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THE OMNIPOTENT SELF
A Study in Self-Deception and Self-Cure
BY
PAUL BOUSFIELD
M.R.C.S. (ENG.), L.R.C.P. (LOND.)
_Physician to the London Neurological Clinic (Ministry of Pensions),
Late Demonstrator of Morbid Anatomy, St. George’s Hospital, Late
M.O. American Women’s Hospital for Officers, etc., etc._
Author of _The Elements of Practical Psycho-Analysis_.
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.,
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1923
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS, TORQUAY.
PREFACE
“_Nature has granted to all to be happy if we but knew how to use her
gifts._”--CLAUDIUS.
Many people, while not considering themselves as suffering from any
nervous ailment, nor desiring the services of a physician, are yet far
from being perfectly happy in their mental outlook and temperament.
Either their feelings are too easily roused, or they are inclined to
worry, to be depressed, irritable, nervous, or over-sensitive. Trifles
which to them seem no trifles interfere with the smooth course of their
daily lives, or this slight abnormality may manifest itself in an
over-sensitiveness to physical pain or to mental or moral difficulties
and conflicts. It is with the hope of helping a few such individuals
to a better understanding of themselves, and through this to a more
equable temperament and greater happiness, that this little book is
written.
There is no hard and fast line between the normal and the abnormal
person, and indeed a very real difficulty exists in even defining a
normal person. If we take our definition of normal as being “average
or conforming to type or standard,” then the majority of people
are normal. If, on the other hand, we take its other meaning, that
of “performing the proper functions,” then there are few people
approaching the normal under modern civilized conditions. A tendency
to undue irritability or depression is a mild and very common form of
abnormality. Hysterias, obsessions, and unreasonable fears are greater
abnormalities, and fortunately of less frequent occurrence, while
certain forms of insanity are still greater deviations from the normal.
A similar combination of causes, however, may form the basis of all
these abnormalities, and these various deviations from the normal are
more of degree than of kind. But whereas in cases of obsessions and
unreasonable fears or in such other abnormalities as homo-sexuality or
sexual impotence, etc., the causes are deeply hidden and the forces at
work somewhat complicated, in the lesser abnormalities there are causes
frequently lying less deeply.
In the case of obsessions, phobias, hysterias, sexual abnormalities,
and so forth, we can only hope to effect an improvement by a thorough
analysis of the unconscious causes and conflicts by a competent
psycho-analyst. In the lesser troubles of the mind, however,
considerable improvement can often be effected by means of a somewhat
superficial self-analysis. This will be directed towards investigating
one in particular of the primary causes which play an important part in
all the minor unpleasant temperamental faults.
In order to teach the patient to help himself, it will first of all be
necessary to enlighten him to a considerable extent as to the general
evolution of his character; at any rate in as far as one important
mental complex known as “Narcissism” is concerned. In doing this, many
other mental complexes will have to be superficially touched upon; but
in order to simplify the work for the uninitiated, they will not be
specifically named when they appear; for, although this would make the
work more technically accurate, it would, at the same time, make it
less clear, and in a book of this type this would be very undesirable.
The first object I have in mind is that the work shall be lucid,
concise, and readily understood by any person of ordinary education,
so that he may gain an insight into the essential causes and growth
of some of his abnormal characteristics without undue complication
of ideas. It is further hoped that this small work may be of some
assistance in suggesting to parents a few of the many things to be
avoided in the early training of the child.
PAUL BOUSFIELD
_7, Harley Street, W._
CONTENTS
PART I: THE OMNIPOTENT SELF
CHAP. PAGE
I THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 3
II REPRESSION 19
III THE FORCES SHAPING CHARACTER 27
IV DETERMINISM AND WILL POWER 41
V NARCISSISM 49
VI FACT AND PHANTASY 64
VII IDENTIFICATION 74
VIII THE IRRITABLE TEMPERAMENT 87
IX RATIONALIZATION 98
PART II: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
X SELF ANALYSIS 111
XI READJUSTMENT OF OBJECTIVES 121
XII READJUSTMENT OF THOUGHT 138
XIII AUTO-SUGGESTION 157
XIV CONCLUSION 165
PART I
THE OMNIPOTENT SELF
CHAPTER I
THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
§1
In considering the question of character, with its various
irregularities and idiosyncracies, we shall have to accustom ourselves
to dealing with factors which do not exist in consciousness at all.
Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, many of our thoughts, ideas,
and motives are quite outside our normal consciousness, and of them
only the resulting emotions and actions appear on the surface. This
may be taken as an absolute and indisputable fact, and one which the
reader should try to appreciate at the outset, although it is somewhat
difficult to realise, for we always find it hard to apprehend and
understand something which we can neither see nor touch.
If one were to tell the ordinary labourer that water is composed of
two gases which when combined form a liquid, he would probably be
quite incredulous, and possibly in his ignorance might even deny
emphatically any such possibility, on the grounds that it was against
all common-sense and experience; he failing to realise, of course, how
very limited were both his sense and his experience. In spite of his
feelings of absolute certainty, and in spite of complete faith in the
unshakable logic behind his belief, he would be wrong.
While it is not to be expected that many readers of this book will deny
the existence of the unconscious part of the mind, it may well be that
many will fail to realise that it is of more than theoretical value.
It therefore becomes necessary for us to examine the matter somewhat
carefully, and to familiarise ourselves with the ideas of the working
of this unconscious mind.
Without going into the further sub-divisions recognised in psychology,
we will confine ourselves to dividing the mind into two parts--the
conscious and the unconscious. _And of these, at any given moment, the
conscious is by far the smaller part._ We are actually conscious at
any moment of but very few things, such as the book we are reading,
the chair we are sitting on, and dimly of our immediate surroundings.
A thousand memories which we might conjure up of our childhood and
our past are, for the time being, far from consciousness. Yet these
matters exist somewhere in the mind, for we are able, if we choose,
to search about in it, and bring them into consciousness, even though
we may not have thought of them for many years. This leads us at once
to a striking fact, namely, that while many things can be remembered
at will, others which we feel we ought to remember, cannot be brought
to mind at all. It is an extremely common experience to find that one
has forgotten a name completely, and that no effort will bring it into
consciousness, yet later on, apparently without effort, the name will
“come back to us,” as we say. In fact, the very phrase we use--“come
back to us”--implies that it has been somewhere away from us, that it
has been lodged in some place that is foreign and unknown to us, yet
which we are aware is somewhere within us.
It is also common knowledge that a great many events and scenes of
considerable importance to us at the time of action are forgotten, and
that they can only be recollected if some sort of stimulus or reminder
be given. For instance, a person may have forgotten completely where
and how he spent a holiday ten years ago. No amount of racking his
brain brings anything to light. But having been reminded of a single
incident that occurred during that holiday, the whole of the rest may
come up from the unconscious in full detail.
There is a third kind of memory more important still, if one may
be permitted to call it memory, and that is the memory of facts
which no _ordinary_ stimulus of this sort will ever bring up into
consciousness again. The term “memory” is used here because we have
every reason to believe that somewhere in the unconscious all facts
have been registered, and in many cases may be partially brought into
consciousness again by suitable means, such for instance, as hypnotism
or psycho-analysis, (two very different methods, by the way). Yet,
though these impressions have been made on the mind, and though there
is this unconscious memory still in existence, in the ordinary course
of events we should never again be conscious of them.
_We may, however, be very conscious of actions and emotions emanating
from the unconscious memory._ Thus, suppose that as a child one had
lived in the country, and on several very happy occasions a bonfire
had been lighted at a picnic, and that later on one lived in a town,
and that this picnic which happened at the age of three or four years
had become completely forgotten, so much so that even photographs of
the scenes or conversations on the subject carried on by other people
brought no memory to light and seemed to touch no chord; it would still
be quite likely that the mere smell of a bon-fire in the distance or
any smell resembling this would be enough to cause a considerable
feeling of elation and happiness in the person, a feeling that
something pleasant was taking place, an idea that if only one could
remember, a pleasant picture could be called up. This is because it is
associated in the unconscious mind with these previous happy occasions.
Or again, suppose a child at the age of two or three years has been
dropped into a pond and nearly drowned. Although the incident may
in later years be completely forgotten, the horror of deep water
and all its associations may vividly persist. It seems probable,
and a considerable amount of work has been done on this subject in
psycho-analysis, that every action, thought, or idea that has ever
been registered in the mind, even to some extent before birth, is
permanently fixed; and that although much of this cannot be brought
into consciousness by present methods, yet all the feelings and
emotions, however slight, which attended these thoughts, ideas, and
actions are perpetually being called forth by slight stimuli of which
we are unaware, and these are playing their part in moulding our
thoughts, feelings and actions in the present time.
