Footnote 125:
Von M. Rothmann: Demonstration des Hundes ohne Grossirn. _Bericht über
den V Kongress f. Experiment. Psychol. in Berlin, 1912_, page 256. The
report is too meager to admit of independent judgment of the animal’s
behavior in many of its details.
Footnote 126:
Until the basal ganglia have been microscopically examined it cannot
be determined that the loss of function was not due to secondary
organic lesions. In Goltz’ dog, which acted like a blind dog, one
optic nerve was cut and the corpora striata and optic thalami were
partly involved in the lesion.
Footnote 127:
Quoted from Schräder by Loeb.
Footnote 128:
Cf. Lloyd Morgan: Instinct and Experience, 1912.
Footnote 129:
Dr. Morgan in his work, “Instinct and Experience,” 1912, published
before Rothmann’s observations, remarks that this “is not inherently
improbable” although it had not as yet been demonstrated.
Footnote 130:
From the point of view here adopted, the recent discussions and
controversies over the problems of “instinct and intelligence” have
been much muddled by the arbitrary denial of conscious elements to an
instinctive process, and by the acceptation of consciousness or
conscious experience as the criterion of intelligence. In this view
instinct and intelligence become contrasted concepts which to my way
of thinking they are not necessarily at all. If it is admitted that
instinct is an innate disposition, its contrasted quality is that
which is _acquired_ and not the quality of consciousness. It is true
that acquired behavior is commonly if not always determined by
conscious processes (conscious experience), but likewise innate
behavior may be determined by processes which contain conscious
elements. Surely fear is instinctive and is a conscious element in an
innate process; and so must be visual and other sensory images, as in
the first peck of a chicken. To look upon the first visual image
simply as conscious “experience,” as an “onlooker,” and reject it as a
factor in the process which determines that first peck, seems to me to
be arbitrary psychology if not physiology. If consciousness may be a
quality of an innate process—and why not?—it cannot be a criterion of
intelligence. The true converse of the conscious is the unconscious.
This adopted antithesis between consciousness and instinct, from this
point of view as well as the arbitrary limitation of the localization
of the whole of an instinctive process to the subcortical centers,
vitiates the force of the very able presentation of the subject by Dr.
Morgan, if I correctly understand him. I know of no data which forbid
the cortex to be included in the innate mechanism of an instinctive
process. On the contrary, it is difficult to understand instinctive
behavior and its modifications through conscious experience unless
cortical centers are included in the psycho-physiological arcs. At any
rate we may define instinct and intelligence in terms of the conscious
and the unconscious, or in brain terms, but we should not mix up these
aspects with that of localization in the definition. Mr. McDougall’s
conception of instinct appeals to me more strongly from both a
biological and a psychological point of view, and further seems to me
to be more in consonance with the data of experience.
Footnote 131:
A Text Book of Physiology, 1893, page 727.
Footnote 132:
The localization of the processes concerned in all such acquired
automatic behavior—whether it is in the cortex or subcortical
centers—is an unsolved problem.
Footnote 133:
If the subconscious processes which perform a mathematical calculation
and other problems, which logically determine the symbolism of a
dream, etc., can be correctly interpreted as unconscious, they plainly
exhibit a higher order of intelligence than any conscious processes in
lower animals, or even some conscious processes of man, like brushing
away a fly.
Footnote 134:
Not included in this volume.
Footnote 135:
It has been objected that to speak of unconscious ideas is a
contradiction of terms. This seems to me to smack of quibbling as we
know well enough that the adjective is used in the sense of
unawareness.
Footnote 136:
For a good account of the history of the theory of unconscious ideas
in philosophy see Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” where
the following quotations may be found: “To have ideas and yet not to
be conscious of them—there seems to be a contradiction in that—for how
can we know that we have them if we are not conscious of them?
Nevertheless, we may become aware indirectly that we have an idea,
although we be not directly cognizant of the same.” (Kant,
Anthropology, sec. 5.) And again: "Innumerable are the sensations and
perceptions whereof we are not conscious although we must undoubtedly
conclude that we have them, obscure ideas as they may be called (to be
found in animals as well as in man). The clear ideas, indeed, are but
an infinitely small fraction of these same exposed to consciousness.
That only a few spots on the great chart of our minds are illuminated
may well fill us with amazement in contemplating this nature of ours.
(Ibid.)
“Now unconscious ideas” are such “as are in consciousness without our
being aware of them” (Herbart).
It is interesting to notice how Kant’s statement might well be
substituted for that of Myers’ of his “Subliminal.” It is difficult to
understand the peculiar antagonistic attitude of certain theoretical
psychologists to the theory of subconscious (coconscious) ideas in
view of the history of this theory in philosophy. They seem to have
forgotten their philosophy and not to have kept pace with experimental
psychology.
Footnote 137:
See footnote on p. 149.
LECTURE IX
THE ORGANIZATION OF UNCONSCIOUS COMPLEXES
=Everyday life.=—It will be well at this point to state in orderly
fashion a few general principles governing the organization of complexes
or syntheses of ideas[138] which, as we shall see, play an important
part in normal and abnormal life. Although this statement will be little
more than descriptive of what is common experience it will be helpful in
classifying and obtaining a useful perspective of the phenomena with
which we shall deal.
Now, as every one knows, the elemental ideas which make up the
experience of any given moment tend to become organized (i.e.,
synthesized and conserved) into a system or complex of ideas, linked
with emotions, feelings and other innate dispositions, so that when one
of the ideas belonging to the experience comes to mind the experience as
a whole is recalled. We may conveniently term such a system when in a
state of conservation, an _unconscious complex_[139] _or neurogram, or
system of neurograms_. If we wish to use psychological terms we may
speak of it as a complex or synthesis of dormant ideas. Although we may
formulate this principle as the “association of ideas” the formula can
have only a descriptive significance pertaining to a relation in time
(and not a causal one) unless there be included an unconscious factor by
which the association becomes effective in exciting one idea through
another—i.e., through a linking of neural dispositions. We cannot
conceive of any conscious relation between ideas that can possibly
induce this effect. It must be some _unconscious dynamic relation_[140]
and be explained in terms of neural dispositions. If this be so, all
ideas are dynamically associated and related in a process which does not
appear in consciousness and which is essential for organization into a
complex. Every system of associated ideas, therefore, implies
conservation through an organized unconscious complex.
Complexes may be very feebly organized in that the elemental ideas are
weakly conserved or weakly associated; in which case when we try to
recall the original experience only a part or none of it is recalled.
On the other hand, a complex may be strongly organized and include a
large number of details of an experience. This is usually owing to the
fact that the original experience was accompanied by strong emotional
tones, or by marked interest and attention, or was frequently repeated.
=Emotional Complexes=: 1. When the original experience was accompanied
by an emotion it may be regarded as having excited one or more of the
emotional instincts of anger, fear, disgust, etc. The excitation of the
instinct or instincts is in one sense a _reaction_ to the ideas of the
experience. The instincts then become organized about one or more of the
ideas to form a sentiment (Shand) and the whole is incorporated in a
complex which then acquires an affective character. The impulsive force
of the instinct thereafter largely determines the behavior of the
complex. (To this we shall return later when we consider the instincts.)
