Although in the above résumé of the phenomena of memory I have for the
most part made use of personal observations, these, so far as the
phenomena themselves are concerned, are in accord with those of other
observers. It would have been easy to have drawn for corroboration upon
the writings of Gurney, Janet, Charcot, Breuer, Freud, Sidis, Coriat,
and others.
A survey of all the facts which I have outlined in this lecture forces
us to ask ourselves the question: To what extent are life’s experiences
conserved? Indeed it was to meet this question that I have reviewed so
large a variety of forgotten experiences which experiment or observation
in individual cases has shown to be conserved. If my aim had been to
show simply that an experience, which has been lost beyond all possible
voluntary recall, may still be within the power of reproduction when
special devices adapted to the purpose are employed, it would not have
been necessary to cover such a wide field of inquiry. To meet the wider
question it was necessary to go farther afield and examine a large
variety of experiences occurring in multiform conditions of mental life.
After doing this the important principle is forced upon us in strong
relief that it matters not in what period of life, or in what state,
experiences have occurred, or how long a time has intervened since their
occurrence; they may still be conserved. They become dormant, but under
favorable conditions they may be awakened and may enter conscious life.
We have seen, even by the few examples I have given, that childhood
experiences that are supposed to have long been buried in oblivion may
be conserved. We have seen that the mental life of artificial and
pathological states is subject to the same principle; that the
experiences of hypnosis, trance states, deliria, intoxication,
dissociated personality—though there may be absolute amnesia in the
normal waking state for them—may still be capable of reproduction as
memory. Yet of the vast number of mental experiences which we have
during the course of our lives we can voluntarily recall but a
fractional part. What proportion of the others is conserved is
difficult, if not impossible, to determine. The difficulty is largely a
practical one due to the inadequacy of our technical methods of
investigation. In the first place, our technic is only applicable to a
limited number of persons. In the second place, it is obvious that when
an episode—occurring in the course of everyday life—is forgotten, but is
recovered under one or another of the conditions I have described, it is
only in a minority of instances that circumstances will permit
confirmation of this evidence by collateral and independent testimony.
Still, if we take the evidence as a whole its cumulative force is such
as to compel the conviction that a vast number of experiences, more than
we can possibly voluntarily recall, are conserved, and that it is
impossible to affirm that any given experience may not persist in a
dormant state. It is impossible to say what experiences of our daily
life have failed to be conserved and what are awaiting only a favorable
condition of reproduction to be stimulated into activity as memory. Even
if they cannot be reproduced by voluntary effort, or by some one
particular device, they may be by another and, if all devices fail, they
may be recovered in pathological conditions like delirium, trance,
spontaneous hallucinations, etc., or in normal dissociated states like
dreams. The inability to recall an experience is no evidence whatever
that it is not conserved. Indeed, even when the special methods and
moments fail it is still not always possible to say that it is not
conserved.
It would be a gross exaggeration to say, on the basis of the evidence at
our disposal, that all life’s experiences persist as potential memories,
or even that this is true of the greater number. It is, however,
undoubtedly true that of the great mass of experiences which have passed
out of all voluntary recollection, an almost incredible, even if
relatively small, number still lie dormant, and, under favoring
conditions, many can be brought within the field of conscious memory.
The significance of this fact will become apparent to us later after we
have studied the nature of conservation. Still more significant,
particularly for abnormal psychology, is the fact we have brought out by
our technical methods of investigation; namely, that almost any
conserved experience under certain conditions can function as a
subconscious memory and become translated into, i.e., produce sensory
and motor automatic phenomena, such as hallucinations, writing, speech,
etc. It will not be surprising if we shall find that various other
disturbances of mind and body are produced by such subconscious
processes.
Two striking facts brought out by some of these investigations are the
minuteness of the details with which forgotten experiences may be
conserved and the long periods of time during which conservation may
persist. Thus, as we have seen, experiences dating back to early
childhood may be shown to be preserved in extremely minute detail though
the individual has long forgotten them. Furthermore, it has been shown
that even remembered experiences may be conserved in far more elaborate
detail than would appear from so much of the experience as can be
voluntarily recalled. Probably our voluntary memory is not absolutely
perfect for any experience in all its details but the details that are
conserved often far exceed those that can be recalled.
