Of course all this does not exclude its being perfectly justifiable to

separate those diseases for which a definite destruction of the brain

parts can be detected, as in paralysis of the brain, from those where

that is impossible. We may also expect that those disturbances in the

brain which we cannot as yet make visible, may allow more easily an

organic repair and thus a restoration to the normal functions. Just as a

disjointed arm may be brought to function quickly again, a broken arm

slowly, an amputated arm never, each brain cell too may suffer lesions

which are reparable in different degrees. But it is evident that it

remains then an entirely empirical question whether the invisible damage

allows repair or not. We have no right to say that where the

destruction cannot be seen under the microscope there is no organic

change and the disturbance is therefore only a psychical one and can be

removed by mental means. All changes are physical and experience has to

decide whether they are accessible to psychological influences or not.

States like epilepsy may not allow any recognition of definite brain

destruction and are yet on the whole inaccessible to mental influence,

while many a brain disturbance with visible alterations, resulting

perhaps from anaemia or hyperaemia, may be caused to disappear. If on the

other hand we say that we can cure with psychotherapeutic means only the

functional brain diseases and define as functional simply those diseases

which can be cured by such means, we move, of course, in the most

obvious circle and yet just that is the too frequent fate of the

discussions in certain quarters.

Every psychical disturbance is organic inasmuch as it is based on a

molecular change which deranges the function. Some of these changes are

beyond restitution; some can be brought back to a well-working structure

by strictly physical agencies like drugs or electricity; others can be

repaired by physiological stimuli which reach directly the higher brain

cells through the sense organs and which we call psychical under one

aspect, but which certainly remain physiological influences from another

aspect. And these psychophysiological influences of the spoken words or

similar agencies are thus indeed for therapeutic effect entirely

cooerdinated with the douche and the bath and the electric current and

the opiate. It is a stimulation of certain brain cells, an inhibition of

certain others: a subtle apparatus which must be handled with careful

calculation of its microscopical causes and effects. That these words

from an entirely different point of view may mean a moral appeal and

have ethical value, point to moral and religious ideas and reenforce the

spiritual personality, lies entirely outside of the psychotherapeutic

calculation. As long as the curing of the patient is the aim, the faith

in God is not more valuable than the faith in the physician and the

moral appeal of no higher order than the influence through the galvanic

current. They come in question only as means to an end and they are

valuable only in so far as they reach the end. That they can be related

to an entirely different series of purposes, to the system of our moral

ideas, ought not to withdraw the attention of the psychotherapist from

his only aim, to cure the patient. The highest moral appeal may be even

a most unfit method of treatment and the religious emotion may just as

well do harm as good from the point of view of the physician.

Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the usual confusion of

standpoints.

V

SUGGESTION AND HYPNOTISM

Psychotherapy has now become for us the effort to repair the disturbed

equilibrium of human functions by influencing the mental life. It is

acknowledged on all sides that the most powerful of these influences is

that of suggestion. This is an influence which is most easily

misunderstood and which has most often become the starting point for

misleading theories. Before we enter into the study of the practical

effects of suggestion and the psychotherapeutic results, we must examine

this tool in the hand of the psychotherapist from a purely psychological

viewpoint. The patient may perhaps sometimes profit from suggestion the

more, the less he understands about its nature, but the physician will

always secure the better results, the more clearly he apprehends the

working of this subtle tool. Of course, that does not mean that any

psychology is able to explain the process of suggestion to a point where

all difficulties are removed, but at least the mysteries can be removed

and the effects can be linked with other well-known processes.

Let us be clear from the start that suggestion is certainly nothing

abnormal and exceptional, nothing which leads us away from our ordinary

life, nothing which brings us nearer to the great riddles of the

universe. There is no human life into which suggestion does not enter in

a hundred forms. Family life and education, law and business, public

life and politics, art and religion are carried by suggestion. A

suggestion is, we might say at first, an idea which has a power in our

mind to suppress the opposite idea. A suggestion is an idea which in

itself is not different from other ideas, but the way in which it takes

possession of the mind reduces the chances of any opposite ideas; it

inhibits them. It is indeed the best result of any successful education,

that the teachings have taken hold of the mind of the young in such a

way that all the opposite tendencies and impulses and wishes do not come

to development. The well-educated person does not need to participate in

a struggle between good and bad motives, for that which has been

impressed upon his mind does not allow the other side to come up at all.

Our life would be crowded with inner conflicts if education had not

secured for us from the start preponderance for the suggestions of our

educators.

The love of family and friends, of our country and our party are in the

same way such suggestions. We may hear arguments for the other side,

arguments which easily convince the man of the other party, but they do

not appeal to us: they are emasculated before they enter our minds; they

have no chance to overcome the resistance because suggestions stand in

their way. No argument will overwhelm the suggestion which religion has

settled in our inner life, and from this strongest suggestion which can

stand against any temptation of life small psychological steps lead down

to the little bits of suggestion with which our daily chance life is

over-flooded. Every advertisement in the newspaper, every display in the

shop-window, every warm intonation in the voice of our neighbor has its

suggestive power, that is, it brings its content in such a way to our

minds that the desire to do the opposite is weakened. We do buy the

object that we do not need, and we do follow the advice which we ought

to have reconsidered. And what would remain of art if it had not this

power of suggestion by which it comes to us and wins the victory over

every opposing idea? We believe the painter and we believe the novelist,

if their technique is good. We do not remember that the inventions of

their genius are contrary to our life experience; we feel sympathy with

the hero and do not care in the least that he has no real life. The

suggestion of art has inhibited in us every contrary idea.

Such daily experience shows us that suggestive power may belong to

different men in different degree. There are lawyers whose arguments and

whose presentation open our mind, it seems, to any suggestion: while

others leave us indifferent; we understand their idea, we follow their

thoughts, and yet we remain accessible to opposite influences. There are

teachers whose authority gives to every word such an impressiveness and

dignity that every opposite thought disappears, while others throw out

words which are forgotten. On the other hand, the readiness to accept

suggestions is evidently also quite different with different

individuals. From the most credulous to the stubborn, we have every

degree of suggestibility, the one impressed by the suggestive power of

any idea which is brought to his mind, the other always inclined to

distrust and to look over to the opposite argument. Such a stubborn mind

is indeed not only without inclination for suggestions, but it may

develop even a negative suggestibility; whatever it receives awakens an

instinctive impulse towards the opposite. Moreover we are all in

different degrees suggestible at different times and under various

conditions. Emotions reenforce our readiness to accept suggestions. Hope

and fear, love and jealousy give to the impression and the idea a power

to overwhelm the opposite idea, which otherwise might have influenced

our deliberation. Fatigue and intoxicants increase suggestibility very

strongly. To look out on a wider perspective, we may add at once that an

artificial increase of suggestibility is all which constitutes the state

of hypnotism.

At first, however, we want to understand the ordinary process of

suggestion in that normal form in which it enters into every hour of our

life and into every relation of our social intercourse. But if we begin

to examine the structure of the process, we can no longer be satisfied

with the vague reference to ideas and their opposites. What does it mean

after all if we speak of opposite ideas? Can we not entertain any ideas

peacefully together in our consciousness? From a logical standpoint,

ideas may contradict each other, but that refers to their meaning. As

mere bits of psychological experience, I may have any ideas together in

my consciousness. I can think summer and winter or day and night or

right and left or black and white or love and hate in one embracing

thought. As mere mental stuff, the one idea does not interfere with the

other. On the other hand, this is evident: I cannot will to turn to the

right and to turn to the left at the same time. There may be a wrangling

between those two impulses, but as soon as my will stands for the one,

the other is really excluded. Any action which I am starting to do thus

crowds out the impulse to the opposed action.

In the sphere of psychological facts, we have here indeed the only

relation between two happenings which necessarily involves an

opposition. We could never understand why one brain cell might not work

together with any other brain cell, but we do understand that nature

must provide for an apparatus by which the impulse to one action makes

the impulse to the opposite action ineffective. There is no action which

has not its definite opposite. The carrying out of any impulse involves

the suppression of the contrary impulse, and the impulse not to do an

action involves the suppression of the impulse to do it. When we spoke

of the relations of mind and brain, we mentioned that such a corelation

of mental centers indeed exists. Physiological experiments have

demonstrated that the activity of those centers which stimulate a

certain action reduce the excitability of those brain parts which awaken

the antagonistic action. As far as the world of actions is concerned,

the mechanism of the process of suggestion thus seems not inaccessible

to a physiological understanding.

Various ideas of movements to be carried out are struggling for control

in the cortex of the brain. That is the normal status which precedes any

decision. The channels of motor discharge are open for both

possibilities; we may turn to the right or to the left. Then the play of

associations begins. A larger and larger circle of ideas surrounds the

idea of the one and of the other goal. Those ideas awaken emotions. On

the one side may call our duty and on the other side our pleasure.

Larger and larger parts of the central content of our consciousness, of

our own personality, become involved; our principles and maxims, our

memories, our hopes and fears, enter into the battle until deeper strata

of the idea of ourselves enter into a firm association with the one

side, reenforcing, perhaps, the idea of the goal at the right. This

opens wide the channels of discharge for the movement to the right and

inhibits thereby the excitability of the center which leads to the

opposite action. The channel of discharge to the movement towards the

left becomes closed, the idea of that movement fades away and becomes

inhibited: we are moving towards the right. The outcome was the product

of our total personality.

But this result would have been different, if from the start the

channels of discharge had not been equally open for both possible

movements, and if thus the relative resistance to the impulse had not

been equal on both sides. If, for instance, we had gone from the given

point frequently to the left, as a result of the habit and training, the

impulse to the left would have found less nervous resistance. The

channels would have become widened by the repetition and the opposite

channels would have been somewhat closed by the lack of use. Or if

instead of such previous habit, we should see at the decisive moment

others turning to the left, the impression would have become the

starting point for a reaction of mere instinctive imitation. While we

might not have followed that imitative impulse at once, yet the channels

would have been widened, the discharge in the direction would have been

prepared by it, the resistance would have been lowered and the chances

for the opposite movement would have been decreased. Those people who

moved to the left gave us by their action the same kind of an impulse

which they would have furnished if they had begged us with words, or if

they had ordered us to follow them with authoritative firmness. In each

of these cases, the influence would have amounted to a suggestion.

Whether we watched the movements of other people or whether their words

made an impression on us, in either case the way became prepared for a

certain line of action and therefore the way for the opposite action

became blocked. The final outcome was thus no longer an entirely free

play of motor ideas, but there was a little inequality in play. The one

had from the start a better chance, the other was from the start

laboring under difficulties. The suggestion of actions is thus nothing

but making use of the antagonistic character in the nervous paths which

start from the motor centers. That all such phrases as the opening and

the closing, the widening and blocking, of channels of discharge are

only metaphors hardly needs special emphasis. Instead of such

comparisons, we ought rather to think of chemical processes which offer

various degrees of resistance to the propagation of the nervous

excitement.