General observation shows that emotional experiences are more likely to
be conserved and also voluntarily recalled. Given such an emotional
complex nearly anything associated with some detail of the experience
may, by the law of association, automatically or involuntarily revive
it, or the emotional reaction with a greater or less number of its
associated memories. This tendency seems to be directly proportionate to
the intensity of the instinct (fear, anger, etc.) incorporated in the
complex. Sometimes, it is true, a strongly emotional experience, even an
experience of great moment in an individual’s life, is completely
forgotten, so completely that no associated idea avails as a stimulus to
awaken it. Usually in all such cases the neurograms are isolated, etc.,
by dissociation. They still, however, may be strongly organized and
conserved as an unconscious complex and sometimes may be excited as a
subconscious process by an associated stimulus. In such conditions it
very frequently is found that the dissociation is due to conflict
between the emotion belonging to the complex and another emotional
complex. The impulsive force of the latter dissociates the former
complex which then cannot be voluntarily reproduced as memory, nor
awakened by any association under normal conditions. We have then a
condition of amnesia and often an hysterical condition. To this
important phenomenon we shall return when we consider the emotions.
Passing over these exceptional conditions of conflicting emotions (which
being explained “prove the rule”), it still remains true that in
everyday life emotional experiences are not only more likely to be
conserved but to be subject to voluntary recall, or awakened
involuntarily by an associated stimulus.
If, for instance, we have experienced a railroad accident involving
exciting incidents, loss of life, etc., the words “railroad,”
“accident,” “death,” or a sudden crashing sound, or the sight of blood,
or even riding in a railroad train may recall the experience, or at
least the prominent features in it. The earlier events and those
succeeding the accident may have passed out of all possibility of
voluntary recall. To take an instance commonplace enough, but which
happens to have come within my recent observation: a fireman, hurrying
to a fire, was injured severely by being thrown from a hose-wagon
against a telegraph-pole with which the wagon collided. He narrowly
escaped death. Although three years have elapsed he still cannot ride on
a wagon to a fire without the memory of substantially the whole accident
rising in his mind. When he does so he again lives through the accident,
including the thoughts just previous to the actual collision when
realizing his situation he was overcome with terror, and he again
manifests all the organic physical expressions of fear, viz.,
perspiration, tremor, and muscular weakness. Here is a well organized
and fairly limited complex. It is also plainly an imperative memory,
that is to say, any stimulus-idea associated with some element in the
complex reproduces the experience as memory whether it is wished or not.
Try as hard as he will he cannot prevent its recurrence. The stimulus
that excites such involuntary memories may be a spoken word (as in the
psycho-galvanic and other associative experiments which we shall
consider in a later lecture), or it may be a visual perception of the
environment—of a person or place—or it may be a repetition of the
circumstances attending the original experience, however induced. The
phenomenon may also be regarded as an automatism or automatic process.
As the biological instinct of fear is incorporated in the complex it is
also a _phobia_.
_Why_ our fireman suffered the intense terror that he did at the time of
the accident, why he experienced the thoughts which surged into his
mind, why he suffered this emotional experience, while another man going
through the same accident suffers no more than the physical injury (if
any) at the time, and why the experience continues to recur as an
imperative memory are problems which we are not considering now. The
fact is that he did suffer the terror and its agonizing thoughts, and,
this being the case, their constant recurrence, i.e., the reproduction
of the experience, is a memory. And this memory consists of a well
organized complex of ideas, feelings, and physiological accompaniments.
I emphasize this point because an imperatively recurring mental
experience of this sort is a psychosis, and, so far as the principle of
memory enters into it, so far memory becomes a part of the mechanism of
obsessions.
The reason why the man at the moment of the accident experienced the
terrorizing thoughts that he did, and why he continued to experience
them, must be sought in associated conserved experiences of his past.
These experiences were the psycho-genetic factors. It would take us too
far out of the way to consider this problem, which belongs to the
obsessions, at this time, but, as I have touched upon it, I may say in
passing that the accident would have awakened no sense of terror and no
emotional shock if a _psychological torch_ had not already been
prepared. This torch was made up of ideas previously imbibed from the
social environment and made ready to be set aflame by the match set to
it by the accident. In the unconsciousness of this man were written in
neurographic records the dangers attending accidents of this kind and
dangers which still threatened his present and future.
Likewise the _insistence_ of the memory can be related to a setting of
associated thoughts which gave meaning to his perception of himself as
one affected, as he believed, with a serious injury threatening his
future. His fear was also, therefore, a fear of the present and future.
Thus not only the experiences of the accident itself became organized
into a group and conserved as a memory, but were organized with memories
of still other experiences which stood in a genetic relation to them. If
it were necessary I could give from my personal observation numerous
examples of this mode of organization of complexes through emotional
experiences and of their reproduction as automatic memories.
An historical example of complex-organizing of this kind is narrated in
Tallentyre’s delightful life of Voltaire. Toward the end of Voltaire’s
famous residence at the court of Frederick the Great, as the latter’s
guest, one of those pestiferous friends who cannot help repeating
disagreeable personal gossip for our benefit swore to Voltaire to having
heard Frederick remark, “I shall want him (Voltaire) at the most another
year; one squeezes the orange and throws away the rind.” From that
moment a complex of emotional ideas was formed in Voltaire’s mind, that,
do what he would, he could not get rid of. He wrote it to his friends,
thought about it, dreamed about it; he tried to forget it, but to no
purpose; it would not “down”; the rind kept constantly rising. It
brought with it every memory of Frederick’s character and actions that
fitted the remark.
Voltaire, like many men of genius, was a neurasthenic and his ideas with
strong emotional tones tended to become strongly organized and acquire
great force. “The orange rind haunts my dreams,” he wrote; “I try not to
believe it.... We go to sup with the king and are gay enough
sometimes;—the man who fell from the top of a steeple and found the fall
through the air soft and said, ‘Good, provided it lasts,’ is not a
little as I am.” The emotional complex which so tormented Voltaire that
it literally became an obsession was a recurring memory. The experience
had been strongly registered and conserved, owing to the emotional tone,
but the reason _why_ there was so much emotion, and _why_ it absorbed so
many associated ideas into itself and kept recurring would undoubtedly
have been found to lie, if we could have probed Voltaire’s mind, in its
settings—his previous stormy experiences with Frederick, his knowledge
of Frederick’s character, his previous _apprehensions_ of what later
actually occurred, and, most probably, self-reproach for his own
behavior, _the consequences of which he feared to face_. All this,
conserved as neurograms, was set ablaze by the remark and furnished not
only the emotion but the material for the content of the complex. These
previous experiences, therefore, stood in genetic relation to the
latter, excited the emotional reaction of anger, resentment and fear,
and prevented the complex from subsiding. The exciting cause for each
recurrence of the complex was, of course, some associated stimulus from
the environment, or train of thought.