In the survey of life’s experiences which we have studied we have, for
the most part, considered those which have had objective relation and
have been subject to confirmation by collateral testimony. But we should
not overlook the fact that among mental experiences are those of the
inner as well as outer life. To the former belong the hopes and
aspirations, the regrets, the fears, the doubts, the self-communings and
wrestlings with self, the wishes, the loves, the hates, all that we are
not willing to give out to the world, and all that we would forget and
would strive not to admit to ourselves. All this inner life belongs to
our experience and is subject to the same law of conservation.
Finally, it should be said that much of what is not ordinarily regarded
as memory is made up of conserved experiences. A large part of every
mental content is memory the source of which is forgotten. Just as our
vocabulary is memory, though we do not remember how and where it was
acquired, so our judgments, beliefs, and opinions are in large part made
up of past experiences which are forgotten but which have left their
traces as integral parts of concepts ingrained in our personalities.
-----
Footnote 27:
For a full account of this experiment, see An Experimental Study of
Visions, _Brain_, Winter Number, 1898; The Dissociation, pp. 81, 82.
Footnote 28:
The Dissociation, p. 77.
Footnote 29:
For numerous observations of this kind, see Pierre Janet: The Mental
States of Hystericals.
Footnote 30:
The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams, loc. cit.
Footnote 31:
Loc. cit. See p. 51.
Footnote 32:
See Lecture VI, p. 185.
Footnote 33:
Gurney was among the first to demonstrate the induction of several
states in the same subject. He was able to obtain three different
hypnotic states (Proceedings S. P. R., Vol. IV, p. 515), and Mrs.
Sidgwick and Miss Johnson eight in one individual, each with amnesia
for the other. Janet, of course, demonstrated the same phenomena. In
the cases of Miss B. and B. C. A. I obtained a large number of such
states.
Footnote 34:
Morton Prince: The Dissociation, p. 55; also An Experimental Study of
Visions, _Brain_, Winter Number, 1898.
Footnote 35:
Some of the Revelations of Hypnotism, _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, May 22, 1890.
Footnote 36:
Studien über Hysterie.
Footnote 37:
Of course I am not discussing here the genetic mechanism of the
amnesia, being concerned only with the principle of conservation.
Footnote 38:
The Dissociation, pp. 284-5, 456-9.
Footnote 39:
Boris Sidis: The Psychology of Suggestion, p. 224; see also Multiple
Personality, p. 143.
Footnote 40:
_The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 93.
Footnote 41:
The Dissociation, pp. 220, 221, 255, 531, 532.
Footnote 42:
The Dissociation, p. 83.
Footnote 43:
_The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol. I, No. 3.
Footnote 44:
_American Journal of Insanity_, July, 1910.
LECTURE IV
CONSERVATION A RESIDUUM OF EXPERIENCES
A consideration of all the facts of observation and experiment of the
kind which I have recited in the last two lectures—and I might have
multiplied them many times—forces us to the conclusion that whether or
not we can recall any given experience it may be still conserved. Bear
in mind that I have used conservation, thus far, only in the sense that
under favoring changes in the moment’s consciousness, or by special
methods of stimulation, a past experience may reproduce itself, or may
be made to reproduce itself, in one form or another of memory.
It may be, for example, that you have to-day only a vague and general
recollection of the last lecture and if you should endeavor to write an
account of it from memory the result would be but a fragmentary report.
And yet it is quite possible that, if one or another of the various
technical methods I have described could be applied to some one of you,
we should be able to recover quite exact memories, of certain portions
at least, of the lecture—perhaps _verbatim_ transcripts of certain
portions, and large numbers of facts which are quite beyond your present
recollection.
Our study of those phenomena of memory which I cited in the last lecture
was carried only so far as to allow us to draw the conclusions as to
conservation which I have just stated. And, in drawing these
conclusions, let me repeat—we have provisionally limited the meaning of
the term conservation simply to the potential ability to reproduce
experiences, with or without recollection, either in their original
form, or translated into a graphic, visual, or auditory expression of
them. We have not attempted from these phenomena to draw conclusions as
to the nature of conservation, or as to whether it is anything apart
from reproduction under favorable conditions. If we do not look below
the surface of the phenomena it might be held that memory is only a
recurrent phase of consciousness, and that the term conservation is only
a figure of speech to express the ability to determine that recurrence
in our self-consciousness.
