Similarly mysticism, a psychopathic malady of a social character, has its origin in the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct, and takes refuge in “love” or in “union” with the Infinite which serves as a rock of protection, security, and salvation from all terrors of life. Psychopathic love is a neurotic fear delusion. There is nothing more deceptive and delusive than psychopathic love,—for it takes its origin in self and fear.
VI. The Principle of Recession
Experiences are blotted out from memory in the course of time. A very small percentage of impressions is registered by the brain, a still smaller percentage can be reproduced, and out of them a very small percentage carries recognition as memory, that is, of impressions experienced before. Forgetfulness is therefore a normal physiological function characteristic of the brain and mind.
Forgetfulness depends on at least three conditions, lack of registration, lack of reproduction, and lack of recognition.
There will correspondingly be at least three forms of amnesia or forgetfulness, amnesia of registration, amnesia of reproduction, and amnesia of recognition. The real problem of Psychology is not so much the lapses of memory, but the why and how of memory, and especially of recognitive memory.
This, however, we may establish as a law that when memory in regard to definite experiences weakens in the course of time, the lapse follows from recognition to reproduction, and finally to registration. Recognition fails first, then comes the failure of memory reproduction, and finally memory registration of the special experience becomes blurred and wiped out. This may be termed the law of memory decay, or of memory regression. This is the principle of memory recession.
Some, though by no means all, child memories or infantile experiences follow this law of regression or recession. Child experiences, like all old experiences, tend to recede in their course of decay or of regression below the threshold of consciousness. The experiences are not recognized on reproduction, or are reproduced with great difficulty, or have even lost the function of being reproduced. When under such conditions, the experiences are said to have become subconscious, or have receded into the subconscious.
On the other hand some of those subconscious experiences, or subconscious memories may, under favorable conditions, once more regain their functions of reproduction and recognition, and become fully conscious. This may occur in various trance states, subconscious states, and in various psychopathic conditions.
Such states, however, rarely fix the experiences in memory, because the states are instable, temporary, and the memories lapse with the disappearance of the states. This principle of recession may be regarded as one of the fundamental facts of the Psychopathology of the Subconscious. In fact, subconscious states may also be termed Recessive States.