Another interesting historical example is the foolish complex which is
said to have disturbed the pretty Mme. Leclerc (Pauline Bonaparte, who
was afterward the Princess Borghese). This fascinating and beautiful
woman was enjoying her triumph at a ball. Seated in a little boudoir off
the ball-room she was entertaining “guests who came to admire her and
fill her cup to overflowing. There was, however, a Mme. de Contades, who
had been deserted by her own cavaliers at the appearance of Pauline.
Approaching, now, on the arm of her escort, she said in a tone
sufficiently loud so that every one, including Pauline, could hear
perfectly: ‘Mon Dieu, what a misfortune! Oh, what a pity! She would be
so pretty but for that!’ ‘But for what?’ asked her cavalier. All eyes
were turned upon poor Mme. Leclerc, who thought there must be something
the matter with her coiffure and began to redden and suffocate. ‘But do
you not see what I mean?’ persisted Mme. de Contades, with the cold
cruelty of a jealous woman. ‘What a pity! Yes, truly, how unfortunate!
Such a really pretty head to have such ears! If I had ears like those I
would have them cut off. Yes, positively, they are like those of a pug
dog. You who know her, Monsieur, advise her to have it done; it would be
a charitable act.’ Pauline, more beautiful than ever in her blushes,
rose, tears blinding her eyes, then sank back upon the sofa, hiding her
face in her hands, sick with mortification and shame. As a matter of
fact, her ears were not ugly, only a little too flat. From that day,
however, she always dressed her hair over them or concealed them under a
bandeau, as in the well-known painting of her.”[141]
Fixed ideas relating to physical blemishes are not uncommonly observed
as obsessions in psychasthenics. With our knowledge of such psychical
manifestations it is easy to imagine Pauline’s antecedent thoughts
regarding her own flat ears, and repugnance to this defect in others,
her suspicions of unfavorable criticisms and of not being admired, etc.,
all organized with the instinct of self-abasement (emotion of
subjection) and forming a sentiment of self-depreciation and shame in
her mind.
2. The outbreak of such _automatic memories_ is particularly prone
to occur in persons of a particular temperament (the apprehensive
temperament, in which the biological instinct of fear is the
paramount factor), in fatigue states, and in so-called neurotic
people—neurasthenics, psychasthenics, and hysterics. In such people
the organization of the complex probably has been largely a
previously _subconscious incubating process_, as in the phenomenon
of “sudden religious conversion.” Later the sudden suggestion or
awakening by whatsoever means of an idea, which has roots in the
antecedent thoughts engaged in the subconscious process, readily
gives occasion for the outbreak of the complex. The latter then
excites the emotional reaction of anger, horror, antipathy, fear,
jealousy, etc., which becomes incorporated in the complex. When once
formed the automatism becomes the psychosis. The following case is
an illustration:
L. E. W., forty-nine years of age, farmer and lawyer by occupation, a
man of strenuous disposition, broke down under stress and strain with
severe but common symptoms of mental and physical fatigue modified and
exaggerated by apprehensions of incurable illness. At the end of a year
there developed scruples and jealous suspicions of his wife’s chastity,
not persistent but recurring from time to time in attacks, and always
awakened by a suggestion of some kind—an associated idea, a remark
heard, an act of some kind on the part of the wife, etc. Between the
attacks he was entirely free from such thoughts, but during the attack,
which came on with the usual suddenness, these thoughts—always the same
doubts, suspicions, reasonings, jealousy, and fear—were dominating,
imperative, and painful. An open-minded, frank, intelligent man he fully
realized that his scruples were entirely unfounded and even
characterized them as “delusions.” It was interesting, so clear was he
in this respect, to hear him discuss his attacks between times with his
wife, as if they were recurrent appendicitis. The attacks would pass off
in a short time after discussing his scruples with his wife, and then he
became natural again; they involved great suffering and he feared, as
people thus afflicted so often do, that they spelled impending insanity.
And yet it was easy to determine that they were only _imperative
recurrent memories_, conserved complexes emerging from the unconscious.
He had been married twenty-two years. He was of a jealous nature, and
before marriage it annoyed him to think that his wife had been courted
by other men, that she wrote them letters, etc. He began to think of her
as a flirt, that she was going to jilt him, and to have misgivings of
her character. He grew jealous and suspicions of possible unchastity
worried him, but reasoning with himself he would say, “O, pshaw! it is
an abominable suspicion,” “an hallucination,” and put the thought out of
his mind, as he said. But we know he really put the thought _into_ his
mind to be conserved in the unconscious, as a complex of chastity
scruples, and there undergo incubation and further development. Later he
had had spells of jealousy during his married life but no true
imperative ideas until he broke down in health, and then, as he himself
expressed it, “the devil got the upper hand and said, ‘I’ve got you
now.’”
The devil was the complex organized twenty-two years previously with the
emotion of jealousy[142] centered about the idea of his wife and the
whole neurographically conserved. The impulsive force of the emotion was
constantly striving to awaken and give expression to the unconscious
complex. He was able to hold it in check, to repress it, by the
conflicting force of other sentiments until these became weakened by the
development of the psychasthenic state. Then these latter controlling
elements of personality were repressed in turn whenever the more
powerful jealousy complex was awakened. The whole mechanism was
undoubtedly more complicated than this, in that the jealousy complex had
a setting in certain unsophisticated and puritanical ideas of conduct
(brought to light in the analysis) which gave a peculiar meaning (for
him) to his wife’s actions. So long as this setting persisted it would
be next to impossible to modify the jealousy complex.
Whatever the mechanism, ideas with strong emotional tones (particularly
fear, anger, jealousy, and disgust), no matter how absurd or repellent,
or unjustified, and whether acceptable or unacceptable, tend to become
organized and welded into a complex which is thereby conserved. The
impulsive force of the incorporated emotion tends to awaken and give
expression to the complex whenever stimulated. The recurrence of such an
organized complex so far as it is reproduction is, of course, in
principle, memory, and an imperative memory or _fixed idea_. Whether the
complex shall be awakened as such a recurrent memory, or shall function
as a dissociated subconscious process, producing other disturbances, or
remain quiescent in the unconscious, depends upon other factors which we
need not now consider.
3. Clinically the _periodic recurrence_ of such complexes is an
_obsession_. An obsession _as met with_ is most likely to be
characterized by fear not only because the instinct of fear is the most
painful of the emotions, but for another reason. Although biologically
fear is useful as a defense for the preservation of the individual, when
perverted by useless associations it becomes harmful, in that it is not
only painful but prevents the adjustment of the individual to his
environment and thereby takes on a pathological taint. Complexes with
other emotions are less likely to be harmful and therefore less
frequently apply for relief. Yet imperative ideas with jealousy, anger,
hatred, love, disgust, etc., centered about an object are exceedingly
common though their possessors less often resort to a physician.
