem _into_ our minds and leave it, so to speak, to incubate. Then,
from time to time, as we take up the matter for consideration, the
various facts involved in the different aspects of the question, and
belonging to their different settings, arise to mind. Then we weigh,
compare, and estimate the value of these different facts and arrive at a
judgment. All happens as if subconscious processes had been at work, as
if the problem had been going through a subconscious incubation,
switching in this and switching in that set of facts, and presenting
them to consciousness, the final selection of the deciding point of view
being left to the latter. The subconscious garners from the storehouse
of past experiences, those which have a bearing on the question and are
required for its solution, brings them into consciousness, and then our
logical conscious processes form the judgment. The degree to which
subconscious processes in this way take part in forming judgments would
vary according to the mental habits of the individual, the complexity of
the problem, the affectivity and conflicting character of the elements
involved. Under this theory we see that there is a deeper psychological
basis for the every-day practice of taking “under advisement” or “into
consideration” a matter, before giving judgment, than would appear on
the surface. There is considerable experimental evidence in favor of
this theory. In discussing above the subconscious solution of problems I
cited certain evidence, obtained from the memories of subjects in
hypnosis, for coconscious and unconscious processes taking part in such
solutions. I have been able to accumulate evidence of this kind showing
the coöperation of processes outside of consciousness in determining the
point of view and final judgment of the subject when a matter has been
under advisement; particularly when the subject has been disturbed by
doubts and scruples. It is plain that in the final analysis any question
on which we reserve our judgment is a problem which we put _into_ our
minds. And, after all, _it is only a question of degree and affectivity
between the state of mind which hesitates to decide an impersonal
question, like a judicial decision, and one that involves a scruple of
conscience_. This latter state often eventuates in hallucinatory and
other phenomena involving subconscious processes. Scruples of
conscience, it is true, usually have strong affective elements as
constituents, but the former may also have them, particularly when
involving personal ambitions, political principles, etc.

-----

Footnote 98:

The Dissociation, Appendix L, p. 548.

Footnote 99:

The Dissociation, Chapter XXXI.

Footnote 100:

As a matter of fact, the judgment was erroneous, though a justifiable
inference.

Footnote 101:

Cf. The Dissociation, 2d edition, p. 567.

Footnote 102:

William James had once said to her in my presence that she could make
a valuable contribution to psychology. It is interesting to note,
although it is aside from the question at issue, that this subject had
strenuously denied that there was any “hope,” insisting that she was
absolutely devoid of any such sentiment. Through hypnotic memories,
however, I was able to demonstrate that this was only consciously
true, and that there were very evident and strong coconscious ideas of
hope of which she was not consciously aware. She had refused to
acknowledge these ideas to herself and by repression had dissociated
them from the personal consciousness. These ideas now expressed
themselves symbolically in the dream.

Footnote 103:

We must remember that a dreaming state is a dissociated state (like a
fugue or trance), and numerous observations have shown that in such
conditions any of the dormant related experiences of life may modify,
repress, resist, alter, and determine the content of the dissociated
consciousness. It is difficult to conceive of a dream allegory being
constructed by the dream consciousness itself. If that were the
mechanism, we should expect that the associative ideas for which
symbols are chosen would appear during the dream construction as is
the case in waking imagination. The method of the mental processes is
very different in the latter. We there _select_ from a number of
associative ideas that crowd into consciousness, choose our symbols,
and remember the rejected ideas. This is not the case with dream
imagination. The imagery develops as if done by something else.

Footnote 104:

It must not be assumed that all dreams are determined by a
subconscious process or that all are symbolic. On the contrary, from
evidence in hand, there is reason to believe that some dreams have
substantially the same mechanism as waking imagination subject to the
limitations imposed by the existing dissociation of consciousness
during sleep. Just as, in the waking state, thoughts may or may not be
determined by subconscious processes, so in the sleeping state. We
know too little about the mechanisms of thought to draw wide
generalizations or to dogmatize.

Footnote 105:

“For two or three days previously I had been trying to write some
verses, and had been reading a good deal of poetry. I had been
thinking in rhythm. I had also been under considerable nervous and
emotional strain for some little time in reference to the facts
portrayed in the verse.”

Footnote 106:

By this is meant “thoughts” of which she was not aware. Numerous
observations on this subject have disclosed such subconscious ideas in
connection with other phenomena. This corresponds with the testimony
of other subjects previously cited. (Lecture VI.)

Footnote 107:

As a theory of the mechanism of the vision I would suggest that it was
the emergence of the secondary visual images belonging to the
subconscious ideas.

Footnote 108:

See page 102. Also Prince: The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams.
_Jour. Abnormal Psychology_. Oct.-Nov., 1910. G. A. Waterman: Dreams
as a Cause of Symptoms. Ibid. Oct.-Nov., 1910.

Footnote 109:

I base this theory on other observations where coconscious images or
“visions” of scenes occurred. When these images emerge into
consciousness the subject experienced a vision.

Footnote 110:

The Dissociation, p. 332.

Footnote 111:

The Dissociation of a Personality, p. 330.

Footnote 112:

Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams, _Journal Abnormal Psychology_,
Oct.-Nov., 1910.

Footnote 113:

The symbolic expression of beliefs and symbolic answers to doubts and
scruples is quite common in another type of symbolism, viz., visions.
Religious and political history is replete with examples.

Footnote 114:

_Loc. cit._

Footnote 115:

It has been answered that experience in a large number of cases shows
that dreams always can be related logically to sexual experiences. To
this it may be answered they can also in an equal number of cases,
indeed in many of these same cases, be related to non-sexual
experiences.

Footnote 116:

_Loc. cit._ It is possible, however, that sometimes the problem has
been solved subconsciously in the waking state, the answer then
appearing in the dream.

Footnote 117:

Here we find an analogy with certain allied phenomena—the visions and
voices experienced as phenomena of sudden religious conversion.

Footnote 118:

Francis Joseph and His Sir Horace Rumbold. Page 151. (Italics mine.)

Footnote 119:

See also, “The Psychology of Sudden Religious Conversion,” _Journal
Abnormal Psychology_, April, 1906, and “The Dissociation,” 2nd Edit.,
pages 344 and 564; also James’ “The Varieties of Religious
Experience.”

Footnote 120:

Quoted by William James, page 343.

Footnote 121:

Some will undoubtedly read into Margaret’s vision a cryptic sexual
symbolism. To do so seems to me too narrow a view, in that it fails to
give full weight to other instincts (and emotions) and to appreciate
all the forces of human personality.

Footnote 122:

Lecture VI, pp. 169-172.

LECTURE VIII
THE UNCONSCIOUS

Our studies up to this point have led us to the general conclusion that
a large measure of the experiences of life are conserved or deposited in
what may be called a storehouse of neurographic dispositions or residua.
_This storehouse is the unconscious._ From this storehouse our conscious
processes draw for the material of thought. Further, a large amount and
variety of evidence, which we have briefly and incompletely reviewed,
has shown that conserved experiences may function without arising into
consciousness, i.e., as a subconscious process. To what extent such
processes take part in the mechanism of thought, contribute to the
formation of judgments, determine the point of view and meaning of
ideas, give direction to the stream and formulate the content of
consciousness, and in particular conditions, by a species of
translation, manifest themselves consciously as phenomena which we
designate abnormal constitute special problems which require to be
studied by themselves.

=Physiological memory and processes.=—There is one phase of the
unconscious which for the sake of completeness ought to be touched upon
here, particularly as it is of considerable importance in any biological
conception of intelligence. _There is every reason to believe that_
intrinsically _there is no essential difference between those
physiological dispositions and activities of the lower nervous centers
(subcortical ganglia and spinal cord), which condition and determine
unconscious behavior, and those dispositions and activities of the
higher centers—the cortex—which condition and determine both conscious
and unconscious behavior._ The former are undoubtedly innate in that
they are primarily conditioned by inherited anatomical and physiological
prearrangements of neurons and the latter are pre-eminently acquired
through experience although probably not wholly so. (Our knowledge of
the localization of function in the nervous system is not sufficiently
definite to enable us to delimit the localization of either innate or
acquired dispositions.) The innate activities of the lower nervous
centers so far as represented by movements can be clearly differentiated
from those of the higher centers and recognized in the behavior of
so-called “spinal” animals and of animals from which the cerebral
hemispheres have been removed. In the former the connection between the
spinal cord and all parts of the nervous system above having been
severed, whatever movements are executed are performed by the spinal
cord alone and therefore of course by unconscious processes. The latter
animals, although their actions are more complex and closely approximate
(with important differences) those of normal animals, are also devoid or
nearly devoid of consciousness. I say “nearly devoid” because in the
interpretation of the experiments it is difficult to disprove that, as
some hold, elementary sensations—qua sensation—are retained, though
others regard the animals as purely unconscious physiological machines.

In the spinal animal, in response to specific stimuli, various movements
are elicited which though of a purposive character are effected, as has
been so admirably worked out by Sherington, by complex spinal mechanisms
of a reflex character. The so-called “scratch reflex” and the reflex
movements of walking, trotting, and galloping (the animal being
suspended in air) are examples. Such reflexes involve not only the
excitation of certain movements appropriate to the stimulus but the
inhibition of antagonistic muscles and reflex movements. Further in the
integration of the spinal system, reflexes are compounded, one bringing
to the support of another allied accessory reflexes so that various
coöperative movements are executed. A constellation of reflexes leads to
quite complex spinal mechanisms responsive to groups of stimuli acting
concurrently and resulting in behavior which is purposive and adaptive
to the situation. The neural processes executing such movements are
necessarily conditioned by inherited dispositions and structural
arrangements of the neurons.

In the animal from which the cerebral hemispheres only have been removed
there can be little doubt that the physiological mechanisms governing
behavior differ only in complexity, not in kind, from those of the
spinal reflexes; that in passing through successive anatomical levels
from the spinal animal to this decerebrate animal with the addition of
each successive ganglion the increasing complexity of behavior
corresponds to increasing complexity of mechanisms or compounding of
reflexes. And yet in the decerebrate animal without consciousness, as we
must believe (excepting perhaps elementary sensations), the subcortical
ganglia and spinal cord continue to perform exceedingly complex actions
ordinarily, as we suppose, guided in the normal animal by consciousness.
The reptile crawls; the fish swims; indeed the lancet fish has no brain,
all its functions being regulated by its spinal cord. The frog hops and
swims; the hen preens its feathers, walks and flies; the dog walks and
runs. These, however, are the simplest examples of decerebrate behavior.
Indeed it may be quite complex. The more recent experiments of Schräder
on the pigeon and falcon and Goltz and Rothmann on the dog, not to
mention those of earlier physiologists, have shown that the decerebrate
unconscious (?) animal performs about all the movements performed by the
normal animal.[123] “A mammal such as a rabbit, in the same way as a
frog and a bird, may in the complete or all but complete absence of the
cerebral hemispheres maintain a natural posture, free from all signs of
disturbance of equilibrium, and is able to carry out with success at all
events all the usual and common bodily movements. And as in the bird and
frog, the evidence also shows that these movements not only may be
started by, but in their carrying out are guided by and coordinated by,
afferent impulses along afferent nerves, including those of the special
senses. But in the case of the rabbit it is even still clearer than in
the case of the bird that the effects of these afferent impulses are
different from those which result when the impulses gain access to an
intact brain. The movements of the animal seem guided by impressions
made on its retina, as well as on other sensory nerves; we may perhaps
speak of the animal as the subject of sensations; but there is no
satisfactory evidence that it possesses either visual or other
perceptions, or that the sensations which it experiences give rise to
ideas.”[124]

Even _spontaneity_ which at one time was supposed to be lost it is now
agreed returns if the animal is kept alive long enough. It “wanders
about in the room untiringly the greater part of the day” (Loeb).

Of course there are differences in the animal’s behavior when compared
with normal behavior, but these differences are not so easy to interpret
in psychological terms. Loeb, apparently following Schräder, does not
believe the animal is blind or deaf or without sensation for it reacts
to light, to noise, to smell, to tactile impressions, etc. It avoids
obstacles and is guided by visual impressions, etc. The falcon jumps at
and catches a mouse introduced in its cage; the dog growls and snaps if
its paw is pinched and endeavors to get away or bite the offending hand;
the pigeon flies and alights upon a bar, apparently visually measuring
distance, and so on. But though it is guided by visual and other sensory
_impressions_, does it have visual, auditory and other _images_, that
is, conscious sensory states? This is not easy to answer. It certainly
acts like an animal that is not blind nor deaf nor without tactual
sensation, and yet it is conceivable that it is guided simply by sensory
mechanisms without conscious sensation. The main reason, apparently, for
believing the animal to be without sensation, as some believe (e. g.,
Morgan) is the absence of the cerebral cortex in which alone sensation
is believed to be “localized.” Recently Rothmann[125] has succeeded in
keeping alive for three years a dog from which the entire cerebrum was
extirpated. It was then killed. Although the dog, like Goltz’ dog, in
its behavior exhibited an abundance of functions in the spheres of
mobility, sensibility, feeding, barking, etc., Rothmann came to the
conclusion that it was blind and deaf.[126] Although apparently without
taste for bitter, sweet, sour, and acid, yet the dog reacted differently
to edible and non-edible substances, swallowing the former and rejecting
the latter (moist sand); raw flesh was eaten preferably to cooked flesh
and Goltz’ dog rejected from its mouth food made bitter with quinine.
Some kind of gustatory processes (probably purely reflex as in Pawlow’s
association experiments) were therefore retained though not necessarily
taste as such. But blindness and deafness in the dog cannot negative the
retention in birds and other animals of visual and auditory impressions
of some kind which guide and originate behavior. But whether such
impressions are psychologically sensations or not, the animal certainly
does not possess visual or other _perceptions_, because the “sensations”
have no “meaning.” Schräder’s falcon, for example, would jump at and
catch with its claws a moving mouse in the cage, but there the matter
was at an end; it did not devour it as would a normal falcon. Any moving
object had for it the same meaning as a mouse and excited the same
movement. So the decerebrate dog does not distinguish friend from
stranger and other dogs have no meaning for it. All objects are alike to
all decerebrate animals. In the popular language of the street “all
coons look alike” to them. In other words the main defect is loss of
memory for conscious experiences, of what Loeb calls associative-memory,
the conscious memory which gives meaning to sensations, transforms them
by synthesis into _perception_ of objects and gives still further
meaning to the objects. Hence for the pigeon without its cerebrum
“Everything is only a mass in space, it moves aside for every pigeon or
attempts to climb over it, just as it would in the case of a stone. All
authors agree in the statement that to these animals all objects are
alike. They have no enemies and no friends. They live like hermits no
matter in how large a company they find themselves. The languishing coo
of the male makes as little impression upon the female deprived of its
cerebrum as the rattling of peas or the whistle which formerly made it
hasten to its feeding place. Neither does the female show interest in
its young. The young ones that have just learned to fly pursue the
mother, crying unceasingly for food, but they might as well beg food of
a stone.”[127]

One of the chief utilities of conscious memory is the means it offers
the psycho-physiological organism to make use of past experiences to
adapt present conduct to a present situation. This the brainless animal
cannot do. Hence it is a mindless physiological automaton. All the
actions performed by it, however complex they may be, are unquestionably
performed and primarily conditioned by inherited neural arrangements and
dispositions. They may be even regarded as complexly compounded reflex
processes similar excepting in complexity, as Sherrington has held, to
the mechanisms of the spinal cord. The behavior of the animal is
therefore by definition instinctive. But even so this fact in no way
throws light upon the intrinsic nature of the physiological process, but
only upon the conditions of its occurrence. Acquired behavior is also
conditioned—conditioned by acquired dispositions. The difference
physiologically between the two is that in instinctive behavior the
neural processes are confined to pathways established by evolutionary
development, and in acquired behavior to pathways established by
experience. Both must be conditioned by pathways, and the process in its
inner nature must be the same in both. Many cortical processes, to be
sure, are conscious—i.e., correlated with consciousness—but probably not
all. And this quality of consciousness permitting of conscious memory is
of great utility in the organization of acquired dispositions that
provide the means for the adaption of the animal to each new
environmental situation.

Furthermore, it is not at all certain that the behavior of the
decerebrate animal is not in part determined by _secondarily acquired
dispositions_. In the normal animal instinctive actions become modified
and perfected after the very first performances of the act by conscious
experience[128] and it is not at all certain that dispositions so
acquired and essential for these modifications are not conserved and
incorporated in the unconscious neural arrangements of the subcortical
centers. So far as this may be the case the acquired modifications of
instinctive behavior may be manifested in the actions of the decerebrate
animals. In other words, the unconscious processes of the lower nervous
centers motivating movements (and visceral functions) may include
_acquired dispositions or physiological memories_.

That the subcortical centers are capable of memory seems to have been
shown for the first time by Rothmann’s dog. This mindless animal proved
to be capable of a certain amount of education. It learned to avoid
hitting against objects, and to do certain tricks—jumping over a hurdle
and following on its hind legs a stool upon which its fore feet were
placed as the stool was dragged forward. “In the perfection of all these
performances the influence of practice was easily recognized.” This
means, if the interpretation given is correct, that new dispositions and
new connections may be acquired within the lower centers _without the
intervention of the integrating influence of the cortex_ or conscious
intelligence.[129] This is an important contribution for apparently the
attempt to educate brainless animals had not been previously made, and
their capability for education demonstrated.

The important bearing which this fact has upon this discussion is that
it shows that unconscious processes are capable of memory, that is
physiological memory. It may be said that this statement needs some
modification if the sensory “impressions” guiding the decerebrate animal
are to be interpreted as true psychological, however elementary,
“sensations.” It would seem to me on the contrary only to accentuate the
fact that the processes of the brainless animal are on a transition
level between the purely unconscious processes of the spinal animal and
the purely (if ever wholly so) conscious processes of the normal animal,
and that intrinsically all are of the same nature. If sensation enters
into the complex reflex reactions of the brainless animal it would seem
that it can only be an elemental conscious factor in a complicated
unconscious physiological mechanism. In this mechanism it can have no
more specific importance in determining behavior, because of the fact of
its being a psychological state, than if it were a receptor “impression”
intercalated in the arc of an innate process. It is not linked with any
associative memories of the past or foresight into the future; it does
not constitute conscious intelligence. As a conscious experience it
cannot have that kind of “meaning” which in the normal animal modifies
instinctive processes and determines conduct. It probably plays simply
the same part in the whole process, which otherwise is wholly
unconscious, that the associative sensory image plays in determining the
flow of thick or thin saliva in Pawlow’s dogs—simply a single link in a
chain of associated reflex processes.

The next point to which I would direct attention is that from an
objective point of view the behavior of the decerebrate animal may be in
nature _intelligent_ in the empirical sense of that word. The dog that
growls and snaps when his foot is pinched, tries to draw it away, and,
failing that, bites at the offending hand; the “educated” dog that jumps
over a hurdle, and walks on his hind legs, following a stool supporting
his front legs, to my way of thinking performs intelligent actions
whether it has a brain or not. If intelligence is arbitrarily limited to
actions performed by conscious processes, then intelligence becomes a
mere question of terms.[130] There arises also the practical difficulty
that certain types of behavior, which by common assent and common sense
are regarded as purely automatic and unintelligent, must be termed
intelligent because guided by consciousness. I cannot help thinking that
“intelligence” is a pragmatic question, not a biological or
psychological one. It would be much more conducive to a clear
understanding of biological problems to use intelligence only as a
convenient and useful expression, like sanity or insanity, to designate
certain behavior which conforms to a type which, without strictly
defining its limits, popular language has defined as intelligent. Sanity
and insanity have ceased to be terms of scientific value because they
cannot be defined in terms of specific mental conditions and much less
in terms of mental processes. So intelligence cannot be defined in terms
of conscious and unconscious processes. Any attempt to do so meets with
insuperable difficulties and becomes “confusion worse confounded.” When
we say then that the behavior of the decerebrate dog may be intelligent,
all that is meant is that the animal exhibits behavior identical with
that which in the normal animal we would empirically call intelligent.
In this sense unconscious processes may exhibit intelligence. It was
from this viewpoint, I think, that Foster concluded: “In short, the more
we study the phenomena exhibited by animals possessing a part only of
their brain, the closer we are pushed to the conclusion that no sharp
line can be drawn between volition and lack of volition, or between the
possession and absence of intelligence. Between the muscle-nerve
preparation at one limit, and our conscious willing selves at the other,
there is a continuous gradation without a break; we cannot fix on any
linear barrier in the brain or in the general nervous system, and say
‘beyond this there is volition and intelligence, but up to this there is
none.’”[131]

It has already been pointed out (Lecture V) that, in man, complicated
actions which have been volitionally and perhaps laboriously acquired
may be afterwards involuntarily and unconsciously performed.[132] In
other words, after intelligent actions have been acquired by conscious
processes, they may be performed by subconscious processes for which
there is no conscious awareness and probably these may be either
coconscious or entirely unconscious. There is no sharp dividing line
between the activities of the unconscious, coconscious, and conscious.

When we descend in the scale of animal life to the insects (bees, ants,
etc.,) we observe motor activity of a highly complex character of a kind
that is termed intelligent, but we are forced to conclude, from various
considerations, that the elements of consciousness have dwindled away to
what can be nothing more than mere sensibility. In other words
consciousness is reduced to its lowest terms, but behavior and the
neural processes are maintained at a high level of complexity.
Accordingly there is a disproportion between the complexity of the motor
behavior and the inferred simplicity of consciousness, for in the higher
animals the former would be correlated with complex psychological
processes. If this be so, the motor activities must be determined by
processes which are mostly unconscious.

In still lower forms of life the motor activities can be referred to
simple tropisms, and thus necessarily are wholly unconscious.

Between the most complex unconscious physiological processes performed
by the nervous system and the simpler cerebral processes accompanied by
consciousness there is not as wide a step as might seem when
superficially viewed. The physiological process may, as we have seen,
manifest itself in acts of quite as intelligent a character as those
exhibited by the conscious process, and indeed more so; for the
conscious act may be little more than a limited reflex. On the other
hand a psychological process may be so elementary that it contains
nothing of awareness of self, of intelligence, or of volition in the
true sense—nothing more, perhaps, than an elementary sensation without
even perception. But it may be said that the presence of the most
rudimentary state of consciousness makes all the difference and renders
the gulf between the two impassable.

We are not called upon to discuss that question here. It is one which
involves the ultimate nature of physical processes. A distinction should
be made between psychological and psychical, these not being coextensive
and always interchangeable terms. Psychological pertains to the
empirical data of consciousness, (thoughts, ideas, sensations, etc.)
while psychical pertains to the inner or ultimate nature of these data.
Though the data as given in consciousness are psychical, that which is
psychical may not be solely manifested as psychological phenomena. It
may be manifested as physical phenomena and perhaps be identified with
the energy of the universe. Hence the doctrine of panpsychism. And so it
may be that in its ultimate analysis an unconscious process is psychical
(monism) although not psychological and not manifesting itself as a
datum of consciousness. Certain it is that, _objectively_ viewed, there
is nothing to distinguish physiological from psychological intelligence.
If the extraordinary instinctive habits exhibited by insects, such as
bees and ants and by still lower forms of animal life, can rightly be
interpreted as, in large part at least, manifestations of physiological
processes, as is quite possible, the distinction between the conscious
and the unconscious in respect to intelligence and adaptability to
environment would be reduced to one only of degree. That some of the
lowest forms of life are endowed with consciousness, in any sense in
which the word has psychological meaning, seems incredible, though they
manifest instinctive intelligence of no mean order. The fact probably
is, as I have just intimated, that those processes we call physiological
and those we call psychological are in their inner nature identical, and
the former are quite capable of functioning, incredible as it may seem,
in a fashion that we are accustomed to believe can only be the attribute
of conscious intelligence. This does not mean, of course, that the
physiological intelligence can reach the same degree of perfection as
that reached by conscious intelligence, though conversely, the latter
may be of a lower order than physiological intelligence.[133] From this
point of view we are logically entitled to regard physiological
processes, even of the lower nervous centers and even though they are
not acquired but due to congenital structural and functional
arrangement, as phases of the unconscious.

=Psycho-physical parallelism and monism.=—According to the doctrine of
psycho-physical parallelism every mental process is correlated with
(accompanied by) a brain process. As brain processes thus viewed are
“unconscious” (in the sense of not having the attribute of
consciousness) we may express this in other terms and say: every
“conscious” process is accompanied by an “unconscious” process. I have
no intention of entering here into the question of the validity of the
doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism. I wish merely to point out that
if parallelism is a true formulation of the mind-brain problem, as I
have just stated it, the converse ought to hold true, namely, that every
brain process of a certain kind involving intelligence ought to be
correlated with consciousness. But if some subconscious processes
manifesting what is equivalent to thought, reasoning, judgment,
imagination, volition, etc., are unconscious—as seems likely if not
probable—then this converse does not hold true. This has some bearing on
the validity of the doctrine; for if physical processes can perform
substantially the same function as conscious intelligence it is
difficult to reconcile this fact with what I may call naïve
psycho-physical parallelism.

It is reconcilable, however, with psychic monism. According to this
doctrine it is not a question of parallelism at all. There is only one
process—the psychical. The physical brain process is only an aspect or
special mode of apprehending this one. All is psychical but not
psychological. That which we apprehend in the form of the unconscious is
really psychical and hence is capable of performing the same _kind_ of
function as it performs when it becomes psychological. It is not at all
certain that unconscious processes may not comprise an intelligence
possessing faculties identical in kind with those of conscious
intelligence and indistinguishable from the latter. Subconscious
processes may exhibit perception, cognition, reason, imagination,
conation (will), feeling, etc., and it is possible that some of these
processes may be correctly interpreted as unconscious. At any rate, from
the point of view of monism, whether the real psychical process or,
probably more correctly, how much of it shall emerge as a psychological
state of consciousness depends upon intrinsic conditions. Though we
cannot penetrate within them it is quite conceivable that it is a matter
of complexity of synthesization and coöperative activity of psychical
energies. This is a most interesting problem closely related to that of
awareness and self-consciousness.

=The meanings of the unconscious, subconscious, and coconscious.=—Though
the term “unconscious” is in general use it has so many connotations
derived from its various meanings in metaphysics, psychology, and
physiology that its use has given rise to considerable confusion of
thought, particularly, I am compelled to believe, in the interpretation
of specific psycho-physiological phenomena. Nevertheless, it has been so
well established in our nomenclature that we could not replace it if we
would. Nor is it wholly desirable to do so. It is a good and useful
term, but I believe that with each advance in the precision of our
knowledge we ought, so far as accumulative data permit, to give
precision to the concept for which it stands. Just as in physical
science we attempt to give precision to our concept of electricity in
conformity with new data accumulated from time to time, so our
psychological concepts should be defined and limited in accordance with
the advance in knowledge. Some do not like to define the term, not being
quite willing to commit themselves unreservedly to the complete
acceptance of the physiological theory of memory and to cut adrift
from the metaphysical concept of a subliminal mind. If the
psycho-physiological theory of memory, which is now generally accepted,
is sound, we have one meaning of the unconscious which is a very
definite concept, namely, the brain residua, physiological
“dispositions” or neurograms in which the experiences of life are
conserved. These terms become, therefore, synonyms for the unconscious.
That, under certain conditions, the passive neurograms may, under
stimulation, become active and function unconsciously (i.e., without
corresponding psychological equivalents being introduced into the
personal consciousness), need not invalidate the concept. We are then
dealing with an unconscious and dynamic process. The effects of such
functioning are simply the manifestations of the unconscious and may be
recognized either in modifications of the stream of consciousness or in
bodily disturbances. The term unconscious is an appropriate and
descriptive term to characterize that which is devoid of the attributes
of consciousness. This use of the term has been sanctioned by common
usage.

Unfortunately, however, the term has been also employed to characterize
another and distinct class of facts, namely _Co-[or Sub-]conscious
Ideas_. We shall have occasion to study these psychological phenomena in
other lectures.[134] We have seen examples in many of the phenomena I
have cited. It is sufficient to say here, that as conceived of, and as
we have seen, they are very _definite states of coconsciousness—a
coexisting dissociated consciousness or coconsciousness of which the
personal consciousness is not aware_, i.e., of which it is
“unconscious.” Hence they have been called “unconscious ideas” and have
been included in the unconscious, particularly by German writers. But
this is plainly using the term in a different sense—using it as a
synonym for the longer phrase, “ideas we are unaware of,” and not as a
characterization of that which is physiological and non-psychological.

“Unconscious ideas” in this sense (the equivalent of coconscious ideas)
would include conscious states that we are not aware of simply because
not in the focus of attention but in the fringe of the content of
consciousness. The term would also include pathologically split-off and
independently acting coconscious ideas or systems of ideas such as occur
in hysteria, reaching their apogee in coconscious personalities and in
automatic writings. Here we have a series of facts essentially different
from the conceptual facts of physical residua, the form in which
experiences are conceived to be conserved. Manifestly it is confusing
and incorrect to define both by “the unconscious.” And to speak of the
former as “unconscious ideas” and of the latter as “unconscious,”
although technically correct, leads to confusion from using the term
“unconscious” in two different senses.[135]

As a concept in a scheme of metaphysics, “unconscious ideas”—i.e., ideas
of which we are not conscious, have long been recognized. Leibnitz was
the first to maintain, on theoretical grounds and by _a priori_
reasoning, the existence of ideas of which we are not aware, as did
likewise Kant, influenced by Leibnitz, and later Schilling, and Herbart;
while Hartmann evolved the unconscious into a biological and
metaphysical system.[136]

By most American, English, and French psychologists such ideas, as
conceived at least by Leibnitz, Kant, and Herbart, would to-day be
called subconscious or coconscious ideas. Hartmann included all
physiological processes of the nervous system in the Unconscious and
ascribed to them special attributes (will, purpose, etc.). The
Unconscious accordingly has connotations from which it is not easy to
rid ourselves in dealing with it. It is generally agreed that it is
desirable to have a term which shall cover all classes of
facts—coconscious ideas, conserved experiences, and physiological
processes—without committal of opinion as to interpretation.[137]

It does not follow, however, that the term “unconscious” is the one that
should be chosen. On the contrary, as unconscious has two distinct and
different meanings (that pertaining to unawareness and that which is
non-psychological) it is a very undesirable term if we wish to be
precise in our terminology. That we should have a term which shall
precisely define ideas which are not in awareness and which shall
distinguish them from physiological processes is necessitated by the
fact that such ideas in themselves form a distinct field of
investigation.

The term “subconscious” is commonly used, excepting by German writers,
to characterize these coconscious ideas. In fact, by some French medical
writers, particularly Janet, it is very precisely limited to such ideas.
By other authors it is employed in this sense and also to include the
physical residua of experiences, and sometimes with the additional
meaning of unconscious physiological neurograms, or processes, which it
defines—in fact, to denote any conserved experience or process outside
of consciousness. On the other hand, among these authors, some do not
admit the validity of the concept of coconscious ideas, but interpret
all so-called subconscious manifestations as the expression of the
physiological functioning of physiological neurograms in which the
experiences of life are conserved. Subconscious and unconscious are,
therefore, quite commonly, but not always, employed as synonyms to
define two or three different classes of facts. For practical reasons,
as already stated, it is desirable to have a term which shall embrace
all classes of facts, and of the two terms in common use, subconscious
and unconscious, the former is preferable, as it is not subject to the
double meaning above mentioned. I, therefore, use the term subconscious
in a generic sense to _include_ (_a_) _coconscious ideas or processes_;
(_b_) _unconscious neurograms, and_ (_c_) _unconscious processes_. Of
course it is only a matter of terminology. The conceptual facts may then
be thus classified:

{ (synonym: subconsciousideas.)
{ The coconscious {
{ { {a: Conserved dormant
{ { {neurograms or neural
{ { {dispositions.
The subconscious {
{ { {b: Active functioning
{ The unconscious { {neurograms or neural
{ { processes.
{ { (synonym: unconscious
{ { processes.)

Subconscious as an adjective used to qualify ideas is plainly equivalent
to coconscious ideas. This terminology I have found useful in keeping
the different classes of conceptual facts separate in my mind and I
believe it will prove to be equally useful to others. With the
conceptual facts clearly differentiated it will be generally easy to
recognize the various senses in which the terms are used when found in
the writings of others.

=The unconscious as a fundamental of personality.=—A survey of all the
facts and their relations, which I have outlined in the preceding
lectures, brings into strong relief the important principle that no
matter in what state complexes of ideas are formed, so long as they are
conserved, they become a part of our personality. They become dormant,
but, being conserved, they may under favorable conditions be awakened
and enter our conscious life. It matters not whether complexes of ideas
have been formed in our personal consciousness, or in a state of
hypnosis, in dreams, in conditions of dissociated personality, in
coconsciousness, or any other dissociated state. They all become parts
of ourselves and may afterwards be revived under favoring conditions,
whether volitionally, automatically, by artificial devices, by
involuntary stimuli, or other agencies. They may or may not be subject
to voluntary recall as recollections, but, so long as they form part of
our dormant consciousness as physiological neurograms, they belong to
the personal self. “After all,” as Miss B. used to say, and correctly,
referring to her different dissociated personalities, BI, B III, and
BIV, “after all, they are all myself.” It makes no difference in what
state an experience has occurred. A potential memory of it may persist
and may, in one way or another, be revived, no matter how or when it
originated.

Through the conception of the _sub_conscious as resolvable, on the one
hand, into the _un_conscious, passive or active physiological
dispositions, and, on the other hand, into _co_active conscious states,
the subconscious becomes simplified and intelligible. It offers a basis
on which may be constructed comprehensible theories of memory,
suggestibility, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams, automatic writing and
similar phenomena, artificial hallucinations, the protean phenomena of
hysteria, and the psycho-neuroses, as well as the mechanism of thought.
It enables us also to construct a rational concept of personality and
self. As we shall see, when we take up the study of multiple personality
in later lectures, out of the aggregate of the accumulated and varied
experience of the past conserved in the unconscious may be constructed a
number of different personalities, each depending upon a synthesis and
rearrangement of life’s neurograms and innate dispositions and
instincts. All dormant ideas with their feeling tones and conative
tendencies belong to our personality, but they may be arranged with
varying instincts and innate dispositions into a number of
differentiated systems, each synthesized into a corresponding
personality. In the unconscious may be conserved a vast number of life’s
experiences ranging in time almost from the cradle to the grave. The
hopes, the wishes, the anxieties of childhood may still be there, lying
fallow, but capable of injecting themselves under favoring conditions
into our personalities. Properly speaking, from this point of view,
aside from certain artificial and pathological conditions, there is,
_normally_, no distinct “subconscious _self_,” or “subliminal _self_,”
or “secondary _self_,” or “hidden _self_.” In artificial and
pathological conditions there may be, as has been frequently shown, a
splitting of consciousness and the aggregation into a secondary
coconscious system of large systems of ideas which have all the
characteristics of personality. This secondary personality (of which the
primary personality is not aware) may have its own memories, feelings,
perceptions, and thoughts. It may appropriate to itself various
complexes of neurograms deposited by the experiences of life which are
not at the disposal of the principal personality. Such a coconscious
system may properly be spoken of as a subconscious _self_. But there is
no evidence that, _normally_, such systems exist. All that we are
entitled to affirm is that every individual’s consciousness may include
ideas of which he is not aware, and that he has at his disposal, to a
greater or less extent, a large unconscious storehouse in which are
neurographically conserved a large and varied mass of life’s
experiences. These experiences may be arranged in systems, as we shall
see in the next lecture, but they do not constitute a “self.” To speak
of them as a subconscious, subliminal, secondary, or hidden self is to
construct concepts which are allegories, metaphors, symbolisms,
personifications of concrete phenomena. Their use tends to fallacious
reasoning and to perverted inductions from the facts. Becoming major
premises in a syllogism, they lead to erroneous interpretations of the
simplest facts, just as fixed ideas or obsessions tend to a perverted
interpretation of the environment.

We are now in a position to see that the psycho-physiological theory of
memory has a far-reaching significance. The facts which have been
brought before you in evidence of the theory have been selected largely
from those which were capable of verification by experimentation and by
other objective testimony. They include a large variety of experiences
which occurred in pathological conditions like amnesia and multiple
personality, and in artificial conditions like hypnosis and
intoxication. Such abnormal conditions enable us to show by testimony,
independent of the individual, that these experiences had actually
occurred, and, therefore, to show that the reproductions of these
experiences were in principle truthful memories. They also enable us to
appreciate the enormous variety and quantity of experiences which,
although absolutely beyond the power of voluntary recall, may be
conserved nevertheless as neurograms, and also to appreciate the
minuteness of detail in which the brain records may be preserved.

If you will stop a moment to think, and give play to your imagination,
you will see that the principle of the neurographic conservation of
experiences must be true not only of our outer life, of our experiences
with our environment, but of our whole _inner life_, normal as well as
abnormal. It is always possible that any thought, any feeling, however
trivial and transitory, may leave neurograms in the brain. It is always
possible that even a fleeting doubt or scruple, thoughts which flash
into the mind and straightway are put out again, all may leave their
records and dispositions to function again. Even a passing doubt which
any of you may entertain regarding the interpretation of the phenomena I
have described, and the correctness of our conclusions, may be recorded.
Indeed, it is a matter of some importance for the understanding of
abnormal mental conditions that many of those horrid little sneaking
thoughts which we do not like to admit to ourselves, the thoughts which
for one reason or another we endeavor to repress, to put out of our
minds, may leave their indelible traces. In fact, these are the very
thoughts, the ones which we try hardest to forget, to push aside, which
are most likely to be conserved. The harder we try, the stronger the
feelings attached to them, the more likely they are to leave neurograms
in the brain though they may never be reproduced. This has been shown by
observation of pathological conditions, like hysteria and psychasthenia,
and by experimentation. In repressing our thoughts we do not put them
out of our minds, but, as the subject previously cited, who in hypnosis
could recall such repressed thoughts, said, we put them _into_ our
minds. In other words, we conserve them as neurograms.

In one sense, I suppose, we may say that every one leads a double life.
Let me hasten to say to you, I mean this not in a moral but in an
intellectual sense. Every one’s mental life may fairly be said to be
divided between those ideas, thoughts, and feelings which he receives
from and gives out to his social world, the social environment in which
he lives, and those which belong more properly to his inner life and the
innermost sanctuary of his personality and character. The former include
the activities and the educational acquisitions which he seeks to
cultivate and conserve for future use. The latter include the more
intimate communings with himself, the doubts and fears and scruples
pertaining to the moral, religious, and other problems of life, and the
struggles and trials and difficulties which beset its paths; the
internal contests with the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the
devil. The conventionalities of the social organization require that the
outward expression of many of these should be put under restraint.
Indeed, society insists that some, the sexual strivings, are aspects of
life and human nature which are not to be spoken or thought of. Now, of
course, this inner life must also leave its neurographic tracings along
with the outer life, and must, potentially at least, become a part of
our personality, liable to manifest itself in character and in other
directions. But, more than this, abnormal psychology, through its
technical methods of investigation and through the perverted
manifestations exhibited in sick conditions of mind and body, has shown
us that the neurograms deposited as the experiences of this inner life
may flower, to use an expression of the lamented William James, below
the threshold of consciousness, and, under certain conditions, where the
mind is in unstable equilibrium, burst forth in mental and bodily
manifestations of an unusual character. Thus in processes of this kind
we find an explanation of religious phenomena like sudden conversion; of
dreams and of certain pathological phenomena like the hallucinations,
deliria, crises, and bodily manifestations of hysteria, and the numerous
automatic phenomena of spiritualistic mediums. Such phenomena may then
be interpreted as the _flowering or functioning of the unconscious_.

The essential difference in the consequences which follow from this
psycho-physiological conception of memory, based as it is on the
unconscious, and those which follow from that conception which is
popularly held must be obvious. According to popular understanding the
mental life which we have outlived, the life which we have put behind
us, whether that of childhood or of passing phases of adult life, is
only an ephemeral, evanescent phase of consciousness which once out of
mind, put aside or forgotten, need no longer be taken into consideration
as pertaining to, much less influencing, our personality. Writers of
fiction who undertake to depict human nature almost invariably, I
believe, are governed by this point of view. They describe their
characters as throwing overboard their past, their dominating beliefs,
convictions, and other traits as easily as we should toss undesirable
refuse into the ocean. Their heroes and heroines jettison their
psychological cargoes as if they were barrels of molasses whenever their
personalities show signs of going down in the storms of life’s
experiences. According to this view, which is derived from an imperfect
conception of mental processes, any passing phase of consciousness
ceases to have potential existence or influence as soon as it is
forgotten, or as soon as it ceases to be a consciously dominating belief
or motive of life. It is assumed that so long as we do not bring it back
into consciousness it belongs to us no more than as if it had originated
in the mind of another, or had taken flight on the wings of a dove. This
is true in part only. A phase of consciousness may not be conserved, or
it may become so modified by the clash with new experiences that a
rearrangement of its elements takes place and it becomes, for instance,
a new motive or belief, or a new setting to give a new meaning to an
idea. On the other hand, any passing phase may, as we have seen, still
belong to our personality even though it lies hidden in its depths. That
we no longer recall it, bring it voluntarily into the field of our
personal consciousness, does not negative its continuing (though
dormant) existence, and its further influence upon the personality
through the subconscious workings of the mind.

In conclusion, and by way of partial recapitulation, we may say, first:
The records of our lives are written in unconscious dormant complexes
and therein conserved so long as the residua retain their dynamic
potentialities. It is the unconscious, rather than the conscious, which
is the important factor in personality and intelligence. The unconscious
furnishes the formative material out of which our judgments, our
beliefs, our ideals, and our characters are shaped.

In the second place, the unconscious, besides being a _static_
storehouse, has _dynamic_ functions. It is evident that, theoretically,
if unconscious complexes are once formed they may, under favoring
conditions of the psycho-physical organism, become revived and play an
important part in pathological mental life. If through dissociation they
could be freed from the normal inhibition and the counterbalancing
influences of the normal mental mechanism, and given an independence and
freedom from voluntary control, they might, by functioning, produce
abnormal states like fixed ideas, delusions, automatisms,
hallucinations, etc. A study of such abnormal phenomena confirms this
theoretical view and finds in this conception of the unconscious an
explanation of the origin of many of them. The hallucinations and
bizarre notions and delusions of the insane, the hysteric, and
psychasthenic, where all seems chaos, without law or order, are often
due to the resurrection and fabricating effect of unconscious complexes
formed by the earlier experiences of the patient’s life. Of course, the
mechanism by which such phenomena are produced is a complicated one
about which there is much difference of opinion and which we cannot
enter into here. In post-hypnotic phenomena and artificial
hallucinations we have experimental examples of the principle.

More than this, and more important, there is considerable evidence going
to show that conserved experiences functioning as subconscious processes
take part in and determine the conscious processes of everyday life. On
the one hand stored neurograms may undergo subconscious incubation,
assimilating the material deposited by the varied experiences of life to
finally burst forth in ripened judgments, beliefs, and convictions, as
is so strikingly shown in sudden religious conversions and allied mental
manifestations. Through a similar incubating process, the stored
material needed for the solution of baffling problems is gathered
together and oftentimes assimilated and arranged and formulated as an
answer to the question. On the other hand, subconscious processes may be
but a hidden part of that mechanism which determines our everyday
judgment and our points of view, our attitudes of mind, the meanings of
our ideas, and the traits of our characters. Antecedent experiences
functioning as such processes may determine our fantasies and our
dreams. Thus functioning as dynamic processes the stored residua of the
past may provide the secrets of our moods, our impulses, our prejudices,
our beliefs, and our judgments.

It remains, however, for future investigation to determine the exact
mechanism and the relative extent to which subconscious processes play
their parts.

-----

Footnote 123:

For a general account of the behavior of decerebrate animals and
summary of these experiments see Loeb’s “Physiology of the Brain,” and
Schäfer’s Text Book of Physiology.

Footnote 124:

M. Foster: A Text Book of Physiology, 1895, page 726.

Footnote 125:

Von M. Rothmann: Demonstration des Hundes ohne Grossirn. _Bericht über
den V Kongress f. Experiment. Psychol. in Berlin, 1912_, page 256. The
report is too meager to admit of independent judgment of the animal’s
behavior in many of its details.

Footnote 126:

Until the basal ganglia have been microscopically examined it cannot
be determined that the loss of function was not due to secondary
organic lesions. In Goltz’ dog, which acted like a blind dog, one
optic nerve was cut and the corpora striata and optic thalami were
partly involved in the lesion.

Footnote 127:

Quoted from Schräder by Loeb.

Footnote 128:

Cf. Lloyd Morgan: Instinct and Experience, 1912.

Footnote 129:

Dr. Morgan in his work, “Instinct and Experience,” 1912, published
before Rothmann’s observations, remarks that this “is not inherently
improbable” although it had not as yet been demonstrated.

Footnote 130:

From the point of view here adopted, the recent discussions and
controversies over the problems of “instinct and intelligence” have
been much muddled by the arbitrary denial of conscious elements to an
instinctive process, and by the acceptation of consciousness or
conscious experience as the criterion of intelligence. In this view
instinct and intelligence become contrasted concepts which to my way
of thinking they are not necessarily at all. If it is admitted that
instinct is an innate disposition, its contrasted quality is that
which is _acquired_ and not the quality of consciousness. It is true
that acquired behavior is commonly if not always determined by
conscious processes (conscious experience), but likewise innate
behavior may be determined by processes which contain conscious
elements. Surely fear is instinctive and is a conscious element in an
innate process; and so must be visual and other sensory images, as in
the first peck of a chicken. To look upon the first visual image
simply as conscious “experience,” as an “onlooker,” and reject it as a
factor in the process which determines that first peck, seems to me to
be arbitrary psychology if not physiology. If consciousness may be a
quality of an innate process—and why not?—it cannot be a criterion of
intelligence. The true converse of the conscious is the unconscious.

This adopted antithesis between consciousness and instinct, from this
point of view as well as the arbitrary limitation of the localization
of the whole of an instinctive process to the subcortical centers,
vitiates the force of the very able presentation of the subject by Dr.
Morgan, if I correctly understand him. I know of no data which forbid
the cortex to be included in the innate mechanism of an instinctive
process. On the contrary, it is difficult to understand instinctive
behavior and its modifications through conscious experience unless
cortical centers are included in the psycho-physiological arcs. At any
rate we may define instinct and intelligence in terms of the conscious
and the unconscious, or in brain terms, but we should not mix up these
aspects with that of localization in the definition. Mr. McDougall’s
conception of instinct appeals to me more strongly from both a
biological and a psychological point of view, and further seems to me
to be more in consonance with the data of experience.

Footnote 131:

A Text Book of Physiology, 1893, page 727.

Footnote 132:

The localization of the processes concerned in all such acquired
automatic behavior—whether it is in the cortex or subcortical
centers—is an unsolved problem.

Footnote 133:

If the subconscious processes which perform a mathematical calculation
and other problems, which logically determine the symbolism of a
dream, etc., can be correctly interpreted as unconscious, they plainly
exhibit a higher order of intelligence than any conscious processes in
lower animals, or even some conscious processes of man, like brushing
away a fly.

Footnote 134:

Not included in this volume.

Footnote 135:

It has been objected that to speak of unconscious ideas is a
contradiction of terms. This seems to me to smack of quibbling as we
know well enough that the adjective is used in the sense of
unawareness.

Footnote 136:

For a good account of the history of the theory of unconscious ideas
in philosophy see Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” where
the following quotations may be found: “To have ideas and yet not to
be conscious of them—there seems to be a contradiction in that—for how
can we know that we have them if we are not conscious of them?
Nevertheless, we may become aware indirectly that we have an idea,
although we be not directly cognizant of the same.” (Kant,
Anthropology, sec. 5.) And again: "Innumerable are the sensations and
perceptions whereof we are not conscious although we must undoubtedly
conclude that we have them, obscure ideas as they may be called (to be
found in animals as well as in man). The clear ideas, indeed, are but
an infinitely small fraction of these same exposed to consciousness.
That only a few spots on the great chart of our minds are illuminated
may well fill us with amazement in contemplating this nature of ours.
(Ibid.)

“Now unconscious ideas” are such “as are in consciousness without our
being aware of them” (Herbart).

It is interesting to notice how Kant’s statement might well be
substituted for that of Myers’ of his “Subliminal.” It is difficult to
understand the peculiar antagonistic attitude of certain theoretical
psychologists to the theory of subconscious (coconscious) ideas in
view of the history of this theory in philosophy. They seem to have
forgotten their philosophy and not to have kept pace with experimental
psychology.

Footnote 137:

See footnote on p. 149.

LECTURE IX
THE ORGANIZATION OF UNCONSCIOUS COMPLEXES

=Everyday life.=—It will be well at this point to state in orderly
fashion a few general principles governing the organization of complexes
or syntheses of ideas[138] which, as we shall see, play an important
part in normal and abnormal life. Although this statement will be little
more than descriptive of what is common experience it will be helpful in
classifying and obtaining a useful perspective of the phenomena with
which we shall deal.

Now, as every one knows, the elemental ideas which make up the
experience of any given moment tend to become organized (i.e.,
synthesized and conserved) into a system or complex of ideas, linked
with emotions, feelings and other innate dispositions, so that when one
of the ideas belonging to the experience comes to mind the experience as
a whole is recalled. We may conveniently term such a system when in a
state of conservation, an _unconscious complex_[139] _or neurogram, or
system of neurograms_. If we wish to use psychological terms we may
speak of it as a complex or synthesis of dormant ideas. Although we may
formulate this principle as the “association of ideas” the formula can
have only a descriptive significance pertaining to a relation in time
(and not a causal one) unless there be included an unconscious factor by
which the association becomes effective in exciting one idea through
another—i.e., through a linking of neural dispositions. We cannot
conceive of any conscious relation between ideas that can possibly
induce this effect. It must be some _unconscious dynamic relation_[140]
and be explained in terms of neural dispositions. If this be so, all
ideas are dynamically associated and related in a process which does not
appear in consciousness and which is essential for organization into a
complex. Every system of associated ideas, therefore, implies
conservation through an organized unconscious complex.

Complexes may be very feebly organized in that the elemental ideas are
weakly conserved or weakly associated; in which case when we try to
recall the original experience only a part or none of it is recalled.

On the other hand, a complex may be strongly organized and include a
large number of details of an experience. This is usually owing to the
fact that the original experience was accompanied by strong emotional
tones, or by marked interest and attention, or was frequently repeated.

=Emotional Complexes=: 1. When the original experience was accompanied
by an emotion it may be regarded as having excited one or more of the
emotional instincts of anger, fear, disgust, etc. The excitation of the
instinct or instincts is in one sense a _reaction_ to the ideas of the
experience. The instincts then become organized about one or more of the
ideas to form a sentiment (Shand) and the whole is incorporated in a
complex which then acquires an affective character. The impulsive force
of the instinct thereafter largely determines the behavior of the
complex. (To this we shall return later when we consider the instincts.)
General observation shows that emotional experiences are more likely to
be conserved and also voluntarily recalled. Given such an emotional
complex nearly anything associated with some detail of the experience
may, by the law of association, automatically or involuntarily revive
it, or the emotional reaction with a greater or less number of its
associated memories. This tendency seems to be directly proportionate to
the intensity of the instinct (fear, anger, etc.) incorporated in the
complex. Sometimes, it is true, a strongly emotional experience, even an
experience of great moment in an individual’s life, is completely
forgotten, so completely that no associated idea avails as a stimulus to
awaken it. Usually in all such cases the neurograms are isolated, etc.,
by dissociation. They still, however, may be strongly organized and
conserved as an unconscious complex and sometimes may be excited as a
subconscious process by an associated stimulus. In such conditions it
very frequently is found that the dissociation is due to conflict
between the emotion belonging to the complex and another emotional
complex. The impulsive force of the latter dissociates the former
complex which then cannot be voluntarily reproduced as memory, nor
awakened by any association under normal conditions. We have then a
condition of amnesia and often an hysterical condition. To this
important phenomenon we shall return when we consider the emotions.
Passing over these exceptional conditions of conflicting emotions (which
being explained “prove the rule”), it still remains true that in
everyday life emotional experiences are not only more likely to be
conserved but to be subject to voluntary recall, or awakened
involuntarily by an associated stimulus.

If, for instance, we have experienced a railroad accident involving
exciting incidents, loss of life, etc., the words “railroad,”
“accident,” “death,” or a sudden crashing sound, or the sight of blood,
or even riding in a railroad train may recall the experience, or at
least the prominent features in it. The earlier events and those
succeeding the accident may have passed out of all possibility of
voluntary recall. To take an instance commonplace enough, but which
happens to have come within my recent observation: a fireman, hurrying
to a fire, was injured severely by being thrown from a hose-wagon
against a telegraph-pole with which the wagon collided. He narrowly
escaped death. Although three years have elapsed he still cannot ride on
a wagon to a fire without the memory of substantially the whole accident
rising in his mind. When he does so he again lives through the accident,
including the thoughts just previous to the actual collision when
realizing his situation he was overcome with terror, and he again
manifests all the organic physical expressions of fear, viz.,
perspiration, tremor, and muscular weakness. Here is a well organized
and fairly limited complex. It is also plainly an imperative memory,
that is to say, any stimulus-idea associated with some element in the
complex reproduces the experience as memory whether it is wished or not.
Try as hard as he will he cannot prevent its recurrence. The stimulus
that excites such involuntary memories may be a spoken word (as in the
psycho-galvanic and other associative experiments which we shall
consider in a later lecture), or it may be a visual perception of the
environment—of a person or place—or it may be a repetition of the
circumstances attending the original experience, however induced. The
phenomenon may also be regarded as an automatism or automatic process.
As the biological instinct of fear is incorporated in the complex it is
also a _phobia_.

_Why_ our fireman suffered the intense terror that he did at the time of
the accident, why he experienced the thoughts which surged into his
mind, why he suffered this emotional experience, while another man going
through the same accident suffers no more than the physical injury (if
any) at the time, and why the experience continues to recur as an
imperative memory are problems which we are not considering now. The
fact is that he did suffer the terror and its agonizing thoughts, and,
this being the case, their constant recurrence, i.e., the reproduction
of the experience, is a memory. And this memory consists of a well
organized complex of ideas, feelings, and physiological accompaniments.
I emphasize this point because an imperatively recurring mental
experience of this sort is a psychosis, and, so far as the principle of
memory enters into it, so far memory becomes a part of the mechanism of
obsessions.

The reason why the man at the moment of the accident experienced the
terrorizing thoughts that he did, and why he continued to experience
them, must be sought in associated conserved experiences of his past.
These experiences were the psycho-genetic factors. It would take us too
far out of the way to consider this problem, which belongs to the
obsessions, at this time, but, as I have touched upon it, I may say in
passing that the accident would have awakened no sense of terror and no
emotional shock if a _psychological torch_ had not already been
prepared. This torch was made up of ideas previously imbibed from the
social environment and made ready to be set aflame by the match set to
it by the accident. In the unconsciousness of this man were written in
neurographic records the dangers attending accidents of this kind and
dangers which still threatened his present and future.

Likewise the _insistence_ of the memory can be related to a setting of
associated thoughts which gave meaning to his perception of himself as
one affected, as he believed, with a serious injury threatening his
future. His fear was also, therefore, a fear of the present and future.
Thus not only the experiences of the accident itself became organized
into a group and conserved as a memory, but were organized with memories
of still other experiences which stood in a genetic relation to them. If
it were necessary I could give from my personal observation numerous
examples of this mode of organization of complexes through emotional
experiences and of their reproduction as automatic memories.

An historical example of complex-organizing of this kind is narrated in
Tallentyre’s delightful life of Voltaire. Toward the end of Voltaire’s
famous residence at the court of Frederick the Great, as the latter’s
guest, one of those pestiferous friends who cannot help repeating
disagreeable personal gossip for our benefit swore to Voltaire to having
heard Frederick remark, “I shall want him (Voltaire) at the most another
year; one squeezes the orange and throws away the rind.” From that
moment a complex of emotional ideas was formed in Voltaire’s mind, that,
do what he would, he could not get rid of. He wrote it to his friends,
thought about it, dreamed about it; he tried to forget it, but to no
purpose; it would not “down”; the rind kept constantly rising. It
brought with it every memory of Frederick’s character and actions that
fitted the remark.

Voltaire, like many men of genius, was a neurasthenic and his ideas with
strong emotional tones tended to become strongly organized and acquire
great force. “The orange rind haunts my dreams,” he wrote; “I try not to
believe it.... We go to sup with the king and are gay enough
sometimes;—the man who fell from the top of a steeple and found the fall
through the air soft and said, ‘Good, provided it lasts,’ is not a
little as I am.” The emotional complex which so tormented Voltaire that
it literally became an obsession was a recurring memory. The experience
had been strongly registered and conserved, owing to the emotional tone,
but the reason _why_ there was so much emotion, and _why_ it absorbed so
many associated ideas into itself and kept recurring would undoubtedly
have been found to lie, if we could have probed Voltaire’s mind, in its
settings—his previous stormy experiences with Frederick, his knowledge
of Frederick’s character, his previous _apprehensions_ of what later
actually occurred, and, most probably, self-reproach for his own
behavior, _the consequences of which he feared to face_. All this,
conserved as neurograms, was set ablaze by the remark and furnished not
only the emotion but the material for the content of the complex. These
previous experiences, therefore, stood in genetic relation to the
latter, excited the emotional reaction of anger, resentment and fear,
and prevented the complex from subsiding. The exciting cause for each
recurrence of the complex was, of course, some associated stimulus from
the environment, or train of thought.

Another interesting historical example is the foolish complex which is
said to have disturbed the pretty Mme. Leclerc (Pauline Bonaparte, who
was afterward the Princess Borghese). This fascinating and beautiful
woman was enjoying her triumph at a ball. Seated in a little boudoir off
the ball-room she was entertaining “guests who came to admire her and
fill her cup to overflowing. There was, however, a Mme. de Contades, who
had been deserted by her own cavaliers at the appearance of Pauline.
Approaching, now, on the arm of her escort, she said in a tone
sufficiently loud so that every one, including Pauline, could hear
perfectly: ‘Mon Dieu, what a misfortune! Oh, what a pity! She would be
so pretty but for that!’ ‘But for what?’ asked her cavalier. All eyes
were turned upon poor Mme. Leclerc, who thought there must be something
the matter with her coiffure and began to redden and suffocate. ‘But do
you not see what I mean?’ persisted Mme. de Contades, with the cold
cruelty of a jealous woman. ‘What a pity! Yes, truly, how unfortunate!
Such a really pretty head to have such ears! If I had ears like those I
would have them cut off. Yes, positively, they are like those of a pug
dog. You who know her, Monsieur, advise her to have it done; it would be
a charitable act.’ Pauline, more beautiful than ever in her blushes,
rose, tears blinding her eyes, then sank back upon the sofa, hiding her
face in her hands, sick with mortification and shame. As a matter of
fact, her ears were not ugly, only a little too flat. From that day,
however, she always dressed her hair over them or concealed them under a
bandeau, as in the well-known painting of her.”[141]

Fixed ideas relating to physical blemishes are not uncommonly observed
as obsessions in psychasthenics. With our knowledge of such psychical
manifestations it is easy to imagine Pauline’s antecedent thoughts
regarding her own flat ears, and repugnance to this defect in others,
her suspicions of unfavorable criticisms and of not being admired, etc.,
all organized with the instinct of self-abasement (emotion of
subjection) and forming a sentiment of self-depreciation and shame in
her mind.

2. The outbreak of such _automatic memories_ is particularly prone
to occur in persons of a particular temperament (the apprehensive
temperament, in which the biological instinct of fear is the
paramount factor), in fatigue states, and in so-called neurotic
people—neurasthenics, psychasthenics, and hysterics. In such people
the organization of the complex probably has been largely a
previously _subconscious incubating process_, as in the phenomenon
of “sudden religious conversion.” Later the sudden suggestion or
awakening by whatsoever means of an idea, which has roots in the
antecedent thoughts engaged in the subconscious process, readily
gives occasion for the outbreak of the complex. The latter then
excites the emotional reaction of anger, horror, antipathy, fear,
jealousy, etc., which becomes incorporated in the complex. When once
formed the automatism becomes the psychosis. The following case is
an illustration:

L. E. W., forty-nine years of age, farmer and lawyer by occupation, a
man of strenuous disposition, broke down under stress and strain with
severe but common symptoms of mental and physical fatigue modified and
exaggerated by apprehensions of incurable illness. At the end of a year
there developed scruples and jealous suspicions of his wife’s chastity,
not persistent but recurring from time to time in attacks, and always
awakened by a suggestion of some kind—an associated idea, a remark
heard, an act of some kind on the part of the wife, etc. Between the
attacks he was entirely free from such thoughts, but during the attack,
which came on with the usual suddenness, these thoughts—always the same
doubts, suspicions, reasonings, jealousy, and fear—were dominating,
imperative, and painful. An open-minded, frank, intelligent man he fully
realized that his scruples were entirely unfounded and even
characterized them as “delusions.” It was interesting, so clear was he
in this respect, to hear him discuss his attacks between times with his
wife, as if they were recurrent appendicitis. The attacks would pass off
in a short time after discussing his scruples with his wife, and then he
became natural again; they involved great suffering and he feared, as
people thus afflicted so often do, that they spelled impending insanity.
And yet it was easy to determine that they were only _imperative
recurrent memories_, conserved complexes emerging from the unconscious.
He had been married twenty-two years. He was of a jealous nature, and
before marriage it annoyed him to think that his wife had been courted
by other men, that she wrote them letters, etc. He began to think of her
as a flirt, that she was going to jilt him, and to have misgivings of
her character. He grew jealous and suspicions of possible unchastity
worried him, but reasoning with himself he would say, “O, pshaw! it is
an abominable suspicion,” “an hallucination,” and put the thought out of
his mind, as he said. But we know he really put the thought _into_ his
mind to be conserved in the unconscious, as a complex of chastity
scruples, and there undergo incubation and further development. Later he
had had spells of jealousy during his married life but no true
imperative ideas until he broke down in health, and then, as he himself
expressed it, “the devil got the upper hand and said, ‘I’ve got you
now.’”

The devil was the complex organized twenty-two years previously with the
emotion of jealousy[142] centered about the idea of his wife and the
whole neurographically conserved. The impulsive force of the emotion was
constantly striving to awaken and give expression to the unconscious
complex. He was able to hold it in check, to repress it, by the
conflicting force of other sentiments until these became weakened by the
development of the psychasthenic state. Then these latter controlling
elements of personality were repressed in turn whenever the more
powerful jealousy complex was awakened. The whole mechanism was
undoubtedly more complicated than this, in that the jealousy complex had
a setting in certain unsophisticated and puritanical ideas of conduct
(brought to light in the analysis) which gave a peculiar meaning (for
him) to his wife’s actions. So long as this setting persisted it would
be next to impossible to modify the jealousy complex.

Whatever the mechanism, ideas with strong emotional tones (particularly
fear, anger, jealousy, and disgust), no matter how absurd or repellent,
or unjustified, and whether acceptable or unacceptable, tend to become
organized and welded into a complex which is thereby conserved. The
impulsive force of the incorporated emotion tends to awaken and give
expression to the complex whenever stimulated. The recurrence of such an
organized complex so far as it is reproduction is, of course, in
principle, memory, and an imperative memory or _fixed idea_. Whether the
complex shall be awakened as such a recurrent memory, or shall function
as a dissociated subconscious process, producing other disturbances, or
remain quiescent in the unconscious, depends upon other factors which we
need not now consider.

3. Clinically the _periodic recurrence_ of such complexes is an
_obsession_. An obsession _as met with_ is most likely to be
characterized by fear not only because the instinct of fear is the most
painful of the emotions, but for another reason. Although biologically
fear is useful as a defense for the preservation of the individual, when
perverted by useless associations it becomes harmful, in that it is not
only painful but prevents the adjustment of the individual to his
environment and thereby takes on a pathological taint. Complexes with
other emotions are less likely to be harmful and therefore less
frequently apply for relief. Yet imperative ideas with jealousy, anger,
hatred, love, disgust, etc., centered about an object are exceedingly
common though their possessors less often resort to a physician.