I had an interesting patient a short time ago who, owing to certain
experiences in the war, was suffering from complete loss of memory; so
complete that he did not know his own wife nor even his parents. Under
hypnosis, the whole of his memory was rapidly brought back; and when it
appeared to be normal and both he and his parents were quite confident
that it was as good as it had ever been, I suggested that we might try
an experiment to see if we could improve it still further. I asked him,
amongst other things, if he could voluntarily remember the first time
he wore knickerbockers. He had not the faintest recollection of the
matter. I then hypnotised him, and told him to give me the details. He
described the knickerbockers minutely, the number of buttons on them,
the fact that he wore them on his third birthday, that his father had
given him a penny, and told him that “now he was a little man, he must
have money in his pocket,” together with a very large number of other
details. I enquired of his father and mother and sisters, and they
corroborated the details in every particular.
I have tried several similar experiments with him and with one or two
other patients under hypnosis with considerable success, and have even
tried to take them back to the memory of their own birth. They have
frequently produced many memories of events that occurred before the
age of one year, but previous to that could only give reproductions of
movements and pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Whether these latter
are memories or not one has unfortunately no means of proving. But the
fact that under hypnosis both educated and uneducated people alike
exhibit extremely similar ideas as to types of movements, expressions,
and feelings at the various stages of their very early life, inclines
one to think that these reproductions may be memories. One has,
however, to beware of the fact that observation and knowledge acquired
in later periods of their lives might be the real factor underlying
their apparent reproductions. Further evidence of a different nature
will be given on this point, however, at a later stage in the book.
§2
So far, we have shown that there is an unconscious part of the mind
which acts as a store-house for memories, ideas, and emotions of the
past. We have not, however, shown that it is anything more than a
store-house. But if we look into it from other points of view, we
shall see that it is a great deal more than a mere store-house, for
it thinks, reasons, comes to conclusions, and in fact assists in
controlling our acts at every turn; indeed this unconscious part of our
mind wields driving forces of the utmost potency in moulding our lives.
Let us examine first the _reasoning_ faculty of the unconscious mind.
Maeder gives a good example of this. A house-surgeon at a hospital
wished particularly to keep a certain appointment, but he was not
allowed to leave the hospital until his chief, who was out, should
return later in the evening. As his appointment was of considerable
importance, he decided to brave the anger of his chief. He therefore
kept his appointment, but when he returned later, he found to his
astonishment that he had left a light in his room, a thing he had
never done before, although he had occupied that room for two years.
He thought the matter over, and soon realised why he had done this.
The chief, on going to his own house, would pass the window and would
see the light burning within, and imagine that his house-surgeon was
at home. The unconscious mind had rapidly reasoned this out and had
determined that the conscious mind should forget to turn off the light.
Another illustration of the persistent way in which the unconscious
mind will reason and act can be given from my own experience. I had to
attend a lecture given by a man, with whose views I totally disagreed.
I had no wish to attend the lecture, but felt compelled to do so in
an official capacity. Consciously, I determined to go; unconsciously
when I made the note of the lecture, I wrote down the time of it in
my engagement-book a week late. On discovering this, I consciously
endeavoured to rectify the matter, but my unconscious mind wrote
Tuesday instead of Thursday in my engagement-book, so it went down
wrong once again. Later, having been forced to see my mistake by a
friend mentioning the matter, I omitted for a short time to rectify it
in my engagement-book, feeling sure that I should remember to do so a
little later. But alas! for the determination of my conscious mind. I
forthwith made an appointment for a patient at the real time appointed
for the lecture, and so could not in the end attend it. Now, these
lectures were held regularly on a particular day of the week, and I
had generally looked forward to them, and attended them without any
difficulty. It was only in this one case that I did not wish to go. My
conscious mind decided to attend; but my unconscious mind played trick
after trick in order that my real desires should be satisfied. Such
examples could be multiplied indefinitely. It is possible that many
would say that they do not actually prove unconscious reasoning nor
power of thought. Let me, therefore, give one or two simple examples of
a different nature.