From another point of view abnormal complexes, represented by these
examples, may be regarded as “_association psychoses_.” Sometimes the
physiological bodily accompaniments form the greater part of the complex
which is for the most part made up of physiological disturbances
(vasomotor, cardiac, gastric, respiratory, secretory, muscular, etc.);
almost pure association _neuroses_ they then become. Neuroses of this
kind we shall consider in a later lecture.[143]
Sometimes, particularly in people of intensive temperaments, “imperative
ideas” are formed by gradual evolution in consequence of the mind
constantly dwelling with emotional intensity on certain phases of
thought—i.e., through repetition. This we see in the development of
religious complexes or faiths, but it is also obtrusive in other fields
of thought, political, industrial, social, etc. Hence the evolution of
_fanatics_. A. D. is a man of strong feeling and great imagination. As a
child he was a constant witness of quarrels between his father and
mother. His mind dwelt upon these experiences and there developed in him
at an early date strong aversions toward marriage. Aversion means the
instinct of repulsion or disgust. This instinct therefore became
systematized with the idea of marriage as its object forming an intense
sentiment of aversion. Even as a boy the aversion impelled him to
determine never to marry and later he formed strong theoretical
anti-matrimonial views which became almost a religion. For years he
talked about his views, argued and preached about them like a fanatic to
his friends. His aversion rose in successful conflict against every
temptation to matrimony and his anti-matrimonial complex became an
obsession. The consequences were what might have been expected when,
later in life, he allowed himself in a moment of sympathetic weakness
and owing to compromising situations to slip within the matrimonial
noose. The complex then, like that of Voltaire’s orange rind, would not
down at his own bidding, or at that of his devoted spouse for whom he
had, in other respects, a strong affection mingled with personal
admiration. The resulting situation can be imagined.
4. _Hysterical attacks._ It is of practical importance to note another
part which emotional complexes may play in psychopathology. In certain
pathological conditions in which there is limitation of the field of
consciousness (involving a disappearance of a large part of the normal
mental life) often all that persists of consciousness and represents the
personal self is the obsessing complex which previously tormented the
patient. In hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance, and certain
types of epilepsy this is peculiarly the case. In these states the
content of consciousness consists almost wholly, or at least largely, of
a recurrent memory of an experience which originated in the normal life
and which has been conserved in the unconscious. Here the obsessing
ideas, which at one time were voluntarily entertained by the subject,
or, as frequently happens, originated in some emotional experience,
automatically recur, while the remainder of the conscious life becomes
dissociated and suppressed; in other words the obsessing ideas emerge
out of the unconscious (neurograms) and became substantially the whole
conscious field. In hysterical attacks, particularly, the complex is
accompanied by the same strong emotional tone—such as fear, anxiety,
jealousy, or anger—which belonged to the original experience. In such
pathological subjects, whenever the complex is awakened, the remainder
of the conscious field tends to become dissociated and the psychological
state to be reproduced. Hence, in such states, the ideas repeat
themselves over and over again with the recurrence of the attacks. The
subject lives over again as in a dream the original attack, which is a
stereotyped revivification of the original experience. This peculiarity
of the mental condition in attacks has been described by various
writers. The dream of the hystero-epileptic is substantially always the
same. Janet has accurately described the origin and rôle of the fixed
ideas in the hysterical attack. “These ideas,” he says, “are not
conceived, invented at the moment; they formulate themselves; they are
only _repetitions_. Thus, the most important of the hallucinations which
harassed Marcelle during her cloud-attack was but the exact reproduction
of a scene which had taken place the previous year. The fixed ideas of
dying, of not eating, are the reproduction of certain desperate
resolutions taken some years ago. Formerly these ideas had some sense,
were more or less well connected with a motive. A desperate love affair
had been the cause of her attempts at suicide; she refused to eat in
order to let herself die of hunger, etc. To-day these ideas are again
reproduced, but without connection and without reason. She has, we
convinced ourselves, completely forgotten her old despair, and has not
the least wish to die. The idea of suicide comes to her to-day without
any relation to her present situation, and she is in despair at the idea
of this suicide which imposes itself on her as a relic of her past, so
to say. She does not know why she refuses to eat; the ideas of suicide
and refusal of food are dissociated. The one exists without the other.
At one moment she hears the voice, ‘Do not eat,’ and yet she has no
thought of death; at another, she thinks of killing herself and yet she
accepts nourishment. We always find in fixed ideas this characteristic
of automatic repetition of the past without connection, without actual
logic.”[144]
When certain emotional and distressing ideas of wounded love are
awakened in M. C., an hysteric, she is thrown into an hysterical attack
in which these ideas recur over and over again and dominate
consciousness. In P. M., another hysteric, ideas of loneliness and
jealousy, which had previously been entertained but which had been
thrust out of her mind again and again in a conscientious struggle with
her moral nature, recur, emerge from the unconscious and dominate the
field of consciousness in each hysterical attack which they induce.
6. In the _psycholeptic_, a variant of the hysteric, the same
sensations, motor phenomena, and hallucinations, and the same bizarre
ideas—whatever the symptomatic phenomena—characterize each attack. This
could be shown experimentally in M——l.[145]
Of course the degree of dissociation of consciousness, the content of
the fixed idea, and the physiological manifestations vary in individual
cases, according to the nature of the case. Sometimes the disturbance of
consciousness is slight and the physiological manifestations
predominant.
From a consideration of all the facts we see that a conserved complex
associated with strong feeling tones may play a disastrous and
pathological part in certain individuals.
It is well to bear in mind here, as before, that in these statements we
are only giving a literal description of the psychological events
without attempt to form any theory of the mechanism of the processes, or
the antecedent psychogenetic factors which lead to the development of
the particular fixed ideas or complexes. About this there may be and is
a difference of view.
=Systematized Complexes.= In contrast with the limited group of fixed
ideas, organized with one or more emotions (i.e., instincts) I have been
describing, are the large _systems_ of complexes or associated
experiences which become organized and fairly distinctly differentiated
in the course of the development of every one’s personality. In many, at
least, of these systems there will be found a predominant emotion and
certain instinctive tendencies, and a predominant feeling tone—of
pleasure or pain, of exaltation or depression, etc. It is quite possible
that careful investigation would disclose that it is this conflicting
affective force which is responsible for the differentiation of one
system from another with opposing affects and tendencies. The
differentiation of such systematized complexes is of considerable
practical importance for normal and abnormal personality. Among such
systems may here be mentioned those which are related to certain
_subjects_ or departments of human experience, or are related in _time_,
or to certain dispositions or _moods_ of the individual. The first may
be called _subject_ systems, the second _chronological_ systems, and the
last _mood_ systems.
