2. A given experience is conserved through the medium of some kind of
residuum of that experience. This residuum must have a specific
existence independent of consciousness, in that it is capable of
specific and independent functioning, coincidentally with and outside of
the consciousness of any given moment. Its nature must be such that it
can incite through specific processes the following phenomena in none of
which the conscious processes of the moment take part as factors:
(a) Specific memory for the given experience expressed through the
established physiological mechanisms of external expression (speech,
writing, gestures) after the manner of a mnesic process.
(b) A mnesic hallucination which is a representation of the antecedent
perceptual experience but after having undergone translation into terms
of another sense.
(c) A mnesic hallucination in which the original experience appears
synthesized with various other experiences into an elaborate
representation of a complex experience, or secondarily elaborated into a
symbolism, allegory or other fabrication.
(d) Mnesic phenomena which are a logical continuation of the antecedent
conscious experiences and such as ordinarily are produced by conscious
processes of thought—reasoning, imagination, volition (mathematical
calculations, versification, fabrication, etc.).
(e) Physical phenomena (paralyses contractures, vasomotor disturbances,
etc.).
In other words a specific experience while in a state of conservation
and without being reproduced in consciousness can incite or induce
processes which incite these and similar phenomena.
-----
Footnote 45:
Lecture III, p. 58.
Footnote 46:
For specific instances, see Lecture VII.
Footnote 47:
Morton Prince: Experimental Evidence for Coconscious Ideation,
_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1908.
Footnote 48:
For further details, see Lecture VI, p. 169.
Footnote 49:
Prince: Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams, _Jour. of Abn.
Psych._, October-November, 1910.
Footnote 50:
If, lacking this knowledge of the data, any one chooses to insist that
it was not the conserved residua of previous thoughts, but of the
dream itself (the only alternative entertainable explanation) which
induced, _after waking_, the hallucinatory phenomena and blindness, we
still fall back upon the same principle, namely, that of the
subconscious functioning of conserved residua of a conscious
experience producing a physiological (and psychological) effect.
Footnote 51:
According to recent researches of Sidis in conjunction with Kalmus,
and later with Nelson (The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic
Phenomenon, Psychological Review, March, 1910) similar galvanic
phenomena under similar conditions may be caused by the _generation_
of an electric current within the body.
Footnote 52:
The test word (e. g., boat, stone, hat, etc.) of course represents an
idea which may have various associations in the mind of the subject.
Footnote 53:
Morton Prince and Frederick Peterson: Experiments in Psycho-Galvanic
Reactions from Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideas in a Case of Multiple
Personality, _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April-May, 1908.
LECTURE V
NEUROGRAMS
We have got as far as showing that the phenomena of memory to be
intelligible require that ideas which have passed out of mind must be
conserved through some sort of residuum left by the original experience.
But this as a theory of memory is incomplete; the question remains,
_How_, and in what form, manner, or way, are they conserved? In other
words, What is the nature of the residuum? Is it psychical or
physical?[54] As we have seen, from the fact that something outside of
the personal consciousness can manifest memory of a given experience at
the very same moment when the personal consciousness has amnesia for
that experience, we are compelled to infer that conservation must be by
a medium, psychological or physiological, capable of being excited as a
specific secondary process. Now this medium must be either an
undifferentiated “Psyche” or specific differentiated residua. In the
former case we postulate a concept of a transcendental something beyond
experience and of which, like the soul after death, we have and can have
no knowledge. To this concept of an undifferentiated Psyche we shall
return presently.
If the second alternative—specific differentiated residua—be the medium
by which experiences are conserved, then the residua must be either
specific psychological states, i.e., the original psychological
experience itself as such; or neural residua (or dispositions) such as
when excited are ordinarily correlated with a conscious memory. In
either case the medium would be such as to permit of the experiences
manifesting themselves, while so conserved outside of the personal
consciousness, as a very specific secondary process, not only
reproducing the original experience as memory, but elaborating the same
and exhibiting imagination, reasoning, volition, feeling, etc. Unless
the doctrine of the undifferentiated Psyche be accepted it is difficult
to conceive of any other mode in which conservation can be effected so
as to permit of the phenomena of memory outside of consciousness.
=Conservation considered as psychological residua.=—It is hypothetically
possible that our thoughts and other mental experiences after they have
passed out of mind, out of our awareness of the moment, may continue
their psychological existence as such although we are not aware of them.
Such an hypothesis derives support from the fact that researches of
recent years in abnormal psychology have given convincing evidence that
an idea, under certain conditions, after it has passed out of our
awareness may still from time to time take on another sort of existence,
_one in which it still remains an idea, although our personal
consciousness of the moment is not aware of it_. A coconscious idea, it
may be called. More than this, in absent-mindedness, in states of
abstraction, in artificial conditions as typified in automatic writing,
and particularly in pathological conditions (hysteria), it has been
fairly demonstrated, as I think we are entitled to assert, that
coconscious ideas in the form of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, even
large systems of ideas, may function and pursue autonomous and
contemporaneous activity outside of the various systems of ideas which
make up the personal consciousness. It usually is not possible for the
individual to bring such ideas within the focus of his awareness.
Therefore, there necessarily results a doubling of consciousness,—two
consciousnesses, one of which is the personal consciousness and the
other a coconsciousness. These phenomena need to be studied by
themselves. We shall consider them here only so far as they bear on the
problem of conscious memory. Observation has shown that among ideas of
this kind it often happens that many are memories, reproductions of
ideas that once belonged to the personal consciousness. Hence, on first
thought, it seems plausible that conservation might be effected by the
content of any moment’s consciousness becoming _coconscious_ after the
ideas have passed out of awareness. According to such an hypothesis all
the conscious experiences of our lives, that are conserved, would form a
great coconscious field where they would continue their existence in
specific form as ideas, and whence they could be drawn upon for use at
any future time.
Various difficulties are raised by this hypothesis. In the first place,
there is no evidence that coconscious ideas have a continuous existence.
The technical methods of investigation which give evidence of such ideas
functioning outside of the awareness of the personal consciousness do
not show that at any given moment they are any more extensive than are
those which fill the field of the personal consciousness. Indeed,
usually, the coconscious field is of very limited extent. There remains
an enormous field of conserved experiences to be accounted for. So far
then as coconscious ideas can be discovered by our methods of
investigation they are _inadequate to account for the whole of the
conservation of life’s experiences_.
In the second place, these ideas come and go in the same fashion as do
those which make up the content of the main personal consciousness; and
many are constantly recurring to become coconscious memories. The same
problem, of the nature of conservation, therefore confronts us with
coconscious ideas in the determination of the mechanism of coconscious
memory. To explain conservation through coconscious ideas is but a
shifting of the problem. If a broader concept be maintained, namely,
that this coconsciousness, which can be demonstrated in special
conditions, is but a fraction of the sum total of coconscious ideas
outside of the personal awareness, we are confronted with a concept
which from its philosophical nature deals with postulates beyond
experience. We can neither prove nor disprove it. There is much that can
be said in its support for the deeper we dive into the subconscious
regions of the mind the more extensively do we come across evidences of
coconscious states underlying specific phenomena. Nevertheless, the
demonstration of coconscious states in any number of specific phenomena
does not touch the problem of the nature of conservation. In weighing
the probability of the hypothesis on theoretical grounds it would seem,
as I have already said in a preceding lecture, to be hardly conceivable
that ideas that had passed out of mind, the thoughts of the moment of
which we are no longer aware, can be treasured, conserved as such in a
sort of psychological storehouse or reservoir of consciousness, just as
if they were static or material facts. Such a conception would require
that every specific state of consciousness, every idea, every thought,
perception, sensation and feeling, after it had passed out of mind for
the moment, should enter a great sea of ideas which would be the sum
total of all our past experiences. In this sum-total millions of ideas
would have to be conserved _in concrete_ form until wanted again for use
by the personal consciousness of the moment. Here would be found, in
what you will see at once would be a real subconscious mind beyond the
content or confines of our awareness, stored up, so to speak, ready for
future use, the mass of our past mental experiences. Here you would
find, perhaps, the visualized idea of a seagull soaring over the waters
of your beautiful bay conserved in association with the idea of the
mathematical formula, a + b = c; the one having originated in a
perception of the outer world through the window of your study while you
were working at a lesson in algebra which gave rise to the latter. And
yet conserved as ideas, as such vast numbers of experiences would be, we
should not be aware of them until they were brought by some mysterious
agency into the consciousness of the moment. The great mass of the
mental experiences of our lives which we have at our command, our
extensive educational and other acquisitions from which we consciously
borrow from time to time, as well as those which, we have seen, are
conserved though they cannot be voluntarily reproduced, all these mental
experiences, by the hypothesis, would still have persisting conscious
existences in their _original concrete psychological form_.