Let us examine now a little more closely some of the phenomena we have
already examined but inadequately.
=Residual processes underlying automatic motor phenomena: writing,
speech, gestures, etc.=—We will take writing as a type and the following
as an example: In a state of hypnosis a subject learns a verse by heart.
It is then suggested that this verse shall be written automatically
after he has been awakened. (By arranging the conditions of the
experiment in this way we make certain that the script afterwards
written shall express a memory and not a fabrication.) After the subject
returns to the normal waking state he has complete amnesia for the whole
hypnotic state and therefore for the verse. Now, if the experiment is
successful, his hand writes the given verse without the subject being
aware of what his hand is writing, and it may be without being aware
that his hand is writing anything at all. The whole thing has been done
without participation of his consciousness and without his knowing that
any such phenomenon was to occur. (Of course any of his conscious
experiences while in the hypnotic state might have been used as a test,
these being known to the experimenter as well.) Now the things to be
noted are:
1, that the script expresses a memory; that is, reproduces previous
_conserved_ conscious ideas—the verse. It expresses memory just exactly
as it would express it if it had been consciously and voluntarily
written.
2, that these ideas _while in a state of conservation_ and without
entering consciousness—i.e., becoming conscious memory—express
themselves in written language.
3, that this occurs while the subject has complete amnesia for the
conserved ideas and therefore he could not possibly reproduce them as
conscious memory.
4, that that which effects the writing is not a recurring phase of the
self-consciousness which is concerned at the moment with totally
different ideas.
5, that the “state of conservation” is, at least during the writing, a
specific state existing and functioning independently and outside of the
personal self-consciousness.
6, that in functioning it induces specific processes which make use of
the same organized physiological mechanisms which ordinarily are made
use of by conscious memory to express itself in writing and that these
processes are not in, but independent of, consciousness.
We are forced to conclude therefore that a conscious experience—in this
case the ideas of the verse—is conserved through the medium of some kind
of residuum of itself capable of specific functioning and inducing
processes which reproduce in the form of written symbols the ideas of
the original experience.
We need not consider for the present the nature of the residuum, and its
process, whether it is the ideas themselves or something else.
=Residual processes underlying hallucinations.=—We will take the
observation of B. C. A. looking into a crystal and reading some printed
words—a cablegram—which she had previously unconsciously overheard.[45]
The words were, let us say, “Best Wishes and a Happy New Year.” This
visual picture was not a literal reproduction of the original
experience, which was a subconscious _auditory_ experience of the same
words, of which she was not aware; but plainly, nevertheless, the visual
picture must have been determined somehow by the auditory experience.
Equally plainly the visual image was not a recurrent phase of the
consciousness, for the words of the message had not been previously
_seen_. What occurred was this: the antecedent auditory perception
manifested itself in consciousness _after an interval of time_ as a
visual hallucination of the words. There was a reproduction of the
original experience but not in its original form. It had undergone a
_secondary alteration_ by which the visual perception replaced the
auditory perception. As a memory it was a conversion or _translation_ of
an auditory experience into terms of another sense. Now the conversion
must have been effected by some mechanism outside of consciousness; that
is to say, it was not an ordinary visualization, i.e., intensely vivid
secondary images pertaining to a _conscious_ memory, as when one thinks
of the morning’s breakfast table and visualizes it; for there was no
conscious memory of the words, or knowledge that there ever had been
such an experience. The visualization therefore must have been induced
by something not in the content of consciousness,—something we have
called a secondary process, of which the individual is unaware.
We can conceive of the phenomenon originating in either one of two
possible modes. Either the hallucination was a newly fabricated
conscious experience; or it was a reproduction of secondary visual
images originally belonging to the auditory perception at the time of
its occurrence and now thrust into consciousness in an intensely vivid
form. In either case, for this to have taken place something must have
been left by the original experience and conserved apart from and
independent of the content of the personal consciousness at any and all
moments—something capable of functioning after an interval of time as a
secondary process _outside of the personal consciousness_. The only
intelligible explanation of the phenomenon is that the original auditory
impression persisted, somehow and somewhere, in a form capable of
conservation as a specific and independent residuum during all
subsequent changes in the content of consciousness. This residuum either
fabricated the hallucination or thrust its secondary images into
consciousness to become the hallucination.