From another point of view abnormal complexes, represented by these
examples, may be regarded as “_association psychoses_.” Sometimes the
physiological bodily accompaniments form the greater part of the complex
which is for the most part made up of physiological disturbances
(vasomotor, cardiac, gastric, respiratory, secretory, muscular, etc.);
almost pure association _neuroses_ they then become. Neuroses of this
kind we shall consider in a later lecture.[143]

Sometimes, particularly in people of intensive temperaments, “imperative
ideas” are formed by gradual evolution in consequence of the mind
constantly dwelling with emotional intensity on certain phases of
thought—i.e., through repetition. This we see in the development of
religious complexes or faiths, but it is also obtrusive in other fields
of thought, political, industrial, social, etc. Hence the evolution of
_fanatics_. A. D. is a man of strong feeling and great imagination. As a
child he was a constant witness of quarrels between his father and
mother. His mind dwelt upon these experiences and there developed in him
at an early date strong aversions toward marriage. Aversion means the
instinct of repulsion or disgust. This instinct therefore became
systematized with the idea of marriage as its object forming an intense
sentiment of aversion. Even as a boy the aversion impelled him to
determine never to marry and later he formed strong theoretical
anti-matrimonial views which became almost a religion. For years he
talked about his views, argued and preached about them like a fanatic to
his friends. His aversion rose in successful conflict against every
temptation to matrimony and his anti-matrimonial complex became an
obsession. The consequences were what might have been expected when,
later in life, he allowed himself in a moment of sympathetic weakness
and owing to compromising situations to slip within the matrimonial
noose. The complex then, like that of Voltaire’s orange rind, would not
down at his own bidding, or at that of his devoted spouse for whom he
had, in other respects, a strong affection mingled with personal
admiration. The resulting situation can be imagined.

4. _Hysterical attacks._ It is of practical importance to note another
part which emotional complexes may play in psychopathology. In certain
pathological conditions in which there is limitation of the field of
consciousness (involving a disappearance of a large part of the normal
mental life) often all that persists of consciousness and represents the
personal self is the obsessing complex which previously tormented the
patient. In hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance, and certain
types of epilepsy this is peculiarly the case. In these states the
content of consciousness consists almost wholly, or at least largely, of
a recurrent memory of an experience which originated in the normal life
and which has been conserved in the unconscious. Here the obsessing
ideas, which at one time were voluntarily entertained by the subject,
or, as frequently happens, originated in some emotional experience,
automatically recur, while the remainder of the conscious life becomes
dissociated and suppressed; in other words the obsessing ideas emerge
out of the unconscious (neurograms) and became substantially the whole
conscious field. In hysterical attacks, particularly, the complex is
accompanied by the same strong emotional tone—such as fear, anxiety,
jealousy, or anger—which belonged to the original experience. In such
pathological subjects, whenever the complex is awakened, the remainder
of the conscious field tends to become dissociated and the psychological
state to be reproduced. Hence, in such states, the ideas repeat
themselves over and over again with the recurrence of the attacks. The
subject lives over again as in a dream the original attack, which is a
stereotyped revivification of the original experience. This peculiarity
of the mental condition in attacks has been described by various
writers. The dream of the hystero-epileptic is substantially always the
same. Janet has accurately described the origin and rôle of the fixed
ideas in the hysterical attack. “These ideas,” he says, “are not
conceived, invented at the moment; they formulate themselves; they are
only _repetitions_. Thus, the most important of the hallucinations which
harassed Marcelle during her cloud-attack was but the exact reproduction
of a scene which had taken place the previous year. The fixed ideas of
dying, of not eating, are the reproduction of certain desperate
resolutions taken some years ago. Formerly these ideas had some sense,
were more or less well connected with a motive. A desperate love affair
had been the cause of her attempts at suicide; she refused to eat in
order to let herself die of hunger, etc. To-day these ideas are again
reproduced, but without connection and without reason. She has, we
convinced ourselves, completely forgotten her old despair, and has not
the least wish to die. The idea of suicide comes to her to-day without
any relation to her present situation, and she is in despair at the idea
of this suicide which imposes itself on her as a relic of her past, so
to say. She does not know why she refuses to eat; the ideas of suicide
and refusal of food are dissociated. The one exists without the other.
At one moment she hears the voice, ‘Do not eat,’ and yet she has no
thought of death; at another, she thinks of killing herself and yet she
accepts nourishment. We always find in fixed ideas this characteristic
of automatic repetition of the past without connection, without actual
logic.”[144]

When certain emotional and distressing ideas of wounded love are
awakened in M. C., an hysteric, she is thrown into an hysterical attack
in which these ideas recur over and over again and dominate
consciousness. In P. M., another hysteric, ideas of loneliness and
jealousy, which had previously been entertained but which had been
thrust out of her mind again and again in a conscientious struggle with
her moral nature, recur, emerge from the unconscious and dominate the
field of consciousness in each hysterical attack which they induce.

6. In the _psycholeptic_, a variant of the hysteric, the same
sensations, motor phenomena, and hallucinations, and the same bizarre
ideas—whatever the symptomatic phenomena—characterize each attack. This
could be shown experimentally in M——l.[145]

Of course the degree of dissociation of consciousness, the content of
the fixed idea, and the physiological manifestations vary in individual
cases, according to the nature of the case. Sometimes the disturbance of
consciousness is slight and the physiological manifestations
predominant.

From a consideration of all the facts we see that a conserved complex
associated with strong feeling tones may play a disastrous and
pathological part in certain individuals.

It is well to bear in mind here, as before, that in these statements we
are only giving a literal description of the psychological events
without attempt to form any theory of the mechanism of the processes, or
the antecedent psychogenetic factors which lead to the development of
the particular fixed ideas or complexes. About this there may be and is
a difference of view.

=Systematized Complexes.= In contrast with the limited group of fixed
ideas, organized with one or more emotions (i.e., instincts) I have been
describing, are the large _systems_ of complexes or associated
experiences which become organized and fairly distinctly differentiated
in the course of the development of every one’s personality. In many, at
least, of these systems there will be found a predominant emotion and
certain instinctive tendencies, and a predominant feeling tone—of
pleasure or pain, of exaltation or depression, etc. It is quite possible
that careful investigation would disclose that it is this conflicting
affective force which is responsible for the differentiation of one
system from another with opposing affects and tendencies. The
differentiation of such systematized complexes is of considerable
practical importance for normal and abnormal personality. Among such
systems may here be mentioned those which are related to certain
_subjects_ or departments of human experience, or are related in _time_,
or to certain dispositions or _moods_ of the individual. The first may
be called _subject_ systems, the second _chronological_ systems, and the
last _mood_ systems.

1. _Subject systems_: I find myself interested, for instance, in several
fields of human knowledge; (a) abnormal psychology; (b) public
franchises; (c) yachting; (d) local politics; (e) business affairs. To
each of these I give a large amount of thought, accumulate many data
belonging to each, and devote a considerable amount of active work to
carrying into effect my ideas in each field. Five large systems are thus
formed, each consisting of facts, opinions, memories, experiences, etc.,
distinct from those belonging to the others. To each there is an emotion
and a feeling tone which have more or less distinctive qualities; these
coming from the intellectual interest of abnormal psychology differing
qualitatively from those of the “joy of battle” excited by a public
contest with a railroad corporation or gas company, as it does from that
of the exhilarating sport of a yacht race, or from the annoying and
rather depressing care of business interests; and so on.

These five subject-complexes do not form independent automatisms or
isolated systems which may intrude themselves in any conscious field,
but comprise large associations, memories of experiences in a special
field of thought. Within that field the ideas of the system are no more
strongly organized than are ideas in general; but it can be recognized
that the system as a whole with its affective tones is fairly well
delimited from the other complexes of other spheres of thought. It is
difficult, for certain individuals at least, to introduce the
associations of one subject-complex into the focus of attention so long
as another is invested with personal interest and occupies the attention
of consciousness. They find it difficult to switch[146] their minds from
one subject to another and back again. On the other hand, it is said of
Napoleon that he had all the subjects of his experiences arranged in
drawers of his mind, and that he could open each drawer at will, take
out any subject he wished, and shut it up again as he wished. Ability of
this kind involves remarkable control over the mind and is not given to
all.

I have frequently made observations like the following on myself,
showing the organization and differentiation of systems: I collect the
various data belonging to one of the problems discussed in these
lectures. I arrange all in an orderly fashion in my mind, work out the
logical relations and the conclusions to which they lead, as well as
their relations to other data and problems. The whole is then
schematically arranged on paper to await proper elaboration the next
morning, when it will be written out on waking, the preliminary mental
arrangement having been done at night. A large complex has been created,
the various details of which are luminously clear and the sequence of
the ideas vividly conceived, the conclusions definite. There is,
further, an affective tone of joy and exaltation which is apt to
accompany the accomplishment of an intellectual problem and which
produces a feeling of increased energy.

The next morning, as I awake and gradually return to full consciousness,
another and very different kind of complex almost exclusively fills my
mind, owing probably to the fatigue following the previous night’s work.
All sorts of gloomy thoughts, memories of experiences better forgotten,
course through the mind; and entirely different emotions (instincts),
and a strong feeling of depression dominate the mental panorama. The
whole—ideas, emotions, and feelings—makes a complex which has been
experienced over and over again, and is recognized as such. The same old
ideas, emotions, thoughts, and memories, conserved as neurograms, repeat
themselves almost in stereotyped fashion. The mental complex has
completely changed and the exuberant energy of the night before has
given place to listless inertia.

All this is commonplace enough, merely morning depression you will say,
due to fatigue; and so it is. But mark the sequel.

I now remember that I have a task to perform and before rising take
paper and pencil, lying ready at my side, to write out the theme
previously arranged in skeleton. But to my surprise I find that it
cannot be recalled. To be sure, I can, by effort of will, recall
individual facts, but the facts have lost their associations and
meaning, they remain comparatively isolated in memory; all their
correlated ramifications, their associated ideas and relations, which
the night before stood out in relief and crowded into consciousness,
have gone. The emotional tone and impulses which energized the thoughts
have also disappeared, and with them the system of complexes as a whole.
It has been dissociated, inhibited, repressed, and there is _amnesia_
for it. With the fatigue depression a new system, with different
emotions and feelings, now dominates the mind and the desired system
cannot be switched in.

This amnesia is not one of conservation but one of reproduction; for
later in the day the fatigue and depression disappear, a new energizing
emotional tone arises and the sought-for system is switched in and
returns in its entirety. With this change the depression system in turn
disappears, and now it is difficult to recall it, excepting that as an
intellectual fact I remember that such thoughts occupied my mind in the
early morning hours. The two systems as a whole are distinctly
differentiated from and alternate with one another.

All this is only expressing in somewhat technical language a common
experience, as most people, I suppose, have such _alternations of
complexes_. The facts are trite enough; but, because they are of common
experience, it is well to formulate them and so, as far as possible,
give precision to our conception of the psychological relations which
have a distinct bearing on the principles of dissociated personality and
other psychoses, on character and psycho-therapeutics. When, at a later
time, we take up for study the subject of dissociated personality[147]
we shall find that the dissociation of consciousness sometimes takes its
lines of cleavage between systems of complexes of this kind.[148] And,
above all, the formation of complexes _is the foundation stone of
psycho-therapeutics_.

The methods of _education and therapeutic suggestion_ are variants of
this mode of organizing mental processes. Both, in principle, are
substantially the same, differing only in detail. They depend for their
effect upon the implantation in the mind of ideational complexes
organized by repetition, or by the impulsive force of their affective
tones, or both. Every form of education necessarily involves the
artificial formation of such complexes, whether in a pedagogical,
religious, ethical, scientific, social, or professional field. So in
psychotherapy by artfully directed suggestion, or education in the
narrower sense, complexes may be similarly formed and organized. New
points of view and “sentiments” may be inculcated, useful emotions and
feelings excited, and the personality correspondingly modified. Roughly
speaking, this is accomplished by suggesting ideas that will form
_settings_ (associations) that give new and desired meanings to
previously harmful ideas; and these ideas, as well as any others we
desire to implant in the mind, are organized by suggestion with emotions
(instincts) of a useful, pleasurable, and exalting kind to form
desirable sentiments, and to carry the ideas to fulfilment. Thus
sentiments of right, or of ambition, or of sympathy, or of altruism, or
of disinterestedness in self are awakened; and, with all this, opposing
emotions are aroused to conflict with and repress the distressing ones,
and the whole welded into a complex which becomes conserved
neurographically and thereby a part of the personality.

Under ordinary conditions of every-day mental life _social suggestion_
acts like therapeutic suggestion. But the suggestions of every-day life
are so subtle and insidious that they are scarcely consciously
recognized.

2. _Chronological systems_ (using complex in a rather extended sense)
are those which embrace the experiences of certain epochs of our lives
rather than the subject material included in them. In a general way
events as they are successively experienced become associated together,
and with other elements of personality, so that the later recollection
of one event in the chain of an epoch recalls successively the others.
Conversely a break in the chain of memory may occur at any point and the
chain only be picked up at a more distant date, leaving between, as a
hiatus, an epoch for which there is amnesia of reproduction. This
normally common _amnesia affords confirmatory evidence_ of the
associative relation of successive events. Involving as it does the
unimportant and unemotional experiences as well as the important and
emotional—though the former may be as well conserved as the latter—it is
not easy to understand. The principle, however, plays an important part
in abnormal amnesia particularly, but not necessarily, where there is a
dissociation of personality.

The epoch may be of a few hours, or it may be of days, of months, or
years. The simplest example is the frequent amnesia for the few hours
preceding a physical injury to the head resulting in temporary
unconsciousness. In other cases it is the result of extensive
dissociation effected by suggestion (e. g., in hypnosis), or psychical
trauma including therein emotional conflicts. Thus, to cite an
experimental example: Miss B. is troubled by a distressing memory which
constantly recurs to her mind during the twenty-four hours. To relieve
her I suggest that she will completely forget the original experience.
To my surprise, though the suggestion is limited to the experience
alone, the whole twenty-four hours are completely wiped out of her
memory. She cannot recall a single incident of that day. The whole epoch
which had associations with the memory is dissociated.

When the epochal amnesia follows psychical trauma the condition of
memory is apt to present the following peculiarity and the personality
may be altered. When the epoch is the immediate past, i.e., includes the
experiences extending from a certain past date up to the present, it
sometimes happens that memory reverts to that past date. That is to say,
the personality goes back to the period last remembered in which he
believes, for the moment, he is still living, the memory of the
succeeding last epoch being dissociated from the personal consciousness.
Under such conditions there is something more than amnesia. The
neurographic residua of the remembered epoch are revived and its
experiences remembered as if they had just been lived. There is not only
a dissociation of the memories of one epoch, but a resurrection of the
conserved and maybe forgotten experiences of a preceding one. The
synthesis of these memories restores again the personal consciousness of
that period. Before the cleavage took place the recollection of the
resurrected epoch may have been very incomplete and vague; afterward the
new personality remembers it as if just experienced. The personality is,
however, in other respects generally (always?) something different from
the personality of that particular epoch. The dissociation is apt to
involve a certain number of acquired traits and certain innate
dispositions and instincts, while other outlived and repressed traits
and innate dispositions and instincts are apt to be reawakened and
synthesized into an altered abnormal personality. But this is another
story that does not concern us now.

As an example of epochal amnesia I may cite Mrs. J——, who, after
dissociation occurs, has amnesia for all the events of several years
succeeding a certain hour of a certain day when a psychical trauma
(shock) occurred. She thinks she is living on that day and remembers in
great detail its events as if they had just occurred.

Miss B. reverts on one occasion to a day, six years back, when she
received a psychical shock; the complexes of her personality of that day
are revived as if just lived, all the succeeding years being forgotten;
on another occasion she reverts to a day when she was living in another
city seven or eight years before.

M——l reverts to an early period of his life when he was living in
Russia, and forgets all since including even his knowledge of English.

B. C. A. on several occasions reverts to different epochs of her life
with complete amnesia for all after events. On each occasion she takes
up the thread of her mental life as if living in the past, and recites
the events as if just lived.

Likewise, after a subject reverts from the abnormal to the normal state,
after a short or long condition of altered personality, there may be a
complete amnesia for the abnormal epoch, and although now normal he
thinks it the same day on which dissociation occurred.

Thus, Miss O. develops a condition of dissociated personality lasting
six months during which, as it unfortunately happens, she falls in love
with a man whom she had never known in her normal state. At the end of
this period she “wakes up” with a complete loss of memory for the phase
of altered personality and, therefore, to find that her fiancé is
apparently a stranger to her (!).

The same amnesia in the normal state for prolonged epochs in which the
personality was altered was conspicuous in the case of Miss B. In
William James’ often-cited case of Ansel Bourne and Dr. E. E. Mayer’s
case of Chas. W. the subjects returned to their normal states with
complete amnesia for the abnormal epochs of two months and seventeen
years respectively.

After all, the common _amnesia for the hypnotic state after waking is
the same phenomenon_.

Such observations show the possible systematization of epoch complexes,
although the determining conditions are not as yet understood.

3. _Disposition or Mood systems._—Among the loosely organized complexes
in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain
dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations,
desires, and modes of activity, which, for one reason or another, we
tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals,
for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and
responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits
which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not
permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life; and yet they may
have a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately
appeal to all mankind and which many actually pursue; in other words, to
yield to the impulsive force of the innate disposition, or instinct, of
play. But these desires are repressed. Nevertheless the longing for
these pleasures, under the impulses of this instinct, recurs from time
to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves
a fabric of pictures, sentiments, thoughts, and emotions the whole of
which thus becomes organized into a systematized complex.

There may be a conflict, a rebellion and “kicking against the pricks”
and, thereby, a liberation of emotional force of the instinct,
impressing, on the one hand, a stronger organization of the whole
process, and, on the other, repressing all conflicting desires. Or, the
converse of this may hold and a person who devotes his life to the
lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for the more
serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly
build up a complex which may similarly express itself. The recurrence of
such complexes is one form of what we call a “mood” which has a
distinctively emotional tone of its own derived from the instincts and
sentiments which are dominant. Such a “disposition” system is often
spoken of as “_a side to one’s character_,” to which a person may from
time to time give play. Thus a person is said to have “many sides to his
character,” and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may
be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal
states.

It may be interesting to note in passing that the well-known
characteristics of people of a certain temperament, in consequence of
which they can pursue their respective vocations only when they are “in
the mood for it,” can be referred to this principle of complex
formations and dissociation of rival systems. Literary persons,
musicians, and artists in whom “feeling” is apt to be cultivated to a
degree of self-pampering are conspicuous in this class. The ideas
pertaining to the development of their craft form mixed subject and mood
complexes which tend to have strong emotional and feeling tones. When
some other affective tone is substituted, organized within a conflicting
complex, it is difficult for such persons to revive the subject complex
belonging to the piece of work in hand and necessary for its
prosecution. “The ideas will not come,” because the whole subject
complex which supplies the material with which the imagination is to
work has been dissociated and replaced by some other. Certain elements
in the complex can be revived piece-meal, as it were, but the complex
will not develop in mass with the emotional driving energy which belongs
to it. Not having their complexes and affects under voluntary control it
is necessary for such persons to wait until, from an alteration in the
coenesthesis or for some other reason, an alteration in the “feeling”
has taken place with a revival of the right complex _in mass_.

No more exquisite illustration of these “disposition complexes” could be
found than in the personality of William Sharp. Sharp’s title to
literary fame very largely rests upon the writings which he gave to the
world under the feminine name of Fiona Macleod. The identity of the
author was concealed from the world until his death, and it is still a
common belief that this concealment and the assumption of the feminine
pseudonym were nothing more than a literary hoax. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. There were two William Sharps; by which I mean,
of course, there were two very strongly organized and sharply cut sides
to his character. Each had its points of view, its complexes of ideas,
its imaginings, and, above all, its creative tendencies and feeling
tones. The one side—the one christened William Sharp—was the bread and
butter earner, the relatively practical man who came in contact with the
world—literary critic, “biographer, essay and novel writer as well as
poet”—the experienced side which was obliged to correct its imagination
by constant comparison with reality. The other side—Fiona Macleod—was
the so-called inner man; what he himself called his “true inward self.”
As Fiona he lived in his imagination and dreamed. The development of
this side of his personality began while, as he said, “I was still a
child.” “He found,” his biographer writes,[149] “as have other
imaginative, psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious
power of visions unshared by any one about him, so that what he related
was usually discredited; but the psychic side of his nature was too
intimate a part of his mind to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned
to shut it away—to keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a
mystery to himself.”

This inner life, as time went on, became a mood which he fostered and
developed and in which he built up great complexes of fancies, points of
view, and emotions, which, when the other side of his character came
uppermost, remained neurographically conserved and dormant in the
unconscious. The Fiona complexes he distinctly felt to be feminine in
type so that when he came to give expression to them, as he felt he
must, he concealed this side of his character under a feminine
pseudonym. “My truest self,” he wrote, “the self who is below all other
selves, and my most intimate life, and joys, and sufferings, thoughts,
emotions, and dreams must find expression, yet I cannot save in this
hidden way.”

“From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self, would sweep
aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea
that had lain dormant in what he called ‘the mind behind the mind’ would
suddenly visualize itself and blot out everything else from his
consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed,
hardly aware of what, or how, he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision
with which for the moment he was identified.”

“All my work,” he said, “is so intimately wrought with my own
experiences that I cannot tell you about _Pharais_, etc., without
telling you my whole life.”

William Sharp himself realized the two moods or “sides,” which became in
time developed into two distinct personalities. These he distinctly
recognized, although there was no amnesia. “Rightly or wrongly,” he
wrote, “I am conscious of something to be done by one side of me, by
one-half of me, by the true inward mind as I believe—(apart from the
overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual mind, and a reminiscent life, and
a woman’s life and nature within concurring with and oftenest dominating
the other)....” This dual personality was so strongly realized by him
that on his birthdays he wrote letters to himself as Fiona signed
“Will,” and _vice versa_.

I have dwelt upon this historical example of the exaggerated development
of mood complexes because, while well within the limits of normal life,
it brings home to us the recognition of psychological facts which we
all, more or less, have in common. But, more important than this, in
certain abnormal conditions where the dissociation between systems of
complexes becomes more exaggerated, mood, subject, chronological and
other complexes, linked as each is with its own characteristic emotions
and feelings—instincts and other innate dispositions—play a paramount
part and dominate the personality. In the _hysterical personality_, in
particular, there is more or less complete reversion to or a
subconscious awakening of one or other such complex. Where the
hysterical dissociation becomes so extreme as to eventuate in amnesia in
one state for another the different systems of complexes are easily
recognized as so many phases of _multiple personality_. But in so
identifying the ideational content of phases of personality it should
not be overlooked that intensive studies of multiple personality
disclose the fact that the dissociation of one phase for another carries
with it certain of the instincts innate in every organism. What I mean
to say is, observation of psychopathological states has shown that
instincts, such as play, hunger, anger, fear, love, disgust, the sexual
instincts, etc., may be dissociated separately or in conjunction with
complexes of ideas. In every case of multiple personality that I have
had the opportunity to study each phase has been shorn of one or more of
these inborn psycho-physiological dispositions and I believe this
obtains in every true case. As a result certain sentiments and traits
are lost while those that are retained stamp an individuality upon the
phase. And as the conative forces of the retained instincts are not
balanced and checked by the dissociated opposing instincts, the
sentiments which they form and the emotional reactions to which they
give rise stand out as dominating traits. Thus one phase may be
characterized by pugnacity, self-assertion, and elation; another by
submission, fear and tender feeling; and so on.

This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated
personality, but I may point out, in anticipation of a deeper discussion
of the subject, that, in accordance with these two principles, in such
conditions we sometimes find that disposition and other complexes
conserved in the unconscious come to the surface and displace or
substitute themselves for the other complexes which dominate a
personality. A complex or system of complexes that is only a mood or a
“side of the character” of a normal individual, may in conditions of
dissociation become the main complex and chief characteristic of the new
personality. In Miss B., for instance, the personality known as BI was
made up almost entirely of the religious and ethical ideas with
corresponding instincts which formed one side of the original self. In
the personality known as Sally we had for the most part the
chronological and mood complexes of youth representing the enjoyment of
youthful pleasures and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and
artificial restraints generally imposed by duties and responsibilities;
she was a resurrection of child life. In BIV the complex represented the
ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss B., as a whole,
normal, without disintegration, it was easy to recognize all three
dispositions as sides of her character, though each was kept ordinarily
within proper bounds by the conflicting influence of the others. It was
only necessary to put her in an environment which encouraged one or the
other side, to associate her with people who strongly suggested one or
the other of her own characteristics, whether religious, social,
pleasure-loving, or intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI,
Sally, or BIV stand out in relief as the predominant personality. Then
we had the alternating play of these different sides of her character.

Likewise in B. C. A. In each of the personalities, B and A, similar
disposition complexes could be recognized each corresponding to a side
of the character of the original personality C. In A were represented
the complexes formed by ideas of duty, responsibility, and moral
scruples; in B were represented the complexes formed by the longing for
fun and the amusements which life offered. When the cleavage of
personality took place it was between these two complexes, just as it
was in Miss B. between the several complexes above described. This is
well brought out in the respective autobiographies of B[150] and
Sally[151] in these two cases. In many cases of hysteria in which
dissociation of personality can be recognized the same phenomenon is
often manifest. A careful study will reveal it also, I believe, in other
cases of multiple personality, although, of course, as we have seen, the
dissociation may be along other lines; that is, between other complexes
than those of disposition.

This principle of the conservation, as neurograms in the unconscious, of
complexes representing “sides” to one’s character, gives a new meaning
to the saying _In vino veritas_. In alcoholic and other forms of
intoxication there results a loss of inhibition, of self-control, and
the disposition complexes, which have been repressed or concealed by the
individual as a matter of social defense, arise out of the unconscious,
and, for the time being, become the dominant mood or phase of
personality. When these complexes represent the true inner life and
nature of the individual, freed from the repressing protection of
expediency, we can then truly say “In vino veritas.”

=Complexes organized in hypnotic and other dissociated conditions.=—1.
We have been speaking thus far of complexes formed in the course of
every-day life and which take part in the composition of the normal
personality. But it is obvious that a complex may be organized in any
condition of personality so long as we are dealing with consciousness,
however limited or disturbed. Thus in _artificial states_, like hypnosis
and the subconscious process which produces automatic writing, ideas may
be synthesized into systems as well as in normal waking life. This is
exemplified by the fact that in hypnosis the memories of past hypnotic
experiences are conserved and form systems of memories dissociated from
the memories of waking life. When the subject regains the normal
condition of the personal self, though there may be amnesia for the
hypnotic experiences their neurograms remain conserved to the same
extent and in the same fashion as do those of the waking life.
Consequently on the return to the hypnotic state the memories of
previous hypnotic experiences are recovered.

This systematization of hypnotic experiences is easily recognized in
those cases where several different hypnotic states can be obtained in
the same individual. Each state has its own system of memories differing
from, and with amnesia for, those of the others. Each system also has
its own feeling tones, one system, for example, having a tone of
elation, another, of depression, etc. The systematization is still more
accentuated in cases like the one mentioned in the second lecture (p.
19), where the subject goes into a hypnotic state resembling a trance,
and lives in an ideal world, peopled by imaginary persons, and in an
imaginary environment, perhaps a spirit world or another planet. The
content of consciousness consists of fabrications which make up a
fancied life. In the instance I have mentioned the subject imagined she
was living in a world of spirits; in Flournoy’s classical case, Mlle
Hélène Smith imagined she was an inhabitant of the planet Mars, and
spoke a fabricated language. In these states the same systems of ideas
invariably appeared.

2. In consequence of this principle of systematization it is in our
power by educational suggestion in hypnosis to organize mental processes
and _build complexes_ of the same kind and in the same way as when the
subject is awake. In fact, it is more readily done, inasmuch as in
hypnosis the critical judgment and reflection tend to be suspended. The
suggested ideas are accepted and education more easily accomplished.
While in hypnosis the individual may thus be made to accept and hold new
beliefs, new judgments, in short, new knowledge.[152] After waking he
may or may not remember his hypnotic experiences. Generally he does. If
he does the new knowledge, if firmly organized (by repetition and strong
affective tones) is still retained, and if accepted (i.e., not repressed
by conflicting ideas) shapes his views and conduct in accordance
therewith. Even if his hypnotic experiences are not remembered, they
still belong to his personality, inasmuch as they are neurographically
conserved, and, experience shows, may still influence his stream of
consciousness. His views are modified by his unconscious personality.
His ideas may and generally do awaken the neurograms of associated
systems created in hypnosis. Not remembering the hypnotic state as a
whole he does not remember the _origin_ of his new knowledge; that is
all.

One point to be borne in mind is that conserved ideas, whether we can
recall them or not, so long as they are conserved are a part of our
personality, as I have previously pointed out, and ideas can emerge from
the unconscious into the field of the conscious though we have
completely forgotten their origin. It requires but a single experiment
in the induction of suggested post-hypnotic phenomena to demonstrate
these principles.

3. As to those _pathological states_ where there is a splitting of
personality—hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance states,
certain types of epilepsy, etc.—complexes may similarly be formed in
them. In these conditions there is a dissociation of a large part of the
normal mental life, and that which is left is only a limited field of
consciousness. A new synthesis comes into being out of the unconscious
to represent the personal self. Though the content of consciousness is a
reproduction of, or determined by certain previous experiences, it is
also true that in these states new experiences may result in new
complexes which then take part in the personality as with hypnotic
experiences.

=Personality as the survival of organized antecedent experiences.=—Of
course all our past mental experiences do not persist as organized
complexes. The latter, after they have served their purpose, tend to
become disaggregated, just as printer’s type is disaggregated or
distributed after it has served its purpose in printing. In the
organization and development of personality the elements of the mental
experiences become sifted, as it were. Normally, in the adaptation of
the individual to the environment, the unessential and useless, the
intermediate steps leading to the final and useful, tend to drop out
without leaving surviving residua, while the essential and useful tend
to remain as memories capable of recall. In the unconscious these remain
more or less permanently fixed as limited ideas, sentiments, and systems
of complexes. Further, those complexes of experiences which persist not
only provide the material for our memories, but tend, consciously or
unconsciously, to shape the judgments, beliefs, convictions, habits, and
tendencies of our mental lives. Whence they came, how they were born, we
have long ceased to remember. We often arrive at conclusions which we
imagine in our ignorance we have constructed at the moment unaided out
of our inner consciousness. In one sense this is true, but that inner
consciousness has been largely determined by the vestiges furnished by
forgotten experiences. Many of these we imbibed from our environment and
the experiences of our fellows; in this sense we are all plagiarists of
the past.

Furthermore, we react, to a large extent, to our environment in a way
that we do not thoroughly understand because these reactions are
determined by the impulses of unconscious complexes organized with
innate dispositions. Indeed, our reactions to the environment, our moral
and social conduct, the affective reactions of our sentiments,
instincts, feelings, and other conative tendencies, our “habits,”
judgments, points of view, and attitudes of mind—all that we term
character and personality—are predetermined by the mental experiences of
the past by which they are developed, organized, and conserved in the
unconscious. Otherwise all would be chaos. We are thus the offspring of
our past and the past is the present.

This same principle underlies what is called the “social conscience,”
the “civic” and “national conscience,” patriotism, public opinion, what
the Germans call “Sittlichkeit,” the war attitude of mind, etc. All
these mental attitudes may be reduced to common habits of thought and
conduct derived from mental experiences common to a given community and
conserved as complexes in the unconscious of the several individuals of
the community.[153]

Through education, whether scholastic, vocational, or social, we inherit
the experiences of our predecessors and become “... the heir of all the
ages, in the foremost files of time.” But the conceptions of one age can
never represent those of a preceding age. The veriest layman in science
today could not entertain the conceptions underlying many hypotheses
formulated by the wisest of the preceding age—of a Galileo, a Descartes,
or Pascal. Lucretius, in the first century B. C., argued, with what for
the time was great force, that the soul of man was corporeal and that it
“must consist of very small seeds and be inwoven through veins and flesh
and sinews; inasmuch as, after it has all withdrawn from the whole body
the exterior contour of the limbs preserves itself entire and not a
tittle of the weight is lost.”

Lucretius gave much thought to this problem, but to-day the least
cultured person, who has never reflected at all on psychological
matters, would recognize the foolishness of such a conception and reject
the hypothesis.[154] He would call it _common-sense_ which guided him,
but common-sense depends upon the fact that in the unconscious lie
memories, the reasons for and origin of which we do not remember; these
nullify such an hypothesis. These contradicting ideas, sifted out of
those belonging to the social education, have become fixed as dormant or
organized memories, and determine the judgments and trends of the
personal consciousness. These memory vestiges may work for good or evil,
shape our personal consciousness into a useful or useless form, one that
adapts or unfits the organism to its environment. In the latter case
they drive the organism into the field of pathological psychology.

-----

Footnote 138:

I am using this word in the general sense of any mental experience as
in the common phrase, “the association of ideas,” and not in the
restricted sense of Titchener as the equivalent of a perception.

Footnote 139:

I use this word “complex” in the general sense in which it is commonly
used and not with the specific meaning given to it by the Zurich
school, which limits it to a system of ideas to which a strong
affective tone is attached and which, because of its personally
distressing character, is repressed into the subconscious.

Footnote 140:

Which may be psychical, although not psychological.

Footnote 141:

Sisters of Napoleon, by M. Joseph Turquan.

Footnote 142:

McDougall (Social Psychology) regards jealousy as a complex emotional
state in which anger, tender emotion, and other innate dispositions
are factors.

Footnote 143:

Not included in this volume.

Footnote 144:

Aboulie et idées fixes, Revue philosophique, 1891, i., p. 279. Mental
State of Hystericals, p. 408.

Footnote 145:

P. 33.

Footnote 146:

The switching process is an interesting problem in itself. (Cf. Max
Levy-Suhl: Ueber Einstellungsvorgänge in normalen und anormalen
Seelenzuständen. Zeitschrift für Psychotherapie und Medizinishe
Psychologie, Bd. 11, Hft. 3, 1910.) An example is the well-known
psychological diagram which may be perceived at one moment as a flight
of steps and at another as an overhanging wall, according as which
perception of the same line is switched in.

Footnote 147:

Lectures not included in this volume.

Footnote 148:

In the case of Miss B., for example, Sally had absolute amnesia for
certain systems of subject-complexes (Latin, French, etc.) possessed
by the other personalities.

Footnote 149:

William Sharp, A Memoir, by Elizabeth A. Sharp.

Footnote 150:

My Life as a Dissociated Personality, _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, October-November, 1908, December-January, 1909.

Footnote 151:

The Dissociation, Chapter XXIII.

Footnote 152:

Provided, of course, this new knowledge is justified and not
contradicted by the facts and principles of life. In other words, it
must be believed, at least, to be the truth.

Footnote 153:

While these pages were in press, Lord Haldane in his Montreal address
(before the American Bar Association), which has attracted wide
attention, developed the psychological principle of “Sittlichkeit,” as
applied to communities, the nation and groups of nations. By
“Sittlichkeit” is meant the social habit of mind and action underlying
social customs, the instinctive sense of social obligation which is
the foundation of society. This plainly includes what is often called
the social conscience and actions impelled thereby. In further
definition of this principle Lord Haldane quotes Fichte as stating
“Sittlichkeit” to mean “those principles of conduct which regulate
people in their relations to each other, and have become matter of
habit and second nature at the stage of culture reached, and of which,
therefore, we are not explicitly conscious.” The point was made that
the citizen is governed “only to a small extent by law and legality on
the one hand, and by the dictates of the individual conscience on the
other.” It is the more extensive system of “Sittlichkeit” which plays
the predominant rôle. Out of this system there develops a unity of
thought and “a common ideal” which can be made to penetrate the soul
of a people and to take complete possession of it. Likewise there
develops “a general will with which the will of the good citizen is in
accord.” This will of the community (inspired by the common ideal) is
common to the individuals composing it. Lord Haldane goes on to make
the point that what is now true within a single nation may in time
come to be true between nations or a group of nations. Thus an
international habit of looking to common ideals may grow up
sufficiently strong to develop a general will, and to make the binding
power of those ideas a reliable sanction for their obligations to each
other. With this thesis, ably presented and fortified though it be, we
are not here concerned. The point I wish to make is that this
conception of “Sittlichkeit” which Lord Haldane in his remarkable
address, destined I believe to become historic, so ably develops and
applies to the solution of a world-problem is in psychological terms
identical with that of complexes of ideas and affects organized in the
unconscious.

Footnote 154:

Professor G. S. Fullerton, in the course of an essay, “Is the Mind in
the Body?” interestingly refers to this fact and points out that
common sense directs the common man in repudiating ancient doctrines,
and that it is “part of his share in the heritage of the race.” “The
common sense which guides men is the resultant attitude due to many
influences, some of them dating very far back indeed.” _The Popular
Science Monthly_, May, 1907.

LECTURE X
THE MEANING OF IDEAS AS DETERMINED BY SETTINGS

In the preceding lecture when describing the organization of emotional
complexes, I mentioned, somewhat incidentally, that their fuller meaning
was to be found in antecedent experiences of life; and that these
experiences conserved in the unconscious formed a setting that gave the
point of view and attitude of mind. It was pointed out also that if we
wish to know the reason why a given experience, like that of Voltaire
with Frederick, awakens a strong emotional reaction, and why the memory
of this experience continues persistently organized with the emotion or
gives rise to the emotional reaction whenever stimulated, we must look
to this setting of antecedent experiences which gives the ideas of the
complexes meaning. We need now to inquire to what extent the unconscious
complex in which the setting has roots may take part in the process
which gives meaning to an idea. It is a problem in _psychogenesis_ and
psychological mechanisms. As an imperatively recurring emotional complex
is an obsession the full meaning of any given obsession is involved in
the psychological problem of “Idea and Meaning.”

Let us, then, take up for discussion this latter problem as preliminary
to the study of that important psychosis—obsessing ideas and emotions.

A perception, or, what is in principle the same thing, an idea of an
object, although apparently a simple thing, is really, as a rule, a
complex affair. Without attempting to enter deeply into the psychology
of perception (and ideas), and particularly into the conventional
conception of perception as usually expounded in the text-books—a
conception which to my mind is inadequate and incomplete[155]—it is
sufficient for our immediate purposes to point out in a general rough
way the following facts concerning perception.

=Perception a synthesis of primary and secondary images.=—Perception may
be regarded both as a process and as a group of conscious elements some
of which are within the focus of attention or awareness and some of
which are outside this focus. As _a process_ it undoubtedly may include
much that is entirely subconscious and therefore without conscious
equivalents, and much that appears in consciousness. As a group of
conscious elements it is a fusion, amalgamation, or compounding of many
elements.

My perception of X., for example, whom I recognize as an acquaintance,
is much more than a cluster of visual sensations—I mean the sensations
of color and form that come from the stimulation of my retina. Besides
these sensations it includes a number of imaginal memory images some of
which are only in the fringe of consciousness and can only be recognized
by introspection or under special conditions. These secondary images, as
they are called, may be (as they most often are) visual, orienting him
in space and in past associative relations, according to my previous
experiences; they may be auditory—the imaginal sound of his voice or
verbal images of his name; or they may be the so-called kinesthetic
images, etc.; and all these images supplement the actual visual
sensations of color and form.

That such images take part in perception is of course well recognized in
every text-book on psychology where they will be found described. It is
easy to become aware of them under certain conditions. For instance, to
take an auditory perception from every-day life, you are listening
through the telephone and hear a strange voice speaking. Aside from the
meaning of the words you are conscious of little more than auditory
sensations although you do perceive them as those of a human voice and
not of a phonograph. Then of a sudden you recognize the voice as that of
an acquaintance. Instantly visual images of his face, and perhaps of the
room in which he is speaking and his situation therein, of the
furnishings of the room, etc., become associated with the voice. Your
perception of the voice now takes on a fuller meaning in accordance with
these imaginal images. In such an experience, common probably to
everybody, the secondary images which take part in perception are
unusually clear and easily detected.

Again, let us take a visual perception. You meet face to face a person
whom at first sight seems unfamiliar; then in a flash visual images of a
scene in a room where you first met, verbal images of his name, and the
sound of his voice rush into consciousness. The comparatively simple
perception of a man has now given place to a more complex perception
(apperception) of an acquaintance and has acquired a new meaning. This
new meaning is in part due to these images which have supplemented the
visual sensations; but it is also due to the coöperation of another and
important factor—the context—which I will presently consider.

Another situation of every-day life in which we become aware of the
images is when riding in a street car at night we look out of the window
and fail to recognize the individual buildings as we pass them though we
perceive them as houses. The neighborhood being obscured by darkness,
the buildings have no meaning from the point of view of their uses,
proprietorship, locality, etc., but only from an architectural point of
view. Then suddenly, by some apparently subconscious process, visual
memory images of the unseen neighborhood (hidden in darkness), and of
the interior of the buildings, flash into consciousness in conjunction
with the actual visual pictures of the buildings. In imagination we at
once see the locality and recognize (or apperceive) the buildings which
acquire a new meaning as particular shops, which we have often entered,
located in a particular locality, etc.

Again, take a tactual perception: If you close your eyes and touch, say
a point on your left hand, with your finger, you not only perceive the
touch but you perceive the exact spot that you touched. Your perception
includes localization. Now if you fix your attention and introspect
carefully you will find that you visualize your hand and see, more or
less vividly, the point touched (and the touching finger). If you draw a
figure on the hand you will visualize that figure. That is to say
imaginal visual images of the hand, figure, etc., enter into the tactual
perceptions. You will probably also be able to feel faint tactual
“images” of the hand (joints, fingers, etc.) which combine with the
visualization.[156] The whole complex is the perception proper.

The images which take part in actual perception, or in ideas of objects,
vary with the mode of perception (whether visual, auditory, tactile,
etc.) and with objects, and in different people. Reading, or the
perception of words, is in many people accompanied by the sound of the
words or kinesthetic images of words. If the printed words are those of
a person whose voice is familiar to us we may actually hear his
voice.[157] General kinesthetic images may occur in perception, as with
objects which look heavy, i.e., have secondary tactual sensations of
heaviness. Likewise tactile and olfactory images may enter the
perceptual field and supplement the visual sensations. When the
sensational experiences of perception are tactile, auditory, olfactory,
or gustatory visual images probably always take part in the perceptual
field if the object is perceived as, e. g., the perception of velvet by
touch and of an orange by smell. Summing all this up we may say, using
Titchener’s words: “perceptions are selected groups of sensations in
which images are incorporated as an integral part of the whole process.”
We may further say the secondary images give meaning to sensations in
forming a perception.

Now, before proceeding further in this exposition, I would point out
that if memory images are habitually synthesized with sensations to form
a given perception, and if perception is a matter of synthesis, then,
theoretically, it ought to be possible to dissociate these images.
Further, in that case, the perception as such ought to disappear. That
this theoretical assumption correctly represents the facts I have been
able to demonstrate by the following experiment which I have repeated
many times. I should first explain that it has been shown by Janet that
by certain technical procedures some hysterics can be distracted in such
a way that the experimenter’s voice is not consciously heard by them,
but is heard and understood subconsciously. The ordinary procedure is to
whisper to the subject while his attention is focused on something else.
The whisper undoubtedly acts as a suggestion that the subject will not
consciously hear what is whispered. The whispered word-images are
accordingly dissociated, but are perceived coconsciously, and whatever
coconsciousness exists can be in this way surreptitiously communicated
with and responses obtained without the knowledge of the personal
consciousness. In this way I have been able to make numerous
observations showing the presence of dissociated coconscious complexes
which otherwise would not have been suspected. Now the experiment which
I am about to cite was made for the purpose of determining whether
certain experiences for which the subject had amnesia were coconsciously
remembered, but the results obtained, besides giving affirmative
evidence on this point, furnished certain instructive facts indicative
of the dissociation of secondary images.

The subject, Miss B., was in the state known as BIVa, an hypnotic state,
_her eyes closed_. While she was conversing with me on a subject which
held her attention I whispered in her ear with the view of communicating
with coconscious ideas as above explained. While I was whispering, she
remarked, “Where have you gone?” and later asked why I went away and
what I kept coming and going for. On examination it then appeared that
it seemed to her that during the moments when I whispered in her ear I
had gone away. That is to say, she could no longer visualize my body,
the secondary imaginal visual images being dissociated with my whispered
words. At these times, however, she continued the conversation and was
not at all in a dreamy state. Testing her tactile sense it was found
that there was no dissociation of this sense during these moments. She
felt tactile impressions while she was not hearing my voice, but she
explained afterwards [while whispering, of course, I could not ask
questions regarding sensations aloud] that when I touched her, and when
she held my hand, palpating it in a curious way as if trying to make out
what it was, she felt the tactile impressions, or tactile sensations,
but not naturally. It appeared as the result of further observations
that this feeling of unnaturalness and strangeness was due to a
dissociation of the secondary visual images which normally occur with
the tactile images. (She described the tactile impressions of my hand as
similar to those she felt when she lifted her own hand when it had “gone
to sleep”; it felt dead and heavy as if it belonged to no one in
particular.

Testing further it was found that, _before abstraction_, while she held
my hand she could definitely visualize my hand, arm, and even face.
While she was thus visualizing I again abstracted her auditory
perceptions by the whispering process. At once the secondary visual
images of my hand, etc., disappeared. As with the auditory perceptions
she could not obtain these visual images, although a moment before she
could visualize as far as the elbow.

Desiring now to learn whether these dissociated visual images were
perceived coconsciously I whispered, at the same time holding her hand,
“Do you see my hand, arm, and face?” She nodded (automatically) “Yes.”
“Does _she_ [meaning the personal consciousness] see them?” (Answer by
nod) “No.” (The personal consciousness (BIVa) was unaware of the
questions and nodding; the latter was performed subconsciously.)

This experiment was repeated several times. As often as she ceased to
hear my voice she ceased to visualize my hand, though she could feel it
without recognizing it. It follows, therefore, that the dissociation of
the auditory perceptions of my voice having also robbed the subject’s
personal consciousness of all visual images of my body, her previous
tactual perception of my hand lost thereby its visual images and ceased
to be a perception.

Let us take another observation: We have seen that a tactual perception
of the body includes secondary imaginal visual and other sensory images
besides the tactile sensation. Now, of course, if sensation is
dissociated so that one has complete anesthesia, no tactile sensation
can be perceived. Under such conditions an anesthetic person
theoretically might not be able to imagine the dissociated tactile
sensations and the associated visual images included in tactile
perception. If so such a person would not be able to visualize his body.
In other words, in accordance with the well-known principle that the
dissociation of a specific memory robs the personal consciousness of
other elements of experiences synthesized with the specific memory, the
dissociation of the tactile images carries with it the visual images
associated in perception. This theoretical proposition is confirmed by
actual observation. Thus B. C. A. in one hypnotic state has general
anesthesia, so complete that she has no consciousness of her body
whatsoever. She does not know whether she is standing or sitting, nor
the attitude of her limbs, or her location in space; she is simply
thought in space. Now it is found that she can visualize the
experimenter, the room, and the objects in the room although she cannot
visualize any part of her own body. The dissociation of the tactual
field of consciousness is so complete that she cannot evoke imaginal
tactual images of the body, and this dissociation of these images
carries with it that of the associated imaginal visual images. Visual
images of the environment, however, not being synthesized with the
tactual body images, can be still evoked. So we see from observations
based on introspection and experimentation that perception includes,
besides primary simple sensations of an object, secondary imaginal
images of various kinds and in various numbers.

=Besides images the content of ideas includes “Meaning”.=—What I have
said thus far refers to perception and idea as the content of
consciousness—a group of conscious states. But this is not all when
perception is regarded as a _process_. The objects of experience have
associative relations to other objects, actions, conduct, stimuli,
constellated ideas, etc., i.e., past experiences represented by
conserved (unconscious) complexes. As a result of previous experiences
various associations have been organized with ideas and these complexes
form the setting or the “context” (Tichener) which gives ideas meaning.
As the secondary images give meaning to sensations to form ideas (or
perceptions), so these associated complexes as settings give meaning to
ideas. This setting in more general terms may be regarded as the
attitude of mind, point of view, interest, etc. Just as the context in a
printed sentence gives meaning to a given word, and determines which of
two or more ideas it is meant to be the sign of, so in the process of
all perceptions the associated ideas give meaning to the perception.
Indeed it is probable that the context as a process determines what
images shall become incorporated with sensations to form the nucleus of
the perception. Perception thus takes one meaning when it is
constellated with one complex and another meaning when constellated with
another complex.

“Meaning” plays such an important part in the mental reactions of
pathological and everyday life that I feel we must study it a little
more closely before proceeding with our theme.

The idea horse[158] as the content of consciousness includes more than
the primary and secondary sensory images which constitute a perception
of an animal with four legs distinguished anatomically from other
animals: The idea includes the meaning of a particular kind of animal
possessing certain functions, useful for particular purposes and
occupying a particular place in civilization, etc. We are distinctly
conscious of this meaning; and although we may abstract more or less
successfully the visual image of the animal from the meaning, and attend
to the former alone, the result is an artifact. Likewise we may as an
artifice abstract, to a large degree, the meaning from the image,
keeping the latter in the background, and attend to the meaning.

That meaning—just as much as the sensory image of an object—is part of
the conscious content of an idea becomes apparent at once, the moment
the setting becomes altered and an object is collocated with a new set
of experiences (knowledge regarding it). X, for example, has been known
to the world as a pious, god-fearing, moral man, a teacher of the
Christian religion. My perception of him, so far as made up of images,
is, properly speaking, that which distinguishes him anatomically from
other men of my acquaintance, that by which I recognize him as X and not
as Y. But my perception also has a distinctly conscious meaning, that of
a Christian man. This meaning also distinguishes him in his qualities
from other men. Now it transpires to every one’s astonishment that X is
a foul, cruel, murderer of women—a Jack-the-Ripper. My perception of him
is the same but it has acquired an entirely different meaning. A
bestial, villainous meaning has replaced the Christian meaning. So
almost all objects have different meanings in different persons’ minds,
or at different times in the same person’s mind, according to the
settings (experiences) with which they are collocated. My perception of
A has the meaning of physician, while one of his family perceives him as
father or husband. My perception of a snake, it may be, has the meaning
of a loathsome, venomous animal, while a naturalist’s perception may be
that of a vertebrate representing a certain stage of evolution, and a
psychologist holding certain theories may perceive it with a meaning
given by those theories, viz.: as a sexual symbol.

This fact of meaning becomes still more obvious when we reflect that the
meaning of a perception, as of A’s personality as a physician or father,
may occupy the focus of attention while the images of his face, voice,
etc., may sink into the background.

Every one is agreed then that every idea or combination of ideas has
“meaning” of some sort. Even nonsense syllables have in a psychological
sense some meaning, which may be an alliteration of sound, or a
symbolism of nonsense (e. g., “fol-de-rol-di-rol-dol-day”) or as
suitable tests for psychological experiments. I am speaking now, of
course, of meaning as dealt with by psychology as a content of
consciousness, and not as dealt with by logic. Every one also will
probably agree that the content of an idea is a composite of sensory
elements (images) and meaning—I would like to say of perception and
meaning; but the use of two abstract terms is likely to lead to a
juggling with words by turning attention away from the concrete facts
for which the terms stand, and by connoting a sharp distinction between
perception and meaning which, as I observe the facts, does not hold.
Indeed the common though useful habit of psychologists of treating
meaning as an abstract symbol without specific reference to those
elements of the content of consciousness for which it stands has, it
seems to me, led to considerable confusion of thought.

Mr. Hoernlé, who has given us one of the clearest expositions of _idea
and meaning_ that I have read,[159] designates that constituent of an
idea which is the psychical image of an object (e. g., “the visual
perception of a horse”) by the term “sign.” “Signs,” he states “are
always sensational in nature, whether they are actual sensations (as in
sense-perception) or ideas (images or ‘revived’ sensations).”
Accordingly an idea is a composite of sign and meaning, or, as Mr.
Hoernlé has well expressed it: “Both the idea[160] and its meaning,
then, must be present in consciousness. Or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that they form together a complex psychical whole, a
‘psychosis,’ of which the different elements, however, enjoy different
degrees of prominence in consciousness or draw upon themselves different
amounts of attention.... Normally we apperceive merely the meaning, and
the image or sign remains in the background, in the shade as it were.
But of course we can make the image or sign the special object of
attention; we can apperceive it and correspondingly the meaning falls
into the background. But it does not disappear; it remains in
consciousness.” And again, “every idea is a concrete whole of sign and
meaning, in which the meaning, even when unanalyzed and ‘implicit’ is
what is essential and prominent in consciousness. The sign on the other
hand which we saw reason to identify with certain sensational elements
in this conscious experience is normally subordinate and I have called
this concrete idea a ‘psychic whole’....”

I quote these passages from Mr. Hoernlé as they are admirably clear
statements of the theory, but as descriptions they are a very incomplete
analysis of the content of ideas, and fall far short of what we require
to know when dealing with the problem of mental mechanisms. It is all
very well to speak of meaning in this general way; but to rest content
with such an abstract term is to only present the problem and there stop
short. Mr. Hoernlé rests content with the negative statement that
meaning “does not consist in images and other words.” What then does it
consist in?

It must be admitted that the problem is a very difficult one and
therefore it is, I suppose, that most psychologists, as if scenting
danger, seem to dodge the question and rest content to use meaning as a
symbol like the unknown _x_ and _y_ of algebra. If meaning is a part of
the content of consciousness it must be analyzable into specific
conscious elements (images, thoughts, words, feelings or what not)
representing to some extent and in some way past experiences.

Obviously a full rounded-out psychology of meaning must include an
analysis of the content of meaning.[161] I have no intention of entering
upon this task here and it is not my business. It would, however, be of
very great assistance in solving many of the problems of abnormal
psychology if the psychology of meaning were better worked out. But
conversely, I would say, considerable light on the psychology of meaning
can be derived from the study of abnormal conditions, and of the mental
phenomena artificially provoked by hypnotic procedures. Some of the
observations which I shall presently cite contribute, I believe, to this
end.

Permit me also to point out—as the point is one which has considerable
bearing on our theme—that the descriptive statement that ideas are a
composite of two distinct elements, perception (images, signs) and
meaning, is inadequate in another respect; it is too static and
schematic. Although it is convenient to distinguish between perception
and meaning, they shade into one another and indeed there does not seem
to be any justification for regarding them as other than one dynamic
process. As we have seen, perception is made up of a primary sensory
image of an object combined with a number of secondary images. This in
itself is a “psychic whole”, and, as I view it, contains meaning. My
perception of a watch contains secondary images which give it the
meaning of a watch and make it something more than a visual image. It
may have a still larger and different meaning, that of a souvenir of a
dead friend, and in this larger meaning the perception of the watch
becomes subordinate, as a sign or group of images, and sinks into the
background, while the added meaning occupies the focus of attention.
Indeed the primary image of a perception may sink into relative
insignificance in the background, while the secondary images become
all-important and practically constitute the actual perception (or idea)
as a psychic whole. Consider, for instance, what different secondary
images (and meaning) are in the focus and how the primary image of the
word “son” (spoken or written) almost disappears, according as the
context shows it to be _my_ son or _your_ son; and how correspondingly
different are those ideas. And so with a wider filial meaning of son. It
is safe to say that King Lear’s idea of “daughter” had not the filial
meaning conventionally ascribed to that relationship.

If all this that I have said is valid the difference between that which
we call perception and that which we call meaning is one of complexity.
The less complex we call perception, the more complex, meaning. Both are
determined by past experiences the residua of which are the settings.

This may be illustrated by the following: We will suppose that three
persons in imagination perceive a certain building used as a department
store on a certain street I have in mind now, in a growing section of
the city. One of these persons is an architect, another is an owner of
property on this street, and the third is a woman who is in the habit of
making purchases in the department store. When the architect thinks of
the building he perceives it in his mind’s eye in an architectural
setting, that is, its architectural style, proportions, features, and
relations. His perception includes a number of secondary images of the
neighboring buildings, of their styles of architecture, and of their
relations from an æsthetic point of view. In the perception of the owner
of property there are also a number of secondary images, but these are
of the passing people and traffic, of neighboring buildings as shops and
places of business. In the perception of the woman the secondary images
are of the interior of the store, the articles for sale, clothes she
would like to purchase and possibly bargains dear to every woman’s
heart. Plainly each perceives the building from a different point of
view. Each might perceive the building from the same point of view, but
the point of view differs because of the differences in the past
experiences of each.

In the case of the architect these experiences were those of previous
observations on the architecture of the growing neighborhood. In the
case of the property owner they were of thoughtful reflections on the
future development of neighboring property, on the industrial relations
of the building to business, and on the speculative future value of the
property. In the case of the woman they were of purchases she had made,
of articles she had seen and desired, of scenes inside the shop, etc.
Out of these experiences respectively a complex was built and conserved
in the mind of each. The idea of the building is set in these respective
experiences which therefore may be called its setting. The imaginal
perception of the building obviously has a different meaning for each of
our three observers, and it is plainly the setting which governs the
meaning, i.e., an architectural, industrial, or shopping meaning, as the
case happens to be; and we may further say the setting determines the
point of view or attitude of mind or interest. _Either the perception
proper of the building or the meaning may be in the focus of attention
and the other recede into the background or the fringe of awareness._

Further, different _affects_ may enter into each setting and, therefore,
into the perception. With the architectural perception there may be
linked an æsthetic joyful emotion; with the industrial perception a
depressing emotion of anxiety; with the shopping perception perhaps one
of anger. (This linking of an emotion, of course, has a great importance
for psychopathic states.)

The dependence of perceptions upon their settings for meaning has been
very beautifully expressed by Emerson in “Each and All”:

“Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear—they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.”

=The practical application of the theory to emotional outbreaks of
everyday life.=—The significance of these principles for our purpose
lies in the fact that they enable us to understand numerous
psychological events of everyday and pathological life that otherwise
would be unintelligible. It is worth while then to study a little more
closely the practical application in everyday life of this principle of
settings before applying it to the more difficult problem of imperative
ideas or obsessions.

No psychological event, any more than a physical event, stands entirely
isolated, all alone by itself, without relation to other events. Every
psychological event is related more or less intimately to antecedent
events, and the practical importance or value of this relation depends
for the individual partly upon the nature of the relation itself, and
partly upon the ontological value of those anterior events, i.e., the
part they played and still play in the personality of the individual. No
event, therefore, if it is to be completely interpreted, should be
viewed by itself but only in relation to preceding ones. For example: a
husband good humoredly and thoughtlessly chaffs his wife about the cost
of a new hat which she exhibits with pride and pleasure. The wife in
reply expresses herself by an outburst of anger which, to the astonished
bystander, seems an entirely unjustifiable and inexplicable response to
an entirely inadequate cause. Now if the bystander were permitted to
make a psychological inquiry into the mental processes of the wife, he
would find that the chaffing remark had meaning for her very different
from what it had for him, and probably also for the husband; that it
meant much more to her than the cost of that hat. He would find that it
was set in her mind in a number of antecedent experiences consisting of
criticisms of the wife by the husband for extravagance in dress; and
perhaps criminations and recriminations involving much angry feeling on
the part of both, and he would probably find that when the hat was
purchased the possibility of criticism on the ground of extravagance
passed through her mind. The chaffing remark of the husband therefore in
the mind of the wife had for a context all these past experiences which
formed a setting and gave an unintended meaning to the remark. The angry
response, therefore, was dictated by these antecedent experiences and
not simply by the trivial matter of the cost of a hat, standing by
itself. The event can only be interpreted in the light of these past
conserved experiences. How much of all this antecedent experience was in
consciousness at the moment is another question which we shall presently
consider.

I have often had occasion to interpret cryptic occurrences of this
kind happening with patients or acquaintances. They make quite an
amusing social game. (A knowledge of this principle shows the
impossibility of outsiders judging the rightness or wrongness of
misunderstandings and contretemps between individuals—particularly
married people.) To complete the interpretation of this episode of the
hat—although a little beside the point under consideration: plainly
the anger to which the wife gave expression was the affect linked with
and the reaction to the setting-complex formed by antecedent
experiences. To state the matter in another way, these experiences
were the formative material out of which a _psychological torch_ had
been plastically fashioned ready to be set ablaze by the first touch
of a match—in this case the chaffing remark or associated idea. This
principle of the setting, which gives meaning to an idea, being the
conserved neurograms of related antecedent experiences is strikingly
manifest in pathological and quasi-pathological conditions. I will
mention only two instances.

The first, that of X. Y. Z., I shall have occasion to refer to in more
detail in connection with the emotions and instincts in a later
lecture.[162] This lady, on the first night of her marriage, felt deeply
hurt in her pride from a fancied neglect on the part of her husband. The
cause was trivial and could not possibly be taken by any sensible person
as an adequate justification for the resentment which followed and the
somewhat tragic revenge which she practiced (continuous voluntary
repression of the sexual instinct during many years). But the fancied
slight had a meaning for her which did not appear on the surface. As she
herself insisted, in attempted extenuation of her conduct, “You must not
take it alone by itself but in connection with the past.” It appeared
that during the betrothal period there had been a number of experiences
wounding to her pride and leading to angry resentment. These had been
_ostensibly but not really forgiven_. The action of her spouse on the
important night in question had a meaning for her of a slight, because
it stood in relation to all these other antecedent experiences, and
through these only could its meaning (for her) be interpreted. As a
practical matter of therapeutics it became evident that the cherished
resentment of years and the physiological consequences could only be
removed by readjusting the setting—the memories of all the antecedent
experiences with their resentment.

The second instance was a case of hysteria of the neurasthenic type with
outbreaks of emotional attacks in a middle-aged woman. It developed
immediately, in the midst of good health, out of a violent and
protracted fit of anger, almost frenzy, two years ago, culminating in
the first emotional or hysterical attack. Looked at superficially the
fit of anger would be considered childish because it was aroused by the
fact that some children were allowed to make the day hideous by firing
cannon-crackers continually under her window in celebration of the
national holiday. When more deeply analyzed it was found that the anger
was really _resentment_ at what she considered unjustifiable treatment
of herself by others, and particularly by her husband, who would not
take steps to have the offense stopped. It is impossible to go into all
the details here; suffice it to say that _below the surface_ the
experiences of life had deposited _a large accumulation of grievances_
against which resentment had been continuous over a long series of
years. Although loving and respecting her husband, a man of force and
character, yet she had long realized she was not as necessary to his
life as she wanted to be; that he could get along without her, however
fond he was of her; and that he was the stronger character in one way.
She wanted to be wanted. Against all this for years she had felt anger
and resentment. She had concealed her feelings, controlled them,
repressed them, if you will, but there remained a general
dissatisfaction against life, a “kicking against the pricks,” and a
quickness to anger, though its expression had been well controlled.
These were the formative influences which laid the mine ready to be
fired by a spark, feelings of resentment and anger which had been
incubating for years. Finally the spark came in the form of a childish
offense. The frenzy of anger was ostensibly only the reaction to that
offense, but it was really the explosion of years of antecedent
experiences. The apparent offense was only the manifested cause,
symbolic if you like so to express it, of the underlying accumulated
causes contained in life’s grievances.[163] After completion of the
analysis the patient herself recognized this interpretation to be the
true meaning of her anger and point of view.

Similarly in everyday life the _emotional shocks_ from fear in dangerous
situations, to which most people are subject and which so often give
rise to traumatic psychoses, must primarily find their source in the
psychological setting of the perception of the situation (railroad,
automobile, and other accidents). This setting is fashioned from the
conserved knowledge of the fatal and other consequences of such
accidents. This knowledge, deposited by past mental experiences—that
which has been heard and read—induces a dormant apprehension of
accidents and gives the meaning of danger to a perception of a present
situation, and in itself, I may add, furnishes the neurographic fuel
ready to be set ablaze by the first accident.[164]

-----

Footnote 155:

In that it takes into account only a limited number of the data at our
disposal and neglects methods of investigation which afford data
essential for the understanding of this psychological process.

Footnote 156:

It is of interest to note again in this connection that these
secondary images may emerge from a subconscious process to form the
structure of an hallucination. Various facts of observation which I
have collected support the thesis advanced by Sidis (loc. cit.) on
theoretical grounds “that hallucinations are synthesized compounds of
secondary sensory elements dissociated completely or incompletely from
their primary elements.” It would carry us too far away from our theme
to consider here this problem of special pathology. Sidis further
insists that hallucinations are not central, but always “are
essentially of peripheral origin,” a view which, it seems to me, is
incompatible with numerous facts of observation.