Such an hypothesis, to my mind, is hardly thinkable, and yet this very
hypothesis has been proposed, though in less concrete form perhaps, in
the doctrine of the “subliminal mind,” a particular form of the theory
of the subconscious mind. This doctrine, which we owe to the genius of
the late W. H. H. Meyers, has more recently appeared, without full
recognition of its paternity, in the writings of a more modern school of
psychology. According to this doctrine our personal consciousness, the
ideas which we have at any given moment and of which we are aware, are
but a small portion of the sum total of our consciousness. Of this
sum-total we are aware, at any given moment, of only a fractional
portion. Our personal consciousness is but sort of up-rushes from this
great sum of conscious states which have been called the subliminal
mind, the subliminal self, the subconscious self. These conscious
up-rushes make up the personal “I,” with the sense of awareness for
their content.
The facts to be explained do not require such a metaphysical hypothesis.
All that is required is that our continuously occurring experiences
should be conserved in a _form_, and by an arrangement, which will allow
the concrete ideas belonging to them to reappear in consciousness
whenever the conserved arrangement is again stimulated. This
requirement, the theory of conservation, which is generally accepted by
those who approach the problem by psycho-physiological methods, fully
satisfies. Before stating this theory in specific form let me mention to
you still another variety of the subliminal hypothesis, metaphysical in
its nature, which appeals to some minds of a philosophical tendency.
=Conservation considered as an undifferentiated psychical something or
“psyche.”=—It is difficult to state this hypothesis clearly and
precisely for it is necessarily vague, transcending as it does human
experience. It is conceived, as I understand the matter, or at least the
hypothesis connotes, that ideas of the moment, after ceasing to be a
part of awareness, subside and become merged in some form or other in a
larger mind or consciousness of which they were momentary concrete
manifestations or phases. This consciousness is conceived as a sort of
unity. Ideas out of awareness still persist as consciousness in some
form though not necessarily as specific ideas. According to this
hypothesis, it is evident that when the ideas of the moment’s awareness
subside and become merged into the larger consciousness either one of
two things must happen; they must either be conserved as specific ideas,
or lose their individuality as states of consciousness, and become fused
in this larger consciousness as an undifferentiated psychical something.
Some like to call it a “psyche,” apparently finding that by using a
Greek term, or a more abstract expression, they avoid the difficulties
of clear thinking.
The first alternative is equivalent to the hypothesis of conservation in
the form of coconscious specific ideas which we have just discussed. The
second alternative still leaves unexplained the mechanism by which
differentiation again takes place in this psychical unity, how a
conscious unity becomes differentiated again into and makes up the
various phases (ideas) of consciousness at each moment; that is, the
mechanism of memory.
But, aside from this difficulty, the hypothesis is opposed by evidence
which we have already found for the persistence of ideas (after
cessation as states of consciousness) in some concrete form capable of
very specific activity and of producing very specific effects. We have
seen that such ideas may under certain conditions continue to manifest
the same specific functionating activity as if continuing their
existence in concrete form (e. g., so-called subconscious solution of
problems, physiological disturbances, etc.). This phenomenon is scarcely
reconcilable with the hypothesis that ideas after passing out of
awareness lose their concrete specificity and become merged into an
undifferentiated psychical something.[55]
Furthermore, for a concept transcending experience to be acceptable it
must be shown that it adequately explains all the known facts, is
incompatible with none, and that the facts are not intelligible on any
other known principle. These conditions seem to me far from having been
fulfilled. Before accepting such a concept it is desirable to see if
conservation cannot be brought under some principle within the domain of
experience.
=Conservation considered as physical residua.=—Now the theory of memory
which offers a satisfactory explanation of the mode in which
registration, conservation, and reproduction occur postulates the
conserved residua as physical in nature. Whenever we have a mental
experience of any kind—a thought, or perception of the environment, or
feeling—some change, some “trace,” is left in the neurons of the brain.
I need not here discuss the relation between brain activity and mind
activity. It is enough to remind you that, whatever view be held, it is
universally accepted that every mental process is accompanied by a
physical process in the brain; that, parallel with every series of
thoughts, perceptions, or feelings, there goes a series of physical
changes of some kind in the brain neurons. And, conversely, whenever
this same series of physical changes occurs the corresponding series of
mental processes, that is, of states of consciousness, arises. In other
words, physical brain processes or experiences are correlated with
corresponding mind processes or experiences, and vice versa.[56] This is
known as the doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism. Upon this doctrine
the whole of psycho-physiology and psycho-pathology rests. Mental
physiology, cerebral localization, and mental diseases excepting on its
assumption are unintelligible—indeed, the brain as the organ of the mind
becomes meaningless. We need not here inquire into the nature of the
parallelism, whether it is of the nature of dualism, e. g., a
parallelism of two different kinds of facts, one psychical and the other
physical; or whether it is a monism, i.e., a parallelism of two
different aspects of one and the same fact or a parallelism of a single
reality (mind) with a mode of apprehending it (matter)—mind and matter
in their inner nature being held to be practically one and the same. The
theory of memory is unaffected whichever view of the mind-brain relation
be held.
Now, according to the psycho-physiological theory of memory, with every
passing state of conscious experience, with every idea, thought, or
perception, the brain process that goes along with it leaves some trace,
some residue of itself, within the neurons and in the functional
arrangements between them. It is an accepted principle of physiology
that when a number of neurons, involved, let us say, in a coördinated
sensori-motor act, are stimulated into functional activity they become
so associated and the paths between them become so opened or, as it
were, sensitized, that a _disposition_ becomes established for the whole
group, or a number of different groups, to function together and
reproduce the original reaction when either one or the other is
afterward stimulated into activity. This “disposition” is spoken of in
physiological language as a lowering of the threshold of excitability—a
term which does not explain but only describes the fact. For an
explanation we must look to the nature of the physical change that is
wrought in the neurons by the initial functioning. This change we may
speak of as a _residuum_.
Similarly a system of brain neurons, which in any experience is
correlated in activity with conscious experience, becomes, so to speak,
sensitized and acquires, in consequence, a “disposition” to function
again as a system (lowering of thresholds?) in a like fashion; so that
when one element in the system is again stimulated it reproduces the
whole original brain process, and with this reproduction (according to
the doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism) there is a reproduction of
the original conscious experience. In other words, without binding
ourselves down to absolute precision of language, it is sufficiently
accurate to say that every mental experience leaves behind a residue, or
a trace, of the physical brain process in the chain of brain neurons.