We see from here the direction in which many psychotherapeutic efforts

must lie, efforts which are entirely within the limits of the daily

normal experience, and belong to the medical practice of every

physician, yes, to the helpful influence of every man in practical life.

The intemperate man may suffer from his inability to resist his desire

for whiskey. The idea of his visit to the saloon finds the channels of

discharge open. We argue with him, we tempt him by attractions which

lead to other ways, we suggest to him that he spend those evening hours

perhaps with friends or with books for which we awaken his interest; we

do it as impressively as we can, we appeal to his friendly feeling for

us; and if again the hour comes in which the desire for the artificial

stimulation sets in with a motor impulse towards the bottle, the

channels for discharge have now been blocked. The idea of the opposite

action arises, it associates itself with the emotions which we stirred

up in his mind, it associates itself with the respect for the adviser,

and thus new clusters of thought reenforce that idea of action which we

suggested, and this opposite line of action now finds a minimum

resistance because our appeal has opened beforehand the gate. The desire

for the book works itself out into action while the desire for the cup

finds increased resistance.

Just this is the kind of suggestion with which we correct faulty action

everywhere in our social circle; and yet small steps lead on from here

to the case where perhaps the desire for alcohol has reached that

pathological intensity in which the equilibrium is entirely disturbed

and cannot be repaired without suggestions of a much more powerful

character, given in a state of artificially increased suggestibility--in

hypnotism. The principle of opening certain channels of discharge for

the purpose of closing the opposite channels remains in the extreme case

the same as in the more ordinary cases. The impulse to drink is a

positive one, but the principle is not different where the impulse is

negative. A friend who comes from the quiet country may feel unable to

pass the busy square of the city. The fear of an accident holds back his

steps, he cannot give the impulse to walk through the crowded rush of

vehicles. Now either by words of advice, by persuasion or by showing the

way, we may apply our suggestion, we open the channels of discharge for

the necessary movements and thus decrease the excitability of those

centers in which nervous fear was playing. And again small steps lead

from here to the case of the psychasthenic sufferer whose phobia does

not allow him to cross any square and where reenforced suggestion has to

break open the ways for the walking movement when the square is reached.

Thus we are not far from a causal understanding of suggestive influences

wherever actions are concerned, where movements are to be reenforced or

to be suppressed and where antagonism of the motor paths is involved.

But that does not seem to lead us nearer to the much larger group of

states in which the whole suggestive process concerns apparently the

interplay of ideas alone, where not actions but impressions are

controlled by suggestion, where not impulses but thoughts are

strengthened or inhibited. Here lies the real psychophysical problem

which has been by far too much neglected in scientific psychology and

has almost been hidden and made to disappear in the wonderful accounts

of the hypnotists. But all those mysterious stories as to the

achievements of suggestion cannot help so long as we do not understand

the working of the process, and we shall have the better chance to

understand it the more we keep away from the uncanny and mysterious

results which refer to the most complex conditions, and rather seek to

analyze the state in its simplest forms and compare it with other simple

mental processes. The psychology of suggestion has suffered too much by

the fascination which its most complex forms exert on a trivial

curiosity.

Yet the problem of suggestion in the field of ideas stands after all not

isolated. Instead of connecting it with the weird reports of mystic

influence from man to man, let us rather link it with the simple

experience of attention. There is no pulse-beat of our life in which

attention does not play its little role. But does not attention share

with suggestion the characteristic feature that some contents of

consciousness are reenforced and others are suppressed? This negative,

this suppressing character of attention is not a chance by-product, it

is most essential. There is no attention without it. If I am studying, I

do not hear the conversation around me, and if I listen to the

conversation, my studies in hand become inhibited. If I enjoy the play

on the stage and give to it my full attention, my memories of the day's

work are suppressed; if I think of the happenings of the day, I am not

attentive to the play and hardly notice what is going on. The inhibited

impression may often disappear entirely. While I am reading I am not at

all aware of the tactual and muscular sensations in my legs, and if I am

completely absorbed by my book, I may not even notice that the bell

rings. In short, we have here as the most characteristic relation, just

as in suggestion, the fact that one mental state becomes vivid, and that

others are losing ground, become less vivid, are inhibited and perhaps

disappear entirely.

Of course, to point to the similarity between suggestion and attention

is not a real explanation. It may be answered that attention simply

offers the same difficulties once more. How can we explain in the

attention process the fact that one idea, the one attended to, becomes

vivid and that others evaporate? The difficulty evidently cannot be

removed by simply saying that only one sensorial process can be

developed in the brain at one time. The popular descriptions of

attention easily make it appear as if such were the solution of the

problem. If one sensorial brain part is intensely engaged, the remainder

of the brain is condemned to a kind of inactivity. Yet such a dogma is

hardly better than the old-fashioned one that the soul can have only one

idea at a time. We know too well now that the psychophysical system is

an extremely complex equilibrium of millions of elements. Thus every

change must be explained with reference to this complex manifold. Above

all, the facts simply contradict such an over-simple explanation,

inasmuch as it is not at all true that only one content of consciousness

can become vivid. Our attention does not focus upon one point at all but

may illuminate a large field and thus give vividness to various complex

groups. If I am thinking about a scientific problem, an abundance of

reminiscences of previous reading and imaginative ideas of possible

solutions, associative thoughts and conclusions are with equal vividness

before my mind and the forthcoming thought may be influenced by this

total combination. I have no right whatever to say that the idea of a

certain solution excludes there in my mind the consideration of the

books which I have read and of the discussions which I have heard.

Emotions may be superadded. In short, a world of mental states may be

held together by one act of attention. And new and ever new thoughts

are shooting in, and all still find place there in the field attended

to, while on the other hand my slight headache is inhibited and an

appointment is forgotten. At a gay banquet, my attention may be given to

the whole hall with all its color effects and its flowers, and to all

that the table offers and to the music from the orchestra and to the

jokes of my neighbors. It is not true that any one of those parts

suppresses the vividness of the others, they seem rather to maintain and

to help one another; and yet in the next moment, my neighbor may bring

me news which absorbs my mind entirely and leaves no room for the

flowers and the music and the meal. How far can psychology do justice to

these characteristics of attention?

There seems to be but one way. The attended-to idea does not exclude

every other idea, but it does exclude the opposite idea, and opposite to

each other is here again that pair of ideas which lead to opposite

actions, to opposite psychophysical attitudes. We must remember here the

psychomotor character of our brain processes which we so fully

discussed. We recognized the fundamental truth that there is no

sensorial state which is not at the same time the starting-point for

motor reaction. We recognized that the brain is by its whole

psychological development a great switchboard which transfers incoming

currents into outgoing ones and that its biological meaning lies in the

fact that it is the center piece of an arc which leads from the sense

organs to the muscles. We cannot conceive of those relations as complex

enough; we know, of course, that millions of nerve fibers lead from the

periphery to the highest psychophysical apparatus in the cortex of the

brain and that millions of fibers bring about the interrelation between

these central stations, but we must never forget that millions of fibers

also represent the outgoing paths and that they too lead down to lower

central motor instruments which are again in numberless corelations. Any

impression is thus a starting point for attitudes and reactions and it

is an empty abstraction to consider it otherwise. An idea is never,

psychophysically considered, the end of the process, it is always also a

beginning. No external action may follow, but the mental impulse to such

is nevertheless starting in the highest center.

If we look at the landscape, every single spot of color, reaching a

nerve fiber in our eye and finally a sensory cell in our brain, is there

the starting point for an impulse to make an eye movement in the

direction of the seen point. The eye may remain entirely quiet as the

impulse to move to the right and to the left, to move up and to move

down, may be equally strong, but those thousands of impulses work in the

motor paths and only their equilibrium results in the suppression of the

outer movement. With such motor scheme, we begin to understand the

selective process in attention. An impression may be accompanied by

other stimuli and associations, by thoughts and ideas, and thousands of

sensory excitements may thus arise in the cortex, but only those have a

chance for full vividness of development which cooeperate in the motor

action already started. Those impressions which would lead to the

opposite actions have no chance because their motor paths are blocked

and their own full development is dependent upon their possibility of

expression. To close the path means to inhibit the idea which demands

such action. We can attend to a hundred thoughts together, if they all

lead to the same attitude and deed. We can look at the opera, can see

every singer and every singer's gown, can listen to every word, can have

the whole plot in mind, can hear the thousands of tones which come from

the orchestra; and yet combine all that in one act of attention, because

it all belongs to the same setting of our reactive apparatus. Whatever

the one wants is wanted by the others. But if at the same time our

neighbor speaks to us, we do not notice it; his words work as a stimulus

which demands an entirely different motor setting as answer. Therefore

the words remain unvivid and unnoticed.

To attend means therefore to bring about a motor setting by which the

object of attention finds open channels for discharge in action. Which

particular action is needed in the state of attention cannot be

doubtful. Attention demands those motor responses and those inner steps

by which the object of attention shows itself more fully and more

clearly. When we give attention to the picture we want to see more

details, when we give attention to the problem we want to recognize more

of the factors involved, when we give attention to the banquet we want

to grasp more of the pleasurable features. This aim of attention

involves that, as part of such reactions, the sense organs become

adjusted; we fixate the eyeball, we listen, and in consequence the

object itself becomes clearer, and through the easy passage into the

motor channels the whole impression becomes vivid. At the same time, all

those associations must be reenforced and become vivid too which lead to

the same action. On the other hand, the opening of the one passageway

closes the path to the opposite action and inhibits the impressions

which would interfere with our interest. Every act of attention becomes,

therefore, a complex distribution in the reenforcement and inhibition of

mental states.

Now let us come back to suggestion. It shares, we said, with attention,

the power to reenforce and to inhibit. But if we examine what is

involved in the suggestion of an idea, we find surely more than a mere

turning of the attention towards one idea and turning the attention away

from another idea. That which characterizes and constitutes suggestion

is a belief in the idea, an acceptance of the idea as real and the

dismissal of the opposite idea as unreal. Yes, we may say directly that

it is meaningless to speak of suggesting an idea; we suggest either an

action or, if no action is concerned, we suggest belief in an idea. If I

suggest to the fearful man at twilight that the willow-tree trunk by the

wayside is a man with a gun, I do not turn his attention to an abstract

idea of a robber nor do I simply awaken the visual impression of one,

but I make him believe that such an idea is there realized, that he

really sees the person. If I suggest to him that he hears distant bells

ringing or that he feels a slight headache, he may not be suggestible

enough to accept it, but if he accepts it he is not simply attending to

the idea which I propose but he is convinced of its real existence. The

same holds true with the negative; if I suggest to him that the slight

headache of which he complained has disappeared or that the smell which

he noticed has stopped, I do not simply invite him to think of the

absence of such sensations. It becomes for him a suggestion only if he

becomes convinced that these disturbances have now become unreal. The

same holds true for all those suggestions of ideas which belong to our

practical life, the suggestions which art imprints on our minds, or

which politics and religion impart. As long as we are under the

suggestion of the novelist, we really believe in the existence of the

heroine; we really believe in the validity of the political party

principle; it is not an argument to which we simply give our attention,

it becomes a suggestion only when the belief in its objective existence

controls our minds. We may say in general that suggestions which are not

suggestions of actions are without exception suggestions of belief.

