It is my opinion that the importance of unconscious operations[208] in
legal procedure is undervalued. We could establish much that is
significant concerning an individual whose unconscious doings we knew.
For, as a rule, we perform unconsciously things that are deeply
habitual, therefore, first of all what everybody does--walk, greet your
neighbor, dodge, eat, etc.; secondly, we perform unconsciously things to
which we have become accustomed in accordance with our especial
characters.[209] When, during my work, I rise, get a glass of water,
drink it, and set the glass aside again, without having the slightest
suspicion of having done so, I must agree that this was possible only in
my well-known residence and environment, and that it was possible to
nobody else, not so familiar. The coachman, perhaps, puts the horses
into the stable, rubs them down, etc., and thinks of something else
while doing so. He has performed unconsciously what another could not.
It might happen that I roll a cigarette while I am working, and put it
aside; after awhile I roll a second and a third, and sometimes I have
four cigarettes side by side. I needed to smoke, had prepared a
cigarette, and simply because I had to use my hands in writing, etc., I
laid the cigarette aside. In consequence, the need to smoke was not
satisfied and the process was repeated. This indicates what complicated
things may be unconsciously performed if only the conditions are
well-known; but it also indicates what the limits of unconscious action
are: e.g., I had not forgotten what would satisfy my need to smoke, nor
where my cigarette paper was, nor how to make a cigarette, but I had
forgotten that I had made a cigarette without having smoked it. The
activities first named have been repeated thousands of times, while the
last had only just been performed and therefore had not become
mechanical.[210]
Lipps calls attention to another instance: “It may be that I am capable
of retaining every word of a speech and of observing at the same time
the expression which accompanies the speech. I might be equally able to
trace a noise which occurs on the street and still to pay sufficient
attention to the speech. On the other hand, I should lose the thread of
the speech if I were required at the same time to think of the play of
feature and the noise. Expressed in general terms, idea A may possibly
get on with idea B and even idea C; but B and C together make A
impossible. This clearly indicates that B and C in themselves have
opposed A and inhibited it in some degree, but that only the summation
of their inhibition could serve really to exclude A.” This is certainly
correct and may perhaps be more frequently made use of when it is
necessary to judge how much an individual would have done at one and
the same time, and how much he would have done unconsciously. An
approximation of the possibilities can always be made.
Such complicated processes go down to the simplest operations. Aubert
indicates, for example, that in riding a horse at gallop you jump and
only later observe whether you have jumped to the right or the left. And
the physician Förster told Aubert that his patients often did not know
how to look toward right or left. At the same time, everybody remembers
how when he is doing it unconsciously, and it may often be observed that
people have to make the sign of the cross, or the gesture of eating in
order to discover what is right and what left, although they are
unconsciously quite certain of these directions. Still broader
activities are bound up with this unconscious psychosis, activities for
us of importance when the accused later give us different and better
explanations than at the beginning, and when they have not had the
opportunity to study the case out and make additional discoveries, or to
think it over in the mean time. They then say honestly that the new,
really probable exposition has suddenly occurred to them. As a rule we
do not believe such statements, and we are wrong, for even when this
sudden vision appears improbable and not easily realizable, the
witnesses have explained it in this way only because they do not know
the psychological process, which, as a matter of fact, consisted of
subconscious thinking.
The brain does not merely receive impressions unconsciously, it
registers them without the co-operation of consciousness, works them
over unconsciously, awakens the latent residua without the help of
consciousness, and reacts like an organ endowed with organic life toward
the inner stimuli which it receives from other parts of the body. That
this also influences the activity of the imagination, Goethe has
indicated in his statement to Schiller: “Impressions must work silently
in me for a very long time before they show themselves willing to be
used poetically.”
In other respects everybody knows something about this unconscious
intellectual activity. Frequently we plague ourselves with the attempt
to bring order into the flow of ideas--and we fail. Then the next time,
without our having thought of the matter in the interval, we find
everything smooth and clear. It is on this fact that the various popular
maxims rest, e.g., to think a thing over, or to sleep on it, etc. The
unconscious activity of thought has a great share in what has been
thought out.
A very distinctive rôle belongs to the coincidence of conscious
attention with unconscious. An explanation of this process will help us,
perhaps, to explain many incomprehensible and improbable things. “Even
the unconscious psychic activities,--going up and down, smoking, playing
with the hands, etc., conversation,--compete with the conscious or with
other unconscious activities for psychic energy. Hence, a
suddenly-appearing important idea may lead us to stop walking, to remain
without a rule of action, may make the smoker drop his smoking, etc.”
The explanation is as follows: I possess, let us say, 100 units of
psychic energy which I might use in attention. Now we find it difficult
to attend for twenty seconds to one point, and more so to direct our
thought-energy to one thing. Hence I apply only, let us say, 90 units to
the object in question, and apply 10 units to the unconscious play of
ideas, etc. Now, if the first object suddenly demands even more
attention, it draws off the other ten units, and I must stop playing,
for absolutely without attention, even unconscious attention, nothing
can be done.
This very frequent and well-known phenomenon, shows us, first of all,
the unconscious activities in their agreement with the conscious,
inasmuch as we behave in the same way when both are interrupted by the
demand of another thing on our attention. If a row suddenly breaks out
before my window I will interrupt an unconscious drumming with the
fingers as well as a conscious reading, so that it would be impossible
to draw any conclusion concerning the nature of these activities from
the mere interruption or the manner of that interruption. This
similarity is an additional ground for the fact that what is done
unconsciously may be very complex. No absolute boundary may be drawn,
and hence we can derive no proof of the incorrectness of an assertion
from the performance itself, i.e., from _what_ has been done
unconsciously. Only human nature, its habits, idiosyncrasies, and its
contemporary environment can give us any norm.