This residue is the physical _register_ of the mental experience. _This
physical register may be conserved or not._ If it is conserved we have
the requisite condition for memory; the _form_ in which our mental
experiences are conserved. But it is not until these physical registers
are stimulated and the original brain experience is reproduced that we
have memory. If this occurs the reproduction of the brain experience
reproduces the conscious experience, i.e., conscious memory (according
to whatever theory of parallelism is maintained). Thus in all ideation,
in every process of thought, the record of the conscious stream may be
registered and conserved in the correlated neural process. Consequently,
the neurons in retaining residua of the original process become, to a
greater or less degree, _organized into a functioning system_
corresponding to the system of ideas of the original mental process and
capable of reproducing it. When we reproduce the original ideas in the
form of memories it is because there is a reproduction of the
physiological neural process.
It is important to note that just as, on the psychological side, memory
always involves the awakening of a previous conscious experience by an
associated idea, one that was an element in the previous system of
associated sensations, perceptions, thoughts, etc., making up the
experience, so, on the physiological side, we must suppose that it
involves stimulation of the whole system of neurons belonging to this
experience by the physiological stimulus corresponding to the conscious
element or stimulus. For instance, if I see my friend A, the image is
not a memory, though it is one I have had many times before and has left
residua of itself capable of being reproduced as memory. But if I see
his hat, and immediately previously linked pictorial images of him arise
in my mind; or, if, when I see him, there arise images of his library in
which I have previously seen him, these images are memory. A conscious
memory is always the reproduction of an experience by an associated idea
or other element of experience (conscious or subconscious). Similarly we
must infer that the neurons correlated with any past mental experience
are stimulated by associated neuron processes. This is the
foundation-stone of mental physiology; for upon the general principle of
the correlation of mental processes with neural processes rests the
whole of cerebral localization and brain physiology.
Although we assume newly arranged dynamic associations of neurons
corresponding to associations of ideas, we do not know how this
rearrangement is brought about, though we may conceive of it as
following the physiological laws of lowering of thresholds of
excitability. Nor do we know whether the modifications left as residua
(by which the thresholds are lowered) are physical or chemical in their
nature, though there is some reason for believing they may be chemical.
=Chemical and physical theories of residua.=—It is possible that,
through chemical changes of some kind left in the system of neurons
corresponding to an experience, the neurons may become sensitized so as
to react again as a whole to a second stimulus applied to one element.
In other words a hyper-susceptibility may become established. There is a
physiological phenomenon, known as anaphylaxis, which may possibly prove
more than analogous, in that it depends upon the production, through
chemical changes, of hyper-susceptibility to a stimulus which before was
inert. The phenomenon is one of sensitizing the body to certain
previously innocuous substances. If, for instance, a serum from a horse
be injected into a guinea pig no observable reaction follows. But, if a
second dose be injected, a very pronounced reaction follows and the
animal dies with striking manifestations called anaphylactic shock. This
consists of spasm of the bronchioles of the lungs induced by contraction
of their unstriated muscles and results in an attack of asphyxia.[57]
The mechanism of anaphylaxis is a very complicated one involving the
production in the blood of chemical substances called antibodies, and is
far from being thoroughly understood. One theory is that sensitization
consists in the “fixing” of the cells of the tissues with these
antibodies. This may or may not be correct—probably not—and I am far
from wishing to imply that sensitization of the neurons, as a
consequence of functioning, has anything in common with the mechanism of
sensitizing the body in anaphylaxis. I merely wish to point out that
sensitizing nervous tissue through chemical changes is a physiological
concept quite within the bounds of possibility; and, as all functioning
is probably accompanied by metabolic (chemical) changes, such metabolic
changes may well persist in neurons after brain reactions produce
sensitization.
If this hypothesis of sensitization should be proven it would offer an
intelligible mechanism of the phenomenon of memory. If the system of
neurons engaged in any conscious experience were sensitized by chemical
changes it would acquire a hyper-susceptibility. The system as a whole
would consequently be excited into activity by any other functioning
system of neurons with which it was in anatomical association and might
reproduce the originally correlated conscious experience.
Various theories based on known or theoretical chemical or physical
alterations in the neurons have been proposed to account for memory on
the physiological side. Robertson[58] has proposed that it is of the
nature of autocatalysis. Catalysis is the property possessed by certain
bodies called catalyzers of initiating or accelerating chemical
reactions which would take place without the catalyzer, but more slowly.
“A catalyzer is a stimulus which excites a transformation of energy. The
catalyzer plays the same rôle in a chemical transformation as does the
minimal exciting force which sets free the accumulation of potential
energy previous to its transformation into kinetic energy. A catalyzer
is the friction of the match which sets free the chemical energy of the
powder magazine.”[59]
Numerous examples of catalytic actions might be given from chemistry.
The inversion of sugar by acids, the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide
by platinum black, fermentation by means of a soluble ferment or
diastase, a phenomenon which may almost be called vital, are all
instances. According to Leduc “the action of pepsin, of the pancreatic
ferment, of zymase and other similar ferments has a great analogy with
the purely physical phenomenon of catalysis.”
In auto-catalysis one of the _products_ of the reaction acts as the
catalyzer. Now Robertson concluded, as a result of his experiments
carried out on frogs, that the processes which accompany the excitation
of the cells of the neurons are of the nature of catalysis; for he found
that they have as one effect the production of an acid; and he also
found that acids accelerate such processes which he concludes to be
probably of the nature of oxidations. “The chemical phenomena which
constitute the activity of a neuron cell,” he says, “seem to us then an
_auto-catalytic oxidation_, that is to say, an oxidation in which one of
the products of the reaction acts as a catalyzer in the reaction.” It
occurred to him then that the physiological correlate of memory might be
explained on the principle of auto-catalysis. When, to test this
hypothesis, he came to compare the results of certain psychological
experiments on memory, made by two different experimenters (Ebbinghaus
and Smith), with the law characteristic of auto-catalytic chemical
reactions, he found that they corresponded in a surprisingly close way
with this law. That is to say, assuming the value of the residua of
memory (measured by the number of syllables learnt by heart) to be
proportional to the mass of the chemical product of auto-catalysis, we
should expect that the increase of the number of syllables or other
experiences retained by memory following increase of repetitions would
obey the law of catalytic reaction as expressed in the mathematical
formula established for the reaction. Now, as a fact, he found that the
number of syllables that should be so retained in memory, as calculated
theoretically by the formula, corresponded in a remarkable way with the
actual number determined by experiment. “The agreement was closer,” the
author states, “than that which generally obtained in experiments in
chemical dynamics carried out _in vitro_.” Robertson sums up his
conclusions as follows:
“5th. We have shown that the phenomenon of which the subjective aspect
is called ‘memory’ is of a nature indicating that the autocatalyzed
chemical reactions form the mechanism conditioning the response of the
central nervous system to stimuli.
“6th. In admitting that the extent of the trace of memory may be
proportionate to the mass of a product of an autocatalyzed chemical
reaction unfolding itself in the central nervous system as the result of
the application of a stimulus, we have shown that the relation which one
theoretically deduces between the mass of memory material and the number
of repetitions corresponds to that which has been found by experience.
“7th. On the basis of the hypothesis above mentioned we have shown that
the law of Weber-Fechner admits of a rational physico-chemical
interpretation, and that the result thus obtained, provided the
hypothesis above mentioned be an exact representation of facts, is that
the intensity of the sensation is at each instant proportionate to the
mass of the product of the autocatalyzed chemical reaction above
mentioned and, consequently, to the extent of the trace of memory.”
While it is easy to understand that auto-catalysis may take part in the
chemical process which underlies the performance of simple volition, as
inferred by Robertson,[60] and perhaps reproduction in the memory
process, it is difficult to understand how such a chemical action can
explain conservation. The problem is not that of acceleration of an
action, but of something like the storing up of energy.
Rignano[61] has proposed an hypothesis according to which the cells of
the nervous system are to be considered as so many accumulators,
analogous to electric accumulators or storage batteries. “The
similarities and differences which nerve currents present in comparison
with electric currents warrant us in assuming in nerve currents some of
the properties of electric currents, and in attributing at the same time
to the first other properties which the electric do not possess,
provided these qualities are not incompatible with the others.”
