THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN PERSONALITY,
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
LECTURE I
THEORY OF MEMORY AS A PROCESS
Gentlemen:
The subject which I have chosen for our first lecture is the theory of
the mechanism of memory. I begin with the study of this problem because
a knowledge of the facts which underlie the theory of memory is a
necessary introduction to an understanding of the Unconscious, and of
the part which subconscious processes play in normal and abnormal mental
life.[4] Speaking more specifically, without such a preliminary study I
do not believe we can interpret correctly a very large number of the
disturbances of mind and body which are traceable to the activity of
subconscious processes and with which we shall later have to do.
If we consider memory as a _process_, and not as specific phases of
consciousness, we shall find that it is an essential factor in the
mechanisms underlying a large variety of phenomena of normal and
abnormal life. These phenomena include those of both mind and body of a
kind not ordinarily conceived of as manifestations of memory. I would
have you dwell in your minds for a moment on the fact that I make this
distinction between memory as a process and memory as a phase of
consciousness or specific mental experience. What we ordinarily and
conventionally have in mind when we speak of memory is the conscious
thought of some past mental experience. But when we conceive of memory
as a process we have in mind the whole mechanism through the working of
which this past experience is _registered_, _conserved_, and
_reproduced_, whether such reproduction be in consciousness or below the
surface of consciousness.
Memory is usually looked upon as something that pertains solely to
consciousness. Such a conception is defensible if the meaning of the
term is restricted to those facts alone which come within our conscious
experience. But when we consider the mechanism by which a particular
empirical fact of this kind is introduced into consciousness we find
that this conception is inadequate. We find then that we are obliged to
regard conscious memory as only the end result of a process and, in
order to account for this end result, to assume other stages in the
process which are not phases of consciousness. Though the end result is
a reproduction of the ideas which constituted the previous conscious
experience, this reproduction is not the whole process.
More than this, the conscious experience is not the only experience that
may be reproduced by the process, nor is the end result always and
necessarily a state of consciousness. _Conscious memory is only a
particular type of memory._ The same process may terminate in purely
unconscious or physiological effects, or what may be called
physiological memory to distinguish it from conscious memory. Along with
the revived ideas and their feeling tones there may be a revival of the
physiological experiences, or processes, which originally accompanied
them; such as secretion of sweat, saliva and gastric juice, the
contraction and dilatation of the blood vessels, the inhibition or
excitation of the heart, lungs and other viscera, the contraction of
muscles, etc. These visceral mechanisms, being originally elements in a
complex process and accompaniments of the idea, may be reproduced along
with the conscious memory, and even without conscious memory. As this
physiological complex is an acquired experience it is entitled to be
regarded as memory so far as its reproduction is the end result of the
same kind of process or mechanism as that which reproduces ideas.
Then, again, investigations into the subconscious have shown that the
original experience may be reproduced subconsciously without rising into
awareness.
The more comprehensive way, then, of looking at memory is to regard it
as a process and not simply as an end result. The process, as we shall
see, is made up of three factors—Registration, Conservation, and
Reproduction. Of these the end result is reproduction; conservation
being the preservation of that which was registered.
This view is far more fruitful, as you will presently see, for memory
acquires a deeper significance and will be found to play a fundamental
and unsuspected part in the mechanism of many obscure mental processes.
From this point of view, upon memory, considered _as a process_, depend
the acquired conscious and subconscious habits of mind and body.
The process involves unconscious as well as conscious factors and may be
wholly unconscious (subconscious).
Two of its factors—registration and conservation—are responsible for the
building up of the unconscious as the storehouse of the mind and,
therefore, primarily for all subconscious processes, other than those
which are innate.
To it may be referred the direct excitation of many subconscious
manifestations of various kinds.
Consciously or subconsciously it largely determines our prejudices, our
superstitions, our beliefs, our points of view, our attitudes of mind.
Upon it to a large degree depend what we call personality and character.
It often is the unsuspected and subconscious secret of our judgments,
our sentiments, and impulses.
It is the process which most commonly induces dreams and furnishes the
material out of which they are constructed.
It is the basis of many hypnotic phenomena.
In the field of pathology, memory, through its perversions, takes part
in and helps to determine the form of a variety of disturbances such as
obsessions, impulsions, tics, habit psychoses and neuroses, many of the
manifestations of that great protean psychosis, hysteria, and other
common ailments which it is the fashion of the day to term neurasthenia
and psychasthenia. It is largely responsible for the conscious and
subconscious conflicts which disrupt the human mind and result in
various pathological states.