The phenomenon by itself does not permit a conclusion as to the nature
of the residuum, whether it is psychological or neural; i.e., whether an
auditory perception, as perception, still persists subconsciously
outside the focus of awareness of consciousness, or whether it has left
an alteration of some kind in the neurons. Whatever the inner nature of
the conserved experience it _obviously must have a very specific and
independent existence, somehow and somewhere, outside of the awareness
of consciousness, and one capable of secondary functioning in a way that
can reproduce the original experience in terms of another sense. In
other words, conservation must be in the form of some kind of residuum,
psychological or neural_. It must be, therefore, something very
different from reproduction or a recurrent phase of consciousness.
Further, it must form a stage in the process of memory of which
reproduction is the final result.
This observation of course does not stand alone. I have cited a number
of observations and might cite many more in which the same phenomenon of
transformation or conversion of sensory images of one sense into images
of another sense was prominent. Indeed a study of hallucinations,
artificial or spontaneous, which are representations of former
experiences and where the determining factors can be ascertained, will
show that in most, if not all, of them this same _mechanism of
conversion_ is at work. Take, for instance, the experiment cited in our
last lecture, the one in which Miss B. was directed to look into a
crystal for the purpose of discovering the whereabouts of some money she
had lost without being aware of the fact. In the crystal she sees a
vision of herself walking along a particular street in Boston absorbed
in thought. She sees herself in a moment of absent-mindedness take some
banknotes out of her pocket, tear them up, and throw them into the
street.
Now this artificial hallucination was, as we have seen, a picture of an
actual occurrence for which there was amnesia. It must, therefore, have
been determined by that experience. The psychological phenomena
manifested, however, were really much more complicated than would appear
at first sight. An analysis of this vision, which unfolded itself like a
cinematograph picture, would show that it was a composite visual
representation of several different kinds of experiences—of past
perceptions of her body and face, of her conscious knowledge of her
relation to the environment (in the street), of muscular movements, and
of her knowledge derived from subconscious tactile impressions of the
act. Of these last she was not aware at the time of their occurrence.
Much of this knowledge must have persisted as a residuum of the original
experience and functioned subconsciously. Thereby, perhaps, the original
secondary visual images were reproduced and emerged into consciousness
as the hallucination or pictorial memory.
Similar phenomena indicative of conservation being effected by means of
a residuum of the original experience may be produced experimentally in
various ways. For instance, in certain hysterics with anesthesia if you
prick a number of times a part of the body—say the hand—in which all
tactile sensation has been lost, and later direct the subject to look
into a crystal, he will see a number, perhaps written on a hand. This
number, let us say five, will correctly designate the number of times
the hand was pricked. Now, because of the loss of sensibility, the
subject was unaware of the pin-pricks. Nevertheless, of course, they
were recorded subconsciously, coconsciously). Their subsequent
transformation into a visual hallucination not only shows that they were
conserved, but that they left something which was capable of taking
part, outside of consciousness, in a secondary process which gave rise
to the hallucination.
An examination of all crystal visions, so far as they are translated
memories of actual experiences, will show this same evidence for a
conserved residuum.
That _conservation is not merely a figure of speech_ to express the
ability to determine the recurrence of a previous experience, but means
a specific residuum capable of independent and elaborate functioning, is
brought out more conspicuously in those visions which are elaborately
fabricated symbolisms of an antecedent experience. In other words, the
vision is not a literal recurrence of a previous phase of consciousness,
in that the latter has been worked over, so to speak, so as to appear in
consciousness in a reconstructed form. Though reconstructed it either
still retains its original meaning or is worked out to a completion of
its thoughts, or to a fulfilment of the emotional strivings pertaining
to them (anxieties, wishes, etc.). These visions, perhaps, more
frequently occur spontaneously, often at moments of crises in a person’s
life, but also are observed under experimental conditions. Sometimes
they answer the doubts, scruples and other problems which have troubled
the subject, sometimes they express the imaginary fulfilment of intense
longings or of anxieties and dreads which have been entertained, or
disturbing thoughts which have pricked the conscience.[46] We are
obliged to conclude, in the light of experimental observations of the
same class, that such phenomena are determined by the specific residua
of antecedent thoughts which must be conserved and function in a
specific manner to appear in this metamorphosed form.