Now, according to the hypothesis, the specific nervous current set up by
any stimulus forms and deposits in the nucleus of the cells (through
which the current flows) a _substance_ which adds itself to the others
already there without changing them and which is capable, under
appropriate conditions, of being discharged and restoring the same
_specific_ current by which it was produced. Each cell thus becomes what
Rignano calls an _elementary nervous accumulator_. He points out that
“both the conception of _accumulators of nervous energy in tension_, and
that of _accumulators of a specific nervous energy constituting their
specific irritability_,” which the hypothesis includes, are not new but
“an ordinary conception very generally employed.”... “The only new thing
which the above definition includes is the hypothesis that the
substance, which is thus capable of giving as a discharge a given
nervous current, _was produced and deposited_ only by a nervous current
of the same specificity, but in the inverse direction, and could have
been produced and deposited only by such a current.” "In just this
capacity of restoring again the same specificity of nervous current as
that by which each element had been deposited one would look for the
cause of the mnemonic faculty, in the widest sense, which all living
matter possesses. And further the very essence of the mnemonic faculty
would consist entirely in this restitution.“
”_The specific elementary accumulators_ (previously termed specific
potential elements) are thus susceptible now of receiving a third name,
namely, that of _mnemonic elements_." “The preservation of memories is
to be ascribed to the accumulations of substance,” while “the
reawakening of these memories consists in the restitution of the same
currents [by discharge of the substance] as had formerly constituted the
actual sensation or impression.”
By this hypothesis Rignano explains not only memory but the inheritance
of acquired characters and the whole process of specialization of cells,
all of which phenomena are special instances of such elementary
accumulators of organic energy being formed and discharged.
Any attempt, with our present knowledge, to postulate particular kinds
of chemical or physical changes in the nervous system as the theoretical
residua of physiological dispositions left by psychological experiences
must necessarily be speculative. And any hypothesis can only have so
much validity as may come from its capability of explaining the known
facts. It is interesting, however, to note some of the directions which
attempts have taken to find a solution of the problem. For the present
it is best to rest content with the theory to which we have been led,
step by step, in our exposition, namely, that conservation is effected
by some sort of physiological residua. This theory, of course, is an old
one, and has been expressed by many writers. What we want, however, is
not expressions of opinion but facts supporting them. It would seem as
if the facts accumulated in recent years by experimental and abnormal
psychology all tended to strengthen the theory, notwithstanding an
inclination in certain directions to seek a psychological interpretation
of conservation.
Some minds of a certain philosophical bent will not be able to get over
the difficulty of conceiving how a psychological process can be
conserved by the physical residuum of a physiological process. But this
is only the old difficulty involved in the problem of the relation
between mind and brain of which conservation is only a special example.
That a mind process and a brain process are so intimately related that
either one determines the other there is no question. It is assumed in
every question of psycho-physiology. The only question is the How. I may
point out in passing, but without discussion, that if we adopt the
doctrine of panpsychism for which I have elsewhere argued[62]—namely,
that there is only one process—the mental—in one and the same
individual, and that what we know as the physical process is only the
mode of apprehending the mental process by another individual; if we
adopt this doctrine of monism the difficulty is solved. In other words,
the psychical (and consciousness) is reality, while matter (and physical
process) is a _phenomenon_, the disguise, so to speak, under which the
psychical appears when apprehended through the special senses. According
to this view in their last analysis all physical facts are psychical in
nature, although not psychological (for psychological means
consciousness), so that physiological and psychical are one. To this
point I shall return in another lecture.
=Neurograms.=—Whatever may be the exact nature of the theoretical
alterations left in the brain by life’s experiences they have received
various generic terms; more commonly “brain residua,” and “brain
dispositions.” I have been in the habit of using the term _neurograms_
to characterize these brain records. Just as telegram, Marconigram, and
phonogram precisely characterize the form in which the physical
phenomena which correspond to our (verbally or scripturally expressed)
thoughts, are recorded and conserved, so neurogram precisely
characterizes my conception of the form in which a system of brain
processes corresponding to thoughts and other mental experiences is
recorded and conserved.[63]
Of course it must not be overlooked that such neurograms are pure
theoretical conceptions, and have never been demonstrated by objective
methods of physical research. They stand in exactly the same position as
the atoms and molecules and ions and electrons of physics and chemistry,
and the “antibodies” and “complements” of bacteriology. No one has seen
any of these postulates of science. They are only inferred. All are
theoretical concepts; but they are necessary concepts if the phenomena
of physical, chemical, and bacteriological science are to be
intelligible. The same may be said for brain changes if the phenomena of
brain and mind are to be intelligible.
And so it happens that though our ideas pass out of mind, are forgotten
for the moment, and become dormant, their physiological records still
remain, as sort of vestigia, much as the records of our spoken thoughts
are recorded on the moving wax cylinder of the phonograph. When the
cylinder revolves again the thoughts once more are reproduced as
auditory language. A better analogy would be the recording and
reproducing of our thoughts by the dynamic magnetization of the iron
wire in another type of the instrument. The vibration of the voice by
means of a particular electrical mechanism leaves _dynamic traces_ in
the form of corresponding magnetic changes in the passing wire, and when
the magnetized wire again is passed before the reproducing diaphragm the
spoken thoughts are again reproduced. So, when the ideas of any given
conscious experience become dormant, the physiological records, or
dynamic rearrangements, still remain organized as physiological
unconscious complexes, and, with the excitation of these physiological
complexes, the corresponding psychological memories awake.
It is only as such physiological complexes that ideas that have become
dormant can be regarded as still existing. If our knowledge were deep
enough, if by any technical method we could determine the exact
character of the modifications of the dispositions of the neurons that
remain as vestiges of thought and could decipher their meaning, we could
theoretically read in our brains the record of our lives, as if
graphically inscribed on a tablet. As Ribot has well expressed it: “...
Feelings, ideas, and intellectual actions in general are not fixed and
only become a portion of memory when there are corresponding residua in
the nervous system—residua consisting, as we have previously
demonstrated, of nervous elements, and dynamic associations among those
elements. On this condition, and this only, can there be conservation
and reproduction.”[64] _Dormant ideas are thus equivalent to conserved
physiological complexes._ We may use either term to express the fact.
The observations and experiments I have recited have led us to the
conclusion that conservation of an experience is something quite
specific and distinct from the reproduction of it. They compel us to the
conclusion that we are entitled, as I pointed out at the opening of
these lectures, to regard memory as a _process_ and the result of at
least two factors—conservation and reproduction. But as conservation is
meaningless unless there is something to be conserved, we must also
assume _registration_; that is, that every conserved mental experience
is primarily registered somehow and somewhere. Conservation implies
registration.
Such is the theory of memory as a _process of registration,
conservation, and reproduction_. Thus it will be seen (according to the
theory) that ideas which have passed out of mind are preserved, if at
all, not as ideas, but as physical alterations or records in the brain
neurons and in the functional dynamic arrangements between them.
From this you will easily understand that while, as you have seen from
concrete observations, we can have conservation of experiences without
memory (reproduction) we cannot have memory without conservation. Three
factors are essential for memory, and memory may fail from the failure
of any one of them. Unless an experience is registered in some form
there will be nothing to preserve, and memory will fail because of lack
of registration. If the experience has been registered, memory may fail,
owing to the registration having faded out, so to speak, either with
time or from some other reason; that is, nothing having been conserved,
nothing can be reproduced. Finally, though an experience has been
registered and conserved, memory may still fail, owing to failure of
reproduction. The neurographic records must be made active once more,
stimulated into an active process, in order that the original experience
may be recalled, i.e., reproduced. Thus what we call conscious memory is
the final result of a process involving the three factors, registration,
conservation, and reproduction.
