1. The impulsive force of the emotion might repress all other ideas than the one in question from the field of consciousness, which would then be contracted to that of the limited emotional complex awakened; all opposing ideas and instincts would then be dissociated or inhibited—a state substantially of mono-ideism. Let us imagine the dominating emotional complex to be a mother’s belief that her child had been killed, this idea being awakened by the sudden announcement of the news. The parental sentiment with child as its object would become organized into a complex with the emotions of fear, sorrow, painful depressed feelings, etc., which the news excited. This complex, being deprived—as a result of the ensuing dissociation—of the inhibiting and modifying influence of all counteracting ideas, would be free to expend its conative force along paths leading to motor, visceral, and other physiological disturbances. An emotional complex of ideas would be then formed which after the restoration of the normal alert state would remain dormant, but conserved in the unconscious. Later, when the emotional complex is again awakened by some stimulus (associative thoughts), dissociation would again take place and the complex again become the whole of the personal consciousness for the time being. This theoretical schema corresponds accurately with one type of hysterical attack.
2. If again the awakened complex should be one which is constellated with a large system of dormant ideas and motives deposited in the unconscious[unconscious] by the experiences of life, the new field of consciousness would not be contracted to a mono-ideism. We should have to do with a phase of personality, one which was formed by a rearrangement of life’s experiences. In this case the usual everyday settings (or systems) of ideas being in conflict with the sentiments of the resurrected system would be dissociated and become dormant. The ideas, with their affects, which would come to the surface and dominate, would be those of previously dormant emotional complexes and their constellated system. The prevailing instincts and other innate dispositions would be, respectively, those corresponding to the two phases, the antagonistic dispositions being in each case inhibited. This schema would accurately correspond to a so-called “mood.” If the demarcation of systems were sharply defined and absolute so that amnesia of one for the other resulted, the new state would be recognized as one of dissociated or secondary personality. A “mood” and secondary personality would shade into one another.
3. Still another theoretical schema could be constructed if, following the hysterical dissociated state represented by schema 1, there were not a complete return to normality, i.e., complete synthesis of personality. The dissociation effected by the impulsive force of the evoked emotional complex and the repressed personal self-conscious-system might be so intense that, on the restoration of the latter, the former would remain dissociated in turn. The emotional complex would then, in accordance with what we know of the genesis of subconscious ideas, become split off from the personal consciousness and unable to enter the focus of awareness. Amnesia for the emotional experience would ensue. Such a split-off idea might, through the impulsive force of its emotion and that of its setting, take on independent activity and function coconsciously and produce various automatic phenomena; that is, phenomena which are termed automatic because not determined by the personal consciousness. The dissociation might include various sensory, motor and other functions, thereby robbing the personal consciousness of these functions (anesthesia, paralysis, etc.). Such a schema corresponds to the hysterical subconscious fixed idea (Janet).
In such a schema also, in accordance with what we know of the behavior of emotion, though the ideas of the complex remained subconscious, the emotion linked with them might erupt into the consciousness of the personal self. The person would then become aware of it without knowing its source. The emotion might be accompanied by its various physiological manifestations such as we have studied. If the emotion were one of fear the subject might be in an anxious state without knowing why he is afraid—an indefinable fear, as it is often called by the subjects of it.
4. If, owing to one or more emotional experiences, an intense sentiment were created in which is organized about its object one or more of the emotions of fear, anger, disgust, self-subjection, etc., with their physiological manifestations (tremor, palpitation, vasomotor disturbances, nausea, exhaustion, etc.) and their psychological disturbances (contraction of the field of consciousness, dissociation, etc.); and if the whole were welded into a complex, we would have the structure of an obsession. Such an organized complex would be excited from time to time by any associated stimulus and develop in the form of attacks: hence termed a recurrent psychopathic state as well as obsession. (As we have seen, the psychogenesis of the sentiment is to be found in antecedent experiences organized with its object giving meaning and persistence to the obsession.)
5. Finally (to add one more schema out of many that might be constructed), if a number of physiological disturbances (pain, secretory, gastric, cardiac, etc), such as occur as the symptoms of a disease, were through repeated experiences associated and thereby organized with the idea of the disease, they would recur as an associative process whenever the idea was presented to consciousness. Here we have the structure of an “association or habit-neurosis,” a disease mimicry. Numerous examples of the type of cardiac, gastric, pulmonary, laryngeal, joint, and other diseases might be given. The physical symptoms in such neuroses are obtrusive, while the psychical elements (including emotion) which, of course, are always factors, conscious or subconscious, remain in the background.
The study of the individual psychoneuroses belongs to special pathology, and need not concern us here. We are only occupied with the general principles involved in their structure and psycho-genesis.
[245]. Inhibition and dissociation, although often loosely used as interchangeable terms, are not strictly synonymous, in that, theoretically at least, they are not coextensive. That which is inhibited may be absolutely, even if temporarily, suppressed as a functioning process, as in physiological inhibition (e. g., of reflexes, motor acts, etc.); or it may be only inhibited from taking part in the mechanisms of the personal consciousness, and thereby dissociated from that psychophysiological system. In the latter case the inhibited process is not absolutely suppressed, but may be capable under favoring conditions of independent functioning outside of that system. This is dissociation in its more precise sense. Inhibition may be said to have induced dissociation, and then the two may be regarded as only different aspects of one and the same thing. In the former case (absolute suppression) the inhibited process cannot function at all, as in certain types of amnesic aphasia when the memory for language is functionally suppressed. Inhibition therefore may or may not be equivalent to dissociation. Practically as observed in psychological phenomena it is often difficult to distinguish between them, and it is convenient to consider them together.
[246]. The Dissociation, p. 189.