1. On first thought it seems strange that a person cannot remember such an important experience as that, for example, of B. C. A., when for all else the memory is normal. That this experience had awakened conflicting ideas and intense, blazing emotions with great retraction of the field of consciousness of the moment is shown by the history. Later there was found to be a hiatus in the memory, the amnesia beginning and ending sharply at particular points, shortly before and shortly after this experience. In other words, the extremely dissociated and retracted emotional field could not be synthesized with the personal consciousness or, one might say, with the sentiment of self. In hypnosis, however, this could be done and the memory recovered. Freud has proposed an ingenious theory involving a particular mechanism by which such amnesic effects are produced. According to this theory the dissociated experience cannot be recalled because it is so painful that it cannot be tolerated by consciousness; i.e., attempted emergence as memory meets with the resistance of conflicting subconscious thoughts, acting as a censor or guardian, and the experience is repressed and prevented from entering consciousness. (It would be, perhaps, within the scope of this theory to say that the impulsive force of the conflicting sentiments (involving pride and self-respect and the instinct of anger) awakened at the moment of the experience continued more or less subconsciously to repress the memory of the whole experience.)
2. If expressed in the following form I think the theory would equally well explain such amnesias, be in conformity with certain known hypnotic phenomena and, perhaps, be more acceptable: An experienced desire not to face, or think of, i.e., to recall to memory, a certain painful experience is conserved in the usual way. When an attempt is made to recall the episode this desire becomes an active subconscious process and inhibits the memory process. The analogue of this we have in posthypnotic amnesia induced by suggestion. In the hypnotic state the suggestion is given that the subject after waking shall have forgotten a certain experience, a name, or an episode. After waking the conative force[[255]] of the suggested idea, functioning entirely subconsciously (as there is complete forgetfulness for the hypnotic state), inhibits the memory of the test experience in that there is found to be amnesia for the latter. One may say there has been a subconscious conflict followed by inhibition of one of the belligerents. That antecedent thoughts of the individual can likewise become activated as subconscious processes and come into conflict with other processes and inhibit them, thus preventing them from becoming conscious, we have already seen. The antagonism of the motives in the two processes is often obvious. Numerous examples of inhibitions (induced by conflicts with subconscious ideas, emotions, and conations) of mental processes which could afterwards be recalled to memory in a secondary state of personality have been recorded in the case of Miss B.[[256]] Likewise in B. C. A. similar phenomena were testified to as due to subconscious conflicts.[[257]] There would seem to be no question therefore of either the occurrence of subconscious conflicts or their efficiency in producing amnesia.
3. However all this may be, there is no need for us now to enter into the question of mechanisms. Certain it is, though, that we often forget what we want to forget, which means memories that are unpleasant; and certain types of pathological amnesia answer to the Freudian mechanism or some modification of it. Certain amnesias undoubtedly follow deliberate wishes to put certain experiences out of mind, just as they follow hypnotic suggestions that they shall be forgotten. A very neat example is that of the observation previously given (Lecture III, p. [74]) of the subject who, in a moment of despair and resentment against criticism, expressed a wish to forget her own marriage name, and lo! and behold! on waking the next day she found she could not recall it. But amnesias of this kind differ in an important respect from the classical amnesias of hysteria. In the latter variety the dissociation is so extensive that reproduction cannot be effected by any associated idea of the personal consciousness; for reproduction another state of consciousness (hypnosis, alteration of personality, etc.) with which the forgotten experience is synthesized must be obtained or the subconscious must be tapped. In the former variety although the reproduction cannot be effected through an idea with which it stands in affectively painful association, it can be by some other indifferent idea or complex with which it is systematized. For instance, in the case of the phobia for the ringing of bells in a tower which we have studied, the original episode could not be recalled in association with the object of the phobia, notwithstanding that this object was an element in the episode, but it was readily recalled in association with contemporary events of the subject’s life. In the case of C. D., who had experienced a painful episode of fainting the same amnesic relations obtained.
4. On the other hand there are other forms of amnesia which the Freudian mechanism is totally inadequate to explain, or of which it offers only a partial explanation. I refer to the persisting amnesias of reproduction exemplified by much of the common forgetfulness of every-day life (often due to dis-interest); by the amnesias for whole systems of experiences in hypnotic states, in different phases of multiple personality, fugues, and deliria; by certain retrograde, general, and continuous amnesias of hysteria, alcoholic amnesia, etc. In some of these the amnesia is a dissociation of systems undoubtedly effected by the force of emotional impulses discharged by antagonistic complexes. This is to view the amnesia from its psychological aspect. But it may also be viewed from its correlated physiological aspect.
Let us note first that reproduction is a synthetic process which requires some sort of dynamic association between the neurogram underlying an idea present in the personal consciousness and the conserved neurograms of a past experience. From this view we may in the future find the explanation of amnesia (resulting from the dissociative effect of emotion) in the configuration of the physical paths of residua traveled and engraved by an emotional experience. The emotional discharge may have prevented an associative path of residua being established with the dissociated experience.[[258]]
5. Amnesia is too large a subject for us to go into its mechanisms at this time and we are not called upon to do so. It is enough to point out the different forms of amnesia which at times are the resultants of emotion. Inasmuch as experiences are organized in complexes and still further in large systems, which include settings (that give meaning to the particular experiences) and other associated sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions, the dissociation of a single experience may involve a large complex of experiences, or a whole system of such, and result either in a simple amnesia alone or in an alteration of personality accompanied by amnesia. Such amnesias are generally classified as localized, systematized, general, or continuous.
6. The first, as it seems to me, is also in principle systematized, the distinction being clinical rather than psychological. By localized is meant an amnesia extending over an epoch of time. Thus, in the instance already cited, Miss B. suddenly found that she could not recall a single moment of a particular day, although previously she had remembered well the incidents, owing to a distressing experience the memory of which had tormented her during the whole day. The amnesia was localized in time. It was the result of a suggestion which I gave in hypnosis that the painful experience only should be forgotten; but unexpectedly the remembrances of the whole day disappeared. In other words, the dissociation of a particular remembrance robbed the personal consciousness of all other remembrances with which it was systematized. That it was so systematized was made evident by the fact that throughout the course of the day it had so dominated her mind that she was continuously under its emotional influence. The amnesia was therefore not only localized but systematized with the day’s experiences. It is to be noted that the hypnotic suggestion necessarily exerted its dissociating force subconsciously after waking.
Similarly in multiple personality, one alternating phase often has complete amnesia for the preceding epoch belonging to another phase. This amnesia may extend over a period of from a few minutes to years, according to the length of time that the second phase was in existence. It is therefore localized. But it is also systematized, not in the sense of relating to only a particular category of remembrances, such as those of a particular object—father, child, etc.—but in the sense of bearing upon all the experiences organized within a large system of sentiments, instincts, settings, etc., characteristic of the second personality. With the dissociation of this system the remembrances of its experiences go, too. Undoubtedly the dissociating force is that of the awakened sentiments, etc., of the succeeding phase. These are always antagonistic to those of the dissociated phase, although those of the one are not necessarily painful to the other. They are simply incompatible with one another, and it may quite well be that their force is subconsciously discharged. Systematized amnesia, on the other hand, may not be localized, bearing as it may only on a particular category of remembrances, let us say of a foreign language with which the subject previously was familiar.
7. The retrograde type of localized amnesia is common following emotional shocks. The case of Mme. D., made classical by Charcot and Janet, is a very excellent example. This woman lost not only all memory of the painful emotional state into which she was thrown by the brutal announcement of her husband’s death, but of the preceding six weeks. The amnesia for the episode might be accounted for on the theory of conflict, but it is difficult to explain the retrograde extension unless it be there was some systematization covering the six weeks’ period within the mental life of the patient not disclosed by the examination.
General and continuous amnesia, the one covering the whole previous life of the subject, the other for events as fast as they are experienced, also, though rarely, occur as the sequence of emotion.