Footnote 157:

I once dictated into a phonograph a passage of a published work.
Whenever I read that passage now I hear the sound of my own voice as
it was emitted by the phonograph.

Footnote 158:

I intentionally do not here say idea _of_ a horse because the use of
the preposition (while, of course, correctly used to distinguish horse
as an idea from a material horse, or the former as a particular idea
among ideas in general) has led, as it seems to me, insidiously to
specious reasoning. Thus Mr. Hoernlé (Image, Idea and Meaning, _Mind_,
January, 1907) argues that every idea has a meaning because every idea
is an idea _of_ some thing. Although this is true in a descriptive
sense, psychologically idea-of-a-horse is a compound term and an
imagined horse. The idea itself is horse. The speciousness of the
reasoning appears when we substitute horse for idea; then the phrase
would read, a “horse is always a horse of something.” I agree, of
course, that every idea has a meaning, but not to this particular
reasoning by which the conclusion is reached, as when, for example,
Mr. Hoernlé when traversing James’ theory cites “image _of_ the
breakfast table” to denote that the breakfast table is the meaning of
the image. The image _is_ the (imagined) breakfast table. They are not
different things as are leg and chair in the phrase, “leg of the
chair,” where chair plainly gives the meaning to leg.

Footnote 159:

R. F. Hoernlé, Image, Idea and Meaning, _Mind_, January, 1907.

Footnote 160:

Idea, according to Mr. Hoernlé’s context, is here used in the sense of
a word, image or sign.

Footnote 161:

Of course the constituents of the content must vary in each individual
instance, but the kind of conscious elements that in general give
meaning to the sensory part of the idea can be determined.

Footnote 162:

P. 462, Lecture XIV.

Footnote 163:

Prince: The Mechanism of Recurrent Psychopathic States, with Special
Reference to Anxiety States, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_,
June-July, 1911, pp. 153-154.

Footnote 164:

Ibid., p. 152. It is interesting to note that statistics show that
traumatic psychoses following railway accidents are comparatively rare
among trainmen, while exceedingly common among passengers. The reason
is to be found in the difference in the settings of ideas of accidents
in the two classes of persons. It is the same psychological difference
that distinguishes the seasoned veteran soldier from the raw recruit
in the presence of the enemy.

LECTURE XI
MEANING, SETTING, AND THE FRINGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

=The content of the fringe of consciousness considered as a subconscious
zone.=—It is obvious that all the past experiences which originate the
meaning of an idea cannot be in consciousness at a given moment. If I
carefully introspect my imaginal perception or idea of an object, say of
a politician, I do not find in my consciousness all the elements which
have given me my viewpoint or attitude of mind toward him—the meaning of
my idea of him as a great statesman or a demagogue, whichever it be—and
yet it may not be difficult, by referring to my memory, to find the past
experiences which have furnished the setting which gives this viewpoint.
Very little of all these past experiences can be in the content of
consciousness, and much less in the focus of attention, at any given
moment, nevertheless I cannot doubt that these experiences really
determined the meaning of my idea, for if challenged I proceed to recite
this conserved knowledge. And so it is with everyone who defends the
validity of the meaning of his ideas.

The question at once comes to mind in the case of any given perception,
how much of past experience (associated ideas) is in consciousness at
any given moment as the setting which provides the meaning?

That the meaning must be in consciousness is obvious; else the term
“meaning” would have no meaning—it would be sheer nonsense to talk of
ideas having meaning. As I have said, the meaning may be in the focus of
attention or it may be in the fringe or background according to the
point of interest. If in the focus of attention, meaning plainly may,
synchronously or successively, include ideas of quite a large number of
past experiences, but if in the background it may be another matter. In
this case it may be held, and probably in many instances quite rightly,
that meaning is a short summary of past experiences, or summing up in
the form of a symbol, and that this summary or symbol is in the focus of
attention or in the fringe of awareness, i. e., is clearly or dimly
conscious. Thus, in one of the examples above given, the industrial
meaning of the owner’s idea of the building might be a short summing up
of his past cogitations on the business value of the property; in the
case of my idea of the politician, the symbol “statesman” or
“demagogue”—as the case might be—might be in consciousness and be the
meaning. All the rest of the past associative experiences in either case
would furnish the origin of the setting but would not be the actual
functioning setting itself.

It must be confessed, however, that the content of meaning, when it is
not in the focus of attention, often becomes very elusive when we try to
clearly revive it retrospectively and differentiate the particular
states of consciousness present at any given moment. It is probably
because of this elusiveness, as of something that seems to evade
analysis, that it was so long overlooked as an object of psychological
study. Yet if meaning is not something more than an abstract term, and
is really a component of a moment’s consciousness, we ought to be able
to analyze it in any given instance provided our methods of
investigation are adequate. The difficulty, I think, largely arises from
the fact that the minute we direct attention to such elements of the
content of consciousness of any given moment as are not in the focus of
attention they at once become shifted into the focus and the composition
of the content also becomes altered. Consequently we are never
_immediately_ vividly or fully aware of the whole content. The only
method of learning what is the whole content at any given moment is by
_retrospection_—the recovery of it as memory. Further, special technical
methods are required. Then, too, image and meaning are constantly
shifting their relative positions, at one time the one being in the
focus of attention, the other in the fringe, and _vice versa_.

When speaking colloquially of the content of consciousness we have in
mind those ideas or components of ideas—elements of thought—which are in
the focus of attention, and therefore that of which we are more or less
vividly aware. If you were asked to state what was in your mind at a
given moment it is the vivid elements, upon which your attention was
focused, that you would describe. But, as everyone knows, these do not
constitute the whole field of consciousness at any given moment. Besides
these there is in the background of the mind, outside the focus, _a
conscious margin or fringe_ of varying extent (_consisting of
sensations, perceptions, and even thoughts_) _of which you are only
dimly aware_. It is a sort of twilight zone in which the contents are so
slightly illuminated by awareness as to be scarcely recognizable. The
contents of this zone are readily forgotten owing to their having been
outside the focus of attention; but much can be recalled if an effort to
do so (retrospection) is made immediately after any given moment’s
experience. Much can only be recalled by the use of special technical
methods of investigation. I believe that the more thoroughly this
wonderful region is explored the richer it will be found to be in
conscious elements.

It must not be thought that because we are only dimly aware of the
contents of this twilight zone therefore the individual elements lack
definiteness and positive reality. To do so is to confuse the awareness
of a certain something with that something itself. To so think would be
like thinking that, because we do not distinctly recognize objects in
the darkness, therefore they are but shadowy forms without substance.
When, in states of abstraction or hypnosis, the ideas of this fringe of
attention are recalled, as often is easily done, they are remembered as
_very definite, real, conscious elements_, and the memory of them is as
vivid as that of most thoughts. That these marginal ideas are not
“vivid” at the time of their occurrence means simply that they are not
in such dynamic relations with the whole content of consciousness as to
be the focus of awareness or attention. What sort of relations are
requisite for “awareness” is an unsolved problem. It seems to be a
matter not only of synthesis but of dynamic relations within the
synthesis.

However that may be, outside that dynamic synthesis which we distinguish
as the focus of attention we can at certain moments recognize or recall
to memory (whether through technical devices or not) a number of
different conscious states. These may be roughly classified as follows:

1: Visual, auditory, and other sensory impressions to which we are not
giving attention—(e. g., the striking of a clock; the sound of horses
passing in the street; voices from the next room; coenæsthetic and other
sensations of the body.

2: The secondary sensory images of which I spoke in the last lecture as
taking part in perception.

3: Associative memories and thoughts pertaining to the ideas in the
focus of attention.

4: Secondary independent trains of thought not related to those in the
focus of attention. (As when we are doing one thing or listening to
conversation and thinking of something else. Very likely, however, what
appear to be secondary trains of thought are often only alternating
trains. I have, however, a considerable collection of data showing such
concomitant secondary trains in certain subjects (cf. Lecture VI). Such
a train can be demonstrated to be a precisely differentiated “stream” of
consciousness in absent-minded conditions, where it may constitute a
veritable doubling of consciousness.

Some of these marginal elements may be so distinctly within the field of
awareness that we are conscious of them, but dimly so.[165] Others, in
particular cases at least, may be so far outside and hidden in the
twilight obscurity that the subject is not even dimly aware of them. In
more technical parlance, we may say, they are so far dissociated that
they belong to _an ultra-marginal zone and are really subconscious_.
Evidence of their having been present can only be obtained through
memories recovered in hypnosis, abstraction, and by other methods. These
may be properly termed coconscious. Undoubtedly the degree of awareness
for marginal elements, i.e., the degree of dissociation between the
elements of the content of consciousness, varies at different moments in
the same individual according to the degree of concentration of
attention and the character of the fixation, e. g., whether upon the
environment or upon inner thoughts. It also varies much in different
individuals. Therefore some persons lend themselves as more favorable
subjects for the detection of marginal and ultra-marginal states than
others. Furthermore, according to certain evidence at hand, there is, in
some persons at least, a constant shifting or interchange of elements
going on between the field of attention and the marginal and the
ultra-marginal zone—what is within the first at one moment is in the
second, or is entirely subconscious, the next, and _vice versa_.

Amnesia develops very rapidly for the contents of the twilight region,
as I have already stated, and this renders their recognition
difficult.[166]

In favorable subjects memory of that portion of the content of
consciousness which is commonly called the fringe can be recovered in
abstraction and hypnosis. In these states valuable information can be
obtained regarding the content of consciousness at any given previous
moment,[167] and this information reveals that there were present in the
fringe conscious states of which the subject was never aware, or of
which he is later ignorant owing to amnesia. I have studied the fringe
of consciousness by this method in a number of subjects. A number of
years ago _a systematic study_ of the field of the content of
consciousness outside the focus of awareness, including not only the
fringe but what may be called the ultra-marginal (subconscious) zone,
was made in a very favorable subject (Miss B.), and the general results
were given in an address on the “Problems of Abnormal Psychology”[168]
at the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in St. Louis (1904). I may be
permitted to quote that summary here. The term “secondary consciousness”
is used in this passage to designate the fringe and ultra-marginal
(subconscious) zone.

"A systematic examination was made of the personal consciousness in
hypnosis regarding the perceptions and content of the secondary
consciousness during definite moments, of which the events were
prearranged or otherwise known, the subject not being in
absent-mindedness. It is not within the scope of an address of this sort
to give the details of these observations, but in this connection I may
state briefly a summary of the evidence, reserving the complete
observation for future publication. It was found that—

"1. A large number of perceptions—visual, auditory, tactile, and thermal
images, and sometimes emotional states—occurred outside of the personal
consciousness and, therefore, the subject was not conscious of them when
awake. The visual images were particularly those of peripheral vision,
such as the extra-conscious [marginal or ultra-marginal] perception of a
person in the street who was not recognized by the personal waking
consciousness; and the perception of objects intentionally placed in the
field of peripheral vision and not perceived by the subject, whose
attention was held in conversation. Auditory images of passing
carriages, of voices, footsteps, etc., thermal images of heat and cold
from the body were similarly found to exist extra-consciously, and to be
entirely unknown to the personal waking consciousness.

"2. As to the content of the concomittant (dissociated) ideas, it
appeared, by the testimony of the hypnotic self, that as compared with
those of the waking consciousness the secondary ideas were quite
limited. They were, as is always the experience of the subject, made up
for the most part of emotions (e. g., annoyances), and sensations
(visual, auditory, and tactile images of a room, of particular persons,
people’s voices, etc). They were not combined into a logical
proposition, though in using words to describe them it is necessary to
so combine them and therefore give them a rather artificial character as
‘thoughts.’ It is questionable whether the word ‘thoughts’ may be used
to describe mental states of this kind, and the word was used by the
hypnotic self subject to this qualification. Commonly, I should infer, a
succession of such ‘thoughts’ may arise, but each is for the most part
limited to isolated emotions and sensorial images and lacks the
complexity and synthesis of the waking mentation.

"3. The memories, emotions, and perceptions of which the subject is not
conscious when awake are remembered in hypnosis and described. The
thoughts of which the subject is conscious when awake are those which
are concentrated on what she is doing. The others, of which she is not
conscious, are a sort of side-thoughts. These are not logically
connected among themselves, are weak, and have little influence on the
personal (chief) train of thought. Now, although when awake the subject
is conscious of some thoughts and not of others, both kinds keep running
into one another and therefore the conscious and the subconscious are
constantly uniting, disuniting, and interchanging. _There is no hard and
fast line between the conscious and the subconscious, for at times what
belongs to one passes into the other, and vice versa._ The waking self
is varying the grouping of its thoughts all the time in such a way as to
be continually including and excluding the subconscious thoughts. The
personal pronoun ‘I,’ or, when spoken to, ‘you,’ applied equally to her
waking self and to her hypnotic self, _but these terms were not
applicable to her unconscious thoughts, which were not self-conscious_.
For convenience of terminology it was agreed to arbitrarily call the
thoughts of which the subject is conscious when awake the _waking
consciousness_, and the thoughts of which when awake she is not
conscious the _secondary consciousness_. In making this division the
hypnotic self insisted most positively on one distinction, namely that
the secondary consciousness was in no sense a _personality_. The pronoun
_I_ could not be applied to it. In speaking of the thoughts of this
second group of mental states alone, she could not say ‘I felt this,’ ‘I
saw that.’ These thoughts were better described as, for the most part,
unconnected, discrete sensations, impressions, and emotions, and were
not synthesized into a personality. They were not, therefore,
self-conscious. When the waking self was hypnotized, the resulting
hypnotic self acquired the subconscious perceptions of the second
consciousness; she then could say ‘_I_,’ and the hypnotic ‘_I_’ included
what were formerly ‘subconscious’ perceptions. In speaking of the
secondary personality by itself, then, it is to be understood that
self-consciousness and personality are always excluded. This testimony
was verified by test instances of subconscious perception of visual and
auditory images of experiences occurring in my presence.

"4. Part played by the secondary consciousness in (a) normal mentation.
The hypnotic self testified that the thoughts of the secondary
consciousness do not form a logical chain. They do not have volition.
They are entirely passive and have no direct control over the subject’s
voluntary actions.

"(b) Part played by the secondary consciousness in absent-mindedness.
(1) Some apparently absent-minded acts are only examples of amnesia.
There is no doubling of consciousness at the time. It is a sort of
continuous amnesia brought about by lack of attention. (2) In true
absent-mindedness there does occur a division of consciousness along
lines which allow a large field to, and relatively wide synthesis of the
dissociated states. The personal consciousness is proportionately
restricted. The subconscious thoughts may involve a certain amount of
volition and judgment, as when the subject subconsciously took a book
from the table, carried it to the bookcase, started to place it on the
shelf, found that particular location unsuitable, arranged a place on
another shelf where the book was finally placed. No evidence, however,
was obtained to show that the dissociated consciousness is capable of
wider and more original synthesis than is involved in adapting habitual
acts to the circumstances of the moment.

"(c) Solving problems by the secondary consciousness. [The statement of
the hypnotic self regarding the part played by the ‘secondary
consciousness’ has already been given in Lecture VI, p. 167.]

“The subject of these observations was at the time in good mental and
physical condition. Criticism may be made that, the subject being one
who had exhibited for a long time previously the phenomena of mental
dissociation, she now, though for the time being recovered, tended to a
greater dissociation and formation of subconscious states than does a
normal person, and that the subconscious phenomena were therefore
exaggerated. This is true. It is probable that the subconscious flora of
ideas in this subject are richer than in the ordinary individual. These
phenomena probably represent the extreme degree of dissociation
compatible with normality. And yet, curiously enough, the evidence
tended to show that the more robust the health of the individual, the
more stable her mind, the richer the field of these ideas.”

Of course it is a question how far the findings in a particular and
apparently specially favorable subject are applicable to people in
general. I would say, however, that I have substantially confirmed these
observations in another subject, B. C. A., when in apparent health. In
this latter subject the richness of the fringe and what may be called
the ultra-marginal region in conscious states is very striking. The same
is true of O. N. (cf. Lecture VI, p. 174). Again in psychasthenics,
suffering from attacks of phobia, association, or habit psycho-neuroses,
etc., I have been able to recover, after the attack has passed off,
memories of conscious states which during and preliminary to the attack
were outside the focus of attention. Of some of these the subject had
been dimly aware, and of some apparently entirely unaware (i.e., they
were coconscious). For the former as well as the latter there followed
complete amnesia, so that the subject was ignorant of their previous
presence, and believed that the whole content of consciousness was
included in the anxiety or other state which occupied the focus of
attention. Consequently I am in the habit, when investigating a
pathological case, like an obsession, of inquiring (by technical
methods) into the fringe of attention and even the ultra-marginal
region, and reviving the ideas contained therein, particularly those for
which there is amnesia. My purpose has been to discover the presence of
ideas or thoughts which as a setting would explain the meaning of the
idea which was the object of fear (a phobia), the exciting cause of
psycho-neurotic attacks, etc. To this I shall presently return.

If all that I have said is true, it follows that the _whole content or
field of consciousness at any given moment includes not only
considerably more than that which is within the field of attention but
more than is within the field of awareness_. The field of conscious
states as a whole comprises the focus of attention plus the marginal
fringe; and besides this there may be a true subconscious ultra-marginal
field comprising conscious states of which the personal consciousness is
not even dimly aware. We may schematically represent the relations of
the different fields by a diagram (Fig. 1).

It will be noted that the field of conscious states includes A., B., and
C. and is larger than that of awareness, which includes A. and B. The
field of awareness is larger than that of attention (A.), but the focus
of awareness coincides with the field of attention, or, as it is
ordinarily termed, the focus of attention. Of course there is no sharp
line of demarcation between any of these fields, but a gradual shading
from A. to D. Any such diagrammatic representation, although of help to
those who like to visualize concepts, must give a false viewpoint; as in
reality the relations are dynamic or functional, and the different
fields more properly should be viewed as different but inter-related
participants in a large dynamic mechanism.

[Illustration:
Fig. 1. A. Attention and focus of awareness.
B. Fringe of awareness.
C. Subconscious, i.e., coconscious states (ultramarginal).
D. Unconscious processes.
]

=The meaning of ideas may be found in the fringe of consciousness.=—Let
us now return from this general survey of the fringe of consciousness to
our theme—the setting which gives meaning to ideas.

It is obvious that, theoretically, when I attend to the perceptive
images of an idea, the meaning of that idea, not being in the focus of
awareness, may be found among the conscious states that make up the
fringe of the dynamic field. For instance, if my idea of a certain
politician, my knowledge of whom, we will say, has been gained entirely
from the newspapers, is that of a bad man—a “crook”—this meaning may be
dimly in the fringe of my awareness. It is not necessary that any large
part of this knowledge should be in the marginal zone of the content of
consciousness but only a summary of all the knowledge I have acquired
regarding him. The _origin_ of this meaning—a crook—I can easily find in
my associative memories of what I have read. But there would seem to be
no need of all these to persist as a functioning setting—a short summary
in the form of an idea, secondary image, a word or symbol of a bad man
would seem to be sufficient. The same principle is applicable to a large
number of the simple images of objects in my environment—a book, an
electric lamp, a horse, etc.

It is not easy with such normal ideas of everyday life to analyze the
fringe and determine precisely its contents. There is no sharp dividing
line between the various zones—the whole being a dynamic system. _The
moment attention is directed to the marginal zones they become the focus
and vice versa._ To obtain accurate knowledge of the marginal zones we
require individuals suitable for a special technique by which the
constituents of these zones can be brought back as memory.

For such purposes certain persons with pathological ideas (e. g.,
phobias)[169] are very favorable subjects for various reasons not
necessary to go into.

Now, as respects the simple normal ideas of everyday life, such as I
have just cited, a person can give very clearly his viewpoint. He has a
very definite notion of the meaning of his perceptions and can give his
reasons for them based on his associative memories of past experiences
which he can recall. But in the conditions to which I am now referring
_a person can give no explanation_ of a particular viewpoint which may
be of a very definite but unusual (abnormal) character. Nor can he
recall any experiences which would explain the origin of it. I have in
mind particularly the obsessions.

Now, according to my observations, we find in the marginal zones of the
content of consciousness conscious elements which in particular cases
may even give a hitherto unsuspected meaning to the pathological idea. I
have found in these zones thoughts which gave meaning to emotions and
other symptoms excited by apparently inadequate objects. Thus, in H. O.,
attacks of recurrent nausea and fear almost prohibiting social
intercourse were always due to thoughts of self-disgust hidden in the
fringe.

Let us take a concrete case, that of a person who has a pathological
fear and who, as we know is often the case, can give no explanation of
his viewpoint. The fear may be that of fainting, or of thunderstorms, of
a particular disease, say cancer, or of so-called “unreality” attacks,
or what not. This so-called “fear” is of course an idea of self or other
object linked with, or which occasions as a reaction, the strong emotion
of fear. It recurs in attacks which are excited by stimuli, of one kind
or another, that are associated with the idea. The patient can give no
explanation of the _meaning_ of this idea that renders intelligible why
it should occasion his fear. There is nothing in his consciousness, so
far as he knows, which gives an adequate meaning to it.

Thus, for example, C. D. was the victim of attacks of fear; the attacks
were so intense that at times she had been almost a prisoner in her
house, in dread of attacks away from home; and yet she was unable even
after two prolonged searching examinations to define the exact nature of
the fear which was the salient feature of the attacks, or, from her
ordinary memories, to give any explanation of its origin. She remembered
many moments in the last twenty years when the fear had come upon her
with great intensity, but she could not recall the date of its inception
and, therefore, the conditions under which it originated; consequently
nothing satisfactory could be elicited beyond an early history of
“anxiety attacks” or indefinable fear of great intensity attached to no
specific idea that she knew.

As a result of searching investigation by technical methods it was
brought out that the specific object of the fear was _fainting_. When an
attack developed, besides intense physiological disturbances and
confusion of thought, there was in the content of consciousness a
feeling that her mind was flying off into space and a definite thought
of losing consciousness or fainting, and that she was going to faint.
There was amnesia for these thoughts following the attacks. She never
had fainted in the attacks and, as it later transpired, had fainted only
once in her life. Here then, _dimly in the content_ of consciousness,
was the object of the fear in an attack. But the object was afterwards
forgotten; hence she could not explain what she was afraid of. Why
fainting should be such a terrible accident to be feared she also could
not explain.

The question now was, what possible meaning could fainting have for her
that she so feared it? This she did not know.

Now, on still further investigation, I found that there was always in
the fringe of consciousness during an attack and also during the
anticipatory fear of an attack, _an idea and fear of death_. This, to
use her expression, “was in the background of her mind”; it referred to
impending fainting. It appeared then that in the fringe or
ultra-marginal zone was the _idea of death as the meaning of fainting_.
_Of this she was never aware._ It was really subconscious. It was the
meaning of her idea of herself fainting. In consequence of this meaning
fainting was equivalent to her own death. She would not have been afraid
of fainting if she had not believed or could have been made to believe
that in her case it did not mean death. We might properly say that the
real object of the fear was death.

When this content of the fringe of attention was recovered, the patient
voluntarily remarked that she had not been aware of the presence during
the attacks of that idea, but now she remembered it clearly, and also
realized plainly why she was afraid of fainting,—what she had not
understood before. (It must be borne in mind that this meaning of
fainting, as a state equivalent to death, did not pertain to fainting in
general but solely to herself. She knew perfectly well that fainting in
other people was not dangerous; it was only an unrecognized belief
regarding a possible accident to herself.) Besides this content of the
fringe of attention it was also easy to show that the fringe often
included the thought (or idea) which had been the immediate excitant of
each attack. Sometimes this stimulus-idea entered the focus of
attention; sometimes it was only in the fringe. In either case there was
apt to be amnesia for it, but it could always be recalled to memory in
abstraction or hypnosis.

The content of consciousness taken as a whole, i.e., to include both the
focus and the fringe of attention, then would adequately determine the
meaning of this subject’s idea of fainting as applied to herself.

But why this meaning of fainting? It must have been derived from
antecedent experiences. An idea can no more have a meaning without
antecedent experiences with which it is or once was linked than can the
word “parallelopipedon” have a geometrical meaning without a previous
geometrical experience, or “Timbuctoo” a personal meaning without being
set in a personal experience, whether of missionaries or hymn-books.

I will not take the time to give the detailed results of the
investigation by hypnotic procedures that followed. I will merely
summarize by stating that the fear of death from fainting was a
recurrent memory, i.e., _a recurrence of the content of consciousness_
of a moment during an incident that occurred more than twenty years
before, when she was a young girl about 18 years of age. At the time as
the result of a nervous shock she had fainted, and just before losing
consciousness she definitely thought her symptoms meant death. At this
thought she became frightened, and ever since she has been afraid of
fainting. There was no conscious association between her phobia and this
youthful episode. When the memory of the latter was recovered she
remarked, “I wonder why I never thought of that before.”

But this again was not all. A searching investigation of the unconscious
(residua) in deep hypnosis revealed the fact that death from fainting
was organized with still wider experiences involving a fear of death. At
the moment of the nervous shock just before fainting (_fancied as
dying_) she thought of her mother who was dangerously ill from _cancer_
in an adjoining room, and a great fear swept over her at the thought of
what might happen to her mother if she should hear of the cause of her
(the patient’s) nervous shock and of her _death_. It further transpired
that the idea of death and fear of it were set in a still larger series
of experiences.[170] It had, indeed, dated from a childhood experience
when she was eight years of age. At that time she was frightened when a
pet animal died and a fear of death had been more or less continuously
present in her mind ever since, but not always consciously so; meaning
that it was sometimes in awareness and sometimes in the _ultra-marginal
zone_ of consciousness. She had been able to conceal the fear until the
fainting episode occurred and, as she in hypnosis asserted, fear
afterward had continued to be present more or less persistently,
although _she was not conscious of the fact when awake_ (excepting in
the phobic attacks) and it had attached itself to various ideas of
intercurrent illnesses. But these ideas could all be reduced to two,
_fainting and cancer_. Ever since her mother’s illness and death she had
a fear of death from cancer, believing she might inherit the disease.
This thought and the fear it aroused had been constantly in her mind but
never previously confessed. It was the real meaning of her fear of
illness which had been conspicuous and puzzling to her physician. She
had imagined that each illness might mean cancer, but had successfully
concealed this thought. The idea of death and the fear it excited had
thus become constellated in a large _unconscious_ complex derived from
past experiences which included the fainting episode, her mother’s death
from cancer and the possibility of having cancer herself. This last was
still _consciously believed_ and was very real to her.

Without pursuing further the details it is evident that although the
meaning of fainting—death—was in the fringe of consciousness and
subconscious, it had as a setting a large group of fear-inspiring
experiences, more particularly those involving cancer. But there was no
conscious association between her fear of fainting and that of cancer.
_Of this setting, during a phobic attack, only the ideas of fainting and
fear-inspiring death enter the various zones of consciousness._

As to why this apparently unsophisticated idea of death still
_persisted_ in connection with that of fainting is another problem with
which we are not concerned at this moment. We should have to consider
more specifically the content of the setting in which, besides the
cancer-belief, probably subconscious self-reproaches would be found.

=Meaning may be the conscious elements of a functioning larger
subconscious complex.=—However, whatever be its conscious constituents,
obviously meaning must be derived from antecedent experiences and
without such experiences no idea can have meaning. If, then, antecedent
experiences determine the meaning of the idea, it is _theoretically_
possible, particularly with insistent ideas, that the conscious elements
involved in meaning are, with many ideas at least, only part and parcel
of a larger complex which is for the most part unconscious. That is to
say, a portion of this complex—perhaps the larger portion represented by
the residua of past experiences—would, under this hypothesis, be
unconscious while certain elements would arise in consciousness as the
meaning of a given idea. Under such conditions a hidden subconscious
process would really determine the conscious setting which gives the
meaning. The whole setting would be partly conscious and partly hidden
in the unconscious. Such a mechanism may be roughly likened to that of a
clock, so far as concerns the relation of the chimes and hands to the
works concealed inside the case. Though the visible hands and the
audible chimes appear to indicate the time, the real process at work is
that of the hidden mechanism. To inhibit the chime or regulate the time
rate the mechanism must be altered. And so with an insistent idea: The
unconscious part of the complex setting must be altered to alter the
meaning of the idea. Of course the analogy must not be carried too far
as in the case of the clock the chimes and hands are only epiphenomena,
while conscious ideas are elements in the functioning mechanism.

Such a theory would afford an adequate explanation of the psychogenesis
and mechanism of certain pathological ideas such as the phobia of C. D.
At any rate, it is plain that an explanation of such ideas must be
sought, on the one hand, in their meanings and in the antecedent
experiences to which they are related, and, on the other, in the
processes which determine their insistency or fixation.

The facts which support this theory, to which our studies have led us,
we will take up for consideration in our next lecture.

-----

Footnote 165:

It is very doubtful whether vivid awareness is a matter of intensity
because, among other reasons, subconscious ideas of which the
individual is entirely unaware and elements in the fringe may have
decided intensity.

Footnote 166:

The development of amnesia seems to be inversely proportionate to the
degree of awareness, provided there are no other dissociating factors,
such as an emotional complex.

Footnote 167:

This is due to the well-known fact (demonstrated in a large variety of
phenomena) that ideas dissociated from the personal consciousness
awake may become synthesized as memories with this same consciousness
in hypnosis.

Footnote 168:

See _Proceedings_, also _The Psychological Review_, March-May, 1905.

Footnote 169:

All pathological processes are only the normal under altered
conditions.

Footnote 170:

Among them was the following: A few months later her mother died. C.
D. was in the room with the body, her back turned toward the bed where
the body lay. Suddenly she was startled by the window curtain blowing
out of the window. The noise and the partial vision of the curtain
gave her a start, for she thought the body had risen up in bed. At
this point, while in hypnosis, C. D. remarked, “Ah! that explains the
dream which I am always having. I am constantly having a frightful
dream of my mother lying dead and rising up as a corpse from the bed.
This dream always gives me a great terror.”

LECTURE XII
SETTINGS OF IDEAS AS SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN OBSESSIONS

In our last lecture we were led to two conclusions: (1) that the
conscious elements which are the meaning of an idea may be in the
marginal zones; and (2) more important, that “meaning” may be only a
part of a larger setting of antecedent experiences, which is an
unconscious complex.

Let us now consider the further question raised in the theory finally
proposed; namely, whether the submerged elements of a complex remain
quiescent or _whether, in some cases at least, this portion functions
subconsciously_ and takes part as an active factor in the whole process
by which the meaning of an idea and its accompanying emotional tone
invades the content of consciousness. If the latter be true, a hidden
subconscious process would, according to the theory (to repeat what was
previously said), really determine the conscious setting which gives the
meaning. Such a mechanism was roughly likened to that of a clock. If
such were the mechanism in insistent ideas, obsessions, and impulsions,
it would, as I have intimated, explain their insistency, their
persisting recurrence, the difficulty in modifying them, notwithstanding
the subject realizes their falsity, the point of view often inexplicable
to the subject, and the persistence of the affect. There is a constant
striving of affective subconscious processes, when stimulated, to carry
themselves to fulfilment. Consequently as we know from numerous
observations, the feelings and emotions (pleasantness and
unpleasantness, exaltation and depression; fear, anger, etc.) pertaining
to subconscious processes tend to emerge into consciousness;[171] and
likewise ideational constituents of the process often emerge into the
fringe of the content of consciousness and even the focus of awareness.
Given such a subconsciously functioning setting to an idea, it would
necessarily tend by the impulsive force of its emotion to make the
latter insistent, and resist the inhibiting control of the personal
consciousness.

In the case of C. D., cited in the last lecture, we were led to the
conclusion, as the result of analysis, that her insistent phobia might
be due to the impulsive force of such subconscious complexes. The whole
problem is a very difficult one, dealing as we are with complicated
mechanisms and such elusive and fluid factors as conscious and
subconscious processes. It is useless, therefore, to attempt to
formulate the mechanisms with anything like scientific exactness.

It must be borne in mind, further, that the method of analysis (employed
with C. D.), meaning thereby the bringing to light associated memories
of past experiences, cannot positively demonstrate that those
experiences take part as the causal factor in a present process. It can
demonstrate the sequence of mental events, and, therefore, each
successive link in a chain of evidence leading to the final act; or it
can demonstrate the material out of which we can select with a greater
or less degree of probability the factor which, in accordance with a
theory—in this case that of subconscious processes—seems most likely to
be the causal factor. Thus in the analysis of a bacterial culture we can
select the one which seems on various considerations to be the most
likely cause of an etiologically undetermined disease, but for actual
demonstration we must employ synthetic methods; that is, actually
reproduce the disease by inoculation with a bacterium. So with
psychological processes synthetic methods are required for positive
demonstration.

We have _available synthetic methods in hypnotic procedures_. These
give, it seems to me, positive results of value. If a subject is
hypnotized and in this state a complex is formed, it will be found that
this complex will determine, after the subject is awakened, the point of
view and therefore the meaning of the central idea when it comes into
consciousness, and this though the subject has complete amnesia for the
hypnotic experience. In this manner, if the idea is one which previously
had a very definite and undesirable meaning which we wish to eradicate,
we can organize a complex which shall include that idea and yet give it
a very different meaning, provided it is one acceptable to the subject.

To take simple examples, and to begin with a hypothetical case, but one
which in practice I have frequently duplicated: A subject is hypnotized
and although, in fact, the day is a beautifully fair one we point out
that it is really disagreeable because the sunshine is glowing and hot;
that such weather means dusty roads, drought, the drying up of the water
supply, the withering of the foliage, that the country needs rain, etc.
We further assert that this will be the subject’s point of view. In this
way we form a cluster of ideas as a setting to the weather which gives
it, fair as it is, an entirely different and unpleasant meaning and one
which is accepted. The subject is now awakened and has complete amnesia
for the hypnotic experience. When attention is directed to the weather
it is found that his point of view, for the time being at least, is
changed from what it was before being hypnotized. The perception of the
clear sky and the sunlight playing upon the ground includes secondary
images of heat, of dust, of withered foliage, etc., such as have been
previously experienced on disagreeable, hot, dusty days, and some of the
associated thoughts with their affects suggested in hypnosis arise in
consciousness; perhaps only a few, but, if he continues to think about
the weather, perhaps many. Manifestly the new setting formed in hypnosis
has been switched into association with the conscious perceptions of the
environment and has induced the secondary images and associated
thoughts, emotions, and feelings which give meaning. But it is equally
manifest, though many elements bubble up, so to speak, from the
unconscious setting into consciousness, that most of this setting
remains submerged in the unconscious.

In similar fashion I made a subject regard, metaphorically speaking, as
a cesspool for sewage a river which was being converted into a beautiful
water park by a dam.[172] It is scarcely necessary to cite additional
observations.

Manifestly such phenomena belong to the well-known class of so-called
“suggested post-hypnotic phenomena.” These we have already seen
(solution of problems predetermined actions, &c., Lecture VI) require
the postulate of a subconscious process. It is therefore difficult to
resist the conclusion that, when the suggested phenomenon is the
“meaning” of an idea, this also involves a subconscious process—that a
hypnotically organized setting functioning subconsciously ejects the
meaning into consciousness. In other words, the unconscious setting is a
part of the whole “psychosis” or complex, a factor in the functioning
mechanism; it is dynamic and not merely static, and is a functioning
part of the “psychic whole” of the given ideas (sign, perception, and
meaning). To use the analogy of the clock, the unconscious part of the
complex corresponds in a way to the works and determines what shall
appear in consciousness. In the case of the ideas of everyday life, and
particularly of pathological insistent ideas, unconscious complexes can
be shown, by methods of analysis and by interpretation, to be existent
and to be settings. We therefore infer that they similarly take part in
the functioning process of ideation. But, as I have said, as any idea
has many different settings and associated complexes, it is difficult to
determine by this method with positiveness which setting or other
complex, if any, is _in activity_ and takes part in the process. Hence
the different theories that have been offered to explain the precise
psychogenesis of insistent ideas.

=Therapeutic application.=—By similar procedures in a very large number
of instances, for therapeutic purposes, I have changed the setting, the
viewpoint, and the meaning of ideas without any realization on the
patient’s part of the reason for this change. This is the goal of
psychotherapy, and in my judgment the one fundamental principle common
to all technical methods of such treatment, different as these methods
appear to be when superficially considered.

It is obvious that in everyday life when by arguments, persuasion,
suggestion, punishment, exhortation, or prayer we change the viewpoint
of a person, we do so by building up complexes which shall act as
settings and give new meanings to his ideas. I may add, if we wish to
sway him to carry this new viewpoint to fulfilment through action we
introduce into the complex an emotion which by the driving force of its
impulses shall carry the ideas to practical fruition. This is the art of
the orator in swaying audiences to his views. Shakespeare has given us a
classic example in Marc Antony’s speech to the Roman populace.

The practical application to therapeutics of these principles of
rearranging the setting of a perception by artificial complex building
may be seen from the following actual case, which I have already cited
in previous contributions.[173]

I suggest to B. C. A. in hypnosis ideas of well-being, of recovery from
her infirmity; I picture a future roseate with hope, stimulate her
ambitions with suggestions of duties to be performed, deeds to be
accomplished. With all this there goes an emotional tone of exaltation
which takes the place of the depression and of the sense of failure
previously present. This emotional tone gives increased energy to her
organization, revitalizing, as it were, her psycho-physiological
processes [and by conflict represses the previously dissociating affect
and sentiment]. The whole I weave artfully and designedly into a
complex. Whatever neurotic symptoms were previously present I do not
allow to enter this complex. Indeed, the complex is such that they are
incompatible with it. The headache, nausea, and other bodily
discomforts, pure functional disturbances in this instance, are
dissociated and cease to torment. After “waking” there is complete
amnesia for the complex. Yet it is still organized, for it can be
recovered again in hypnosis. It is simply dormant. But the emotional
tone still persists after waking, and invades the personal synthesis,
which takes on a correspondingly ecstatic tone. The aspect of her
environment, her conception of her relation to the world and her past,
present, and future mental life have become colored, so to speak, by the
new feeling, as if under a new light. But, more than this, new syntheses
have been formed with new tones. If we probe deep enough we find that
many ideas of the dormant complex have, through association with the
environment (_point de repère_), become interwoven with those of the
previous personal consciousness and given all a new meaning. A moment
ago [her view was that] she was an invalid, incapacitated, exiled from
her social and family life, etc. What was there to look forward to? Now:
What of that? She is infinitely better; what a tremendous gain; at such
a rate of progress in a short time a new life will be open to her,
etc.—a radically new point of view. Now, too, she feels buoyant with
health and energy, ready to start afresh on her crusade for health and
life. Her neurotic symptoms have vanished. Such is the change that she
gratefully speaks of it as the work of a wizard. But the mechanism of
the transformation is simple enough. The exaltation, artificially
suggested in hypnosis, persists, altering the trend of her ideas and
giving new energy. The perceptions of her environment, cognition of
herself, etc., have entered into new syntheses which the introduction of
new _ideas_, new points of view have developed; thus the content of her
ideas has taken a definite, precise shape. Whence came these new ideas?
They seem to her to have come miraculously, for she has forgotten the
hypnotic complex. But forgetting an experience is not equivalent to its
not having happened, or to that experience not having been a part of
one’s own psychic life. The hypnotic consciousness remains a part of
one’s self (as a neurographic complex), however absolutely we have lost
awareness of it. Its experiences become fixed, though dormant, just as
do the experiences of our personal conscious life. The mechanism is the
same.

The following letter from this patient, received by chance after these
paragraphs were written, well expresses the psychological conditions
following hypnotic suggestion:

“Something has happened to me—I have a new point of view. I don’t know
what has changed me so all at once, but it is as if scales had fallen
from my eyes; I see things differently. That affair at L—— was nothing
to be ashamed of, Dr. Prince. I showed none of the common sense which
I really possess; I regret it bitterly; but I was not myself, and even
as [it was] I did nothing to be ashamed of—quite the contrary,
indeed.... Anyway, for some reason—I don’t know why, but perhaps you
do—I have regained my own self-respect and find to my amazement that I
need never have lost it. You know what I was a year ago—you know what
I am now—not much to be proud of, perhaps; but I am the work of your
hands, and a great improvement on [my poor old self]. I owe you what
is worth far more than life itself ... namely, the _desire_ to live.
You have given me life and you have given me something to fill it with
... I feel more like myself than for a long time. I am ‘my own man
again,’ so to say, and if you keep me and help me a little longer I
shall be well.”

In interpreting the phenomena it must be remembered that in such
suggestive experiments the subject after waking has complete amnesia for
the whole hypnotic experience, for all the ideas which were organized
into the complex to form the setting. And yet this viewpoint, in spite
of this amnesia, is that which was suggested, and he does not know why
his view has changed. That a large fraction of the hypnotic complex (or
setting) remains submerged in the unconscious can be readily shown. The
only question is whether it becomes an active subconscious process out
of which certain elements emerge as meaning into consciousness.

=The setting in obsessions.=—This question of the functioning of
unconscious complexes as subconscious processes is of fundamental
importance for psychology, whether normal or abnormal, and if well
established gives an entirely new aspect to its problems. We cannot
therefore be too exacting in demanding proof for the postulation of
subconscious processes as part of the mechanisms we are considering, or,
at least, requiring sufficient evidence to justify them as a _reasonable
theory_. If assumed as an hypothesis many otherwise obscure phenomena
become intelligible by one or other theory making use of them.

Let us examine for a moment the obsessions as one of the most important
problems with which abnormal psychology has to deal, and which offer
themselves as exaggerated examples of ideas with insistent meanings. The
phenomena are psychological and physical. They occur in a sporadic form,
as well as in a recurring obsessional form. Let us consider them simply
as phenomena irrespective of recurrence. They may be arranged by
gradations in types in which they appear:

A, as purely physical disturbances;

B, as physical disturbances plus conscious emotion;

C, as physical disturbances plus conscious emotion plus a specific idea
of the object of the emotion, but _without_ logical meaning;

D, as physical disturbances plus emotion plus idea plus meaning.

In the first type the physical phenomena (such as commonly attend
emotion) can be traced to a functioning subconscious emotional complex
of which the phenomena are physical manifestations; in the second to a
functioning subconscious complex ejecting its emotion into
consciousness. In the third we find by analysis an associated
unconscious complex (setting), which logically would account for the
emotion of the obsessing idea, and infer, by analogy with A and B, that
it is a dynamic factor in the psychosis. In the fourth we find a similar
complex, which logically would account for all the physical and
conscious phenomena.

_Type A_: The following observation may be cited as an example. At the
conclusion of some experiments, made on one subject in the presence of
another patient and while conversing socially at afternoon tea, I
noticed that the subject manifested marked tremor of the hands to such
an extent that the cup in her hand shook and rattled in its saucer. She
herself commented on the fact, and laughingly remarked that she did not
know what was the matter with her; at times she would “get awfully hot
all over and would break out in perspiration.” She could give no
explanation of this phenomenon which had not been present before the
experiments were begun. The subject was now put into deep hypnosis, in a
state in which communication was obtained only by writing, and thereby
the subconscious tapped. Without going into all the details, the sum and
substance of the information obtained in this hypnotic state was this:
coconscious images (pictures), of which she was not consciously aware,
kept coming and going; these were the coconscious phenomena I have
previously described (p. 169). When certain images appeared
coconsciously the tremor developed, and when others appeared the tremor
ceased; when still others appeared there were vasomotor disturbances and
perspiration as well as tremor.

The images as I interpret them were the secondary images belonging to
subconscious ideas or processes.[174] To understand the conditions in
this instance it will be necessary to explain certain antecedent facts.
I had arranged to make certain hypnotic and other experiments on two
patients in the presence of each other. The one in question, the subject
of this observation, hesitated to have them made on herself in the
presence of a second person, fearing lest the various subconscious
phenomena which she exhibited would be regarded as stigmata and she be
thought “queer.” Each, of course, wished to see the experiments on the
other. The subject in question had for a long time been rather obsessed
with the insistent foolish idea that if people knew she manifested these
phenomena they would not care to know her socially. It was a point of
view which had been more or less obstinately maintained in spite of all
contradictory arguments. The idea had specifically recurred from time to
time in particular situations, and had caused considerable emotional
disturbance. If not a true obsession it was close to one. Nevertheless
she wanted to take part both for the object of seeing the experiments
and also of meeting the second patient. Still there were anxious doubts
and scruples in her mind arising from her desire, on the one hand, and a
fear, on the other, that it was a social mistake to do so. This had been
going on during several days and had been even the subject of
correspondence, discussions, etc. It was only at the last moment that
she could screw up her courage to take part in the experiments.

Finally the experiments were made, with the result as above stated. Now
the coconscious images which were accompanied by the tremors, etc., were
pictures of herself, of the second patient, and of myself. These images
coming and going seemed, as in a pantomime, to symbolize her previous
thoughts. Sometimes the image of the second patient turned away from the
subject, sometimes the three images were present, but the one of the
subject stood apart from the others as if an outcast, and in both these
latter cases particularly she would shake with tremor, and would “get
awfully hot all over,” and break out in perspiration. Then apparently
reassuring pictures would come and the tremor would cease.

Besides these coconscious images there was a train of coconscious
thought of which she was not personally aware. There was the thought
that perhaps, after all, it was a mistake to have taken part in the
experiments, as X, the second patient, was not a physician, and her wish
to see the subject hypnotized must have been largely curiosity. Of this
train of thought the subject was not aware. _At the same time_
concurrently there was in her personal consciousness the “thought that
she liked X, that it was very good of her to have come, and awfully kind
of you to take your time to conduct the experiments.” There was also a
conscious emotion of pleasure and something akin to hope, and
nervousness at the situation. By contrast coconsciously there was a
greater feeling of nervousness and the _emotion of fear_ of which she
was not consciously aware. By a few appropriate suggestions all these
phenomena were made to disappear.

It would take us too long and be too much of a digression to go more
deeply into these subconscious phenomena. From what has been given,
which is corroborated by a large number of observations of the same
sort, it seems to me we are justified in concluding that the physical
manifestations of emotion (tremor, etc.) in the instance were determined
by subconscious processes which were the _functioning residua of
antecedent thoughts with their emotions_.

But more than this these antecedent thoughts were obsessing ideas of
self-abasement, i.e., of herself as a person who socially was stamped
with a stigma and, therefore, as a sort of outcast. These thoughts had
formed one setting to the actual situation in which she found herself.
The subconscious complex, therefore, contained a perception plus the
meaning of the situation plus emotion; in other words, the whole of the
psychosis including the affect was subconscious in that none of its
elements emerged into consciousness. Another and rival perception of the
situation was that which was actually in consciousness and which has
been described. The physical phenomena were the manifestation of the
subconscious affect and would have been equally manifested if the affect
had become conscious. In such a case, then, we may say the whole of one
setting actually functions subconsciously.

The case of H. O. is the same in principle as I interpret it, but is
distinguished by the fact that the dissociation of processes was not so
extreme. The obsessing idea was in the ultramarginal zone of
consciousness and, to this extent, subconscious. Briefly stated, H. O.
for many years was the victim of an intense obsession, in consequence of
which she had practically foregone social life, and found herself unable
to travel for fear she would be afflicted with her psychosis in trains,
etc. The physical symptom was intense nausea suddenly arising as an
attack. When attacked with this there developed also depression and a
mental state which is perhaps best described as a mood. She could give
no explanation of the attacks. On examination it developed that always
in the “background of her mind,” just preceding the attack, there came
the idea of disgust of self. At once the nausea as the physical
expression of disgust was experienced. The disgust-idea was always
excited by some associated stimulus. The meaning of this “sentiment” was
set in a large complex of past experiences. Into all this I will not go.
The point is that the only conscious elements of her obsession were in
the extreme fringe of consciousness, sufficiently dissociated to be
practically coconscious,[175] but the _physical symptoms_ were
distressingly prominent. _Relief was easily effected simply by
organizing a new complex giving a new point of view of self._

Complexes consisting entirely of the physiological manifestations of
emotion without conscious emotion undoubtedly occur. A long time ago I
described such a neurosis under the name of Fear Neurosis[176] in
distinction from psychosis. The symptom complex was interpreted as a
persisting automatism derived from antecedent fear states that had been
outgrown. From our present standpoint and fuller knowledge we must
believe that underlying this automatism is probably an unconscious
complex of these antecedent experiences including the fear which takes
part in the functioning mechanism. It may be called, then, a
subconscious psychosis.

True _hysterical laughter and crying_ are undoubtedly phenomena of this
type and due to the same mechanism. These phenomena are well known to be
purely automatic; that is to say, they are emotional manifestations
unaccompanied in consciousness by thoughts or even by emotions
corresponding to them. The subject laughs or cries without knowing why
and without even feeling merry or sad. I forbear to digress sufficiently
to present the evidence for the interpretation that the phenomena are
due to subconscious processes of the kind just described. Let me merely
say that in one instance, N. O., intensely studied, the automatic crying
was traced by experimental and clinical methods to a persisting and
often insistent subconscious childhood’s perception and meaning of
self—as a lonely, unhappy child. This perception, etc., could be
differentiated from the conscious perception belonging to adult age.

Numerous observations of emotional phenomena similar in principle have
been recorded in the case of Miss B.[177] These observations included
automatic facial expressions of pleasure, anger, and fear. These
expressions could always be traced to subconscious processes and in this
case to actual ideas of a coconscious personality. But the principle is
the same. _Sometimes the affect linked to the process welled up into
consciousness and sometimes it did not._ When, in the case of Miss B.,
the automatic phenomena were determined by coconscious ideas it was
because the perceptions of the secondary subconscious personality had a
humorous, angry, or fear setting, as the case might be. These particular
observations are of especial interest because they allow us to clearly
distinguish _at almost one and the same moment the different
manifestations corresponding to the different settings with which the
same idea may be clustered_. While, for instance, the personal
consciousness of Miss B. perceived a person or situation with
apprehension and manifested this apprehension in her facial expression
as well as verbally, the subconscious perception of the same person or
situation was one of joy which broke through Miss B.’s apprehensive
feature in automatic smiles. In other words, two different perceptions
(with opposite meanings) of one and the same object functioned at the
same time.

These observations, as interpreted, are of wider significance in that
they allow us to understand the mechanism of many phenomena of everyday
life. For instance, the _hysteria of crowds_ may be explained on the
same principle; likewise the outbreak of emotional physical
manifestations in a person whose attention is absorbed (abstraction and
distraction) in reading or hearing something (e. g., at a play), which,
it may be inferred, touches some inner emotional experience of his life.
In the kind of instance I have in mind introspection fails to reveal the
presence of conscious thoughts or sometimes even emotions which
adequately explain the physical disturbance. When not abstracted by the
reading or play, the same ideas he was attending to a moment before fail
to excite these disturbances.

As has been said, “everyone is a little hysterical,” meaning that under
certain conditions—particularly those of stress and strain and strong
emotion—the mind becomes a bit disintegrated, and unconscious complexes
manifest themselves through what are called hysterical symptoms.

_Type B_: In this class the subject is afflicted with attacks of
_conscious emotion_, most conspicuously and commonly fear, _plus the
same physical disturbances as in type A_, but without any specific idea
in consciousness to which the emotion is related. When we examine
certain favorable subjects like Miss B., B. C. A., H. O. and O. N., in
whom memories of subconscious processes can be obtained by technical
procedures, specific coconscious ideas can be demonstrated during the
attacks of fear. These ideas are those of fear of some specific object.
The emotion pertaining to these ideas _alone_ emerges into
consciousness, the subject remaining unaware of the ideas themselves. In
the case of Miss B. numerous observations of this kind were
recorded.[178] When the obsessing fear constantly recurs it is a
so-called “_anxiety neurosis_,”[179] as I interpret the phenomena.

A typically perfect example of anxiety neurosis was the recurring
attacks of intense anxiety accompanied by a feeling of suffocation and
oppression of the chest experienced by one of my subjects. Investigation
disclosed that the first attack immediately followed a dream which was
forgotten, but recovered in hypnosis. It appeared that in the dream she
was accused by a certain person of certain delinquencies and threatened
with exposure. At this point in the dream she was overcome with fear and
anguish as in the after attacks. It also appeared that previously she
had been and still was apprehensive of this person’s loyalty. By
inference and analogy with the well-established after-phenomena of
dreams (p. 101), we must assume that the dream process still functioned
subconsciously and produced the anxiety attacks.[180]

In this connection it is well to notice that it is a common observation
that not only the affect of emotion but that of _feeling_ also may
emerge from the subconscious into consciousness and color the attitude
of the personal consciousness. This may be demonstrated by hypnotic
procedures. When in hypnosis complexes of ideas with strong feeling
tones, whether of pleasure or displeasure, of exaltation or depression,
are suggested, the subject after awakening experiences these same
feeling tones which dominate the personality. The subject then feels
pleasantly exalted or unpleasantly depressed, as the case may be,
without knowing the reason why. In alternating personalities the same
phenomena may sometimes be observed. In the case of Miss B. the feeling
tones which dominated the one personality invaded the consciousness of
the other personality, often causing considerable distress after the
alternation had occurred and although there was amnesia for all that had
gone before.[181] Thus BIV complained of the feelings of depression from
which BI shortly before had suffered, although her own ideas were far
from being of a depressing nature. This depression welled up from the
unconscious. It was in consequence of this phenomenon that BIV wrote:
“BI’s constant grieving wears on my nerves. It is harder to endure than
one would believe possible. I would rather give and take with Sally—a
thousand times rather.” Likewise when a subject has feelings of
unpleasantness and depression which he cannot explain it is easy in
certain subjects to demonstrate the concurrence of coconscious ideas
with these feeling tones. The affect in such cases emerges into
consciousness, though the subject is unaware of the coconscious ideas.
Correspondingly the feelings may be those of pleasantness and
exaltation. The demonstration of coconscious processes as the sources of
the conscious feelings of course can only be made in subjects in whom
memories of coconscious processes can be evoked. In such subjects I have
observed the phenomena on almost numberless occasions. But it can be
provoked in almost any good hypnotic subject. To awake pleasurable and
exalting feelings, to substitute them for their opposite when such are
present, belongs to therapeutic art. The skillful therapeutist endeavors
to provoke the former by the various procedures at his command. The
important principle underlying such procedures is that the feeling tones
pertaining to ideas may still invade the personal consciousness after
the ideas have become dormant in the unconscious.

This principle, it seems to me, is of far-reaching application. The
persistence of the feeling tone in a pleasant or unpleasant mental
attitude after the experience giving rise to it has become dormant is
_observed in everyday life_ and can be explained on this principle. We
have an exalting experience, engage in a spirited game of tennis, watch
an exciting football match, or take part in an exhilarating dance. For
the remainder of the day or the next day we still experience all the
stimulating pleasurable feeling, even though in the cares of our
vocation the memories of the previous experiences have remained dormant,
not having once been called to mind. The only difference between such
experiences of everyday life and those of hypnosis is that in one case
we can, if we will, recall the origin of the feeling and in the other we
cannot. In both we do not.[182]

Dormant _dream_ complexes may give rise to similar phenomena. In a minor
way everyone, probably, has experienced the persistence of the emotional
effects of a dream after waking and after the memory of the dream has
vanished. More commonly, of course, the dream is remembered, but in the
cases of people who do not remember their dreams the phenomenon is
precise. B. C. A., for example, does not as a rule remember her dreams,
but nevertheless frequently awakes in a state of anxiety or exaltation
which has considerable persistency. In hypnosis the dream which gives
rise to the emotional state is recovered.

In pathological conditions these post-hypnotic, hysterical, dream, and
other phenomena suggest, among other questions, whether in depressive
and excited psychoses the affective element is not derived from
submerged unconscious complexes. _Melancholias_, for example, may in
some cases at least derive their feeling tone from such complexes.

-----

Footnote 171:

Janet: The Mental States of Hystericals, pp. 289-290. Prince: The
Dissociation, pp. 132-5, 262, 297–8, 324-5, 497.

Footnote 172:

The Unconscious, _Journal Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1909.

Footnote 173:

Morton Prince: (Psychotherapeutics; A Symposium. Richard G. Badger,
Boston, 1910.) Also The Unconscious, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_,
April-May, and June-July, 1909.

Footnote 174:

See p. 178, Lecture VI.

Footnote 175:

Memory of them could only be obtained in abstraction and hypnosis.

Footnote 176:

Fear Neurosis, _Boston Med. and Surg. Journal_, September 28, 1898.

Footnote 177:

The Dissociation, see index, “Subconscious Ideas,” and “Subconscious
Self.”

Footnote 178:

The Dissociation, loc. cit.

Footnote 179:

Ibid., p. 132.

Footnote 180:

It is worth noting that this interpretation is supported by the
therapeutic result. The attacks completely and quickly ceased after
the setting to her apprehensive idea was so altered, by one single
explanation, that she no longer feared the loyalty of her friend.

Footnote 181:

The Dissociation, pp. 262, 297, 298 and 324, 325, 497; also The
Unconscious, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1909.

Footnote 182:

Prince: The Unconscious, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May
and June-July, 1909.

LECTURE XIII
TWO TYPES OF PHOBIA
(_Obsessions Continued_)

_Type C_: In this type _the affect is linked with an idea as its object
in consciousness but without meaning_, so that whenever this idea is
awakened it is accompanied by the affect alone. Some of the phobias are
the most common pathological exemplars. Nor is there anything in the
content of consciousness which gives meaning to the idea as something
that should occasion anxiety. The subject, in other words, does not know
why he is afraid of the given object. In such cases the restoration of
dormant memories will disclose antecedent experiences in which the idea
is set and which explains the origin and meaning of the fear. Here again
we have the principle shown in a clear cut way in conditions of
alternating personality. For instance take the case of Miss B. An
emotion, apparently paradoxical, would be aroused in BIV in connection
with a strange person or place, or in consequence of a reference by some
one to an unknown event. BIV, without apparent reason, would feel an
intense emotion in connection with something or other which she did not
remember to have ever heard or seen before. A face, a name, a particular
locality where she happened to find herself would arouse a strong
emotional effect without her knowing the reason. The memories of the
experiences to which these emotions belonged were a part of BI’s life
and could easily be recalled by her when the personalities again
alternated and BI came into existence. When BIV came again these
experiences, of course, would be forgotten and become dormant, but the
emotions associated with the visual, auditory, and other images of a
given person or place, or whatever it might be, would be liable to be
aroused in her by the perception, in spite of the amnesia, whenever the
given person or place, as it might be, came into her daily life. Here
the conscious content of the psychosis consists of perception plus
affect without meaning.

I formerly was inclined to interpret such paradoxical emotions on the
principle of the simple linking of an affect to a perception. But when
we consider that, on the reversion of the personality to BI the
perception, meaning, and affect still remained organized as a conscious
psychic whole, it is much more probable that the meaning took part as a
subconscious process in the mechanism of BIV’s emotional psychosis and
was responsible for the paradox. In the case of recurrent fears the
antecedent experiences which contain their meaning are conserved as
unconscious complexes. The psychosis differs clinically from types A and
B only in that another conscious element has been added,—viz.: the idea
of an object of the fear. It is consistent therefore to infer that the
unconscious complexes are a submerged part of the mechanism by which the
affect is maintained in association with the object. The conscious and
the subconscious form a psychic whole.

As an instance let us take the following case of phobia. It was
ostensibly one of church-steeples and towers of any kind. The patient, a
woman about forty years of age, dreaded and tried in consequence to
avoid the sight of one. When she passed by such a tower she was very
strongly affected emotionally, experiencing always a feeling of terror
or anguish accompanied by the usual marked physical symptoms. Sometimes
even speaking of a tower would at once awaken this emotional complex
which expressed itself outwardly in her face, as I myself observed on
several occasions. Considering the frequency with which church and
schoolhouse towers are met with in everyday life, one can easily imagine
the discomfort arising from such a phobia. Before the mystery was
unraveled she was unable to give any explanation of the origin or
meaning of this phobia, and could not connect it with any episode in her
life, or even state how far back in her life it had existed. Vaguely she
thought it existed when she was about fifteen years of age and that it
might have existed before that. Now it should be noted that an idea of a
tower with bells had in her mind no meaning whatsoever that explained
the fear. It had no more meaning than it would have in anybody’s mind.
In the content of consciousness there was only the perception plus
emotion and no corresponding meaning. Accordingly I sought to discover
the origin and meaning of the phobia by the so-called psycho-analytic
method.

When I attempted to recover the associated memories by this method, the
mere mention of bells in a tower threw her into a panic in which
anxiety, “thrills,” and perspiration were prominent. Before making the
analysis I had constructed a theory in my mind to the effect that a
phobia for bells in a tower was a sexual symbolism, being led to this
partly by the suggestiveness of the object and partly by the fact that I
had found symbolisms of a sexual kind in her dreams.[183]

Analysis was conducted at great length and memories covering a wide
field of experiences were elicited. When asked to think of bells in a
tower, or each of these objects separately, there was at first a
complete blocking of thought in that her mind became a blank. Later,
memories which to a large extent, but not wholly, played in various
relations around her mother (who is dead) as the central object came
into the field of consciousness. Nothing, however, was awakened that
gave the slightest meaning to the phobia even on the wildest
interpretation. The patient, who had been frequently hypnotized by
another physician, tended during the analysis to go into a condition of
unusually deep abstraction, to such a degree that on breaking off the
analysis she failed to remember, save very imperfectly, the memories
elicited. Such an abstraction is hypnosis.

Finally, after all endeavors to discover the genesis of the phobia by
analysis were in vain, I tried another method. While she was in hypnosis
I put a pencil in her hand with the object of obtaining the desired
information through automatic writing. _While she was narrating some
irrelevant memories of her mother_, the hand rapidly wrote as follows:
“G.... M.... church and my father took my mother to Bi.... where she
died and we went to Br.... and they cut my mother. I prayed and cried
all the time that she would live and the church bells were always
ringing and I hated them.”

When she began to write the latter part of this script she became
depressed, sad, indeed anguished; tears flowed down her cheeks and she
seemed to be almost heartbroken. In other words, it appeared as if she
were subconsciously living over again the period described in the
script. I say subconsciously for she did not know what her hand had
written or why she was anguished. During the writing of the first part
of the script she was verbally describing other memories; during the
latter part she ceased speaking.

After awakening from hypnosis and when she had become composed in her
mind she narrated, at my request, the events referred to in the script.
She remembered them clearly as they happened when she was about fifteen
years of age. It appeared that she was staying at that time in G....
M...., a town in England. Her mother, who was seriously ill, was taken
to a great surgeon to be operated upon. She herself suffered great
anxiety and anguish lest her mother should not recover. She went twice a
day to the church to pray for her mother’s recovery and in her anguish
declared that if her mother did not recover she would no longer believe
in God. The chimes in the tower of the church, which was close to her
hotel, sounded every quarter hour; they got on her nerves; she hated
them; she could not bear to hear them, and while she was praying they
added to her anguish. Ever since this time the ringing of bells has
continued to cause a feeling of anguish. This narrative was not
accompanied by emotion as was the automatic script.

It now transpired that it was the _ringing_ of the church bells, or the
_anticipated ringing_ of bells, that caused the fear, and not the
perception of a tower itself. When she saw a tower she feared lest bells
should ring. This was the object of the phobia.[184] She could not
explain why she had never before connected her phobia with the episode
she described. This failure of association as we know is not uncommon,
and in this case was apparently related to a determination to put out of
mind an unbearable episode associated with so much anguish. There had
been for years a more or less constant mental conflict with her phobia.
The subject had striven not to think of or look at belfries, churches,
schoolhouses, or any towers, or to hear the ringing of their bells, or
to talk about them. She had endeavored to protect herself by keeping
such ideas out of her mind. Before further analyzing the case there are
two points which are well worth calling attention to:

1. When the subject subconsciously described the original childhood
experience by automatic script there was intense emotion—fear—which
emerged into consciousness without her knowing the reason thereof. When,
on the other hand, she later from her conscious memories described the
same experience there was no such emotion. In other words it was only
when the conserved residua of the experience functioned consciously and
autonomously as a dissociated, independent process that emotion was
manifested. So long as the memories were described from the view-point
of the matured adult personal consciousness there was no emotion. As a
subconscious process they were unmodified by this later viewpoint. This
suggests at least that when the phobia was excited by the sight or idea
of a tower it was due likewise to a subconscious process and that this
was one and the same as that which induced the experimental phobia.

2. The phraseology of the script is noticeable. The account is just such
as a child might have written. It reads as if the conserved thoughts of
a child had awakened and functioned subconsciously.