=Similar residual processes underlying post-hypnotic
phenomena.=—Conserved experiences which give rise to more complicated
secondary elaboration may be observed in suggested post-hypnotic
phenomena. Experiments of this kind may be varied in many ways. The
phenomenon may be an hallucination similar to the one I have just
described in hysterics, or a so-called subconscious calculation. You
suggest in hypnosis to a suitable subject that he shall multiply certain
numbers, or calculate the number of seconds intervening between certain
hours—let us say between 10:43 and 5:13 o’clock—the answer to be given
in writing on a certain day. The subject is then awakened immediately,
before he has time to do the calculation while in hypnosis. Later, if
the experiment is successful, at the time designated the subject will
absent-mindedly or automatically write the figures giving the answer.
There are two modes in which these calculations may be accomplished. In
a special and limited class of cases, where there is a large split-off
subconscious personality, or doubling of consciousness, the calculation
may be made entirely by this secondary subconscious self, in the same
fashion as it would be made by the principal personality if the problem
were given in the waking state. The subconscious personality will go
through each conscious step in the calculation in the same way.[47] In a
second class of cases the _calculations are worked out, apparently,
unconsciously_, without participation in the process by a subconscious
personality even when such exists. At most it would seem that isolated
numbers representing different steps in the calculation arise from time
to time coconsciously as a limited secondary consciousness (of which the
personal consciousness is unaware) until finally the figures of the
completed answer appear therein. The calculation itself appears to be
still another process outside both the personal and the secondary
consciousness. When the problem has been finished the answer is finally
given automatically. The whole process is too complicated to go into at
this time before we have studied the problems of the coconscious.[48] It
is enough to say that it is plain that the hypnotic experience—the
suggested problem—must be considered as some kind of specific residuum,
psychological or neural, and that this residuum must be one capable of
quite elaborate independent and subconscious intellectual activity
before finally becoming transformed into the final answer.
=Residual processes underlying dreams.=—When citing the evidence of
dreams for the conservation of forgotten experiences I spoke of one type
of dream as a symbolical memory. I may now add it is more than this; it
is a fabrication. The original experience or thought may appear in the
dream after being worked over into a fantasy, allegory, symbolism, or
other product of imagination. Such a dream is not a recurrent phase of
consciousness, but a _newly fabricated phase_. Further, analytical and
experimental researches go to show that the fabrication is performed by
the original phase without the latter recurring in the content of the
personal consciousness. The original phase must therefore have been
conserved in some form capable of such independent and specific
functioning, i.e., fabrication below the threshold of consciousness. For
instance:
The subject dreamed that she was standing where two roads separated.
One was broad and bright and beautiful, and many people she knew were
going that way. The other road was the rocky path, quite dark, and no
one was going that way, but she had to go. And she said, “Oh, why must
I go this way? Will no one go with me?” And a voice replied, “I will
go with you.” She looked around, and there were some tall black
figures; they all had names across their foreheads in bright letters,
and the one who spoke was Disappointment; and all the others said, “We
will go with you,” and they were Sorrow, Loss, Pain, Fear, and
Loneliness, and she fell down on her face in anguish.
Now an analysis of the antecedent thought of this subject and a
knowledge of her circumstances and mental life, though we cannot go into
them here, make it perfectly clear that as a fact, whether there was any
causal connection or not, this dream _was_ a symbolic expression of
those thoughts. The rocky path has been shown to be symbolic of her
conception of her own life entertained through years—the other road
symbolic of the life longed for and imagined as granted to others.