Actions and beliefs are the only possible material of any suggestion.

Yet what else is a belief than a preparation for action? I may think of

an object without preparing myself for any particular line of behavior.

Here in the room I may think of rain or sunshine on the street as a mere

idea, but to know that it now really rains or shines means something

entirely different. It means a completely new setting in my present

attitude, a setting by which I am prepared to act along the one or the

other line, to take an umbrella or to take a straw hat, when I am to

leave the house. I may think of the door of this room as locked or

unlocked without transcending the mere sphere of imagination, but to

believe that it is the one or the other means a new setting in my motor

adjustments. If it is locked I know that I cannot leave the room without

a key. Every belief means the preparation for a definite line of action

and a new motor adjustment in the whole system of motor paths, an

adjustment by which my actions in future will be switched off at once

into particular paths. And there is theoretically no difference whether

my belief refers to the proposition that the door is locked or that a

God exists in Heaven.

But if every belief is such a new motor setting, then we are evidently

brought back to the mechanism which was essential for every suggestion

of action on the one side and for every process of attention on the

other side, namely, the mechanism of antagonistic movements. To prepare

ourselves for one line of action means to close beforehand the channels

of discharge for the opposite. The suggestible mind sees the man with a

gun on the wayside because he is preparing himself in his expectation

for the appropriate action; he is ready for the fight or ready to run

away, and every line of the tree trunk is apperceived with reference to

this motor setting. The smell, on the other hand, has disappeared under

the influence of the suggestion because a new motor adjustment has set

in, in which he is prepared to act as if there were no smell.

The difference between suggestion and attention lies thus only in this:

the motor response in attention aims towards a fuller clearness of the

idea, for instance, by fixating, listening, observing, searching; while

the motor response in suggestion aims towards the practical action in

which the object of the idea is accepted as real. In attention, we

change the object in making it clearer; in suggestion, we change

ourselves in adapting ourselves to the new situation in which we

believe. If you consider attention as a psychophysical process open to

physiological explanation, you have surely no reason to seek anything

mysterious in the process of suggestion; and no new principle is

involved, if we come from the effect of the smallest suggestive hint to

the complex and powerful suggestions which overwhelm the whole

personality.

The two great types of suggestion, the suggestion of actions and the

suggestion of ideas, have now come nearer together since we have seen

that the suggestion of ideas is really a suggestion of the practical

acceptance of ideas, and that means, of a preparation towards a certain

line of action. In the one case I suggest the idea of a certain action

and this motor idea leads to the action itself, and in the other case I

suggest a certain preparatory setting for action and that will lead to

the appropriate action whenever the time for action comes. Every

suggestion is thus ultimately a suggestion of activity. The most

effective suggestion for an action results, of course, if both methods

are combined, that is, if we suggest not only the will to perform the

action, but at the same time the belief that the end of the action will

be real. Suggestion reaches us usually from without. Yet there is again

no new principle involved, when the new motor setting results from one's

own associations and emotions. Then we speak of auto-suggestion. It is

the same difference which exists between the attention called forth

through an outer impression and the attention directed by our own will.

Loud noise demands our attention, and even a whispered word may awaken

associations which stir up the attention. In both cases the channels for

adjustment become opened without our intention. But if we are expecting

something of importance, if we start to watch a certain development and

to find something which we seek, we open the channels by our own effort

beforehand and produce our own settings thus through a voluntary

attention. In this way suggestion too may start from without,--by a

spoken word, by a movement, by a hint; or may start within us and may

give us our caprices and our prejudices.

We must not neglect one other feature of the suggestion. Not every

proposition to action or to belief can be called a suggestion. Essential

too remains the other side of it, the overcoming of the resistance. A

mere request, "Please hand me the book on the table," or a mere

communication, "It rains," may produce and will produce the fit motor

response, the movement towards handing over the book or opening of the

umbrella, and yet there may be no suggestive element involved. We have a

right to speak of suggestion only if a resistance is to be broken down,

that is, if the antagonistic impulse, or the motor setting for the

antagonistic action is relatively strong. If I say to the boy, "Hand me

the book," when he was anxious to hide the book from my eyes and thus

had the wish not to hand it to me and the tone of my request overwhelmed

his own intention, then to be sure suggestion is at work. The stronger

the resistance, the greater the degree of suggestive power which is

needed to overcome the motor setting. If I say to the normal man, "It

rains," while he sees the blue sky and the dry street, his impression

will be stronger than my suggestion; but if he is suggestible and I tell

him that it will rain, he may accept it and take an umbrella on his

walk, even if no indication makes a change of weather probable. The

present impression of the dry street was strong enough to resist the

suggestion, the imaginative idea of that which is to be expected in the

next hour was too weak, and was overwhelmed by the suggestion of the

weather prophecy.

It is clear that the whole suggestive effect, being one of a new motor

setting, depends thus entirely on the equilibrium of the personality

which receives the suggestion. Every element which reaches the mind

through sense organs or through associations must have influence in

helping the one or the other side, that is, in opening the channels of

action in the suggested direction or in the antagonistic one. The

results appear surprising only if we forget how endlessly complex this

psychomotor apparatus really is. If we disregard this complexity we may

easily have the feeling that one person has an unexplainable influence

over another, as if the will of the one could control in a mysterious

way the will of the other. But as soon as we see that every action is

the result of the cooeperation of hundreds of thousands of psychomotor

impulses which are in definite relation to antagonistic energies, and

that the result depends upon the struggling and balancing of this most

complex apparatus, then we understand more easily how outer influences

may help the one or the other side to preponderance: as soon as the

balance turns to the one side, a completely new adjustment must set in.

And we understand especially that there is nowhere a sharp demarcation

line between receiving communications and receiving suggestions. By

small steps suggestion shades over into the ordinary exchange of ideas,

propositions, and impressions, just as attention shades over into a

neutral perception.

To be suggestible means thus to be provided with a psychophysical

apparatus in which new propositions for actions close easily the

channels for antagonistic activity. Such an apparatus carries with it

the disadvantage that the personality may too easily be guided contrary

to his own knowledge and experience. He will be carried away by every

new proposition and will accept beliefs which his own thoughts ought to

reject. On the other hand, it has the advantage that he will be open to

new ideas, be ready to follow good examples, never stubbornly close his

mind to the unaccustomed and the uncomfortable. It is easy to determine

the degree of suggestibility. Take this case. I draw on the blackboard

of a classroom two circles of an equal size, and write in the one the

number fourteen and in the other the number eighty-nine, and ask the

children which is the larger circle. The suggestible ones will believe

that the circle with the higher number in it is really larger than the

other, the unsuggestible children will follow the advice of their senses

and call both equal, and there may be a few children with negative

suggestibility who would call the circle with the higher number the

smaller circle. What happened to the suggestible ones was that the

higher number brought about a motor attitude which faced that whole

complex as being more imposing and this new motor setting was with them

strong enough to overcome the motor adjustment which the circles alone

produced. Such experiments of the psychological laboratory can be varied

a thousandfold, and it might not be unwise to introduce them into many

practical fields. Everybody knows for instance how much may depend upon

the suggestibility of the witness in court. The suggestible witness

believes himself to have seen and heard what the lawyer suggests. The

memory picture which such a witness has in mind offers, of course, much

less resistance to the opposite action and attitude and belief than the

immediate impression. If I show the witness a colored picture of a room

and close the book and ask him whether there were three or four chairs

in the picture and whether the curtain was green or red, the suggestible

man will decide for one or the other proposition, even if there were

only two chairs and a blue curtain. The perception would have resisted

the suggestion, the fading memory image cannot resist it. Thus

suggestibility is really a practical factor in every walk of life. And

it is in the highest interests of psychotherapy that this intimate

connection between suggestion and ordinary talk and intercourse, between

suggestion and ordinary choice of motives, between suggestion and

attention be steadily kept in view and that suggestion is not

transformed into a kind of mysterious agency.

To be sure, the importance of suggestion for psychotherapy is not

confined to these suggestive processes of daily life. They play a role

there, as we shall see, and we shall claim that even the mere presence

of the physician may have its suggestive power and so may every remedy

which he applies. But no doubt many of his suggestive effects depend on

a power which far transcends the suggestions of our daily life. Yet the

psychologist must insist again that no new principle is involved, that

even in the strongest forms of suggestion, in hypnotism, nothing depends

upon any special influence emanating from the mind of the hypnotizer or

upon any special power flowing over from brain to brain; but that

everything results from the change of equilibrium in the psychomotor

processes of the hypnotized, and thus upon the interplay of his own

mental functions. All that is needed is a higher degree of

suggestibility than is found in the normal life. In a more suggestible

mind even the direct sense impressions may be overwhelmed by the

proposition for an untrue belief and the strongest desires may yield to

the new propositions of action. This library may then become a garden

where the hypnotized person picks flowers from the floor, and the wise

man stands on one leg and repeats the alphabet, if the hypnotizer asks

him to do so. Let us consider at first this extreme case. By a few

manipulations I have brought a man into a deep hypnotic state. He is now

unable to resist any suggestion, either suggestion of impulse or

suggestion of belief, and as every one of the hypnotic phenomena can be

explained in this way, we may claim that the hypnotic state is in its

very nature a state of reenforced suggestibility. Whether I say, "You

will not move your arm," or whether I say, "You cannot move your arm,"

awakening in the one case the impulse to the suppression of the

movement, in the other case the belief in the impossibility of the

movement, in either case the result is the same; the arm remains stiff

and any effort of his to move it is inhibited. I may go to the extreme

and tell him that our friend by my side has left the room; he will not

see him, he will not even hear a word which the friend speaks. If I take

a hat in my hand and put it on the friend's head, the hat appears to

hang in the air. Every impression of sound or sight or touch which comes

from the friend is entirely inhibited. The direct sense impression of

eye and ear is thus completely overwhelmed by the suggestion.

What has happened? Are the manipulations which I applied sufficient to

produce the changes by their physical influence? Certainly not; they are

of the most different kinds and yet all may have the same effect.

Perhaps I may have used the easy method of making the subject stare at a

shining button held in front of his forehead. Or I may have used slight

tactual impressions, while he was lying with closed eyes, or I may have

produced the abnormal state by monotonous noises of falling waterdrops,

or I may have simply spoken to him and asked him to think of sleep and

to relax and to feel tired, while I held my hand on his forehead or

while I held his hand in mine. Or I may have relied upon mild talking

without touching him at all; and yet every time the result was reached

in the same degree. There is thus certainly no special physical energy

which like a magnetic force flows over. It cannot even be said that my

will is engaged. I have often hypnotized without even thinking of the

subject before me, going through adjusted manipulations while my

thoughts were engaged in something else. I have even hypnotized over the

telephone; and a written note may be substituted with the same result. I

write to the patient that two minutes after receiving this letter by

mail, he will fall into hypnotic sleep. The effect sets in; and yet at

that time, I may not remember sending the note at all.

