§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.