Likewise the rest of the dream symbolized, in a way which any one can
easily recognize, the lot which she had in her disappointment actually
fancied was hers. The thoughts thus symbolized had been constantly
recurring thoughts and therefore had been conserved. They were
reproduced in the dream, not in their original form, but translated into
symbols and an allegory. Something must, therefore, have effected the
translation. In other words, the dream is not a recurrent phase of
consciousness but _an allegorical fabrication_ which expresses these
thoughts, not literally as they originally occurred, but in the form of
an imaginative story. Now the similarity of the allegorical dream
thoughts to the original thoughts can be explained only in two ways:
either as pure chance coincidence, or through a relation of cause and
effect. In the latter case the dream might have been determined either
by the specific antecedent thoughts in question—those revealed as
memories in the analysis, or both series might have been determined by a
third, as yet unrevealed, series. For the purposes of the present
problem it is immaterial which so long as the dream was determined by
some antecedent thought. The very great frequency, not to say
universality, with which this same similarity or a logical relation with
antecedent thoughts is found in dreams after analysis renders chance
coincidence very improbable. We must believe, therefore, that the dream
was determined by antecedent experiences. It is beyond my purpose to
enter here into an exposition of the theory of the mechanism of dreams,
although I shall touch upon it later in some detail in connection with
subconscious processes. We need here only concern ourselves with this
mechanism so far as it bears upon the principle of conservation. Suffice
it to say that analytical observations (Freud) have, it seems to me,
conclusively shown that conserved experiences may be not only the
determining factors in dreams, but that _while in a state of
conservation they are capable of undergoing elaborate fabrication and
afterwards appearing so thoroughly transformed in consciousness as not
to be superficially recognizable_. I have also been able to reach the
same conclusions by the method of experimental production of dreams.
The only question is, in what form can a thought be so conserved that it
can, _while still in a state of conservation_, without itself rising
into consciousness, fabricate a symbolism, allegory, or other work
requiring imagination and reasoning? The only logical and intelligible
inference is that the antecedent conscious experience has been either
itself specifically conserved as such outside of the personal
consciousness, or has left some neural residuum or disposition capable
of functioning and constructing the conscious dream fabrication.
=Residual processes underlying physiological bodily
disturbances.=—Before proceeding further I would invite your attention
to another class of facts as these facts must be taken into
consideration in any theory of conservation. These facts show that the
residua can, by subconscious functioning, induce _physiological bodily
manifestations_ without reproducing the original mental experience as
conscious memory. In certain abnormal conditions of the nervous system,
i.e., in certain psychoneuroses, we meet with certain involuntary
actions of the limbs or muscles known as spasms and contractures; also
with certain impairment of functions such as blindness, deafness, loss
of sensation (anesthesia), paralysis, etc. These disturbances are purely
functional, meaning that they are not due to any organic disease. Now
the evidence seems to be conclusive that these physiological
disturbances are caused sometimes by ideas after they have passed out of
consciousness and become, as ideas, dormant, i.e., while they are in a
state of conservation and have ceased to be ideas—or, at least, ideas of
which the subject is aware. A moment’s consideration will convince you
that this means that ideas, or, at least, experiences in a state of
conservation, and without being reproduced as conscious memory, can so
function as to affect the body in one or other of the ways I have
mentioned. To do this they must exist in some specific form that is
independent of the personal consciousness of the moment. To take, for
example, an actual case which I have elsewhere described:
B. C. A., in a dream, had a visual hallucination of a flash of light
which revealed a scene in a cave and which was followed by blindness
such as would physiologically follow a tremendous flash. In the dream
she is warned that if she looks into the cave, she will be blinded. She
looks; there is a blinding flash and loss of vision follows; after
waking she was still partially blind, but she continued from time to
time to see momentary flashes of light revealing certain of the objects
seen in the dream in the cave, and these flashes would be succeeded
temporarily by absolute blindness as in the dream. She had no memory of
the dream. Now psychological analysis disclosed the meaning of the
dream; it was a symbolical representation of certain conserved
(subconscious) previous thoughts—thoughts apprehensive of the future
into which she dared not look, thinking she would be overwhelmed. _While
in a state of conservation_ the residua of _these_ antecedent thoughts
had translated themselves into the symbolical hallucination of the dream
and the loss of vision. Similarly after waking, although she had no
memory of the dream, the conserved residua of the same thoughts
continued to translate themselves into visual hallucinations and to
induce blindness.[49] It would take too long for me to enter here into
the details of the analysis which forces this conclusion.[50]
Similarly, as is well known, convulsions resembling epilepsy, paralysis,
spasms, tics, contractures, etc., may be caused directly or indirectly
by ideas, after they have passed out of consciousness and ceased to take
part in the conscious processes of thought. At least that is the
interpretation which the facts elicited by the various methods of
investigation seem to require.