Finally, upon the utilization of the processes of memory modern
psychotherapeutics, or the educational treatment of disease, is largely
based. For many of these reasons an understanding of the mechanism of
memory is essential for an understanding of the subconscious. In short,
memory furnishes a standpoint from which we can productively study the
normal and abnormal processes of the mind—conscious and subconscious.
These somewhat dogmatic general statements—which I have put before you
much after the fashion of the lawyer who presents a general statement of
his case in anticipation of the evidence—I hope will become clear and
their truth evident as we proceed; likewise, their bearing upon the
facts of abnormal psychology. To make them clear it will be necessary to
explain in some detail the generally accepted theory of memory as a
process and to cite the numerous data upon which it rests.
There may be, as, indeed, you will find there are, wide differences of
opinion as to the exact psychological mechanism by which a
memory-process plays its part in the larger processes of mental life,
normal and abnormal, such as I have just mentioned, but that the
memory-process is a fundamental factor is revealed by whatever method
the problems are attacked. A study, therefore, of this fundamental
factor and a determination of its mechanism are a prerequisite for a
study of the more complex processes in which it takes part. For this
reason I shall begin the study of the Unconscious (subconscious), to
which I shall ask your attention in these lectures, with a consideration
of the processes of memory.
If you ask the average person, as I have often done, how or why he
remembers he will be puzzled and he is apt to reply, “Why, I just
remember,” or, “I never thought of that before.” If you push him a bit
and ask what becomes of ideas after they have passed out of mind and
have given place to other ideas, and how an idea that has passed out of
mind, that has gone, disappeared, can be brought back again as memory,
he becomes further puzzled. We know that ideas that have passed out of
mind may be voluntarily recalled, or reproduced, as memory; we may say
that meantime they have become what may be called dormant. But surely
something must have happened to enable these conscious experiences to be
conserved in some way and recalled. Ideas are not material things which,
like books, can be laid away on a shelf to be taken up again when
wanted, and yet we can recall, or reproduce, many ideas when we want
them just as we can go to a shelf and take down any book we want.
We learn the alphabet and the multiplication table in childhood. During
the greater part of our lives the sensory images, auditory language
symbols, etc., which may be summarized as ideas representing these
educational experiences, are out of our minds and do not form a
continuous part of our conscious experiences, but they may be recalled
at any moment as memory. In fact, try as hard as we may, we cannot
forget our alphabet or multiplication table. Why is this?
The older psychology did not bother itself much with these questions
which puzzle the average man. It was content for the most part with a
descriptive statement of the facts of conscious memory. It did not
concern itself with the process by which memory is effected; nor, so
long as psychology dealt only with phases of consciousness, was it of
much consequence. It has been only since subconscious processes have
loomed large in psychology and have been seen to take part on the one
hand in the mechanism of conscious thought and on the other to produce
various bodily phenomena, that the process of memory has acquired great
practical importance. For it has been seen that in these subconscious
processes previous conscious experiences are resurrected to take part as
subconscious memory, consequently a conscious experience that has passed
out of mind may not only recur again as conscious memory, but may recur
subconsciously below the threshold of awareness. The study of
subconscious processes therefore necessarily includes the processes of
memory. And so it has become a matter of considerable moment to follow
the fate of experiences after they have passed out of mind with a view
to determining the mechanism by which they can be reproduced consciously
and subconsciously. More than this it is important that the theory of
memory should be removed if possible from the domain of purely
speculative psychological concepts and placed on a sound basis of
observation and experiment like other accepted theories of science.
From the point of view of animism, and indeed of dualism, nothing
becomes of the ideas that have passed out of mind; they simply, for the
time being, cease to exist. Consciousness changes its form. Nothing is
preserved, nothing is stored up. This is still the popular notion
according to which a mental experience at any given moment—the content
of my consciousness, for instance, at this moment as I speak to you—is
only one of a series of kaleidoscopic changes or phases of my
self-consciousness. In saying this what is meant plainly must be that
the content of consciousness at any given moment is a phase of a
continuing psychical something. We may, perhaps, call this my
self-consciousness, and say that when I reproduce an experience as
memory I simply bring back (by the power of self-determination) that
same previous phase of the psychical something. If I cannot bring it
back my failure may be due to a failure of the power of
self-determination or—and here is a weak point—to a failure in the
formative cohesion of the elementary ideas of that experience. In this
latter alternative no note is taken of a seeming contradiction paradox.
If nothing is preserved, if nothing continues to exist, if memory is
only one of a series of kaleidoscopic phases of consciousness, how can
there be any cohesion or organization within what does not exist?
