The courses, from which I have selected twelve lectures for my present purpose, were designed for just such instruction as is recommended in this report. They were, I believe, the first to be given on these subjects in any medical school or college in this country. Necessarily they covered a wider range of topics than the lectures now published which more properly serve as an introduction to the general subject.
[2]. “The Birth of the Dream,” The Independent, Oct. 30, 1913.
[3]. A descriptive account of this case, written as a sort of autobiography by the subject herself, was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Vol. 3, Nos. 4 & 5, 1908-1909) under the title “My Life as a Dissociated Personality.” This remarkable account includes an instructive description of the coconscious self of considerable value.
[4]. I divide the Subconscious into two parts, namely the Unconscious and the Coconscious. See preface and Lecture VIII.
LECTURE II
CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE
I. Normal Life
Evidence obtained by the method of automatic writing.—If we take a suitable subject, one in whom “automatic writing”[[5]] has been developed, and study the content of the script, we may find that to a large extent it contains references to, i.e., memories of, experiences which have long been forgotten by the subject and which cannot even by the stimulus of memoranda be voluntarily recalled. These experiences may be actions performed even as far back as childhood, or passages read in books, or fragments of conversation, etc. Thus B. C. A., who suffers from an intense fear or phobia of cats, particularly white cats, can recall no experience in her life which could have given rise to it. Yet when automatic writing is resorted to the hand writes a detailed account of a fright into which she was thrown, when she was only five or six years of age, by a white kitten which had a fit while she was playing with it. The writing also describes in minute detail the furnishings of the room where the episode occurred, the pattern of the carpet, the decorative designs of the window shades, the furniture, etc. As this observation is typical of many others, it may be well to dwell upon it long enough to describe it in some detail for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this class of phenomena.
After it had been determined, by a searching examination, that B. C. A. could not recall any experience that might throw light upon her phobia, an attempt was made to recover a possible memory in hypnosis. As is well known, the memory often broadens in hypnosis and events which are forgotten when “awake” may be recovered. In this instance the subject was put into two different hypnotic states, but without success. This, again, is a matter of some importance for the principle of conservation. Different hypnotic states in the same individual may be distinguished in that each, among other characteristics, may have different and independent systems of memories, as we shall see later. The memories which belong to one state cannot be recalled in another. Hence the fact that a memory cannot be recovered in one state is not proof that it is not conserved, nor is a failure to recover the memory of an episode in all states of hypnosis evidence of failure of conservation, any more than is the failure to recover a memory in the waking state at any given moment.
In the experiment with B. C. A., after failing to awaken a possible memory in either state of hypnosis, a pencil was put in her hand while she was still hypnotized. The hand then wrote automatically, without the knowledge of the hypnotized subject, the following account of this childhood episode that I have just mentioned:[[6]]
“I think I know about the cats. I can remember myself, a little child, playing on the floor with a kitten, and it began to run about the room and had a fit, I think, and it jumped on me, and I was alone, and I screamed and cried and called my mother, but no one came, and I was very much frightened. I do not believe I ever told anyone. It was a white kitten. It ran out of the room and after a bit I went on playing.”