There is an analogous class of phenomena which ought to be mentioned
among the possible data bearing upon the theory of memory, although too
much weight cannot be placed upon them as their interpretation is not
wholly clear. I will discuss them in detail later in connection with the
phenomena of the emotions. They are certain _emotional phenomena_ which
are attributed by some writers to ideas in a state of conservation. It
has been demonstrated that ideas to which strong feeling tones are
attached are accompanied by such physiological effects as disturbance of
respiration, of the heart’s action, of the vaso-motor system, of the
secretions, etc., and also by certain _galvanic phenomena_ which are due
to the diminution of the electrical resistance of the body, probably
caused by increased secretion of sweat.[51]
Now the point is that such phenomena are sometimes experimentally
obtained in connection with certain test words[52] spoken to the subject
experimented upon, although he has no recollection of any incident in
his life which could have given an emotional tone to the word and,
therefore, can give no explanation of the physical reaction. By various
technical methods, however, memories of a forgotten emotional experience
in which the idea (represented by the word) plays a part and through
which it derived its emotional tone are resurrected. I have been able to
obtain such reactions from test words which investigation showed
referred to the incidents of terrifying dreams which were _completely
forgotten_ in the waking state. When the test word was given, the
subject might, for instance, exhibit a respiratory disturbance—a sudden
gasp—without conscious knowledge of its significance, and the
galvanometer, with which the subject was in circuit, would show a wide
deflection. Recovery of the dream in hypnosis would explain the meaning
of the emotional disturbance excited by the word. The interpretation
which has been put upon such phenomena is that the residua of the
forgotten experience are “struck” by the test word. As the forgotten
experience originally included the emotion and its physiological
reaction, so the residua are linked by association to the emotional
mechanism and when stimulated function as a subconscious process and
excite the reaction. If this interpretation, strongly held by some, be
correct, the phenomena are important for the support they give to the
theory of conservation. They would indicate that conscious experiences
must be conserved in a very specific subconscious form, one that is
capable, without becoming conscious memory, of exciting the
physiological apparatus of the emotions in a manner identical with that
of conscious emotional ideas. They are open, however, to a simpler
explanation, whether more probable or not: namely, that it is not the
residua of the forgotten experience which unconsciously excite the
physiological reaction, but the auditory symbol, the test word itself.
The symbol having been once associated with the emotional reaction, it
afterwards of itself, through a short circuit so to speak, suffices to
induce the reaction, though the origin of the association has been
forgotten and, therefore, the subject is in entire ignorance of the
reason for the strong feeling manifestation. On the other hand, in some
instances test words associated with emotional experiences which
_originally_ were entirely coconscious and _had never entered conscious
awareness at all_ give the reactions in question.[53] As coconscious
memories of such experiences can be demonstrated it would seem at first
sight as if under such conditions the word-reactions must come from a
true subconscious process—the subconscious memory. And yet even here it
is difficult to eliminate absolutely the possibility of the second
interpretation. There are, however, a large number of emotional
phenomena occurring in pathological conditions which can only be
intelligibly interpreted as being due to the residua of previously
conscious experiences functioning as a subconscious process. These
phenomena we shall have occasion to review in succeeding lectures. They
are too complex to enter upon at this stage.
Aside, then, from these word-reactions we have a sufficient number of
other phenomena, such as I have cited, which indicate that conscious
experiences when conserved must persist in a form capable of exciting
purely physiological reactions without the experiences themselves rising
into consciousness again as memory. The form must also be one which
permits of their functioning as intelligent processes although not
within the conscious field of awareness of the moment.
As a final summing up of the experiments and observations of the kind
which I have thus far cited, dealing with forgotten experiences, we may
say that they lead us to the following conclusions: