IS THE SUBCONSCIOUS A PERSONALITY?
The problem that interested me most was to come into close contact
with the subwaking self. What is its fundamental nature? What are
the main traits of its character? Since in hypnosis the subwaking
self is freed from its chains, is untrammeled by the shackles of
the upper, controlling self, since in hypnosis the underground
self is more or less exposed to our view, it is plain that
experimentation on the hypnotic self will introduce us into the
secret life of the subwaking self. For, as we pointed out, the two
are identical.
I have made all kinds of experiments, bringing subjects into
catalepsy, somnambulism, giving illusions, hallucinations,
post-hypnotic suggestions, etc. As a result of my work one central
truth stands out clear, and that is the _extraordinary plasticity
of the subwaking self_.
If you can only in some way or other succeed in separating the
primary controlling consciousness from the lower one, the waking
from the subwaking self, so that they should no longer keep
company, you can do anything you please with the subwaking self.
You can make its legs, its hands, any limb you like perfectly
rigid; you can make it eat pepper for sugar; you can make it drink
water for wine; feel cold or warm; hear delightful stories in the
absence of all sounds; feel pain or pleasure, see oranges where
there is nothing; you can make it eat them and enjoy their taste.
In short, you can do with the subwaking self anything you like. The
subwaking consciousness is in your power, like clay in the hands of
the potter. The plasticity of the subconscious is revealed by its
extreme suggestibility.
I wanted to get an insight into the very nature of the subwaking
self; I wished to make a personal acquaintance with it. “What is
its _personal_ character?” I asked. How surprised I was when, after
a close interrogation, the answer came to me that there cannot
possibly be any personal acquaintance with it,--for _the subwaking
self lacks personality_.
Under certain conditions a cleavage may occur between the two
selves, and then the subwaking self may rapidly grow, develop,
and attain, apparently, the plane of self-consciousness, get
crystallized into a person, and give itself a name, imaginary,
or borrowed from history. This accounts for the spiritualistic
phenomena of personality, guides, controls, and communications by
dead personalities, or spirits coming from another world, such as
have been observed in the case of Mrs. Piper and other mediums
of like types; it accounts for all the phenomena of multiple
personality, simulating the dead or the living, or formed anew out
of the matrix of the subconscious.
All such personality metamorphoses can be easily developed,
under favorable conditions in any psychopathological laboratory.
They can be easily formed, by suggestion in trance, hypnotic,
and waking states. The newly crystallized personality is, as a
rule, extremely unstable, ephemeral, shadowy in its outlines,
spirit-like, ghost-like, tends to become amorphous, being formed
again and again under the influence of favorable conditions and
suggestions, rising to the surface of consciousness, then sinking
into the subconsciousness, and disappearing, only to give rise to
new personality-metamorphoses, bursting like so many bubbles on the
surface of the upper stream of consciousness.
There are cases when the personality of the individual is changed,
or more personalities are formed. This metamorphosis may be brought
about _artificially_, by suggestion, either direct or indirect.
This is often brought about in a state of hypnosis when any number
of personalities may be formed at the will of the hypnotizer
who may create them deliberately; or they may become formed by
subtle indirect suggestion, coming from the hypnotizer, of which
he himself is not fully conscious; or the personalities may be
formed by auto-suggestions. Such phenomena may be regarded as the
_artefacts of Psychopathology_.
There are again cases which are no play-personalities depending on
hypnotic suggestion, or suggestion in waking life, but which are
really due to pathological agencies. The former, due to suggestion,
are _suggestion-personalities_, the latter, due to pathological
agencies, are _pathological personalities_. The formation of
multiple personality by means of suggestion does not belong to our
present subject.
I have discussed these facts of suggestion personalities in my
volume, “The Psychology of Suggestion,” and other works. The
pathological multiple personalities are of immense interest from
many standpoints which we need not go into just at present, since
our object is rather the causation, not the nature and character of
the personalities themselves.[7]
The subwaking self is extremely credulous; it lacks all sense of
the true and rational. “Two and two make five.” “Yes.” Anything
is accepted, if sufficiently emphasized by the hypnotizer. The
suggestibility and imitativeness of the subwaking self were
discussed by me at great length. What I should like to point out
here is the extreme _servility_ and _cowardliness_ of that self.
Show hesitation, and it will show fight; command authoritatively,
and it will obey slavishly.
_The subwaking self is devoid of all morality._ It will steal
without the least scruple; it will poison; it will stab; it will
assassinate its best friends unhesitatingly. When completely cut
off from the waking person, it is precluded from conscience.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] The subject of pathological multiple personalities is discussed
in my work, “Multiple Personality.”