From this history, so far as given, it is plain that the psychosis in
one sense is a recurring antecedent experience or memory, but it is only
a partial memory. The whole of the experience does not recur but only
the emotion in association with the ringing of bells. The rest of that
experience, viz., the idea of the possible death of her mother with its
attendant grief and anguish associated with the visits to the church,
the praying for recovery and finally the realization of the fatal
ending—all that which originally excited the fear and _gave the
ringing-of-bells-in-a-tower meaning_ was conserved as a setting in the
unconscious. That the rest of the experience was conserved was shown by
the fact that it could be recalled not only by automatic writing but,
although not in association with the phobia, to conscious memory. From
this point of view the fear of bells ringing may be regarded as a
recurrence of the original fear—that of her mother’s death—now derived
from a subconsciously functioning setting. The child was afraid to face
her grief and so now the matured adult was also afraid.

From another point of view the ringing of bells may be regarded as
standing for, or a symbol of, her mother’s death with which it was so
intimately associated, and this symbol awakened the same fear as did
originally the idea itself of the death. An object may still be the
symbol of another, although the association between the two cannot be
recalled. (The transference of the emotional factor of an experience to
some element in it is a common occurrence; e. g., a fear of knives in a
person who has had the fear of committing suicide.)

The discovered antecedent experiences of childhood then give a hitherto
unsuspected meaning to the ringing of bells. It is a meaning—the _mise
en scène_ of a tragedy of grief and a symbol of that tragedy. But was
that tragedy with its grief the _real_ meaning of the child’s fear or,
perhaps more correctly, the _whole_ of the meaning? And is it still the
meaning in the mind of the adult woman? Does the mere conservation of a
painful memory of grief explain its persistent recurrent subconscious
functioning during twenty-five years, well into adult life, so that the
child’s emotion shall be reawakened whenever one element (bell-tower) of
the original experience is presented to consciousness? And, still more,
can the persistence of a mere association of the affect with the object
independently of a subconscious process explain the psychosis? Either of
these two last propositions is absurd on its face as being opposed to
the experience of the great mass of mankind. The vast majority of people
have undergone disturbing, sorrowful or fear-inspiring experiences at
some time during the course of their lives and they do not find that
they cannot for years afterwards face some object or idea belonging to
that experience without being overwhelmed with the same emotion. Such
emotion in the course of time subsides and dies out. A few, relatively
speaking, do so suffer and then, because contrary to general experience,
it is called a psychosis.

We must, then, seek some other and adequate factor in the case under
examination. When describing the episode in the church, the subject
stated that on one occasion she omitted to go to church to pray and the
thought came to her that if her mother died it would be due to this
omission, and _it would be her fault_. The “eye of God”[185] she thought
was literally upon her in her every daily act and when her mother did
die she thought that it was God’s punishment of herself because of that
one failure. Consequently she thought _that she was to blame for her
mother’s death_; that _her mother’s death was her fault_. She feared to
face her mother’s death, not because of grief—that was a mere
subterfuge, a self-deception—but because she thought she was to blame;
and she feared to face towers with bells, or rather the ringing of
bells, because they symbolized or stood for that death (just as a
tomb-stone would stand for it), and in facing that fact she had to face
her own fancied guilt and self-reproach and this she dared not do. _This
was the real fear_, the fear of facing her own guilt. The emotion then
was not only a recurrence of the affect associated with the church
episode but a _reaction to self-reproach_. The ringing of bells,
somewhat metaphorically speaking, reproached her as Banquo’s ghost
reproached Macbeth.

All this was the child’s point of view.

But I found that the patient, an adult woman, _still believed and
obstinately maintained_ that her mother’s death was her fault. She had
never ceased to believe it. Why was this? Why had not the
unsophisticated belief of a child become modified by the maturity of
years? It did not seem to be probable that the given child’s reason was
the real adult reason for self-reproach. I did not believe it. A woman
forty years of age could not reproach herself on such grounds. And, even
if this belief had been originally the real reason, as a matter of fact
she had outgrown the child’s religious belief. She was a thorough-going
agnostic. Further probing brought out the following:

Two years before her mother’s death, the patient, then thirteen years
old, owing to her own carelessness and disobedience to her mother’s
instructions, had contracted a “cold” which had been diagnosed as
incipient phthisis. By the physician’s advice her mother took her to
Europe for a “cure” and was detained there (as she believed) for two
years, all on account of the child’s health. At the end of this period a
serious, chronic disease from which the mother had long suffered was
found to have so developed as to require an emergency operation. The
patient _still believed_ and argued that if her mother had not been
compelled to take her abroad she (the mother) would have been under
medical supervision at home, would have been operated upon long before
and in all probability would not have died. Furthermore, as the patient
had heedlessly and disobediently exposed herself to severe cold and
thereby contracted the disease compelling the sojourn in Europe, she was
to blame for the train of circumstances ending fatally.

All this was perfectly logical and true, assuming the facts as
presented. Here then was the real reason for the patient’s persistent
belief that her mother’s death was her fault and the persistent
self-reproach. _It also transpired that all this had weighed upon the
child’s mind and that the child had likewise believed it._ So the child
had two reasons for self-reproach. One was neglecting to pray and the
other was being the indirect cause of the fatal operation. Both were
intensely believed in. The first based on the “eye of God” theory she
had outgrown, but the other had persisted.

Summing up our study to this point: All these memories involving grief,
suffering, self-reproach, bells and mother formed an unconscious setting
which gave meaning to bells in towers and took part in the functioning
to form a psychic whole. The conscious psychosis was first the emergence
into consciousness of two elements only, the perception and the affect,
and the fear was a reaction to self-reproach, a fear to face self-blame.

Now even if the mother’s death were logically, by a train of fortuitous
circumstances, the patient’s fault, why did an otherwise intelligent
woman lay so much stress upon an irresponsible child’s behavior? The
child after all behaved no differently from other children. People do
not consciously blame themselves in after life for the ultimate
consequences of childhood’s heedlessness. According to common experience
such self-reproaches do not last into adult life without some
continuously acting factor.

A search in this case into the unconscious brought to light a persisting
idea that when events in her life happened unfortunately it was due to
her fault. It had cropped out again and again in connection with
inconsequential as well as consequential matters. She had, for instance,
been really unable on many occasions to leave home on pleasure trips for
fear lest some accident might happen within the home and consequently it
would be due to her fault; and if away she was in constant dread of
something happening for which she would be to blame. It was not a fear
of what might happen—an accident to the children, for example—but that
it would be her fault. I have heard her, when some matter of apparently
little concern had gone wrong, suddenly exclaim, “Was it my fault?” her
voice and features manifesting a degree of emotion almost amounting to
terror. When her brother died (still earlier, before her mother’s death)
she had blamed herself for that death, as later with her mother, on the
same religious grounds. This self-reproach for happenings, fancied as
due to her fault, has frequently appeared in her dreams. It would take
us too far afield to trace the origin and psychogenesis of this idea.
Suffice to say, it can be followed back to early childhood when she was
five or six years of age. She was a lonely, unhappy child. She thought
herself ugly and unattractive and disliked and that so it always would
be through life, and it was all her fault because she was ugly, as she
thought.[186] The instinct of self-abasement (McDougall[187]) or
negative self-feeling (Ribot) dominated the personality as the most
insistent instinct and from its intensity within the self-regarding
sentiment (McDougall) formed a sentiment of self-depreciation. She
wanted to be liked and believed it to be her own fault that, as she
fancied, she was not and never would be, and reproached herself
accordingly. This sentiment of self depreciation with its impulse to
render self-reproach has persisted, as with many people, all her life
and has been fostered by unwise and thoughtless domestic criticism. The
persistence to the present day of this impulse to self-reproach is shown
in the following observation:

Quite recently this subject began to suffer from general fatigue,
insomnia, distressing dreams, hysterical crying, indefinable anxiety and
pseudo twilight states or extreme states of abstraction. In these states
she became oblivious of her environment, did not hear the conversation
going on about her, nor answer when directly spoken to. This became so
noticeable that she became the jest of her companions. In these states
her mind was always occupied with reveries (not fantasies), though
mostly pleasant, regarding a very near relative who had died about six
months previously. Her distressing dreams also concerned this relative.
It appeared, therefore, probable, on the face of the symptoms that they
were in some way related to this relative’s death.

Now it transpired, as I already knew, that the relative had died under
somewhat tragic circumstances and that our subject’s experience during
the last illness was unusually distressing and sorrowful. _This
experience, she asserted, she could not bear to speak or even think
about and over and over again had refused to do so and put it out of her
mind. She further asserted that her reason for this attitude was the
distressing nature of the scenes in which she took part._

Now I did not believe that this was the true reason, although given in
good faith. It was improbable on its face. To say that a grown woman,
forty years of age, could not do what every woman can do, tolerate
sorrowful memories simply because they were sorrowful, and must perforce
put them out of her mind, is sheer nonsense. There must be some other
reason.

On examining a dream it was found to be peculiar in one respect: It was
not an imaginative or fantastic composition, but a detailed and precise
living over again of the scenes at the death bed: that is to say, it was
a sort of somnambulistic state. In recalling this dream[188] she could
not for some time recover the ending. Finally it “broke through,” as she
expressed it. The dream was as follows: First came many details of the
vigil of the last night of the illness; then she went to her room and to
bed to snatch a few moments’ sleep; she was waked up by the husband of
the dying relative appearing in her room. He sat on the edge of her bed
and said to her, “All is over.” Up to this point the facts of the dream
were actual representations in great detail of the actual facts as they
had occurred, but at this moment the dream presented a fact which had
not occurred in the real scene; she suddenly, in the dream, sat up in
bed and exclaimed, “My God! then I ought to have sent for the doctor!”

Here was the key to the intolerance for memories of the illness of the
relative and the death-bed scene. What had happened was this: The
question had arisen early in the illness whether or not a doctor should
be sent for from London in consultation. The expense, owing to the
distance, would have been considerable. The whole responsibility and
decision rested upon the subject. Against the opinion of other relatives
she had decided that it was inadvisable. After the fatal ending the
question had arisen again whether or not she ought to have sent for the
consultant and she had been tormented by the doubt as to whether she did
right; _was the fatal result her fault_? Although she had reasoned with
herself that her decision was good judgment and right still there had
always lurked a doubt in her mind. She was also somewhat disturbed by
the thought of what the husband’s opinion might be.

The real reason why she could not tolerate the memories of the last
illness of this relative, and the psychogenesis of the symptoms now were
plain: they were not grief but self-reproach with its instinct of
self-abasement. The memories brought to her mind that the fault was
her’s and with the thought came self-reproach. _This self-reproach she
was afraid of and unwilling to face._ This fact she recognized and
frankly confessed after the disclosures of the analysis.

Now follows the therapeutic sequel. The relative’s illness at the
beginning was in no way of a dangerous nature and the proposed
consultation had nothing to do with the question of danger to life. The
death was due to purely an accidental factor and could not have been
foreseen. When I assured her in hypnosis, with full explanation, that
her decision had been medically sound, as it was, the change in her
mental attitude was delightful to look upon. “Wasn’t it my fault! Wasn’t
it my fault!” she exclaimed in excitement. Anxiety, dread, and
depression gave way to exhilaration and joyousness. Thereupon she woke
up completely relieved in mind, and retained the same feeling of joy,
but without knowing the reason thereof. The explanation was repeated to
her in the waking state and she then fully realized (as she did also in
hypnosis) that her previous view was a pure subterfuge and fully
appreciated the truth of the discovered reason for her inability to face
her painful memories. The twilight states, the insomnia, and the
distressing dreams, the anxiety, and other symptoms ceased at once.

Returning to the phobia for bells, in the light of all these facts, the
patient’s belief that her mother’s death was her fault and the
consequent self-reproach were obviously only a particular concrete
example of a lifelong emotional tendency originating in the experiences
of childhood to blame herself; and this tendency was the striving to
express itself of the instinct of self-abasement (with the emotion of
self-subjection) which, incorporated within “the self-regarding
sentiment” (McDougall), was so intensely cultivated and had played so
large a part in her life. Indeed this instinct had almost dominated her
self-regarding sentiment and had given rise time and again to
self-reproach for accidental happenings. It now specifically determined
her attitude of mind toward the series of events which led up to the
fatal climax and determined her judgment of self-condemnation and
self-reproach. These last most probably received increased emotional
force from the large number of roots in painful associations of
antecedent experiences (particularly of childhood) in which the
self-regarding sentiment, self-debasement, and self-reproaches were
incorporated.[189] _Nevertheless the fear was of a particular concrete
self-reproach._ The general tendency was of practical consequence only
so far as it explained the particular point of view and might induce
other self-reproaches.

As a general summary of this study it would appear that we can postulate
a larger setting to the phobia than the grief inspiring experiences
attending her mother’s death. The unconscious complex included the
belief that she was to blame and the sentiment of self-reproach, and the
whole gave a fuller meaning to the ringing of bells in a tower. The fear
besides being a recurring association was also a reaction to the
subconsciously excited setting of a fancied truth or self-accusation.
Although excited by towers and steeples the fear was really of
self-reproach. Towers, steeples, and bells not only in a sense
symbolized her mother’s death, but her own fancied fault. It was in this
sense and for this reason that she dared not face such objects. The
conscious and the unconscious formed a psychic whole.[190]

Now in reaching these conclusions see how far we have traveled: Starting
with an ostensible phobia for towers, we find it is more correctly one
of ringing-of-bells, but without conscious association; then we reach a
childhood’s tragedy; then a self-reproach on religious grounds; then a
belief in a fault of childhood’s behavior culminating in a lifelong
self-reproach—the causal factor and psychologically the true object of
the phobia: and between this last self-reproach and the phobia no
conscious association.

The _therapeutic_ procedure and results are instructive. As the fear was
induced by a belief in a fancied fault exciting a self-reproach,
obviously if this belief should be destroyed the self-reproach must
cease and the fear must disappear. Now when all the facts were brought
to light, the patient, as is usual, recognized the truth of them. She
also recognized fully and completely the real nature of the fear, of the
self-blame and of the self-reproach. There remained no lingering doubt
in her mind, nevertheless the bringing to “the full light of day” of all
this did not cure the phobia. As the first procedure in the therapeusis
it was pointed out that it was contrary to common sense to blame herself
for the heedlessness of a child; that all children were disobedient;
that she would have been a little prig if she had been the sort of a
child that never disobeyed, and that she would not have blamed any other
child who had behaved in a similar way under similar circumstances, and
so on. She simply said that she recognized all this intellectually as
true and yet, although it was the point of view which she would take
with another person in the same situation, it did not in any way alter
her attitude toward herself. In other words the bringing to the full
light of day of the facts did not cure the phobia. It was necessary to
change the setting of her belief. _To do this either the alleged facts
had to be shown to be not true or else new facts had to be introduced
which would give them a new meaning._ This, briefly told, was done in
the following way:

She was put into light hypnosis in order that exact and detailed
memories of her childhood might be brought out. Then, through her own
memories, it was demonstrated, that is to say, the _patient herself
demonstrated_, that there was considerable doubt about her having had
phthisis at all; that she was not taken to the usual places of “cures”
for phthisis but sojourned in the gay and pleasant cities and watering
places of Europe; that her mother really staid in Europe because she
enjoyed it and made an excuse of her daughter’s health not to come home;
that she might have returned at any time but did not want to do so; and
that the fault lay, if anywhere, with her physician at home. When this
was brought out the patient remarked, “Why, of course, I see it now! My
mother did not stay in Europe on account of my health but because she
enjoyed it, and might have returned if she had wanted to. I never
thought of that before! It was not my fault at all!” After coming out of
hypnosis the facts as elicited were laid before the patient; she again
said that she saw it all clearly, as she had done in hypnosis, and her
whole point of view was changed.

The therapeutics, then, consisted in showing that the alleged facts upon
which the patient’s logical conclusions had been based were false. The
setting thereby was altered, and a new and true meaning given to the
real facts. The result was towers and steeples no longer excited fears,
the phobia ceased at once—an immediate cure.[191]

_Type D._ In this type _the conscious psychosis consists of idea,
meaning, affect, and physical disturbance_. F. E. suffered from attacks
of so-called “unreality” accompanied with intense fear. She was unable
to give an intelligent explanation as to why she was afraid of the
attacks—harmless in themselves—until it was brought out that there was
in the _background of her mind_ the thought that the attacks spelled
insanity (or that she was likely to go insane) and also death. Following
the attacks there was amnesia for these thoughts. Her fear really, then,
was of insanity and death. The content of consciousness in the attacks
contained the perception of herself as an insane person, thoughts which
expressed the meaning of her attacks, and fear. (The usual physical
disturbances of course accompanied the fear.) No amount of explanation
of the harmlessness of the unreality syndrome sufficed to change her
point of view, i.e., its meaning to her. But going further it was
discovered that her self-regarding sentiment and her ideas of insanity
and death were organized with a large number of fear-inspiring
antecedent experiences which explained why she regarded the attacks as
dangerous to her mentality and life; and why the biological instinct of
fear was incorporated with the self-regarding sentiment. These
experiences had long passed out of mind and there was no conscious
association between them and her phobia, but they could be recalled as
associative memories.[192] The unreality attacks had for her two
meanings which were within the content of consciousness, viz., 1,
insanity, and 2, death. The first was derived from (a) antecedent
girlhood and later experiences which had engendered the unsophisticated
belief that having the mind fixed on one subject, as was obtrusively and
painfully the case at one time, meant insanity: and (b), from the fact
that the bewildering, irreconcilable, absurd thoughts, conflicts, and
emotions in which the unreality attacks culminated meant insanity.

The second meaning (death) was derived from (a) the previous fixed idea
(just referred to), organized with that of insanity—namely, an
unsophisticated medieval idea of hell which was conceived of as the
equivalent of death and which had excited an intense horror of both; and
(b) from the fact that in the unreality attacks there was a _struggling_
for air; struggling was in her mind, the equivalent of convulsions;[193]
convulsions of unconsciousness; and unconsciousness of death. All these
various ideas and the intense fears which each gave rise to had become
organized into a complex, and, in consequence of these antecedent
experiences in which self took a prominent part, the instinct of fear—as
I conceive the matter—became incorporated within the self-regarding
sentiment. (Anything that aroused this sentiment tended to arouse the
emotion of fear, as in another person it would tend to arouse the
emotion of pride, or self-abasement.) At any rate this organized complex
was the setting which gave the meaning to her phobia. There can be, I
think, no manner of doubt about this. The patient herself explained her
viewpoint through these ideas here briefly summarized. The only question
is as to the mechanism of the phobia. Now as Type D, of which these
cases are examples, differs clinically from the preceding three types
only in the addition of one more element—meaning—to the conscious
psychic whole, a consistent interpretation would seem to compel us to
postulate also a functioning subconscious complex or setting and in this
case of the antecedent experiences disclosed as a factor in the
mechanism and a part of the psychic whole. Out of this complex emerged
into consciousness the idea of insanity and death and fear as the
meaning of the unreality syndrome, the whole constituting the phobia
psychosis.

That there was in fact a subconsciously functioning process derived from
this complex would seem to be almost conclusively shown by another
phenomenon manifested. I refer to the vivid _visualization of herself in
a convulsion, struggling for air and manifesting fright_, which she
experienced in each attack. We have seen that such a visualization
(i.e., a modified vision) is the expression (secondary images?) of a
subconscious process (co-conscious ideas?). As a matter of fact this
particular visualization was a pictorial representation of antecedent
thoughts organized with thoughts of death and insanity and still
conserved in the unconscious. We must believe, then, that it was these
antecedent thoughts (in the first place her apprehension of inheriting
Bright’s disease and convulsions from her father, and in the second
place her conception of the unreality syndrome as a state which might
possibly end in convulsions) which, functioning subconsciously, induced
the quasi hallucinatory expression of themselves.[194] It is difficult
to get away from the conclusion that the remainder of the setting from
which the ideas of insanity and death were derived also functioned as a
subconscious process. Whether this process was conscious or unconscious
is a secondary question which we need not consider.

In weighing the probabilities of this interpretation we should bear in
mind that there were two conscious beliefs of which the patient was
fully aware and which were very real to her; namely, the liability of
becoming insane and to convulsions and death. The conative force of the
instinct of fear linked to such ideas is quite sufficient to drive them
to expression when out of mind and subconscious. Or expressed
differently we may say that the fear was a reaction to these ideas which
the patient dared not face.

We ought not, however, to be too sweeping in our generalizations and go
further than the facts warrant. We are not justified in concluding that
the linking of an affect to an idea always includes a subconscious
mechanism. On the contrary, as I have previously said, probably in the
great majority of such experiences, aside from obsessions, no such
mechanism is required to explain the facts.

_The Inability to Voluntarily Modify Obsessions._—We are now in a
position on this theory to look a little more deeply into the structure
and mechanism of an obsession and thereby realize why it is that the
unfortunate victims are so helpless to modify or control them. Indeed
this behavior of the setting could be cited as another piece of
circumstantial evidence for the theory that the setting is largely
unconscious and that only a few elements of it enter the field of
consciousness. If we simply explain to a person who has a true
obsession, i.e., an insistent idea with a strong feeling tone, the
falsity of the point of view, the explanation in many cases at least has
no or little effect in changing the viewpoint, though the patient admits
the correctness of the explanation. The patient cannot modify his idea
even if he will. But if the original complex, which is hidden in the
unconscious and which gives rise to the meaning of the idea, is
discovered, and so altered that it takes on a new meaning and different
feeling tones, the patient’s conscious idea becomes modified and ceases
to be insistent. This would imply that the insistent idea is only an
element in a larger unconscious complex which is the setting and
unconsciously determines the viewpoint. The reason why the patient
cannot voluntarily alter his viewpoint becomes intelligible by this
theory, because that which determines it is unconscious and unknown. He
may not even know what his point of view is, owing to the meaning being
in the fringe of consciousness.

If this theory of the mechanism is soundly established the difficulty of
correcting obsessions becomes obvious and intelligible. It is also
obvious that there are theoretically two ways in which an obsession
might be corrected.

1. A new setting with strong affects may be artificially created so that
the perception acquires another equally strong meaning and interest.

2. The second way theoretically would be to bring into consciousness the
setting and the past experiences of which the setting is a _sifted_
residuum, and reform it by introducing new elements, including new
emotions and feelings. In this way the old setting and point of view
would become transformed and a new point of view substituted which would
give a new meaning to the perception.

Now in practice both these theoretical methods of destroying an
obsession are found to work, although both are not always equally
efficacious in the same case. In less intense obsessions where the
complex composing the setting is only partially and inconsequently
submerged, and to a slight degree differentiated from the mass of
conscious experiences, the first and simpler method practically is amply
sufficient. We might say that the greater the degree to which the
setting is conscious and the less the degree to which it has acquired,
as an unconscious process, independent autonomous activity the more
readily it may be transformed by this method.

On the other hand in the more intense obsessions, where a greater part
of the setting is unconscious, has wide ramifications and has become
differentiated as an independent autonomous process, the more difficult
it is to suppress it and prevent its springing into activity whenever
excited by some stimulus (such as an associated idea). In such instances
the second method is more efficacious. It is obvious that, so long as
the setting to a central idea remains organized and conserved in the
unconscious, the corresponding perception and meaning are always liable
under favoring conditions (such as fatigue, ill health, etc.) to be
switched into consciousness and replace the new formed perception. This
means of course a recurrence. Nevertheless medical experience from the
beginning of time has shown that this is not necessarily or always the
case. The technique, therefore, of the treatment of obsessions will vary
from “simple explanations” (Taylor) without preliminary analysis to the
more complicated and varying procedures of analysis and re-education in
its many forms.

_Affects._—Here a word of caution in the interpretation of emotional
reactions is necessary. In the building of complexes, as we have seen,
an affect becomes linked to an idea through an emotional experience. The
recurrence of that idea always involves the recurrence of the affect. It
is not a logical necessity that the original experience which occasioned
the affect should always be postulated as a continuing subconscious
process to account for the affect in association with the idea. It is
quite possible, if not extremely probable, that in the simpler types, at
least, of the emotional complexes, the association between the idea and
affect becomes so firmly established that the conscious idea alone,
without the coöperation of a subconscious process, is sufficient to
awake the emotion; just as in Pawlow’s dogs the artificially formed
association between a tactile stimulus and the salivary glands is
sufficient to excite the glands to activity, or as in human beings the
idea of a ship by pure association may determine fear and nausea, the
sound of running water by the force of association may excite the
bladder reflex, or an ocular stimulus the so-called hay fever complex.
So in word-association reactions, when a word is accompanied by an
affect-reaction the word itself may be sufficient to excite the reaction
without assuming that an “unconscious complex has been struck.” The
total mechanism of the process we are investigating must be determined
in each case for itself.

In the study and formulation of psychological phenomena there is one
common tendency and danger, and that is of making the phenomena too
schematic and sharply defined, as if we were dealing with material
objects. Mental processes are not only plastic but shifting, varying,
unstable, and undergo modifications of structure almost from moment to
moment. We describe a complex schematically as if it had a fixed,
immutable, and well-defined structure. This is far from being the case.
Although there may be a fairly fixed nucleus, the cluster, as a whole,
is ill defined and undergoes considerable modification from moment to
moment. New elements enter the cluster and replace or are added to those
which previously took part in the composition. An analogy might be made
with a large cluster of electric lights arranged about a central
predominant light, but so arranged that individual lights could be
switched in and cut out of the cluster at any moment and different
colored lights substituted. The composition and structure of the
cluster, and the intensity and color of the light, could be varied from
moment to moment, yet the cluster as a cluster maintained. We might
carry the analogy farther and imagine the cluster to be an advertising
sign which had a meaning—the advertisement. This meaning might or might
not be altered by the changes in the individual lamps.

The same indefiniteness pertains to the demarcation between the
conscious and the subconscious. What was conscious at one moment may be
subconscious the next and _vice versa_. Under _normal_ conditions there
is a continual shifting between the conscious and subconscious. I have
made numerous investigations to determine this point, and the evidence
is fairly precise, and to me convincing, that this shifting continually
occurs,[195] as might well be inferred on theoretical grounds. Nor,
excepting in special pathological and artificial dissociated conditions,
is the distinction between the conscious and subconscious at any moment
always sharp and precise; it is often rather a matter of vividness and
shading, and whether a conscious state is in the focus of attention or
in the fringe. Experimental observation confirms introspection in this
respect.

In view of the foregoing we can now appreciate a fallacy which has been
too commonly accepted in the interpretation of therapeutic facts. It is
quite generally held that it is a necessity that the underlying
unconscious complexes cannot be modified without bringing them to the
“full light of day” by analysis. The facts of everyday observation do
not justify this conclusion. The awakening of dormant memories of past
experiences is mainly of importance for the purpose of giving us exact
information of _what_ we need to modify, not necessarily for the purpose
of effecting the modification. Owing to the fluidity of complexes,
whether unconscious or conscious, our conscious ideas can become
incorporated in unconscious complexes. This means that any new setting
in which we may incorporate our conscious ideas to give them a new
meaning becomes effective in the associations which these ideas have as
a dormant complex. The latter is able to assimilate from the conscious
any new material offered to it. Practical therapeutics and everyday
experience abundantly have shown this. I have accomplished this, and I
believe every therapeutist has done the same time and again. We should
be cautious not to overlook common experience in the enthusiasm for new
theories and dramatic observations. The difficulty is in knowing what we
want to modify, and for this purpose analytical investigations of one
sort or another are of the highest assistance, because they furnish us
with the required information. If we recover the memories of the
unconscious complex our task is easier, as we can apply our art with the
greater skill.

When we speak of a setting to an idea we are not entitled to think of it
as a sharply defined group of ideas, or sharply limited subconscious
process. When we identify it with the residua of past experiences we are
not entitled, on the basis of exact knowledge, to arbitrarily make up a
selected cluster of residua which shall exclude those and include these
residual elements of antecedent associated experiences, and dogmatically
postulate the composition of the complex which we call the setting.
Analysis by the very limitations of the method fails to permit of such
arbitrary selection, and synthetic methods are not sufficiently exact
for the purpose. All we can say is that from the residua of various past
experiences a complex is sifted out to become the setting. And even then
no process is entirely autonomous and entirely removed from the
interfering, directing, and coöperative influence of other processes.
Even with simple and purely physiological processes, such as the knee
jerk, this is true. Although the knee jerk may be schematically
conceived as a simple reflex arc involving the peripheral nerves and the
spinal cord, nevertheless other parts of the nervous system—the brain
and the spinal cord—provide coöperative processes which take part, and
under special conditions take a very active part, in modifying the
phenomenon. While we are justified, for the clarifying purposes of
exposition, in schematizing the phenomenon by selecting the spinal
reflex as the predominant process, yet we do not overlook the
coöperative processes which may control and modify the spinal reflex. If
this is true of purely physiological processes, it is still more true of
the enormously more complex processes of human intelligence.

We may say, then, not only that with our present knowledge and our
present methods we are not able to precisely differentiate the settings
of ideas, but that it is highly improbable that settings as complexes of
residua are with any preciseness functionally entirely autonomous and
removed from the influence of other associative processes.

We need further investigations into the psychology and processes of
settings, and until we have wider and more exact knowledge it is well
not to theorize and still more not to dogmatize. It is an inviting field
which awaits the psychologist.

-----

Footnote 183:

In making the analysis, therefore, I was in no way antagonistic in my
mind to the Freudian hypothesis.

Footnote 184:

I want to emphasize this point, because certain students, assuming the
well-known alleged sexual symbolism as the meaning of steeples and
towers, will read and have read such an interpretation into this
phobia. As a matter of fact, although these objects had been
originally alleged by the subject herself to be the object of the fear
it was done thoughtlessly as the result of careless introspection.
Later she clearly distinguished the true object. They were no more the
object than the churches and schoolhouses themselves. They bore an
incidental association only, and only indicated where the ringing of
bells might be expected to be heard, having been an element in the
original episode. Nor were bells, qua bells, the object of the phobia,
but the ringing-of-bells of the kind that recalled the mother’s death.
In other words, the fear was of bells with a particular meaning. Nor
was the fear absolutely limited to tower-bells, for it transpired that
the subject had refrained from having, as she desired, an alarm bell
arranged in her house in the country (in case of fire, etc.), because
of her phobia. (This note is perhaps made necessary by the violent
shaking of the heads of my Freudian friends that I noticed at this
point during the presentation of this case before the American
Psychopathological Association.) See _Jour. Abn. Psychol._, Oct.-Nov.,
1913.

Footnote 185:

This idea had its origin in a child’s fairy tale, and had been
fostered by the governess as a useful expedient in enforcing good
behavior. The child accepting the fairy legend believed the Eye of God
was always on her and every one in the world, and observed all that
each did or omitted to do. The legend excited her imagination, and she
used to think about it and wonder how God could keep His eye on so
many people as there were in the world. At a still earlier age, when
she was about eight, she had thought her little brother’s death was
also her fault, because she had neglected one night, at the time of
his illness, God’s eye being upon her, to say her prayers. For a long
time afterward she suffered similarly from self-reproach. It is
interesting to compare the outgrowing with maturity of this
self-reproach with the persistence of the later one, evidently owing
to the reasons given in the text.

Footnote 186:

Another example of this idea and of the way it induced a psychosis is
the following: She had an intense dislike to hearing the sound of
running water. This sound induced an intense feeling of _unhappiness
and loneliness_. This feeling was so intense that whenever she heard
the sound of running water she endeavored to get away from it. The
sound of a fountain or rainwater running from a roof, for example,
would cause such unpleasant feelings that she would change her
sleeping room to avoid them. Likewise drawing water to fill the
bathtub was so unpleasant that she would insist upon the door being
closed to exclude the sound. She could give no explanation of this
psychosis. It was discovered in the following way: She had been
desirous of finding out the cause, and we had discussed the subject. I
had promised that I would unravel the matter in due time, after the
other phobia had been cured. I then hypnotized her and, while she was
in hypnosis and just after we had completed the other problem, she
remarked that a memory of the running water association was on the
verge of emerging into her mind. She could not get it for some time,
and then, after some effort, it suddenly emerged. She described it as
follows: “It was at Bar Harbor. She was about eight years of age.
There was a brook there called Duck Brook. The older girls used to go
up there on Sundays for a walk with the boys. I went with them one
Sunday, accompanied by the governess, and was standing by the brook
with a boy. It was a very noisy brook, the water running down from the
hillside. While I was standing by the brook, watching the running
water, the boy left me to join the other girls, who had gone off. I
thought that was the way it would always be in life; that I was ugly,
and that they would never stay with me. I felt lonely and unhappy.
During that summer I would not join parties of the same kind, fearing
or feeling that the same thing would happen. I stayed at home by
myself, and when I refused to go it was attributed to sullenness. They
did not know my real reasons. Ever since I have been unable to bear
the sound of running water, which produces the feeling of unhappiness
and loneliness, the same feeling that I had at that time. I thought
then that it was all my fault, because I was ugly.” It was then
tentatively pointed out at some length to the subject that as she now
knew all the facts which had been brought to the “full light of day,”
etc., she, of course, would no longer have her former unpleasant
emotions from the sound of running water. Hereupon, to put the
question to the test, I reached out my hand and poured some water from
a caraffe, by chance standing by, into a tumbler, letting the water
fall from a height to make a sound. At once she manifested discomfort,
and sought to restrain me with her hand. Plainly the setting had to be
changed. This was easily done by leading her to see that her
childhood’s ideas had been proven by life’s experiences to be false.
When this became apparent she laughed at herself, and the psychosis
ceased at once.

Footnote 187:

Social Psychology.

Footnote 188:

This was done in hypnosis, the dream being forgotten when awake.

Footnote 189:

For instance, when I came to the therapeutics I found in abstraction
that the patient did not want to give up her point of view “because,”
as she said, “it forms an excuse so that when I feel lonely, if there
is nothing else to be lonely about, I have that memory and point of
view to fall back upon as something to justify my crying and feeling
lonely and blue.”

When she now feels blue and cries, as happens occasionally, and she
asks herself Why? then she drifts back in her mind to childhood and
remembers she was lonely and then cries the harder. Then she vaguely
thinks of her mother’s death being her fault. She likes therefore to
hold on to this as a peg on which to hang any present feeling of
blueness and loneliness.

Footnote 190:

Some, I have no doubt, will insist upon seeing in towers with bells a
sexual symbol, and in the self-reproach a reaction to a repressed
infantile or other sexual wish. But I cannot accede to this view
first, because a tower was not only not the real object of the phobia,
but not even the alleged object, which was the ringing of bells;
secondly, because it is an unnecessary postulate unsupported by
evidence, and, thirdly, because in fact, the associative memories of
early life were conspicuously free from sex knowledge, wishes,
curiosity, episodes and imaginings, nor was there any evidence of the
so-called “mother complex” or “father-complex,” or any other sexual
complex that I could find after a most exhaustive probing. The
impulses of instincts other than sexual are sufficient to induce
psychical trauma, insistent ideas, and emotion. To hold otherwise is
to substitute dogma for the evidence of experience.

Footnote 191:

It is worth noting that between the bringing to the “full light of
day” the facts furnished by the analysis and the cure a full year and
a half elapsed, during which the phobia continued. The “cure” was
effected at one sitting. The original study was undertaken on purely
psychological grounds; the cure for the purpose of completing the
study.

Footnote 192:

This account will be clearer if read in connection with the full
analysis (“A Clinical Study of a Case of Phobia”), published in the
_Jour, of Abn. Psychol._, October-November, 1912.

Footnote 193:

She was apprehensive of having inherited Bright’s disease from her
father, who had convulsions.

Footnote 194:

It is quite possible that this subconscious process induced the
unreality syndrome in which struggling for air was the salient
symptom.

Footnote 195:

I am excluding conditions like split personalities, automatic writing,
etc., and refer rather to normal mental processes.

LECTURE XIV
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF EMOTION

Emotion,[196] more particularly fear, plays so large a part in the
psychogenesis and symptomatology of the psychoses that it is desirable
to have a clear realization of its physiological and psychological
manifestations and of the disturbances of the organism which it can
induce. It is not necessary for our purpose to discuss the various
theories of the nature of emotion that have been propounded; we need
deal only with the _manifestations_ of emotion and its effect upon the
organism.[197] We will consider the physiological manifestations first.

When a strong emotion is awakened in consciousness there are a large
number of physiological reactions, for the most part visceral, which can
be noted. Some of these may be graphically recorded and measured by
means of instruments of precision. These physiological reactions are
numerous and have been extensively described by Féré[198] among others.
The earlier work of Mosso upon the disturbances of the respiration and
vasomotor apparatus induced by sensory stimulation is well known.

More recently considerable experimental work has been done, particularly
by German investigators, to determine the influence of affective states
upon the circulation and respiration.

Modifications of the _peripheral circulation_, manifested through pallor
or turgescence of the skin and measured by changes recorded by the
plethismograph in the volume of the limbs; modifications of the volume
of the _heart_ and of the rhythm and force of the beats recorded by the
sphygmograph, and of arterial tension measured by the sphygmomonometer
are common phenomena. (Fear is more particularly accompanied by pallor,
and shame by turgescence—blushing. Anger in some is manifested by pallor
and in others by turgescence, and so on.) Changes in rate of the
heart-beats belong to popular knowledge. It is not so well known, even
to physiologists that the volume of the heart may be affected by
emotion. In several series of observations made under conditions of
emotional excitement upon a large number of healthy men, candidates for
civil service appointments, I recorded in a high percentage not only
alterations in the rate and rhythm and force of the heart-beat, but
temporary dilatation of the heart lasting during the period of
excitement.[199] This dilatation in some cases was sufficient to lead to
insufficiency of the mitral valve and to give rise to murmurs. The
examination was purposely conducted so as to induce a high degree of
emotional excitement, at least in many men. In another series of
observations (not published) the arterial tension was measured, and it
was found, as would be expected, that an increase of tension accompanied
the cardiac excitation under emotion.[200]

[Illustration:

Fig. 2. J., acute katatonic stupor. b is a wave selected from the
series in which 6 is sudden call by name. The galvanometer curve (a)
is slight, but the change in the pneumograph curve is notable.
(Peterson and Jung.[201])
]

As to the _respiratory apparatus_ the effect of emotion in altering the
rate and depth of respiration may be shown by the pneumograph; by this
method the effects of slight emotion that otherwise would escape
observation may be detected. Such a disturbance of respiration is shown
in the tracing, Fig. 2.

That emotion will profoundly affect the respiration has of course been
common knowledge from time immemorial, and has been made use of by
writers of fiction and actors for dramatic effect. The same may be said
of modifications of the functioning of the whole respiratory apparatus,
including the nostrils and the mouth; and likewise of the decrease or
increase of secretions (dryness of the mouth from fear, and “foaming”
from anger). These are among the well known physiological effects of
emotions.

Increase of _sweat_ sometimes amounting to an outpour, and alterations
in the amount of the various _glandular secretions_ (_salivary_,
_gastric_, etc.), and _rigor_ are important phenomena.

The remarkable researches of Pawlow[202] and his co-workers in Russia on
the _work of the digestive glands_, and those of Cannon[203] in America
on the _movements of the stomach and intestines_ have revealed that
these functions are influenced in an astonishing degree by psychical
factors.

Although it has long been known that the sight of food under certain
conditions would call forth a secretion of gastric juice in a hungry dog
(Bidder and Smith, 1852), and common observation has told us that
emotion strongly affects the gastrointestinal functions, increasing or
diminishing the secretions of saliva and gastric juice, and even
producing dyspeptic disturbances and diarrhœa, it has remained for
Pawlow and his co-workers to demonstrate the important part which the
“appetite,” as a psychical state, plays in the process of digestion. In
hungry dogs a large quantity of gastric juice, rich in ferment, is
poured out when food is swallowed, and even at the sight of food, and it
was proved that this outpouring was due to psychical influences. Simply
teasing and tempting the animal with food cause secretions, and food
associations in the environment may have the same effect. “If the dog
has not eaten for a long time every movement, the going out of the room,
the appearance of the attendant who ordinarily feeds the animal—in a
word, every triviality—may give rise to excitation of the gastric
glands.” (Pawlow, p. 73.) This first secreted juice is called “appetite
juice,” and is an important factor in the complicated process of
digestion. “The appetite is the first and mightiest exciter of the
secretory nerves of the stomach.” (Pawlow, p. 75.) Pawlow’s results have
been confirmed in man by Hornborg, Umber, Bickel, and Cade and Latarjet.
The mere chewing of appetizing food, for instance, is followed by a
copious discharge of gastric juice, while chewing of rubber and
distasteful substances has a negative result. Depressing emotions
inhibit the secretion of juice (Bickel). More than this, Cannon,[204] in
his very remarkable experiments on the movements of the stomach and
intestines, found that in animals (cat, rabbit, dog, etc.), gastric
peristalsis is stopped whenever the animal manifests signs of rage,
distress, or even anxiety. “Any signs of emotional disturbance, even the
restlessness and continual mewing which may be taken to indicate
uneasiness and discomfort, were accompanied in the cat by total
cessation of the segmentation movements of the small intestines, and of
antiperistalsis in the proximal colon.” Bickel and Sasaki have confirmed
in dogs these emotional effects obtained by Pawlow and Cannon.

The effect of the emotions on the digestive processes is so important
from the standpoint of clinical medicine that I quote the following
summary of published observations from Cannon: "Hornborg found that when
the boy whom he studied chewed agreeable food a more or less active
secretion of the gastric juice was started, whereas the chewing of
indifferent material was without influence.

"Not only is it true that normal secretion is favored by pleasurable
sensations during mastication, but also that unpleasant feelings, such
as vexation and some of the major emotions, are accompanied by a failure
of secretion. Thus Hornborg was unable to confirm in his patient the
observation of Pawlow that mere sight of food to a hungry subject causes
the flow of gastric juice. Hornborg explains the difference between his
and Pawlow’s results by the difference in the reaction of the subjects
to the situation. When food was shown, but withheld, Pawlow’s hungry
dogs were all eagerness to secure it, and the juice at once began to
flow. Hornborg’s little boy, on the contrary, became vexed when he could
not eat at once, and began to cry; then no secretion appeared. Bogen
also reports that his patient, a child, aged three and a half years,
sometimes fell into such a passion in consequence of vain hoping for
food, that the giving of the food, after calming the child, was not
followed by any secretion of the gastric juice.

"The observations of Bickel and Sasaki confirm and define more precisely
the inhibitory effects of violent emotion on _gastric secretion_. They
studied these effects on a dog with an œsophageal fistula, and with a
side pouch of the stomach which, according to Pawlow’s method, opened
only to the exterior. If the animal was permitted to eat while the
œsophageal fistula was open the food passed out through the fistula and
did not go to the stomach. Bickel and Sasaki confirmed the observation
of Pawlow that this sham feeding is attended by a copious flow of
gastric juice, a true ‘psychic secretion,’ resulting from the
pleasurable taste of the food. In a typical instance the sham feeding
lasted five minutes, and the secretion continued for twenty minutes,
during which time 66.7 c. c. of pure gastric juice was produced.

"On another day a cat was brought into the presence of the dog,
whereupon the dog flew into a great fury. The cat was soon removed, and
the dog pacified. Now the dog was again given the sham feeding for five
minutes. In spite of the fact that the animal was hungry and ate
eagerly, there was no secretion worthy of mention. During a period of
twenty minutes, corresponding to the previous observation, only 9 c. c.
of acid fluid was produced, and this was rich in mucus. It is evident
that in the dog, as in the boy observed by Bogen, strong emotions can so
profoundly disarrange the mechanisms of secretion that the natural
nervous excitation accompanying the taking of food cannot cause the
normal flow.

"On another occasion Bickel and Sasaki started gastric secretion in the
dog by sham feeding, and when the flow of gastric juice had reached a
certain height the dog was infuriated for five minutes by the presence
of the cat. During the next fifteen minutes there appeared only a few
drops of a very mucous secretion. Evidently in this instance a
physiological process, started as an accompaniment of a psychic state
quietly pleasurable in character, was almost entirely stopped by another
psychic state violent in character.

"It is noteworthy that in both the positive and negative results of the
emotional excitement illustrated in Bickel and Sasaki’s dog the effects
persisted long after the removal of the exciting condition. This fact
Bickel was able to confirm in a girl with œsophageal and gastric
fistulas; the gastric secretion long outlasted the period of eating,
although no food entered the stomach. The importance of these
observations to personal economics is too obvious to require
elaboration.

“Not only are the secretory activities of the stomach unfavorably
affected by strong emotions; the movements of the stomach as well, and,
indeed, the movements of almost the entire alimentary canal, are wholly
stopped during excitement.”[205]

So you see that the proverb, “Better a dinner of herbs where love is
than a stalled ox and hatred therewith,” has a physiological as well as
a moral basis.

Nearly any sensory or psychical stimulus can be artificially made to
excite the _secretion of saliva_ as determined by experimentation on
animals by Pawlow.

It is probable that all the _ductless glands_ (thyroid, suprarenal,
etc.), are likewise under the influence of the emotions. The suprarenal
glands secrete a substance which in almost infinitesimal doses has a
powerful effect upon the heart and blood vessels, increasing the force
of the former and contracting the peripheral arterioles. The recent
observations of Cannon and de la Paz have demonstrated in the cat that
under the influence of fear or anger an increase of this substance is
poured into the circulation.[206] Cannon, Shohl and Wright have also
demonstrated that the glycosuria which was known to occur in animals
experimented upon in the laboratory is due (in cats) to the influence of
the emotions, very probably discharging through the sympathetic system
on the adrenal glands and increasing their secretion.[207] The
glycosuria is undoubtedly due to an increase of sugar in the blood. It
is interesting to note, in this connection, that there is considerable
clinical evidence that indicates that some cases of diabetes and
glycosuria have an emotional origin. The same is true of disease of the
thyroid gland (exophthalmic goiter).

Most of the viscera are innervated by the sympathetic system, and the
visceral manifestations of emotion indicate the dominance of sympathetic
impulses. “When, for example, a cat becomes frightened, the pupils
dilate, the stomach and intestines are inhibited, the heart beats
rapidly, the hairs of the back and tail stand erect—all signs of nervous
discharge along sympathetic paths” (Cannon). Cannon and his co-workers
have further made the acute suggestion that, as adrenalin itself is
capable of working the effects evoked by sympathetic stimulation, “the
persistence of the emotional state, after the exciting object has
disappeared, can be explained” by the persistence of the adrenalin in
the blood. There is reason to believe that some of the adrenal secretion
set free by nervous stimulation returning in the blood stream to the
glands stimulates them to further activity, and this would tend to
continue the emotional effect after the emotion has subsided. “Indeed it
was the lasting effect of excitement in digestive processes which
suggested” to Cannon his investigations.[208]

According to Féré[209] the _pupils_ may dilate under the influence of
asthenic emotions and contract with sthenic emotions. However that may
be, the dilatation of the pupils during states of fear may be
demonstrated in animals.

exert force of which he is ordinarily incapable. Or this energy, instead
of being discharged into the channels being made use of by the will, and
so augmenting its effects, may be so discharged as to inhibit the will,
and produce paralysis of the will and muscular action.

These muscular vasomotor and secretory changes need not surprise us, as
indeed they have a biological meaning. As Sherrington[210] has pointed
out, “there is a strong bond between emotion and muscular action.
Emotion ‘moves’ us, hence the word itself. If developed in intensity, it
impels toward vigorous movement. Every vigorous movement of the body ...
involves also the less noticeable co-operation of the viscera,
especially of the circulatory and respiratory [and, I would add, the
secretory glands of the skin]. The extra demand made upon the muscles
that move the frame involves a heightened action of the nutrient organs
which supply to the muscles the material for their energy”; and also
involves a heightened action of the sweat glands to maintain the thermic
equilibrium. “We should expect,” Sherrington remarks, “visceral action
to occur along with the muscular expression of emotion,” and we should
expect, it may be added, that through this mechanism emotion should
become integrated with vasomotor, secretory, and other visceral
functions.

Another physiological effect of emotion ought to be mentioned, as of
recent years it has been the object of much and intensive study by
numerous students and has been frequently made use of in the clinical
study of mental derangements and in the study of subconscious phenomena.
I refer to the so-called “_psycho-galvanic reflex_.” As an outcome of
all the investigations which have been made by numerous students into
this phenomenon, it now seems clear that there are two types of galvanic
reactions, distinct from each other, which can be recognized. The one
type first described by Féré[211] consists in an increase, brought about
by emotion, of a galvanic current made to pass through the body from a
galvanic cell. If a very sensitive galvanometer is put in circuit with
the body and such a cell, a certain deviation of the needle of course
may be noted varying in amplitude according to the resistance of the
body. Now, if an idea associated with emotion—i.e., possessing a
sufficient amount of affective tone—is made to enter the consciousness
of the person experimented upon, there is observed an increased
deflection of the needle, showing an increase of current under the
influence of the emotion. The generally accepted interpretation of this
increase is that it is due to diminished resistance of the skin (with
which the electrodes are in contact) caused by an increase of the
secretions of the sweat glands. A similar increase of current follows
various sensory stimulations, such as the pricking of a pin, loud
noises, etc. It may be interesting for historical reasons to quote here
Féré’s statement of his observations, as they seem to be generally
overlooked. In his volume, “La Pathologie des Emotions,” in 1892, he
thus sums up his earlier and later observations: "I then produce various
sensory stimulations—visual (colored glasses), auditory (tuning fork),
gustatory, olfactory, etc. Whereupon there results a sudden deviation of
the needle of the galvanometer which, for the strongest stimulations,
may travel fifteen divisions (milliampères). The same deviation may also
be produced under the influence of sthenic emotions, that is to say, it
is produced under all the conditions where I have previously noticed an
augmentation of the size of the limbs, made evident through the
plethysmograph. Absence of stimulation, on the contrary, increases the
resistance; in one subject the deviation was reduced by simply closing
the eyes.

“Since these facts were first described at the Biological Society I have
been enabled to make more exact observations by using the process
recommended by A. Vigouroux (De la résistance électrique chez les
mélancoliques, Th. 1890, p. 17), and I have ascertained that under the
influence of painful emotions or tonic emotions the electrical
resistance may, in hystericals, instantaneously vary from 4,000 to
60,000 ohms.”

It will be noticed that Féré attributed the variations of the current to
variations of resistance of the body induced by sensations and emotions.

The method of obtaining the psycho-galvanic reaction may be varied in
many ways, the underlying principle being the same, namely, the arousing
of an emotion of some kind. This may be simply through imagined ideas,
or by expectant attention, sensory stimulation, suggested thoughts,
verbal stimuli, etc. According to Peterson and Jung,[212] “excluding the
effect of attention, we find that every stimulus accompanied by an
emotion causes a rise in the electric curve, and directly in proportion
to the liveliness and actuality of the emotion aroused. The galvanometer
is therefore a measurer of the amount of emotional tone, and becomes a
new instrument of precision in psychological research.” This last
statement can hardly be said to be justified, as we have no means of
measuring the “liveliness and actuality” of an emotion and, therefore,
of co-relating it with a galvanic current, nor have we any grounds for
assuming that the secretion of sweat (upon which the diminished
resistance of the body presumably depends) is proportionate to the
liveliness of the emotion, or, indeed, even that it always occurs. It is
enough to say that the galvanic current is in general a means of
detecting the presence of emotion.

The second type of galvanic reaction, as shown by Sidis and Kalmus,[213]
does not depend upon the diminished resistance of the body to a galvanic
current passing from without through the body, but is a current
originating within the body under the influence of emotion. Sidis and
Kalmus concluded that “active psycho-physiological processes, sensory
and emotional processes, with the exception of purely ideational ones,
initiated in a living organism, bring about electromotive forces with
consequent galvanometric deflections.” In a later series of experiments
Sidis and Nelson[214] came to the conclusion that the origin of the
electromotive force causing the galvanic deflection was in the
muscles.[215] Wells and Forbes,[216] on the other hand, conclude from
their own investigation that the origin of the galvanic current is to be
found in the sweat gland activity and believe the muscular origin
improbable. From a clinical standpoint the question is unimportant.

_Sensory disturbances._ On the sensory side the effect of emotions,
particularly unpleasant ones, in awakening “thrills” and all sorts of
sensations in different parts of the body is a matter of everyday
observation. _Nausea_, _dizziness_, _headache_, _pains_ of different
kinds are common accompaniments. Such reactions, however, largely vary
as idiosyncrasies of the individual, and are obviously not open to
experimentation or measurement. Whether they should be spoken of as
physiological or aberrant reactions is a matter of terminology. They
are, however, of common occurrence. In pathological conditions
disagreeable sensations accompanying fear, grief, disgust, and other
distressing forms of emotion often play a prominent part, and as
symptoms contribute to the syndromes of the psychosis. The following
quaintly described case quoted by Cannon from Burton’s Anatomy of
Melancholy is as good as a more modern illustration: “A gentlewoman of
the same city saw a fat hog cut up; when the entrails were opened, and a
noisome savour offended her nose, she much disliked, and would not
longer abide; a physician in presence told her, as that hog, so was she
full of filthy excrements, and aggravated the matter by some other
loathsome instances, insomuch this nice gentlewoman apprehended it so
deeply that she fell forthwith a vomiting; was so mightily distempered
in mind and body that, with all his art and persuasion, for some months
after, he could not restore her to herself again; she could not forget
or remove the object out of her sight.” Cannon remarks: “Truly, here was
a moving circle of causation, in which the physician himself probably
played the part of a recurrent augmenter of the trouble. The first
disgust disturbed the stomach, and the disturbance of the stomach, in
turn, aroused in the mind greater disgust, and thus between them the
influences continued to and fro until digestion was impaired and serious
functional derangement supervened. The stomach is ‘king of the belly,’
quotes Burton, ‘for if he is affected all the rest suffer with him.’”

Such cases could be multiplied many fold from the records of every
psychopathologist. I happen by chance to be interrupted while writing
this page by a patient who presents herself suffering from a phobia of
fainting. When this fear (possibly with other emotions) is awakened she
is attacked by nausea and eructation of the gastric contents, and, if
she takes food, by vomiting of the meal. (Owing to a misunderstanding of
the true pathology by her physician, her stomach was washed out
constantly for a period of two years without relief!)

=General psychopathology.=—In the light of all these well-known
physiological effects of emotion it is apparent that when an idea
possessing a strong emotional tone, such as fear or its variants, enters
consciousness, it is accompanied by a complex of physiological
reactions. In other words, fear, _as a biological reaction_ of the
organism to a stimulus, does not consist of the psychical element alone,
but includes a large syndrome of physiological processes. We can,
indeed, theoretically construct a schema which would represent the
emotional reaction. This schema would undoubtedly vary in detail in
particular cases, according to the excitability of the different
visceral functions involved in different individuals and to the mixture
of the emotions taking part (fear, disgust, shame, anger, etc.). As one
type, for instance, of a schema, taking only the most obtrusive
phenomena which do not require special technique for their detection, we
would have:

Fear (or one of its variants, anxiety, apprehension, etc., or a compound
emotion that includes fear).

Inhibition of thought (confusion).

Pallor of the skin.

Increased perspiration.

Cardiac palpitation.

Respiratory disturbances.

Tremor.

Muscular weakness.

Gastric and intestinal disturbances.

(Blushing or congestion of the skin would replace pallor if the fear was
represented or accompanied by shame or bashfulness, etc.
(self-debasement and self-consciousness),[217] or if the affective state
was anger.)

On the sensory side we would have various paresthesiæ varying with the
idiosyncrasies of the individual, and apparently dependent upon the
paths through which the emotional energy is discharged:

“Thrills.”

Feeling of oppression in the chest.

Headache.

Nausea (with or without vomiting).

Pains, fatigue, etc.

It is of practical importance to note that attacks of powerful emotions,
according to common experience, are apt to be followed by exhaustion;
consequently in morbid fears fatigue is a frequent sequela.

Physiological Mimicry of Disease.

Now, theoretically, one or more of these physiological disturbances
might be so obtrusive as to be the predominant feature of the syndrome
and to mask the psychical element which might then be overlooked.
Gastric and intestinal disturbances, for instance, or cardiac distress,
might be so marked as not to be recognized as simply manifestations of
an emotion, but be mistaken for true gastric, intestinal, or heart
disease. Going one step further, if a person had a frequently recurring
fear, as is so common, and the physiological symptoms were obtrusively
predominant, these latter would necessarily recur in attacks and,
overshadowing the psychical element, might well have all the appearance
(both to the subject and the observer) of true disease of the viscera.

Now, as a fact this theoretical possibility is just what happens. It is
one of the commonest of occurrences, although it is too frequently
misunderstood.[218] A person, we will say, has acquired—owing to no
matter what psychogenetic factor—a recurrent fear. This fear, or, in
less obtrusive form, anxiety, or apprehension, is, we will say, of
disease—heart disease or insanity or fainting or cancer or epilepsy or
what not. It recurs from time to time when awakened by some thought or
stimulus from the environment. At once there is an outburst of
physiological, i.e., functional disturbances, in the form of an
“attack.” There may be violent cardiac and respiratory disease, tremor,
flushing, perspiration, diarrhœa, sensory disturbances, etc., followed
by more or less lasting exhaustion. On the principle of complex
building, which we have discussed in a previous lecture, the various
physiological reactions embraced in such a scheme as I have outlined
tend to become welded into a complex (or association psycho-neurosis),
and this complex of reactions in consequence recurs as a syndrome every
time the fear is reëxcited. On every occasion when the anxiety recurs, a
group of symptoms recurs which is made up of these physical
manifestations of emotion which are peculiar to the individual case. The
symptoms, unless a searching inquiry is made into their mode of onset,
sequence, and associative relations, will appear a chaotic mass of
unrelated phenomena; or only certain obtrusive ones, which in the mind
of the patient point to disease of a particular organ, are described by
him. The remainder have to be specifically sought for by the
investigator. The latter, if experienced in such psycho-neuroses, can
often from his knowledge of the phenomena of emotion anticipate the
facts and in a large degree foretell to the patient the list of symptoms
from which he suffers. By those who lack familiarity with these
functional disturbances mistakes in diagnosis are frequently made.
Disease of the heart, or of the stomach, or of the nervous system is
frequently diagnosed when the symptoms are simply the product of
emotion. Quite commonly, when the symptoms are less related to
particular organs, but more conspicuously embrace vasomotor, sensory,
digestive disturbances (inhibition of function), and fatigue, the
syndrome is mistaken for so-called _neurasthenia_.[219] Thus it happens
that in recurrent morbid fears—known as the phobias or obsessions—a
group of symptoms are met with which at first sight appear to be
unrelated bodily disturbances, but which when analyzed are seen to be
only a certain number of physiological manifestations of emotion welded
into a complex. On every occasion that the fear recurs this complex is
reproduced.

It now remains to study the effect of the emotions on the psychical
side. This we shall do in the next lecture.

-----

Footnote 196:

I use the word, not in the strict but in the popular and general
sense, to include feeling, indeed all affective states, excepting
where the context gives the strict meaning.

Footnote 197:

The James-Lange theory is disregarded here as untenable.

Footnote 198:

La Pathologie des Emotions, 1892.

Footnote 199:

Physiological Dilatation and the Mitral Sphincter as Factors in
Functional and Organic Disturbances of the Heart, _The American
Journal of the Medical Sciences_, February, 1901; also, The Occurrence
and Mechanism of Physiological Heart Murmurs (Endocardial) in Healthy
Individuals, _The Medical Record_, April 20, 1889.

Footnote 200:

The emotional factor is a source of possible fallacy in all
observations on arterial tension and must be guarded against.

Footnote 201:

Frederick Peterson and C. G. Jung: Psycho-Physical Investigations with
the Galvanometer and Pneumograph, _Brain_, Vol. XXX, July, 1907, p.
153.

Footnote 202:

The Work of the Digestive Glands (English Translation), London, 02.

Footnote 203:

For a summary of Cannon’s work, see his article, Recent Advances in
the Physiology of the Digestive Organs Bearing on Medicine and
Surgery, _The Medical Journal of Medical Sciences_, 1906, New Series,
Vol. CXXXI, pp. 563-578.

Footnote 204:

_American Journal of Medical Sciences_, 1906, p. 566. See also “The
Influence of Emotional States on the Functions of the Alimentary
Canal,” by the same writer (_ibid._, April, 1909) for an interesting
résumé of the subject.

Footnote 205:

_American Journal of the Medical Sciences_, April, 1909.

Footnote 206:

Cannon and de la Paz: _American Journal of Physiology_, April 1, 1911.

Footnote 207:

Cannon, Shohl, and Wright, Ibid., December 1, 1911.

Footnote 208:

These effects of adrenalin suggest that the secretion may take some
part in pathological anxiety states.

Footnote 209:

Pathologie des Emotions, 1892.

The influence of emotion on the _muscular system_ need hardly be more
than referred to. Tremor, twitchings, particularly of the facial
muscles, and other involuntary movements, as well as modifications of
the tonus of the muscles, are common effects. All sorts of
disturbances occur, ranging from increase of excitability to
paralysis. Everyone knows that under the influence of powerful
emotion, whether of joy, anger, or fear, there is discharged an
increase of energy to the muscles, sometimes of an intensity which
enables an individual to

Footnote 210:

The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 266.

Footnote 211:

Note sur les modifications de la résistance électrique sous
l’influence des excitations sensorielles et des émotions, _C. R. Soc.
de Biologie_, 1888, p. 217.

Footnote 212:

Psycho-Physical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph
in Normal and Insane Individuals, _Brain_, Vol. XXX, July, 1907.

Footnote 213:

_Psychological Review_, November, 1908, and January, 1909.

Footnote 214:

The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic Phenomena, _Psychological
Review_, March, 1910, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, June-July,
1910.

Footnote 215:

Having demonstrated the development of electromotive force within the
body, these experimenters assumed that every psycho-galvanic reaction
was of this type. But plainly, their results do not contradict the
phenomenon of diminished resistance of the body to an electric current
brought about by emotion stimulating the sweat glands. The evidence
indicates, as I have said, two types of psycho-galvanic phenomena.

Footnote 216:

On Certain Electrical Processes in the Human Body and Their Relation
to Emotional Reactions, _Archives of Psychology_, March, 1911.

Footnote 217:

Morbid self-consciousness is commonly accompanied by fear and other
emotions. Nausea, although the specific manifestation of disgust, not
rarely is induced by fear.

Footnote 218:

A good example is that of an extreme “neurasthenic,” who had been
reduced to a condition of severe inanition from inability to take a
proper amount of food because of failure of digestion, nausea, and
vomiting. Examined by numerous and able physicians in this country and
Europe, none had been able to recognize any organic disease or the
true cause of the gastric difficulty which remained a puzzle. As a
therapeutic measure her stomach had been continuously and regularly
washed out. Yet it was not difficult to recognize, after analyzing the
symptoms and the conditions of their occurrence, that the disturbances
of the gastric functions were due to complex mental factors, the chief
of which, emotion, inhibited the gastric function, as in Cannon’s
experiments, and indirectly or directly, induced the nausea and
vomiting. The correctness of this diagnosis was recognized by the
attending physician and patient. Sometimes a phobia complicates a true
organic disease and produces symptoms which mimic the symptoms of the
latter—heart disease, for example. In this case it is often difficult
to recognize the purely phobic character of the symptoms. O. H. C. was
such a case. Though there was severe valvular disease of the heart,
compensation was good and there was little if any cardiac disability.
The attacks of dyspnœa and other symptoms were unmistakably the
physical manifestation of a phobia of the disease. The phobia had been
artificially created by overcautious physicians.

Footnote 219:

One has only to compare routine out-patient hospital records with the
actual state of patients to verify the truth of this statement. For
purposes of instruction I have frequently done this before the class.
The true nature of the psycho-neurosis and the irrelevancy of the
routine record and diagnosis have, I believe, been commonly made
manifest. Sometimes, however, of course, phobias complicate other
diseases, and we have a mixed symptomatology.