It is thus entirely evident that the hypnotic effect results only from

the mental conditions of the subject. Whatever may stimulate his mind

to the right kind of reaction will produce the desired result. The

increased suggestibility thus sets in by his own imagination which may

be stirred up by slight visual or tactual or acoustic stimuli or by

monotonous words or by feelings of relaxation and especially by words

which encourage sleep. But just because it is the play of his own

imagination, the most essential factor certainly is the will and

expectation of the subject. No one can really be hypnotized against his

own will. And to expect strong hypnotic effect from a certain hypnotist

is often in itself sufficient to produce hypnotic sleep. Thus there is

no special personal power necessary to produce hypnotism. Everybody can

hypnotize. And almost with the same sweeping statement it may be said

everybody can be hypnotized, provided that he is willing to enter into

this play of imagination. The young child or the insane person is

therefore unfit.

Of course, not everybody can be hypnotized to the same degree. Just as

the normal suggestibility showed itself very different with different

persons, the degree of artificial reenforcement varies still more.

Practically everybody can be brought to that breakdown of the

resistance in which he can no longer open the eyes against the order of

the hypnotist, but rather few can be brought to the point of seeing

extended hallucinations, or accepting the disappearance of persons who

are speaking, or of yielding to the impulse to a dangerous action. The

highest reported degree, in which even criminal actions are performed

by honest men, exists in my opinion only in the imagination of

amateurs; it is certainly not difficult to produce sham crimes for

performance sake, with paper daggers and toy pistols, but that is no

proof at all that the hypnotized person would commit a crime under

conditions under which he has the conviction that he faces a real

criminal situation. But if we abstract from real crime, we certainly

have to acknowledge that actions can be performed which appear in

striking contrast with the habits and character of the normal

personality, upset his knowledge, and are based on beliefs which would

be immediately rejected under ordinary conditions. These higher degrees

of hypnotic state are easily followed by complete loss of memory for all

that happened during the abnormal state.

How have we to interpret such a surprising alteration of mind? It lies

near to compare it with sleep. The brain seems powerless to produce its

normal ideas, the associations do not arise, the normal impulses have

disappeared and a general ineffectiveness has set in; in short, the

brain cells seem unable to function. Of course, the explanation of sleep

itself may offer difficulties. Is it a chemical substance which poisons

the brain during the sleep, or are the brain cells contracted so that

the excitement cannot run over from the branches of one nerve cell into

those of another? Or are the blood-vessels contracted so that an anaemic

state makes their normal function impossible? But whatever the physical

condition of sleep may be, have we really a right to emphasize the

similarity between sleep and hypnosis? After all that we have discussed,

we ought rather to recognize that the hypnotic state too comes much

nearer to the process of attention than to the process of sleep. We saw

that in every act of attention the process of inhibition is essential.

All that is not in harmony with the attended idea is suppressed. Yet we

should hesitate to say that in attention parts of our brain are asleep.

We should feel reluctance to group such inhibition together with sleep

because it would be a sleep which at any moment can pass from one part

of the brain to others and which certainly leaves at every moment most

of the cell groups unaffected. We saw that attention does not at all

focus on one narrow point, but that an abundance of impressions, of

ideas and associations, of thoughts and emotions can enter the field of

attention, if they all lead to one and the same motor attitude, and that

only the one part is inhibited which involves the opposite action. Such

a jumping sleep which at every moment selects a special part would be,

of course, just the contrary of that which characterizes the sleep state

of the fatigued brain. But exactly these characteristics of attention

belong to hypnotism too. It is not true that the mind of the hypnotized

is asleep and that perhaps only one or the other idea can be pushed into

his mind. On the contrary, his mind is open to an abundance of ideas,

just as in the normal state. If I tell him that this is a landscape in

Switzerland, he sees at once the mountains and the lakes, and his mind

provides all the details of his reminiscences, and his imagination

furnishes plenty of additions. His whole mind is awake; the feelings and

emotions and volitions, the memories and judgments and thoughts are

rushing on, and only that is excluded which demands a contrary attitude.

This selective process stands decidedly in the center of the hypnotic

experience and makes it very doubtful whether we are psychophysically on

the right track, if we make much of the slight similarity between

hypnosis and sleep.

This has nothing to do with the fact that hypnosis is best brought about

by suggesting the idea of sleep, that is, the belief that sleep will

set in. This belief is indeed effective in removing all the ideas

which are awake in the mind which would interfere with the willingness

to submit to the suggestions of the hypnotizer. But the fact that

belief in sleep and expectation of sleep bring with them the hypnotic

state is not a proof that the hypnotic state itself is sleep. Even

the mental experiences which can remain in sleep, the dreams, are

characteristically different from the hypnotic experience. Thus the

dreams show that unselective awakening of ideas which is to be expected

from a general decrease of functioning. The hypnotic variation is

characterized just by its selective narrowing of consciousness. For the

same reason, hypnotism is strikingly different from such diseases of the

mind as dementia. Certainly in dementia too, many associations are cut

off, but it is not a selective inhibition, it is a haphazard destruction

resulting from the degeneration in the brain.

The fundamental principle of the hypnotic state lies in its selective

character. Inhibited and cut off are those states which are antagonistic

to the beliefs in the suggested ideas, and as their antagonism consists

in their connection with opposite actions, the whole is again a question

of motor setting. No doubt, such new motor setting can precede the

normal sleep too; thus the sleeper may be insensitive to any surrounding

noises, but perhaps awake at the slightest call from a patient who is

intrusted to his care. In that case, one special feature of hypnotism is

superadded to sleep but the sleep itself is not hypnotic. Again sleep

may go over into a state which shares many characteristic features with

hypnotism, that is, somnambulism, and it may be said with a certain

truth that hypnotism is artificial somnambulism. But somnambulism, while

arising in sleep, is not at all a feature of sleep.

While sleep is characterized by a decrease of sensitiveness and of

selective powers, the selective process of hypnotism rather reenforces

sensitiveness and memory in every field which is covered by the

suggestive influence. Stimuli may become noticeable which the normal man

is unable to perceive, and long-forgotten experiences which seem

inaccessible to the search of the waking mind may reproduce themselves

and may vividly enter consciousness. Again we have there symptoms which

rather characterize the state of over-attention than the state of sleep.

We might add further that we know states with all the characteristics of

hypnotism in which even the subjective idea of sleep is entirely

absent, for instance, all those which are usually called states of

fascination. A certain shining light or a glimpse of an uncanny eye may

startle and upset the imagination of the subject and throw him into a

state of abnormally increased suggestibility. It is well known that

whole epidemics of such captivation have occurred and have resulted in

hysterias of the masses in which the subjects become the slaves of their

impulse, perhaps to imitate what they see or hear, or to realize ideas

in which they believe without logical warrant. They surely are not

asleep, are not even partially asleep. Every center of their brains

would be ready to work, if the captivated attention were not forcing the

mind in one direction and selectively suppressing every impulse to

opposite actions. The developed hypnotism finally shades off into

innumerable states of hypnoid character in which the sleeplike symptoms

are entirely in the background.

Thus the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic state will result not

from a partial sleeplike decrease of functioning but the decrease of

function is a motor inhibition which results from over-attention. In the

ordinary attention, our motor setting secures only an increase in

clearness and vividness of the attended ideas, but in an abnormal

over-attention the new motor setting produces a complete acceptance with

all its consequences. Abnormal or heightened attention thus goes

directly over into the belief and into the impulse without resistance.

There is no hypnotism which does not contain from the first stage this

definite relation to certain objects of attention, usually to a

particular person. All the manipulations, passes, fixation, monotonous

speaking, and so on narrow the contents of consciousness but hold the

idea of the hypnotizing person steadily in the center of attention. The

awakened expectation of sleep, the associated feeling of tiredness all

help to cut off attention from the remainder of the world, but as no

real sleep sets in, this cutting off from the remainder reenforces the

focusing of attention on the one central idea of the hypnotizing

personality. Every word and every movement of this personality become

therefore absorbed with that over-attention which leads at once from a

mere perceiving and grasping to a complete sinking into the suggested

idea with the suppression of all opposites, and thus to a blind

acceptance and belief. We saw before that such belief is indeed nothing

else but a motor setting in which certain ways of action are prepared.

We are to think in accordance with the belief in the suggested idea and

the channels for discharge in the opposite direction are closed. Even

the ordinary life shows us everywhere that the step from attention to

belief is a short one. The effort to grasp the object clearly works as a

suggestion to accept that which we are seeking as really existing, and

that from which we are to abstract and which we are to rule out through

our attention, we believe to be non-existent. The prestidigitator does

his tricks in order to sidetrack our attention, but he succeeds in

making us believe that we see or do not see whatever he wishes.

That the motor setting alone determines those changes and that a real

sleeplike inability of the centers does not set in, can also be

demonstrated by the results of later hypnotizations. I ask my hypnotized

subject not to perceive the friend in the room; he is indeed unable to

see him or to hear him. Yet his visual and acoustic centers are not

impaired, the defect is only selective, inasmuch as he sees me, the

hypnotizer, and not the friend. But even this selection inhibits only

the attitude and not the sensorial excitement. If I hypnotize him again

to-morrow and suggest to him now to remember all that the friend did and

said during yesterday's meeting, he is able to report correctly the

sense impressions which he got, which were inhibited only as long as

they contradicted the suggestion, but now rush to consciousness as soon

as the suggestion is reversed. As a matter of course, he must therefore

have received impressions through eye and ear in his hypnotic sleep of

yesterday from all that happened, only he was not aware of it because

the channels of the accepting attitude were blocked.

As soon as the over-attention has produced the acceptance of the belief,

all further effects are automatic and necessary. If I tell the

hypnotized person that he cannot speak and he absorbs this proposition,

with that completeness in which he accepts it as a fact, not speaking

itself unavoidably results. The motor ideas with which the speech

movement has to start are cut off and the subject yields passively to

the fate that he cannot intonate his voice. Thus a special influence on

the will is in no way involved. If the idea is accepted, and that means,

if the preparatory setting for the action has been completed, the ideas

of opposite activity must remain ineffective; the suggested idea must

discharge itself in action without resistance. As a matter of course the

new line of action will then surround itself with its own associations

and will thus give to the subject the impression that he is acting from

his own motives. As soon as the psychophysical principles are

understood, there is indeed no difficulty in going from the simplest

experience to those spectacular ones where we may suggest to the

profoundly hypnotized person that he is a little child or that he is

George Washington. In the one case, he will speak and cry and play and

write as in his present imagination a child would behave; in the other

case, he will pose in an attitude which he may have seen in a picture of

Washington. There is nothing mysterious and his utterances are

completely dependent upon his own ideas, which may be very different

from the real wisdom of a Washington and the real unwisdom of a child. I

may suggest to him to be the Czar, by that he will not become able to

speak Russian. In the same way I may suggest changes of the

surroundings; he may take my room for the river upon which he paddles

his canoe, or for the orchard in which he picks apples from my

bookshelves.

Finally there is no new principle involved, if the action which is

prepared by any belief has to set in after the awaking from hypnotic

sleep, the so-called post-hypnotic suggestion. As a matter of course,

just these have an eminent value for psychotherapy. I may suggest to-day

that the subject will overcome to-morrow his desire for the morphine

injection, or that he will feel to-night the restfulness which will

overcome his insomnia. But if the suggestion of an idea means belief,

and if belief means a preparation for action, we have indeed no new

factor before us if the action for which we prepare the subject is from

the start related to a definite time. If we do not link it with the

consciousness of a special time or of a special occasion which will

occur later, the suggestion soon fades away. That my library is an

orchard is forgotten perhaps within ten minutes, if I have not come back

to it in the conversation. But if I say that after awaking as soon as I

shall knock on my desk three times, you will be in the orchard again,

the psychophysical apparatus is prepared, a new setting has set in, the

three knocks will bring about the complete transformation. In short the

difficulties disappear as soon as we are consistent in interpreting all

suggestive influences as changes in the motor setting and as the result

of the antagonistic character of all of our motor paths.

We say the difficulties disappear. Of course, that is meant in a

relative sense only. It means essentially that we are able to bring the

complex state of hypnotism down to the similar state of attention and

motor adjustment, but of course we must not forget that we are far from

a satisfactory explanation of the process in attention itself. We know

that the opening of motor channels in one direction somewhat closes the

channels for discharge in the opposite direction, but what mechanism

does that work is still very obscure. Whichever principle of

hypothetical explanation we might prefer, it certainly leads to

difficulties in view of the extreme complexity of attention in states of

suggestion and hypnotism. We might think of a mechanism which through

the medium of the finest blood-vessels should produce a localized anaemia

in those centers which lead to the antagonistic action. Or we might

fancy that by extremely subtle machinery the resistance is increased in

those tissues which lie between the various neurons, or we might even

think of toxic and antitoxic processes in the cerebral regions; and any

day may open entirely new ways of explanation. We may add that even if

the mechanism of attention were completely explained, we are also still

far from understanding the physiological changes which go on in the

sphere of the blood-vessels or of the glands and the internal organs. We

understand easily that the idea of the subject that he cannot move his

arm keeps the arm stiff; but that his idea to blush really dilates the

blood-vessels of his cheek is much less open to our causal

understanding; still less that in very exceptional cases perhaps a part

of the skin becomes inflamed, if we make believe that we touch it with a

glowing iron. And yet here too we see that we move in the same direction

and that we have to explain these exceptional and bewildering results by

comparing them with the simpler and simpler forms, that the process of

attention contains all the germs for the whole development.

In claiming that hypnotism depends upon the over-attention to the

hypnotizing person, we admit that the increased suggestibility belongs

entirely to suggestions which come from without. Only that which at

least takes its starting point from the words or the movements of the

hypnotizer finds over-sensitive suggestibility. Ideas which arise merely

from the associations of the subject himself have no especially

favorable chance for acceptance. But surely we also know states in which

the suggestibility for certain of one's own ideas is abnormally

increased. Great individual differences exist in that respect in normal

life. There are normal hypochondriacs who believe that they feel the

symptoms of widely different diseases under the influence of their own

ideas, and others who are torturing themselves with fears on account of

unjustified beliefs. But the abnormal increase of suggestibility

parallel to that of hypnotism for suggestions from without exists for

suggestions from within, mainly in nervous diseases, especially in

neurasthenic, hysteric, and psychasthenic states. Within certain limits,

we might almost say that this increase of suggestibility for

autosuggestion is the fundamental characteristic of these diseases, just

as increase of suggestibility for heterosuggestions characterizes

hypnotism.

Especially in earlier times, the theory was often proposed that hypnosis

is an artificial hysteria. Such a view is untenable to-day; but that

hysteria too shows abundant effects of increased suggestibility is

correctly indicated by such a theory. The hysteric patient may by any

chance pick up the idea that her right arm is paralyzed or is

anaesthetic and the idea at once transforms itself into a belief and the

belief clings to her like an obsession and produces the effect that she

is unable to move the arm or that she does not feel a pinprick on the

skin. These autosuggestions may take a firmer hold of the mind than any

suggestions from without, but surely such openness to selfimplanted

beliefs must be acknowledged as symptomatic of disease, while hypnosis

with its impositions can be broken off at any moment and thus should no

more be classed among the diseases than are sleep and dreams. The

hysteric or psychasthenic autosuggestion resists the mere will of

breaking it off. Here, therefore, is the classical ground for strong

mental counterinfluences, that is, for psychotherapeutic treatment.

Experience shows that the strongest chance for the development of such

autosuggestive beliefs exists wherever an emotional disposition is

favorable to the arriving belief. But emotion too is after all

fundamentally a motor reaction. The whole meaning of emotion in the

biological sense is that it focuses the actions of man into one channel,

cutting off completely all the other impulses and incipient actions.

Emotion is therefore for the expressions of man what attention is for

the impressions. An emotional disposition means thus in every case a

certain motor setting by which transition to certain actions is

facilitated. It is thus only natural that a belief can settle the more

easily, the more it is favored by an emotional disposition, as the motor

setting for the one must prepare the other. Hypnosis and hysteria thus

represent the highest degrees of suggestibility, the one artificial, the

other pathological; the one for suggestions from without, the other for

suggestions from within. But between these two and the normal state

there lie numberless steps of transition. The normal variations

themselves may go to a limit where they overlap the abnormal artificial

product, that is, the suggestibility of many normal persons may reach a

degree in which they accept beliefs hardly acceptable to other persons

in mild hypnotic condition. Thus there is no sharp demarcation between

suggestions in a waking state and suggestions in a hypnoid state. And

the expectation of coming under powerful influence may produce a

sufficient change in the motor setting to realize any wonders. Moreover

probably every physician who has a long experience in hypnotizing has

found that his confidence in the effectiveness of the deep hypnotic

states has been slowly diminished, while his belief in the surprising

results of slight hypnotization and of hypnoid states has steadily grown

and has encouraged him in his psychotherapeutic efforts.

VI

THE SUBCONSCIOUS

The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words: there is

none. But it may need many more words to make clear what that means, and

to show where the misunderstanding of those who give to the subconscious

almost the chief role in the mental performance sets in. The psychology

of suggestion, for instance, which we have now fully discussed without

even mentioning the word subconscious, figures in most popular books in

the treatises of both physicians and ministers as a wonderful dominance

of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind alone receives the

suggestions and makes them effective, the subconscious mind controls the

suggestive processes in consciousness, and the subconscious mind comes

into the foreground and takes entire hold of the situation when the

hypnotic state sets in.

But we are always assured that there is no need of turning to the

mystery of suggestion and hypnotism to find that uncanny subpersonality

in us. We try to remember a name, or we think of the solution of a

problem; what we are seeking does not come to consciousness and now we

turn to other things; and suddenly the name flashes up in our mind or

the solution of the problem becomes clear to us. Who can doubt that the

subconscious mind has performed the act? While our attention was given

over to other questions, the subconscious mind took up the search and

troubled itself with the problem and neatly performed what our conscious

mind was unable to produce. Moreover in every situation we are

performing a thousand useful and well-adapted acts with our body without

thinking of the end and aim. What else but the subconscious mind directs

our steps, controls our movements, and adjusts our life to its

surroundings? And is not every memory picture, every reminiscence of

earlier experiences a sufficient proof that the subconscious mind holds

its own? The poem which we learned years ago did not remain somewhere

lingering in our consciousness, and if we can repeat it today, it must

be because our subconscious mind has kept it carefully in its store and

is ready to supply us when consciousness has need for it.

Surely if we think how this, our subconscious mind, is able to hold all

our memories and all our learning, and how it transacts all the work of

controlling our useful actions and of bringing up the right ideas, we

may well acknowledge that compared with it our conscious life is rather

a small part. It is as with the iceberg in the ocean; we know that only

a small part is visible above the surface of the water and a ten times

larger mountain swims below the sea. It seems, therefore, only logical

to attach this whole subconscious mental life to a special subconscious

personality. Then we come to the popular theory of the two minds in us,

the upper and the lower, of which we can hardly doubt that the lower one

has on the whole the larger part of the business to perform. And we

certainly have no right to give to the word lower mind the side-meaning

that the activity is of a lower order. The most brilliant thoughts of

the genius are not manufactured in his upper consciousness, they spring

suddenly into his mind, their whole creation belongs thus to the

assiduous work of the subconscious neighbor. There the inventor and

discoverer gets his guidance, there the poet gets his inspiration, there

the religious mind gets its beliefs. In short, the constitution of the

mental state allows on the whole to the upper consciousness a rather

decorative part while the real work is left for the lower house.

Yet it must be acknowledged that the scholars somewhat disagree as to

the dignity of the lower mind. Considering the usually accepted fact

that in hypnotism the lower mind comes entirely over the surface, just

these hypnotic events can indeed suggest two different views of the

subconscious and this doubleness is reenforced if we still add the

entertaining material which comes to light by the automatic writing of

mediums in their trance. The hypnotized person is ready to perform any

foolishness, is not influenced by any considerations of tact and taste

and wisdom and respect, and thus some of the chief believers in the

subconscious personality stick to the diagnosis that the lower mind in

us which shows up in hypnotism is a rather brutal, stupid, lazy,

cowardly, immoral creature which ordinarily rather deserves to be

subdued by our noble and wise upper personality. And the automatic

writings of the mediums indorse this disrespectful view, for it is

difficult to gather more idiotic slang than the emanations of these

letters of the planchette. On the other hand, the hypnotized person

shows an increase of sensitiveness and hyperaesthesia in which perhaps

optical impressions or smells may be noticed which the ordinary man

cannot perceive. Moreover the memory of the hypnotized is, as we saw,

abnormally sharpened. Entirely forgotten experiences may awake again.

The same holds true for the hysteric in whom also, of course, the

subconscious takes hold of the inner life. Thus it seems entirely safe

to say that the powers of the subconscious personality far surpass those

of the upper conscious fellow, and that agrees with all those facts as

to the subconscious origin of the work of the genius. Further, has it

not been found again and again that the hypnotized and the hysteric

cannot only remember long-forgotten parts of the past but have

telepathic knowledge for distant events and even mysterious premonitions

of the field of occurrences of the future?