=Physiological memory.=—Memory as commonly regarded and known to
psychology is a _conscious_ manifestation but, plainly, if we regard it,
as we have thus far, as a process, then, logically, we are entitled to
regard any process which consists of the three factors, registration,
conservation, and reproduction of experiences, as memory, whether the
final result be the reproduction of a conscious experience, or one to
which no consciousness was ever attached. In other words, theoretically
it is quite possible that acquired physiological body-experiences may be
reproduced by exactly the same process as conscious experiences, and
their reproduction would be entitled to be regarded as memory quite as
much as if the experience were one of consciousness. In principle it is
evident that it is entirely immaterial whether that which is reproduced
is a conscious or an unconscious experience so long as the mechanism of
the process is the same.
Now, as a matter of fact, there are a large number of acquired
physiological body-actions which, though unconscious, must be regarded
quite as much as manifestations of memory as is the conscious repetition
of the alphabet, or any other conscious acquisition. Having been
acquired they are _ipso facto_ reproductions of organized experiences.
We all know very well that movements acquired volitionally, and perhaps
laboriously, are, after constant repetition, reproduced with precision
without conscious guidance.
They are said to be automatic; even the guiding afferent impressions do
not enter the content of consciousness. The maintaining of the body in
one position, sitting or standing, though requiring a complicated
correlation of a large number of muscles, is carried out without
conscious volition. It is the same with walking and running. Still more
complicated movements are similarly performed in knitting, typewriting
and playing the piano, shaving, buttoning a coat, etc. We do not even
know the elementary movements involved in the action, and must become
aware of them by observation. The neurons remember, i.e., conserve and
reproduce the process acquired by previous conscious experiences. But
though it is memory it is not conscious memory, it is unconscious
memory, i.e., a physiological memory. The acquired dispositions repeat
themselves—what is called habit. Precision in games of skill largely
depend upon this principle. A tennis player must learn the “stroke” to
play the game well. This means that the muscles must be coordinated to a
delicate adjustment which, once learned, must be unconsciously
remembered and used, without consciously adjusting the muscles each time
the ball is hit. Indeed some organic memories are so tenacious that a
player once having learned the stroke finds great difficulty even by
effort of will in unlearning it and making his muscles play a different
style of stroke. Likewise one who has learned to use his arms in
sparring by one method finds difficulty in learning to spar by another
method. In fact almost any acquired movement is compounded of elementary
movements which by repetition were linked and finely adjusted to produce
the resultant movement, and finally conserved as an _unconscious
physiological arrangement_. As one writer has said, the neuron
organization “faithfully preserves the records of processes often
performed.”
In what has just been said the fact has not been overlooked that the
initiation or modification of any of the movements which have been
classed as physiological memory (knitting, typewriting, games of skill,
etc.), even after their acquisition, is necessarily voluntary and
therefore, so far, a conscious memory, but the nice coördination of
afferent and efferent impulses for the adjustment of the muscles
involved becomes, by repetition, an unconscious mechanism, and is
performed outside the province of the will as an act of _unconscious
memory_. By repeated experience the neurons become functionally
organized in such a way as to acquire and conserve a functional
“disposition” to reproduce the movements originally initiated by
volition.
Physiological memory has indeed, as it seems, been recently
experimentally demonstrated by Rothmann, who educated a dog from which
the hemispheres had been removed to perform certain tricks; e. g., to
jump over a hurdle.[65]
Still another variety of memory is _psycho-physiological_. This type is
characterized by a combination of psychological and physiological
elements and is important, as we shall see later, because of the
conspicuous part which such memories play in pathological conditions.
Certain bodily reactions which are purely physiological, such as
vaso-motor, cardiac, respiratory, intestinal, digestive, etc.,
disturbances, become, as the result of certain experiences, linked with
one or another psychical element (sensations, perceptions, thoughts),
and, this linking becoming conserved as a “disposition,” the
physiological reaction is reproduced whenever the psychical element is
introduced into consciousness. Thus, for example, the perception or
thought of a certain person may become, as the result of a given social
episode, so linked with blushing or cardiac palpitation that whenever
the former is thrust into consciousness, no matter how changed the
conditions may be from those of the original episode, the physiological
reaction of the blood vessels or heart is reproduced. Here the original
psycho-physiological experience—the association of an idea (or psychical
element) with the physiological process is conserved and reproduced.
Such a reproduction is essentially a psycho-physiological memory
depending wholly upon the acquired disposition of the neurons.[66]
Thus, to take an actual example from real life, a certain person during
a series of years was expecting to hear bad news because of the illness
of a member of the family and consequently was always startled, and her
“heart always jumped into her throat,” whenever the telephone rang.
Finally the news came. That anxiety is long past, but now when the
telephone rings, although she is not expecting bad news and no thought
of the original experience consciously arises in her mind, her “heart
always gives a leap and sometimes she bursts into a perspiration.”
A beautiful illustration of this type of memory is to be found in the
results of the extremely important experiments, for psychology as well
as physiology, of Pawlow and his co-workers in the reflex stimulation of
saliva in dogs. These experiments show the possibility of linking a
physiological process to a psychological process by education, and
through the conservation of the association reproducing the
physiological process as an act of unconscious memory. (The experiments,
of course, were undertaken for an entirely different purpose, namely,
that of studying the digestive processes only.) It should be explained
that it was shown that the salivary glands are selective in their
reaction to stimuli in that they do not respond at all to some (pebbles,
snow), but respond to others with a thin watery fluid containing mere
traces of mucin or a slimy mucin-holding fluid, according as to whether
the stimulating substance is one which the dog rejects, and which
therefore must be washed out or diluted (sands, acids, bitter and
caustic substances), or is an eatable substance and must as a food bolus
be lubricated for the facilitation of its descent. Dryness of the food,
too, largely determined the quantity of the saliva.
Now the experiments of the St. Petersburg laboratory brought out another
fact which is of particular interest for us and which is thus described
by Pawlow. “In the course of our experiments it appeared that all the
phenomena of adaptation which we saw in the salivary glands under
_physiological_ conditions, such, for instance, as the introduction of
the stimulating substances into the buccal cavity, reappeared in exactly
the same manner under the influence of _psychological_ conditions—that
is to say, when we merely drew the animal’s attention to the substances
in question. Thus, when we pretended to throw pebbles into the dog’s
mouth, or to cast in sand, or to pour in something disagreeable, or,
finally, when we offered it this or that kind of food, a secretion
either immediately appeared or it did not appear, in accordance with the
properties of the substance which we had previously seen to regulate the
quantity and nature of the juice when _physiologically_ excited to flow.
If we pretended to throw in sand a watery saliva escaped from the mucous
glands; if food, a slimy saliva. And if the food was dry—for example,
dry bread—a large quantity of saliva flowed out even when it excited no
special interest on the part of the dog. When, on the other hand, a
moist food was presented—for example, flesh—much less saliva appeared
than in the previous case however eagerly the dog may have desired the
food. This latter effect is particularly obvious in the case of the
parotid gland.”[67]
It is obvious that in these experiments, when the experimenter pretended
to throw various substances into the dog’s mouth, the action was
effective in producing the flow of saliva of specific qualities because,
through repeated experiences, the pictorial images (or ideas) of the
substance had become associated with the specific physiological salivary
reaction, and this association had been conserved as a neurogram.
Consequently the neurographic residue when stimulated each time by the
pretended action of the experimenter reproduced reflexly the specific
physiological reaction and, so far as the process was one of
registration, conservation, and reproduction, it was an act of
psycho-physiological memory.