LECTURE XV
INSTINCTS, SENTIMENTS, AND CONFLICTS

It is generally agreed that emotions proper (as distinguished from other
affective states) may be divided into those which are primary (anger,
fear, disgust, etc.), and those (jealousy, admiration, hatred, etc.),
which are compounded of two or more primary emotions. McDougall has made
a great contribution to our knowledge in having made clear that a
primary emotion is not only instinctive, but is the central or psychical
element in a reflex process consisting, besides, of an ingoing stimulus
and an outgoing impulse. The whole process is the instinct.[220] It is
of course innate, and depends on congenital prearrangements of the
nervous system. The central element, the emotion, provides the conative
or impulse force which carries the instinct to fulfilment. It is the
motive power, the dynamic agent that executes, that propels the response
which follows the stimulus. Though we speak of anger and fear, for
example, as instincts, McDougall is unquestionably right in insisting
that more correctly speaking the activated instinct is a process in
which the emotion is only one factor—the psychical. The instincts of
anger and fear should more precisely be termed respectively “pugnacity
with the emotion of anger” and “flight with the emotion of fear.” In the
one case, the emotion, as the central reaction to a stimulus, by its
conative force impels to pugnacity; in the other fear impels to flight;
and so with the other instincts and their emotions which I would suggest
may be termed arbitrarily the _emotion-instincts_, to distinguish them
from the more general instincts and innate dispositions with which
animal psychology chiefly deals, and in which the affective element is
feebler or has less of the specific psychical quality. For brevity’s
sake, however, we may speak of the instinct of anger, fear, tender
feeling, etc. Of course they are biological in their nature.

This formulation, by McDougall, of emotion as one factor in an
instinctive process must be regarded as one of the most important
contributions to our knowledge of the mechanism of emotion. It can
scarcely be traversed, as it is little more than a descriptive statement
of observed facts. It is strange that this conception of the process
should have been so long overlooked. Its value lies in replacing
vagueness with a precise conception of one of the most important of
psychological phenomena, and enables us to clearly understand the part
played by emotion in mental processes. It also shows clearly the
inadequacy of the objective methods of normal psychology when attempting
to investigate emotion by measuring the discharge of its impulsive force
in one direction only, namely, the disturbances of the functions of the
viscera (vasomotor, glandular, etc.). It discharges also along lines of
mental activity and conduct.

When studying the organization of complexes, and in other lectures, we
saw, as everyone knows in a general way, that _affects may become linked
with ideas_, and that the force derived from this association gives to
the ideas intensity and conative influence. Further, it was developed
that the linking of a strong affect tends to stronger registration and
conservation of experiences. This linking of an affect to an idea is one
of the foundation stones of the pathology of the psycho-neuroses. One
might say that upon it “hangs all the law and the prophets.”

Inasmuch as a sentiment, even in the connotations of popular language,
besides being an idea always involves an affective element, it is
obvious that _a sentiment is an idea of an object with which one or more
emotions are organized_. But, obvious as it is, it remained for Mr.
Shand, as McDougall reminds us, to make this precise definition. It is
hardly a discovery as the latter puts it, as the facts themselves have
been long known; but it is a valuable definition and its value lies in
helping us to think clearly. Nearly every idea, if not every idea, has
an affective tone of some kind, or is one of a complex of ideas endowed
with such tone. This tone may be weak so as to be hardly recognizable,
or it may be strong. Now, if emotion is one factor in an instinctive
process, it is evident that a sentiment more precisely is an idea of an
object linked or organized with one or more “emotion-instincts.” As
McDougall has precisely phrased it, “A sentiment is an organized system
of emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object.” The
impulsive force of the emotional dispositions or linked instincts
becomes the conative force of the idea, and it is this factor which
carries the idea to fruition. This is one of the most important
principles of functional psychology. Its value can scarcely be
exaggerated. Without the impulse of a linked emotion ideas would be
lifeless, dead, inert, incapable of determining conduct. But when we say
that an emotion becomes linked to, i.e., organized with that composite
called an idea, _we really mean (according to this theory of emotion)
that it is the whole instinct, the emotional innate disposition of which
the emotion is only a part that is so linked_. The instinct has also
afferent and efferent activities. The latter is an impulsive or conative
force discharged by the emotion. Thus the affective element of an
instinctive process—a process which is a biological reaction—provides
the driving force, makes the idea a dynamic factor, moves us to carry
the idea to fulfilment. As McDougall has expressed it:

"We may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts are the
prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force
of some instinct (or of some habit derived from some instinct), every
train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne
along toward its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and
sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all
activities and supply the driving power by which all mental activities
are sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most
highly developed mind is but a means toward these ends, is but the
instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions, while
pleasure and pain do but serve to guide them in their choice of the
means.

“Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful
impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any
kind; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork
whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam engine whose fires had
been drawn. These impulses are the mental forces that maintain and
shape all the life of individuals and societies, and in them we are
confronted with the central mystery of life and mind and will.”[221]

Furthermore _the organization of the emotions with ideas to form
sentiments is essential for self-control and regulation of conduct_, and
becomes a safeguard against mental, physiological, and social chaos.

“The growth of the sentiments is of the utmost importance for the
character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the
organization of the affective and conative life. In the absence of
sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order,
consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations
and conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses, would be
correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and unstable. It is only
through the systematic organization of the emotional dispositions in
sentiments that the volitional control of the immediate promptings of
the emotions is rendered possible. Again, our judgments of value and
of merit are rooted in our sentiments; and our moral principles have
the same source, for they are formed by our judgments of moral
value.”[222]

Summing up, then, we may say _one of the chief functions of emotion_ is
to provide the conative force which enables ideas to fulfill their aims,
and one of the chief functions of sentiments to control and regulate the
emotions.

Besides the instinctive dispositions proper there are other innate
dispositions which similarly provide conative force and determine
activities. For the practical purposes of the problems with which we are
concerned, the conative or impulsive forces of all such innate
dispositions and the sentiments which they help to form are here, it
should be understood, considered together and included under instincts.

=The conative function of emotion.=—I shall take up in a later
lecture[223] (in connection with the psychogenesis of multiple
personality) the instincts and sentiments for discussion in more detail.
The point to which I wish in this connection to call attention is that
when a simple emotion-instinct, or an idea linked with an instinct (a
sentiment) is awakened by any stimulus, _its impulsive force is
discharged in three directions_: the _first_ is toward the excitation of
those articulated movements and ideas which guide and carry the instinct
to fruition—to fight in the case of anger, to flee in the case of fear,
to cherish in the case of love, etc. _Second_ (accessory to the first)
the excitation of many of the various visceral functions which we have
reviewed reinforces the instinctive movements; e. g., for pugnacity or
flight the increased respiration and activity of the heart increase the
supply of oxygen and blood to the muscles; the secretion of sweat
regulates the temperature during increased activity, the increased
secretion of adrenalin and the increased secretion of sugar may, as
Cannon suggests, respectively keep up the emotional state (after the
cause of the fear or anger has subsided) and meet the demand of the
muscles for an extra supply of food, etc.

Later experiments of Cannon seem to show that the adrenal secretion
removes the fatigue of muscles; and, further, that stimulation of the
splanchic nerves will largely recover fatigued muscles, increasing the
efficiency as much as 100 per cent.[224] As emotion discharges its
impulses along splanchic pathways to the adrenal glands, the inference
as to the function of emotion in overcoming fatigue is obvious.

As to the _sensory accompaniments of emotion_, it is quite reasonable to
suppose that their rôle is to supplement and reinforce in consciousness
the affect, thereby aiding in arousing the individual to a full
appreciation of the situation and to such voluntary effort (whether to
guide and assist the instinct to its fulfillment or to repress it) as,
in the light of past experiences, his judgment dictates. These sensory
disturbances on this theory act as additional warnings in consciousness
where the affect proper might be too weak.[225] Their function would be
like that of pain in the case of organic disease. Pain is a biological
reaction and a warning to the individual to rest the diseased part,[226]
as well as a danger signal.

The _third_ direction which the discharge of the impulsive force of the
emotion takes is toward the repression of the conflicting conative force
of such other emotions as would act in an antagonistic direction.[227]
The utility of the discharge in this direction is supplementary to that
of the excitation of the visceral functions: _the former protects
against the invasion of counteracting forces, the latter strengthens the
force of the impulse in question_.

_Conflicts thus arise._ When an emotion is aroused a conflict
necessarily occurs between its impulse and that of any other existing
affective state, the impulse of which is antagonistic to the aim of the
former. Consequently instincts and sentiments which, through the
conative force of their emotion, tend to drive the conduct of the
individual in a course in opposition to that of a newly aroused emotion
(instinct) meet with resistance. Whichever instinct or sentiment,
meaning whichever impulse, is the stronger necessarily downs the other;
inhibits the central and efferent parts of the process—ideas, emotions
and impulses—though the afferent part conveys the stimulus to the
central factor. Thus processes of thought to which the inhibited
sentiment or instinct would normally give rise, or with which it is
systematized, are likewise inhibited and behavior correspondingly
modified. These statements are only descriptive of what is common
experience. If one recalls to mind the principal primary emotions
(instincts) such as the sexual, anger, fear, tender feeling, hunger,
self-abasement, self-assertion, curiosity, etc., this is seen to be an
obvious biological truth.[228] Fear is suppressed by anger, tender
feeling, or curiosity (wonder), and _vice versa_; hunger and the sexual
instinct by disgust.

What is true of the primitive instincts and their primary emotions is
also true of compound instincts (emotions) and of sentiments, i.e.,
ideas about which one or several emotions are systematized. We may,
therefore, for brevity’s sake, speak of a conflict of ideas or
sentiments or emotions or instincts indiscriminately. In other words,
_any affective state may be suppressed by conflict with another and
stronger affective state_. A timid mother, impelled by the parental
instinct, has no fear of danger to herself when her child is threatened.
The instinct of pugnacity (anger) in this case not being antagonistic
(in conflict) is not only not suppressed but may be awakened as a
reaction to aid in the expression of the parental instinct. _Per
contra_, when anger would conflict with this instinct, as when the child
does wrong, the anger is suppressed by the parental instinct.
Conversely, the sentiment of love for a particular person may be
completely suppressed by jealousy and anger. Hatred of a person may
expel from consciousness previous sentiments of sympathy, justice, pity,
respect, fear, etc. The animal under the influence of the parental
instinct may be incapable of fear in defense of its young, particularly
if anger is excited. Fear may be suppressed in an animal or human being
if either is impelled by great curiosity over a strange object. Instead
of taking to flight, the animal may stand still in wonder. Similarly in
man, curiosity to examine, for example, an explosive—an unexploded shell
or bomb—inhibits the fear of danger often, as we know, with disastrous
results. The suppression of the sexual instinct by conflict is one of
the most notorious of the experiences of this kind in everyday life.
This instinct cannot be excited during an attack of fear and anger, and
even during moments of its excitation, if there is an invasion of
another strong emotion the sexual instinct at once is repressed. Under
these conditions, as with other instincts, even habitual excitants can
no longer initiate the instinctive process. Chloe would appeal in vain
to her lover if he were suddenly seized with fright or she had
inadvertently awakened in him an intense jealousy or anger. Similarly
the instinct may be suppressed, particularly in men, as every
psycho-pathologist has observed, by the awakening of the instinct of
self-subjection with its emotion of self-abasement (McDougall) with
fear, shown in the sentiments of incapacity, shame, etc. The authors of
“_Vous n’avez rien à declarer_” makes this the principal theme in this
laughable drama. Indeed the principle of the suppression of one instinct
by conflict with another has been made use of by writers of fiction and
drama in all times.

This principle of inhibition by conflict allows us to understand the
imperative persistence (if not the genesis) of certain sexual
perversions in otherwise healthy-minded and normal people who have a
loathing for such perversions in other people but can not overcome them
in themselves. H. O., for example, has such a perversion, and yet the
idea of this perversion in another person excites a lively emotion of
disgust. In other words, at bottom, as we say, she is right-minded. How
then account for the continuance of a self practice which she reprobates
in another, censures in herself, and desires to be free of, and why does
not the instinct of repulsion, and the sentiment of self respect, etc.,
act in herself as a safeguard? Introspective examination shows that when
the sexual emotion is awakened, disgust and the sentiments of pride and
self respect are suppressed, and the momentarily activating instinct
determines all sorts of sophistical reasoning by which the perversion is
justified to herself. As soon as the instinct accomplishes its aim it
becomes exhausted, and at once intense disgust, meeting with no
opposition, becomes awakened and in turn determines once more her
right-minded ideas. Based upon this mechanism one therapeutic procedure
would be to organize artificially so intense sentiments of disgust for
the perversion and of self-respect that they would suppress the sexual
impulse.[229]

Likewise the intense religious emotions (awe, reverence, self-abasement,
divine love, etc.) may, if sufficiently strong, suppress the opposing
instincts of anger, fear, play, and self-assertion, and emotions
compounded of them. Examples might be cited from the lives of religious
martyrs and fanatics.

If it is true that “the instincts are the prime movers of all human
activity,” and that through their systematic organization with ideas
into sentiments they are so harnessed and brought under subjection that
they can be utilized for the well-being of the individual; and if
through this harnessing the immediate promptings of the emotions are
brought under volitional control, then _all conduct, in the last
analysis, is determined by the conative force of instincts_[230] (and
other innate dispositions) harnessed though they be to ideas. For though
volition itself can control, reinforce, and determine the particular
sentiment and thus govern conduct,—reinforce, for instance, a weaker
abstract moral sentiment so that it shall dominate any lower brutish
instinct or sentiment with which it conflicts, still, volition must be a
more complex form of conation and itself issue from sentiments.

We need not enter into this troublesome problem of the nature of the
will;[231] nor does it concern us. It is enough for our purpose to
recognize that volition can reinforce a sentiment and thus take part in
conflicts. In this way undesirable instincts and sentiments can he
voluntarily overcome and inhibited or repressed and mental processes and
conduct determined.

Nor are we concerned here with conduct which pertains more properly to
social psychology. Our task is much more limited and simple, namely to
inquire into the immediate conscious phenomena provoked by emotion, just
as we have studied the physiological phenomena. We have seen that one
such phenomenon is inhibition or repression of antagonistic instincts
and sentiments provoked by conflict. (We shall see later that a conflict
may arise between a conscious and an entirely subconscious sentiment
with similar resulting phenomena.)

=Repression of individual instincts may be lasting.=—The repressions
resulting from conflict which we have just been considering have been of
a temporary nature lasting only just so long as the conflict has lasted.
It is instructive to note that just as an instinct can be cultivated
until it becomes a ruling trait in the character, so it can be
permanently repressed, or so intensely repressed that it cannot be
awakened excepting by unusual excitants or under unusual conditions.
Such a persisting repression may be brought about either directly by
volitional conflict or indirectly through the cultivation of
antagonistic sentiments. The cultivation of an instinct is a common
enough observation. Every one can point to some one of his acquaintance
who has so fostered his instinct of anger or fear, has so cultivated the
habit of one or the other reaction that he has become the slave of his
emotion. Conversely, by the conative force of the will, and still more
successfully by the cultivation of appropriate moral and religious and
other sentiments, and complexes or “settings” systematized about those
sentiments, a person can inhibit any instinct or any sentiment organized
with that instinct. A bad-tempered person can thus, if he chooses,
become good-tempered; a coward, a brave person; a person governed by the
instinct of self-subjection can repress it by the cultivation of
sentiments of self-assertion, and so on. The complete repression of
unchristian instincts and sentiments is the acquired characteristic of
the saintly character. The cultivation and repression of character
traits and tendencies along these lines obviously belong to the domains
of the psychology of character, social psychology, and criminology. But
the persisting repression of at least one instinct—the sexual
instinct—may take on pathological significance[232] while that of
sentiments may lead to pathological dissociation and to the _formation
of disturbing subconscious states_. To this latter type of repression we
shall presently return.

That the sexual instinct may be involuntarily and persistently repressed
by conflict is shown by the following case:

F. S. presented herself at the hospital clinic because of hysterical
epileptiform attacks of six months’ duration. The attacks, which had
been caused by an emotional trauma, were easily cured by suggestion.
After recovery she fell into lamentations over the fact that she was
sterile owing to both ovaries having been removed three years before
because of pelvic disease. Just before the operation she had also
suffered from an emotional trauma (fear). Although complete recovery
from her symptoms had followed the operation, the sexual instinct had
been abolished for three years. She was now much distressed over her
inability to have children, complaining it had led to domestic
infelicity, and apprehending divorce which had been threatened on the
ground of her sterility. Having confidence in the strength of certain
fundamental principles of human nature, and disbelieving the reasons
alleged by the husband for divorce, I was able to restore domestic
felicity, as well as demonstrate the psycho-physiological principle that
the instinct was not lost but only inhibited. A single suggestion in
hypnosis, psychologically constructed so as to bear a strong conative
impulse that would overcome any other conflicting affective impulses and
carry itself to fruition, restored not only the lost function[233] but
conjugal happiness. That the instinct had only been inhibited is
obvious. Whether the repressing factor had been fear or an involuntary
auto-suggestion was not determined.

The following case is instructive not only because of the lasting
dissociation of this instinct as a result of a conflict, but because the
dissociation was volitionally and intentionally effected as a revenge.
Other interesting features are the transference of the repressing
revenge affect to an object (clothes which became an amulet or fetish to
protect from sexual approaches, and the building of a complex (“raw
oyster”) which became the bearer of the repressing force. X. Y. Z.
received a deep wound to her pride on the first night of her honeymoon
when her husband forgot his bride of a few hours who was awaiting him in
the nuptial chamber. Happening to meet in the hotel some political
acquaintances after the bride had retired, he became absorbed in a
political discussion and—forgot! When he appeared after a prolonged
absence and presented his excuses she was hurt in her pride and offended
to think that she was of so little importance to him that he could
become interested in talking politics.[234] There was anger too, and she
vowed to herself to show, or, to use her own words, she “would be hanged
if” she would show that she had any liking for or any interest in the
marital intimacy. (She had never hitherto experienced any sexual
feelings and, like most young girls, was entirely ignorant of the
physical side. Nevertheless, from what she had been told, she had
idealized the spiritual union of husband and wife and anticipated
pleasurable experiences.) So purposely she repressed any interest, made
herself absolutely indifferent to her spouse’s amorous attentions and
experienced absolutely no sexual feeling; and so it continued for some
days. In view of what later happened, and what we know of conflicts, we
must believe that the impulses which carried her volition to fruition
came from the emotions of anger, pride, and revenge.

Then one afternoon, just after she had finished dressing herself
preparatory to going out, her husband came into her room and made
advances to her. The idea appealed to her and she became emotionally
excited at the thought. But in the middle of the act when the libido
began to be aroused, suddenly she remembered that she had been snubbed
at the first and that her rôle was to show no liking or interest. There
were reawakened the emotions of pride, anger, and revenge, although not
malicious revenge. Impelled by these emotions she actually gave herself
suggestions to effect her purpose—a determination to get square with the
past. She said to herself, “I must not like it; I must put it away back
in my mind, I must become flabby as an oyster.” Thereupon she became
“perfectly limp and uninterested and the feelings of flabbiness came
over” her, and the beginning sexual feeling subsided at once. (That day
she had eaten some raw oysters and had been impressed by them as the
essence of flabbiness.) She admitted having continued during succeeding
years to cherish this revengeful feeling as to the sexual relation—to
get square with the past. She defended it, however, (although admitting
the childishness of the original episode) on the ground that the slight
to her pride must be viewed in connection with a long series of
antecedent experiences. These must therefore be viewed as the setting
which gave meaning to her idea of sexual relations with her husband.
After this at the sexual approach under conventional marital conditions
she for a time always volitionally induced this flabby “raw-oyster”
sensation and feeling. Later it would automatically arise at the first
indication or suggestion of the approach and counteract the libido. It
was now no longer necessary to be on guard, knowing she could not be
taken unawares. The consequence has been that the patient has never
consciously experienced any sexual feeling beyond those first beginnings
at the time of the experience when she was fully dressed. The patient
can produce the “raw-oyster” state at will and exhibited it voluntarily
during the examination. The state as then observed was one of lethargy
or extreme relaxation. There was no general anæsthesia; pinching and
pricking was felt perfectly, but, as she remarked, they carried no
sensation of discomfort. “I do not care at the moment,” she explained,
“what any one does to me; no sensation would cause pleasure or
discomfort.” To arouse the state she thinks of the sexual approach
first, and then the state comes. The sexual instinct has never been
aroused by reading, or associative ideas of any kind. “It does not
exist,” to quote her words.

Clothes became an amulet of protection in the following way: Ever since
that afternoon when she was taken unawares in her clothes (and “almost
liked it”) she realized and feared that sexual approaches when she was
fully clothed might arouse the sexual instinct. Consequently she was
more on her guard when fully clothed than at night for fear of being
taken unawares. The idea that she must be on her guard when clothed
became fixed, and, at first, when in this condition, she was always on
her guard ready to defend herself by _pugnacity_. Then any approach at
such times, if accompanied by physical contact, awakened an instinctive
reaction which became a defense; it aroused the instincts of fear and
anger. Any affectionate demonstration suggestive of the approach on the
part of her husband would arouse these defensive instincts. On the other
hand, when half dressed there has been no such ebullition of emotion;
she has in consequence always believed that having clothes on would
protect her against admirers. Indeed, as a fact, this is so, for any
show of affection from any one manifested by a touch, even the friendly
pat of the hand, will cause an unnecessary and unreasonable outburst of
uncontrollable anger, such as to astonish and startle the offender.
Clothes, becoming thus a sentiment in which the instincts of flight and
pugnacity are incorporated, have also become a protection in
themselves—an amulet to ward off danger.

What reason, it may be asked, is there for believing that the sexual
instinct really exists in this case, and is only repressed or
dissociated? I may not state all the reasons; it is sufficient to say
that the evidence is to be found in dreams. The large number of sexual
dreams which the subject has experienced, many of them accompanied by
realistic sexual manifestations and not symbolic only, leave no doubt of
this fact.[235]

_Conflicts with subconscious sentiments._ Thus far we have been
considering conflicts between sentiments and emotional processes which
have been in the full light of consciousness. But in previous lectures
we have seen that ideas with strong emotional tones may be dissociated
and function below the threshold of consciousness as coconscious
processes. It is theoretically possible, therefore, that conflicts
might arise between a dissociated coconscious sentiment and one that
is antagonistic to it in consciousness. To appreciate this theoretical
condition let me point out that there is one important _difference
between the ultimate consequences of the repression of an instinct and
of a sentiment_. If an instinct is repressed (it being only an innate
disposition) it ceases to be an active factor in the functioning
organism. It is inhibited. A stimulus that ordinarily suffices to
excite it fails to do so, and it may respond only to an
extraordinarily powerful stimulus, or perhaps none will awaken it.
Thus abstinence from food fails to awaken a sense of hunger in a
person who has lost this instinct for any reason, even though
appetizing food be placed before him.[236] Similarly anger, or fear,
or tender emotion, or self-assertion, or disgust, in certain persons
cannot be awakened excepting by very unusual stimuli. In other words,
the psycho-physiological reflex is completely or relatively in
abeyance just as much so as is an organic reflex (e. g., the
knee-jerk) which has been inhibited. Normally, of course, it is rare
for an instinct to be absolutely inhibited excepting temporarily, as
has been explained, during a conflict with another instinct. In
certain pathological conditions (e. g., dissociated personality),
almost any instinct may be persistently inhibited. In normal
conditions there is, however, one exception, namely the sexual
instinct, which, as we have seen from instances cited, may be
inhibited during long periods of time. In women this inhibition is
common and is effected, as I believe, by the subtle and insensible
influence of the environment of the child and by social education, in
other words, by the social taboo. Wherever inhibition occurs
observation would seem to show that the psycho-physiological function
has ceased to take part in the functioning organism.

With sentiments, however, the case stands differently. A sentiment,
being an idea about which a system of emotional dispositions has been
organized, when repressed by conflict, or when simply out of mind,
whether capable of reproduction as memory or not, may, like all ideas,
still be conserved, as we have seen, as an unconscious neurogram. As we
have also seen, so long as it is conserved it is still a part of the
personality. Even though repressed it is not necessarily absolutely
inhibited but may be simply dissociated and then be _able to take on
dissociated subconscious activity_. As a subconscious process the idea
continues still organized with its emotional dispositions, and the
conative forces of these, under certain conditions, may continue
striving to give expression to the idea. We have already become familiar
with one phenomenon of this striving, namely, the emerging into
consciousness of the emotional element of the sentiment while the idea
remains subconscious, thus producing an unaccountable fear or joy,
feelings of pleasure or pain, etc. (p. 381).

1. This being so, it having been determined that _under certain
conditions_ any conserved experience may become activated as a
dissociated subconscious process, it is _theoretically_ quite possible
that the impulses of an activated subconscious sentiment might come into
conflict with the impulses of a conscious process—the two being
antagonistic. The resulting phenomena might be the same as when both
factors to the contest are in consciousness. In such a conflict if the
impulsive force of the subconscious sentiment is the stronger the
conscious ideas, sentiments, and feelings—in short, the conscious
process—would be repressed, and _vice versa_. Or if the subconscious
sentiment got the worst of the conflict and could not repress the
conscious process, the former, being dissociated and an independent
“automatic” process, might theoretically induce various other phenomena
in the effort to fulfil its aim. If it could not directly overcome the
impulses of the conscious process it might circumvent the latter by
inducing mental and physiological disturbances which would indirectly
prevent the conscious impulses from fulfilling their aim; e. g.,
inhibition of the will, dissociation or total inhibition of
consciousness, amnesia for particular memories, motor phenomena
interfering with normal activity, etc. The subconscious sentiment
engaging in such a conflict could be excited to activity by any
associative antagonistic idea in consciousness. It should be noted that
the subject being entirely unaware of the subconscious process would not
know the cause of the resulting phenomena.

2. Now, in fact, _such hypothetical conflicts and phenomena are actually
observed_ in very neat and precise form _under experimental conditions_,
particularly in pathological or quasi-pathological subjects. These
conditions are particularly instructive as they allow us to clearly
recognize the subconscious character of the conflicting process and
detect the exact sentiment concerned therein.

The following experiment illustrative of such a conflict between a
conscious and subconscious process I have repeated many times in one
subject with the same resulting phenomenon. It has been demonstrated on
several occasions to psychologists and others. On the first occasion
when the phenomenon was observed it was entirely spontaneous and
unexpected as also has since been frequently the case.

B. C. A. in one phase of alternating personality (B) was asked to
mention a certain complex of ideas which was known to have been
organized about a distressing “sentiment” in another phase (C) causing
considerable unhappiness. This sentiment included a strong emotion of
pride in consequence of which she had in the C phase intense objections
to revealing these ideas. As she herself said, she “would have gone to
the stake first.” Phase B has no such sentiment, but on the contrary the
ideas in question were only amusing to her.[237] In phase B, therefore,
she not only had no objection to revealing the sentiment distressing to
C but desired for therapeutic reasons to do so. In accordance with this
difference of sentiments the difference in the attitude of mind in the
two phases toward the same experience was quite striking. The impulse in
the one was to conceal the experiences and sentiment, in the other to
divulge them.

Now, in reply to an interrogatory as to what was distressing in the C
phase, B begins to mention the sentiment. At once, and to her
astonishment, her lips and tongue are tied by painful spasms involving,
also, the throat muscles. She becomes dumb, unable to overcome the
resistance. She struggles in vain to speak. When she gives up the
struggle to pronounce the forbidden words she speaks with ease on other
subjects saying “something prevented me from speaking.” Each time that
she endeavors to turn State’s evidence and to peach on herself, the same
struggle is repeated. When she persists in her effort, using all her
will-power, the effect of the conflicting force extends to
consciousness. Her thoughts become first confused, then obliterated, and
she falls back in her seat limp, paralyzed, and apparently unconscious.
The thoughts to which she strove to give expression have disappeared.
She now cannot even will to speak.

But she is not really unconscious, it is only another phase; there is
only a dissociation or inhibition of the consciousness comprising the
system of ideas making up the B phase and an awakening of another
restricted system. When automatic writing is tried, it is found that a
limited field of consciousness is present in which are to be found the
ideas which opposed the resistance. A precise statement of the opposing
factors (volition) which offered the resistance and brought about the
conflict, the spasm of the vocal apparatus, and finally inhibition or
dissociation of consciousness, is obtained from this dissociated
restricted field.[238]

This phenomenon carries its own interpretation on its face and cannot be
doubted. Certain sentiments, for the moment dormant and outside the
focus of awareness of the subject, are “struck” or stimulated by
memories within that focus. The conative force of the conscious wishes
to which the subject seeks to give expression meets with the resistance
of a similar and more powerful force from the previously dormant
sentiment. The latter carries itself to fulfilment and _controls the
vocal apparatus at first, and then, finding itself likely to be overcome
by the will-power of the personality, annihilates the latter by the
inhibition and dissociation of consciousness_.

Various forms of the same phenomenon of conflict with subconscious
processes I have experimentally demonstrated in Miss B. and O. N.
Spontaneous manifestations of the same have also been frequently
observed in all three subjects. In the published account of Miss B.[239]
numerous examples are given. I will merely refer to the attacks of
aboulia, the dissociations of consciousness and inhibition of thought,
and of speech resulting in stuttering and dumbness, the inhibition of
motor activity, the induction of systematized anesthesia and alexia,
etc. In the prolonged study of the case I was the witness, I was going
to say, of innumerable exhibitions of such manifestations, and the book
is replete with examples of conflicts between opposing mental processes.
B. C. A. in her account, “My Life as a Dissociated Personality,”[240]
has described similar spontaneous phenomena. It is worth noting in this
connection that the commonplace phenomena of systematized anesthesia
(negative hallucinations) may be induced by conflict with a subconscious
process motivated by strong emotion. Thus Miss B. in one of her phases
could not see the writing on a sheet of paper which appeared blank to
her; on another occasion she could not see the printing of the pages of
a French novel which she therefore took to be a blank book, nor could
she see a bookcase containing French books.[241] The subconscious
conflicting ideas were motivated by anger in the one case and jealousy
in the other. That the conflicting ideas in this case were elements
synthesized in a large dissociated system or subconscious self in no way
affects the principle, which is that of conflict between processes. The
conflicting process in such conditions is a more complex one, that is
all. Undoubtedly the systematized anesthesia, so easily induced by
hypnotic suggestion and which has been made the subject of much study,
may be explained on the same principle, although the affective elements
are not so obtrusive. The conflict is between the personal volition of
the subject to see the marked playing-card, if that is the test object
used in the experiment, and the suggested idea not to see it. The latter
wins if the experiment is successful and inhibits the perception of the
card—i. e., dissociates it from the focus of awareness. (The emotional
tones involved are obscure; possibly they are curiosity on the one hand
vs. self-subjection on the other.)

The _unconscious resistance to suggestion_ is probably of the same
nature. Every one knows that it is difficult to hypnotize a person who
resists the suggestion. This resistance may come from a counter
auto-suggestion which may be entirely involuntary, perhaps a conviction
on the part of the subject that she cannot be hypnotized, or an
unwillingness to be—i.e., desire not to be hypnotized or fear. The same
is true of waking a person from hypnosis. In other words, an
antagonistic preparedness of the mind blocks involuntarily the
suggestion. A very pretty illustration is the following: H. O.
discovered that she could easily and rapidly hypnotize herself by simply
passing her own fingers over her eyelids, but she could not wake herself
out of hypnosis. She then discovered that, if she first gave herself the
suggestion that she would wake when she desired, she could quickly do
so. Likewise, if she suggested to herself that she could not hypnotize
herself the customary procedure was without effect. Though this
observation is a common phenomenon the rapidity and ease with which the
phenomenon was demonstrated were as striking as it was amusing to watch
her struggle to awake when the preparatory anticipatory autosuggestion
had not been given.

In O. N. _more complicated phenomena_ induced by conflicts with
subconscious complexes have been equally precise and striking. In this
subject I find, as the result of repeated observations, that, in order
that a suggestion, that is antagonistic to a preexisting attitude of
mind possessing a strong feeling tone, shall not be resisted in
hypnosis, it must be first formally accepted by the personality _before_
hypnosis is induced. If this viewpoint is not preformed, after hypnosis
is induced the blocking attitude cannot be altered. Practically this
means that the subject shall _bring into consciousness and disclose
ideas_ with which the intended suggestion will conflict and shall modify
them voluntarily. This she does by first candidly accepting a new point
of view, and then, secondly, by a technical procedure of her own,
namely, by preparing her mind not to resist in hypnosis. This procedure,
briefly stated and simplified, is as follows: she first says to herself,
“I will ‘take out’ that [resisting] idea.” Then she arranges in her
thoughts the ideas of acceptance which she will substitute. Then she
puts herself into a state of abstraction (hypnosis) and _suggests to
herself_ that the resisting idea _is_ taken out and that my intended
suggestion shall be her viewpoint. Even then, sometimes, when the
resisting idea is one harking back to a long past period of life and
belonging to a pathologically organized “mood,” known as the “b mood” or
state, the acceptance of the suggestion may be ineffectual. Under these
circumstances and _when the hypnotic dissociation is carried too far_,
so that the hypnotic state is reduced to the “b mood,” the previously
auto-suggested acceptance of the idea by the patient is thereby
ostracized from the hypnotic field and is unable to play its part and
have effect. So much by way of explanation. Now when the precaution has
not been taken to see that any resisting idea has been “taken out” and
when the intended suggestion has not been accepted, one of the following
phenomena is observed: (1) the hypnotic personality when the suggestion
is given becomes “automatically” and unconsciously restless, endeavors,
_without knowing why_, to avoid listening, and to push me away, shifting
her attitude and struggling to withdraw herself from contact or
proximity—all the time the face expressing hostility and disapproval in
its features; or (2) complete obnubilation of consciousness supervenes
so that the suggestions are not heard; or (3) the subject suddenly wakes
up. The last frequently happens as often as the suggestion is repeated;
and yet in hypnosis (and also, of course, when awake), the subject is
unaware of what causes the resistance and the resulting phenomena. But
if now the subject is warned of what has occurred and accepts the
suggestion by the procedure mentioned (unless the “b mood” I have
mentioned recurs), the resistance and other phenomena at once cease and
the suggestion takes effect. Thus in this case the conflicting ideas can
always be precisely determined and the conditions of the experiment
arranged at will and the results controlled. It is obvious that all
three phenomena are different modes by which the subconscious idea
resists the suggested idea and accomplishes its aim.

3. _In entire accordance with the experimental results are certain
pathological disturbances_ which from time to time interrupt the course
of everyday life of this subject, O. N. These disturbances consist of
one or more of the following: a dissociative state in which the
pathological “b mood” is dominant; a lethargic state; twilight state;
complete repression of certain normal sentiments and instincts; complete
alteration of previously established points of view; morbid
self-reproach; nervousness, restlessness, agitation; anger at
opposition; indecision of thought, etc. Now, whenever such phenomena
recur, with practical certainty, they can always be traced by the use of
technical methods to a conflict with a turbulent sentiment (in which
strong emotional tones are incorporated) previously lying dormant in the
unconscious. Sometimes the turbulent sentiment can be definitely traced
to childhood’s experiences. Very often it has been intentionally formed
and put into her mind by the subject herself for the very purpose of
inducing the repression of other sentiments, to which for one reason or
another for the time being she objects, and of changing her habitual
point of view. Her method of artificially accomplishing this result is
exceedingly instructive. It is similar to the auto-suggestive process I
have described in connection with the hypnotic experiments. Having first
prearranged her psychological plan, she proceeds to put herself into
abstraction and to “take out”, as she calls it, her previous sentiment
(or instinct) and substitute an antagonistic sentiment. When she comes
to herself out of abstraction, the previously objected to sentiment has
completely vanished. If it is one concerning a person or mode of life,
she becomes completely indifferent to that person or mode of life as if
previously no sentiment had existed. If an intimate friend, he becomes
only an acquaintance toward whom she has entirely new feelings
corresponding to the new sentiment; if a physician, nothing that he says
has influence with her, her new feeling, we will say, being that of
resentment; if a mode of life, she has lost all interest in that mode
and is governed by an interest in a new mode. Even physiological bodily
instincts have been in this way suppressed. She has indulged this
psychological habit for years. Again and again when she has exhibited
these, and still other, phenomena, I have been able to discover their
origin in this auto-suggestive procedure.

Some of the other phenomena I have just mentioned are more likely
to be traced to _autochthonous conflicts between everyday
ideas_—dissatisfactions with actual conditions of life, and wishes
for other conditions, unwillingness to forego the fulfilment of
certain wishes and accept the necessary conditions as they exist,
etc. The natural consequence is restlessness, agitation, anger,
indecision, etc. The dissociation of personality, with the
outcropping of the “b mood,” follows—a conflict due to the
excitation of certain childhood complexes, conserved in the
unconscious and embracing sentiments in which are incorporated the
instinct of self-subjection or abasement. This “b mood” is a study
in itself. The self-reproaches are, I believe, also traceable to
this instinct.

_Conflicts may even occur between two processes, both of which are
subconscious_ and therefore outside of the awareness of the subject.
Thus, in B. C. A. I have frequently observed the following: while the
right hand has been engaged in automatic writing, the left hand,
motivated by a subconscious sentiment antagonistic to the subconscious
ideas performing the writing, has seized the pencil, broken it, or
thrown it across the room. The two conflicting systems of thought, each
with its own sentiments and wishes, have been made to disclose
themselves and exhibit their antitheses and antipathies.

The principle of emotional conflict and the phenomena we have outlined
enable us to understand the mechanism of prolonged reaction time and
blocking of thought observed in the so-called “word association tests.”
These tests involve too large a subject for us to enter upon them here.
Let it suffice to say that when a test word strikes an emotional complex
the response of the subject by an associated word may be delayed or
completely blocked. The emotional impulse which inhibits the response
may come from an awakened conscious or subconscious memory.

=The psychogalvanic reaction as physical evidence of actual subconscious
emotional discharge.=—This reaction may be also used to demonstrate that
subconscious processes may actually give forth emotional impulses
without the ideas of those processes entering the personal
consciousness.

1. I may be permitted to cite here some experiments,[242] which I made
with Dr. Frederick Peterson, as they leave the minimum of latitude for
interpretation and come as close as possible to the demonstration of
emotional discharges from processes entirely outside of awareness. Such
a demonstration is important for the theory of subconscious conflicts.

The experiments were undertaken in a case of multiple personality (B. C.
A.) with a view to obtaining the galvanic phenomenon from coconscious
states. This case offered an exceptional opportunity to determine
whether the galvanic reaction could be obtained in one personality from
the dissociated complexes _deposited by the experiences of the second
alternating personality for which there was complete amnesia on the part
of the first_. These dissociated experiences, of course, had never
entered the awareness of the personality tested, who, therefore,
necessarily could not possibly recall them to memory. With the
information furnished by the second personality, it was easy to arrange
test words associated with the emotional ideas of the experiences
belonging to this personality and unknown to the one tested.

Similarly it was possible to test whether galvanic reaction could be
obtained from complexes—from subconscious complexes—the residua of
forgotten dreams, as in this case the dreams were not remembered on
waking. An account of the dreams could be obtained in hypnosis. The
dreams were therefore simply dissociated.

Again we could test the possibility of obtaining reactions from
subconscious perceptions and thoughts which had never arisen into
awareness. The required information concerning these perceptions and
thoughts could be obtained in this case in hypnosis.

Now we found that test words which expressed the emotional ideas
belonging to a forgotten dream gave, in spite of the amnesia, very
marked rises in the galvanic curve. The same was true of the test words
referring to dissociated experiences belonging to the _alternating_
personality for which the tested personality had amnesia, and of the
subconscious perceptions. For instance (as an example of the latter),
the word _lorgnette_, referring to a subconscious perception of a
stranger unnoticed by the conscious personality, gave a very lively
reaction.

Further, pin pricks, which could not be consciously perceived owing to
the _anesthesia_ of the skin, gave strong reactions.

Now here in the first two sets of observations were emotional effects
apparently obtained from what were very precise complexes which were
definitely underlying, in that they never had been experienced by the
personality tested and therefore could not come from memories, or from
associations of which this personality was aware. They could only come
from the residua of a personality which had experienced them and which
was now “underlying.” That these experiences had been conserved is shown
by the recovery of them in a hypnotic state, and by their being
remembered by the secondary personality. Even the pin pricks, which were
not felt on account of the anesthesia, gave reactions. It could be
logically inferred, therefore, that the galvanic reaction was due to the
activity of subconscious complexes, using the term in the narrow and
restricted sense of conserved residua without conscious equivalents. But
the conditions were more complicated than I have described. There was in
this case a veritable coconscious personality, a split-off,
well-organized system of conscious states synthesized into a personal
consciousness—two foci of self-consciousness. Now the coconscious
personality with its large system of thoughts had full memory of all
these amnesic experiences; it remembered the dreams and the experiences
of the second personality, and perceived the pin pricks. Hence we
concluded that the galvanic phenomena were obtained from the memory and
perceptions of this coconscious personality.

This demonstration of an actual physical discharge is proof positive
that an emotional process can function subconsciously. This being so,
_it only needs this discharge to come into conflict with some other
process, conscious or subconscious, for one or other phenomenon of
conflict to be manifested_.

2. This psycho-galvanic phenomenon may be correlated with those
phenomena which we have already studied (p. 381) wherein the emotional
element of the process alone rises into consciousness. The former
phenomenon is therefore the manifestation of the efferent and the latter
of the central part of the activated emotional disposition. The former
supports the interpretation of various clinical motor phenomena as being
the efferent manifestations of purely subconscious emotional processes.
I refer to hysterical tics, spasms, contractures, etc. The latter
phenomenon we have had frequent occasion to refer to. You will remember,
for instance, that in the case of Miss B. on numerous occasions it was
observed that emotion, particularly of fear, swept over the conscious
personality without apparent cause. This emotion could be traced to
specific dissociated and coconscious ideas. Likewise in B. C. A., states
of anxiety or depression could be related to specific coconscious ideas
which, having been shunted out of the field of consciousness, continued
their activity in a coconscious state. Janet, as might be expected of so
accurate an observer, long ago described the same phenomenon—the
invasion of the personal consciousness by the emotion belonging to a
coconscious idea. “Isabella,” he writes, “presents constantly conditions
which have the same character; we shall cite but one other in the
interest of the study of dementia. For a week or so she has been gloomy
and sad; she hides and will not speak to anyone. We have trouble in
getting a few words from her, and these she says very low, casting her
eyes down: ‘I am not worthy to speak with other people.... I am very
much ashamed, I have a crushing load on my mind like a terrible gnawing
remorse....’—‘A remorse about what?’—‘Ah! that’s just it. I am trying to
find it out day and night. What is it that I could have done last week?
for before I was not thus. Tell me candidly, did I do something very bad
last week?’ This time, as will be seen, the question is no longer about
an act, but about a feeling, a general emotional state which she
interprets as remorse; she is equally incapable of understanding and
expressing the fixed idea which determines this feeling. If you divert
the subject’s attention, you can obtain the automatic writing, and you
will see that the hand of the patient constantly writes the same name,
that of Isabella’s sister who died a short time ago. During the attacks
and the somnambulic sleep we establish a very complicated dream in which
this poor young girl thinks she murdered her sister. That is quite a
common delirium, you will say; perhaps so, but for a hysteric it
presents itself in a rather curious manner. She suffers only from its
rebound, experiences only the emotional side of it; of the delirium
itself she is wholly ignorant; the latter remains subconscious.”...

“It will be seen by this last example that, in some cases, a small
portion of the fixed idea may be conscious. Isabella feels that she is
troubled by some remorse, she knows not what. It thus frequently happens
that hystericals, during their normal waking time, complain of a certain
mental attitude, so much so that they partly look as if obsessed.
Celestine experiences thus feelings of anger which she cannot
explain.”[243]

As might be expected intense conflicts may have wide-reaching
consequences and lead to the development of pathological conditions.
Indeed, in the latter we find the most clear-cut exemplars of repression
(dissociation) and other phenomena produced by conflict. I shall point
out in later lectures[244] how in a specific case intense religious
sentiments completely repressed their antagonistic instincts and
eventuated in dissociation of (multiple) personality (Miss B.) Likewise
with B. C. A., as I interpret the phenomena, the dissociation of
personality resulted from a conflict between wishes that could not be
fulfilled and sentiments of duty, respect, etc. We shall see later the
significance of this principle for the understanding of other
pathological states.

-----

Footnote 220:

... “Every instinctive process has the three aspects of all mental
processes, the cognitive, the affective, and the conative. Now, the
innate psychophysical disposition, which is an instinct, may be
regarded as consisting of three corresponding parts, an afferent, a
central, and a motor or efferent part, whose activities are the
cognitive, the affective, and the conative features respectively of
the total instinctive process. The afferent or receptive part of the
total disposition is some organized group of nervous elements or
neurones that is specially adapted to receive and to elaborate the
impulses initiated in the sense-organ by the native object of the
instinct; its constitution and activities determine the sensory
content of the psychophysical process. From the afferent part the
excitement spreads over to the central part of the disposition; the
constitution of this part determines in the main the distribution of
the nervous impulses, especially the impulses that descend to modify
the working of the visceral organs, the heart, lungs, blood vessels,
glands, etc., in the manner required for the most effective excitation
of the instinctive action; the nervous activities of this central part
are the correlates of the affective or emotional aspect or feature of
the total physical process. The excitement of the efferent or motor
part reaches it by the way of the central part; its construction
determines the distribution of impulses to the muscles of the skeletal
system by which the instinctive action is effected, and its nervous
activities are the correlates of the conative element of the physical
process, of the felt impulse to action.” William McDougall. An
introduction to Social Psychology, p. 32.

Footnote 221:

Social Psychology, p. 44.

Footnote 222:

Ibid, p. 159.

Footnote 223:

Not included in this volume.

Footnote 224:

Personally communicated.

Footnote 225:

This theory of the part played by the sensory accompaniments of
visceral activity I would suggest as a substitute for the James-Lange
theory.

Footnote 226:

Hilton: Rest and Pain.

Footnote 227:

Note analogues in Sherrington’s mechanism of the spinal reflexes.

Footnote 228:

I follow in the main McDougall’s classification as sufficiently
adequate and accurate for our purposes.

Footnote 229:

In fact, this was successfully done.

Footnote 230:

For purposes of simplification I leave aside feelings of pleasure and
pain, excitement and depression, for though their main functions may
be only to guide or shape the actions prompted by the instincts, as
McDougall affirms, still I think there is sound reason to believe that
feelings also have conative force and are coöperative impulsive
factors.

Footnote 231:

McDougall has proposed the ingenious theory that that which we
understand, properly speaking, by “will” is a complex form of conation
issuing from a particular sentiment, viz., the complexly organized
sentiment of self (“self-regarding sentiment”). The behavior
immediately determined by the primitive instincts and other sentiments
cannot be classed as volition, but should be regarded as simple
instinctive conation. When, therefore, the will reinforces a sentiment
and determines conduct it is the self-regarding sentiment which
provides the “volitional” impulse and is the controlling factor. If
this theory should stand it would give a satisfactory solution of this
difficult question. Perhaps it receives some support on the part of
abnormal psychology in that certain observations seem to show, if I
correctly interpret them, that self-consciousness is a complex capable
of being dissociated like any idea or sentiment. I shall presently
describe a quasi-pathological state which may be called
depersonalization. In this state the “conscious intelligence” present
is able to think and reason logically and sanely, is capable of good
judgments, and has an unusually large field of memory, in short, is a
very intelligent consciousness; nevertheless, it exhibits a very
strange phenomenon: it has lost all consciousness of self; it has no
sense of personality, of anything to which the term “I” can be
applied. This sentiment seems to be absolutely dissociated in this
state.

Footnote 232:

The repression of the sexual instinct and of sexual wishes plays the
dominant rôle in the Freudian psychology. If a wish may be correctly
defined psychologically as the impulsive force of a sentiment striving
toward an end plus the pleasurable feeling resulting from the imagined
attainment of that end, i.e., the imagined gratification of the
impulse, then the repression of a wish belongs to the phenomena of
repressed sentiments rather than of primitive instincts. This
distinction, I think, is of some importance, as will appear when we
consider subconscious sentiments.

Footnote 233:

In making use of suggestion for therapeutic purposes it is essential
to construct one with strong emotional tones and pleasurable and
exalting feelings for the purposes of increasing resistances to
contrary impulses, and carrying the suggestion to fruition. This I
believe to be one of the secrets of successful suggestive procedure.
The construction of an effective suggestion is an art in itself and
must be based on the psychological conditions existing in each case.

Footnote 234:

Of course this attitude is not to be viewed as an isolated event
standing all alone by itself. It must be read like nearly all events
of life in relation to a series of antecedent events. These, to her,
had denoted indifference, and now on this crucial occasion formed the
real setting and gave the offensive meaning to her spouse’s
forgetfulness.

Footnote 235:

Notwithstanding the frequency with which asexuality is met with in
women, I am strongly inclined to the opinion that the sexual instinct
in the sex is never really absent, excepting, of course, in late life
and in organic disease. No woman is born without it. When apparently
absent it is only inhibited or dissociated by the subtle influences of
the environment, education, conflicting sentiments, etc.

Footnote 236:

A distinction should be made between hunger and appetite. Food may
excite appetite, although hunger has been appeased.

Footnote 237:

Note that the same idea forms different sentiments in different phases
or moods, according to the emotions with which it is linked. In this
case, in phase C, it is linked with mortification, self-abasement,
possibly anger, pride, and feelings of pain and depression; in phase
B, with joyful emotions and feelings of pleasure and excitement. Also
note that the former sentiment, although out of mind at the time of
the observation, is conserved in the unconscious.

Footnote 238:

At first the subject (B) had no anticipation or supposition that such
a conflict would occur. Later she learned after repeated experiences
to anticipate the probable consequences of trying to tell
tales-out-of-school.

Footnote 239:

The Dissociation, see Index: “Subconscious ideas.”

Footnote 240:

_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, October-November, 1908.

Footnote 241:

The Dissociation, p. 538.

Footnote 242:

_Journal Abn. Psychol._, June-July, 1908.

Footnote 243:

The Mental State of Hystericals, pp. 289-290.

Footnote 244:

Not included in this volume.

LECTURE XVI
GENERAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS

The awakening of intense emotional impulses we have seen tends to
intensify certain activities and to inhibit other conflicting ones.
Further when that which is inhibited is a sentiment possessing an
intense emotion the sentiment tends to become dissociated[245] from the
personal consciousness and free to become by the force of its own
emotional dispositions a subconscious process. As a consequence of these
tendencies there may result a number of psycho-physiological conditions
of personality with some of which we should become familiar. They are
observable, as would be expected, in every-day life, and when highly
accentuated become pathological phenomena. Let us now consider some of
them in detail.

=Contraction of the field of consciousness and of personality.=—In
every-day life intense emotion excludes from the field of awareness
thoughts that are unrelated, antagonistic to and incompatible with the
ideas exciting the emotion, and perceptions of the environment that
ordinarily would enter awareness. The field of consciousness is thereby
contracted and limited to thoughts excited by or associated with the
emotion. Thus, for example, in the heat of anger the mind is dominated
by the particular object or thought which gave rise to the anger, or by
anger exciting associated ideas. Conflicting memories and correlated
knowledge that would modify the point of view and judgment and mollify
(inhibit) the anger are suppressed and cannot enter the focus of
attention. Further, a person in such a state may not perceive many
ocular, auditory, tactile, and other impressions coming from the
environment; he may not see the people about him, hear what is said, or
feel what is done to him, or only in an imperfect way. All these
sensations are either actually inhibited or prevented from entering
awareness (dissociated) by the conflicting conative force of the
emotion. In other words there is a dissociation (or inhibition) of
consciousness and consequent contraction of its field to certain
emotional ideas.

To take a concrete example, you are playing a game of cards and with
zest throw yourself into the game. Something happens to arouse your
anger. At once there is a conflict: The impulsive force of your
pugnacity instinct meets with the impulsive force of your play instinct
and its pleasure feelings. If the former is the stronger, the latter
with the ideas to which it is linked are inhibited, repressed, driven
out of consciousness. The pleasure of play ceases and its impulses no
longer determine your thoughts. Further, you forget the cards that have
been played though you knew them well a moment before, you may forget
your manners, become oblivious to social etiquette and the environment.
You can no longer reason on the play of the cards; you forget your card
knowledge. All these processes are inhibited, and consequently the field
of consciousness and personality becomes contracted.

On the other hand, the emotion of anger dominating the mind, ideas
associated with or which tend to carry your pugnacity instinct to
fruition, arise and direct and determine your conduct. Habit reactions
are likely to come automatically into play, and you break out into angry
denunciatory speech, if that is your habit. I leave you to fill out the
details of the picture for yourselves.

And yet, again through training in self-control, a self-regarding
sentiment conflicting with the anger impulse may be awakened, and the
latter in turn be dominated, repressed, inhibited.

In the case of an intense fear it is common observation that this
contraction may reach a high degree. In the excitement of a railroad
accident the frightened passenger does not feel the bruising and pain
which he otherwise would suffer, nor hear the shrieks of his fellow
passengers nor perceive but a small part of what is occurring about him,
but driven only by the intensely motivating idea of escape from danger
he struggles for safety. His field of consciousness is limited to the
few ideas of danger, escape, and the means of safety. All else is
dissociated by the conative force of the emotion and cannot enter the
focus of attention. He could not philosophize on the accident if he
would. In ordinary concentration of attention or absent-mindedness the
same phenomenon of contraction of the field of consciousness occurs
occasioned by interest; but with cessation of interest the field of
awareness quickly widens. So in contraction of this field from emotion
the normal is restored so soon as the emotion ceases.

When this same general contraction of the field of consciousness,
effected by the repressing force of emotion, reaches a certain acme we
have a pathological condition—the _hysterical state_. The field of
consciousness is now occupied by the single dissociating idea or complex
of ideas with its emotion that did the repressing—a condition of
mono-ideism. All other conscious processes are inhibited or dissociated.
When the complex is an intensely emotional one, its nervous energy, now
unbridled, is free to discharge itself in many directions, perhaps
producing convulsive phenomena of one kind or another.

To attribute these effects of emotion to repression _from conflict_ is
only to express the facts in different terms. But it would be often an
over-emphasis to describe what takes place as a specific conflict
between particular sentiments. It is often rather the discharge of a
blind impulsive force in every direction which, like a blast of
dynamite, suppresses or dissociates every other process which might come
into consciousness and displace it.

_Systematized dissociation._—Quite commonly the dissociated field, by
whatever force isolated, instead of being general may be systematized.
By this is meant that only certain perceptions, or groups or categories
of ideas that have been organized into a system, or have associative
relations, are prevented from entering the personal synthesis. In other
respects the conscious processes may be normal. The simplest type is
probably systematized anesthesia, exemplified in every-day life in
anyone who fails to perceive his eye-glasses, or any other object he is
in search of that is lying under his nose on the table before him; and
by the post-hypnotic phenomenon exhibited by the subject who fails to
perceive a _marked_ playing card or to hear or see a given person,
though he perceives all the other cards in the pack and everyone else in
the room; and by the hysteric who likewise fails to perceive certain
systematized sensations, such as the printing on a page which, itself,
therefore appears blank. That which is dissociated in these examples is
a comparatively very simple complex, but it may involve larger and
larger groups of remembrances, perceptions, sentiments (with their
emotions and feelings), settings, attitudes, instincts, and other innate
dispositions, etc., organized into a system about the sentiment of self.
Such groups and systems may, as we saw when studying the organization of
complexes (Lecture IX), be dissociated in that they cease to take part
in the functioning of the personality. The personality becomes thereby
contracted.

1. The principle involved is this: When a specific idea or
psycho-physiological function (memory, sensation, perception, instinct)
is by any force dissociated, the exiled idea or function tends to carry
with itself into seclusion other ideas and functions with which it is
systematized. The dissociation is apt to involve much more than the
particular psychological element in question in that it “robs” the
personal consciousness of much else. I have already cited in a previous
lecture (p. 318) examples of this principle. I need merely remind you of
the observation with Miss B., where the systematized dissociation of
auditory images pertaining to the experimenter carried with it the
associated secondary visual images of him necessary for tactile
perception of his hand. Similarly, in B. C. A., the general dissociation
of tactile images carried with it the secondary visual images necessary
for the visualization of her body. A large number of examples drawn from
all kinds of dissociative phenomena might be given. I will content
myself with mentioning two or three more: In automatic writing the
dissociated muscular control of the hands usually robs the personal
consciousness, so far as the hand is concerned, of all sensory
perception, and in automatic speech the dissociation of the faculty of
speech often robs the personal consciousness of the auditory perception
of the subject’s own voice. In hysterics, the specific dissociation of
one class of perceptions carries away others systematized with them. In
systematized anesthesia it is often easy to recognize this fact. A good
example of this is that recorded in the case of Miss B., who, believing
she had lost her finger rings, not only could not be made to see or feel
them, but also not even the ribbon on which they were hung round her
neck, or to hear them click together, or to feel the tug of the ribbon
when I pulled it.[246] The perceptions of these associated sensations
were therefore also withdrawn. The same principle can be demonstrated by
suggestion in suitable subjects. Thus, for example, I suggest to one of
these subjects in hypnosis that she will forget an episode associated
with a certain person named “August.” After waking she has amnesia not
only for the episode but for the name of the person and for the word in
its other meanings, e. g., the name of a calendar month. She cannot
recall that a month intervenes between July and September.

In these examples the source of the dissociating force is not in every
case obvious. But this need not concern us now. What I want to point out
is that when the dissociation is the consequence of an emotional
discharge the same principle frequently comes into play, the same
phenomenon of systematization is of common occurrence. It may be
recognized with considerable exactness when a conflict between
sentiments has been artificially created. Thus the phenomenon, described
in the last lecture (p. 476), of inhibition of sentiments by a
self-suggested antagonistic sentiment, may equally well be cited in
evidence of this principle. Similarly, O. N. suggested to herself a
sentiment antagonistic to a specific sentiment which she previously
entertained regarding a particular person. Not only was the latter
sentiment dissociated but a number of other allied sentiments
systematized around the same person were also incidentally and
unintentionally repressed and withdrawn from consciousness, so much so
that her whole point of view was altered.[247] (It was easy in hypnosis
by the procedures already stated to synthesize the sentiments at will so
as to drive out, with suggested antagonistic sentiments, the undesired
ones. The change of viewpoint and feeling after waking from hypnosis was
often quite dramatic.)

2. By this mechanism we can explain the dissociation of large systems of
sentiments leaving a contracted personality—a mere extract of its former
self—dissociated and distinguished from what it was by different
sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions.[248] The facts seem
to show that the awakening of the emotional impulses of certain
sentiments inhibits, not only those particular antagonistic sentiments
with which the former are incompatible, but large systems of sentiments,
and many instincts and other innate dispositions with which the
inhibited sentiments are systematized. The contracted self may or may
not be able to recall to memory the fact of having previously
experienced the dissociated sentiments. But whether so or not the latter
no longer functionally participate in the personality.

This mechanism, to be sure, is an interpretation but the facts are
easily demonstrated. Minor types of such dissociations result in what we
have described as “moods.” More extreme types are pathological and
characterized as phases of personality.

3. The contrast of the sentiments in such moods and phases with the
habitual sentiments having identically the same objects is striking. In
other words the object is organized with an entirely different group of
emotions (instincts). The subject’s sentiment of husband or wife or
father or son no longer contains the emotions of love and reverence,
etc.; but, perhaps, there are organized within it the emotions of anger,
hatred, contempt, etc. A self-regarding sentiment of self-subjection
with shame, “feelings” of inadequacy and depression may be substituted
for self-assertion, pride, self-respect, etc. These clinical facts are
matters of observation. B——n suffers from constantly recurring and very
intense attacks of asthma which have certain characteristics which stamp
it as an hysterical tic. In the attacks it is noticeable that her
personality and disposition—normally amiable, gentle, and
affectionate—undergo a change. The parental instinct and sentiments of
affection for her family, of whom she is very fond, of modesty, of
pride, of consideration for others, etc., disappear and are replaced by
others of an opposite character. Fear, anger, and resentment are easily
aroused, etc. B. C. A. in phase B of personality knew nothing of
remorse, self-reproach, or despair which characterized the normal phase,
and experienced only emotions and feelings of pleasure and
happiness.[249]

Janet, with his customary accuracy in observing facts, has noted these
changes, although I think in his attempt at interpretation he has not
quite recognized the mechanism by which they are brought about. “With
Renée,” this author remarks, when noting the facts, “we have gradually
seen disappearing the taste for finery; her coquetry—vanity,
even—disappeared. With others, the love of property is gone; they lose
all that belongs to them and do not care. Bertha formerly had great
timidity; she now wonders at the loss of it. She goes and comes at
night; she looks at dead bones of which she was afraid in past years,
and asks: ‘Why does all this make no impression on me now?’ Marie,
especially, is very curious as to that. She takes no longer any interest
in things or people. Overwhelmed with misfortunes, consequences of her
malady, and, after having been in comfortable circumstances, reduced to
extreme poverty, she does not perceive that her situation is serious.
She loses money, when she has only a few pennies left; she mislays her
clothing, can scarcely keep on the dress she is wearing and does not
seem to trouble herself about it in the least. Yet we observe that she
is still intelligent and might provide against her situation. She does
so very little, and only wonders at her indifference. ‘Formerly I took
care of my things; now I do not.’ There are some still more
characteristic facts to be observed in this patient. Formerly she loved
her husband and was even quite jealous about him. She was devoted to her
two children. Since her illness she has gradually abandoned her
children, who have been reared by her sisters, and she finally left her
husband. For the last three years, instead of her former happy life, she
leads about Paris the most miserable existence. Not once did she inquire
about her husband or her children. She heard indirectly of the former’s
death. ‘Strange!’ she said, ‘it does not affect me in the least; yet, I
assure you, it does not make me happy, either ... I simply don’t care.’
‘But if we were to tell you that your little Louis [it was her favorite
child] is dead, too?’ ‘How do you suppose it can affect me? I have
forgotten him!’”[250]

4. Janet, when interpreting such phenomena, attributes them to
“psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality
cannot synthesize more than a certain number of emotions and ideas to
form the personal self-consciousness. It certainly cannot perform the
synthesis involved in retaining certain formerly possessed sentiments,
etc., but it is not because of _feebleness_. Many hysterics can
synthesize quite as _many_ psychological elements as a normal person,
but not sentiments and emotions of a certain _character_, i.e., those
which pertain to certain experiences, to certain systems of
remembrances. M. Janet has quite correctly pointed out that, in spite of
the apathy and lack of emotionality of hysterics in certain
directions,—which, I would insist, in the last analysis means the
absence of _particular_ sentiments and instincts—in other directions
these patients are “extremely excitable and susceptible of very
exaggerated emotions,” which in turn means the retention of particular
sentiments and instincts. These last dominate the personality. Here is
the key to the enigma.

From this point of view, the effect of the impulsive force of the
dominating emotions has been misinterpreted by M. Janet. These emotions
are the causal factors in determining the apathy, i.e., absence of
particular sentiments and instincts, and explain _why_ they cannot be
brought within the personal synthesis. If we bear in mind that emotion
means discharge of force, an adequate explanation of such phenomena in a
great many instances, at least, is to be found in the principle of
conflict and dissociation. The conflict is between the impulsive forces
of the emotions pertaining either to antagonistic instincts or to
sentiments organized within different systems. With the excitation of
emotion, instincts and sentiments which have opposing conative
tendencies are inhibited, repressed, or dissociated, and with them the
systems with which they are organized. The emotion does not so much
cause “psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality
cannot synthesize sentiments, as it inhibits and dissociates
antagonistic sentiments, etc., which consequently cannot be synthesized.
The _result_ you may call “feebleness” if you like.

Hence it is that hysterics present the seeming paradox of having, as M.
Janet observed, “in reality fewer emotions than is generally thought and
[in] that their principal character is here, as it is always, a
diminution of psychological phenomena. These patients are in general
very indifferent, at least to all that is not directly connected with a
small number of fixed ideas.” According to the view which we are
maintaining, the “fewer emotions” are due to the dissociation of many
sentiments and instincts by the dominating emotional complex.