A friend of mine once told me that he had spent several days in trying
to work out a chess problem without success. One morning, he woke
up with a picture in his mind of the exact moves that he must make.
The problem had been solved in his sleep unconsciously, and with no
recollection on waking of any conscious effort at reaching the solution.
In my own experience, as a school-boy, I failed to solve a problem in
Euclid during an examination. On the morning afterwards, the solution
flashed through my brain suddenly, as I lay in bed. Whether I had
solved it in my sleep, or whether it was solved in bed as I lay awake,
I am not prepared to say. Of this much, however, I am certain. I made
no conscious effort; my mind merely wandered lazily in the direction
of the previous day’s failure, and almost instantaneously the right
solution appeared without effort.
Let us now take another example of work which the unconscious mind is
called upon to perform; an example which we are accustomed to view
without question or thought, which is comparatively commonplace,
and which we dismiss summarily by referring to it as “habit.” The
accomplished pianist reads the music in front of him consciously, but
he is not conscious of the extremely rapid translation which takes
place from the brain to the fingers, so as to produce complicated
movements on the key-board. And if we examine it carefully, we shall
find that something very wonderful has actually taken place outside
his consciousness. When he was first learning to play, he looked at
the note on his music, and said to himself “That is C.” He looked at
the key on the piano, and repeated “That is C.” He was taught that a
particular finger must be placed on that particular note when playing
in a certain key. He was taught that it had to be hit in a particular
way and held down for a particular time, according to the size and
shape of the note he was reading on the sheet of music in front of him.
He was further taught that in order to modify any sound in a particular
manner, he could use his feet on one or other of the pedals, and must
be extremely careful to put his feet down and lift his feet up again
at exactly the right moment. He was taught that when certain symbols,
known as sharps and flats, preceded the notes at the beginning of his
piece of music, the whole scheme of fingering would be different. And,
at first, he had laboriously to go through the process of watching
first the music and then the key-board, and of _thinking_ at each
point what he should do with his fingers and with his feet, and how he
should do it, and for what period he should keep on doing it. Now, the
whole process is gone through with half-a-million notes which he has
never seen before, many of them played simultaneously, and with an
exactitude which he never attained when he was consciously thinking.
Whatever may be the nature of the unconscious action which is taking
place, all he has in consciousness is the music in front of him, and
the final sound that he is producing, together with the emotions which
these called forth in him as a result of the whole.
Can there be any doubt left that a complicated unconscious process of
the same kind is taking place?
Or again, let us examine our own personal likes and dislikes.
Frequently one can assign no reason whatsoever for these. They may
exist, in fact, against what we call our better judgment. We may
love a person in spite of certain faults, or dislike him in spite
of his virtues. If the matter be examined further, however, we not
infrequently find the reasons for our emotions towards him. Either
his manner, dress, or tone of voice, or some other trivial feature
may resemble someone we have liked before, or on the contrary, some
mannerism may call to mind a similar mannerism which we associate
either in ourselves or in some other person, with unpleasant
characteristics. Our unconscious mind has rapidly sized up all these
points, appraised them, and presented our conscious mind with the
resulting emotions alone.
So-called intuition is, to a large extent, merely rapid unconscious
reasoning, in which minute details are taken into consideration by the
unconscious, and only the final opinion presented to consciousness.
One should beware of trusting intuition too much, however, in spite of
popular prejudice to the contrary, for unconscious reasoning is just
as liable to be wrong in its conclusions as is conscious reasoning;
and it is just as liable to reach the conclusion which best serves its
immediate purpose, and to suppress truth where it is unpleasant.[1]
Some psychologists think that the unconscious mind is _infallible_
in purely _deductive_ reasoning from the _premises_ from which it
starts. But it provides its own premises from a secret store and also
accepts any suggested premises which are not repugnant. The premises
may therefore be wrong but the deductive reasoning is accurate. In this
case the conclusions will only be wrong because the premises are wrong.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Unconscious reasoning or intuition is found chiefly in those who
have not been trained in subjects which induce and train logical
conscious reasoning. It is not a prerogative of sex, but on the whole
is found more amongst women, merely because of their method of training
from childhood upwards. In children and savages intuition is found
equally present in both sexes. The loss of intuition merely means
that the training of the conscious mind has caused us to mistrust
conclusions for which we cannot consciously see the reasons.