Psychotherapy

by Hugo Münsterberg

If thus the memory idea is linked with the past experience entirely by the lasting physiological change in the brain, we have no reason to alter the principle, when we meet the memory processes of the hypnotized person or the hysteric. It is true their memory may bring to light earlier experiences which are entirely forgotten by the conscious personality, but that ought to mean, of course, only that nerve paths have become accessible in which the propagation of the excitement was blocked up before. That does not bring us nearer to the demand for a subconscious mental memory. The threshold of excitability changes under most various conditions. Cells which respond easily in certain states may need the strongest stimulation in others. The brain cells which are too easily excited perhaps in maniacal exultation would respond too slowly in a melancholic depression. Hypnotism, too, by closing the opposite channels and opening wide the channels for the suggested discharge, may stir up excitements for which the disposition may have lingered since the days of childhood and yet which would not have been excited by the normal play of the neurons. Quite secondary remains the question of how these reproduced images finally appear in consciousness, that is, whether they appear with reference to earlier happenings and are thus felt as remembrances, or whether they enter as independent imaginations, or whether they finally, under special conditions, take the character of real, new perceptions. The latter case is well-known in crystal-gazing, where long-forgotten memory ideas project themselves into the visual field like hallucinations. But for the theory of the subconscious, even these uncanny crystal visions do not mean more than the simplest awakening of the experience of a landscape image of yesterday.

We turn to a second group of facts and again we have no fault to find with the observation of the facts, even of the most surprising and exceptional ones. Our objection refers to the interpretation of them. This second group contains the active results of such physiological nervous dispositions. In the first group, the dispositions come in question only as conditions for a new excitement which was accompanied by mental experience. In this second group, the dispositions are causes for other physiological processes which either lead to actions or to influences on other mental processes. The dispositions are here working like the setting of switches which turn the nervous process into special tracks. In the simple cases, of course no one doubts that a purely physiological basis is involved. The decapitated frog rubs its skin where it is touched with a drop of muriatic acid in a way which is ordinarily referred to the trained apparatus of his spinal cord, as no brain is left, and the usefulness of the action and its adjustment is very well understood as the result of the connecting paths in the nervous system.

From such simple adjustment of reactions of the spinal cord, we come step by step to the more complex activities of the subcortical brain centers, and finally to those which are evidently only short-cuts of the higher brain processes. That we react at every change of position with the right movements to keep our bodily balance, that we walk without thinking of our steps, that we speak without giving conscious impulse for the various speech movements, that we write without being aware of the motor activity which we had to learn slowly, that we play the piano without thinking of the special impulses of the hands, that we select the words of a hasty speech, if we have its aim in mind, without consciously selecting the appropriate words—all that is by continuous transitions connected with those simplest automatic reactions. And from here again, we are led over gradually perhaps to the automatic writings of the hysteric who writes complex messages without having any idea of their content in consciousness. It is in such cases certainly a symptom of disease that the activity of these lower brain centers can go over into the motor impulse of writing without producing secondary effects in the highest conscious brain centers; it is hysterical. But that the message of the pencil can be brought about by such operation of lower brain centers, or at least with imperfect coöperation of the higher brain centers, is certainly entirely within the limits of the same physiological explanation.

On the other hand, nothing is changed in the theoretic principles of the case if the effect of these automatic processes in the nervous system is not an external muscle action at first, but an influence on other brain centers which may furnish the consciousness with new contents. We try to remember a name, that is, a large number of neuron processes are setting in which normally lead to the excitement of that particular process which furnishes us the memory image of the name. But those brain cells may not respond, the channels may be blocked somehow or the excitability of those cells may be lowered. Now new excitements engage our psychophysical system. We are thinking of other problems. In the meantime, by the new equilibrium in the brain the blockade in these first paths may slowly disappear or the threshold of excitability may be changed. The physiological excitement may now be carried effectively into those tracts. The cell response sets in and suddenly the name comes to our mind. This purely physiological operation in our brain paths must thus have exactly the same result which it would have had, if more parts of the process had been accompanied by conscious experience. And again from mere remembering a forgotten name, we come by slow steps to the solution of a problem, to the invention, and finally to the creation of the genius.