Hypnotism is essentially the same as the old mesmerism, and mesmerism

was widely acknowledged as clairvoyance, and all that harmonizes again

with the experiences of the mediums whose subconscious mind in trance

enters into contact with the spirits of the dead. The subconscious

personality is thus really a metaphysical power which transcends the

limitations of the earthly person altogether and has steady connection

with the endless world of spirit and the inner soul of the universe.

Most popular books, it is true, do not demand from their readers the

choice between the one or the other type of the lower personality,

between that brutal, vicious, ignorant creature and that far-seeing,

inspired, powerful soul. They simply mix the two and adapt the special

faculties of this underground man to the special requirements of the

particular chapter, the subconscious being unusually wise or unusually

stupid in accordance with the special facts which are just then to be

explained. Even that does not always settle all difficulties. They may

discover, for instance, that the subconscious mind with which we deal in

the hypnotized person has again itself a subconsciousness. If we tell

the hypnotized person not to see a certain picture on the wall, this

subconscious personality perceives the whole room with the exception of

the picture. Yet after all someone sees this picture, because if we

hypnotize him the next time and ask him what the picture contained, he

now knows its contents. Thus they must have been recognized in a

sub-subconsciousness, and we therefore come to a personality which lives

on a floor still below the basement. But experiment can demonstrate that

even this most hidden personality has still its secrets which are handed

downwards. In short, we finally have not merely two but a number of

personalities in us.

But now let us leave these fantasies of psychological fiction. Let us

turn to the concrete facts, let us see them in the spirit of modern

scientific psychology, let us try to explain them in harmony with the

principles of psychological explanation, and let us discriminate the

various groups of facts which have led to that easy-going hypothesis of

the subconscious. Discrimination indeed is needed, as it would be

impossible to bring the whole manifold of facts under one formula, but

there is certainly no unification reached by simply putting the same

label on all the varieties and behaving as if they are all at once

explained when they are called the functions of the subconscious. Two

large groups may be separated. Facts are referred to the subconscious

mind which do not belong to the mind at all, neither to a conscious nor

to a subconscious one, but which are simply processes in the physical

organism; and secondly, facts are referred to the subconscious mind

which go on in the conscious mind but which are abnormally connected.

Thus the subconscious mental facts are either not mental but

physiological, or mental but not subconscious.

What does the scientific psychologist really mean by consciousness? We

must now think back to our discussion of the principles which control

the fundamental conceptions of modern psychology. We saw clearly that

the psychology which is a descriptive and explanatory science of mental

phenomena can by no means have the ambition to be a full interpretation

of the inner reality. Our inner life, we saw, is not a series of

phenomena, is not a chain of objects which we are aware of and which we

therefore can describe, and which finally we can explain. But in its

living reality, we saw that it is purposive, has a meaning and aim, is

will and intention, and can thus be understood in its true character,

not by describing and explaining it but by interpreting it and

appreciating it. This is the life attitude towards personalities when we

deal man to man. We do not at first consider ourselves or our fellows as

mental objects to be explained but always as subjects to be understood

in their meaning. If we pass from this primary attitude to the attitude

of the scientific psychologist we gain, as we saw, an artificial

perspective. We must consider then our inner experience of ourselves

with all our states as a series of objects made up of elements connected

by law. Instead of the real things which in our real life are objects of

will and purpose, tools and means for us, the psychologist knows only

objects of awareness, objects which have no meaning, but which simply

exist and which are no longer related to a will but are connected with

other objects as causes and effects. Now we deal no longer with the

chairs and tables before us but from a psychological point of view they

become perceptive ideas of chairs and tables, ideas which are not in the

room but in our own minds. While these objects of our will and of our

personality become mere ideas, our will and personality themselves

become, too, a series of phenomena. Our self is now no longer the

purposive will but is that group of sensations and ideas which clusters

about the perception of our organism and its actions; in short, our

self itself becomes an object of awareness.

Our whole inner experience thus becomes a manifold of objects. Our self

and the actions of our self are thus alike for the psychologist mere

phenomena, mere objects which are perceived. Will and emotion, memory

idea and thought--they all are now passing appearances like the sunshine

and rain, the flowers and waves. By this transformation the immediate

will character of real life is given up, but instead of it a system of

objects is gained, that allows description and explanation. If we are to

deal at all with inner life not from a purposive but from a causal point

of view, we are obliged to admit this reconstruction. Without it we

cannot have any science of the mind, without it we can understand the

intentions of our neighbor and appreciate the truth and morality of his

meanings but we cannot causally explain his experiences or determine

which effects are to be expected. It is thus not an arbitrary

substitution but a procedure just as necessary and logically obligatory

as the work of the chemist who substitutes trillions of invisible atoms

for the glass of water which he drinks. The possibility of causal

explanation of the successive facts demands this remolding of the outer

and of the inner world. We have discussed that before and now only have

to draw the consequences.

Thus for the psychologist the mental world is a system of mental

objects. To be an object means of course to be object of some subject

which is aware of it. What else could it mean to exist at all as object

if not that it is given to some possible subject? But the world of

objects is twofold; we have not only the mental objects of the

psychologist but also the physical objects of the naturalist. Science

must characterize the difference between those two and we pointed once

before to the only fundamental difference. Physical objects are those

which are possible objects of awareness for every subject; psychical

objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for one

subject only. The tree which I see is as physical tree object for every

man, it is the same tree which you and I see; my psychical perception of

the tree is object for one subject only. My perception can never be your

perception. Our perceptions may agree but each has his own. As to the

physical objects, we can entirely abstract from such reference to the

subjects. We say simply: the tree exists or is part of nature; and only

the philosopher is aware that we silently mean by it that it exists for

every subject and that it is therefore not necessary to refer to any

particular subject. But the perception of the tree which is either your

idea or my idea evidently gets its existence only if it is referred and

attached to a particular subject which is aware of it. Such subject of

awareness is that which the psychologist calls consciousness and all the

ideas and volitions and emotions and sensations and images which make up

the mental life are then contents of the consciousness or objects of the

consciousness. To have psychical existence at all means thus to be

object of awareness for a consciousness. Something psychical which

simply exists but is not object of consciousness is therefore an inner

contradiction. Consciousness is the presupposition for the existence of

the psychical objects. Psychical objects which enjoy their existence

below consciousness are thus as impossible as a wooden piece of iron.

If consciousness is nothing but the subject of awareness for the

individual objects, we see at once certain consequences which are too

often forgotten in the popular, haphazard psychology. In the scientific

system of psychology, consciousness has for instance nothing whatever to

perform, that is, consciousness itself is in no way active. The active

personality of real life has been left behind and has itself been

transformed into that self which is merely content of consciousness. The

person who acts and performs the deeds of our life is then only a

central content of our consciousness which is crystallized about the

idea of our organism. It has thus become one of the contents of which

consciousness itself is passively aware. Consciousness is an inactive

spectator for the procession of the contents. Thus consciousness itself

cannot change anything in the content nor can it connect the contents.

No other function is left to consciousness but merely that of awareness.

Every change and every fusion and every process must be explained

through the relations of the various contents to one another.

Consciousness has, therefore, not the power to prefer the one idea or to

reject the other, to reenforce the one sensation and to inhibit the

other. From a psychological point of view, we have seen before that

even attention does not mean an activity of consciousness but a change

in the content of consciousness. Certain sensations become more

impressive, more clear, and more vivid, and others fade away, become

indistinct and disappear, but all that goes on in the content of

consciousness and the spectator, consciousness itself, simply becomes

aware of those changes. Consciousness has also in itself no special

span, ideas appear or disappear not because consciousness expands or

narrows itself but because the causal conditions awaken or suppress the

various contents.

Consciousness has in itself no limit; all organization belongs to the

content. Whatever psychical states are attributed to one organism belong

thus to its consciousness but all the connections are entirely

connections of the content. We, therefore, have not even the right to

say that consciousness, as such, has unity. Unity too belongs to the

organization of the content. One part of the content hangs together with

the other parts but consciousness is only the constant condition for

their existence. Where there is no unity, there it cannot have any

meaning to speak of the double or triple existence. There may be a

disconnection in the various parts of the content and a dissociation by

which the normal ties between the various contents may be broken but

consciousness itself cannot fall asunder. Thus consciousness cannot have

any different degrees. The same consciousness experiences the distinct

clear content and the vague fading confused content. Thus also

consciousness can never be aware of itself and the word

self-consciousness is easily misleading. In psychology, it can never

mean that the consciousness which is a subject of all experience is at

the same time object of any experience. Its whole meaning lies in its

being the passive spectator. That of which consciousness becomes aware

in self-consciousness is the idea of the personality, which is certainly

a content. The personality, the actor of our actions, is thus never

anything but an object in psychology, and consciousness never anything

but a subject. Consciousness itself is thus in no way altered when the

idea of the personality is changing. Only if all this is carelessly

confused, if consciousness is sometimes treated as meaning subject of

consciousness, and at another time as meaning the content of

consciousness, and again at another time the unified organization of the

content, and at still another time the connection of the content with

the personality, and if finally all that is confused with the purposive

reality of the immediate personal life--only then, do we find the way

open to those tempting theories of the subconscious personality.

* * * * *

If, instead, we stick to the scientific view, we find the following

facts. First, we have everywhere with us the fact that the earlier

experiences may again enter into consciousness as memory images or as

imaginative ideas, that is, in the order in which they are experienced a

long time before or in a new order, either with a feeling of

acquaintance or without it. Certainly at no time is the millionth part

of what we may be able to reproduce present in our consciousness. Where

are those words of the language, those faces of our friends, those

landscapes, and those thoughts; where have they lingered in the time of

their seclusion? Scientific psychology has no right to propose any other

theory as explanation but that no mental states at all remain and that

all which remained was the disposition of physiological centers. When I

coupled the impression of a man with the sound of his name, a certain

excitement of my visual centers occurred together with the excitement of

my acoustical centers; the connecting paths became paths of least

resistance, and any subsequent excitement of the one cell group now

flows over into the other. It is the duty of physiology to elaborate

such a clumsy scheme and to make us understand in detail how those

processes in the neurons can occur and it is not the duty of psychology

to develop detailed physiological hypotheses. Psychology has to be

satisfied with the fact that all the requirements of the case can be

furnished by principle through physiological explanation. Least of all

ought we to be discouraged by the mere complexity of the process. If a

simple sound and a simple color sensation, or a simple taste and simple

smell sensation, can associate themselves through mere nervous

conditions of the brain, then there is nothing changed by going over to

more and more complex contents of consciousness. We may substitute a

whole landscape for a color patch or the memory of a book for a word,

but we do not reach by that a point where the physiological principle of

explanation, once admitted, begins to lose its value. Complexity is

certainly in good harmony with the bewildering manifoldness of those

thousands of millions of possible connections between the brain cells.

Every experience leaves the brain altered. The nerve fibers and the

cells have gone into new stages of disposition for certain excitements.