1. _Subject systems_: I find myself interested, for instance, in several
fields of human knowledge; (a) abnormal psychology; (b) public
franchises; (c) yachting; (d) local politics; (e) business affairs. To
each of these I give a large amount of thought, accumulate many data
belonging to each, and devote a considerable amount of active work to
carrying into effect my ideas in each field. Five large systems are thus
formed, each consisting of facts, opinions, memories, experiences, etc.,
distinct from those belonging to the others. To each there is an emotion
and a feeling tone which have more or less distinctive qualities; these
coming from the intellectual interest of abnormal psychology differing
qualitatively from those of the “joy of battle” excited by a public
contest with a railroad corporation or gas company, as it does from that
of the exhilarating sport of a yacht race, or from the annoying and
rather depressing care of business interests; and so on.
These five subject-complexes do not form independent automatisms or
isolated systems which may intrude themselves in any conscious field,
but comprise large associations, memories of experiences in a special
field of thought. Within that field the ideas of the system are no more
strongly organized than are ideas in general; but it can be recognized
that the system as a whole with its affective tones is fairly well
delimited from the other complexes of other spheres of thought. It is
difficult, for certain individuals at least, to introduce the
associations of one subject-complex into the focus of attention so long
as another is invested with personal interest and occupies the attention
of consciousness. They find it difficult to switch[146] their minds from
one subject to another and back again. On the other hand, it is said of
Napoleon that he had all the subjects of his experiences arranged in
drawers of his mind, and that he could open each drawer at will, take
out any subject he wished, and shut it up again as he wished. Ability of
this kind involves remarkable control over the mind and is not given to
all.
I have frequently made observations like the following on myself,
showing the organization and differentiation of systems: I collect the
various data belonging to one of the problems discussed in these
lectures. I arrange all in an orderly fashion in my mind, work out the
logical relations and the conclusions to which they lead, as well as
their relations to other data and problems. The whole is then
schematically arranged on paper to await proper elaboration the next
morning, when it will be written out on waking, the preliminary mental
arrangement having been done at night. A large complex has been created,
the various details of which are luminously clear and the sequence of
the ideas vividly conceived, the conclusions definite. There is,
further, an affective tone of joy and exaltation which is apt to
accompany the accomplishment of an intellectual problem and which
produces a feeling of increased energy.
The next morning, as I awake and gradually return to full consciousness,
another and very different kind of complex almost exclusively fills my
mind, owing probably to the fatigue following the previous night’s work.
All sorts of gloomy thoughts, memories of experiences better forgotten,
course through the mind; and entirely different emotions (instincts),
and a strong feeling of depression dominate the mental panorama. The
whole—ideas, emotions, and feelings—makes a complex which has been
experienced over and over again, and is recognized as such. The same old
ideas, emotions, thoughts, and memories, conserved as neurograms, repeat
themselves almost in stereotyped fashion. The mental complex has
completely changed and the exuberant energy of the night before has
given place to listless inertia.
All this is commonplace enough, merely morning depression you will say,
due to fatigue; and so it is. But mark the sequel.
I now remember that I have a task to perform and before rising take
paper and pencil, lying ready at my side, to write out the theme
previously arranged in skeleton. But to my surprise I find that it
cannot be recalled. To be sure, I can, by effort of will, recall
individual facts, but the facts have lost their associations and
meaning, they remain comparatively isolated in memory; all their
correlated ramifications, their associated ideas and relations, which
the night before stood out in relief and crowded into consciousness,
have gone. The emotional tone and impulses which energized the thoughts
have also disappeared, and with them the system of complexes as a whole.
It has been dissociated, inhibited, repressed, and there is _amnesia_
for it. With the fatigue depression a new system, with different
emotions and feelings, now dominates the mind and the desired system
cannot be switched in.
This amnesia is not one of conservation but one of reproduction; for
later in the day the fatigue and depression disappear, a new energizing
emotional tone arises and the sought-for system is switched in and
returns in its entirety. With this change the depression system in turn
disappears, and now it is difficult to recall it, excepting that as an
intellectual fact I remember that such thoughts occupied my mind in the
early morning hours. The two systems as a whole are distinctly
differentiated from and alternate with one another.
All this is only expressing in somewhat technical language a common
experience, as most people, I suppose, have such _alternations of
complexes_. The facts are trite enough; but, because they are of common
experience, it is well to formulate them and so, as far as possible,
give precision to our conception of the psychological relations which
have a distinct bearing on the principles of dissociated personality and
other psychoses, on character and psycho-therapeutics. When, at a later
time, we take up for study the subject of dissociated personality[147]
we shall find that the dissociation of consciousness sometimes takes its
lines of cleavage between systems of complexes of this kind.[148] And,
above all, the formation of complexes _is the foundation stone of
psycho-therapeutics_.
The methods of _education and therapeutic suggestion_ are variants of
this mode of organizing mental processes. Both, in principle, are
substantially the same, differing only in detail. They depend for their
effect upon the implantation in the mind of ideational complexes
organized by repetition, or by the impulsive force of their affective
tones, or both. Every form of education necessarily involves the
artificial formation of such complexes, whether in a pedagogical,
religious, ethical, scientific, social, or professional field. So in
psychotherapy by artfully directed suggestion, or education in the
narrower sense, complexes may be similarly formed and organized. New
points of view and “sentiments” may be inculcated, useful emotions and
feelings excited, and the personality correspondingly modified. Roughly
speaking, this is accomplished by suggesting ideas that will form
_settings_ (associations) that give new and desired meanings to
previously harmful ideas; and these ideas, as well as any others we
desire to implant in the mind, are organized by suggestion with emotions
(instincts) of a useful, pleasurable, and exalting kind to form
desirable sentiments, and to carry the ideas to fulfilment. Thus
sentiments of right, or of ambition, or of sympathy, or of altruism, or
of disinterestedness in self are awakened; and, with all this, opposing
emotions are aroused to conflict with and repress the distressing ones,
and the whole welded into a complex which becomes conserved
neurographically and thereby a part of the personality.
Under ordinary conditions of every-day mental life _social suggestion_
acts like therapeutic suggestion. But the suggestions of every-day life
are so subtle and insidious that they are scarcely consciously
recognized.
2. _Chronological systems_ (using complex in a rather extended sense)
are those which embrace the experiences of certain epochs of our lives
rather than the subject material included in them. In a general way
events as they are successively experienced become associated together,
and with other elements of personality, so that the later recollection
of one event in the chain of an epoch recalls successively the others.
Conversely a break in the chain of memory may occur at any point and the
chain only be picked up at a more distant date, leaving between, as a
hiatus, an epoch for which there is amnesia of reproduction. This
normally common _amnesia affords confirmatory evidence_ of the
associative relation of successive events. Involving as it does the
unimportant and unemotional experiences as well as the important and
emotional—though the former may be as well conserved as the latter—it is
not easy to understand. The principle, however, plays an important part
in abnormal amnesia particularly, but not necessarily, where there is a
dissociation of personality.
