The so-called subconscious, which in reality is fully in consciousness but only unnoticed, easily shades over into that unconscious which is also in consciousness but dissociated from the idea of the own personality and thus somewhat split off from the interconnected mass of conscious contents. Wherever we meet such phenomena, we are in the field of the abnormal. The normal mental life is characterized by the connectedness of the contents. Yet even that holds true, of course, only if we think of those mental states which exist at one and the same instant in consciousness. As soon as we consider the succession of mental events, we cannot doubt that even normal experience shows breaks, lapses, and complete annihilation of that which a moment before was a real content in our consciousness. We may have looked at our watch and certainly had in glancing at the dial a conscious impression, but in the next moment we no longer know how late it is. The impression did not connect itself with our continuous personal experience, that is, with that chief group of our conscious contents which we associate with the perception of our personality. Under abnormal conditions of the brain, larger and larger parts of the completely conscious experience may thus be cut off from the continuity of conscious life. But to be in consciousness, and therefore to be not-subconscious, does not mean to be through memory ties connected with the idea of our own personality.
The somnanbulist, for instance, may get up at night time and write a letter, then go to bed again and not know anything of the event when he awakes in the morning. We have no reason to claim that he had no knowledge of the letter in his consciousness when he wrote it. It is exactly the same consciousness from a psychological standpoint as the one with which he wakes up. Only that special content has in an abnormal way entirely disappeared, has not left a possibility of awakening a memory image, and the action of the personality in writing has thus become separated and cut off from the connected experiences of the man. But while the nocturnal episode may be entirely forgotten, it was not less in consciousness for the time being, than if a normal man should leave his bed hastily to write a letter. Moreover under abnormal conditions, as for instance in severe hysteric cases, those dissociated contents may form large clusters of mental experiences in the midst of which a new idea of the own personality may develop. Considering that through such disconnection many channels of discharge are blocked, while others are abnormally opened, it seems only natural that the idea of the own acting personality becomes greatly changed. Thus we have in such an episode a new second personality which may be strikingly different in its behavior and in its power, in its memories and in its desires, from the continuous normal one, and this secondary personality may now develop its own continuity and may arise under special conditions in attacks which are connected among one another by their own memory bonds.
The two personalities may even alternate from day to day and the normal one may itself become pathologically altered. In that case the two alternating personalities would both be different from the original one. But again we have even in such most complex and exceptional cases only an alternation in the contents, not an alternation in the consciousness itself. Different ideas of the own personality with different associations and impulses follow each other in consciousness and the abnormality of the situation lies in the lack of memory connections and of mutual influences, but consciousness remains the same throughout. It remains the same, just as we do not change consciousness if we feel ourselves in one hour as members of our family, in the next hour as professional workers in our office, again later as social personalities at a party or as citizens at a political meeting or as æsthetic subjects at the theater. Each time we are to a high degree a different personality, the idea of our self is each time determined by different groups of associations, memories, emotions, and impulses. The differentiation is to be considered as normal only because broad memory bridges lead over from one to the other. The connection of the various contents with the various ideas of the own personality constitutes thus in no way a break of consciousness itself and relegates no one content into a subconscious sphere.
Finally the same holds true, if the idea of the personality as content of consciousness in the patient is split into two simultaneous groups, of which each one is furnished with its own associations. Yet the interpretation here becomes extremely difficult and arbitrary. Take the case that a patient in severe hysteria at our request writes down the history of her life. We should not hesitate to say that she is doing it consciously but now we begin to talk with her and slowly the conversation takes her attention while her pencil is continuing to write down the connected story of her youth. Again the conversation by itself gives the impression of completely conscious behavior. As both functions go on at the same time, the person who converses does not know what the person who writes is writing, and the writer is uninfluenced by the conversation. Various interpretations are possible. Indeed we might think that by such double setting in the pathological brain two independent groups in the content of consciousness are formed, each one fully in consciousness and yet both without any mutual influence and thus without mutual knowledge. In the light of such interpretation, it has been correctly proposed to speak of coconscious processes, rather than subconscious. Or we may interpret it more in harmony with the ordinary automatic writing or with other merely physiological reactions. Then we should suppose that as soon as the conversation sets in, the brain centers which control the writing movement work through channels in which no mental factors are involved. One of the two characteristic reaction systems would then be merely physiological. We saw before that the complexity of the process is no argument against the strictly physiological character of the event. That various activities can coexist in such a way that one of them may at any time slide down from the conscious centers to the merely physical ones, we all know by daily experience. We may go home through the streets of the busy town engaged with our thoughts. For a while the idea of our way and of the sidewalk is in our consciousness, when suddenly we reach our house and notice that for a long while we have no longer had any thought at all of the way. We were absorbed by our problems, and the motor activity of walking towards our goal was going on entirely in the physiological sphere. But whether we prefer the physiological account or insist on the coconscious phenomena, in either case is there any chance for the subconscious to slip in? That a content of consciousness is to a high degree dissociated or that the idea of the personality is split off is certainly a symptom of pathological disturbance, but it has nothing to do with the constituting of two different kinds of consciousness or with breaking the continuous sameness of consciousness itself. The most exceptional and most uncanny occurrences of the hospital teach after all the same which our daily experience ought to teach us: there is no subconsciousness.
PART II
THE PRACTICAL WORK OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
VII
THE FIELD OF PSYCHOTHERAPY[Contents]
We have discussed the psychological tools with which the psychotherapist has to work but we have not spoken as yet of psychotherapy itself. All that we have studied has been by way of preparation; and yet the right preparation is almost the most important factor for the right kind of work. To rush into psychotherapy with hastily gathered conceptions of mental life may be sometimes successful for the moment, but must always be ultimately dangerous. It is often most surprising what a haphazard kind of psychology is accepted as a basis for psychotherapy even by scientifically schooled physicians who would never believe that common sense would be sufficient to settle the problems of anatomy and physiology; as soon as the mind is in question, no serious study seems needed. Can we be surprised then that in the amateur medicine of the country within and without the church any fanciful idea of mental life may flourish? If we are to recognize the rights and wrongs of psychotherapy in a scientific spirit, a sober analysis of the mental facts involved was indeed at the very first most essential. Now we can easily draw the conclusions from our findings.
We recognized from the start the fundamental difference between two different attitudes which we can take towards the inner life of any personality, the purposive view and the causal. We recognized the sphere to which each belongs and we saw that all medical treatment demands the causal view, thus dealing with inner life as part of the causal chain of events. Each inner experience became therefore a series of so-called contents of consciousness. These contents can be described and must be analyzed into their elements. The basis of psychotherapy is therefore an analytic psychology which conceives the inner experience as a combination of psychical elements.