Superficiality of thought is easily inclined to object to such a physiological interpretation and perhaps to denounce it pathetically as a crude materialism which lowers the dignity of mental work. Nothing shows more clearly the confusion between a purposive and causal view of the mind. In the purposive view of our real life, only our will and our personality have a meaning and can be related to the ideas and higher aims. Nature is there nothing but the dead material which is the tool of our will and which has to be mastered by the personality. In that world alone lie our duty and our morality. But as soon as we have gone over to the causal aspect of our life and have taken the point of view of the psychologist, making our inner life a series of contents of consciousness, of psychical phenomena, we have transformed our inner experience in such a way that it has become itself nothing but nature.

It is mental nature, nature of psychical stuff, but each part of it is nothing but a mental element, a mental atom without any meaning and without any value; nothing but a link in the chain, nothing but a factor in the explanation of the whole, nothing to which any ethical or æsthetic or logical or religious significance can any longer be attached. The psychical sensations and the physical atoms are equally material for naturalistic explanation. To understand causally a certain effect, for instance the creation of a work of art, of a discovery or a thought or a deed as the product of psychical processes, is thus in no way more dignified or more valuable than to understand it as the product of physiological brain processes. The one is not more dignified than the other because both alike have nothing whatever to do with dignity. Both alike are the necessary results of the foregoing processes, and to attach a kind of sentimental preference to the explanation through conscious factors is nothing but a confused reminiscence again of the entirely different purposive view of life. And surely nothing is gained for the higher values of life if this confusion sets in, because if the popular mind becomes unable to discriminate between the secondary, causal, artificial aspect of science and the primary, purposive aspect of life, the opposite effect lies still nearer: the values of the real life suffer and are crowded out by the knowledge of the scientific facts. Man's moral freedom is then wrongly brought in question, as soon as it is learned that every action is the product of brain processes. Life and science alike will gain the more, the more clearly the purposive and the causal point of view are separated and the more it is understood that this causal aspect itself is demanded by certain purposes of life. The oratory of those who denounce the physiological theories as lacking idealism in reality undermines true moral philosophy. There is no idealism which can really flourish merely by ignoring the progress of science and confusing the issues. The true values of the higher life cannot be safely protected by that thoughtless idealism which draws its life from vagueness and which therefore has to be afraid of every new discovery in scientific psychology. Our real ideals do not lie at all in the sphere in which the problem of causally explaining the psychological phenomena arises.

Our conscious experiences are thus indeed not only here and there, but usually the products of chains of processes which go on entirely on the physiological side. We have no reason at all to seek for those preceding actions any mental accompaniment outside of consciousness, that means, any subconscious mental states. Then, of course, this physiological explanation also covers entirely those after-effects of earlier experiences, especially emotional experiences, which the physician nowadays likes to call subconscious "complexes." We shall see what an important rôle belongs to these facts, especially in the treatment of hysteria and psychasthenia, but the interpretation again ought to avoid all playing with the conception of the subconscious. Emotional experiences may produce there some strong stable dispositions in the brain system which become mischievous in reënforcing or inhibiting certain thoughts and actions without awakening directly conscious experiences. The whole psychological switch system may have been brought into disorder by such abnormal setting of certain parts, but the connection of each resulting accident with the primary emotional disturbances does not contradict the fact that all the causes lie entirely in disturbances of the central paths. It is a change in the neurons and their connections. To discover it we may have to go back to early conscious experiences, but in the process itself there is no mental factor, and therefore no subconscious emotion is responsible for the mischief carried out.