This disposition may be slowly lost. In that case the earlier experience

cannot be reproduced; we have forgotten it. But as long as the

disposition lasts--it is quite indifferent whether we conceive it more

in terms of chemical changes or physical variations, as processes in the

nerve cells or between the nerve cells--the physiological change alone

is responsible for the awakening of the memory idea under favoring

associative conditions. Of course, someone might reply: can we not fancy

that there remains on the psychical side also a disposition? Each idea

which we have experienced may have left a psychical trace which alone

may make it possible that the idea may come back to us again. But what

is really meant and what is gained by such a hypothesis?

First, do not let us forget that such a proposition could only have one

possible end in view, namely, the explanation of the reappearance of

memories. But when we discussed the basis of physiological psychology,

we convinced ourselves that mental facts as such are not causally

connected anyhow. Our real inner life has its internal connections,

connections of will and purpose, but as soon as we have taken that great

psychological step and look on inner life as merely psychological

objects, then the material is connected only through the underlying

physiological processes and we can never explain causally the appearance

of an idea through the preceding existence of another idea. We may

expect one after the other, but we have no insight into the mechanism

which makes the second follow after the first. Such insight into

necessary connection we find only on the physical side, and we saw that

just here lies the starting point for the modern view of physiological

psychology. If that holds true for the connections between idea and

idea, of course it holds true in the same way for the connection between

mental disposition and the corresponding memory. We can understand

causally that a chemical disposition in the nerve fibers brings about a

chemical excitement in those neurons, but how a mental disposition is to

create mental experience we could not understand; and to explain it

casually, we should need again a reference to the underlying

physiological processes. The hypothesis of mental dispositions would

thus be an entirely superfluous addition by which we transcend the real

experience without gaining anything for the explanation.

Secondly, if we really needed a mental disposition for each memory

picture, in addition to the physiological disposition of the brain

cells, can we overlook that exactly the same thing would then be

necessary for every perception also? The outer impression produces,

perhaps through eye or ear or skin, an excitement of the brain cell and

this excitement is accompanied by a sensation; and no one fancies that

the appearance of this sensation is dependent upon a special disposition

for it on the mental side. No one fancies it, because it is evident that

such a hypothesis again would be entirely useless. If every new

perception needed such a special mental disposition, we should have to

presuppose dispositions for everything which possibly can come into our

surroundings. Every smell, every word, every face which comes anew to us

would need its special ready-made disposition. In other words, our mind

would contain the disposition for every possible idea and that would

mean that these dispositions would be in no way helps for explanation.

If the disposition exists for everything, no one particular thing can be

explained by the existence of that disposition. Again we should have to

rely entirely upon the physiological brain excitement for explaining

that this word or that word is perceived by our mind. But if the brain

excitement alone is sufficient to explain the new perception in the

mind, then no reason can be found why the renewed brain excitement would

not be sufficient to renew the mental experience. Thus there is nowhere

room for mental dispositions below the level of consciousness.

Thirdly, what could we really mean by such mental dispositions? A

physiological disposition for a physiological action is certainly not

the action itself. The finger movement in piano playing finds only a

disposition in my brain centers, in case I am trained; the movement

itself does not last. But the disposition is at least itself a change

in the physical world. The molecules are somehow differently placed, the

disposition has thus as much objective existence as the resulting

movement. Nothing at all similar can be imagined in the sphere of

psychical contents. Such mental dispositions would have to exist

entirely outside the world of concrete mental experiences and, if we

scrutinize carefully, we soon discover that such theories are only

lingering reminiscences of the purposive view of life, and do not fit at

all into the causal one. If we take the purposive attitude, then every

idea and every will contains indeed all that its meaning involves and

everything which we can logically develop out of it is by intention

contained in it. All mathematical calculations are then contained in the

thought of figures and forms, but they are contained there only by

intention, they are logically inclosed; psychologically the

consciousness of the figures and forms does not contain any disposition

for the development of mathematical systems. We indeed have no right to

throw into a psychological subconsciousness all that which is not

present but involved by intention in the ideas and volitions of our

purposive life.

If thus the memory idea is linked with the past experience entirely by

the lasting physiological change in the brain, we have no reason to

alter the principle, when we meet the memory processes of the hypnotized

person or the hysteric. It is true their memory may bring to light

earlier experiences which are entirely forgotten by the conscious

personality, but that ought to mean, of course, only that nerve paths

have become accessible in which the propagation of the excitement was

blocked up before. That does not bring us nearer to the demand for a

subconscious mental memory. The threshold of excitability changes under

most various conditions. Cells which respond easily in certain states

may need the strongest stimulation in others. The brain cells which are

too easily excited perhaps in maniacal exultation would respond too

slowly in a melancholic depression. Hypnotism, too, by closing the

opposite channels and opening wide the channels for the suggested

discharge, may stir up excitements for which the disposition may have

lingered since the days of childhood and yet which would not have been

excited by the normal play of the neurons. Quite secondary remains the

question of how these reproduced images finally appear in consciousness,

that is, whether they appear with reference to earlier happenings and

are thus felt as remembrances, or whether they enter as independent

imaginations, or whether they finally, under special conditions, take

the character of real, new perceptions. The latter case is well-known in

crystal-gazing, where long-forgotten memory ideas project themselves

into the visual field like hallucinations. But for the theory of the

subconscious, even these uncanny crystal visions do not mean more than

the simplest awakening of the experience of a landscape image of

yesterday.

We turn to a second group of facts and again we have no fault to find

with the observation of the facts, even of the most surprising and

exceptional ones. Our objection refers to the interpretation of them.

This second group contains the active results of such physiological

nervous dispositions. In the first group, the dispositions come in

question only as conditions for a new excitement which was accompanied

by mental experience. In this second group, the dispositions are causes

for other physiological processes which either lead to actions or to

influences on other mental processes. The dispositions are here working

like the setting of switches which turn the nervous process into special

tracks. In the simple cases, of course no one doubts that a purely

physiological basis is involved. The decapitated frog rubs its skin

where it is touched with a drop of muriatic acid in a way which is

ordinarily referred to the trained apparatus of his spinal cord, as no

brain is left, and the usefulness of the action and its adjustment is

very well understood as the result of the connecting paths in the

nervous system.

From such simple adjustment of reactions of the spinal cord, we come

step by step to the more complex activities of the subcortical brain

centers, and finally to those which are evidently only short-cuts of the

higher brain processes. That we react at every change of position with

the right movements to keep our bodily balance, that we walk without

thinking of our steps, that we speak without giving conscious impulse

for the various speech movements, that we write without being aware of

the motor activity which we had to learn slowly, that we play the piano

without thinking of the special impulses of the hands, that we select

the words of a hasty speech, if we have its aim in mind, without

consciously selecting the appropriate words--all that is by continuous

transitions connected with those simplest automatic reactions. And from

here again, we are led over gradually perhaps to the automatic writings

of the hysteric who writes complex messages without having any idea of

their content in consciousness. It is in such cases certainly a symptom

of disease that the activity of these lower brain centers can go over

into the motor impulse of writing without producing secondary effects in

the highest conscious brain centers; it is hysterical. But that the

message of the pencil can be brought about by such operation of lower

brain centers, or at least with imperfect cooeperation of the higher

brain centers, is certainly entirely within the limits of the same

physiological explanation.

On the other hand, nothing is changed in the theoretic principles of the

case if the effect of these automatic processes in the nervous system is

not an external muscle action at first, but an influence on other brain

centers which may furnish the consciousness with new contents. We try to

remember a name, that is, a large number of neuron processes are setting

in which normally lead to the excitement of that particular process

which furnishes us the memory image of the name. But those brain cells

may not respond, the channels may be blocked somehow or the excitability

of those cells may be lowered. Now new excitements engage our

psychophysical system. We are thinking of other problems. In the

meantime, by the new equilibrium in the brain the blockade in these

first paths may slowly disappear or the threshold of excitability may be

changed. The physiological excitement may now be carried effectively

into those tracts. The cell response sets in and suddenly the name comes

to our mind. This purely physiological operation in our brain paths must

thus have exactly the same result which it would have had, if more parts

of the process had been accompanied by conscious experience. And again

from mere remembering a forgotten name, we come by slow steps to the

solution of a problem, to the invention, and finally to the creation of

the genius.

Superficiality of thought is easily inclined to object to such a

physiological interpretation and perhaps to denounce it pathetically as

a crude materialism which lowers the dignity of mental work. Nothing

shows more clearly the confusion between a purposive and causal view of

the mind. In the purposive view of our real life, only our will and our

personality have a meaning and can be related to the ideas and higher

aims. Nature is there nothing but the dead material which is the tool of

our will and which has to be mastered by the personality. In that world

alone lie our duty and our morality. But as soon as we have gone over to

the causal aspect of our life and have taken the point of view of the

psychologist, making our inner life a series of contents of

consciousness, of psychical phenomena, we have transformed our inner

experience in such a way that it has become itself nothing but nature.

It is mental nature, nature of psychical stuff, but each part of it is

nothing but a mental element, a mental atom without any meaning and

without any value; nothing but a link in the chain, nothing but a factor

in the explanation of the whole, nothing to which any ethical or

aesthetic or logical or religious significance can any longer be

attached. The psychical sensations and the physical atoms are equally

material for naturalistic explanation. To understand causally a certain

effect, for instance the creation of a work of art, of a discovery or a

thought or a deed as the product of psychical processes, is thus in no

way more dignified or more valuable than to understand it as the product

of physiological brain processes. The one is not more dignified than the

other because both alike have nothing whatever to do with dignity. Both

alike are the necessary results of the foregoing processes, and to

attach a kind of sentimental preference to the explanation through

conscious factors is nothing but a confused reminiscence again of the

entirely different purposive view of life. And surely nothing is gained

for the higher values of life if this confusion sets in, because if the

popular mind becomes unable to discriminate between the secondary,

causal, artificial aspect of science and the primary, purposive aspect

of life, the opposite effect lies still nearer: the values of the real

life suffer and are crowded out by the knowledge of the scientific

facts. Man's moral freedom is then wrongly brought in question, as soon

as it is learned that every action is the product of brain processes.

Life and science alike will gain the more, the more clearly the

purposive and the causal point of view are separated and the more it is

understood that this causal aspect itself is demanded by certain

purposes of life. The oratory of those who denounce the physiological

theories as lacking idealism in reality undermines true moral

philosophy. There is no idealism which can really flourish merely by

ignoring the progress of science and confusing the issues. The true

values of the higher life cannot be safely protected by that thoughtless

idealism which draws its life from vagueness and which therefore has to

be afraid of every new discovery in scientific psychology. Our real

ideals do not lie at all in the sphere in which the problem of causally

explaining the psychological phenomena arises.