5. Let us not forget that this explanation is a matter of
interpretation, but the interpretation comports with what is common
observation of what happens when a new emotion which is incompatible
with an existing emotion (fear—anger) is excited. In the case of Miss
B., the alternation of the personality coincident with the excitation of
an emotion occurred with such frequency, not to say with regularity,
that there seemed to be no room to doubt the causal factor and the
mechanism.[251] Sometimes the dissociation resulted in the formation of
new phases of personality in which Miss B. reverted to a past epoch of
time in which she lived once more, the experiences of all later epochs
being dissociated; sometimes in phases with a very contracted field of
consciousness without orientation in time or place and with little
knowledge of self or environment; sometimes—and in these instances the
dissociation of organized systems could most clearly be recognized—in
the substitution of one of the already established phases (BI, BIV, or
BIII) for another. It is not always easy without intensive study, to
determine the exact sentiment or instinct which is responsible for the
dissociation, although the actual occurrence of the emotional state just
preceding the development of the phenomenon is obtrusively obvious. “At
various times as a result of emotionally disintegrating circumstances”
at least eight different phases were observed in addition to the three
regularly recurrent phases.[252]

In B. C. A. the gradual organization through the circumstances of life
of a group of “rebellious” ideas, in which the dominating sentiments and
instincts were intensely antagonistic to those previously peculiar to
the subject, could be clearly determined. So antagonistic was this group
that it was known as the rebellious complex but termed B complex for
convenience. It became by successive accretions a large system and phase
of personality. The details are too extensive to enter into at this
time; suffice it to say that as the result of what is called an
“emotional shock” the B system came into being. This interpreted means
that the shock was really the excitation of the rebellious sentiments
and other emotions belonging to the B system; there was a conflict; the
habitual sentiments and the system to which they belonged were inhibited
and replaced by the former (B). Later the displaced sentiments and their
corresponding A system were awakened, the emotions giving rise to
another shock, a conflict, and the B system, in turn, was inhibited. And
so it could be recognized that alternations of systems could be evoked
by the alternate excitation of sentiments and instincts—or complexes, if
you prefer the term—pertaining to each.

6. This summary of the phenomena of conflict inducing dissociation of
personality would be incomplete if the _dissociations effected by
entirely subconscious processes_ were not mentioned. These can be very
neatly studied with coconscious personalities, as such personalities can
give very precise information of the mode by which the displacement of
the primary personality is effected. In the cases of Miss B. and B. C.
A. “Sally” and “B,” respectively, have done this. It appears, according
to this testimony, that coconscious “willing” or strong conation, even
simply a wish to inhibit the principal consciousness, would effect that
result. Thus, for instance, B testified: “When A is present I can ‘come’
voluntarily by willing, i.e., blot A out and then I ‘come.’... By
willing I mean I would say to A: ‘... Go away’: ‘Get out of the way’:
‘Let me come: I _will_ come,’ and then A disappeared. She was gone and I
was there. It was almost instantaneous.... Sometimes the wish to change
would blot out A without actual willing.”

In the case of Miss B. similar testimony of the effect of coconscious
willing and wishes was obtained.

When the coconscious wishes, sentiments, etc., are not synthesized into
a large self-conscious system (i.e., coconscious personality) which can
give direct testimony as to the subconscious conflicts, the former and
the process which they incite must be inferred from known antecedent
factors and the observed phenomena of inhibition or dissociation. That
general and systematized dissociation are phenomena which can be, and
frequently are, induced by the conative force of purely subconscious
processes, in view of the multiform data offered by hysterics can be
open to no manner of doubt. The process may be also formulated in terms
of conflict.

=Laws governing the lines of cleavage of personality.=—In systematized
dissociation there is a cleavage between certain organized systems of
experiences and functions and the remainder of the personality. The
contracted personality is consequently shorn of much. But we understand
only very incompletely the laws which determine _the direction of the
line of cleavage_ and the consequent extent of the dissociated field.
Unquestionably this follows the law of organization of complexes in a
general way, but not wholly so. For instance, it is impossible by this
law or by any known mechanism to explain the anesthesia which sometimes,
apparently spontaneously, appears in certain hypnotic states. A given
subject, e. g., B. C. A., is simply hypnotized by suggestion and
successively falls into two different states. In one state the subject
is found to be completely anesthetic and in the other normally esthetic.
The subject is one and the same and the dissociating suggestion, which
is the same in each case, contains nothing specifically related to
sensation; and yet the line of cleavage is within the field of sensation
in the one case and without it in the other; i.e., that which is
dissociated includes the sensory field in the one state and not in the
other. Similarly when the disaggregation of personality is brought about
by the force of a conflicting emotion, the resulting hysterical state or
dissociated personality may be robbed of certain sensory or motor
functions, although these functions are not as far as we can see
logically related to the emotion or the ideas coupled with it. Thus a
person receives an emotional shock and develops a one-sided anesthesia
and paralysis—a very common phenomenon. Louis Vivé used to pass into one
state in which he had left hemiplegia and into another in which he had
right hemiplegia, another with paraplegia. Each state had its own
systematized memories, but why each had its own and different motor and
sensory dissociations cannot be explained. In Miss B. the dissociation
which resulted in the formation of the secondary personality, Sally,
withdrew, without apparent rhyme or reason, the whole general field of
sensations so that Sally was completely anesthetic.[253] The sensory
functions seemed to be wantonly ejected along with the repressed
complexes of ideas. _Per contra_, by the same process which results in
dissociation, lost functions are often paradoxically synthesized. Mrs.
E. B. and Mrs. R., anesthetic when “awake,” are found to be normally
esthetic in hypnosis; i.e., the sensory functions are spontaneously
synthesized with the hypnotic personality. In other words, in hypnosis
the personal synthesis is in this respect more normal than in the
“waking” state.

Again, when amnesia results it may cover a past epoch—retrograde
amnesia—without obvious reason for the chronological line of cleavage.
In short the suppression by dissociation of a specific psychological
element—remembrance, perception, sentiment, etc.—not only tends to rob
the personality of a whole psychological system in which it is organized
but of other faculties, the relation of which to the specifically
dissociated element is obscure. It seems as if the dissociation
sometimes followed physiological as well as psychological lines.[254] It
is in accordance with this principle that instincts and sentiments which
are not immediately concerned in the specific conflict nor antagonistic
to the dissociating emotion are often suppressed. Thus it is that
hysterics, as we have seen by examples, have lost so many emotions
(instincts) and the sentiments involving them, though they are so
excitable to the emotions that are retained. In the case of B. C. A. the
secondary personality B, the resultant (as I interpret the case) of the
conflict between the play instinct and sentiments of duty,
responsibility, etc., lost the parental instinct with the emotion of
tender feeling (McDougall) and that of fear, with their corresponding
sentiments. She was shockingly devoid of filial and maternal love and,
indeed, of affection, in the true sense, for her friends. Likewise Sally
(in the case of Miss B.), also the product of conflict between the
impulses of the play instinct and those of the religious emotions, was
entirely devoid of fear, of the sexual, and of certain other instincts
not antagonistic to the dominating play instinct. She had lost also a
great many, if not all, sentiments involving the tender feeling. As in
the examples given of dissociation of motor, sensory, and other
functions, the dissociative line of cleavage had excluded more than was
engaged in the conflict. Of course, there always must be some reason for
the direction taken by any line of cleavage, following the application
of force, whether the fracture be of a psycho-physiological organism or
of a piece of china; but when the conditions are as complex as they are
in the human organism their determination becomes a difficult problem.
When we come to study multiple personality we shall see that the
suppression of instincts plays an important rôle.

=Amnesia.=—It is a general rule that when a person passes from a
condition of extreme dissociation to the normal state there is a
tendency for _amnesia_ to supervene for the previous dissociated state
(multiple personalities, epileptic and hysterical fugues, hypnotic and
dream states, etc.). Likewise in everyday life it frequently happens,
when the dissociation effected by emotion results in an extremely
retracted field of consciousness, that, after this emotional state has
subsided and the normal state has been restored, memory for the excited
retracted state, including the actions performed, is abolished or
impaired. Even criminal acts committed in highly emotional states
(anger, “brain storms,” etc.) may be forgotten afterwards. In other
words, in the normal state there is in turn a dissociation of the
residua of the excited state. The experiences of this latter state are
not lost, however, but only dissociated in that they cannot be
synthesized with the personal consciousness and thereby reproduced as
memory. That they may be still conserved as neurographic residua is
shown in those cases suitable for experimental investigation where they
can be reproduced by artificial devices (hypnotism, abstraction, etc.).

Thus B. C. A. could not recall a certain emotional experience although
it made a tremendous impression upon her, disrupted her personality, and
induced her illness. In other respects her memory was normal. Janet has
described this amnesia following emotional shocks, notably in the
classical case of Mme. D.

1. On first thought it seems strange that a person cannot remember such
an important experience as that, for example, of B. C. A., when for all
else the memory is normal. That this experience had awakened conflicting
ideas and intense, blazing emotions with great retraction of the field
of consciousness of the moment is shown by the history. Later there was
found to be a hiatus in the memory, the amnesia beginning and ending
sharply at particular points, shortly before and shortly after this
experience. In other words, the extremely dissociated and retracted
emotional field could not be synthesized with the personal consciousness
or, one might say, with the sentiment of self. In hypnosis, however,
this could be done and the memory recovered. Freud has proposed an
ingenious theory involving a particular mechanism by which such amnesic
effects are produced. According to this theory the dissociated
experience cannot be recalled because it is so painful that it cannot be
tolerated by consciousness; i.e., attempted emergence as memory meets
with the resistance of conflicting subconscious thoughts, acting as a
censor or guardian, and the experience is repressed and prevented from
entering consciousness. (It would be, perhaps, within the scope of this
theory to say that the impulsive force of the conflicting sentiments
(involving pride and self-respect and the instinct of anger) awakened at
the moment of the experience continued more or less subconsciously to
repress the memory of the whole experience.)

2. If expressed in the following form I think the theory would equally
well explain such amnesias, be in conformity with certain known hypnotic
phenomena and, perhaps, be more acceptable: An experienced desire not to
face, or think of, i.e., to recall to memory, a certain painful
experience is conserved in the usual way. When an attempt is made to
recall the episode _this desire becomes an active subconscious process_
and inhibits the memory process. The analogue of this we have in
posthypnotic amnesia induced by suggestion. In the hypnotic state the
suggestion is given that the subject after waking shall have forgotten a
certain experience, a name, or an episode. After waking the conative
force[255] of the suggested idea, functioning _entirely subconsciously_
(as there is complete forgetfulness for the hypnotic state), inhibits
the memory of the test experience in that there is found to be amnesia
for the latter. One may say there has been a subconscious conflict
followed by inhibition of one of the belligerents. That antecedent
thoughts of the individual can likewise become activated as subconscious
processes and come into conflict with other processes and inhibit them,
thus preventing them from becoming conscious, we have already seen. The
antagonism of the motives in the two processes is often obvious.
Numerous examples of inhibitions (induced by conflicts with subconscious
ideas, emotions, and conations) of mental processes which could
afterwards be recalled to memory in a secondary state of personality
have been recorded in the case of Miss B.[256] Likewise in B. C. A.
similar phenomena were testified to as due to subconscious
conflicts.[257] There would seem to be no question therefore of either
the occurrence of subconscious conflicts or their efficiency in
producing amnesia.

3. However all this may be, there is no need for us now to enter into
the question of mechanisms. Certain it is, though, that we often forget
what we want to forget, which means memories that are unpleasant; and
certain types of pathological amnesia answer to the Freudian mechanism
or some modification of it. Certain amnesias undoubtedly follow
deliberate wishes to put certain experiences out of mind, just as they
follow hypnotic suggestions that they shall be forgotten. A very neat
example is that of the observation previously given (Lecture III, p. 74)
of the subject who, in a moment of despair and resentment against
criticism, expressed a wish to forget her own marriage name, and lo! and
behold! on waking the next day she found she could not recall it. But
amnesias of this kind differ in an important respect from the classical
amnesias of hysteria. In the latter variety the dissociation is so
extensive that reproduction cannot be effected by any associated idea of
the personal consciousness; for reproduction another state of
consciousness (hypnosis, alteration of personality, etc.) with which the
forgotten experience is synthesized must be obtained or the subconscious
must be tapped. In the former variety although the reproduction cannot
be effected through an idea with which it stands in affectively painful
association, it can be by some other indifferent idea or complex with
which it is systematized. For instance, in the case of the phobia for
the ringing of bells in a tower which we have studied, the original
episode could not be recalled in association with the object of the
phobia, notwithstanding that this object was an element in the episode,
but it was readily recalled in association with contemporary events of
the subject’s life. In the case of C. D., who had experienced a painful
episode of fainting the same amnesic relations obtained.

4. On the other hand there are other forms of amnesia which the
_Freudian mechanism is totally inadequate to explain_, or of which it
offers only a partial explanation. I refer to the persisting amnesias of
reproduction exemplified by much of the common forgetfulness of
every-day life (often due to dis-interest); by the amnesias for whole
systems of experiences in hypnotic states, in different phases of
multiple personality, fugues, and deliria; by certain retrograde,
general, and continuous amnesias of hysteria, alcoholic amnesia, etc. In
some of these the amnesia is a dissociation of systems undoubtedly
effected by the force of emotional impulses discharged by antagonistic
complexes. This is to view the amnesia from its psychological aspect.
But it may also be viewed from its _correlated physiological aspect_.

Let us note first that reproduction is a synthetic process which
requires some sort of dynamic association between the neurogram
underlying an idea present in the personal consciousness and the
conserved neurograms of a past experience. From this view we may in the
future find the explanation of amnesia (resulting from the dissociative
effect of emotion) in the configuration of the physical paths of residua
traveled and engraved by an emotional experience. The emotional
discharge may have prevented an associative path of residua being
established with the dissociated experience.[258]

5. Amnesia is too large a subject for us to go into its mechanisms at
this time and we are not called upon to do so. It is enough to point out
_the different forms of amnesia_ which at times are the resultants of
emotion. Inasmuch as experiences are organized in complexes and still
further in large systems, which include settings (that give meaning to
the particular experiences) and other associated sentiments, instincts
and other innate dispositions, the dissociation of a single experience
may involve a large complex of experiences, or a whole system of such,
and result either in a simple amnesia alone or in an alteration of
personality accompanied by amnesia. Such amnesias are generally
classified as _localized_, _systematized_, _general_, or _continuous_.

6. The first, as it seems to me, is also in principle systematized, the
distinction being clinical rather than psychological. By _localized_ is
meant an amnesia extending over an epoch of time. Thus, in the instance
already cited, Miss B. suddenly found that she could not recall a single
moment of a particular day, although previously she had remembered well
the incidents, owing to a distressing experience the memory of which had
tormented her during the whole day. The amnesia was localized in time.
It was the result of a suggestion which I gave in hypnosis that the
painful experience only should be forgotten; but unexpectedly the
remembrances of the whole day disappeared. In other words, the
dissociation of a particular remembrance robbed the personal
consciousness of all other remembrances with which it was systematized.
That it was so systematized was made evident by the fact that throughout
the course of the day it had so dominated her mind that she was
continuously under its emotional influence. The amnesia was therefore
not only localized but _systematized_ with the day’s experiences. It is
to be noted that the hypnotic suggestion necessarily exerted its
dissociating force subconsciously after waking.

Similarly in multiple personality, one alternating phase often has
complete amnesia for the preceding epoch belonging to another phase.
This amnesia may extend over a period of from a few minutes to years,
according to the length of time that the second phase was in existence.
It is therefore localized. But it is also systematized, not in the sense
of relating to only a particular category of remembrances, such as those
of a particular object—father, child, etc.—but in the sense of bearing
upon all the experiences organized within a large system of sentiments,
instincts, settings, etc., characteristic of the second personality.
With the dissociation of this system the remembrances of its experiences
go, too. Undoubtedly the dissociating force is that of the awakened
sentiments, etc., of the succeeding phase. These are always antagonistic
to those of the dissociated phase, although those of the one are not
necessarily painful to the other. They are simply incompatible with one
another, and it may quite well be that their force is subconsciously
discharged. Systematized amnesia, on the other hand, may not be
localized, bearing as it may only on a particular category of
remembrances, let us say of a foreign language with which the subject
previously was familiar.

7. The _retrograde_ type of localized amnesia is common following
emotional shocks. The case of Mme. D., made classical by Charcot and
Janet, is a very excellent example. This woman lost not only all memory
of the painful emotional state into which she was thrown by the brutal
announcement of her husband’s death, but of the _preceding_ six weeks.
The amnesia for the episode might be accounted for on the theory of
conflict, but it is difficult to explain the retrograde extension unless
it be there was some systematization covering the six weeks’ period
within the mental life of the patient not disclosed by the examination.

_General and continuous amnesia_, the one covering the whole previous
life of the subject, the other for events as fast as they are
experienced, also, though rarely, occur as the sequence of emotion.

=Subconscious traumatic memories.=—When an emotional complex has once
been organized by an emotional trauma and more or less dissociated from
the personality by the conflicting emotional impulses, it is conserved
as a neurogram more or less isolated. The fact of amnesia for the
experience is evidence of its isolation in that it cannot be awakened
and synthesized with the personal consciousness. Now, given such an
isolated neurogram, observation shows that it may be excited to
autonomous subconscious activity by associative stimuli of one kind or
another. It thus becomes an emotional subconscious memory-process and
may by further incubation and elaboration induce phenomena of one kind
or another.

This is readily understood when it is remembered that such a memory, or
perhaps more precisely speaking its neurogram, is organized with one or
more emotional dispositions (instincts) and these dispositions by their
impulsive forces tend when stimulated to awaken the memory and carry its
ideas to fulfillment. The subconscious memory thus acquires a striving
to fulfil its aim. We ought to distinguish in this mechanism between the
isolation of the neurogram and that of the process. The former is
antecedent to the latter.

The phenomena which may be induced by such a subconscious memory may be
of all kinds such as we have seen are induced by subconscious processes
and emotions—hallucinations, various motor phenomena, disturbances of
conscious thought, dreams and those phenomena which we have seen are the
physiological and psychological manifestation of emotion and its
conflicts, etc.

Undoubtedly the _mental feebleness_, manifested by a feeling of
exhaustion or fatigue, which so frequently is the sequel of intense
conscious emotion, favors the excitation to activity of such
subconscious autonomous processes or memory when antecedent isolation
has occurred. This enfeeblement of personality probably is the more
marked the larger the systems included in the dissociation. Certain it
is that in fatigued states, whether induced by physical or mental “storm
and stress,” subconscious processes become more readily excited. The
greater the dissociation the greater the mental instability and
liability to autonomous processes. Time and again it was noted, for
instance in the case of Miss B. and B. C. A., that when the primary
personality was exhausted by physical and emotional strain, the
subconscious personality was able to manifest autonomous activity
producing all sorts of phenomena (when it could not do so in conditions
of mental health) even to inhibiting the whole primary personality.[259]
The direct testimony of the subconscious personality was to the same
effect.

=Mental confusion.=—Fortunate is the person who has never felt
embarrassment when the attention of others has been directed to himself,
or when some act or thought which he wished to conceal has become patent
to others, or when called upon without warning to make a speech in
public. Unless one is endowed with extraordinary self-assurance he will
become, under such or similar circumstances, bashful, self-conscious,
and shy, his thought confused, and he will find it difficult to respond
with ready tongue. Associated ideas _à propos_ of the matter in hand
fail to enter consciousness, his thoughts become blocked even to his
mind becoming a blank; he hesitates, stammers, and stands dumb, or too
many ideas, in disorderly fashion and without apparent logical relation,
crowd in and he is unable to make selection of the proper words. In
short, his mind becomes confused, perhaps even to the extent of
dizziness. The ideas that do arise are inadequate and are likely to be
inappropriate, painful, and perhaps suspicious. The dominating emotion
is early reinforced by the awakening of its ally, the fear instinct,
with all its physiological manifestations. Then tremor, palpitation,
perspiration, and vasomotor disturbances break out. Shame may be added
to the emotional state.

1. This reaction becomes intelligible if we regard it as one of conflict
resulting in painful bashfulness and shame, inhibition of thought; the
excitation of painful ideas, amnesia, and limitation of the field of
consciousness. The self-regarding sentiment is awakened and dominates
the content of consciousness. The conflict is primarily between two
instincts organized within this sentiment—that of self-abasement
(negative self-feeling) and that of self-assertion (positive self
feeling). The impulsive force of the former, awakened by the stimulus of
the situation—let us say the presence and imagined criticism of
others—opposes and contends with that of the latter which is excited by
the desire of the person to display his powers and meet the occasion.
The result of the struggle between the two impulses is emotional
agitation or _bashfulness_. If this bashfulness is “qualified by the
pain of baffled positive self feeling” there results the emotion of
shame.[260] But these emotional states are not the whole consequences of
the conflict. Almost always fear comes to the rescue as a biological
reaction for the protection of the individual and impels to flight. The
impulsive force of this instinct is now united to that of self-abasement
and the conjoined force inhibits or blocks the development of ideas,
memories, and speech symbols appropriate to the occasion and dissociates
many perceptions of the environment. On the other hand, the
self-regarding sentiment evokes various associative abasing ideas of
self and related memories. The victim is fortunate if unfounded
suspicions and other painful thoughts (through which criticism of self
is imagined and the situation falsely interpreted) do not arise. Or
there may be an oscillation of ideas corresponding to the conflicting
sentiments and instincts. A person in such a condition experiences
mental confusion and embarrassment. The condition is often loosely
spoken of as self-consciousness and shyness.

2. Painfully emotional _self-consciousness_ of this type as the sequence
of special antecedent psychogenetic factors is frequently met with as an
obsession. Then fear, with its physiological manifestations, is always
an obtrusive element. Individuals who suffer from this psychosis
sometimes cannot even come into the presence of strangers or any public
situation without experiencing an attack of symptoms such as I have
somewhat schematically described. The phenomena may be summarized as
bashfulness, emotion of fear, inhibition, dissociation, limitation of
the field of consciousness, ideas of self, confusion of thought and
speech, inappropriate and delayed response, delusions of suspicion,
tremor, palpitation, etc.

=The symptomatic structure of the psychoneuroses.=—When studying the
physiological manifestations of emotion (Lecture XIV), we saw how a
large variety of disturbances of bodily functions, induced by the
discharge of emotional impulses, may be organized into a symptom-complex
which might, if repeatedly stimulated, recur from time to time. On the
basis of these physiological manifestations we were able to construct a
schema of the physiological symptoms occurring in the emotional
psycho-neuroses. We obtained a structure of such symptoms corresponding
to the facts of clinical experience. We then went on in the next lecture
to examine the psychological disturbances induced by emotion and found a
number of characteristic phenomena. The view was held that emotion is
the driving force which bears along ideas to their end and makes the
organism capable of activity. We found conflicts between opposing
impulses resulting in repression, dissociation, and inhibition of ideas
and instincts, and limitation of the field of consciousness. We saw that
sentiments in which strong emotions were incorporated tended to become
dominating, to the exclusion of other sentiments from consciousness, and
to acquire organic intensity and thereby to be carried to fruition. We
saw also that the dominating emotional discharges might come from
sentiments within the field of consciousness, and therefore of which the
individual is aware, or from entirely subconscious sentiments of which
he is unaware. And we saw that conflicts might be between entirely
conscious sentiments or between a conscious and a subconscious
sentiment, and so on. (Indeed, a conflict may be between two
subconscious sentiments as may be experimentally demonstrated with
corresponding phenomena.)

Now the practical significance of these phenomena of emotion, both as
observed in every-day life and under experimental conditions, lies in
the fact that they enable us to understand the symptomatic _structure_,
and up to a certain point the psychogenesis of certain psychoneuroses of
very common occurrence. (For a complete understanding of the
psychogenesis of any given psychoneurosis, such as a phobia, we must
know all the antecedent experiences which formed the setting and gave
meaning to the dominating ideas and determined the instincts which have
become incorporated with them to form sentiments. This we saw when
studying the settings in obsessions (Lectures XII and XIII).)

It is evident, that, theoretically, if antecedent conditions have
prepared the emotional soil, and if an emotional complex, an intense
sentiment, or instinct should be aroused by some stimulus, any one of a
number of different possible psychopathic states might ensue, largely
through the mechanism of conflict, according, on the one hand, to the
degree and extent of the dissociation, inhibition, etc., established,
and on the other to the character and systematization of the emotional
complex or instinct. As with the physiological manifestations of
emotion, we can construct various theoretical schemata to represent the
psychological structure of these different states. Practically both
types—the physiological and psychological—must necessarily almost always
be combined.

1. The impulsive force of the emotion might repress all other ideas than
the one in question from the field of consciousness, which would then be
contracted to that of the limited emotional complex awakened; all
opposing ideas and instincts would then be dissociated or inhibited—a
state substantially of mono-ideism. Let us imagine the dominating
emotional complex to be a mother’s belief that her child had been
killed, this idea being awakened by the sudden announcement of the news.
The parental sentiment with child as its object would become organized
into a complex with the emotions of fear, sorrow, painful depressed
feelings, etc., which the news excited. This complex, being deprived—as
a result of the ensuing dissociation—of the inhibiting and modifying
influence of all counteracting ideas, would be free to expend its
conative force along paths leading to motor, visceral, and other
physiological disturbances. An emotional complex of ideas would be then
formed which after the restoration of the normal alert state would
remain dormant, but conserved in the unconscious. Later, when the
emotional complex is again awakened by some stimulus (associative
thoughts), dissociation would again take place and the complex again
become the whole of the personal consciousness for the time being. This
theoretical schema corresponds accurately with =one type of hysterical
attack=.

2. If again the awakened complex should be one which is constellated
with a large system of dormant ideas and motives deposited in the
unconscious by the experiences of life, the new field of consciousness
would not be contracted to a mono-ideism. We should have to do with a
phase of personality, one which was formed by a rearrangement of life’s
experiences. In this case the usual everyday settings (or systems) of
ideas being in conflict with the sentiments of the resurrected system
would be dissociated and become dormant. The ideas, with their affects,
which would come to the surface and dominate, would be those of
previously dormant emotional complexes and their constellated system.
The prevailing instincts and other innate dispositions would be,
respectively, those corresponding to the two phases, the antagonistic
dispositions being in each case inhibited. This schema would accurately
correspond to a so-called “mood.” If the demarcation of systems were
sharply defined and absolute so that amnesia of one for the other
resulted, the new state would be recognized as one of =dissociated or
secondary personality=. A “mood” and secondary personality would shade
into one another.

3. Still another theoretical schema could be constructed if, following
the hysterical dissociated state represented by schema 1, there were not
a complete return to normality, i.e., complete synthesis of personality.
The dissociation effected by the impulsive force of the evoked emotional
complex and the repressed personal self-conscious-system might be so
intense that, on the restoration of the latter, the former would remain
dissociated in turn. The emotional complex would then, in accordance
with what we know of the genesis of subconscious ideas, become split off
from the personal consciousness and unable to enter the focus of
awareness. Amnesia for the emotional experience would ensue. Such a
split-off idea might, through the impulsive force of its emotion and
that of its setting, take on independent activity and function
coconsciously and produce various automatic phenomena; that is,
phenomena which are termed automatic because not determined by the
personal consciousness. The dissociation might include various sensory,
motor and other functions, thereby robbing the personal consciousness of
these functions (anesthesia, paralysis, etc.). Such a schema corresponds
to the =hysterical subconscious fixed idea= (Janet).

In such a schema also, in accordance with what we know of the behavior
of emotion, though the ideas of the complex remained subconscious, the
emotion linked with them might erupt into the consciousness of the
personal self. The person would then become aware of it without knowing
its source. The emotion might be accompanied by its various
physiological manifestations such as we have studied. If the emotion
were one of fear the subject might be in an =anxious state= without
knowing why he is afraid—an indefinable fear, as it is often called by
the subjects of it.

4. If, owing to one or more emotional experiences, an intense sentiment
were created in which is organized about its object one or more of the
emotions of fear, anger, disgust, self-subjection, etc., with their
physiological manifestations (tremor, palpitation, vasomotor
disturbances, nausea, exhaustion, etc.) and their psychological
disturbances (contraction of the field of consciousness, dissociation,
etc.); and if the whole were welded into a complex, we would have the
structure of an obsession. Such an organized complex would be excited
from time to time by any associated stimulus and develop in the form of
attacks: hence termed a recurrent psychopathic state as well as
obsession. (As we have seen, the psychogenesis of the sentiment is to be
found in antecedent experiences organized with its object giving meaning
and persistence to the obsession.)

5. Finally (to add one more schema out of many that might be
constructed), if a number of physiological disturbances (pain,
secretory, gastric, cardiac, etc), such as occur as the symptoms of a
disease, were through repeated experiences associated and thereby
organized with the idea of the disease, they would recur as an
associative process whenever the idea was presented to consciousness.
Here we have the structure of an “=association or habit-neurosis=,” a
disease mimicry. Numerous examples of the type of cardiac, gastric,
pulmonary, laryngeal, joint, and other diseases might be given. The
physical symptoms in such neuroses are obtrusive, while the psychical
elements (including emotion) which, of course, are always factors,
conscious or subconscious, remain in the background.

The study of the individual psychoneuroses belongs to special pathology,
and need not concern us here. We are only occupied with the general
principles involved in their structure and psycho-genesis.

-----

Footnote 245:

Inhibition and dissociation, although often loosely used as
interchangeable terms, are not strictly synonymous, in that,
theoretically at least, they are not coextensive. That which is
inhibited may be absolutely, even if temporarily, suppressed as a
functioning process, as in physiological inhibition (e. g., of
reflexes, motor acts, etc.); or it may be only inhibited from taking
part in the mechanisms of the personal consciousness, and thereby
dissociated from that psychophysiological system. In the latter case
the inhibited process is not absolutely suppressed, but may be capable
under favoring conditions of independent functioning outside of that
system. This is dissociation in its more precise sense. Inhibition may
be said to have induced dissociation, and then the two may be regarded
as only different aspects of one and the same thing. In the former
case (absolute suppression) the inhibited process cannot function at
all, as in certain types of amnesic aphasia when the memory for
language is functionally suppressed. Inhibition therefore may or may
not be equivalent to dissociation. Practically as observed in
psychological phenomena it is often difficult to distinguish between
them, and it is convenient to consider them together.

Footnote 246:

The Dissociation, p. 189.

Footnote 247:

One sees the same phenomenon in every-day life. Let a person acquire
under a sense of injury a dislike of one who previously was a friend,
and every sentiment involving friendship, admiration, esteem,
gratitude, loyalty, etc., is repressed with a complete change of
attitude. Politics furnishes many examples.

Footnote 248:

Exemplified in Miss B. by Sally, in O. N. by the b mood, and in B. C.
A. by phase B, and also in the earlier stages of the case by phase A.

Footnote 249:

My Life as a Dissociated Personality, _Jl. Ab. Psychol._,
December-January, 1908-9.

Footnote 250:

The Mental State of Hystericals, p. 205.

Footnote 251:

The Dissociation, cf. Index: “Emotion, the Disintegrating Effect of,”
and Chapters XXVIII and XXIX.

Footnote 252:

The Dissociation, p. 462.

Footnote 253:

We shall study in other lectures the forces and mechanisms which
effected the dissociation in this case.

Footnote 254:

See Morton Prince: Some of the Present Problems of Abnormal
Psychology, _St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences_ (1904), Vol. 5,
p. 772; also, _The Psychological Review_, March-May, 1905, p. 139.

Footnote 255:

Probably derived from the “will to believe,” the desire to please the
experimenter, or other elements in the hypnotic setting. The
conception of a “censor” or desire to protect the personal
consciousness from something painful is an unnecessary complication.

Footnote 256:

The Dissociation.

Footnote 257:

Cf. My Life as a Dissociated Personality, _Jl. Abn. Psychol._,
October-November, 1908.

Footnote 258:

T. Brailsford Robertson, in a very recent communication on the
“Chemical Dynamics of the Central Nervous System” and “The
Physiological conditions underlying heightened suggestibility,
hypnosis, multiple personality, sleep, etc.” (_Folia Neuro-Biologica_,
Bd. VII, Nr. 4/5, 1913), has attempted to correlate these conditions
and also amnesia (as one of their phenomena) with the isolation of
paths “canalised” by auto-catalysed chemical reactions. These
processes he concludes, from previous studies, “underlie and determine
the activities of the central nervous system (and therefore the
physical correlates of mental phenomena).” (See Lecture V, p. 124.)

Footnote 259:

The Dissociation, Chapter XXIX; My Life as a Dissociated Personality,
pp. 39 and 41.

Footnote 260:

In this analysis I follow McDougall who seems to me to have analyzed
clearly and adequately the emotional conditions. (Social Psychology,
p. 145.)

LECTURE XVII
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMIC ELEMENTS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY

We ought to be able now to construct out of the various elements we have
studied a general scheme, if not the details, of that composite whole
which we call _Personality_. This should include its structure as well
as its elements and dynamics.

It is obvious that we must have a fairly comprehensive and accurate
conception of these factors if we would understand those alterations of
personality which are met with as pathological conditions and
particularly their psychogenesis. Multiple personality, for instance, as
it occurs in the alternating and coconscious types can only be
comprehended through a knowledge of the normal structure and dynamic
mechanisms. On the other hand the phenomena of this latter pathological
condition throw a flood of light upon the normal and can be utilized to
test the validity of theories. I shall complete these lectures by a
study from the psychogenetic point of view of a case of dissociated and
multiple personality. Certain phenomena met with in this derangement of
the normal have been frequently cited in the preceding lectures and
certain general principles underlying them and the alterations giving
rise to multiplication of the personality and character in one
individual have been referred to. A study of the psychogenesis of a
concrete case will on the one hand illustrate these principles and, on
the other, the structure and dynamics of normal personality.

Before making such a study, however, we ought to have a working
conception of the normal; and this we are entitled, from the point of
view of dynamic psychology, to construct on the basis of data supplied
by studies of abnormal and normal mental behavior. The older way of
considering human personality was to conceive it as an “ego” with
various faculties. We may now consider it as _a composite structure
built by experience upon a foundation of performed, inherited,
psycho-physiological dynamic mechanisms (instincts, etc.), containing
within themselves their own driving forces_.

Let us glance for a moment at this foundation with a view to a full
comprehension of the significance of the innate instinctive and other
dispositions composing its structure. The structure and the dynamics of
these dispositions themselves we have already studied (Chap. XV). Their
teleological aspect needs further exposition for in their functioning
the processes which they carry out have a distinctly purposive character
for the personality.

Every instinct has an aim or end which it strives to fulfil and which
alone satisfies it; and it contains in itself the driving force which,
as an urge, or impulse, sets into activity the mechanism and carries the
instinctive process, unless blocked by some other process, to completion
and satisfies the aim of the instinct. Thus the instinct of flight
impelled by the urge of fear has an aim to escape from danger and is not
satisfied until the danger is escaped. Until that end is gained fear
will not subside. If impeded in its activity it may awaken the pugnacity
instinct which coming to the rescue may fight for safety. Similarly the
instincts of acquisition and self-assertion are not satisfied and their
urge persists until their ends are gained—the acquisition of certain
objects in the one case and self-display or domination of other
individuals or situations in the other case. Obviously the instincts and
other innate dispositions have a biological significance,
ontogenetically and phylogenetically, in that they serve the
preservation of the individual and species and the perpetuation of the
latter. And obviously in the drive to satisfy their aims they determine
and govern behavior. But in doing this they become modified and
controlled by experience—by the dispositions which are acquired by
experience. In this way the behavior of the individual becomes adapted
to the specific situations of the environment. Necessarily these
modifications of the workings of the innate mechanisms by the imposition
of experience upon and within them become very complicated and the
problems of instinct and experience thereby evoked have been the object
of much study and debate.

Now with such fundamental innate mechanisms as a basis the composite
structure of personality is built up by experience, according to the
theory I am presenting.

By experience new “dispositions” are deposited (i.e., acquired), and
organized, systematized, not only amongst themselves but integrated with
the inherited mechanisms. Thus, on the one hand, are formed new
mechanisms which in their functioning manifest themselves as mental
processes and behavior, and, on the other, the instinctive mechanisms
are brought under control by experience and mental processes acquire a
driving force, or an extra driving force, from the impulsive forces of
the integrated instinctive mechanisms.

Accordingly we may say: _Personality_ is the sum total of all the
biological innate dispositions, impulses, tendencies, appetites and
instincts of the individual and of all the _acquired_ dispositions and
tendencies—acquired by experience. And to these it is limited.

The former would embrace inherited, innate psychophysiological
mechanisms or arrangements, such as those of the emotions, feelings,
appetites and other tendencies manifested in instinctive reactions to
the environment; the latter the memories, ideas, sentiments and other
intellectual dispositions acquired and organized within the personality
by the experiences of life.

The integration into one functioning organism, or whole, of all these
innate and acquired dispositions with their mechanisms and inherent
forces by which they come into play is personality.

As thus defined personality includes more than _character_. Character is
the sum total of the predominating dispositions, or tendencies,
popularly called traits. Thus in the domain of the innate dispositions
every personality includes anger, fear, curiosity, and other instinctive
reactions, but one personality might possess an angry temperament, while
another an amiable temperament, meaning that in the one anger is aroused
quickly and by a large variety of situations; in the other it is rarely
aroused and by few situations; in the one anger is excited whenever the
individual is thwarted, opposed, or wounded in his feelings; in the
other the response is never or rarely anger in such situations but
perhaps sorrow, or pity, or some other feeling. One is said to be quick
to anger; the other slow to anger. Hence the character of the one is
said to be “good tempered,” the other “bad tempered.” Yet every normal
personality will manifest anger in some situation.

Likewise with fear: one person reacts with fear to all sorts of
threatening situations; another rarely and to very few. One is said to
have a timorous, or an apprehensive, the other a brave, or bold,
“sandy,” character. Yet every one manifests fear in one of its phases
(apprehension, anxiety, etc.) in some situation. There is no personality
born without the fear instinct.

Likewise in the domain of acquired dispositions personality includes the
ideals, “sentiments,” desires, points of view, attitudes, etc., of the
individual in respect to himself, to life and the environment. These
being acquired by educational, social and environmental experiences
largely differ in every individual. Some become common, or substantially
common to all or many. But those that are peculiar to, or acquire a
dominating position and influence in the personality, play their
part—and even a greater part than the primitive instinctive
dispositions—in distinguishing the character of one personality from
that of another. For in a large measure they determine the reaction to
situations, the behavior and the modes of thought as intellectual
processes. They stamp the _quality_ or character of the intelligence
(its content) rather than the _degree or capacity_ of the same.[261] On
this side, then, character is so much of personality as is represented
by the dominating acquired dispositions of the individual. But as innate
and acquired dispositions become inter-organized by experience, as
traits, into complex functioning wholes, or complexes, acquired traits
include the former.

Thus a personality may exhibit a character recognized as idealistic,
altruistic, selfish, egotistic, social, anti-social, etc., according to
what ideals, “sentiments,” morals, etc., have been acquired by
experience. It is in these respects that he is largely the product of
his education and environment, the influences of which have also
organized his innate dispositions (instincts, etc.,) with his
intellectual processes.

We have already seen (Lectures IX and XV) that the acquired dispositions
are, by the very experiences by which they are acquired, organized into
complexes and systems of complexes which are conserved as such in the
storehouse of the unconscious to be drawn upon by memory or to be
awakened again to activity as occasion may demand to serve the purposes
of mental life. Now, large numbers of these complexes have not only an
organized structure but a dynamic potentiality and in consequence of
these two characteristics each tends to function as a dynamic psychic
whole. For in such complexes are incorporated one or more emotional or
other instinctive mechanisms from which their chief energy and aim are
derived. (This theory postulates not only a structure of mental
dispositions but a correlated structure of hypothetical physiological
dispositions which I have termed the “neurogram.”)[262] In so far as
dynamic complexes and systems of complexes have structure and tend to
function as psychic wholes they take on the character of unitary
mechanisms or systems. From this point of view the most fruitful
conception of the structure of personality is that which views it as
built up of dynamic units which may be classed as primary and secondary.
The primary units are the innate psychophysiological arrangements or
mechanisms which we have agreed to call the instincts, or innate
tendencies or dispositions, in many of which are incorporated the
emotions and other affects. These primary units become organized by
experience into larger units or unitary systems. Whether they are also
_innately_ organized amongst themselves and by themselves into larger
systems as some maintain (Shand) may or may not be the case. It is not
necessary for our present purposes to consider this problem. It is
sufficient that those dispositions which are innate, such as those of
anger, fear, joy, etc., do become organized by and with experiences into
larger and larger dynamic unitary systems.

The secondary units are the acquired complexes and systems of complexes
within which are incorporated one or more primary units. In these are
found as already mentioned the ideals, “sentiments,” wishes,
aspirations, forebodings, apprehensions, and all other organized systems
of thought which, on the one hand have their roots in the deposited
experiences of life and, on the other, their promptings and urges in the
primitive innate instincts and other dispositions. Thus the innate and
acquired dispositions are organized into unitary systems of greater and
greater complexity but each having a tendency and, under certain
conditions of dissociation, a greater or less freedom to function as a
psychic whole. And the integration or potential integration of all these
units and unitary complexes and systems into a functioning whole is
personality. This does not mean that all the primary and secondary units
take part in the functioning of the personality; on the contrary, as we
have seen, many lie dormant, for one reason or the other, in the
unconscious. But, as we have also seen, they are potentially capable of
being awakened and determining mental and bodily behavior. Furthermore,
evidence has been adduced to show that the various units of personality
do not always coöperate and function harmoniously with one another, as
no doubt they ought to do, but sometimes are incited to conflicts and
then they play the deuce with the individual and he fails to be able to
adapt himself to the realities of life.

Amongst these acquired unitary systems there are certain ones which are
of preëminent importance for the personality in the determination of
mental behavior. I refer to those complexes known as the _sentiments_.
By this term, as we have seen, is understood the organization of an
acquired disposition—the idea of an object—or complex of such
dispositions (the psychic whole of idea plus its “meaning” derived from
the setting of associated experiences) with one or more innate emotional
dispositions. It must not be overlooked for one moment that a sentiment
is something more than the organization of an emotion or other affect
with an idea. There is nothing novel or fruitful in such a limited
conception of the structure of a sentiment as this. A sentiment in its
structure is the organization of an idea and meaning with an emotional
instinct which has an aim and end which the instinct strives to attain
and which alone satisfies the urge of the instinct. Such a structure has
great significance and the conception is a most fruitful one. For
because of this structure the excitation of the idea necessarily
involves the excitation of the instinct and the impulse of the latter
determines behavior in reference to the object of the idea and carries
the instinct to fruition. Thus if the sentiment be one of love the
excitation of the instincts organized with the object determines through
their urge the behavior to cherish or possess the object of the
sentiment. And the attainment of this aim alone satisfies it. If the
sentiment be one of apprehension of an object the instinct of fear
incites behavior to escape from the danger contained in the meaning of
the object. A sentiment in the hierarchy of units is a unitary system
built up by the organization (through experience) of primary units with
a secondary unitary complex (idea, meaning, etc.).

The importance of the sentiments in the dynamics of personality and
therefore in the determination of mental and bodily behavior I have
already dwelt upon (Lecture XV). But there is one sentiment which plays
such an important rôle both in these respects and in that unitary system
which we know as the empirical self, or consciousness of self that
something more needs to be said about it. This sentiment is that which
McDougall has termed the “self-regarding sentiment” which is intimately
bound up with the idea or conception of the empirical self, and both
should be considered together. It is only by regarding, as it seems to
me, the conception or idea of the empirical self as a secondary unitary
complex organized by experience that we can approach the solution of the
problem of the self and understand the phenomenon of two selves in one
personality, as so often occurs in multiple personality.

The self-regarding sentiment, according to McDougall’s theoretical
analysis—and I may say his analysis has been confirmed by my own
practical analyses of concrete cases—has structurally organized within
it by experience the two opposing instincts, self-abasement and
self-assertion, but either may be the dominating one. The idea or
conception of self, proper, is, according to the theory, a complex and
integrated whole organized by experience like the self-regarding
sentiment. “McDougall has argued,” to quote what I have written in a
study of multiple personality,[263] “and I think soundly ‘that the idea
of self and the self-regarding sentiment are essentially social
products; that their development is effected by constant interplay
between personalities, between the self and society; that, for this
reason, the complex conception of self thus attained implies constant
reference to others and to society in general, and is, in fact, not
merely a conception of self, but always one’s self in relation to other
selves.’ But, as I would argue, this formulation must be considerably
broadened. Every sentiment (and therefore the self-regarding sentiment)
has roots in and is consequently related to what has gone before. And
the experiences of what has gone before of the self, i.e., what has been
previously experienced (ideally or realistically) by the individual in
reference to the object of the sentiment, determines the attitude of
mind and point of view towards that object, and is responsible for the
organization of the object and instinct into a sentiment. The sentiment
is the resultant and the expression of those antecedent experiences.
They form its setting and give it meaning beyond the mere emotional
tone. You cannot separate sentiment, conceived as a linked object and
emotional instinct, from such a setting. They form a psychic whole. This
is not only theoretically true, but actual dealings with pathological
sentiments (in which the principle can be most clearly studied), called
phobias and other emotional obsessions, bring out this intimate relation
between the sentiment and the conserved setting of antecedent
experiences. Such practical dealings also show not only that the
sentiment is the outgrowth of and the expression of this setting, but
that by changing the setting the sentiment can be correspondingly
altered.... I want to emphasize that in the dynamic functioning of a
sentiment the setting coöperates in maintaining and carrying it to the
fruition and satisfaction of its aim.”

So far as concerns the incorporation of the two instincts,
self-abasement and self-assertion, “McDougall with keen insight and
analysis, has argued that the self-regarding sentiment is organized with
these two innate dispositions, but in different degrees in different
individuals, and with the growth of the mind one may replace the other
in the adaptation of the individual to the changing environment. Taking
two extreme types, he draws a picture of the proud, arrogant,
self-assertive, domineering person, with the feeling of masterful
superiority, and angry resentment of criticism and control, and who
knows no shame and is indifferent to moral approval and disapproval. In
this personality the instincts of self-assertion and anger are the
dominating innate dispositions of the self-regarding sentiment. On the
other hand we have the type of the submissive, dependent character, with
a feeling of inferiority, when the contrary disposition is the
dominating one. McDougall’s analysis was beautifully illustrated in the
case of Miss Beauchamp by two personalities, BI and BIV, fragments of
the original self, which were actual specimens from real life of his
theoretic types. Again McDougall’s theoretic analysis of the conception
of self, showing the idea to be one ‘always of one’s self in relation to
other selves,’ is concretely illustrated and substantiated by the
dissection of this mind effected by trauma.”

The study of another case, that of “Maria” furnished the same results as
respects the two personalities that were manifested, as did that of “B.
C. A.”

As to the conception of the empirical self and as “an important addition
to this theory both from a structural and dynamic point of view, I would
insist again that the complex conception of self includes a setting of
mental experiences of much wider range, in which the idea of self is
incorporated and which gives the idea meaning. The range of this setting
extends beyond ‘other selves’ and ‘society in general’ and may include
almost any of life’s experiences.” By way of illustration let us take
the two selves known as the “Saint” (BI) and the “Realist” (BIV) in the
case of Miss Beauchamp. "Concretely and more correctly the psychological
interpretation of the ‘reference to others and society in general,’ of
the relation of one’s self to other selves, would in this particular
instance be as follows: the Saint’s conception of self (with the
self-regarding sentiment) was related to an ideal world and ideal selves
contained in religious conceptions; and hence it became organized in a
larger setting which gave it a meaning of divine perfection such as is
obtained, or aspired to by saints, and in which were incorporated the
emotional dispositions of awe, reverence, love, self-abasement, etc.
This conception was not a product of, or related to the social
environment. Rather it was the product of an ideal world. She, as has
been said, lived in a world of idealism, oblivious of the realities
round about her, which she saw not ‘clearly and truly’ but as they were
colored by her imagination. Her idea of self thus became the ‘saintly
sentiment’ of self-perfection.

“On the other hand the conception of self in BIV, the Realist, was
related to and set in the realities of this social world as they clearly
are, the world of her objective environment. And in this conception of
self the instinctive dispositions of self-assertion and anger
contributed the promptings and motive force to dominate these realities
and bend them to her will.”

It must be an obvious conclusion from the numerous and multiform
subconscious phenomena which were cited in previous lectures that all
the unitary and complexes and systems which enter into the composite
structure of personality do not necessarily emerge into awareness. Some
function subconsciously and in this way determine conscious mental
processes and behavior. Many remain conserved in the unconscious and
have only a potential reality in that they remain latent but susceptible
of being awakened into activity. It is also true that in the course of
the growth of the personality many become modified by experience and
metamorphosed into new sentiments, new ideals, new desires, new
apprehensions, new meanings, etc.

The necessity for adaptation of the personality to the realities of life
necessarily gives rise to conflicts, for the urges of some unitary
complexes cannot be satisfied, and some are incompatible with the
situations which reality presents, or with one another. A practical
solution of the problem is compulsory. Compensation is sought. Sometimes
compensation or compromise is successfully attained; sometimes it is
not. Or the solution may be accepted and the urge of a rebellious system
incompatible with the demands of reality is suppressed by voluntary or
automatic repression. When neither compensation nor compromise is
attained, or when the situation is not accepted and the rebellious urge
continues, then disruption or disarrangement of the personality may
follow with such resulting phenomena as have been already described.
Integrated systems may become disintegrated or dissociated, permitting
of independent autonomous functioning of conflicting systems. And of the
unitary systems taking part in such conflicts one or more may, as we
have seen, function subconsciously. Furthermore, as observation shows,
dissociated complexes may take on growth independently of the integrated
systems of the personal consciousness and thus create large subconscious
systems. On the other hand both one or more primary units (innate
dispositions) and secondary unitary complexes and systems (acquired
dispositions) may by the force of conflicts be completely repressed and
cease to function within the personality. Thus, for example, certain
instincts may be suppressed and systematic amnesia and other defects be
produced. And so on.

Without pursuing further this exposition of the empirical personality or
going into details, it would seem that some such conception of the
structure of personality as that of which I have given a mere outline
will alone satisfy the phenomena actually observed under normal and
abnormal conditions. Indeed the theory would seem to be a compelling
induction from the phenomena derived from clinical observation and
experiment.

Against this preliminary sketch of the structure and dynamic mechanisms
of the normal personality as a background I will in the next lecture
present a study of a case of dissociated and multiple personality, as
the alterations of structure and the dynamic manifestations observed in
cases of this kind, on the one hand, concretely illustrate the
principles involved, and, on the other, present some of the most
important data on which the theory is founded.

-----

Footnote 261:

“Intelligence tests” therefore do not afford tests of character which
is the most important element of personality from a sociological point
of view. (See “Character vs. Intelligence in Personality Studies” by
Dr. Guy Fernald, _Jour. Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. XV, No. 1.)

Footnote 262:

Indeed I cannot see that mental “disposition” has any reality
excepting so far as it is derived from its correlated physiological
disposition. (See p. 266.)

Footnote 263:

Miss Beauchamp: “The Theory of the Psychogenesis of Multiple
Personality”; _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. XV, Nos. 2-3; pp.
108, 120-121.

LECTURE XVIII
THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY[264]
THE CASE OF B. C. A.

As an introduction let me say that in a previous lecture (The
Unconscious, Lecture VIII) I pointed out that in a general way
alteration of personality is effected through the primary organization
by experience and later coming into dominating activity of particular
unitary systems of ideas with their affects, on the one hand, and the
displacement by dissociation or inhibition of other conflicting systems
on the other. In slighter degrees and when transient this alteration may
be regarded as a mood. When the alteration is more enduring, and so
marked by contrast with the preceding and normal condition as to
obtrusively alter the character and behavior of the individual and his
capacity for adjustment to his environment, we have a pathological
condition. When the alteration is slight and affects few systems it may
be easily overlooked; or when it is accompanied, as it often is, by
physiological disturbances, it may be so masked by them as to be
mistaken for so-called neurasthenia. It is when the dissociation is so
comprehensive as to deprive the individual of memory of his previous
phase of personality, or of certain acquired knowledge or other
particular experiences that the personality is easily recognized as a
dissociated one. When the inhibiting or repressing force that induces
dissociation ceases to be effective, that is when the dissociated
systems come again into activity and repress the temporarily dominant
systems, then the individual returns to his normal condition (in which
he may or may not remember the dissociated state), just as a person
returns to his habitual character after the passing of a mood. We may
speak of the two phases—the normal and the altered one—as constituting
together _multiple personality_. As these two phases may continue to
alternate with one another they are also alternating personalities. The
second or altered state is also sometimes called a _secondary
personality_. There may be several such secondary personalities which
may alternate with each other or the normal personality.

It should be noted that the formation of a secondary personality is
primarily the result of two processes, _dissociation_ and _synthesis_
though it is subject to _secondary growth_ through various processes. As
a result of the first process, dissociation, systems of thought, ideas,
memories, emotions and dispositions previously habitual in the
individual may cease to take part in the affected person’s mental
processes. The influence of these systems with their conative tendencies
is therefore no longer for the time being in play.

When we pass in review a large number of cases, we find that the systems
of ideas, which (through the dissociating process) cease to take part in
personality, may be quite various. One or more “sides” to one’s
character, for instance, may vanish, and the individual may exhibit
always a single side on all occasions; or the ethical systems built up
and conserved by early pedagogical, social, and environmental training
may cease to take part in the mental processes and regulate conduct; or,
again, the ideas which pertain to the lighter side of life and its
social enjoyments may be lost and only the more serious attributes of
mind retained. There may even be amnesia in consequence of dissociation
for chronological epochs of the individual’s life, or for certain
particular episodes, or for certain specific knowledge, such as
educational acquirements (mathematics, Greek, Latin, music, literature,
etc., or knowledge of a trade or profession, and even of language).
Amnesia alone, however, does not constitute alteration of personality
strictly speaking; for a person may have complete loss of memory for
certain specific experiences without true alteration of character. It is
of important significance, as we shall see, that the dissociated or
inhibited[265] systems may include emotions, instincts and innate
dispositions.

Examination of recorded cases shows too that besides mental memories,
physiological functions may be involved in the dissociation. Thus there
may be loss of sensation in its various forms, and of the special
senses, or of the power of movement (paralysis), or of visceral
functions (gastric, sexual, etc.). Dissociation may, then, involve quite
large parts of the personality including very precise and definite
physiological and psychological functions. We see examples of these
different dissociations in numerous cases.

As to the mechanism by which pathological dissociation is effected, it
may be well to point out here that there is no reason to suppose that it
is anything more than an exaggeration of the normal mechanism by which,
on the one hand, mental processes are temporarily inhibited from
entering the field of consciousness, and, on the other, physiological
functions are normally suppressed and prevented from taking part in the
psychophysiological economy. (For instance, the suppression of the
gastro-intestinal functions by an emotional discharge.) Every mental
process involves the repression of some conflicting process; otherwise
all would be chaos in the mind. And every physiological process involves
some repression of another process. The movements of walking involve the
inhibition alternatively of the flexor and extensor muscles according as
which is active in the movement.

This principle is conspicuous in absent mindedness and voluntary
attention when every antagonistic or irrelevant thought and even
consciousness of the environment is prevented by a conflicting force
from entering the field of consciousness. In other words, every mental
process involves a conflict and inhibition: in physiological terms a
raising of the threshold of the antagonistic mental process in
consequence of which it cannot function unless the stimulus be
increased. This is a normal mechanism and process. The conditions which
determine absolute and continuous dissociation or inhibition become the
object of study.

By the second process, synthesis, particular unitary systems of ideas
with the conative tendencies of their feeling tones rise to the surface
out of the unconscious and become synthesized with the perceptions, and
such memories and other mental systems and faculties of the individual
as are retained. Thus it may be that unitary dispositions, sentiments
and systems belonging to a particular “side” of the character—the
amiable or the brutal, the unselfish or the selfish, the ungenerous or
the generous, the practical or the idealistic, the literary or the
business, the religious or worldly, the youthful and gay, or the mature
and serious, etc., to any side may become uppermost and be the dominant
trait of the secondary personality. Or it may be that the systems of
ideas, disposition, etc., belonging to childhood and long outgrown, but
conserved nevertheless in the unconscious, may be resurrected and
becoming synthesized with other systems form a personality childish in
character. Or, again, sentiments, thoughts, dispositions, tendencies,
instincts which, though intimately belonging to the individual, have
been restrained, repressed, concealed from the world for one reason or
another, may, being set free through dissociation from the repressing
thoughts, rise to the surface and take part in the synthesis of the new
personality.

In other words there is a rearrangement and readjustment of the innate
dispositions and those deposited by the experiences of life which go to
form personality. Some by the process of dissociation are expelled from
the personal synthesis; some which had been previously expelled
(repressed) by education, maturity of character, direct volition, and
other processes of mental development are brought back into it.

It is obvious that when such rearrangements and readjustments have
occurred the mental reactions of the individual will vary largely from
what they were before. The reaction to the environment will become
altered. When systems which give rise to the habitual modes of thought
are dissociated, naturally the reactions of the individual will not be
influenced by them but by those of the new synthesis, and the character
will be correspondingly changed. Inasmuch as out of the great storehouse
of the unconscious any number of combinations of systems may be
arranged, it is obvious that any number of secondary personalities may
be formed in the same person. As many as ten or twelve have been
observed.

A study of cases which have come under my personal observation, and the
reports to be found in the literature of those cases of multiple
personality which have been studied with sufficient intensity and
exhaustiveness, allow these general and preliminary statements, which
are little more than descriptive of the facts, to be verified.[266] One
of the best examples is the case of B. C. A. which I had an opportunity
of studying over a long period of time, and to which reference has been
frequently made. I shall take this as the object of our study in
psychogenesis.[267]

This subject has herself written at my request two introspective
analyses of her own case, one by the normal personality and the other by
the secondary personality. These analyses are of great value.[268] They
give different versions of the same facts in accordance with the
differing memories, knowledge and points of view of the differing
personalities. The second also gives an account of the claimed
co-conscious life as experienced by herself and unknown to the normal
personality. We cannot do better than take them as a basis for a genetic
study of the case and reproduce portions of them here. In this study I
have made use, in addition to this material, of a large number of
personal observations extending over five years, of numerous letters and
analyses written by the subject at different times in her various phases
of personality, of the memories in hypnosis, in which state many
subconscious and dissociated perceptions and thoughts not otherwise
remembered are brought to light, and of numerous analyses of her
memories made on many occasions, at the expense of many hours of labor.
Other sources of information have also been made use of. This
investigation has resulted in a voluminous collection of records filling
several large portfolios. In making the analyses and in many of the
letters the subject, with extreme frankness and in the interests of
psychology has gone in great detail into and has laid bare the most
intimate facts of her mental life. This is true of each of the phases of
personality, so that the point of view from which the same facts were
seen in different moods has been obtained. This is a matter of no small
consequence as the same fact often acquires a different aspect or
meaning according to the view point of the mood in which it is
experienced. A large amount of data pertaining to the inner life of the
subject has thus become accessible. It is obvious that data of this sort
are necessary if the psychological status of any given period of an
individual’s life is to be related to antecedent mental experiences as
etiological factors. But this sort of data is that which usually is most
difficult to obtain. Our inner lives we keep hidden as in a sealed book
from the world. In all published reports of multiple personality these
data are lacking, the studies dealing almost entirely with such facts
only as were open to the observation of the investigator. It necessarily
results from such a study of the inner life of a person living in the
circle to which this subject belongs that many of the data are too
intimate and personal for publication. However much one may be
interested in science there is a point beyond which one shrinks from
exposing one’s self in print. I am, therefore, at many points very
properly limited to the use of general phrases and summarizing
expressions instead of explicit statements of particular facts which, I
am aware, would be more satisfactory to the critic. This limitation
cannot be helped, but is probably compensated for by the fact that, if
it did not exist, the subject would be one whose introspective
observations would be of much less value.

I will only add to this statement that the data were not collected in
support of a preconceived theory or even of a working hypothesis, but
only after they were gathered—in fact, after much of this material was
forgotten—were they brought together and studied. It was then found that
when the different pieces of evidence were pieced together they allowed
of only one conclusion, namely, that which the subject herself in the
main reached independently as the facts were laid bare and brought into
the field of her consciousness by the means I have described.

By way of preface to the subject’s introspective analyses I reproduce
here the following remarks, which I wrote as an introduction to the
“Life,” but slightly expanded and with a few verbal changes to make the
matter clearer.

An account of the various phases of dissociated personality written by
the patient after recovery and restoration of memory for all the
different phases cannot fail to be of interest. If the writer is endowed
with the capacity for accurate introspection and statement such an
account ought to give an insight into the condition of the mind during
these dissociated states that is difficult to obtain from objective
observation, or, if elicited from a clinical narration of the patient,
to accurately transcribe. In that remarkable book, “A Mind that Found
Itself,” the author, writing after recovery from insanity, has given us
a unique insight into the insane mind. Similarly the writer of the
following account allows us to see the beginnings of the differentiation
of her mind into complexes, the final development of a dissociated or
multiple personality, and to understand the moods, points of view,
motives, and dominating ideas which characterized each phase. Such an
account could only be given by a person who has had the experience, and
who has the introspective and literary capacity to describe it.

The writer in publishing, though with some reluctance and at my request,
her experiences as a multiple personality, is actuated only, as I can
testify, by a desire to contribute to our knowledge of such conditions.
The experiences of her illness—now happily recovered from—have led her
to take an active interest in abnormal psychology and to inform herself,
so far as is possible by the study of the literature, on many of the
problems involved. The training thus acquired has plainly added to the
accuracy and value of her introspective observations.

A brief preliminary statement will be necessary in order that the
account as told by the patient may be fully intelligible.

The subject was under my observation for about four years. When first
seen the case presented the ordinary picture of so-called neurasthenia,
characterized by persistent fatigue and the usual somatic symptoms, and
by moral doubts and scruples. This condition, at first unsuspected, was
later found to be a phase of multiple personality and was then termed
and is described in the following account as state or personality A.
Later another state, spoken of as personality B, suddenly developed. A
had no memory of B, but the latter had full knowledge of A. Besides
differences in memory A and B manifested distinct and markedly different
characteristics and traits which included moods, tastes, health,
emotions, feelings, instincts, sentiments, points of view, habits of
thought, and controlling ideas. In place, for instance, of the
depression, fatigue, and moral doubts and scruples of A, B manifested
rather a condition of exaltation, and complete freedom from neurasthenia
and its accompanying obsessional ideas. A and B alternated during a long
period of time with one another. After A, for example, had existed as a
personality for a number of hours or days she changed to B, and vice
versa. After the first appearance of B it was soon recognized that both
states were only fragments, so to speak, or phases of a dissociated
personality, and neither represented the normal complete personality.
After prolonged study this latter normal state was obtained in hypnosis
(c´), and on being waked up a personality was found which possessed the
combined memories of A and B, and was free from the pathological
stigmata which respectively characterized each. This normal person is
spoken of as C. Normal C had, therefore, been split and resynthesized
into two systems of complexes or personalities, A and B. Leaving out for
the sake of simplicity certain intermediate hypnotic states, A and B
could be hypnotized into a single hypnotic state which was a synthesis
that could be recognized as a complete normal personality in hypnosis.
All that remained to do was to wake up this state and we had the normal
C. This process could be reversed and repeated as often as desired: that
is, C could be split again into A and B, then resynthesized in c´ who
when awakened became C again. This relationship may be diagramatically
expressed as follows:[269]

[Illustration]

The various traits which characterized and differentiated the different
personalities will appear in the course of this genetic study. With this
introduction we will proceed to the latter.

II
THE DISRUPTION OF PERSONALITY

The first of the accounts above mentioned by the _normal_ personality,
C, written after recovery, is in the form of a letter. She had complete
memory for both her phases A and B. It will be noticed in passing that
this normal self speaks of the phases A and B as herself, transformed to
be sure, but still herself in different “states.” “As A, _I_ felt” so
and so, “as B, _I_ felt” thus, etc. On the other hand, the secondary
personality, B, in her account, always refers to the other personalities
as distinct personages, and uses the third person “she” in speaking of
them. In this matter of differentiation of personalities B was very
insistent, maintaining, as has been frequently noted in other cases,
that she had no sense of identity of her own self-consciousness with
that of the others. “I am, at any rate, a distinct personality,” she
remarks. In her consciousness there was no feeling that the
self-consciousness of C and A was identical with her own, but the
contrary. This frequent phenomenon presents a standpoint from which the
problem of the “I” may be studied. What is it that determines the
self-consciousness of an ego? We are not concerned with this old
question at present, but it is worth noting that cases of dissociated
personality offer favorable material for the solution of the problem.