The epoch may be of a few hours, or it may be of days, of months, or
years. The simplest example is the frequent amnesia for the few hours
preceding a physical injury to the head resulting in temporary
unconsciousness. In other cases it is the result of extensive
dissociation effected by suggestion (e. g., in hypnosis), or psychical
trauma including therein emotional conflicts. Thus, to cite an
experimental example: Miss B. is troubled by a distressing memory which
constantly recurs to her mind during the twenty-four hours. To relieve
her I suggest that she will completely forget the original experience.
To my surprise, though the suggestion is limited to the experience
alone, the whole twenty-four hours are completely wiped out of her
memory. She cannot recall a single incident of that day. The whole epoch
which had associations with the memory is dissociated.
When the epochal amnesia follows psychical trauma the condition of
memory is apt to present the following peculiarity and the personality
may be altered. When the epoch is the immediate past, i.e., includes the
experiences extending from a certain past date up to the present, it
sometimes happens that memory reverts to that past date. That is to say,
the personality goes back to the period last remembered in which he
believes, for the moment, he is still living, the memory of the
succeeding last epoch being dissociated from the personal consciousness.
Under such conditions there is something more than amnesia. The
neurographic residua of the remembered epoch are revived and its
experiences remembered as if they had just been lived. There is not only
a dissociation of the memories of one epoch, but a resurrection of the
conserved and maybe forgotten experiences of a preceding one. The
synthesis of these memories restores again the personal consciousness of
that period. Before the cleavage took place the recollection of the
resurrected epoch may have been very incomplete and vague; afterward the
new personality remembers it as if just experienced. The personality is,
however, in other respects generally (always?) something different from
the personality of that particular epoch. The dissociation is apt to
involve a certain number of acquired traits and certain innate
dispositions and instincts, while other outlived and repressed traits
and innate dispositions and instincts are apt to be reawakened and
synthesized into an altered abnormal personality. But this is another
story that does not concern us now.
As an example of epochal amnesia I may cite Mrs. J——, who, after
dissociation occurs, has amnesia for all the events of several years
succeeding a certain hour of a certain day when a psychical trauma
(shock) occurred. She thinks she is living on that day and remembers in
great detail its events as if they had just occurred.
Miss B. reverts on one occasion to a day, six years back, when she
received a psychical shock; the complexes of her personality of that day
are revived as if just lived, all the succeeding years being forgotten;
on another occasion she reverts to a day when she was living in another
city seven or eight years before.
M——l reverts to an early period of his life when he was living in
Russia, and forgets all since including even his knowledge of English.
B. C. A. on several occasions reverts to different epochs of her life
with complete amnesia for all after events. On each occasion she takes
up the thread of her mental life as if living in the past, and recites
the events as if just lived.
Likewise, after a subject reverts from the abnormal to the normal state,
after a short or long condition of altered personality, there may be a
complete amnesia for the abnormal epoch, and although now normal he
thinks it the same day on which dissociation occurred.
Thus, Miss O. develops a condition of dissociated personality lasting
six months during which, as it unfortunately happens, she falls in love
with a man whom she had never known in her normal state. At the end of
this period she “wakes up” with a complete loss of memory for the phase
of altered personality and, therefore, to find that her fiancé is
apparently a stranger to her (!).
The same amnesia in the normal state for prolonged epochs in which the
personality was altered was conspicuous in the case of Miss B. In
William James’ often-cited case of Ansel Bourne and Dr. E. E. Mayer’s
case of Chas. W. the subjects returned to their normal states with
complete amnesia for the abnormal epochs of two months and seventeen
years respectively.
After all, the common _amnesia for the hypnotic state after waking is
the same phenomenon_.
Such observations show the possible systematization of epoch complexes,
although the determining conditions are not as yet understood.
3. _Disposition or Mood systems._—Among the loosely organized complexes
in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain
dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations,
desires, and modes of activity, which, for one reason or another, we
tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals,
for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and
responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits
which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not
permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life; and yet they may
have a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately
appeal to all mankind and which many actually pursue; in other words, to
yield to the impulsive force of the innate disposition, or instinct, of
play. But these desires are repressed. Nevertheless the longing for
these pleasures, under the impulses of this instinct, recurs from time
to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves
a fabric of pictures, sentiments, thoughts, and emotions the whole of
which thus becomes organized into a systematized complex.
There may be a conflict, a rebellion and “kicking against the pricks”
and, thereby, a liberation of emotional force of the instinct,
impressing, on the one hand, a stronger organization of the whole
process, and, on the other, repressing all conflicting desires. Or, the
converse of this may hold and a person who devotes his life to the
lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for the more
serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly
build up a complex which may similarly express itself. The recurrence of
such complexes is one form of what we call a “mood” which has a
distinctively emotional tone of its own derived from the instincts and
sentiments which are dominant. Such a “disposition” system is often
spoken of as “_a side to one’s character_,” to which a person may from
time to time give play. Thus a person is said to have “many sides to his
character,” and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may
be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal
states.
It may be interesting to note in passing that the well-known
characteristics of people of a certain temperament, in consequence of
which they can pursue their respective vocations only when they are “in
the mood for it,” can be referred to this principle of complex
formations and dissociation of rival systems. Literary persons,
musicians, and artists in whom “feeling” is apt to be cultivated to a
degree of self-pampering are conspicuous in this class. The ideas
pertaining to the development of their craft form mixed subject and mood
complexes which tend to have strong emotional and feeling tones. When
some other affective tone is substituted, organized within a conflicting
complex, it is difficult for such persons to revive the subject complex
belonging to the piece of work in hand and necessary for its
prosecution. “The ideas will not come,” because the whole subject
complex which supplies the material with which the imagination is to
work has been dissociated and replaced by some other. Certain elements
in the complex can be revived piece-meal, as it were, but the complex
will not develop in mass with the emotional driving energy which belongs
to it. Not having their complexes and affects under voluntary control it
is necessary for such persons to wait until, from an alteration in the
coenesthesis or for some other reason, an alteration in the “feeling”
has taken place with a revival of the right complex _in mass_.
No more exquisite illustration of these “disposition complexes” could be
found than in the personality of William Sharp. Sharp’s title to
literary fame very largely rests upon the writings which he gave to the
world under the feminine name of Fiona Macleod. The identity of the
author was concealed from the world until his death, and it is still a
common belief that this concealment and the assumption of the feminine
pseudonym were nothing more than a literary hoax. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. There were two William Sharps; by which I mean,
of course, there were two very strongly organized and sharply cut sides
to his character. Each had its points of view, its complexes of ideas,
its imaginings, and, above all, its creative tendencies and feeling
tones. The one side—the one christened William Sharp—was the bread and
butter earner, the relatively practical man who came in contact with the
world—literary critic, “biographer, essay and novel writer as well as
poet”—the experienced side which was obliged to correct its imagination
by constant comparison with reality. The other side—Fiona Macleod—was
the so-called inner man; what he himself called his “true inward self.”