Consciousness according to this notion might be likened to the water of
a lake in which vortices were constantly being formed, either by the
current of inflowing springs from the bottom or the influences of
external agencies. One vortex would give place to a succeeding vortex.
Memory would be analogous to the reproduction of a previously occurring
vortex.
When, however, such a notion of memory is examined in the light of all
the facts which have to be explained it will be found to be descriptive
only of our conscious experiences. It does not explain memory; it does
not answer the question of the ordinary man, “How can ideas which have
ceased to exist be reproduced again as memory?” For, putting aside
various psychological difficulties such as, How can I determine the
reproduction of a former phase of consciousness—that is, memory—without
first _remembering_ what I want to determine?, or, if this be answered,
“By the association of phases (ideas),” how can there be any bond of
association between an existing idea and one that does not exist?, and,
therefore, how can association bring back that which has ceased to
exist?—putting aside such questions, there are a number of
psycho-physiological facts which this conception of memory will be found
inadequate to meet. As a matter of fact, investigations into the
behavior of mental processes, particularly under artificial and
pathological conditions, have disclosed certain phenomena which can be
adequately explained only on the supposition that ideas as they pass out
of mind—the mental experiences of the moment—leave something behind,
some residuum which is preserved, stored up as it were, and which plays
a subsequent part in the process of memory. These phenomena seem to
require what may be called a psycho-physiological theory of memory.
Although the theory has long been one of the concepts of normal
psychology it can be said to have been satisfactorily validated only by
the investigations of recent years in abnormal psychology.
The full significance as well as the validity of this theory can be
properly estimated only in the light of the facts which have been
revealed by modern technical methods of investigation. After all, it is
the consequences of a theory which count, and this will be seen to be
true particularly as respects memory. The pragmatic point of view of
counting the consequences, of determining the difference that the theory
makes in the understanding of the mental processes of normal and
abnormal life, reveals the importance to us of validating the theory.
The consequences of the psycho-physiological theory are so far-reaching,
in view of its bearing upon a large number of problems in normal and
abnormal psychology, that it is worthy of sustained and exhaustive
examination. I will, therefore, briefly résumé the various classes of
facts which support the theory and which any adequate theory of memory
must satisfactorily explain. For, as will appear, besides the common
facts of memory pertaining to everyday life, there are a large number of
other facts which can be observed only when the mind is dissected, so to
speak, by pathological processes, and by the production of artificial
conditions, and when investigations are carried out by special technic.
Irrespective of any theory of explanation, a knowledge of these facts is
extremely important for an understanding of many phenomena in the domain
of both normal and abnormal psychology.
=The meaning of conservation.=—We all know, as an everyday experience of
mankind, that at one time we can recall what happened to us at some
particular moment in the past, and at another time we cannot. We know
that when we have forgotten some experience if we stimulate or refresh
our memory, as the lawyers say to us on the witness-stand, by reference
to our notes, appropriately called memoranda, the original experience
may come back to mind. Often at one moment we cannot recall a verse, or
a name, or a piece of acquired knowledge, while at another time, a
little later, we can. We have a feeling, a perhaps justifiable belief,
that a desired piece of knowledge is not lost, that it is back somewhere
in our minds but we cannot get at it. If, sooner or later, under one
circumstance or another, with or without the aid of some kind of
stimulus, we can recall the desired knowledge we say it was preserved
(or conserved). If we continue, under all circumstances and at all
moments, to be unable to recall it we say it is lost, that our memory of
it is not conserved. So the notion of conservation of knowledge being
something apart from recollection enters even into popular language.
What sort of thing conservation is, popular language does not attempt to
define. It is clear, however, that we may with propriety speak of the
conservation of experiences, using this term in a descriptive sense
without forming any definite concept of the nature of conservation.
Provisionally, then, I shall speak of conservation of a given experience
in this sense only, meaning that the memory of it is not permanently
lost but that under certain particular circumstances we can recall it.
Now a large mass of observations demonstrate that there are an enormous
number of experiences, belonging to both normal and abnormal mental
life, which we are unable to voluntarily recall during any period of our
lives, no matter how hard we try, or what aids to memory we employ. For
these experiences there is life-long amnesia. Nevertheless, it is easy
to demonstrate that, though the personal consciousness of everyday life
cannot recall them, they are not lost, properly speaking, but conserved;
for when the personal consciousness has undergone a peculiar change, at
moments when certain special alterations have taken place in the
conditions of the personal consciousness, at such moments you find that
the subject under investigation recalls the apparently lost experiences.