That this is the correct interpretation of the educational mechanism is
made still more evident by other results that were obtained; for it was
found that the effective psychical stimulus may be part of wider
experiences or a complex of ideas; everything that has been in any way
psychologically associated with an object which physiologically excites
the saliva reflex may also produce it; the plate which customarily
contains the food, the furniture upon which it stands; the person who
brings it; even the sound of the voice and the sound of the steps of
this person.[68]
Indeed, it was found that any sensory stimulus could be educated into
one that would induce the flow of saliva, if the stimulus had been
previously associated with food which normally excited the flow. “Any
ocular stimulus, any desired sound, any odor that might be selected, and
the stimulation of any part of the skin, either by mechanical means or
by the application of heat or cold, have in our hands never failed to
stimulate the salivary glands, although they were all of them at one
time supposed to be inefficient for such a purpose. This was
accomplished by applying these stimuli simultaneously with the action of
the salivary glands, this action having been evolved by the giving of
certain kinds of food or by forcing certain substances into the dog’s
mouth.”[69] It is obvious that reflex excitation thus having been
accomplished by the education of the nerve centers to a previously
indifferent stimulus the reproduction of the process through this
stimulus is, in principle, an act of physiological memory.[70]
The experiences of the dogs embraced quite large systems of ideas and
sensory stimuli which included the environment of persons and their
actions, the furniture, plates, and other objects; and various ocular,
auditory, and other sensory stimuli applied arbitrarily to the dogs. All
these experiences had been welded into an associative system and
conserved as neurograms. Consequently it was only necessary to stimulate
again any element in the neurogram to reproduce the whole process,
including the specific salivary reaction.
We shall see later that these experiments acquire additional interest
from the fact that in them is to be found the fundamental principle of
what under other conditions can be recognized as a _psycho-neurosis—an
abnormal or perverted association and memory_. The effects produced by
this association of stimuli may be regarded as the germ of the habit
psychosis, and in these experiments we have experimental demonstration
of the mechanism of these psychoses—but this is another story which we
will take up by and by.
=Recollection.=—This is as good a place as any other to call attention
to a certain special form of memory. Recollection and memory are not
synonymous terms. We are accustomed to think of memory as including, in
addition to other qualities, recollection, i.e., what is called
localization of the experience in time and space. It connotes an
awareness of the content of the memory having been once upon a time a
previous experience which is more or less accurately located in a given
past time (yesterday, or a year ago, or twenty years ago), and in
certain local relations of space (when we were at school, or riding in a
railway car with so and so). But, as Ribot points out, this (relatively
to physiological memories) is ... “only a certain kind of memory which
we call perfect.” For we have just seen that, when memory is considered
as a process, reproduced physiological processes, which contain no
elements of consciousness and therefore of localization, may be memory.
But more than this, I would insist, _recollection is only a more perfect
kind of conscious memory_. Ribot would make recollection a peculiarity
of all conscious memory, but this is plainly an oversight. As we saw in
previous lectures there may be _conscious memories which do not contain
any element of recollection_, or, in other words, such conscious
memories resemble in every way, in principle, the reproduction of
organic neuron processes in that they have no conscious localization in
the past. In dissociated personalities, for instance, and in other types
of _dissociated conditions_ (functional amnesia, post-hypnotic states,
etc.), the names of persons, places, faces, objects, and even complex
ideas may flash into the mind without any element of recollection. The
person may have no idea whence they come, but by experiment it is easy
to demonstrate that they are automatic memories of past experiences.[71]
In the sensory automatisms known as _crystal visions_, pictures which
accurately reproduce, symbolically, past experiences of which the
subject has no recollection may vividly arise in the mind. Such pictures
are real conscious symbolic memories. _Dreams_, too, as we have seen,
may be unrecognized memories in that they may reproduce conscious
experiences, something heard or seen perhaps, but which has been
completely forgotten even when awake. Again, modern methods of
investigation show that numerous ideas that occur in the course of our
_everyday thoughts_—names, for instance—are excerpts from, or vestiges
of, previous conscious experiences of which we have no recollection,
that is to say, they are memories, reproductions of formerly experienced
ideas. In the absence of recollection they seem to belong only to the
present. Memories which hold an intermediate place between these
automatic memories and those of true recollection are certain memories,
like the alphabet or a verse or phrase once learned by heart which we
are able at best to localize only dimly in the past. Indeed, the greater
part of our _vocabulary_ is but conscious memory without localization in
the past. So we see that recollection is not an essential even for
conscious memories. It is only a particular phase of memory just as are
automatic conscious memories.
-----
Footnote 54:
I use this term physical in the sense in which it is used in the
physical sciences without reference to any metaphysical concept or the
ultimate nature of matter or of a physical process.
Footnote 55:
The psyche would have to be one which would be capable of becoming
differentiated at one and the same moment into two independent
consciousnesses—the personal and the secondary; a soul split into two,
so to speak. The desire to explain a secondary consciousness by this
doctrine has probably given rise to the popular notion of two souls in
a single body!
Footnote 56:
If the theory of the unconscious presented in these lectures be firmly
established this doctrine will have to be modified to this extent,
that, while all mental processes are accompanied by brain processes,
brain processes that ordinarily have conscious equivalents can within
certain limits occur without them and exhibit all the characteristics
of intelligence—unconscious cerebration. _Indeed, it becomes probable
that every mental process is a part of a larger mechanism in which
unconscious brain processes not correlated with the specifically
conscious processes are integral factors._
Footnote 57:
Dr. S. J. Meltzer has pointed out in a very suggestive article
(_Journal American Medical Association_, Vol. IV, No. 12) that the
anaphylactic attack resembles that of bronchial asthma in man, and
argues that this latter disease may be the same phenomenon.
Footnote 58:
T. Brailsford Robertson: Sur la Dynamique chimique du système nerveux
central, Archiv. de Physiol. v. 6, 1908, p. 388. Ueber die Wirkung von
Säuren auf das Athmungs Zentrum, Arch. f. die Gesammte Physiologie,
Bd. 145, Hft. 5 u. 6, 1912.
Footnote 59:
Stéphane Leduc: The Mechanism of Life.
Footnote 60:
Further studies in the chemical dynamics of the central nervous
system, Folio Neuro-Biologica, Bd. VI, Nos. 7 and 8, 1912.
Footnote 61:
Eugenio Rignano: Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters. Trans.
by Basil C. H. Harvey, Chicago. Open Court Publishing Co., 1911.
Footnote 62:
Prince: The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism, 1885:
Hughlings-Jackson on the Connection between the Mind and Brain,
_Brain_, p. 250, 1891; The Identification of Mind and Matter,
_Philosoph. Rev._, July, 1904.
Footnote 63:
Richard Semon (Die Mneme, 1908) has adopted the term Engramm with much
the same signification that I have given to Neurogram, excepting that
Engramm has a much wider meaning and connotation. It is not limited to
nervous tissue, but includes the residual changes held by some to be
left in all irritable living substances after stimulation. All such
substances are therefore capable of memory in a wide sense (Mneme).
Footnote 64:
Th. Ribot: Diseases of Memory, pp. 154, 155. Translation by William
Huntington Smith. D. Appleton & Co.
Footnote 65:
Cf. Lecture VIII, p. 238.
Footnote 66:
Emotion is a factor in the genesis of such phenomena, but may be
disregarded for the present until we have studied the phenomena of the
emotions by themselves.
Footnote 67:
The Work of the Digestive Glands (English Translation), p. 152.
Footnote 68:
Psychische Erregung der Speicheldrusen, J. P. Pawlow. Ergebnisse der
Physiologie, 1904, I Abteil., p. 182.
Footnote 69:
Huxley Lecture, _Br. Med. Jour._, October 6, 1906.
Footnote 70:
Pawlow overlooked in these experiments the possible, if not probable,
intermediary of the emotions in producing the effects. The principle,
however, would not be affected thereby.
Footnote 71:
Compare “The Dissociation,” pp. 254, 261. For examples, see also
“Multiple Personality,” by Boris Sidis, and “The Lowell Case of
Amnesia,” by Isador Coriat, _The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, Vol.