As Fiona he lived in his imagination and dreamed. The development of
this side of his personality began while, as he said, “I was still a
child.” “He found,” his biographer writes,[149] “as have other
imaginative, psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious
power of visions unshared by any one about him, so that what he related
was usually discredited; but the psychic side of his nature was too
intimate a part of his mind to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned
to shut it away—to keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a
mystery to himself.”
This inner life, as time went on, became a mood which he fostered and
developed and in which he built up great complexes of fancies, points of
view, and emotions, which, when the other side of his character came
uppermost, remained neurographically conserved and dormant in the
unconscious. The Fiona complexes he distinctly felt to be feminine in
type so that when he came to give expression to them, as he felt he
must, he concealed this side of his character under a feminine
pseudonym. “My truest self,” he wrote, “the self who is below all other
selves, and my most intimate life, and joys, and sufferings, thoughts,
emotions, and dreams must find expression, yet I cannot save in this
hidden way.”
“From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self, would sweep
aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea
that had lain dormant in what he called ‘the mind behind the mind’ would
suddenly visualize itself and blot out everything else from his
consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed,
hardly aware of what, or how, he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision
with which for the moment he was identified.”
“All my work,” he said, “is so intimately wrought with my own
experiences that I cannot tell you about _Pharais_, etc., without
telling you my whole life.”
William Sharp himself realized the two moods or “sides,” which became in
time developed into two distinct personalities. These he distinctly
recognized, although there was no amnesia. “Rightly or wrongly,” he
wrote, “I am conscious of something to be done by one side of me, by
one-half of me, by the true inward mind as I believe—(apart from the
overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual mind, and a reminiscent life, and
a woman’s life and nature within concurring with and oftenest dominating
the other)....” This dual personality was so strongly realized by him
that on his birthdays he wrote letters to himself as Fiona signed
“Will,” and _vice versa_.
I have dwelt upon this historical example of the exaggerated development
of mood complexes because, while well within the limits of normal life,
it brings home to us the recognition of psychological facts which we
all, more or less, have in common. But, more important than this, in
certain abnormal conditions where the dissociation between systems of
complexes becomes more exaggerated, mood, subject, chronological and
other complexes, linked as each is with its own characteristic emotions
and feelings—instincts and other innate dispositions—play a paramount
part and dominate the personality. In the _hysterical personality_, in
particular, there is more or less complete reversion to or a
subconscious awakening of one or other such complex. Where the
hysterical dissociation becomes so extreme as to eventuate in amnesia in
one state for another the different systems of complexes are easily
recognized as so many phases of _multiple personality_. But in so
identifying the ideational content of phases of personality it should
not be overlooked that intensive studies of multiple personality
disclose the fact that the dissociation of one phase for another carries
with it certain of the instincts innate in every organism. What I mean
to say is, observation of psychopathological states has shown that
instincts, such as play, hunger, anger, fear, love, disgust, the sexual
instincts, etc., may be dissociated separately or in conjunction with
complexes of ideas. In every case of multiple personality that I have
had the opportunity to study each phase has been shorn of one or more of
these inborn psycho-physiological dispositions and I believe this
obtains in every true case. As a result certain sentiments and traits
are lost while those that are retained stamp an individuality upon the
phase. And as the conative forces of the retained instincts are not
balanced and checked by the dissociated opposing instincts, the
sentiments which they form and the emotional reactions to which they
give rise stand out as dominating traits. Thus one phase may be
characterized by pugnacity, self-assertion, and elation; another by
submission, fear and tender feeling; and so on.
This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated
personality, but I may point out, in anticipation of a deeper discussion
of the subject, that, in accordance with these two principles, in such
conditions we sometimes find that disposition and other complexes
conserved in the unconscious come to the surface and displace or
substitute themselves for the other complexes which dominate a
personality. A complex or system of complexes that is only a mood or a
“side of the character” of a normal individual, may in conditions of
dissociation become the main complex and chief characteristic of the new
personality. In Miss B., for instance, the personality known as BI was
made up almost entirely of the religious and ethical ideas with
corresponding instincts which formed one side of the original self. In
the personality known as Sally we had for the most part the
chronological and mood complexes of youth representing the enjoyment of
youthful pleasures and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and
artificial restraints generally imposed by duties and responsibilities;
she was a resurrection of child life. In BIV the complex represented the
ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss B., as a whole,
normal, without disintegration, it was easy to recognize all three
dispositions as sides of her character, though each was kept ordinarily
within proper bounds by the conflicting influence of the others. It was
only necessary to put her in an environment which encouraged one or the
other side, to associate her with people who strongly suggested one or
the other of her own characteristics, whether religious, social,
pleasure-loving, or intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI,
Sally, or BIV stand out in relief as the predominant personality. Then
we had the alternating play of these different sides of her character.
Likewise in B. C. A. In each of the personalities, B and A, similar
disposition complexes could be recognized each corresponding to a side
of the character of the original personality C. In A were represented
the complexes formed by ideas of duty, responsibility, and moral
scruples; in B were represented the complexes formed by the longing for
fun and the amusements which life offered. When the cleavage of
personality took place it was between these two complexes, just as it
was in Miss B. between the several complexes above described. This is
well brought out in the respective autobiographies of B[150] and
Sally[151] in these two cases. In many cases of hysteria in which
dissociation of personality can be recognized the same phenomenon is
often manifest. A careful study will reveal it also, I believe, in other
cases of multiple personality, although, of course, as we have seen, the
dissociation may be along other lines; that is, between other complexes
than those of disposition.
This principle of the conservation, as neurograms in the unconscious, of
complexes representing “sides” to one’s character, gives a new meaning
to the saying _In vino veritas_. In alcoholic and other forms of
intoxication there results a loss of inhibition, of self-control, and
the disposition complexes, which have been repressed or concealed by the
individual as a matter of social defense, arise out of the unconscious,
and, for the time being, become the dominant mood or phase of
personality. When these complexes represent the true inner life and
nature of the individual, freed from the repressing protection of
expediency, we can then truly say “In vino veritas.”
=Complexes organized in hypnotic and other dissociated conditions.=—1.
We have been speaking thus far of complexes formed in the course of
every-day life and which take part in the composition of the normal
personality. But it is obvious that a complex may be organized in any
condition of personality so long as we are dealing with consciousness,
however limited or disturbed. Thus in _artificial states_, like hypnosis
and the subconscious process which produces automatic writing, ideas may
be synthesized into systems as well as in normal waking life. This is
exemplified by the fact that in hypnosis the memories of past hypnotic
experiences are conserved and form systems of memories dissociated from
the memories of waking life. When the subject regains the normal
condition of the personal self, though there may be amnesia for the
hypnotic experiences their neurograms remain conserved to the same
extent and in the same fashion as do those of the waking life.
Consequently on the return to the hypnotic state the memories of
previous hypnotic experiences are recovered.
This systematization of hypnotic experiences is easily recognized in
those cases where several different hypnotic states can be obtained in
the same individual. Each state has its own system of memories differing
from, and with amnesia for, those of the others. Each system also has
its own feeling tones, one system, for example, having a tone of
elation, another, of depression, etc. The systematization is still more
accentuated in cases like the one mentioned in the second lecture (p.