The following extracts from the accounts by “C” and “B” have been taken
as a basis for our analysis which will further attempt to coordinate the
two accounts and to clarify the psychological development of the case.

FROM ACCOUNT GIVEN BY THE NORMAL PERSONALITY C AFTER RECOVERY

MY DEAR DR. PRINCE,

You have asked me to give you an account of my illness as it seems to
me now that I am myself and well; describing myself in those changes
of personality which we have called “A” and “B.”

It is always difficult for one to analyze one’s self accurately and
the conditions have been very complex. I think, however, that I have a
clear conception and appreciation of my case. I remember myself
perfectly as “A” and as “B.” I remember my thoughts, my feelings, and
my points of view in each personality, and can see where they are the
same and where they depart from my normal self. These points of view
will appear as we go on and I feel sure that my memory can be trusted.
I recall clearly how in each state I regarded the other state and how
in each I regarded myself.

As I have said, I have now, as “C,” all the memories of both states
(though none of the co-conscious life which, as B, I claimed and
believed I had). _These memories are clearly differentiated in my
mind._[270] It would be impossible to confuse the two as the moods
which governed each were so absolutely different, but it is quite
another thing to make them distinct on paper. I have, however, been so
constantly under your observation that you can, no doubt, correct any
statement I may make which is not borne out by your own knowledge.

I am, perhaps, of a somewhat emotional nature, and have never been
very strong physically though nothing of an invalid. I have always
been self-controlled and not at all hysterical, as I would use the
word. On the contrary, I was, I am sure, considered a very sensible
woman by those who know me well, though I am not so sure what they may
think of me now. I am, however, very sensitive and responsive to
impressions in the sense that I am easily affected by my environment.
For instance, at the theatre I lose myself in the play and feel keenly
all the emotions portrayed by the actors. _These emotions are
reflected vividly in my face and manner sometimes to the amusement of
those with me and, if the scene is a painful one, it often takes me a
long time to recover from the effect of it. The same is true of scenes
from actual life._[271]

Before this disintegration took place I had borne great responsibility
and great sorrow with what I think I am justified in calling
fortitude, and I do not think the facts of my previous life would
warrant the assumption that I was naturally nervously unstable. It
does not carry great weight, I know, for one to say of one’s self,—I
am sensible, I am stable, I am not hysterical,—but I believe the
statement can be corroborated by the testimony of those who have known
me through my years of trial. The point I wish to make is that my case
shows that such an illness as I have had is possible to a
constitutionally stable person and is not confined to those of an
hysterical tendency.

A year previous to this division of personality a long nervous strain,
covering a period of four years, had culminated in the death of one
very dear to me—my husband. I was, at the end of that period, in good
physical health, though nervously worn, but this death occurred in
such a way as to cause me a great shock, and within the six days
following I lost twenty pounds in weight. For nearly three months I
went almost entirely without food, seemingly not eating enough to
sustain life. I did not average more than three or four hours’ sleep
out of the twenty-four, but I felt neither hungry nor faint, and was
extremely busy and active, being absorbed both by home
responsibilities and business affairs. The end of the year (5 years
after the beginning of my husband’s illness), however, found me in
very poor health physically and I was nervously and mentally
exhausted. I was depressed, sad, felt that I had lost all that made
life worth living and, indeed, I wished to die. I was very nervous,
unable to eat or sleep, easily fatigued, suffered constantly from
headache, to which I had always been subject, and was not able to take
much exercise. The physician under whose care I was at this time told
me, when I asked him to give my condition a name, that I was suffering
from “nervous and cerebral exhaustion.”

_It was at this time that the shock which caused the division of
personality occurred_ [_resulting_ in period III].

Although this last statement is true so far as concerns the complete
dissociation of personality which resulted in the birth of an
independent alternating personality, the first beginning of the genesis
of that personality can be traced back to a far earlier period when she
was about twenty years of age, that is to say _nineteen years before the
final cleavage. These beginnings were an embryonic cluster or unitary
complex of rebellious ideas, “floating thoughts, impulses, desires,
inclinations” and intense feelings which came into being at this early
period in consequence of an emotional trauma._

I propose to trace in the course of this study, first, the gradual
growth by successive syntheses of this rebellious cluster with other
idea-clusters during a period of _fourteen_ years.

Second, its incubation, organization and segregation from the main
personality during a second period of _five_ years as a fairly well
defined unitary complex known as the _B complex_.

Third, the culmination of the incubating process and, as the result of
an emotional shock, final bursting into flower of the B complex as the
_B personality_ (i.e., nineteen years from the time of the beginning of
disaggregation through rebellious thoughts).

Fourth, the reversion to the original personality, but now one so
disintegrated, shorn and shattered by the segregation of the autonomous
B complex and of certain instincts as to be a so-called secondary
disintegrated _personality_, _A_.

Fifth, the alternation of these two strongly contrasted abnormal
personalities.

Finally, the reintegration of the two abnormal personalities into one
normal original personality, C.

In following the evolution of the personalities my main purpose will be
to bring to light the psychological forces which brought about the
disaggregation, on the one hand, and the synthetic construction of the
new personal systems, on the other. The following arrangement of these
changes in the personality by periods will be convenient for
reference.[272]

Period I. From wedding to beginning of husband’s illness
(14 years) characterized by a group of
rebellious ideas.

Period II. During husband’s illness (4 years) and one year
thereafter (5 years), characterized by B
_complex_ and terminating with shock.

Period III. Beginning with shock, characterized by B
_personality_ and terminating one month later
by another shock in

Period IV. _Personality_ A, plus B complex, lasting one
week, followed by

Period V. Characterized by alternations of A and B
personalities and lasting several years until
reintegrated in original normal personality,
C.

All these changes from period I to IV inclusive were caused by emotional
shocks awakened by a common factor in closely associated situations. In
period IV the A personality had no amnesia for personality B. This
amnesia developed in period V.

THE REBELLION

PERIOD I

The writer C in her account passes over the early first period, but she
remembers clearly the historical facts and has given a very precise
description of them in the many analyses which have been made and
recorded. Moreover in the second account,[273] written in the secondary
B phase of personality, she recognizes the embryonic emotional complex
of this first period, and its genetic relation to the later B _complex_,
and to her own still later developed B _personality_. “This complex” she
(B) wrote, “it seems to me is the same, though only slightly developed,
as that which appeared later and is described as complex B. In trying to
explain this condition, which it seems to me was the first start of what
ultimately resulted in a division of personality, I will divide the time
into periods, and I will call this period I.” (This same division into
periods I have thought it well to follow.) She also identified the ideas
of this early complex with ideas and feelings which she still
entertained and which formed a marked characteristic of her own
dissociated (B) personality.

For the sake of clearness and simplicity of phraseology it will be well
from now on to speak of the subject when in the dissociated B state
simply as B, and when united in the normal state as C. In this way, as C
points out, we shall avoid constant repetition and circumlocution in
such phrases as, “when the subject was in the B state,” etc. You must
not, however, be misled by the connotation of terms and read into this
nomenclature more than the psychological facts warrant, or make
distinctions of personality which transcend in any way psychological
laws. Dissociated and multiple personality are not novel freak
phenomena, but are only exaggerations of the normal and due to
exaggerations of normal processes, and it is for this reason that they
are of interest and importance. For, being exaggerations, they
accentuate and bring out into high relief certain tendencies and
functional mechanisms which belong to normal conditions, and they
differentiate mental processes, one from another, which normally are not
so easily recognized.

They are caricatures, so to speak, of the normal. In one respect they
may be likened to the staining of an anatomical specimen prepared for
the microscope by which the various anatomical structures are brought
out into strong contrast with one another and easily differentiated,
like the boundaries of countries on a colored map. Without the staining
all would have a homogeneous appearance and differentiation would be
difficult. So, though a secondary personality is in one sense but a
phase of the whole personality, it is characterized largely by an
accentuation or domination of particular constituents to be found in the
given normal everyday personality, and by the subordination or
suppression of others, both being effected by the exaggeration of the
normal processes of dissociation and synthesis. In such a secondary
personality these constituents and processes are easily recognized
though they may be hidden under normal conditions. In saying that a
secondary personality is a phase of the whole personality the latter
term—whole personality—must be taken in the sense of including all the
past experiences of life which have been organized, deposited and
conserved in the unconscious, and all the instincts and innate
dispositions of the individual. These past experiences form, as we have
seen,[274] a storehouse of formative material which, for the most part,
under ordinary conditions, may lie dormant though potential; but any
elements of this material may, under special influences, be awakened to
activity and, uniting with particular constituents of the normal
everyday personality, take part under the urge of their own instinctive
impulses and dispositions in the formation of a new personality. The
remainder of the normal personality then becomes submerged and dormant
in the unconscious.

To return to the evolution of the B personality. If this final phase be
correctly traced back 19 years to the early antecedent rebellious
complex above referred to, we shall see that the evolution of multiple
personality in this case passed through several successive stages and
was of slow growth. Speaking generally, it may, indeed, be ascribed,
primarily, on the one hand, to the disruptive or dissociating effect of
continuous _conflicts_ between the opposing impulses of innate
dispositions and instincts (emotions), and, on the other, to the gradual
synthesization of the components of personality repressed by these
conflicts into the subconscious. The secondary incubation of these
repressed and other deposited experiences of life followed, with the
final setting free of all this formative material, when fully matured,
by the force, awakened by a trauma, of the conative emotional impulses
belonging to it. The analogues of these phenomena and mechanisms are
observed in sudden religious conversion which in principle is an
alteration of personality.[275]

All the historical evidence at hand, derived from searching
investigation, goes to show that at the early period to which I have
referred (period I) the subject received an emotional shock, “which,” B
wrote, “it seems to me, as I look at it now, resulted in the first
cleavage of personality. This emotion was one of fright and led to
rebellion [in the form of rebellious thoughts] against a certain
condition of her life, and formed a small vague complex [of thoughts and
emotions] which persisted in the sense that it recurred from time to
time, though it was always immediately suppressed.”[276] And this vague
complex of rebellious thoughts necessarily soon gave rise to and
included other “floating thoughts, impulses, desires, inclinations,” all
of which the subject suppressed or endeavored to suppress during a long
period of years. “This complex,” she adds, as quoted above, “it seems to
me, was the same, though only slightly developed, as that which appeared
later, and is described as complex B.”

The “shock” when more deeply analyzed proved to be the excitation of
certain emotions which, besides a mild degree of fright, were intense
repugnance or disgust. They were a reaction to or defense against
another affect, which was also excited and which we will term, in
deference to our subject’s good taste, X. The emotion of repugnance was
so intense as to require considerable fortitude to withstand and gave
rise to much agitation. It accompanied a cluster of “rebellious” ideas
awakened by the realization of an unexpectedly disagreeable situation
and relation. This cluster I shall call the _rebellious complex_ to
distinguish it from the later B complex into which it became
constellated. This rebellious complex with the emotion of repugnance
(instinct of repulsion) was of necessity frequently excited by the
conditions of life and, therefore, of frequent recurrence, after the
fashion of an obsession. After the first shock the fright naturally
subsided, for one reason, from habituation to the conditions. The X
affect, never experienced before, from the very first was repressed by
the inhibiting force of the more intense emotion of disgust.[277] Fear
also was involved in this repression, for there was a conflict between
the opposing forces of conflicting emotions; and in such a conflict—as,
for example, between fear and anger—the stronger tends to repress its
antagonist and whatever it conflicts with. Consequently the recurring
rebellious complex was habitually accompanied by repugnance alone. The
exact constitution of this rebellious complex I am not at liberty to
mention. It may have been a matter of mother-in-law, or of social
arrangements, or particular duties and responsibilities, or something
else—it does not matter and it is not necessary to say. It was a
shrinking from a particular condition of her life. It was certainly not
a wish unless this repugnance and “kicking against the pricks” can be
twisted into its opposite as a wish to be free from the objectionable
condition. Still less was it a morally unacceptable unconscious, being
just the opposite; for both the rebellious thoughts and the wish to be
free from the condition objected to were acceptable and justified to
herself in her mind, and, in her secret thoughts at least, tolerated as
natural and reasonable.[278] Nor was the X affect an _intolerable_ wish.
If a wish there was no reason why it should not have been gratified.
Nevertheless, as B affirms, the rebellious thoughts were put out of
mind, as thoughts of a disagreeable fact, as they arose from time to
time; but this was only from a sense of duty in consideration of
responsibilities undertaken. I could make this clearer if I were at
liberty to enter into the details of these rebellious thoughts. Her life
in every other respect was an unusually happy one, surrounded by all
that one should desire, and included a devoted husband whom she loved,
admired and respected. For these reasons alone she felt it a duty to
suppress all expression of her rebellious feelings.

The main point, from the point of view of psychogenesis, is that at this
early stage we have constantly _recurring conflicts between the conative
forces pertaining to emotions linked with sentiments of duty, loyalty,
and affection, on the one hand, and those pertaining to the rebellious
thoughts with corresponding desires, impulses, etc., reinforced with the
emotion of repugnance, on the other_. The former always won and the
latter were inhibited or repressed into the unconscious. These were not
the only rebellious thoughts that were repressed. There were others from
which the original rebellion received accretions. That such constantly
repressed thoughts with their strong feeling tones should be conserved
in the unconscious was a psychological necessity, and also that they
should emerge by the force of their own urge into consciousness from
time to time like an obsession whenever stimulated by environmental and
personal conditions. I may simply cite the two following simple
examples.

The subject, governed by the maternal instinct, naturally loved to take
care of her baby and “make things for him to wear, and fuss over them”;
and yet there were “floating thoughts” of an opposite character which
later, as will appear, emerged and became conspicuous in the B complex
and B personality. “She was very fond of her father-in-law and did
everything to make him happy,” and yet there were other thoughts which
conceived of him as a “fussy old bother.” These again were represented
later in the loss of sentiments of affection and in the point of view of
the B phases. There was no real dissociation and doubling of
consciousness; these conflicting attitudes and tendencies were, at least
in the beginning until the later period of stress and strain when they
eventuated in corresponding action, merely _evanescent thoughts, wishes
and impulses which easily passed out of mind_, or an undercurrent of
thought such as all of us have more or less.

Later, when they became more insistent and persistent, they had to be
repressed by an effort of will.

Then it followed that C, conscious of these contrary impulses,
reproached herself for them, thought herself wicked to have them, and
when they became insistent repressed them. Their intrusion into
consciousness was probably favored by a considerable degree of
neurasthenia, for when she was ill they were more frequent and
obtrusive, while with good health and happiness they disappeared, as is
the case with all obsessing ideas.

The occurrence of such contrary impulses would probably have been of no
account and nothing more would have been heard from them, as in the case
of ordinary mortals, if it had not been for a period of stress and
strain which she was destined to undergo. As it was, the awakening of
these contrary thoughts and impulses was fraught with a danger to the
psychical unity, a danger that actually materialized, namely: as these
conflicting impulses, being also rebellious against the conditions of
life, were constantly awakened contemporaneously with the specialized
frequently recurring “rebellious complex,” the whole tended to become
synthesized into a large complex which later, during the second period
of stress and strain, became in turn the nucleus of a still larger
complex (B). During this latter period, as we shall see, like the forces
of a growing political revolution, the rebellious thoughts and impulses
increased in number, frequency and intensity, until there were times
when they acquired the mastery in the conflicts and repressed the
previously opposing thoughts of duty, affection, etc., and dominated the
personality. The effect of such intense conflict was to cause by
repression a rift in the personality, i.e., to dissociate a large system
of ideas (with their emotions), from other systems. All this will appear
as we go on.

There is another point which it is interesting here to note. The
secondary phase B looking back recognizes (i.e., has a sense of
awareness) that the “rebellious thoughts” and the various contrary
impulses were herself. “_I was the rebellion_;” “I think of the
rebellion as myself;” “I was the rebellion which she kept to herself;”
“The first complex formed a something I am;” “I think I am made up of
all the impulses which began to come then;” "It seems to me, as I think
of it now, that I was always there—sometimes more, sometimes less—in the
form of conflicting impulses.“ In these and similar phrases B, over and
over again, in numerous analyses at widely separated intervals,
identifies these early conscious processes with her own individuality.
Nevertheless, ”_I was not an_ I _then_, you know," she explains, “but to
understand what I write you will have to call me so. I remember them now
as my thoughts, but at that time I never thought of myself as a self.”
“I never thought, ‘I’ do not like this or that then; _it was like an
impulse in the other direction_.” Let it not be forgotten, then, that at
the beginning the rebellious complex and impulses were not synthesized
and segregated as an ego. Nevertheless, in fact, whenever she attempts
to describe the early rebellious complex and the impulses she drops into
the mode of saying, “I felt so and so,” and finds herself obliged to use
this personal pronoun when thinking of these past thoughts, and the same
is true when she speaks of the more fully developed subsequent B
complex.

You will say that there is nothing particularly remarkable or unusual in
this. We all think of our past thoughts as our own, even when they
occurred, say, in absent mindedness when there was no consciousness of
self. _But the unusual thing is that B—the subject in the B phase of
personality—does not think of C’s other thoughts or conscious
experiences as her own._ In fact she persistently refuses to recognize
these others as hers. She has no feeling of their having belonged to her
own consciousness. “They were not my thoughts,” she says. This is true
of this other content of the conscious life of the early first period as
well as of the later periods when the B complex and the B personality
appeared. “_She_ liked,” such and such a thing; “_I_ didn’t!” "_She_
thought,“ so and so; ”_I_ didn’t;" referring respectively to the
thoughts of the dominant consciousness and the contrary thoughts. “Yet
in referring to the B _complex_,” she writes of the second period, “I
find myself continually saying ‘I’; it is difficult not to do so. This,
I think, must show the intimate relation between the two. I think of the
B complex and I find I think of it as myself, although I do not think of
A and C as myself, and they do not seem to be my own personality.”

This feeling by a secondary personality that certain conscious
experiences belong, or belonged, to her own personal consciousness or
ego and that others do not, or did not, belong is a common phenomenon in
such cases and is of great significance. It is a phenomenon which
justifies the inference that the relation which one system of ideas
bears to that which we call the ego is different from that of the other
system; it is a phenomenon, too, which must be taken into account in
solving the problem of the ego. When we study the records of cases of
multiple personality we find as a frequent observation that the
secondary personality distinguishes between the conscious experiences
which belong to itself and those which belong to the principal
personality, and to other secondary personalities, if more than one.
This differentiation is based upon the feeling of a particular
self-consciousness being attached to the former and not to the latter.
The conception of self and the self-regarding sentiment differ markedly
in their content in the different phases of personality. The analysis of
their contents shows this to be the case: e. g., the contained images
and affects. It is not, therefore, simply a matter of the experiences
occurring at different chronological epochs. Indeed the two different
sets of experiences may be synchronous, one being conscious and the
other co-conscious.

I have passed over a question which is sure to be asked: Why did the
“unexpectedly disagreeable” situation, whatever it was, occasion the
“shock” and the rebellious complex? I may say frankly that the situation
was not one which would induce such a disastrous effect in the ordinary
individual. The answer is to be found in the principle of settings which
give meaning to ideas. [Every idea over and above the sensory images
which take part in its content has meaning; and the meaning is
determined by antecedent experiences (thoughts, perceptions, feelings,
etc.) with which it is associated, i.e., in which it is set. An idea of
a particular individual, for example, has one meaning for one person and
another meaning for another according to the associated mental
experiences of each. These experiences form the setting or context which
determines the meaning, point of view, and attitude of mind towards any
given object or situation presented to consciousness.][279] Whenever an
emotional “shock” (one that is not a simple instinct reaction) occurs,
this setting of antecedent experiences, organized with the idea and
emotions, acts as a unitary complex, a psychic whole, and behaves as a
sort of psychological torch which some later experience sets aflame, so
to speak, as an emotional shock. Because of this setting the idea reacts
in accordance with the emotions (fear, disgust, etc.) which the
“meaning” includes, and induces a defense reaction. Now analytical
investigation revealed settings to the “situation” dating in part from
early childhood and in part from later experiences. An attitude of mind,
therefore, already existed which was ready to react with the emotions
(fear and disgust) which were excited by the meaning of the situation.
It is easy to see, in the light of the actual facts, that if a certain
factor of the situation had been altered, without altering the situation
itself, its meaning would have been altered, i.e., it would not have
awakened the setting built up by the experiences of life, and would not
have excited the emotional response (shock) that ensued.

DISSOCIATION

But the organization of an emotional complex was not the whole effect of
these experiences. In addition, if the memories of B can be trusted—and
I believe they can—there resulted in a minor degree a cleavage or
dissociation of personality. This was not so pronounced as to give rise
to noticeable pathological manifestations, but apparently sufficient to
make at least a line of indenture, so to speak, which afterwards was
easily broadened and deepened into a complete dissociation. This is not
easy to demonstrate at this late date, but there are certain facts that
have some evidential value.

In the first place, according to the evidence, there developed a
tendency in what we have called the rebellious complex to take on
independent activity, or an automatism after the nature of an obsession,
outside the domain of the will and self-control. No amount of reasoning
or of self-reproach sufficed to change the point of view. Like an
obsession it would not down and recurred automatically.

In the second place, it seems, according to B’s memories, that the
activity of the rebellious complex of ideas began to take place to a
certain extent outside the focus of the attentive consciousness, in the
sense that the personal consciousness was not conscious or aware of
their presence. This means that at times when the ideas in question were
not in consciousness, and therefore might be supposed to be dormant in
the unconscious, they recurred nevertheless and were in subconscious
activity, i.e., were co-conscious. This statement is based upon the
interrogation of B who to the best of her memory thought that the
“rebellious ideas were split off and went on by themselves while the
subject C was thinking of other things, without her being aware of
them.” “They were co-conscious as I know it now.”

Too much weight should not be laid upon memories of this kind after such
long intervals of time, and I would not be understood as doing so; but
that the memories of this secondary personality may be given their just
value it should be explained that, like some other secondary
personalities, B’s memory embraces not only the mental states (thoughts,
perceptions, feelings, etc.,) of the principal personality which were
within the focus of attention, but those which were in the fringe or
margin of awareness and those which were entirely outside, i.e., fully
subconscious. This has proved to be the case by numerous test
observations and experiments. B might, therefore, remember split off
(co-conscious) rebellious states if they existed. One reason for this
enlargement of the field of memory of this phase of personality is that
besides being an alternating personality[280] she is a co-conscious
personality. But this is another story which we shall have to postpone
for the present.

In the third place, the constant invasion of the field of the personal
consciousness by the contrary impulses, which I have already spoken of,
suggest, if they do not establish, a certain degree of automatic
activity arising from the unconscious and dissociated from the rest of
the conscious field. In the light of what has already been told and of
later developments, to be described in the next lecture, the inference
assumes a high degree of probability that these impulses were
manifestations of ideas and feeling tones belonging to an earlier period
of life—childhood or girlhood—which had been conserved in the
unconscious and which now erupted into the field of the personal
co-consciousness.

I do not want to make too much of these early tendencies to dissociation
nor is the matter important. For historical comprehension, however, it
is desirable that the facts should be mentioned for, if our
interpretation be correct, they were evidently steps in the evolution of
the final disintegration.

Thus matters went on during this first period, covering a span of 14
years; sometimes the rebellious complex, enlarged and constellated with
conflicting thoughts, desires and impulses, recurred with frequency, and
sometimes they remained dormant for considerable intervals, the state of
general health apparently often being the conditioning factor.

III
THE EVOLUTION OF THE B COMPLEX

PERIOD II

At the end of the 14-year span—when the _second period_ begins—the
subject “received a great shock in the sudden illness of her husband.
This illness was of such a nature that she knew no complete recovery was
possible and that death might result at any time.” This second shock
aroused once more the emotion of fright, and the old rebellion and a
certain apprehensiveness, a trait which is inherent to a marked degree
in her character. During the following four years which covered the
illness of her husband she was almost literally torn to pieces mentally
by this apprehensiveness—always anticipating the inevitable hanging over
her.

After the first two weeks, when her husband’s temporary recovery took
place, the same old rebellious complex returned with intensified force
as the condition that gave rise to it returned. But she repressed all
expression of it, resolved that no one should guess her secret because
she did not wish to give pain to another. So she kept her secret to
herself, and what she kept to herself became the _beginnings_ of a new
personality. “Then came the nervous strain of sorrow, anxiety, and care,
and the inability to reconcile herself to the inevitable. This nervous
strain continued for four years. C’s life during this time was given up
entirely to the care of her husband; she tried to live up to her
ideal—which was a high one—of duty and responsibility, and always having
the sense of failure, discouragement and apprehension.” Necessarily she
was cut off from the social world of gaiety by the care that devolved
upon her or, considering her temperament, thought she was. A person of
less intense feeling and governed by pure intellect quite likely might
have reasonably arranged her life so that she could have both given all
the care she wished to the invalid, on the one hand, and participated in
the pleasures of social life, on the other. But, like many anxious wives
and mothers whom all physicians see, her anxiety and feelings were too
intense for such cool reasoning, her mind became single tracked and she
shut herself off from the world she loved. Consequently, during this
period of stress and strain the old rebellious complex not only became
intensified and more persistent, but also became enlarged and
systematized with a still larger cluster of rebellious thoughts. To the
old rebellion there was now added a rebellion against the hardness of
fate which was about to cheat her out of the happiness which belonged to
her, and still more against the new conditions of life as she found
them. This is what the incurable illness of her husband meant to her.

She rebelled bitterly [B writes in a letter;] she _could_ not have it
so and it _was_ so. No one knew what his illness was and she bent
every energy to conceal his true condition. She blamed herself for his
illness [in her ignorance of the pathology of disease], and after a
time she began to have that sense of being double. More than anything
else she wanted to be happy; she saw all happiness going and she could
_not_ let it go—it _must_ not—she _would_ be happy, and she
_couldn’t_. It was a fight with herself all the time. We were A and B
then just as much as we are now. The part that afterwards became A
doing all that a devoted conscientious wife could do, determined that
her husband should never miss anything of love and care; and the part
that afterwards became B rebelling against it all, not willing to give
up her youth, longing for pleasure, and above all for happiness. To be
happy, that was always the cry, and it was not possible.

It was a longing for conditions which in her mind seemed essential, and
she could not accept the conditions as they were. “It was a rebellion, a
longing for happiness, a disinclination to give up the pleasures of life
which the conditions required; and there was a certain _determination to
have these pleasures in spite of everything_, and this resulted in a
constant struggle between C and this complex.” It was that inability,
which is so common and causes so much mental disturbance and unhappiness
in so many people, to reconcile and adjust oneself to the actual
situation of one’s life and accept it. And here, in the case of B. C.
A., we recognize in the center of the rebellion of this second period of
stress and strain, the same thoughts which had cropped up evanescently
during the first period but now become more intense and persistent, more
disturbing and the fundamental, cause of the inability to adjust herself
to the situation.

These thoughts, however, were not tolerated by the subject and were put
out of mind and _repressed into the unconscious by her rightmindedness_.
It thus became a matter of conflict between the light-hearted gay
sentiments and temperament of inexperienced youth which, in ignorance of
life, finds it difficult to accept its serious responsibilities, and the
sentiments of honor, duty, and affection which were the dominating
traits. These facts are too intimate to go into in greater detail, but
each one will probably recognize in himself some such conflicting
desires and tendencies.

This is the place to point out certain major traits in the character of
B. C. A. which enable us to recognize more clearly the source of the
conflicting impulses and help to make intelligible their uprushes. There
were two strongly marked elements in her character which had always been
noticeable and which, given the appropriate conditions, were almost
bound to come in conflict. B. C. A. during all her girlhood days and
early married life was noted for her happy, buoyant, lively,
light-hearted disposition. She was ready at all times for pleasure and
could not bear to give it up, and she had an unusually intense desire to
be happy; she loved happiness and wanted happiness, and when happiness
dominated, as it generally did in a person of such a disposition, she
was filled with the “joy of life.” Responsive to her environment,[281]
when her surroundings were sympathetic all the joy and mirth of her own
personality was given out and reflected upon others. She was of an
intense nature in that she felt all the anxieties, sorrows, and joys of
life with great and equal intensity. But it was joy and happiness which
appealed to her as the one thing she must preserve. This was one of her
character traits.

On the other hand, the second trait was equally strong, namely,
unreasonably high moral ideals, so high even in the little every day
affairs of life that only a strong stern fanatic or ascetic could live
consistently and perpetually up to them; she was intensely conscientious
and high-minded with an almost inordinate sense of honor and duty; and
there was also an overweening pride in her rectitude and moral ideals
which sometimes seems to have transcended common-sense; and there was
pride in her pride. Reserved and rather unapproachable to strangers she
was affectionate to relatives and intimates.

These two traits of character if analyzed would be seen to be two great
strongly contrasted unitary systems of ideas and sentiments with their
respective emotions and feelings. They formed two sides to her
personality, and the conflicts that ensued could be said to have been
between the two sides.

To say that these two traits or groups of traits—love of the joy of life
and conscientious devotion to duty—were combined in one person is not of
course to mention anything out of the ordinary. What was out of the
ordinary was the intensity with which each existed. Now that she has
recovered from her illness and has reverted to the normal synthesized
personality these traits are still easily noticeable. None but a person
of unusually strong, fixed character, capable of holding an ideal
continuously in mind, subordinating all else, could have downed the cry
for happiness and lighter pleasures of life. When we come to the
secondary split personalities we shall see that the splitting was
between these two traits or systems; the elements of one gathering about
itself associated elements, formed one personality with corresponding
reactions to the environment, and the elements of the other in similar
fashion formed the other personality. Thus stronger conflicts arose.

The recognition of mental conflicts as disturbances of personality and
determinants of conduct is as old as literature itself. They have been
the theme of poets, dramatists and fiction writers of every age. It has
remained for modern dynamic psychology to study and determine with
exactness the phenomena, discover the mental mechanisms involved and
formulate the laws. One school, the so-called psycho-analysts, claims to
find in practically all conflicts, a very complicated mechanism
involving repression, unconscious processes (generally a sexual wish for
the most part from infantile life) a “censor,” a compromise, conversion
and disguisement of the repressed factor in the form of a
psycho-neurosis, or other mental and physiological phenomena,
substitution, etc. I have no intention of entering into a discussion of
the correctness of such mechanisms. The sole point I wish to make is
that, even if so, to find such mechanisms and results to be universal is
the reductio ad absurdum just as it would be to find that a conflict
between a policeman and a resisting rioter is always carried out by a
process which is manifested by a black eye and cracked skull, arrest,
trial and conviction of the rioter. The process of the physical conflict
may be simple or complex and be manifested and terminated in many ways.
It may be carried out by and result in simple dissociation of the rioter
from the crowd and sending him home about his business.

So with mental conflicts which may be manifested in many ways and have
various results. In previous lectures we have considered some of these
ways and results. One way and mechanism is, as in the latter example of
the rioter, the simple repression and dissociation of the weaker factor
resulting in the domination of the stronger, and the determination of
conduct according to the impulses and tendencies organized within the
mental system that has gained the ascendency. But in maintaining social
law and order we may have to deal, not with a single rioter, but with a
mob or organized rebellion. Then the repression of the uprising may
bring into action more men and more systematized forces and may result
in the repression of organized factions and an alteration of the social
system. So mental conflicts may involve large systems and result in
extensive rearrangements and repressions; in other words, an alteration
with dissociation of personality. This was the mechanism and result in
the case now under examination.

The conflicts were between the impulses or conative forces discharged
from the emotions pertaining to youthful sentiments of pleasure and joy
and play and ideas with exalting pleasure-feeling tones, all
constituting wishes for the pleasures and happiness of youth—conflicts,
I mean, between these forces and those of ethical sentiments of duty,
together with other sentiments involving the emotions of affection,
anxiety, sympathy, admiration, and depressing pain-feeling tones. _For
the time being, at least, the latter won and the former were repressed._
But they were still there, conserved in the unconscious, ready to spring
to life in response to a stimulus at any favorable opportunity when the
repressing force of the will power was weakened by stress and strain. So
we see that the conflicting wishes and impulses which jarred and
threatened the mental equilibrium of the subject were, after all, only
impulses or incursions from the unconscious of repressed antecedent
mental experiences (wishes and conative tendencies) which were elements
in the normal character.

Thus it came about that the original complex of rebellious thoughts
against a _particular_ condition had become slowly enlarged into a
rebellion against _general conditions_, and _constellated with a number
of specific wishes for pleasure (which were incompatible with her life)
and their corresponding impulses into a still larger complex_.

It is this latter that we have called the _B complex_.

It had become evolved and organized out of the original “rebellious”
complex as its nucleus by receiving successive accretions from later
rebellious ideas and wishes in conflict with the personality, much as
the pearl in the oyster grows by successive accretions.

From one point of view it was a highly developed “mood.”

It was still under control but later, as we shall find, it was destined
to assume autonomous activity and play a dominant rôle.

“C was still conscious of these thoughts, [B wrote in her account], but
they represented to her the selfish and weak part of her nature and she
tried to suppress them; tried to put them out of her mind but they still
persisted, and she was always to a greater or less extent aware of them.
There was no lack of awareness and no amnesia. As the months and years
went on the sorrow and anxiety of the C group increased, and the
conflicting thoughts and _rebellion_ of the B group increased. C was
ashamed of the latter and always tried to suppress such thoughts as they
arose. If during those years anything happy had come to C the formation
of this rebellious complex would, I believe, have been retarded, perhaps
stopped altogether, but nothing pleasant happened; it was all grief, and
everything went wrong.”

Notwithstanding the continuing stress and strain and lack of joy all
probably would have gone well if C’s husband had recovered and she had
retained her physical health. Returning to her normal life, she would
have been only one more of those who have lived through a period of
anxious perturbation. But unfortunately, as it happened, “C’s husband
died suddenly away from home, the one thing she had [dreaded and] felt
she could not bear.” She received the news over the telephone.

She did not recover [B states] from the shock and became more and more
nervous, was very much depressed, easily fatigued, suffered constantly
from headache, and was possessed by all sorts of doubts and fears,
reproaching herself for things done and undone. She also overtaxed her
strength in attending to business matters.

C’s physical health immediately and suddenly gave way. Her own account,
already given, goes more into detail and lets us see the extent to which
she was handicapped by physical and mental ill-health in her struggle
against her rebellious impulses—against fate. She was not given half a
chance. Her description of her condition at this period, as noted at the
beginning of this account, is worth repeating here in this connection:

I was at that time in good physical health, though nervously worn, but
this death occurred in such a way as to cause me a great shock and
within the six days following I lost twenty pounds in weight. For
nearly three months I went almost entirely without food, seemingly not
eating enough to sustain life, and I did not average more than three
or four hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, but I felt neither hungry
nor faint, and was extremely busy and active, being absorbed both by
home responsibilities and business affairs. The end of the year,
however, found me in very poor health physically and I was nervously
and mentally exhausted. I was depressed, sad, felt that I had lost all
that made life worth living and, indeed, I wished to die. I was very
nervous, unable to eat or sleep, easily fatigued, suffered constantly
from headache, to which I had always been subject, and was not able to
take much exercise. The physician under whose care I was at this time
told me, when I asked him to give my condition a name, that I was
suffering from “nervous and cerebral exhaustion.”

It is always the case in so-called neurasthenic states that the power of
self-control is weakened, resistance to obsessing thoughts diminishes
and the latter tend to take on automaticity and invade and dissociate
the personality. And there is also a certain degree of repression and
dissociation of previously dominant systems of ideas. In other words
every case of real so-called “neurasthenia” and hysteria is a greater or
less alteration of personality.[282]

Accordingly, although at the beginning of period II the B complex was
only a loosely organized system of rebellious thoughts, wishes and
impulses recurring from time to time, this system now began in her
physically and mentally weakened condition to acquire increased force,
to invade the personal consciousness, and breaking through the
repressing force of the will to gain autonomous sovereignty and
temporarily to dominate the conduct. In the prolonged conflict the
rebellion with its contrary wishes was at moments to gain the
ascendency. In other words, these other elements came to the surface and
gathered to themselves all the discordant elements of personality, much
as a radical political party gathers to itself all the rebellious
discordant factions that are in antagonism to the governing conservative
party. In one sense another side to the character had become
crystallized and autonomous, and, through the intensity of its feeling
tones, became periodically dominant. But not without protest from the
previously dominant elements of personality. This protest, however, had
certain psychological peculiarities which show that the conditions were
not quite as simple as this. I will speak of them later.

Soon the repressed wishes, impulses—the B complex—began to manifest
themselves in a way which indicated that a definite dissociation had
taken place, although as yet, as I have said, there was no secondary
_self_ or _I_ properly speaking. All the previous undercurrents of
thought—the intensified shrinking from the particular condition of life,
the internal rebellion against the conditions in general, the
disinclinations, longings, wishes, and determinations—had become
synthesized, and began to form a separate train of thought, so that at
one and the same time there was a sense, as is so commonly felt in such
cases, of a double train of thought; she had “a sense of being double.”
It seemed to her, C, that there was “all the time a pulling in a
different way from the way she had to go, a not wanting to live the life
she had to live.” This “sense of being double” seems to have been so
pronounced that to B, looking back upon it, it seemed as if these two
trains of thought (the C personality and the B complex) “occurred
concurrently and simultaneously, so that it could be said that one was
co-conscious with the other,” just as much as when there is loss of
awareness on the part of the principal consciousness for the coconscious
train. In this case there was, however, at this time, no lack of
awareness and there is nothing to prove B’s view of concomitance of
different trains of thought rather than that the two trains did not
rapidly oscillate or alternate from instant to instant.

The self-accusations and self-reproaches of the principal consciousness,
C, rendered the pleasure impulses still more intolerable and tended the
more to repress the rebellious train and thereby to disrupt further the
personality and to crystallize the secondary synthesis. It became more
than a matter of inner behavior of mental systems: _the outward behavior
became affected and changed_.

For corresponding to this invasion and domination of the ideas of the B
complex the behavior of C became altered, much to her amazement. That
is, her conduct at times was governed by the impulses of her once
repressed wishes and she found herself then doing things which normally
she had not enjoyed or done. _Her health and strength also, at such
moments, became extraordinarily improved._

This alteration of conduct and character and health became more
obtrusive and characteristic at a later date when the B complex had
become developed into the B personality. But the alteration of conduct
can be easily recognized at these earlier times if some of the previous
minor characteristics of C in respect to this sort of behavior are
understood.

Among these characteristics were a great dislike of riding on electric
cars, an almost abnormal nervousness about bugs and mosquitoes—I
always disliked going into the woods for this reason—an aversion to
exercise in summer, and a fear of canoeing. I had never enjoyed
sitting out from under cover or on the ground as the glare of the sun
was apt to cause headache and I abhorred all crawling things. I was
reserved with strangers and not given to making my friends quickly;
devoted to my family and relatives, fond of my friends, and not in the
habit of neglecting them in any way. I felt much responsibility
concerning business matters and had given a good deal of time and
thought to them. Many more peculiarities might be mentioned.

In the later B personality, as will be presently related, these and
other traits were replaced by their opposites, but even at this earlier
time the complete reversal of her tastes and behavior was obvious.

To my surprise [C states in her account] there were times when I did
some of the things above referred to, such as sitting in the woods,
etc. I felt a sense of wonder that I should be doing them and a still
greater wonder that I found them pleasant. There was also a sense at
times of impatience and irritation at being troubled with business
matters or responsibility of any kind and an inclination to throw
aside all care. I wondered at myself for feeling as I did and rather
protested to myself at many of my acts but still kept right on doing
them. It seems to me that these ideas and feelings formed a complex by
which I was more or less governed and that this complex gradually grew
in strength and can be identified with that of the personality (B)
which first developed.

A more interesting account of this change of conduct is given by B:

_As she grew more and more neurasthenic_, it seems to me as I look
back upon it, the _B complex grew stronger and more dominant_, and
with this increase of strength of this complex, C began to live a life
_corresponding to the impulses belonging to it_—staying out of doors
entirely—and then there followed much improvement in her health.[283]
She took long rides on the electric cars, which she had always
previously disliked intensively; she had always been very much afraid
of a canoe, but now she went canoeing often and enjoyed it. She was
surprised and astonished that she should enjoy these things, as it was
foreign to her natural and previous ideas and inclinations. There was
no change of character, properly speaking, but she did things she
disapproved of and knew at the time that she disapproved of them.
There was a recognition that she was doing things she would not
previously have done, and she protested to herself, but even this
half-protest was suppressed. She would say to herself, “Why am I doing
these things? I never cared for them before. Why should I care for
them now?” The old doubts and fears were at this time out of her mind.
The personality was C, but influenced and dominated by the B complex
of which, of course, she was perfectly aware.

What is here described is obviously a mood but a mood which included
altered bodily as well as mental characteristics. The alternation of
neurasthenic and healthy phases also became more obtrusive when the
healthy mood became a personality. The apparent recovery then deceived
the medical attendant.

In these quoted passages we have a description of the uprush from the
unconscious and successful sovereignty of the conflicting B complex.
Before continuing with our analysis two points are worth noting. First:
With the winning of sovereignty by this system of ideas, the previously
dominating system—or self—sank to an inferior position and assumed the
protesting, one may say, the rebellious attitude. Like two adversaries
in a wrestling conflict, in which first one then the other holds the
vantage and each in turn yields before the superior force of the other,
so it was turn and turn about, and now the rebellious complex becoming
the victor, repressed the protests, the self-reproaches, doubts, fears,
and scruples of the regularly constituted government.

Second: With the eruption of the B complex into the C personality it is
interesting once more to note the increase of physical strength, and
improvement in the general health. It was thought by her physician that
it was really a condition of health which had supervened but, as will be
seen, this was far from being the case; it was one of psychological
disintegration. Nevertheless with the one system of ideas—the B
complex—there were associated all the mental and bodily reactions of
health, with the other complex the reactions characteristic of the
neurasthenic condition. This alteration was still more noticeable later
when the B _personality_ erupted. The same phenomenon was observed in
the case of Miss Beauchamp. With the appearance of the “Sally” complex
all the neurasthenic symptoms vanished, and the personality became
buoyant with health. Identical variations in health have been observed
in other cases of dissociated personality; one phase of personality
being characterized by an extreme hysterical condition, another by
freedom from such symptoms (Felida X., Marcelline R., and others). This
phenomenon is of great significance for the understanding of the
neurasthenic and hysteric condition.

-----

Footnote 264:

This study was first published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, Oct., 1919, but originally was written for this volume.
It was omitted with other lectures from the first edition to limit the
size of the volume.

Footnote 265:

Dissociation and inhibition are not coextensive terms for although
inhibition implies dissociation, a dissociated element may not be
necessarily inhibited as it may function subconsciously or
independently of the personal consciousness.

Footnote 266:

Unfortunately most of the reported cases were not studied from a
genetic point of view and the reports are too meagre to afford
sufficient data for a study of this kind. But in many cases the
principles can be recognized. In the article “Hysteria from the Point
of View of Dissociated Personality,” _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_,
Oct., 1906, I have given a synopsis in tabulated form of the reports
accessible up to the date of publication.

Footnote 267:

I would refer those who are interested in this problem of personality
to a similar but more exhaustive study of the case of “Miss Beauchamp”
which I have recently published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, Vol. XV, Nos. 2 and 3, 1920. A descriptive account of the
case was published in 1906: _The Dissociation of a Personality_; New
York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1906.

Footnote 268:

Published under the title “My Life as a Dissociated Personality” in
the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_; Oct.-Nov., 1908 and Dec.-Jan.,
1909.

Footnote 269:

The broken lines indicate dissociation; the solid lines, synthesis.

Footnote 270:

I have italicized a number of words and sentences not thus emphasized
in the original account.

Footnote 271:

Sympathetically excited emotions (instincts).

Footnote 272:

The division into periods follows that given in the second account by
B.

Footnote 273:

_Journal Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. III, No. 5, p. 311.

Footnote 274:

Lecture IX.

Footnote 275:

Prince: _Jour. Abnormal Psychology_. Vol. I, No. 1, 1906. Also, _The
Dissociation of a Personality_, 2nd ed., Chap. XXI. James: _Varieties
of Religious Experiences_.

Footnote 276:

I. e., “Tried not to think of it”; “put it out of her mind as a
disagreeable fact.”

Footnote 277:

Instinct of repulsion (McDougall).

Footnote 278:

Nor were they the reaction to or the expression of a previously
repressed sexual wish as any such wish would have met no conscious
resistance. It is easy to see in the light of all the facts that,
given a certain change in the conditions, or point of view, there
would have been no shock and no rebellion.

Footnote 279:

Lecture X; also, “The Meaning of Ideas as Determined by Unconscious
Settings,” _Journal Abnormal Psychology_, Oct.-Nov., 1912.

Footnote 280:

I use the present tense as more convenient although I am speaking of a
past condition.

Footnote 281:

As illustrated by her responsive behaviour at the theatre (p. 558), as
I have witnessed it there and socially.

Footnote 282:

“Hysteria from the Point of View of Dissociated Personality.” _Journal
Abnormal Psychology_, 1906.

Footnote 283:

It is interesting to note the apparent paradox of an increasing
physically neurasthenic phase coincident with an increasing physically
healthy phase. With the subsidence of the latter the neurasthenic
state became obvious.

LECTURE XIX
(THE SAME CONTINUED)—THE B PERSONALITY

PERIOD III

Let us now return to C’s account of the shock which occurred at this
time, while the B complex was periodically dominant. It was the cause of
the final complete dissociation of personality and the eruption of the
secondary personality B.

The shock I received was of an intensely emotional nature. It brought
to me, suddenly, the realization that my position in life was entirely
changed, that I was quite alone, and with this there came a feeling of
helplessness and desolation beyond my powers of description. I felt,
too, angry, frightened, insulted. For a few minutes these ideas
flashed through my mind and then—all was changed. All the distressing
ideas of the preceding moments left me, and I no longer resented what,
a moment before, had caused me so much distress. _I became the
personality which we have since called_ “B.” I do not feel now that
the episode was of a character that would have affected a person of a
different nature, or even myself had I been in good health.
Psychologically speaking, I suppose I was already in a somewhat
disintegrated condition and therefore more susceptible. At any rate it
did affect me. _From the moment of that shock I was, literally, a
different person._ Even the episode itself now became of little or no
importance to me; indeed I looked upon it rather as a lark and really
enjoyed it, as I did, in this character, succeeding events. _With the
change to “B” there was no loss of memory as sometimes occurs under
such conditions._ It seems very curious to me that the effect of this
shock was to change me not to the despondent, despairing mood of “A”
which came later, but to the happy mood of “B.”

In describing the two personalities I shall sometimes have to refer to
them by the letters A and B to avoid the constant repetition of
“myself as A—myself as B.”

As B, I was, apparently, a perfectly normal person, as will be seen
from the description which follows, except that I was ruled by the
fixed idea that upon me, and me alone, depended the salvation, moral
and physical, of a person who was almost a perfect stranger to me and
who was the subject of a drug habit. I had known this person but a few
weeks. This idea became an obsession; all else sank into
insignificance beside it; _nothing_ else was of any consequence; I
went to all lengths to help this person, doing things which, though
quite right and proper, indeed imperative from my point of view as B,
were unwise and unnecessary. I believed that I was the only one in the
world who would stand by him; that every one else had given him up as
hopeless and that his one chance lay in his belief in me.

The writer neglects here to say that it was not only as B that she had
undertaken the “salvation” of the drug addict. As C she also shared in
this solicitude and had begun the reformation. B only continued it but
from different motives as later stated by C herself. B does not refer to
it in her story apparently not taking it very seriously. Of course in my
numerous interviews I heard an exhaustive account of the whole affair.

The marked change in health and strength for the better noted in those
phases, during period II, when the personality was dominated by the B
complex and mentioned in the last lecture was still more accentuated now
in the B personality. C thus refers to it:

With the change of personality, which will be clearer as you read,
there was also a complete change of physical conditions. _Previously
neurasthenic, I, as B, was perfectly well and strong and felt equal to
anything in the way of physical exercise._

You will also remember that in the last lecture I spoke of certain minor
traits which had been characteristic of C and which were markedly
altered in an opposite direction under the dominance of the B complex
and induced impulsive alterations of behavior. These changes were
accentuated in the B personality from the very first as C goes on to
describe.

The minor traits I have above mentioned were replaced by their
opposites. A walk of three or four miles did not tire me at all; I
tramped through the woods during the hottest days of summer, with
nothing on my head, feeling no discomfort from the heat and no
fatigue; I sat on the ground in the woods, hours at a time, not
minding in the least the bugs and the mosquitoes; canoeing I was very
fond of and felt no fear of the water. I also took long rides on the
electric cars and found them perfectly delightful. These are small
things but, as you see, it was a radical change and seems as strange
to remember as the more important ones.

The change in the emotional and feeling tones, the former representing a
different set of emotion-instincts, from those that were habitual, is
illustrated in the following passage:

As B, I was light-hearted and happy and life seemed good to me; I
wanted to live; my pulses beat fuller, my blood ran warmer through my
veins than it ever had done before. I seemed more alive. Nothing is
stranger to remember than the vigorous health of B. Never in my life
was I so well, before or since. I felt much _younger_ and looked so,
for the lines of care, anxiety, sorrow, and fatigue had faded from my
face and the change in expression was remarked upon. I neglected my
family and friends shamefully, writing short and unsatisfactory
letters which left them in ignorance of my health and plans; business
affairs I washed my hands of entirely. I lost the formality and
reserve which was one of my traits. My tastes, ideas, and points of
view were completely changed.

I remained in this state for some weeks, enjoying life to the utmost
in a way entirely foreign to my natural tastes and inclinations as
described above, walking, boating, etc., living wholly out of doors;
and also doing many irresponsible things which were of a nature to
cause me much distress later.

Some of this might, perhaps, be ascribed to improved health though
different from anything I had ever been before.[284]

A point of considerable significance is the youthfulness of this B
phase, a trait which the writer C notes and which B in her account
emphasizes. When later the case came under my observation this
phenomenon was so noticeable that it arrested the attention.

It may be interesting to hear B’s description of the shock, more
dramatically told than C’s, and of the changes above mentioned of the
personality (health, emotional tones, conduct, and youthfulness)
immediately following.

It runs as follows:

At this time there came to C a third shock of a strongly emotional
nature, giving rise to events which I call _period III_. It brought to
her the realization of a fact of which she had been unconscious; she
had never thought of the possibility of such a thing and she was
startled, frightened, angry, all in a flash—and I was there. James, in
explaining “Sudden Religious Conversion,” speaks of a “flowering of
the subconscious,”—well, I “flowered,” and C disappeared somewhere;
_the B complex had become a personality_ and I lived a life of my own
choosing.[285] How slowly this complex gathered form in this case may
be seen from the fact that it was five years from the time of the
beginning of her husband’s illness before I came as a personality.

Now, when I came as a personality, I felt much younger than C; my
ideas of what constituted pleasure were more like those of a girl of
twenty—as C was when she received the first shock (_period I_). But in
character, points of view, tastes, emotions, in everything that goes
to make up personality I was quite different from anything C had ever
been; also in health. I was strong and vigorous, taking long walks and
feeling no fatigue. I was also very happy. Life seemed so good to me;
everything was so beautiful; the outdoor world looked to me as it does
to one who has been for months shut in through illness. I loved the
trees, the sky, and the wind; but _I did not love people_. I felt no
care or responsibility—that is why I was so happy. I remained the only
personality for about _one month_, when there came the fourth
emotional shock producing _period IV_.

These accounts need further explanation. C remarks: “It seems very
curious to me that the effect of this shock was to change me not to the
despondent, despairing mood of A, which came later, but to the happy
mood of B.” A consideration of the facts in more detail renders the
reason obvious. It must be kept in mind that the dominant feature of the
B mood or personality was the B complex, and the nucleus of this system
of ideas was the “rebellion” I have described. This rebellion again had
its first beginnings 19 years before (period I). We have traced it
through the succeeding years, with its later accretions, growing and
expanding in intensity and extent, like a political insurrection, until
it had taken into itself a large field of ideas and became the B
complex. Bear in mind here that the primitive germinal first rebellion
was the reaction to an emotional shock in which fright and disgust as
elements occurred plus the X affect to which they were a defense
reaction. Now the second shock which was experienced at the third period
was fundamentally the same in nature as that of the first period. It
gave rise to the same _affect_, X, and mental awakening, to the same
kind of realization of her situation, and the reaction, particularly to
the affect, was the same rebellion. _But the rebellion had meantime, in
the years that had passed, grown into the B complex, and so it was this
B constellation of ideas which erupted into consciousness and dominated
the whole field of personality._ Though the second shock awoke the same
affect as did the original shock, it was consciously mild and probably
for the most part subconscious, being repressed and submerged by the
reacting emotions of fear and anger, which latter blazed forth. And in
the reaction there were, also, the emotions of disgust and
self-assertion and the vengeful emotion.

With such emotions, particularly anger and disgust, this affect was in
conflict as was also fear. When two primary emotions are in conflict
both cannot live; one will be suppressed. Fear will be suppressed by an
outburst of blazing anger, and anger cannot exist when an overwhelming
fear is excited. One will replace the other. So the mild X affect and
fear were immediately repressed by anger, disgust and the compound
vengeful emotion, the three not in any way conflicting with one another
but as allies reinforcing each other in the attack.

Consequently from the B personality, which sprang to life as the
reaction to the X affect, this affect itself, was completely repressed
and dissociated, so that this personality _is entirely without this_ and
other traits of the C personality. Likewise, although this is not so
easy to determine, owing to the impossibility of reproducing all
conditions under which a given individual would react normally to any
given emotion, _fear_ and _tender feeling_ (love) seem to have been
dissociated from the B personality. It is certainly true that B
experienced no fear and other emotions with which C habitually reacted
to certain situations. This question of the involvement of the emotions
in dissociation will be discussed in another place.

As to the X affect, it is of some significance that later, after the
development of the third personality, A, which alternated with B, this
personality retained this affect (as well as fear and others lost to B)
and the awakening of this affect in A would regularly change this
personality to B; that is, repress the A personality and awaken B. Many
times other emotions, particularly anxiety (fear), would have the same
effect, but the affect in question would always induce the change,
apparently as a defense reaction.

From one point of view it may be maintained that all this emotional
reaction, called “shock,” (that primarily called into being the B
personality) was a defense reaction. It certainly was, as any outburst
of anger may be a defense reaction, as it is in the bull in the ring of
a Spanish bull-fight. Under other conditions anger as an element in the
pugnacity instinct may, like other emotional impulses, be an attacking
reaction.

But labelling with names does not give us any insight into the mechanism
of a reaction any more than labelling a machine an automobile gives us
any idea of its mechanism. It gives only a teleological meaning to the
machine.

What is a fruitful question, however, is whether the “shock” was a
defense to an external aggression or to the urge of an unacceptable
subconscious _wish_ containing the repressed affect X. Some will _wish_
to make this latter interpretation. It is entirely incompatible,
however, with the fact that the same conflict and “shock” had previously
occurred under conditions when, even if there had been such a wish, it
could not have been unacceptable, as there was no reason therefor, but
on the contrary it would have been her duty to have fulfilled it. It is
useless in this case to work that trumpery affect business in this way.

Furthermore, as a matter of experience, we find from a study of cases of
multiple personality that after two independent systems of ideas have
been formed, almost any emotional shock is liable to cause the
displacement of one system and the substitution of the other system.
This was observed over and over again in the case of Miss
Beauchamp,[286] as it was in this case. Why it should be so is not
always obvious at the time of any given occurrence. That there is a
specific psychological reason and dynamic mechanism we cannot doubt.
Undoubtedly if we could probe sufficiently extensively into the
unconscious in each instance we should find that subtile associations in
the substituted systems had been struck and that the change was thereby
determined. When the associated element is organized with strong
emotions the discharge of the emotion more easily represses and
dissociates the rival conflicting systems. This gives the appearance
that it was the emotion alone, as an isolated factor, which induced the
alternation of personality.

What happened then when the change of personality took place was this:
The acquired B complex, which had been developing in content and
conative intensity, surged up as a reaction from the unconscious (where
it had been conserved during the normal mood in a dormant condition),
came into conflict with the systems of the normal self and repressed and
replaced this previously dominating side of her nature. By this
dissociation this side was put out of commission so to speak. In turn it
remained dormant, of course, conserved as unconscious neurograms, ready
to be _resurrected_ under favoring conditions by appropriate stimuli.

But in the formation of the B personality there was more than this;
otherwise there would not have been generated a personality; the
alteration would have been limited to the incursion into the field of
consciousness only of the B complex as had so often happened before. On
the one hand a larger synthesis took place. The B complex dragged out of
the storehouse of the unconscious the acquired and conserved ideas and
other experiences of childhood and girlhood that had an associative
relation to the system which formed the B complex. In this respect it
was a _reversion_ to the earlier period of life.

On the other hand, there was, as we shall see, a dissociation and
suppression of certain _innate_ dispositions, instincts and sentiments
belonging to normal personality that were in conflict with the B phase.
Specifically the most important of these were, the instinct of
self-abasement and its corresponding self-regarding sentiment, the
“tender emotion” (affection) and its parental instinct (McDougall), the
X affect and its instinct, fear (instinct of flight) and vengeful
emotion.

The emotions and their instincts and the innate dispositions, appetites
and tendencies, being psycho-physiological arrangements inborn in the
organism and not acquired, are the very foundations of human
personality. Without a recognition of them and without assigning to them
their proper parts and due weight in determining mental traits and
behavior alterations of personality cannot be explained or
understood.[287]

The justification for the interpretation I have given of the genesis of
the B personality is found in an analysis of its manifested
characteristics. In the first place this B phase by common consent, even
in the opinion of those who were in entire ignorance of what had
psychologically occurred—i.e., the alteration of personality,—was much
younger in character than the mature C. She appeared to be a young girl
of 18 or 19 years of age. Her friends spoke of her, when remarking on
her improved health, as “being as she used to be.” She looked
younger.[288] As I myself observed her on, I might almost say, hundreds
of occasions, the contrast between the actual age of the subject and the
apparent age of B as indicated by expressions of face, the vivacious
mannerisms, the girlish attitude of mind, points of view, tastes, etc.,
was remarkable.

All this together with the lack of appreciation of many of the
responsibilities of life and of the duties and conditions which pertain
to motherhood, social relations and conventions, the loss of sentiments
acquired after marriage, etc., made up a picture of youth that was
unmistakable. The contrast between the mature C and the girlish B became
almost dramatic when the change of personality took place suddenly as it
later frequently did in my presence.

When we come to analyze the traits which gave this impression of youth
we see that it was justified. One side of C’s character, as we have
seen, was a love of happiness and the pleasures which induce the joy of
life. This side was dominant in B; but the _kind_ of pleasure which
appealed to B was not only that which appeals to youth but that which
had particularly appealed to the subject when a young girl. It was
“tramping through the woods in the hottest days of summer,” canoeing and
rowing in boats, walking, riding in electric cars—in fact, the out-door
life that appealed to her most strongly and was her greatest enjoyment.
“Oh, wouldn’t I just love to tramp through the woods or sail off over
the waves, or anything exciting,” she wrote. Such of these things as she
had been able when a little girl to indulge in she then enjoyed. As a
child and during girlhood she liked camping out and sailing, but as she
grew older, say about sixteen or eighteen, she became afraid of the
water and row boats. Canoeing she had never done before her marriage and
then was afraid of it.

We have seen that childhood’s experiences are largely conserved, when
not modified by the growth of personality, in the unconscious
(neurographic residua) although they may never come to the surface of
consciousness unless resurrected by some device or accident; and
repression tends to conserve them as unitary complexes maintaining their
own urges. Accordingly in the case of B everything points to the
conclusion that the repressed, conserved sentiments with their organized
emotions and feelings, of the pleasure of childhood and adolescent life,
sentiments by which the young girl was governed, _erupted into
consciousness_. The play-instinct, or innate disposition, long
repressed, particularly was revived and played a large part in
determining behavior. The B personality was thus a _reversion_ to an
early period of life. The rearrangement of the play-instinct and other
innate dispositions will be more conveniently discussed later in
connection and contrast with the A personality.

Of course there is no sharp line of division between different periods
of life, one running into the other, and the ideas, sentiments, desires,
habits, etc., of one period may continue more or less unchanged well
into another and beyond. Or, as usually happens, they may be modified by
the successive experiences of life. So obviously we cannot ascribe with
precision to a past definite age traits of character of the kind we are
considering. Such traits belong to the evolutional development of the
individual; they tend to become modified by the clash with new
experiences, or, when incompatible with the knowledge and habits
acquired by new experiences, to become repressed—when not incompatible
they may persist late into adult life. So some of these traits have
persisted as a side to, or as elements in the character of B. C. A. into
her present life; some, however, have been modified or repressed into
the unconscious. As age advances, as the child passes into adolescence
and then into maturity, there comes wider knowledge of the facts of the
environment, of its dangers and other relations, a more true and
complete conception of the meaning of life, a more extensive world view,
and a recognition and assumption of duties, cares, and responsibilities.
And all these acquisitions tend to form a conscious organism with new
sentiments which give new acquired reactions to stimuli in place of the
old reactions (traits and other conative tendencies). Activities, for
example, which once received their impulses from play dispositions are
later inhibited by sentiments invested with the instinct of fear
(flight). So B. C. A. acquired a fear of the water (boats, canoeing) and
a dislike of bugs and mosquitoes and electric cars. Why these changes in
her mental reactions took place we cannot say without making a more
extensive search into the experiences of her past life, and the
information when acquired would hardly repay the time and labor of the
inquiry. We cannot say, for example, why she has disliked electric cars
without resurrecting the memories of past experiences pertaining to them
and other associated ideas. Perhaps the dislike arose simply out of the
noise and resulting discomfort and headaches; or it may have had a more
subtile cause in associated ideas of danger which would not appeal to a
girl, or possibly such objects may more subtilely still be the symbolic
expression of some unconscious process. It does not bear upon our
present problem. (The dislike of mosquitoes and bugs very probably arose
from having been bitten and poisoned badly by them when a child.)

There were certain other youthful traits and tastes in B which are worth
mentioning. This personality was extravagant in money matters. “She,”
the personality A wrote, “spends money as I used to, and will not
acknowledge the necessity of economizing.” That is to say, the
regulation of the household and personal expenses, according to the
requirements of business sense, and proper appreciation of the financial
management was scarcely recognized by B who desired to spend money as B.
C. A. had done as a girl, before being initiated into the
responsibilities of domestic management. Like such a girl, to the
discomforture of the other personality, she spent money as if all were
pin money, without appreciation of making ends meet in the management of
the household.

Another and what will seem a strange peculiarity of B was the feeling
that she was not the mother of her child. “I am not his mother,” she
would say. “He is not my son”—“_I_ never was married.” “I know all her
experiences,” she wrote me in a letter, “but they are _her_ experiences
not _mine_. Why! _I_ was never married, Dr. Prince, and I am not
Willie’s mother. All those experiences belong to A. I know she _had_
them, but then, so do you. The only difference is that I know exactly
what she thought about them.” Indeed she carried this so far as to
entirely neglect the responsibility of looking after his life. This was
true also of the time when B. C. A. was ruled by the B complex before
the change to the B personality. On one such occasion for example, she
allowed this young boy to take a long journey of many hundred miles
through the west, roughing it in the woods and canoes, without a care or
anxious thought on her part during the whole time he was gone. All the
arrangements were made by others while she herself did not even go to
the station to see him off. Previously she had always felt the greatest
motherly solicitude for the boy, even foolishly devoted to him, and
could not bear to be parted from him even to accompany her husband on a
journey.

This peculiar trait is easily understood on the theory that rebellious B
was largely a systematized resurrection of pre-marital complexes but
with a dissociation of the tender emotion (parental instinct). I have
already pointed out that B regarded the “rebellious” complexes as
herself, but not the other ideas of B. C. A. In referring to the former,
as I have said, she used the word I, saying, I thought so and so, but
she did not use such expressions regarding the other systems of B. C.
A.’s thought after the genesis of these rebellious complexes. Likewise
she regarded as her own the earlier youthful experiences before
dissociation occurred. In the constellation of her complexes none of the
experiences of maternity (which occurred after the development of the
rebellious complex) were synthesized, any more than the sentiments and
other conflicting thoughts of the A phase. Even in the embryonic
contrary impulses of the B complex, it will be remembered, there were
dislikes to “fuss” over the baby conflicting with the maternal instinct.
She never, therefore, felt that motherhood was a part of her own
experience. And so her _conception of self_ in its content differed
materially from that of C and A, in that it contained references to
entirely different experiences, and, therefore, included entirely
different images and feelings. And it was organized with a
self-regarding sentiment in which the instinct of self-assertion
predominated instead of that of self-abasement.