These moments are those of hypnosis, abstraction, dreams, and certain
pathological states. Again, in certain individuals it is possible by
technical devices to awaken secondary mental processes in the form of a
subconsciousness which may manifest the memories of the forgotten
experiences without awareness therefor on the part of the personal
consciousness. These manifestations are known as automatic writing and
speech. Then, again, by means of certain post-hypnotic phenomena, it is
easy to study conservation experimentally. We can make, as you will
later see, substantially everything that happened to the subject of the
experiment in hypnosis—his thoughts, his speech, his actions, for all of
which he has complete and irretrievable loss of memory in a waking
state—we can make memory for all these lost experiences reappear when
hypnosis is again induced. Thus we can prove conservation when voluntary
memory for experiences is absolutely lost. These experiments, among
others, as we shall also see, also give an insight into the nature of
conservation which is the real problem involved in an investigation into
the process of memory.
Before undertaking to solve this problem—so far as may be done—it is
well to obtain a full realization of the extent to which experiences
which have been forgotten may be still conserved. I will therefore, as I
promised you, résumé the experimental and other evidence supporting this
principle, making use of both personal observations and those of others.
_NOTE—In the following exposition of the evidence for the theory of
memory it has been necessary to make use of phenomena subsuming
subconscious processes before the subconscious itself has been
demonstrated. A few words in explanation of the terms used is therefore
desirable to avoid confusing the reader._
_Dividing as I do the subconscious into the unconscious and the
coconscious, the former is either simply a neural disposition, or an
active neural process without any quality of consciousness; the latter
is an actual subconscious idea or a process of thought of which,
nevertheless, we are not aware. An unconscious and a coconscious process
are both, therefore, only particular types of a subconscious process. I
might have used the single term subconscious throughout the first seven
lectures, but in that case, though temporarily less confusing, the data
necessary for the appreciation of the division of the subconscious into
two orders would not have been at hand. Typical phenomena having been
described as unconscious or coconscious (instead of simply
subconscious), the reader will have already become familiar with
examples of each type and be thus prepared for the final discussion in
Lecture VIII. PROVISIONALLY, these three terms may be regarded as
synonyms. To indicate the synonym, the term “subconscious” has often
been added in parenthesis in the text to one or other of the
subdivisional terms, and vice versa._
-----
Footnote 1:
In this connection it is a satisfaction to the author to note that
more recently a committee was appointed by the American Psychological
Association (December, 1911) to investigate the relation of psychology
to medical education. This committee, after an extensive inquiry by
correspondence with all the medical schools of the country, has made a
report (Science, Oct. 17, 1913) based upon the preponderating opinion
of the best medical schools and of the schools as a whole. The second
(in substance) and third conclusions reached in the report were as
follows:
2nd: For entrance in certain schools requiring a preliminary college
training of greater or less length an introductory or pre-medical
course in psychology should be required in the same way as they now
require chemistry, biology, physics, etc., or, in lieu thereof, a
course in the medical schools.
3rd: “It is the belief of most of the best schools that a second
course in psychology should precede the course in clinical psychiatry
and neurology. This course should have more of a practical nature, and
should deal especially with abnormal mental processes and with the
application of psychological principles and facts to medical topics.
Although this course should deal chiefly with psychopathology, it
should not be permitted to develop, or degenerate, into a course in
psychiatry, neurology or psychotherapeutics. This course should be
clinical in the sense that, as far as possible, clinical material
should be the basis of the course, but it should not be clinical in
the sense that the students are given particular cases for the purpose
of diagnosis or of treatment. The functions of the courses in
psychiatry and neurology should not be assumed by this course.”
The courses, from which I have selected twelve lectures for my present
purpose, were designed for just such instruction as is recommended in
this report. They were, I believe, the first to be given on these
subjects in any medical school or college in this country. Necessarily
they covered a wider range of topics than the lectures now published
which more properly serve as an introduction to the general subject.
Footnote 2:
“The Birth of the Dream,” _The Independent_, Oct. 30, 1913.
Footnote 3:
A descriptive account of this case, written as a sort of autobiography
by the subject herself, was published in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_ (Vol. 3, Nos. 4 & 5, 1908-1909) under the title “My Life
as a Dissociated Personality.” This remarkable account includes an
instructive description of the coconscious self of considerable value.
Footnote 4:
I divide the Subconscious into two parts, namely the Unconscious and
the Coconscious. See preface and Lecture VIII.
LECTURE II
CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND
PATHOLOGICAL LIFE