19), where the subject goes into a hypnotic state resembling a trance,
and lives in an ideal world, peopled by imaginary persons, and in an
imaginary environment, perhaps a spirit world or another planet. The
content of consciousness consists of fabrications which make up a
fancied life. In the instance I have mentioned the subject imagined she
was living in a world of spirits; in Flournoy’s classical case, Mlle
Hélène Smith imagined she was an inhabitant of the planet Mars, and
spoke a fabricated language. In these states the same systems of ideas
invariably appeared.
2. In consequence of this principle of systematization it is in our
power by educational suggestion in hypnosis to organize mental processes
and _build complexes_ of the same kind and in the same way as when the
subject is awake. In fact, it is more readily done, inasmuch as in
hypnosis the critical judgment and reflection tend to be suspended. The
suggested ideas are accepted and education more easily accomplished.
While in hypnosis the individual may thus be made to accept and hold new
beliefs, new judgments, in short, new knowledge.[152] After waking he
may or may not remember his hypnotic experiences. Generally he does. If
he does the new knowledge, if firmly organized (by repetition and strong
affective tones) is still retained, and if accepted (i.e., not repressed
by conflicting ideas) shapes his views and conduct in accordance
therewith. Even if his hypnotic experiences are not remembered, they
still belong to his personality, inasmuch as they are neurographically
conserved, and, experience shows, may still influence his stream of
consciousness. His views are modified by his unconscious personality.
His ideas may and generally do awaken the neurograms of associated
systems created in hypnosis. Not remembering the hypnotic state as a
whole he does not remember the _origin_ of his new knowledge; that is
all.
One point to be borne in mind is that conserved ideas, whether we can
recall them or not, so long as they are conserved are a part of our
personality, as I have previously pointed out, and ideas can emerge from
the unconscious into the field of the conscious though we have
completely forgotten their origin. It requires but a single experiment
in the induction of suggested post-hypnotic phenomena to demonstrate
these principles.
3. As to those _pathological states_ where there is a splitting of
personality—hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance states,
certain types of epilepsy, etc.—complexes may similarly be formed in
them. In these conditions there is a dissociation of a large part of the
normal mental life, and that which is left is only a limited field of
consciousness. A new synthesis comes into being out of the unconscious
to represent the personal self. Though the content of consciousness is a
reproduction of, or determined by certain previous experiences, it is
also true that in these states new experiences may result in new
complexes which then take part in the personality as with hypnotic
experiences.
=Personality as the survival of organized antecedent experiences.=—Of
course all our past mental experiences do not persist as organized
complexes. The latter, after they have served their purpose, tend to
become disaggregated, just as printer’s type is disaggregated or
distributed after it has served its purpose in printing. In the
organization and development of personality the elements of the mental
experiences become sifted, as it were. Normally, in the adaptation of
the individual to the environment, the unessential and useless, the
intermediate steps leading to the final and useful, tend to drop out
without leaving surviving residua, while the essential and useful tend
to remain as memories capable of recall. In the unconscious these remain
more or less permanently fixed as limited ideas, sentiments, and systems
of complexes. Further, those complexes of experiences which persist not
only provide the material for our memories, but tend, consciously or
unconsciously, to shape the judgments, beliefs, convictions, habits, and
tendencies of our mental lives. Whence they came, how they were born, we
have long ceased to remember. We often arrive at conclusions which we
imagine in our ignorance we have constructed at the moment unaided out
of our inner consciousness. In one sense this is true, but that inner
consciousness has been largely determined by the vestiges furnished by
forgotten experiences. Many of these we imbibed from our environment and
the experiences of our fellows; in this sense we are all plagiarists of
the past.
Furthermore, we react, to a large extent, to our environment in a way
that we do not thoroughly understand because these reactions are
determined by the impulses of unconscious complexes organized with
innate dispositions. Indeed, our reactions to the environment, our moral
and social conduct, the affective reactions of our sentiments,
instincts, feelings, and other conative tendencies, our “habits,”
judgments, points of view, and attitudes of mind—all that we term
character and personality—are predetermined by the mental experiences of
the past by which they are developed, organized, and conserved in the
unconscious. Otherwise all would be chaos. We are thus the offspring of
our past and the past is the present.
This same principle underlies what is called the “social conscience,”
the “civic” and “national conscience,” patriotism, public opinion, what
the Germans call “Sittlichkeit,” the war attitude of mind, etc. All
these mental attitudes may be reduced to common habits of thought and
conduct derived from mental experiences common to a given community and
conserved as complexes in the unconscious of the several individuals of
the community.[153]
Through education, whether scholastic, vocational, or social, we inherit
the experiences of our predecessors and become “... the heir of all the
ages, in the foremost files of time.” But the conceptions of one age can
never represent those of a preceding age. The veriest layman in science
today could not entertain the conceptions underlying many hypotheses
formulated by the wisest of the preceding age—of a Galileo, a Descartes,
or Pascal. Lucretius, in the first century B. C., argued, with what for
the time was great force, that the soul of man was corporeal and that it
“must consist of very small seeds and be inwoven through veins and flesh
and sinews; inasmuch as, after it has all withdrawn from the whole body
the exterior contour of the limbs preserves itself entire and not a
tittle of the weight is lost.”
Lucretius gave much thought to this problem, but to-day the least
cultured person, who has never reflected at all on psychological
matters, would recognize the foolishness of such a conception and reject
the hypothesis.[154] He would call it _common-sense_ which guided him,
but common-sense depends upon the fact that in the unconscious lie
memories, the reasons for and origin of which we do not remember; these
nullify such an hypothesis. These contradicting ideas, sifted out of
those belonging to the social education, have become fixed as dormant or
organized memories, and determine the judgments and trends of the
personal consciousness. These memory vestiges may work for good or evil,
shape our personal consciousness into a useful or useless form, one that
adapts or unfits the organism to its environment. In the latter case
they drive the organism into the field of pathological psychology.
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Footnote 138:
I am using this word in the general sense of any mental experience as
in the common phrase, “the association of ideas,” and not in the
restricted sense of Titchener as the equivalent of a perception.
Footnote 139:
I use this word “complex” in the general sense in which it is commonly
used and not with the specific meaning given to it by the Zurich
school, which limits it to a system of ideas to which a strong
affective tone is attached and which, because of its personally
distressing character, is repressed into the subconscious.
Footnote 140:
Which may be psychical, although not psychological.
Footnote 141:
Sisters of Napoleon, by M. Joseph Turquan.
Footnote 142:
McDougall (Social Psychology) regards jealousy as a complex emotional
state in which anger, tender emotion, and other innate dispositions
are factors.
Footnote 143:
Not included in this volume.
Footnote 144:
Aboulie et idées fixes, Revue philosophique, 1891, i., p. 279. Mental
State of Hystericals, p. 408.
Footnote 145: