[243]. The Mental State of Hystericals, pp. 289-290.
[244]. Not included in this volume.
LECTURE XVI
GENERAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS
The awakening of intense emotional impulses we have seen tends to intensify certain activities and to inhibit other conflicting ones. Further when that which is inhibited is a sentiment possessing an intense emotion the sentiment tends to become dissociated[[245]] from the personal consciousness and free to become by the force of its own emotional dispositions a subconscious process. As a consequence of these tendencies there may result a number of psycho-physiological conditions of personality with some of which we should become familiar. They are observable, as would be expected, in every-day life, and when highly accentuated become pathological phenomena. Let us now consider some of them in detail.
Contraction of the field of consciousness and of personality.—In every-day life intense emotion excludes from the field of awareness thoughts that are unrelated, antagonistic to and incompatible with the ideas exciting the emotion, and perceptions of the environment that ordinarily would enter awareness. The field of consciousness is thereby contracted and limited to thoughts excited by or associated with the emotion. Thus, for example, in the heat of anger the mind is dominated by the particular object or thought which gave rise to the anger, or by anger exciting associated ideas. Conflicting memories and correlated knowledge that would modify the point of view and judgment and mollify (inhibit) the anger are suppressed and cannot enter the focus of attention. Further, a person in such a state may not perceive many ocular, auditory, tactile, and other impressions coming from the environment; he may not see the people about him, hear what is said, or feel what is done to him, or only in an imperfect way. All these sensations are either actually inhibited or prevented from entering awareness (dissociated) by the conflicting conative force of the emotion. In other words there is a dissociation (or inhibition) of consciousness and consequent contraction of its field to certain emotional ideas.
To take a concrete example, you are playing a game of cards and with zest throw yourself into the game. Something happens to arouse your anger. At once there is a conflict: The impulsive force of your pugnacity instinct meets with the impulsive force of your play instinct and its pleasure feelings. If the former is the stronger, the latter with the ideas to which it is linked are inhibited, repressed, driven out of consciousness. The pleasure of play ceases and its impulses no longer determine your thoughts. Further, you forget the cards that have been played though you knew them well a moment before, you may forget your manners, become oblivious to social etiquette and the environment. You can no longer reason on the play of the cards; you forget your card knowledge. All these processes are inhibited, and consequently the field of consciousness and personality becomes contracted.
On the other hand, the emotion of anger dominating the mind, ideas associated with or which tend to carry your pugnacity instinct to fruition, arise and direct and determine your conduct. Habit reactions are likely to come automatically into play, and you break out into angry denunciatory speech, if that is your habit. I leave you to fill out the details of the picture for yourselves.
And yet, again through training in self-control, a self-regarding sentiment conflicting with the anger impulse may be awakened, and the latter in turn be dominated, repressed, inhibited.
In the case of an intense fear it is common observation that this contraction may reach a high degree. In the excitement of a railroad accident the frightened passenger does not feel the bruising and pain which he otherwise would suffer, nor hear the shrieks of his fellow passengers nor perceive but a small part of what is occurring about him, but driven only by the intensely motivating idea of escape from danger he struggles for safety. His field of consciousness is limited to the few ideas of danger, escape, and the means of safety. All else is dissociated by the conative force of the emotion and cannot enter the focus of attention. He could not philosophize on the accident if he would. In ordinary concentration of attention or absent-mindedness the same phenomenon of contraction of the field of consciousness occurs occasioned by interest; but with cessation of interest the field of awareness quickly widens. So in contraction of this field from emotion the normal is restored so soon as the emotion ceases.
When this same general contraction of the field of consciousness, effected by the repressing force of emotion, reaches a certain acme we have a pathological condition—the hysterical state. The field of consciousness is now occupied by the single dissociating idea or complex of ideas with its emotion that did the repressing—a condition of mono-ideism. All other conscious processes are inhibited or dissociated. When the complex is an intensely emotional one, its nervous energy, now unbridled, is free to discharge itself in many directions, perhaps producing convulsive phenomena of one kind or another.