II, p. 93.
LECTURE VI
SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES
In what I have said thus far I have had another purpose in view than
that of a mere exposition of the psycho-physiological theory of memory.
This other and chief purpose has been to lay the foundation for a
conception of the _Unconscious_ in its larger aspect. We have seen that
thoughts and other conscious experiences that have passed out of mind
may be and to an enormous extent are conserved and, from this point of
view, may be properly regarded as simply _dormant_. Further we have seen
that all the data collected by experimental pathology and other
observations lead to the conclusion that conservation is effected in the
form of neurographic residua or brain neurograms—organized physiological
records of passing mental experiences of all sorts and kinds. We have
seen that these neurographic records conserve not only our educational
acquisitions and general stock of knowledge—all those experiences which
we remember—but a vast number of others which we cannot spontaneously
recall, including, it may be, many which date back to early childhood,
and many which we have deliberately repressed, put out of mind and
intentionally forgotten. We have also seen that it is not only these
mental experiences which occupied the focus of our attention that leave
their counterpart in neurograms, but those as well of which we are only
partially aware—absent-minded thoughts and acts and sensations and
perceptions which never entered our awareness at all—subconscious or
coconscious ideas as they are called. Finally, we have seen that the
mental experiences of every state, normal, artificial, or pathological,
whatever may be the state of the personal consciousness, are subject to
the same principle of conservation. In this way, in the course of any
one’s natural life, an enormous field of neurograms is formed
representing ideas which far transcend in multitude and variety those of
the personal consciousness at any given moment and all moments, and
which are far beyond the voluntary beck and call of the personal
consciousness of the individual.
Neurograms are concepts and, by the meaning of the concept, they are
unconscious. It is not necessary to enter into the question whether they
are in their ultimate nature psychical or physical. That is a
philosophical question.[72] They are at any rate unconscious in this
sense; they are devoid of consciousness, i.e., have none of the
psychological attributes of any of the elements of consciousness, and in
the sense in which any physiological arrangement or process is not
conscious, i.e., is unconscious. We have here, then, in the concept of
brain residual neurograms the fundamental meaning of the
_Unconscious_.[73] _The unconscious is the great storehouse of
neurograms which are the physiological records of our mental lives._ By
the terms of the concept neurograms are primarily passive—the potential
form, as it were, in which psychical energy is stored. This is not to
say, however, that, from moment to moment, certain ones out of the great
mass may not become active processes. On the contrary, according to the
theory of memory, when certain complexes of neurograms are stimulated
they take on activity and function—the potential energy becomes
converted into dynamic energy. In correlation with the functioning of
such neurographic complexes, the complexes of ideas which they
conserve—the psychological equivalents—are reproduced (according to the
doctrines of monism and parallelism) and enter the stream of the
personal consciousness. The unconscious becomes the conscious (monism),
or provided with correlated conscious accompaniments (parallelism), and
we may speak of the ideas arising out of the unconscious.
=Neurograms may also function as subconscious processes exhibiting
intelligence and determining mental and bodily behavior.=—Here two
important questions present themselves. Is it a necessary consequence
that when unconscious neurograms become active processes psychological
equivalents must be awakened; and when they are awakened, must they
_necessarily_ enter the stream of the personal consciousness? If both
these questions may be answered in the negative, _then plainly in either
case such active processes become by definition subconscious
processes_—of an _unconscious_ nature in the one case and of a
_coconscious_ nature in the other. They would be subconscious because in
the first place they would occur outside of consciousness and there is
no awareness of them, and in the second place they would be a
dissociated second train of processes distinct from those engaged in the
conscious stream of the moment. Theoretically such subconscious
processes, whether unconscious or coconscious, might perform a variety
of functions according to the specificity of their activities.
Now, in preceding lectures, when marshalling the evidence for
conservation, we met with a large number and variety of phenomena
(automatic writing, hallucinations, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams,
“unconscious” solution of problems, etc.), which clearly demonstrated
that memory might be manifested by processes of which the individual was
unaware and which were outside the content of consciousness. Hence these
phenomena presented very clear evidence of the occurrence of processes
that may be properly termed _subconscious_.[74] Attention, however, was
primarily directed to them only so far as they offered evidence of
conservation and of the mode by which conservation was effected. But
necessarily these evidences were subconscious manifestations of
forgotten experiences (memory), and in so far as this was the case we
saw that unconscious neurograms can take on activity and function
subconsciously; i.e., without their psychological equivalents (i.e.,
correlated conscious memory) entering the stream of the personal
consciousness. We may now speak of these processes as =subconscious
memory=. But when their manifestations are carefully scrutinized they
will be found to exhibit more than memory. They may, for instance,
exhibit logical elaboration of the original experiences, and what
corresponds to fabrication, reasoning, volition and affectivity.
_Theoretically_ this is what we should expect if any of the conserved
residual experiences of life can function subconsciously. As life’s
experiences include fears, doubts, scruples, wishes, affections,
resentments, and numerous other affective states, innate dispositions,
and instincts, the subconscious memory process necessarily may include
any of these affective complexes of ideas and tendencies. An affective
complex means an idea (or ideas) linked to one or more emotions and
feelings. In other words, any acquired residua drawn from the general
storehouse of life’s experiences may be systematized with feelings and
emotions, the innate dispositions and instincts of the organism. Now it
is a general psychological law that such affective states tend by the
force of their conative impulses to carry the specific ideas with which
they are systematized to fulfilment through mental and bodily behavior.
Consequently, theoretically, it might thus well be that the residua of
diverse experiences, say a fear or a wish, by the force of such impulses
might become activated into very specific subconscious processes with
very specific tendencies expressing themselves in very specific ways,
producing very specific and diverse phenomena. Thus memory would be but
one of the manifestations of subconscious processes.
Now, as a matter of fact, there are a large number of phenomena which
not only justify the postulation of subconscious processes but also the
inference that such processes, activated by their affective impulses,
may so influence conscious thought that the latter is modified in
various ways; that it may be determined in this or that direction,
inhibited, interrupted, distorted, made insistent, and given
pathological traits. There is also a large variety of bodily phenomena
which can be explicitly shown to be due to subconscious processes, and
many which are only explicable by such a mechanism. Indeed, a
subconscious process may become very complex and constellated with any
one or many of the psycho-physiological mechanisms of the organism. In
special artificial and pathological conditions where such processes
reach their highest development, as manifested through their phenomena,
they may exhibit that which when consciously performed is understood to
be _intelligence_, comprising reasoning, constructive imagination,
volition, and feeling; in short, what is commonly called thought or
mental processes. Memory, of course, enters as an intrinsic element in
these manifestations just as it is an intrinsic element in all thought.
The automatic script that describes the memories of a long-forgotten
childhood experience may at the same time reason, indulge in jests,
rhyme, express cognition and understanding of questions—indeed (if put
to the test), might not only pass a Binet-Simon examination for
intelligence, but take a high rank in a Civil Service examination. In
these more elaborate exhibitions of subconscious intelligence it is
obvious that there is an exuberant efflorescence of the residua
deposited in many unconscious fields by life’s experiences and
synthesized into a _subconscious functioning system_.
It is beyond the scope of this lecture to examine into the particular
_mechanism_ by which a subconscious process is provoked at all—why, for
instance, a dormant wish or fear-neurogram becomes activated into a
subconscious wish or fear, or having become activated, the mechanism by
which such a wish or fear manifests itself in this phenomenon or that—or
to examine even any large number of the various phenomena which are
provoked by subconscious processes, and it is not my intention to do so.
Such problems belong to special psychology and special pathology. Of
recent years, for instance, certain schools of psychology, and in
particular the Freudian school, have attempted to establish particular
mechanisms by which subconscious processes come into being and express
themselves. We are engaged in the preliminary and fundamental task of
establishing, if possible, certain basic principles which any mechanism
must make use of, and, as a deeper-lying theoretical question, the
nature of such processes.
