THE MECHANISM OF RECALL
[Sidenote: _The Right Stimulus_]
Somehow, somewhere, all experiences, whether subject to voluntary recall
or not, are preserved, and are capable of reproduction when the right
stimulus comes along.
And it is a law that _those experiences which are associated with each
other, whether ideas, emotions or voluntary or involuntary muscular
movements, tend to become bound together into groups, and these groups
tend to become bound together into systems_.
[Sidenote: _"Complexes" of Experience_]
Such a system of associated groups of experiences is technically known
as a "complex."
Pay particular attention to these definitions, as "groups" of ideas and
"complexes" of ideas, emotions and muscular movements are terms that we
shall constantly employ.
You learned in a former lesson that mental experiences may consist not
only of sense-perceptions based on excitements arising in the memory
nerves, but also of bodily emotions, the "feeling tones" of ideas, and
of muscular movements based on stimuli arising in the motor nerves.
_Groups consist, therefore, not only of associated ideas, but of
associated ideas coupled with their emotional qualities and impulses to
muscular movements._
All groups bound together by a mutually related idea constitute a single
"complex." Every memory you have is an illustration of such "complexes."
[Sidenote: _The Thrill of Recollection_]
Suppose, for example, you once gained success in a business deal. Your
recollection of the other persons concerned in that transaction, of any
one detail in the transaction itself, will be accompanied by the faster
heartbeat, the quickened circulation of the blood, the feeling of
triumph and elation that attended the original experience.
[Sidenote: _"Complexes" and Functional Derangements_]
Complexes formed out of harrowing earthquakes, robberies, murders or
other dreadful spectacles, which were originally accompanied on the part
of the onlooker by trembling, perspiration and palpitation of the
heart, when lived over again in memory, are again accompanied by all
these bodily activities. Your memory of a hairbreadth escape will bring
to your cheek the pallor that marked it when the incident occurred.
The formation and existence of "complexes" explains the origin of many
functional diseases of the body--that is to say, diseases involving no
loss or destruction of tissue, but consisting simply in a failure on the
part of some bodily organ to perform its allotted function naturally and
effectively.
[Sidenote: _Automatically Working Mental Mechanisms_]
Thus, in hay fever or "rose cold" the tears, the inflammation of the
membranes of the nose, the cough, the other trying symptoms, all are
linked with the sight of a rose, or dust, or sunlight, or some other
outside fact to which attention has been called as the cause of hay
fever, into a complex, "an automatically working mechanism." And the
validity of this explanation of the regular recurrence of attacks of
this disease is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that a paper rose
is likely to prove just as effective in producing all the symptoms of
the disease as a rose out of Nature's garden.
Another striking illustration of the working of this principle is
afforded by two gentlemen of my acquaintance, brothers, each of whom
since boyhood has had unfailing attacks of sneezing upon first arising
in the morning. No sooner is one of these men awake and seated upon the
edge of his bed for dressing than he begins to sneeze, and he continues
to sneeze for fifteen or twenty minutes thereafter, although he has no
"cold" and never sneezes at any other time.
[Sidenote: _Two Classes of "Complexes"_]
Obviously, if absolutely all mental experiences are preserved, they
consist altogether of two broad classes of complexes: first, those that
are momentarily _active in consciousness_, forming part of the present
mental picture, and, second, all the others--that is to say, all past
experiences that are _not at the present moment before the mind's eye_.
There are, then, _conscious_ complexes and _subconscious_ complexes,
complexes of _consciousness_ and complexes of _subconsciousness_.
[Sidenote: _The Subconscious Storehouse_]
And of the complexes of subconsciousness, some are far more readily
recalled than others. Some are forever popping into one's thoughts,
while others can be brought to the light of consciousness only by some
unusual and deep-probing stimulus. And _the human mind is a vast
storehouse of complexes, far the greater part buried in
subconsciousness_, yet somehow, like impressions on the wax cylinder of
a phonograph, preserved with life-like truth and clearness.
Turn back for a moment to our definition of memory. You will observe
that its second essential element is Recall.
Recall is the process by which the experiences of the past are summoned
from the reservoir of the subconscious into the light of present
consciousness. We necessarily touched upon this process in a previous
book, in considering the Laws of Association, but here, in relation to
memory, we shall go into the matter somewhat more analytically.
THE LAWS OF RECALL
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