Both groups of facts which we have studied so far, have dealt with processes which were indeed not conscious but which we had no right to call subconscious inasmuch as they contained no mental process at all but only physiological dispositions and actions. We turn finally to the other smaller and more abnormal group of so-called subconscious facts in which the facts are mental indeed and not only physiological, but not at all outside of consciousness and thus again not subconscious. A conscious fact may easily suggest the appeal to subconscious theories to those who have accepted such theories for other reasons. There are, for instance, plenty of mental experiences which we do not notice or which we do not recognize. Yet if we find later that they must have influenced our mind, we are easily inclined to refer them to subconscious activity. But it is evident that to be content of consciousness means not at all necessarily to be object of attention or object of recognition. Awareness does not involve interest. If I hear a musical sound, I may not recognize at all the overtones which are contained in it. As soon as I take resonators and by them reënforce the loudness of those overtones, they become vivid for me and I can now notice them well even when the resonators are removed. I surely was aware of them, that is, had them in consciousness all the time but there were no contrast feelings and no associations in consciousness which gave them sufficient clearness to attract attention.

In this way I may be again led by gradual stages to more and more complex experiences. I may overlook and yet include within my content of consciousness most various parts of my surroundings; and yet the neglected is not less in consciousness itself than the attended. Much that figures in literature as subconscious means indeed nothing else but the unattended. But it belongs to the elements of psychological analysis to recognize that the full content of consciousness is always larger than the narrow field of attention. This narrow field on the other hand has certainly no sharp demarcation line. There is a steady shading off from the most vivid to the least vivid. We cannot grasp those least vivid contents of consciousness, we cannot fixate them as such, because as soon as we try to hold them, they move from the periphery of the content into its center and become themselves vivid and clear. But as we are surely aware of different degrees of clearness and vividness in our central mass of contents, we have no difficulty in acknowledging the existence of still lower degrees of vividness in those elements which are blending and fusing into a general background of conscious experiences. Nothing stands out there, nothing can be discriminated in its detail. That background is not even made up of whole ideas and whole memories and whole emotions and feelings and judgments and volitions, but of loose fragments; half ideas and quarter ideas, atoms of feelings and incipient impulses and bits of memory images are always mixed in that half-dark background. And yet it is by principle not less in consciousness, and consciousness itself is not different for these contents. It is not half-clear consciousness, not a lower degree of awareness, only the objects of awareness are crumbled and fading.

Whether these background objects really exist can only be made out by studying carefully the changes which result under different conditions, the influences which those loose parts have on the structure of the whole, and the effect of their complete disappearance. I may never really notice a little thing in my room and yet may be aware that it has been taken away. The visual image of it was an element of my mental background, when I was sitting at my desk, but it never before moved to the center of my conscious content. But this center itself is also constantly changing. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other idea may enter into it, but in this alternation that which is not in the focus either remains in consciousness unattended or when it disappears from it it loses its mental character altogether. If I attend a tiresome lecture while my mind is engaged with a practical problem of my own life, there may be a steady rivalry between the words which come with the force of outer stimulus to my brain and make me listen and my inner difficulties which claim my attention. I listen for a while, and then suddenly, without noticing it, my own thoughts may have taken the center of the stage and again without sudden interruption a word may catch my attention. While I was thinking of my own problem the sounds of the lecturer were really outside of my field of attention, yet some remark now pushes itself again into the center. That does not mean that a subconscious mind is listening while my lucid mind was thinking, but it does mean that those words were unattended and remained in the periphery of the field of consciousness. But when some of the sentences stirred up in that peripheral field some important associations, they were strong enough to produce a new motor reaction by which the mental equilibrium became changed again and by which the lecturer overwhelmed my private thoughts. Yet even this state of mind, without any break, can go over into an absolutely physiological process. I may for a while really inhibit the lecturer's voice completely and remain in the thoughts of my own imagination. After a minute or two, the resistance against the acoustical stimulus will certainly be broken and the sound will again enter into my consciousness, but in that interval there was no subconscious and not even any unattended mental function; there was no mental process at all. The sound reached my brain but as the motor setting was adverse, the sounds did not bring about that highest act of physiological transmission which is accompanied by mental contents. Thus it became entirely physiological. Yet of course every word reached my brain and left traces there. If I were hypnotized after the lecture and thus the threshold for the real awakening of brain excitements lowered, it might not be impossible that some of the thoughts of the lecturer which did not enter my consciousness at all, are now afterwards in the hypnotic state stirred up in me. Yet even that would not indicate that they had become mental and thus subconscious at the time of the lecture.