Our conscious experiences are thus indeed not only here and there, but

usually the products of chains of processes which go on entirely on the

physiological side. We have no reason at all to seek for those preceding

actions any mental accompaniment outside of consciousness, that means,

any subconscious mental states. Then, of course, this physiological

explanation also covers entirely those after-effects of earlier

experiences, especially emotional experiences, which the physician

nowadays likes to call subconscious "complexes." We shall see what an

important role belongs to these facts, especially in the treatment of

hysteria and psychasthenia, but the interpretation again ought to avoid

all playing with the conception of the subconscious. Emotional

experiences may produce there some strong stable dispositions in the

brain system which become mischievous in reenforcing or inhibiting

certain thoughts and actions without awakening directly conscious

experiences. The whole psychological switch system may have been brought

into disorder by such abnormal setting of certain parts, but the

connection of each resulting accident with the primary emotional

disturbances does not contradict the fact that all the causes lie

entirely in disturbances of the central paths. It is a change in the

neurons and their connections. To discover it we may have to go back to

early conscious experiences, but in the process itself there is no

mental factor, and therefore no subconscious emotion is responsible for

the mischief carried out.

Both groups of facts which we have studied so far, have dealt with

processes which were indeed not conscious but which we had no right to

call subconscious inasmuch as they contained no mental process at all

but only physiological dispositions and actions. We turn finally to the

other smaller and more abnormal group of so-called subconscious facts in

which the facts are mental indeed and not only physiological, but not at

all outside of consciousness and thus again not subconscious. A

conscious fact may easily suggest the appeal to subconscious theories to

those who have accepted such theories for other reasons. There are, for

instance, plenty of mental experiences which we do not notice or which

we do not recognize. Yet if we find later that they must have influenced

our mind, we are easily inclined to refer them to subconscious activity.

But it is evident that to be content of consciousness means not at all

necessarily to be object of attention or object of recognition.

Awareness does not involve interest. If I hear a musical sound, I may

not recognize at all the overtones which are contained in it. As soon as

I take resonators and by them reenforce the loudness of those overtones,

they become vivid for me and I can now notice them well even when the

resonators are removed. I surely was aware of them, that is, had them in

consciousness all the time but there were no contrast feelings and no

associations in consciousness which gave them sufficient clearness to

attract attention.

In this way I may be again led by gradual stages to more and more

complex experiences. I may overlook and yet include within my content of

consciousness most various parts of my surroundings; and yet the

neglected is not less in consciousness itself than the attended. Much

that figures in literature as subconscious means indeed nothing else but

the unattended. But it belongs to the elements of psychological analysis

to recognize that the full content of consciousness is always larger

than the narrow field of attention. This narrow field on the other hand

has certainly no sharp demarcation line. There is a steady shading off

from the most vivid to the least vivid. We cannot grasp those least

vivid contents of consciousness, we cannot fixate them as such, because

as soon as we try to hold them, they move from the periphery of the

content into its center and become themselves vivid and clear. But as we

are surely aware of different degrees of clearness and vividness in our

central mass of contents, we have no difficulty in acknowledging the

existence of still lower degrees of vividness in those elements which

are blending and fusing into a general background of conscious

experiences. Nothing stands out there, nothing can be discriminated in

its detail. That background is not even made up of whole ideas and whole

memories and whole emotions and feelings and judgments and volitions,

but of loose fragments; half ideas and quarter ideas, atoms of feelings

and incipient impulses and bits of memory images are always mixed in

that half-dark background. And yet it is by principle not less in

consciousness, and consciousness itself is not different for these

contents. It is not half-clear consciousness, not a lower degree of

awareness, only the objects of awareness are crumbled and fading.

Whether these background objects really exist can only be made out by

studying carefully the changes which result under different conditions,

the influences which those loose parts have on the structure of the

whole, and the effect of their complete disappearance. I may never

really notice a little thing in my room and yet may be aware that it has

been taken away. The visual image of it was an element of my mental

background, when I was sitting at my desk, but it never before moved to

the center of my conscious content. But this center itself is also

constantly changing. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other idea may

enter into it, but in this alternation that which is not in the focus

either remains in consciousness unattended or when it disappears from it

it loses its mental character altogether. If I attend a tiresome lecture

while my mind is engaged with a practical problem of my own life, there

may be a steady rivalry between the words which come with the force of

outer stimulus to my brain and make me listen and my inner difficulties

which claim my attention. I listen for a while, and then suddenly,

without noticing it, my own thoughts may have taken the center of the

stage and again without sudden interruption a word may catch my

attention. While I was thinking of my own problem the sounds of the

lecturer were really outside of my field of attention, yet some remark

now pushes itself again into the center. That does not mean that a

subconscious mind is listening while my lucid mind was thinking, but it

does mean that those words were unattended and remained in the periphery

of the field of consciousness. But when some of the sentences stirred up

in that peripheral field some important associations, they were strong

enough to produce a new motor reaction by which the mental equilibrium

became changed again and by which the lecturer overwhelmed my private

thoughts. Yet even this state of mind, without any break, can go over

into an absolutely physiological process. I may for a while really

inhibit the lecturer's voice completely and remain in the thoughts of my

own imagination. After a minute or two, the resistance against the

acoustical stimulus will certainly be broken and the sound will again

enter into my consciousness, but in that interval there was no

subconscious and not even any unattended mental function; there was no

mental process at all. The sound reached my brain but as the motor

setting was adverse, the sounds did not bring about that highest act of

physiological transmission which is accompanied by mental contents. Thus

it became entirely physiological. Yet of course every word reached my

brain and left traces there. If I were hypnotized after the lecture and

thus the threshold for the real awakening of brain excitements lowered,

it might not be impossible that some of the thoughts of the lecturer

which did not enter my consciousness at all, are now afterwards in the

hypnotic state stirred up in me. Yet even that would not indicate that

they had become mental and thus subconscious at the time of the lecture.

The so-called subconscious, which in reality is fully in consciousness

but only unnoticed, easily shades over into that unconscious which is

also in consciousness but dissociated from the idea of the own

personality and thus somewhat split off from the interconnected mass of

conscious contents. Wherever we meet such phenomena, we are in the field

of the abnormal. The normal mental life is characterized by the

connectedness of the contents. Yet even that holds true, of course, only

if we think of those mental states which exist at one and the same

instant in consciousness. As soon as we consider the succession of

mental events, we cannot doubt that even normal experience shows breaks,

lapses, and complete annihilation of that which a moment before was a

real content in our consciousness. We may have looked at our watch and

certainly had in glancing at the dial a conscious impression, but in the

next moment we no longer know how late it is. The impression did not

connect itself with our continuous personal experience, that is, with

that chief group of our conscious contents which we associate with the

perception of our personality. Under abnormal conditions of the brain,

larger and larger parts of the completely conscious experience may thus

be cut off from the continuity of conscious life. But to be in

consciousness, and therefore to be not-subconscious, does not mean to be

through memory ties connected with the idea of our own personality.

The somnanbulist, for instance, may get up at night time and write a

letter, then go to bed again and not know anything of the event when he

awakes in the morning. We have no reason to claim that he had no

knowledge of the letter in his consciousness when he wrote it. It is

exactly the same consciousness from a psychological standpoint as the

one with which he wakes up. Only that special content has in an abnormal

way entirely disappeared, has not left a possibility of awakening a

memory image, and the action of the personality in writing has thus

become separated and cut off from the connected experiences of the man.

But while the nocturnal episode may be entirely forgotten, it was not

less in consciousness for the time being, than if a normal man should

leave his bed hastily to write a letter. Moreover under abnormal

conditions, as for instance in severe hysteric cases, those dissociated

contents may form large clusters of mental experiences in the midst of

which a new idea of the own personality may develop. Considering that

through such disconnection many channels of discharge are blocked, while

others are abnormally opened, it seems only natural that the idea of the

own acting personality becomes greatly changed. Thus we have in such an

episode a new second personality which may be strikingly different in

its behavior and in its power, in its memories and in its desires, from

the continuous normal one, and this secondary personality may now

develop its own continuity and may arise under special conditions in

attacks which are connected among one another by their own memory bonds.

The two personalities may even alternate from day to day and the normal

one may itself become pathologically altered. In that case the two

alternating personalities would both be different from the original one.

But again we have even in such most complex and exceptional cases only

an alternation in the contents, not an alternation in the consciousness

itself. Different ideas of the own personality with different

associations and impulses follow each other in consciousness and the

abnormality of the situation lies in the lack of memory connections and

of mutual influences, but consciousness remains the same throughout. It

remains the same, just as we do not change consciousness if we feel

ourselves in one hour as members of our family, in the next hour as

professional workers in our office, again later as social personalities

at a party or as citizens at a political meeting or as aesthetic

subjects at the theater. Each time we are to a high degree a different

personality, the idea of our self is each time determined by different

groups of associations, memories, emotions, and impulses. The

differentiation is to be considered as normal only because broad memory

bridges lead over from one to the other. The connection of the various

contents with the various ideas of the own personality constitutes thus

in no way a break of consciousness itself and relegates no one content

into a subconscious sphere.

Finally the same holds true, if the idea of the personality as content

of consciousness in the patient is split into two simultaneous groups,

of which each one is furnished with its own associations. Yet the

interpretation here becomes extremely difficult and arbitrary. Take the

case that a patient in severe hysteria at our request writes down the

history of her life. We should not hesitate to say that she is doing it

consciously but now we begin to talk with her and slowly the

conversation takes her attention while her pencil is continuing to write

down the connected story of her youth. Again the conversation by itself

gives the impression of completely conscious behavior. As both functions

go on at the same time, the person who converses does not know what the

person who writes is writing, and the writer is uninfluenced by the

conversation. Various interpretations are possible. Indeed we might

think that by such double setting in the pathological brain two

independent groups in the content of consciousness are formed, each one

fully in consciousness and yet both without any mutual influence and

thus without mutual knowledge. In the light of such interpretation, it

has been correctly proposed to speak of coconscious processes, rather

than subconscious. Or we may interpret it more in harmony with the

ordinary automatic writing or with other merely physiological reactions.

Then we should suppose that as soon as the conversation sets in, the

brain centers which control the writing movement work through channels

in which no mental factors are involved. One of the two characteristic

reaction systems would then be merely physiological. We saw before that

the complexity of the process is no argument against the strictly

physiological character of the event. That various activities can

coexist in such a way that one of them may at any time slide down from

the conscious centers to the merely physical ones, we all know by daily

experience. We may go home through the streets of the busy town engaged

with our thoughts. For a while the idea of our way and of the sidewalk

is in our consciousness, when suddenly we reach our house and notice

that for a long while we have no longer had any thought at all of the

way. We were absorbed by our problems, and the motor activity of walking

towards our goal was going on entirely in the physiological sphere. But

whether we prefer the physiological account or insist on the coconscious

phenomena, in either case is there any chance for the subconscious to

slip in? That a content of consciousness is to a high degree dissociated

or that the idea of the personality is split off is certainly a symptom

of pathological disturbance, but it has nothing to do with the

constituting of two different kinds of consciousness or with breaking

the continuous sameness of consciousness itself. The most exceptional

and most uncanny occurrences of the hospital teach after all the same

which our daily experience ought to teach us: there is no

subconsciousness.