The subconscious now belongs to popular speech and it is the fashion of
the day to speak of it glibly enough, but I fear it means very little to
the average person. It is involved in vagueness if not mystery. Yet as a
necessary induction from observed facts it has a very precise and
concrete meaning devoid of abstruseness, just as the other has a precise
and concrete meaning. Although subconscious processes were originally
postulated on theoretical grounds, the theory is fortunately open to
experimental tests so that it is capable of being placed on an
experimental basis like other concepts of science. It is possible to
artificially create such processes and study their phenomena; that is to
say, the modes in which they manifest their activities, their influence
upon conscious and bodily processes. We can study their effect in
inhibiting and distorting thought, in determining it in this or that
direction, in creating hallucinatory, emotional, amnesic, and other
mental phenomena, in inducing physiological disturbances of motion,
sensation, of the viscera, etc. We can also study the capabilities and
limitations of the subconscious in carrying on intelligent operations
below the threshold of consciousness. Again, we can investigate the
phenomena of this kind as met with in the course of clinical
observations, and by technical methods of research explore the
subconscious and thus explicitly reveal the process underlying and
inducing the phenomena. By such methods of investigation the
subconscious has been removed from the field of speculative psychology,
and placed in the field of experimental research. We have thus been
enabled to postulate a subconscious process as a _definite concrete
process producing very definite phenomena_. These processes and their
phenomena have become a field of study in themselves and, from my point
of view, the determination of the laws of the subconscious should be
approached by such experimental and technical methods of research. After
its various modes of activity, its capabilities and limitations have
been in this way established, its laws can then be applied to the
solution of conditions surrounding particular problems. Though we can
determine the actuality of a particular subconscious process this does
not mean that we can determine all the components of that process; we
may be able to determine many or perhaps none of these: just as among
the constituents of a crowd we may discern an active, turbulent group
creating a disturbance, though we may not be able to recognize all the
components of the group or the scattered individuals acting in
conjunction with it. Nor may we be able to determine the intrinsic
nature of a subconscious process—whether it is a conscious or
unconscious one, but only the actuality of the process, the conditions
of its activity, and the phenomena which it induces.
_A subconscious process may be provisionally defined as one of which the
personality is unaware, which, therefore, is outside the personal
consciousness, and which is a factor in the determination of conscious
and bodily phenomena, or produces effects analogous to those which might
be directly or indirectly induced by consciousness._ It would be out of
the question at this time to enter into an exposition of the larger
subject—the multiform phenomena of the subconscious, but as its
processes are fundamental to an understanding of many phenomena with
which we shall have to deal, we should have a clear understanding of the
grounds on which such processes are postulated as specific, concrete
occurrences. The classical demonstration of subconscious occurrences
makes use of certain phenomena of hysteria, particularly those of
subconscious personalities and artificial “automatic” phenomena like
automatic writing. The epoch-making researches of Janet[75] on hysterics
and almost coincidently with him of Edmund Gurney on hypnotics very
clearly established the fact that these phenomena are the manifestations
of _dissociated_ processes outside of and independent of the personal
consciousness. Among the phenomena, for example, are motor activities of
various kinds such as ordinarily are or may be induced by conscious
intelligence. As the individual, owing to anesthesia, may be entirely
unaware even that he has performed any such act, the process that
performed it must be one that is subconscious.
=The intrinsic nature of subconscious processes.=—Janet further brought
forward indisputable evidence showing that in hysteria these
subconscious processes are real coconscious processes. It is only
another mode of expressing this to say that there is a dissociation or
division of consciousness in consequence of which certain ideas do not
enter the content of the personal consciousness of the individual. It is
possible, as he was the first to show, to communicate with and, in
hypnotic and other dissociated states, recover memories of these
split-off ideas of which the individual is unaware, and thereby
establish the principle that these ideas are the subconscious process
which induces the hysterical phenomena. (These phenomena are of a great
many kinds and include sensory as well as motor automatisms, inhibition
of thought and will, deliria, visceral, emotional, and other
disturbances of mind and body.) The hysterical subconscious process is
thus determined to be a very specific concrete _coconscious_ process,
one, the elements of which are memories and other particular ideas. This
type of subconscious process, therefore, may be regarded as the
activated residua of antecedent experiences with or without secondary
elaboration. All subsequent investigations during the past twenty-five
years have served but to confirm the accuracy of Janet’s observations
and conclusions. It would be out of the question at this time, before
coconscious ideas have been systematically studied, to attempt to
present the evidence on which this interpretation of certain
subconscious phenomena rests. This will be done in other lectures.[76] I
will simply say that this evidence for coconsciousness occurring in
certain special conditions, artificial and pathological, and perhaps as
a constituent of the normal content of consciousness, is of precisely
the same character as that for the occurrence of consciousness in any
other individual but one’s self. If we reject the evidence of hysterical
phenomena, of that furnished by a coconscious personality, and by
automatic script and speech, etc., we shall have to reject precisely
similar evidence for consciousness in other people than ourselves.[77]
The evidence is explicit and not implied.
A subconscious personality is a condition where complexes of
subconscious processes have been constellated into a personal system,
manifesting a secondary system of self-consciousness endowed with
volition, intelligence, etc. Such a subconscious personality is capable
of communicating with the experimenter and describing its own mental
processes. It can, after repression of the primary personality, become
the sole personality for the time being, and then remember its previous
subconscious life, as we all remember our past conscious life, and can
give full and explicit information regarding the nature of the
subconscious process. By making use of the testimony of a subconscious
personality and its various manifestations, we can not only establish
the actuality of subconscious processes and their intrinsic nature in
these conditions, but by prearrangement with this personality
predetermine any particular process we desire and study the modes in
which it influences conscious thought and conduct. For instance, we can
prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal
consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or
volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which
may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena,
etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in
this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities,
therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the
mind.[78]
The conclusion, then, seems compulsory that the subconscious processes
in many conditions, particularly those that are artificially induced and
those that are pathological, are _coconscious_ processes.
There are other phenomena, however, which require the postulation of a
subconscious process, yet which, when the subconscious is searched by
the same methods made use of in hysterical phenomena, do not reveal
explicit evidence of coconsciousness. An analysis of the subconscious
revelations as well as the phenomena themselves seems to favor the
interpretation that in some cases the underlying process is in part and
in others wholly _unconscious_. The only ground for the interpretation
that all subconscious processes are wholly conscious is the assumption
that, as some are conscious, all must be. This is as unsound as the
assumption that, because at the other end of the scale some complex
actions (e. g., those performed by decerebrated animals) are intelligent
and yet performed by processes necessarily unconscious, therefore all
actions not under the guidance of the personal consciousness are
performed by unconscious processes.
If some subconscious processes are unconscious they are equivalent to
physiological processes such as, _ex hypothesi_, are correlated with all
conscious processes and perhaps may be identified with them. In truth,
they mean nothing more nor less than “unconscious cerebration.”
We can say at once that considering the complexity and multiformity of
psycho-physiological phenomena there would seem to be no _a priori_
reason why all subconscious phenomena must be the same in respect to
being either coconscious or unconscious; some may be the one and some
the other. It is plainly a matter of interpretation of the facts and
there still exists some difference of opinion. The problem is a very
difficult one to settle by methods at present available; yet it can only
be settled by the same methods, in principle, that we depend upon to
determine the reality of a personal consciousness in other persons than
ourselves. No amount of _a priori_ argument will suffice. Perhaps some
day a criterion of a conscious state of which the individual is unaware
will be found, just as the psycho-galvanic phenomenon is possibly a
criterion of an effective state. Any conclusions which we reach at
present should be regarded as provisional.[79]