I said that the parental instinct with the emotion of tender feeling was
dissociated. This absence of tender emotion (affection) was also
manifested in her attitude towards the different members of her family
and her friends. As a girl she was markedly affectionate just as A and
later C was, but as B she had lost this trait. She neglected her family
most shockingly, in a way that showed complete absence of the impulses
that come from tender feeling, and without the slightest compunction or
recognition of the fact that she was wanting in affection. I might give
numerous specific instances of this but refrain from doing so for
obvious reasons.[289] B liked people but for other reasons than those
which depend on personal affection. This absence, then, of the tender
emotion with its impulses was the second factor in determining the
feeling that B had of not being the mother of her child. It also, of
course, prevented the building up a new sentiment of maternal affection
through experience. All this is in conformity with our interpretation.

The way other instincts and innate dispositions were affected will be
better described in connection with the A personality for contrast.

Another peculiarity of B was the change in literary taste. The lighter
reading in which B found pleasure contrasted strongly with the
literature dealing with the deeper problems of life that appealed to A.
This difference has been touched upon by C in her account. It would take
us too far afield to enter into the psychological reasons for it.

It remains to point out that the reactions of the personality in
accordance with the new synthesis were intensified and became the sole
reactions by the fact of the dissociation of those systems of ideas
which represented the wider world view and which were organized with
instincts and innate dispositions now inhibited. Those systems were the
outcome of the cares, anxieties, responsibilities, and sorrows of later
life. All these, which were acquired and had their origin at a
comparatively late period, had subsided into the unconscious and ceased
to influence the conscious life and give rise to their corresponding
reactions. The emotions and sentiments of anxiety, remorse,
self-reproach and despair, so conspicuous in the A phase, were
completely dissociated from the B phase and formed no part of it. Though
there was no amnesia for them as past experiences they were dissociated
in the sense that they did not take part as psycho-physiological
dispositions in the personality. They could be voluntarily recalled in
an intellectual way as memories, but like many memories they had lost
their emotional tones and were not awakened by any contemplated or
actual line of conduct. Not entering the new B synthesis there was no
clash by which the reactions might be modified. The sole reactions were,
therefore, those of the B synthesis and were mostly those of pleasure
and joy. You must not overlook the fact, however, that the dissociated
elements of personality were still conserved and, as we shall see,
capable of being resurrected and thereby taking part in the reproduction
of the original personality, or of forming by themselves another
dissociated one.

The _temperament_ of the B personality is in accord with the conception
of a modified reversion to the conserved unconscious personality of
early life. B. C. A. “was naturally very light-hearted, happy, buoyant.”
Later when going through the stress and strain of her husband’s illness,
and later still after becoming neurasthenic, she became apprehensive and
given to self-reproaches, worry, and depression. She was racked by
emotions of an anxious depressing kind. All this was enormously
accentuated in the secondary personality A, (to be presently described)
whom in banter I used to call “Mrs. Gummidge.” Now B reverted in
temperament to the earlier period; she was free from depression; “had
more courage, was light-hearted, merry; conditions did not seem so
dreadful as they did to A,” and she “took things as they were”; “this
was the way she used to be.”

If I may anticipate a little the development of the A personality, a
passage or two from letters will show this difference in temperament as
manifested by the emotions. B wrote, “A is nearly crazy about those
papers. She simply ‘tears her hair’ and groans, and then, presto!
change! and I am here.” Again in a note to her other self (A) she
writes: “I suppose you have a ‘deep-horror-then-my-vitals-froze’
expression on your face now. Really, you suffer more to the square inch
than any one I ever knew.” Although it is hardly fair to ascribe these
emotional traits of A—a disintegrated personality—to the normal C, still
they were and are at times noticeable in C as moods, or when under
stress and strain. (C of course has pleasant affects and joyous moods as
well.) B on the other hand was a perfect stranger to such feelings; she
did not know the meaning of them; they were completely dissociated from
her ideas. B’s sole emotions were those of pleasure and exaltation; C’s
emotions included unpleasant and depressing ones as well, while A’s
stock was made up almost entirely of the latter. This dissociation of
unpleasant and depressing emotions from B is well manifested by her
memories. When C (or A) recalled (and it is still true) an unpleasant
experience the memory was accompanied by the original emotion in its
full intensity. She lived over again the original experience and
manifested all the feeling in the expression of her face and in gesture.
But when B recalled this same experience of C (or A) she simple
remembered it intellectually as a fact, without the feeling tone. In
fact she would recite a painful fact of C’s experience with a gaiety of
tone that betokened enjoyment at the other self’s expense. The same
phenomenon was still more striking in B as a co-conscious
personality.[290] As a co-consciousness she always insisted that while
she knew C’s (and A’s) thoughts she did not feel her emotions. “You see
I know all that A thinks but I do not _feel_ her emotions; she is all
emotion,” she wrote. This she insisted upon again and again. She only
knew what the other personalities felt by the way they acted. Similarly
the affect which was the cause of the “rebellion” was dissociated from
B. This same phenomenon was observed in the case of Miss Beauchamp.
Sally as a co-consciousness knew the thoughts of the personal
consciousness (B I or B IV) but she was not aware of the feelings that
accompanied the thoughts; the feelings she could only guess from the
actions of the principal personality, and as an alternating personality
Sally likewise was entirely devoid of certain emotions which were
strongly accentuated in the other personalities.[291] This dissociation
of affects from B helps us to understand the difference in the reactions
of B, C, and A to the same stimuli.

-----

Footnote 284:

The same as when dominated by the B complex but in a more extreme way.
(M. P.)

Footnote 285:

That is, the remainder of the C complex subsided into the
“unconscious,” where, of course, its experiences were conserved.
They could be recalled as a memory by B. As a system of ideas the B
complex had been “flowering” for five years. (M. P.)

Footnote 286:

See _Journal Abnormal Psychology_, 1920, Nos. 2 and 3.

Footnote 287:

The science of human personality is becoming a special branch of
psychology and is based upon the recognition and study of the innate
psycho-physiological systems of which a few are mentioned here. Of the
most recent works on this subject, those of Alexander F. Shand (The
Foundations of Character) and William McDougall (Social Psychology)
are the most important contributions. They are based on the study of
normal behavior. Abnormal alterations, such as are met with in the
psychoses and multiple personality, will prove to be a more fruitful
field for study and will provide more valuable contributions to our
knowledge of normal mechanisms, just as the pathology of the nervous
system has done for our knowledge of its anatomy and physiology.
Disease dissects the mind far better than can introspection or
observation.

Footnote 288:

In a letter written in the phase A to me she writes: “B seems to
revert to the time before all the sorrow and trouble. She writes in
the diary [kept at my direction by the different personalities] as I
used to feel. She ‘won’t be unhappy;’ she ‘will have a good time,’
etc. She seems younger than I, someway. I find that my friends often
think me more ‘like myself,’ when B is here; she also spends money as
I used to and will not acknowledge the necessity of economizing....”
In another letter she writes: “Then came the time when I was wholly B.
Everything but my own pleasure was cast to the wind. I felt and acted
like a girl of 18, and I know that I _looked_ years younger than I do
now.”

Footnote 289:

C writes: “To me this point of the affections is one of the most
interesting and curious. As a child and young girl I was affectionate,
shy, proud, and reserved—everything that B was not. I positively never
had in me any of these traits that B exhibited during those weeks ...
except gaiety.”

This statement, when analyzed, is in entire agreement with the results
of our study. The absence of affection is what would be expected from
the loss of the primary emotion “tender feeling,” the affective
element in the parental instinct. Shyness is determined by the
instinct of self-abasement which was dissociated from B. Likewise with
the self-regarding sentiment of pride in one of its varieties,
self-respect. According to McDougall this comprises two instincts:
that of self-assertion with its emotion of elation, and that of
self-abasement with its emotion of subjection. The latter instinct we
have seen reason to conclude was inhibited in B. Hence, on this theory
of pride, this sentiment was lost.

Footnote 290:

B later became co-conscious with the other personalities as well as
alternating.

Footnote 291:

“Miss Beauchamp,” etc.; _Jour. Abn. Psychol._, Vol. XV, p. 80.

LECTURE XX
(THE SAME CONTINUED)—THE A PERSONALITY

PERIOD IV

We may now return to C’s account of her dissociated life—to the point
where she was about to describe the development of another personality,
A, and at which I digressed.

Bear in mind that it is the B personality that now received the shock
and that the revelation of the deception, therefore, was to a
personality whose point of view was not that of duty or affection but of
mere joy and pleasure.

After a period of a few weeks I received a second[292] shock, which
was caused by the discovery of deception in matters[293] which my
“obsession” had taken in charge. The revelation came in a flash, _a
strong emotion_ swept over me, and the state B, _with all its traits,
physical characteristics, and points of view disappeared, and I
changed to another state which we have since called A_. In this state
my physical condition was much as it was before the first shock,[294]
that is, I was neurasthenic. From a state of vigorous health I
instantly changed to one of illness and languor; I could hardly sit
up, had constant headache, insomnia, loss of appetite, etc. My mental
characteristics were also different. As before, however, there was no
amnesia either for the state when I was B or for my life before the
first shock.

Now, though as A I was filled with most disproportionate horror at
what had occurred during the weeks of my life as B, I was ruled by the
same obsession, but with this difference: what I, as B, had done with
a sense of _pleasure_, I, as A, did with a sense of almost horror at
my own actions, feeling that I was compelled to do so by what seemed
at the time a sense of _duty_. I felt that I must carry out certain
obligations, and I doubt now, as I afterward expressed myself to you,
if I could have resisted had I tried. [I. e., she was again governed
as formerly by the B complex.] I would not refuse the demand for help
which was made upon me because, as B, I had promised my aid, but in
complying I was obliged to do things which seemed to me, as A,
shocking and unheard of. I felt that my conduct was open to severe
criticism but I had promised and must fulfil though the skies fell. It
seems to me now, in the light of our present knowledge of B, that I,
while in this A phase, was in a sort of somnambulistic stage governed
by what I have learned were co-conscious ideas belonging to B; and
that the impulses of the B complex were too strong to be resisted; but
in my memory my ideas as B were at this time so curiously intermingled
with my ideas as A that it is useless to try to analyze my mind more
accurately. In mood, points of view and ideals I was A, but I _did_
the things B would have done, though from a different incentive.

To fully appreciate the situation and in that light the meaning of A’s
point of view in the preceding passage and in that which follows, we
must remember that, when the original personality B. C. A., as the
neurasthenic and a disintegrated self that we may call the _A mood_, was
suddenly changed by the preceding “shock” to the B personality, for a
few minutes the subject was angry, frightened and felt insulted. There
can be no doubt that if the change had not occurred she would have
resented any further continuance of friendly or philanthropic relations
with the object of her resentment. When she came under my observation
later, as A, she was overwhelmed with (unjustified) humiliation and
blazed with wrath at the mere thought of the episode. Her governing
feeling was vengeful emotion. Even later as the normal C she could not
forgive or forget.

Now imagine the scene: a person dominated by such feeling suddenly,
without apparent rhyme or reason, completely changing in her feelings
and point of view, regarding the episode as a lark, enjoying it and
smiling and happy. And then in this frolicsome mood continuing to play
for a month with the object of her previous wrath. Such a scene on the
stage would be a most dramatic one. Imagine what must have been the
bewilderment of the victim.

Then, after some weeks of this play, the B personality changes back to
the disintegrated self, A. As A she remembers what she has done as B in
complete contradiction to her previous feelings and views of the
episode, herself and the object. She is overcome with horror on
remembering her behavior (as B) and yet she finds herself ruled by a
fixed idea of the B complex and going on doing, but from a different
motive, the very things which had horrified her.[295]

Keeping this situation in mind we can understand A’s feelings and
viewpoint bearing in mind that all was morbidly exaggerated.

For a few days I remained A and then owing, I think, to a lessening of
nervous tension, I changed again to B [personality] and remained in
that state for two or three weeks during which time I was physically
well and happy again. At the end of this time, as a result of another
realization of the actual situation, A reappeared and was the only
personality for some weeks. These changes were due to successive
emotional shocks.

The following passage which continues A’s viewpoint accurately describes
her state of mind when she came under my observation.

When you first saw me I was A at my worst. I had no amnesia for the
events of the preceding months when, as B, I had been filled with the
joy of living. There was no thought on my part of any “change of
personality”—I had never heard of such a thing—but I was like one
slowly awakening from a dream. I was equally aghast at what I (B) had
done for _pleasure_, and at what I (A), had done from a sense of duty;
one seemed as unbelievable as the other.[296]

One of the most shocking things to me, as A, was the fact that I had
_enjoyed myself_ as B. Had I committed the most dreadful crimes I
could not have felt greater anguish, regret, and remorse. I had been
dominated by the fixed ideas and obsessions of B; I had felt that I
must respond to any call for help made by this person [the
drug-addict] even though it was against my inclination and judgment to
do so; there seemed no choice for me in the matter—I _had_ to;[297] I
could see no point of view but my own. To do what seemed my plain duty
I was willing to sacrifice myself in every way, but could not see that
I (A) was now causing as much anxiety to my family as I had previously
done as B; that I was sacrificing them also, and that my idea of duty
was entirely mistaken. A, it would seem, was the emotional and
idealistic part of my nature magnified a thousand times. My emotions
and ideals as A were not different in kind from those of my normal
self, but were so exaggerated as to be morbid.

As A I was full of metaphysical doubts and fears, full of scruples. I
did not attend church because I felt that I could no longer honestly
say the Creed and the prayers. The service had lost all meaning to me
and so it seemed hypocritical to take part in it. I felt that I had
utterly failed in the performance of every duty, and tortured myself
with the remembrance of every act of omission and commission. I
accused myself of selfishness, neglect, in fact, of nearly all the
crimes in the calendar including, in an indirect way, that of
murder.[298] My conversation was always of the most serious
character,—religion (I believed in nothing), life after death (of
which I found no hope), and I dwelt much upon the fact that no one
should be judged by their deeds alone, that no one could tell what
hidden motive had prompted any given act. This was because I had (as
B) done so many things which (as A) I wholly disapproved of and felt
might be misunderstood. I did not understand them myself but knew that
my motive had been good. I was frightened, bewildered, shocked,
agonized—concentrated anguish and remorse. During these weeks I
suffered more than it ought to be possible for any one ever to suffer
for anything, and always, over and over in my mind went the same old
thoughts,—“_Why_ did I do as I did? _How_ could I have done it? Why
did it seem right? What would my friends think if they knew? I was
mad! _I was not myself._” Finally I decided to end it all—I could not
live under such a weight of humiliation and self-reproach. I am sure,
Dr. Prince, that you must remember how impossible it was to reason
with me as A, for it was at this time and in this state that I was
sent to you and you first saw me.

Summing up this statement a new personality had come to the fore—a
personality that was the antithesis of B. The traits which characterized
A had been left entirely out of B while those which had characterized B
were left entirely out of A. Both sets of traits were to be found in C
though less accentuated and less freely manifested. The gaiety, love and
pleasure and joy of life, the absence of all thought of responsibility
and care belonging to B had given place to seriousness, a sense of
responsibility and duty, a feeling of apprehension, to doubts and fears
and self-reproaches. Depression and sorrow had taken the place of
exaltation and joy. The neurasthenic state had replaced buoyant health.

Now it should be noted that these latter were the traits of the subject
C during the preceding four-year period of stress and strain, and the
succeeding neurasthenic period, and represented a side of her character
which was developed, systematized and intensified by the circumstances
of her life. In accordance with these traits, habits of thought had been
established and by constant repetition complexes had been built. It is
of importance to note that it was against these very A traits that the
“B complex” at that time had rebelled—that very complex which was to
become the chief component of the “B personality,” and which was the
other side of the original self. It was during the neurasthenic state
that the A traits had become abnormally developed and belonged to the
neurasthenic condition. When the personality changed to B these A traits
became dissociated but still remained conserved as unconscious
systematized neurograms; now the A traits were awakened once more, there
was a conflict and the B traits, the lighter side of her character, were
repressed, dissociated and subsided into the unconscious. A was,
therefore, a dissociated personality. She was the original C, if you
please, but now so shattered and shorn as to be but an abstract and
wreck of her former self. The normal C possessing both sets of traits
had been, and now, resynthesized to health, is able to compare, to
weigh, to modify, to balance the judgments obtained from the point of
view of the B system with those of the A system and thus keep a fairly
equitable poise of mind. The one counteracted the other fairly well. The
A and B phases being respectively deprived of the characteristics of the
other, each exhibited its own traits in a highly intensified degree, and
manifested excessive reactions to the environment. The dissociated state
A was plainly a reversion to the stress-and-strain and neurasthenic
period. The awakening of A was the awakening of a system of thoughts
which had lain dormant during the B state. Now the repressed B state was
dormant.

It is of great significance for an understanding of neurasthenic
disturbances that the awakening of the A system brought back all the
neurasthenic symptoms that had as physical reactions accompanied this
system at the time when it was dominant in C. The A system of thoughts,
emotions, instincts, innate dispositions, etc., and the physical
symptoms necessarily went together, for the latter are the expression or
reaction of a dissociated personality that is deprived of its sthenic
and exalting emotions. The moment the sthenic emotions were brought back
(in C or A) the physical symptoms disappeared. The disappearance of the
neurasthenia even in A when certain emotions were temporarily restored
by suggestion was remarkable.

What caused the awakening of the A system? We have seen that the
awakening of the rebellious B personality was an emotional trauma which
was the same in kind as that which originally gave rise to the primitive
“rebellion” as a reaction to the emotion. A similar trauma later
awakened the same rebellion but one grown to the large proportions of
the “B complex.” So in like fashion the new trauma to B awakened the A
system as a reaction and associative phenomenon. What was the new
trauma?

C in her written statement does not give the nature of the “strong
emotion which swept over” her when the “revelation came in a flash.”
It was very different in character from the other. It was
_apprehension_—the apprehension of moral disaster to the person whom
she was trying to save. There was no resentment at the discovered
deception, no thought of wounded self, no feeling of injury as might
be inferred from the language of the writer, but only the thought of
her own _responsibility_ in the circumstances, and of _duty_
undertaken, and the feeling of _anxiety_ for the future of this other
person; and there was a sense of _disappointment and failure_. These
erupted from the submerged A system.

It was this same system of ideas, but organized about her husband as
their object, which had been dominant in C during the four years period
of stress-and-strain and “neurasthenia.” They had lain dormant in the
unconscious during the B period. Now they are struck and excited to
activity. There is a conflict. The impulses from the conflicting A
emotions, being the stronger, repress the B impulses and the A system is
awakened as a personality.

The question at once comes to mind whether the object of B. C. A.’s
solicitude was not a surrogate for her deceased husband, a sort of
symbol, and had not become the object of the transference (to use the
language of the psycho-analysts) of the solicitude which had previously
been bestowed upon her husband’s health and future well-being; whether
this new person had not been substituted for the ill husband in that A
system of ideas which during four years had been characterized by
responsibility, duty, anxiety, disappointment, failure, etc.; whether,
indeed, it might not be held that the solicitude for the salvation of
this drug addict was not a defense reaction against self-reproach for an
imaginary responsibility for the illness of her husband. Such
self-reproaches she describes.

If this were true, the awakening of the A system by the discovery of the
deception (which was only the banal one of money matters) and
realization of failure, disappointment, etc., would be all the more
comprehensible in view of the very strong and close associations which
the new object would have in the system. But if true I cannot see that
it would have any further or deeper significance. There was no need for
disguisement. Certainly solicitude for a husband, disguised in another
person, needs no disguisement and could not be unacceptable. But painful
_self-reproaches_ for former failure could not be faced, and
satisfaction could be found in the performance of a new duty as a sort
of atonement.

Again was there any subconscious sex wish or urge that could not be
admitted to herself and to which the change to A was a defense reaction?
I have been unable to discover any. And if there were I am unable to see
how the revelation of deception in money matters required a defense
reaction against the fulfillment of this wish. That sounds like Alice in
Wonderland.

But why did the revelation shock B, who with her traits would not have
cared? I can answer this from my intimate and fuller knowledge of C’s
and A’s ideas. It was a revelation of the truth. The true character of
the object of their solicitude, “whom everyone else had given up as
hopeless,” was revealed in a flash, and this “revelation” had struck,
not B, but the submerged A (or C) system, which immediately emerged in
an uprush from the unconscious. The shock was not to B but to
subconscious A. And the reaction was “disappointment,” “failure,”
“apprehension,” etc. Similar phenomena have been observed over and over
again in psychological studies as I have frequently witnessed them in
this case.

III

In a previous lecture[299] I called attention to the fact that emotions
(instincts) innate dispositions and tendencies are fundamental to
personality and I pointed out that in abnormal alterations the
dissociation may involve one or more of these. Certain of these innate
psycho-physiological systems were cited as having been repressed or
dissociated in this case. It remains to study this phenomenon a little
more closely.

Psychologists are generally agreed that of the emotions some are
primary, or elementary, and others are complex, that is compounded of
two or more emotions. Fear and anger, for example, are primary and the
conscious elements, like all primary emotions, in biological instincts.
These instincts serve a purpose in the preservation of the species. Of
the complex emotions scorn and loathing may be taken as examples, the
former, it is believed, being compounded of anger and disgust and the
latter of fear and disgust. There is not a general agreement in regard
to all the emotions that should be regarded as primary. Joy and sorrow,
for example, are classed by some as primary and by some as complex. I
made an effort to note and classify in a tentative way the emotions that
were present and absent in the two personalities A and B and have
arranged them in the following table. In this table the classification
of the primary and complex emotions of McDougall has been followed in
the main.

Of course it is very difficult to determine with certainty if any given
emotion is absolutely absent, as it depends upon suitable conditions
being present for its excitation. An emotion that is repressed might
still be excited if the stimulus were sufficiently strong. Still, it is
significant that emotions which would ordinarily excite a given emotion,
say, tender feeling, or sorrow or fear, in the ordinary normal person,
or did do so in this subject in the A personality, did not do so in the
B personality, or would awaken in the latter only an emotion of joy or
mirth. Under these circumstances, when the A and B personalities
respectively came into being, these differences were easily observed,
and it is noteworthy that then certain emotions were never in evidence
in each respectively, whether potentially present or not.

It is interesting to note that when a primary emotion was absent, for
instance in personality B, that a compound emotion which included this
primary emotion was also absent. It is obvious that dissociation of
personalities in which certain emotions are repressed offer valuable
data for studying the problem of the classification of emotions, more
reliable than do the usual methods of introspective analysis.

PRIMARY EMOTIONS, INSTINCTS, FEELINGS AND INNATE DISPOSITIONS

Personality A Personality B
Anger Present (marked) Never observed,
although sometimes
she felt “provoked”
Fear Present (marked) Never observed
Disgust Present (marked) Never observed
Hunger Slight _Absent (?)_
Sexual Present _Absent_
Curiosity Present Present
Joy _Absent_ (present only Present (marked)
when excited by
suggestion)
Sorrow Present (marked) _Absent_
Parental, Tender- Present _Absent_
feeling Affection,
etc.
Self-assertion—Elation Present (in pride) Present
Self-abasement—Subjection Present (marked) _Absent_
Play _Absent_ Present (marked)
Pleasure-feeling tones _Rare_ Constant (marked)
Pain-feeling tones Present (marked) _Absent_

COMPOUND EMOTIONS

Personality A Personality B
Admiration Present ?
Reverence ? ?
Gratitude Present (marked) ?
Scorn { Anger Present (marked) _Absent_
Disgust
{
Loathing { Fear Present (marked) _Absent_
{ Disgust
Envy ? ?
{ Anger
Reproach { Tender- Present _Absent_
{ emotion
Jealousy Present _Absent (?)_
Vengeful emotion Present _Absent_
Shame Present _Absent_
Bashfulness Present _Absent_
Pity ? _Absent_
Happiness _Absent_ Constant

As there were differences in emotions and pleasure-pain feelings
manifested by the two personalities, so also the emotions and feelings
organized with the same objects differed. That is to say, one and the
same object often awakened different emotions or feelings. For example,
the moon excited in A pain, in B pleasure; woods excited in A
apprehension, in B pleasure; a lake, in A fear; in B joy; relatives, in
A affection, in B indifference. Situations, too, that gave A sorrow,
gave B joy, or, it might be, pleased A and bored B. Likewise with
persons: Y—aroused intense hatred, scorn, etc., in A; in B pleasant
feelings.

To return to the behavior of the B and A personalities; the B system,
from the fact that it had become for a month, during the third period,
segregated as an independent and autonomous system, had become
crystallized and easily dissociated as _a whole_ from the remainder of
the personalities. The same happened with the A system after it had
become emancipated as a result of the fourth shock. The two systems
readily changed with one another and I had innumerable opportunities of
observing the changes taking place before my eyes and of studying them.
C makes the following statement of these alternations:

Shortly after I came to you I began to alternate more frequently
between those two states, and it is well to emphasize that one marked
change in the state of A developed. In this state I now had _complete
amnesia_ for my whole life as B; for everything I thought and
did.[300] In other respects, however, these states were identical with
what they had been. The presence of amnesia made no difference in the
fact of change of personality. As I see it I was just as much an
altered personality before the amnesia developed as afterward. As B, I
had no amnesia.

The amnesia made life very difficult; indeed, except for the help you
gave me I think it would have been impossible and that I should have
gone truly mad. How can I describe or give any clear idea of what it
is to wake suddenly, as it were, and not to know the day of the week,
the time of the day, or why one is in any given position? I would come
to myself as A, perhaps on the street, with no idea of where I had
been or where I was going; fortunate if I found myself alone, for if I
was carrying on a conversation I knew nothing of what it had been;
fortunate indeed, in that case, if I did not contradict something I
had said for, as B, my attitude toward all things was quite the
opposite of that taken by A. Often it happened that I came to myself
at some social gathering—a dinner, perhaps—to find I had been taking
wine (a thing I, as A, felt bound not to do)[301] and what was to me
most shocking and horrifying, smoking a cigarette; never in my life
had I done such a thing and my humiliation was deep and keen.

The bearing of amnesia on the principle of multiple personality,
perhaps, needs a few words. From the facts as they developed in this
case it must be obvious that the presence or absence of amnesia in no
way affects the reality of altered or secondary personality. B was quite
as much a personality before the development of amnesia as afterwards.
Before this appeared the patient as A in no way differed in
characteristics (other than amnesia) from what she was afterwards, and
the same is true of B. The amnesia simply made the contrast between the
phases more obtrusive; that was all. If, therefore, following the
amnesia each phase can be rightly interpreted—and of this there can be
no doubt—as a dissociated personality, the same must be true of it
antecedent to loss of memory. Each phase had lost and gained certain
traits and peculiarities, and what one had lost the other, to a large
extent, had retained.

An analysis of the previous life history shows that each represented a
constellation of mental complexes created out of the formative matter of
the past conserved in the unconscious. On the other hand it is obvious
that from another point of view each, before amnesia occurred, was
rightly entitled to be considered as a highly developed “mood” with
strong conative tendencies. In principle the amnesia does not affect the
point of view. One frequently sees in lesser degree such moods in
so-called normal people of a certain temperament. They are in fact
really temporary alterations of personality, though it is not customary
to speak of them as such. After amnesia develops the conditions in other
respects are in no way changed. If such alterations of personality are
combined with a neurasthenic condition it is customary to regard the
phase as one of neurasthenia or hysteria, and, in fact, the state A was
for a long time so regarded until the other state, B, was discovered.

It is not within the scope of this study to describe in detail the
behavior of the two personalities A and B. Enough has been said to show
that they differed in character so widely as to appear to be two
entirely distinct persons, with contradictory traits, desires, feelings,
points of view, habits, manners, temperaments, and attitudes towards
their environment and towards each other. Alternating as they did, the
situations in which A, at least, was placed were often dramatic and
comparable to that of the case of Miss Beauchamp[302] with which some of
you may be familiar.

A good general idea of the two personalities and their behavior has been
given by the subject herself in the two articles from which I have
freely quoted. For further details I would refer you to those
accounts[303] which merit careful study.

Nor can I take up that phase of the problem of dissociation which
involves _co-conscious_ systems of thought. It is too large a subject
and must be reserved for a later occasion. I will merely say that when A
became _unaware_ of the _B complex_ and became amnesic for her
alternating life as B, the latter, B, continued during the A phase; or,
in other words, the co-conscious life was a continuation of the B
alternating life after the change took place to A (or C), but the latter
was unaware of it.

This seems very difficult to comprehend for those who are not familiar
with the phenomenon. Yet, as I see it, the mechanism and principle are
very simple and the phenomenon is only an exaggeration of the normal.
Otherwise and without a normal mechanism it could not occur. B has also
given in her account a very valuable description based on introspection
of the co-conscious life. This merits careful study.

REINTEGRATION OF A AND B INTO A NORMAL PERSONALITY C

You probably will have sufficient curiosity to want to know how the
reintegration of the dissociated phases into a single normal personality
was accomplished: that is to say how a cure was brought about and the
original personality was obtained. It was very simple and can be told in
a few words. The method was the same as that employed in the case of
Miss Beauchamp.

Each of the dissociated personalities A and B could be hypnotized. When
A was hypnotized she went into a state which we will call _a_ and when B
was hypnotized she went into a state which we will call _b_. Now both
these states could be still further hypnotized. When the process of
hypnotizing _a_ was carried further a state was obtained which we will
provisionally call _x_. When the process of hypnotizing _b_ was carried
further a state was obtained which we will call provisionally _y_. Now,
when studying these two hypnotic states, _x_ and _y_, they were found to
be the same state. That is to say they had the same memories and other
traits of personality. Furthermore they were found to be a combination
of both _a_ and _b_, possessing all the memories, emotions and innate
dispositions which were lost in A and therefore possessed by B and all
those that were lost in B and therefore possessed by A. In other words,
it was the complete normal personality but in the hypnotic state. This
hypnotic state, therefore, which had been previously labeled both _x_
and _y_ was now labeled _c_. All that remained to do, therefore, was to
wake up _c_ and the trick would be done, for we would then have,
theoretically, the normal C personality. So this procedure was carried
out and the normal personality was obtained.

-----

Footnote 292:

Fourth according to the division of periods here adopted.

Footnote 293:

Money matters.

Footnote 294:

Second which brought the B personality.

Footnote 295:

Apropos of this B states: “I still continued, in a sense, as the B
complex in the same way as during the time when C lived the life which
was in accordance with my nature and opposed to hers, i.e., the out of
doors life during the latter part of the second period; only, as a
result of the time (_period III_) when I was the sole personality
(though I did not think of myself as such) and had lived my own life,
I had, it seems to me as I look back upon it, become more
crystallized. There had before seemed to be a conjoining of two
natures, and there was now, only the second one, myself, was more
strongly integrated. C, or rather A, as I shall call this new phase,
had no amnesia for the preceding period (_III_), and as before was
still perfectly aware of the B complex. She was ruled by this complex,
as C had before been ruled, and kept right on doing things in
accordance with the impulses of the B complex. She was something like
a somnambulist, I think, partly realizing the difference in her
conduct, which seemed strange to her, and unable to help herself.”

Footnote 296:

At this time A had removed from the environment in which all this that
has been narrated had taken place, and had come under my care; she was
then A. There were no longer calls for duty to be performed, no longer
responsibilities to carry out. B was dormant and it was impossible for
the fixed idea to act, though undoubtedly if the former situation was
restored the old parts would have been reënacted; as it was A looked
upon the past as a closed chapter and she was able to judge herself as
A and B. In the quiescence of her fixed idea she was able to see
herself, though in a distorted perspective, and reprobated her conduct
in both phases of personality, and as she says, was “aghast.”

Footnote 297:

Referring to the fixed idea mentioned above of saving this person.

Footnote 298:

Referring to her husband’s illness and death.

Footnote 299:

Lecture XVII.

Footnote 300:

This came about in the following way: One day while A was in hypnosis
she suddenly and spontaneously changed to a different hypnotic state
characterized by change of facial expression, manner, speech, etc. It
was afterwards recognized that this was the B personality in hypnosis.
I had not before seen or heard of the B personality as such. I had
only known that the subject from her own account had been in a
neurasthenic condition and had been through periods of improvement and
relapses. I did not suspect that these phases of improvement and
relapses represented phases of personality such as was soon discovered
to be the case. A few days after the B personality had appeared in
hypnosis this phase spontaneously waked and alternated as it had
previously done, with the A complex. But now, as the writer says,
there was amnesia on the part of A for B. The explanation for this is
undoubtedly to be found in the fact that a new synthesis and more
complete dissociation of the B complex had taken place through the
experience of hypnosis. Analogous phenomena I have observed in making
experimental observations but it would take us too far away to enter
into this question here.

Footnote 301:

During the first weeks of my existence as B I pledged myself to drink
no wine. The promise was made under such conditions that no reasonable
person could have felt bound by it. As B I realized this and felt no
obligation to keep it but as A, I could not feel so, though you had
assured me over and over again that I was not in honor bound.

Footnote 302:

Prince: The Dissociation of a Personality, Longmans, Green & Co.

Footnote 303:

“My Life as a Dissociated Personality,” _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, Vol. III, Nos. 4 and 5.

SUMMARY AND GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

We may now bring this study of human personality to a close, incomplete
as it is. We have not by any means exhausted all the factors of
personality, but, guided by practical consideration, we have at least
examined the chief of its fundamentals, more particularly those which
are concerned in the disturbances which general psychopathology makes
the object of study. Such a study should be undertaken preparatory to
that of special pathology or particular complexes of disturbances of
function (the functional psychoneuroses). The aim of psychology should
be to become capable of being an applied science. So far as a science is
only of academic interest it fails to be of real value to the world.
Physics, chemistry, astronomy, mineralogy, geology, physiology,
bacteriology, botany, and many departments of zoology, etc., can be
applied, and other sciences at least tend to form our notions of the
universe in which we live, and thus to mould our religious,
philosophical and other conceptions. Until very recent years it was an
opprobium of psychology, as studied and taught, that it had not become
divorced from philosophy[304] and stood amongst the few sciences that
could not be applied to practical life and was for the most part of
academic interest only. Now, however, in the field of medicine
psychology is fast looming to the front as of great practical
interest—not the older psychology, but the new psychology of functions
and mechanisms. In the field of human efficiency in the mechanical arts
it is also fast becoming capable of practical application. With the
above aim in view we have dealt in these lectures more particularly with
those psychological activities a knowledge of which can be applied in
the theory and practice of medicine. But as the laws governing the
organism are general, not special, what has been found is as applicable
to normal as to pathological life.

We have not attempted to enter the field of special pathology to study
the psycho-pathology of special diseases. So far as this has been done
it has been mainly for the purpose of seeking data. Our aim has been
rather to obtain that knowledge of functions which will serve as an
introduction to such medical studies. Even in this limited field there
are any number of specific problems which have been scarcely more than
touched upon and any one of which, by itself, would be a rich field of
investigation.

It is well now, in conclusion, to make a general survey of the fields
which we have tilled, and gather together into a whole, so far as
possible, the results of our gleaning.

We have seen on the basis of the phenomena of memory that the “mind”
includes more than conscious processes; that it includes a vast
storehouse of acquired “dispositions” deposited by the experiences of
life, and that these dispositions (by which mental experiences are
conserved) may be regarded as chemical or physical in their nature, as
sort of residua deposited (if we are asked to confine ourselves to terms
of the same order) by the neural processes correlated with the conscious
experiences of life. This storehouse of acquired dispositions provides
the material for conscious and subconscious processes; and thus provides
the wherewithal which enables the personality to be guided in its
behavior by the experiences of the past. It provides the elements of
memory which we know must be supplied by the mind in every perception of
the environment—even the simplest—and which are required for every
process of thought. Indeed throughout our review of processes and
manifestations of mind, which we need not recapitulate, we have
continually come upon evidences of these dispositions playing as I
foretold in our first lecture an underlying and responsible part.

The fact that brain dispositions are of one order of events (physical)
while psychological processes are of another (psychical) is in no way an
objection to such an interpretation, as in this antithesis we have only
the old mind-matter problem—dualism, or monism, or parallelism.

We have also seen that in neural dispositions, whether acquired or
innate, we have a conception of the unconscious that is definite,
precise.

We have also reviewed the evidence going to show that though the main
teleological function of the unconscious, so far as it represents
acquired dispositions, is to provide the material for conscious memory
and _conscious_ processes, in order that the organism may be consciously
guided in its reactions by experience, yet under certain conditions
neurographic residua can function as a _subconscious_ process which may
be _unconscious_, i.e., without being accompanied by conscious
equivalents. The latter were classed as a sub-order of subconscious
processes. We saw reason for believing that any neurogram deposited by
life’s experience can, given certain other factors, thus function
subconsciously, either autonomously or as a factor in a large mechanism
embracing both conscious and unconscious elements; and that this was
peculiarly the case when the neurogram was organized with an emotional
disposition or instinct. The impulsive force of the latter gives energy
to the former and enables it to be an active factor in determining
behavior. The organism may then be subconsciously governed in its
reactions to the environment.

After a consideration of actions so habitually performed that they
become automatic and free from conscious direction (so-called
habit-reactions), of actions performed by decerebrate animals, of
cerebro-spinal reflexes, and many motor activities of lower forms of
animal life, we came to the conclusion that they also were performed by
unconscious neural dispositions and processes, analogous to, or
identical with (as the case might be) the acquired dispositions and
processes correlated with conscious processes. Many of them may likewise
be acquired and in a pragmatic sense intelligent. We thus were able to
broaden our conception of the unconscious and its functioning, and at
the same time see the further necessity of distinguishing the
unconscious as a subdivision of the subconscious.

Proceeding further we found that besides subconscious processes that are
distinctly unconscious, there are others which are distinctly conscious
(or at least unconscious processes with conscious accompaniments) but
which do not enter the focus or fringe of awareness—in other words, true
subconscious ideas. These were termed _coconscious_ as a second
subdivision of the subconscious. They may include true perceptions,
memories, thoughts, volition, imagination, etc. As with unconscious
processes, any conserved experience of life, _under certain conditions
and given certain other factors_, may thus function coconsciously,
particularly if organized with and activated by an innate emotional
disposition. So we may have subconscious processes both without and with
conscious equivalents. We have also seen that coconscious processes may
exhibit intelligence of a high order, and the same thing is possibly
true in a less degree of unconscious processes. We found evidence
showing that a conserved idea may undergo subconscious incubation and
elaboration, and that subconscious processes may acquire a marked degree
of autonomy, may determine or inhibit conscious processes of thought,
solve problems, enter into conflicts, and in various modes produce all
sorts of psychological phenomena (hallucinations, impulsive phenomena,
aboulia, amnesia, dissociation of personality, etc.).

We have seen how, by the use of the experimental method of “_tapping_,”
and by hypnotic and other procedures, that this same autonomy can be
demonstrated, manifesting itself by impulsive phenomena (writing,
speech, gestures, and all sorts of motor automatisms) on the one hand,
and sensory automatisms (hallucinations) on the other. And we have seen
that by similar procedures, in specially adapted individuals,
remembrances of coconscious processes that have induced identical
phenomena can be recalled. With this precise knowledge of the processes
at work these automatisms were correlated with the spontaneous
occurrence of the same kinds of phenomena in the psychoses and in normal
conditions. Their occurrence in all sorts of pathological conditions
thus becomes intelligible.

Evidence has been adduced to show that life’s experiences, and therefore
acquired dispositions, tend to become organized into groups. The latter,
termed for descriptive purposes neurograms, thereby acquire a functional
unity; and they may become compounded into larger functioning groups, or
complexes, and still larger systems of neurograms. Whether their origin
is remembered or not they become a part of the personality. Such
complexes and systems play an important part by determining mental and
bodily behavior. Amongst other things they tend to determine the points
of view, the attitudes of mind, the individual and social conscience,
judgment, etc., and, as large systems, may become “sides to one’s
character.” When such complexes have strong emotional tones they may set
up conflicts leading to the inhibition of antagonistic sentiments, and
sometimes to the contraction and even disruption of the personality. All
these phenomena can be induced by the artificial creation and
organization of complexes and this principle becomes an important one in
therapeutics.

When studying ideas we found that, besides sensory images, they have
meaning derived from antecedent associated experiences that form the
setting or context. Further evidence was adduced to show that this
setting and the idea formed a psychic whole; but that often the former
remained subconscious while the idea only, or the affect only, or both,
emerged into the content of consciousness. The significance of this
mechanism lay in the fact that it enabled us to understand the
insistency of emotional ideas or obsessions. Indeed reasons have been
given for holding that subconscious processes perform a part in most
processes of thought.

Besides acquired dispositions, organized and, so to speak, deposited by
life’s experiences, personality includes many that are innate, and
therefore conditioned by inherited pre-formed anatomical and
physiological arrangements of the nervous system. These function after
the manner of a physiological reflex; and the theory was adopted that
the emotions are the central elements in certain of such dispositions.
These may therefore be called emotional dispositions or instincts. By
the excitation of such emotional reflexes the organism reacts in an
emotional manner to the environment.

In the organization of life’s experiences the emotional dispositions
tend to become synthesized with ideas to form sentiments and therefore
synthesized with the neurographic residua by which ideas are conserved.
Thus, on the one hand, neurograms and systems of neurograms become
organized with innate emotional dispositions, and, on the other, ideas
become energized by the emotional impulsive force that carries the ideas
to fruition.

As to general psycho-pathological and certain physiological phenomena, a
large variety such as anxiety states, hallucinations, and automatic
motor phenomena, are clearly the manifestations of automatic
subconscious processes; some are the resultants of conflicts between the
impulsive forces of distinctly conscious sentiments, others between
those of conscious and subconscious sentiments; others are the
physiological manifestation of emotional processes, conscious or
subconscious. Some, indicative of losses from personality (such as
amnesia, anesthesia, paralysis, altered personality, etc.), are the
resultants of inhibitions or dissociations of acquired or innate
dispositions, effected by the conflicting force of antagonistic factors.
These resultants may or may not be associated with the excitation and
dominance of complexes, or large systems of acquired dispositions. If
so, moods, trance states, fugues, somnambulistic states, secondary
personalities, and other hysterical states come into being. In all cases
these various pathological conditions are functional derangements of the
fundamental factors of a given human personality—expressions of the same
mechanisms which the organism normally makes use of to adapt itself
harmoniously to its own past or present experiences and to its
environment.

Finally, out of the innate and acquired dispositions organized by
experience to a very large extent into unitary dynamic systems human
personality is constructed by the integration of these systems (and
other dispositions) into a composite functioning whole. And according as
certain systems acquire dominance and determine fixed and predictable
reactions to the environment character traits are developed. But as
personality is thus a composite, that is an integrated system of lesser
systems these latter are capable of being reassembled or integrated in
varying combinations into many and different composites and thus
multiple personality may be formed. The forces which bring about the
disintegration of the normal composite and the resynthesizing of the
unitary systems into new personalities are to be found in the dynamic
dispositions of conscious and unconscious mechanisms. And we have also
seen that as the empirical ego is a unitary system organized by
experience each personality may contain its own differentiated ego.

Viewing as a whole the phenomena we have studied, we see why it is that
personality is a complex affair in that in its make-up there enter many
factors, some acquired and some innate. Each of these is capable of more
or less autonomy and upon their harmonious coöperation depends the
successful adaptation of the personality to its environment. It is, we
may say with almost literal truth, when these factors work to cross
purposes that a personality ceases to be a harmonious whole; just as the
individuals composing a group of persons, a football team, for example,
when they fail to work together and each strives to fulfill his own
purposes, cease to be a single team. Consciousness is not a unity in any
sense that the term has any significant meaning beyond that which is a
most banal platitude. The “unity of consciousness” seems to be a
cant-expression uttered by some unsophisticated ancient philosopher and
repeated like an article of faith by each successive generation without
stopping to think of its meaning or to test it by reference to facts.
Neither a reference to the evidence of consciousness or to its
manifestations gives support to the notion of unity. The mind is rather
an aggregation of potential or functioning activities some of which may
combine into associative functioning processes at one time and some at
another; while again these different activities may become disaggregated
with resulting contraction of personality, on the one hand, and
conflicting multiple activities on the other.

The unconscious, representing as it does all the past experiences of
life that have been conserved, is not limited to any particular type of
experiences; nor are the subconscious and conscious processes to which
it gives rise more likely to be determined by any particular
antecedents, such as those of childhood, as some would have us believe.
Nor are these motivated by any particular class of emotional instincts
or strivings of human personality. The instincts and other innate
dispositions which are fundamental factors are, as we have seen,
multiform, and any one of them may provide the motivating force which
activates subconscious as well as conscious processes. Impelled by any
one or combination of these instincts unconscious complexes may undergo
subconscious incubation and in the striving to find expression may work
for harmony or, by conflict with other complexes, for discord.

Having grasped the foregoing general principles governing the
functioning mechanisms of the mind, we are prepared to undertake the
study of the more particular problems of everyday life and of special
pathology.

-----

Footnote 304:

In most universities to-day Psychology is classed as a department of
Philosophy! How long is this attitude to be continued?

INDEX OF NAMES[305]

Footnote 305:

See Addendum to index on page 654.

Barrows, Ira, 213.
“B. C. A.”, 159, 302.
Bergson, viii.
Bicknel, 428, 429, 430, 431.
Bidder and Schmidt, 427.
Bogen, 429, 430.
Breuer, J., 69.

Cade and Latarjet, 428.
Cannon, W. B., 426, 428, 432, 439, 452, 453.
Charcot, 77, 526.
Coriat, I. H., 76, 145.

De la Paz, D., 432.
Dickenson, C. Lowe, 19.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 330.

Féré, Ch., 423, 433, 436.
Flournoy, Th., 304.
Foster, M., 233, 242.
Freud, Sigmund, 45, 71, 196, 203, 221, 509.
Fullerton, G. S., 309.

Goltz, F., 232.
Gurney, Edmund, 62, 157.

Haldane, (Lord), 307.
Hartmann, 250, 251.
Herbart, 250, 251.
Hilton, 453.
Hoernlé, R. F., 322, 325.
“Mrs. Holland,” 22.
Hornborg, 427, 428, 429.

James, William, 223, 224, 260.
Janet, Pierre, 56, 62, 77, 157, 252, 281, 317, 364, 485, 498, 499, 500,
501, 506, 509, 526.
Johnson, (Miss) Alice, 22, 62.
Jung, C. J., 425, 437.

Kant, 250, 251.

Leibnitz, 250, 251.
Loeb, J., 232, 233, 236.
Lucretius, 309.

McDougall, William, 241, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 455, 456, 458.
Meltzer, S. J., 123.
Morgan, Lloyd, 234, 237, 238, 241.
Mosso, 423.
Myers, Frederick W. H., 251.

Pawlow, J. P., 139, 235, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431.
Peterson, Frederick, 106, 425, 437, 481.
Pilgrim, C. W., 81.

Ribôt, Th., 133, 144.
Rignano, Eugenio, 127.
Robertson, T. Brailsford, 124, 125, 127, 514.
Rothmann, Von M., 232, 234.
Rumbold, Horace, 223.

Schäfer, E. A., 232.
Schilling, 250.
Schrader, Max E. G., 232, 234, 235, 236.
Semon, Richard, 131.
Shand, 267, 449.
Sharp, Elizabeth A., 297.
Sherrington, C. S., 231, 234, 237.
Shohl, A. T., 432.
Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry, 62.
Sidis, Boris, 75, 104, 145, 183, 315.
Sidis and Kalmas, 104, 437, 438.
Sidis and Nelson, 104, 438.

Tallentyre, 271.
Titchener, E. B., 316, 321.
Turquan, Joseph, 274.

Umber, 427.

Verrall, (Mrs.), 21.
Vigouroux, A., 436.

Waterman, G. A., 169, 209.
Wells and Forbes, 438.
Wright, W. S., 432.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

=Absent-minded acts=, conservation of, 50.
=Affective states=, suppression of, by conflict, 455.
=Affects=, see =Emotion=.
as conative force of ideas, 448.
linking of, to ideas fundamental for the pathology of the
psychoneuroses, 449.
=Amnesia=, continuous, 76;
episodic, 69;
epochal, 74.
from conflict, 71, 508–518.
theory of, following emotion, 509–514.
different forms of, following emotion, 514–517.
=Anxiety neurosis=, emergence of emotion from a subconscious idea in,
382, 526.
=Association neuroses=, 279, 527.
=Association psychoses=, 278.

=Bashfulness= as resultant of emotional conflict, 520.
=Behavior=, acquired and instinctive, 237, 238;
conscious and unconscious, 230.

=Coconscious=, the meaning of the, 247–254.
=Coconscious= ideas, 168, 249, 254.
images, 169–171, 178, 208, 210, 374–376.
=Coconscious= processes, auto-analysis of the content of, 171, 176.
=Complex= of ideas, definition of a, 265.
=Complexes= (systematized), dissociated, as phases of multiple
personality, 299–302.
emotional, 267;
organization of emotional, 267–274.
systematized, 283:
Subject systems, 284;
alternation of, 288;
in dissociated personality, 288.
Chronological systems, 290;
differentiated by amnesia, 290–294.
Mood systems, 294;
regarded as a “side to one’s character,” 295;
illustrated by William Sharp, 296.
unconscious, organization of, in hypnotic and other dissociated
conditions, 302–306;
in pathological states, 305;
in psychotherapeutics, 288–289, 304;
underlying the individual, social, civic and national conscience,
public opinion, Sittlichkeit, etc., 307.
=Conflict=, from conative force of emotion, 71, 454.
between conscious and subconscious sentiments, 460, 467–480;
in pathological conditions, 478;
under experimental conditions, 470–478.
=Conflict= between emotional impulses, 454;
and sentiments, 455.
between two subconscious processes, 480.
general phenomena of, 488:
contraction of field of consciousness and personality, 489–492;
the hysterical state, 492;
systematized dissociation, 492–504;
systematized anesthesia, 492;
contracted personality, 496;
change of sentiments, 497;
alternation of personality, 501;
multiple personality, 502;
amnesia, 508–517;
subconscious traumatic memories, 517;
mental confusion, 519–521;
bashfulness, 520;
self-consciousness, 521.
suppression of instincts and affective states by, 454–458.
=Confusion= (mental), as resultant of emotional conflicts, 519;
theory of, 520.
=Conservation=, meaning of, 12.
a residuum of experience, 87.
considered as psychological residua, 110;
as coconscious ideas, 111;
as an undifferentiated psyche, 115;
as physical residua, 117;
as neural dispositions, 117.
evidence of, furnished by automatic writing, 15;
abstraction, 24;
hypnosis, 31;
hallucinatory phenomena, 39;
dreams, 43.
=Conservation=, of absent-minded acts, 50
of forgotten artificial states, 62;
(hypnosis, 62).
of forgotten dreams and somnambulisms, 59.
of forgotten experiences of normal life, 15.
of forgotten pathological states, 68
(amnesia, 68;
deliria, 79;
fugues, 75;
intoxications, 80;
multiple personality, 77).
of inner life, 85.
of subconscious perceptions, 52.

=Decerebrate Animal=, behavior of, 231.
intelligent behavior of, 240.
=Dissociation=, due to conflict, 71, 469, 472–475, 480, 487, 488,
492–504.
amnesia following, 508.
effected by subconscious processes, 504.
laws of cleavage of personality in, 504–508.
systematized, 492–504;
principle involved, 493.
=Dreams=, as a type of hallucinatory phenomena, 222.
physiological after-phenomena, 101.
subconscious process underlying, 196–213.
symbolism in, 200, 202.

=Emotion=, see =Affects=.
amnesia, as resultant of, 514–517.
emergence of, from subconscious ideas, 382–386, 387–388, 391, 485.
general psychopathology of, 440–442.
James-Lange theory of, 423, 453.
physiological manifestations of, 423;
changes in circulation, 424;
modifications of volume and action of heart, 424;
of respiratory apparatus, 426;
of glandular secretions, 426;
of the functions of the digestive glands, 426;
of the movements of the stomach and intestines, 426;
of salivary secretion, 431;
of secretion of ductless glands, 431;
of pupils, 433;
of muscular system, 433;
the psycho-galvanic reflex, 435.
physiological symptoms of, caused by subconscious ideas, 377–381.
phenomena of, due to subconscious processes, 103.
provides the impulsive force of an instinct, 447;
one of chief functions of, 451.
psycho-physiological schema of manifestations of emotion, 441;
physiological mimicry of disease, 442.
sensory accompaniments of, 453.
=Emotion=, sensory disturbances caused by, 438.
the central psychical element in an innate reflex process, 446.
the conative function of, 451, 452–460;
discharge of force in three directions, 452.
=Emotions=, as the prime-movers of all human activity, 450;
organization of, with ideas essential for self-control, etc., 451,
458.
primary and compound, 446.
=Emotional discharge= from subconscious processes, evidence for, 481.
=Emotional reactions=, acquired, do not always involve subconscious
processes, 418.

=Fanatics=, 279.
=Fear neurosis= due to subconscious ideas, 379.
=Feeling=, may emerge from subconscious complexes, 383–386.
=Fixed idea= (imperative), 278–279.
=Fringe (of consciousness)=, considered as a subconscious zone,
338–352;
as a twilight zone, 341;
consists of definite, real elements, 342;
ultramarginal or coconscious zone, 343–352.
content of the, 342–352;
only recovered by memory, 340, 353.
effect of attention in shifting the content of focus and, 340, 353.
=Fringe (of consciousness)=, meaning of ideas may be in the, 352–360.

=Glycosuria=, due to emotion, 432.

=Hallucinations=, see =Visions=.
as the emergence of secondary sensory images of subconscious ideas,
182–183, 204, 209–210, 315.
=Hysterical attacks=,
as recurrent complexes, 280, 282;
laughter and crying due to subconscious processes, 379.

=Idea=, a composite of sign and meaning, 325.
=Idea and Meaning=, the problem of, 311.
=Ideas=, content of, includes “Meaning,” 321-331.
setting of, 321, 330.
=Images=, of perception, either in the focus of attention or in the
fringe, 330, 340.
=Images, secondary=, in perception, 82–183, 313;
dissociation of, 318–321;
from subconscious ideas, 204, 209, 315–321, 375, 413.
=Instinct and Intelligence=, 240.
=Instinct=, McDougall’s conception of an, 446.
as an emotional disposition, 447, 467.
=Instinctive process=, three aspects of an, 446.
=Instincts=, conduct determined by, 458;
suppression of, by conflict, 454–458;
may be lasting, 460–467.
difference between consequences of repression of, and of sentiments,
467–469.
=Intelligence=, 240.
and instinct, 240.
a pragmatic question, 241.
conscious and unconscious, 240–246.

“=Meaning=,” as a part of the content of ideas, 321–331.
as determined by a subconscious process, 361.
as the conscious elements of a larger subconscious complex, 360–362,
363.
derived from the setting, 321, 330.
may be in the fringe of consciousness, 352–360, 363.
must be in consciousness, 339.
the problem of, 311.
=Melancholia=, depressive feeling in, as emergence from a subconscious
complex, 386.
=Memory=, as a process, 1;
of registration, conservation and reproduction, 2, 134.
conscious, a particular type, 3;
without recollection, 144.
physiological, 3, 135, 229, 238.
psycho-physiological, 138.
significance of theory of, 257–264.
subconscious, 84, 151, 517.
unconscious, 137.
=Memories, automatic=, 267;
outbreak of, 274;
as hysterical attacks, 280;
as obsessions, 271, 278, 280;
as a phobia, 269.
=Monism=, doctrine of, 246.

=Neurograms=, 109, 131. as organized systems of neurons, 121. as
physiological dispositions, 131. as subconscious processes, 150–157.

=Obsessions=, clinical characteristics of, 278.
four types of, 373.
type A, purely physical disturbances caused by subconscious ideas,
374–381.
type B, emotion plus physical disturbances, 381–386;
as “anxiety neurosis,” 382.
type C, emotion plus physical disturbances, plus idea, 387–410.
type D, idea, meaning, emotion and physical disturbance, 410–415.
inability to voluntarily modify, 415.
therapeutics of, 416.
the setting in, 372.

=Parallelism=, doctrine of, 246.
=Perception=, a synthesis of primary and secondary images, 312–321.
may include affects, 330.
=Personalities, subconscious=, value of, for study of mental
mechanisms, 160.
=Personality=, as survival of antecedent experiences, 306–310.
dissociated, 299–302.
includes conserved but forgotten experiences of hypnotic states, 66.
multiple, 299–302.
=Phobia=, see =Obsessions=.
as an automatism, 269.
of steeples (case), 389–410;
of fainting (case), 355–360;
of insanity (case), 411–414.
=Psycho-galvanic phenomenon=, induced by subconscious processes, 103.
nature of, 435–438.
a phenomenon of emotion, 435.
as evidence of subconscious emotional discharge, 481–484.
=Psycholeptic attack=, as an organized complex, 282.
=Psychoneuroses=, symptomatic structure of, 521–528;
the hysterical attack, 524;
the dissociated personality, 525;
the subconscious fixed idea, 526;
the anxiety state, 526;
an obsession, 527;
an association neurosis, 527.
=Psychotherapeutics=, based on organization of complexes, 288–289;
in hypnosis, 304.
by the organization of unconscious settings of ideas, 368–372, 416.
=Psychotherapeutics= of obsessions, 416.
=Physiological Dispositions=, innate and acquired, 230, 231.
in the spinal animal, 231.
in the decerebrate animal, 231.
determinants of conscious and unconscious behavior, 230.

=Recollection=, 143.
a more perfect kind of conscious memory, 144.
=Reflection=, subconscious processes underlying, 225–228.
=Religious conversion= (sudden), 193, 223.
=Reproduction=, dissimilarity of types in abstraction and automatic
writing, 27.
realistic, 32.
=Residua=, as neural dispositions, 119.
chemical and physical theories of, 122;
analogy with anaphylaxis, 123;
theory of auto-catalysis, 124–127;
of nervous accumulators, 127–129.
=Residual Processes=, underlying automatic motor phenomena, 88;
hallucinations, 90;
post-hypnotic phenomena, 96;
dreams, 98;
physiological bodily disturbances, 101.

=Self-consciousness=, as resultant of emotional conflict, 521.
=Sentiment=, definition of a, 449;
as an organized system of emotional dispositions centered about an
idea, 449–450.
difference between the consequences of repression of an instinct and
of a, 467–469.
=Sentiments=, essential for self-control and regulation of conduct,
451;
in absence of, emotional life would be chaos, 451;
suppression of, by conflict, 454–458.
repression of, may lead to the formation of pathological subconscious
states, 461.
“=Settings=,” theory of, 311;
practical application to everyday life, 331–337.
not sharply defined groups of ideas, 421.
as part of an unconscious complex and a subconscious process, 361,
363, 367;
inadequacy of analysis as a method of proof, 364, 368;
synthetic methods, 365;
therapeutic application of, 368–372;
in obsessions, 372–386, 387–415.
=Subconscious, The=, demarcation between, and the conscious, 419;
difficulties of interpretation by clinical methods, 220;
in applied psychology, 213–228.
meanings of, 247–254;
three classes of facts included in, 253.
special problems of, 162.
subdivisions of, x, 14, 253.
=Subconscious=, emotional discharge shown by psycho-galvanic reaction,
481–484.
ideas, 249–254.
intelligence, 150, 153, 163, 164, 177–180, 187, 188;
underlying spontaneous hallucinations, 188–195;
underlying dreams, 196–213;
comparable to a coconscious personality, 211–212.
mathematical calculations, 96, 167, 169–171, 177–179.
perception, 52.
performance of post-hypnotic phenomena, 168, 171.
personality, 159;
value of, for study of mind, 159–160.
process, definition of a, 156.
processes, evidence for, 151, 163;
validity of memory as evidence for, 176;
actuality, intrinsic nature, and intelligence of, 164;
as coconscious, 157;
as unconscious, 161;
conditions required for proof of, 164–166;
as determinants of behavior, 153, 163;
of the meanings of ideas, 361, 363;
of physical symptoms, 377;
intrinsic nature of, 157, 163, 164;
underlying artificial visual hallucinations, 180–187;
spontaneous visual hallucinations, 188–195;
underlying dreams, 196–213.
=Subconscious= self, 256.
solution of problems, 171–176.
=Symbolism=, in dreams, 200, 202;
in visions, 222.

=Unconscious, The=, 229;
as a storehouse of neurograms, 149.
as a fundamental of personality, 254–264.
has dynamic functions, 262.
the meanings of the, 149, 247–254.
=Unconscious=, calculations, 178;
intelligence, 187, 210–211.
complex as the setting of ideas, 361-363.
complexes, organization of, 265;
definition of, 265.
ideas, 249-254.

=Visions=, see =Hallucinations=.
as the emergence of secondary visual images of subconscious ideas,
182–3, 204, 209–210, 315, 413.
crystal, 42.
subconscious processes underlying normal, 222.
symbolism in, 222.

=Will=, McDougall’s theory of the, 458.
=Word-association= reactions and the principle of conflict, 481.

ADDENDUM: NAMES AND SUBJECTS

=Character= as distinguished from Personality, 533.

=McDougall, Wm.=, 538, 602, 625.
=Mental Conflicts=, mechanisms of, 582.
=Multiple personality=, the psychogenesis of, 545;
product of two processes and secondary growth, 546.
Case of B. C. A., 551;
autobiography, 556;
conflicts between sentiments and rebellious thoughts, 567, 579,
583;
growth of rebellious thoughts into the larger B complex and the
later B personality, 569, 577–579, 584, 587, 596–598;
unification of the same in the second ego, 570.
The B complex, 584, 587;
manifestations of the B complex in alterations of character and
conduct, 587–592, 616.
The B personality, 593;
the eruption of the B personality from “shock” (conflict), 593,
601;
the evolution of the B personality, 596–598, 601;
“shock” as a defense reaction, 599;
analysis of the “shock” 601;
the B personality as a reversion to youth, 602–612;
characteristics of the B personality, 603.
The A personality, 614;
eruption of the same by “shock,” 614;
characteristics of the A personality, 612, 614, 619–621;
mechanisms of the “shock” reaction, 621–624.
Dissociation and repression of emotional instincts from the A and B
personalities, 624–627.
Reintegration of the two personalities into one normal whole, 632.

=Personality=, structure and dynamic elements of, 529;
definition of, 532;
primary and secondary units of its structure, 535.

=Self=, the conception of, 541.
=Sentiments=, structure of, 537;
the self-regarding sentiments, 538;
conflicts between sentiments in the case of B. C. A., 583.
=Shand, Alexander F.=, 535, 602.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcriber’s Note

The unmatched ‘)’ at 95.1 ‘recorded subconsciously, coconsciously).’,
has no simple resolution, based on the grammar and punctuation, and has
been left as-is.

There appears to be a confusion of quotation marks at 282.15. The final
phrase contains an opening double quote, which is belied by a short
single-quoted phrase just above, and the final footnote referring to
Janet’s text.

The labels on the two graphs in the image on p. 425 were chopped and
have been added.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

xvii.31 The B Personal[l/it]y Replaced.
56.28 [(]tactile, visual, etc.) Added.
97.23 to say that it[ is] plain Inserted.
138.30 process is conserved and rep[r]oduced Inserted.
150.12 out of the unconscious.[”] Removed.
155.1 devoid of ab[s]truseness, Inserted.
187.8 post[ /-]hypnotic Replaced.
210.13 coconscious or un[con]conscious Removed.
214.10 is apt to meet with difficulties[.] Added.
223.27 and His Times[,] Sir Horace Rumbold Added.
231.21 that various co[o/ö]perative movements Replaced.
258.19 [o/a]bnormal mental conditions Replaced.
280.10 [5/4]. _Hysterical attacks._ Misnumbered.
436.23 che[x/z] les mélancoliques Replaced.
470.19 inhibition of consciousnes[s] Added.
504.18 to the subconsc[i]ous conflicts Inserted.
525.3 deposited in the uncon[s]cious Inserted.
598.24 particularly anger and disgust[;/,] Replaced.
600.11 whether the “shock[”] was a defense Added.
649.29 [con-]considered as a subconscious zone Removed.

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