In explanation B. C. A. sent me the following letter: “The keys were found in the box mentioned. I had hunted for them ever since coming home, October 4th. One key belonged to my box in the safety deposit vault and I had felt very troubled and anxious at not being able to find them. I have no recollection now of putting them where I found them.” [Nor was recollection subsequently recovered.]
I could give from my own observation if it were necessary as many instances as could be desired of “automatic” reproductions of forgotten experiences of one kind or another the truth of which could be verified by notebook records or other evidence. By a forgotten experience of course is meant something more than what cannot for the moment be voluntarily recalled. I mean something that cannot be remembered at any moment nor under any conditions, even after the memory has been prodded by the reproduction in the script—something that is apparently absolutely forgotten. The experience may not only be of a trivial nature but something that happened long in the past and of the kind that is ordinarily absolutely forgotten. I have often invoked the automatic writing (memories) of the subject to recover data elicited in the past in psychological examinations but which both I and the subject had forgotten. Reference to notes always verified the automatic memories. The records of automatic writing to be found in the literature are rich in reproductions showing conservation of forgotten experiences. In fact, given a good subject who can write automatically it is easy to obtain experimentally evidence of this kind at will.
Evidence from abstraction.—One of the most striking of artificial memory performances is the recovery of the details of inconsequential experiences of everyday life by inducing simple states of abstraction in normal people. It is often astonishing to see with what detail these experiences are conserved. A person may remember any given experience in a general way, such as what he does during the course of the day, but the minute details of the day he ordinarily forgets. Now, if he allows himself to fall into a passive state of abstraction, simply concentrating his attention upon a particular past moment, and gives free rein to all the associative memories belonging to that moment that float into his mind, at the same time taking care to forego all critical reflection upon them, it will be found that the number of details that will be recalled will be enormously greater than can be recovered by voluntary memory. Memories of the details of each successive moment follow one another in continuous succession. This method requires some art and practice to be successfully carried out. In the state of abstraction attention to the environment must be completely excluded and concentrated upon the past moments which it is desired to recall. For instance, a young woman, a university student, had lost some money several days before the experiment and desired to learn what had become of it. She remembered, in a general way, that she had gone to the bank that day, had cashed some checks, made some purchases in the shops of the town, returned to the university, attended lectures, etc., and later had missed the money from her purse. Her memory was about as extensive as that of the ordinary person would be for similar events after the lapse of several days. I put her into a state of abstraction and evoked her memories in the way I have just described. The minuteness and vividness with which the details of each successive act in the day’s experiences were recovered were remarkable, and, to the subject, quite astonishing. As the memories arose she recognized them as being accurate, for she then remembered the events as having occurred, just as one remembers any occurrence.[[11]] In abstraction, she remembered with great vividness every detail at the bank teller’s window, where she placed her gloves, purse, and umbrella, the checks, the money, etc.; then there came memories of seating herself at a table in the bank, of placing her umbrella here, her purse there, etc.; of writing a letter, and doing other things; of absent-mindedly forgetting her gloves and leaving them on the table;[[12]] of going to a certain shop where, after looking at various articles and thinking certain thoughts and making certain remarks, she finally made certain purchases, giving a certain piece of money and receiving the change in coin of certain denominations; of seeing in her purse the exact denominations of the coins (ten and five-dollar gold pieces and the pieces of subsidiary coinage) which remained; then of going to another shop and similar experiences. Then of numerous details which she had forgotten; of other later incidents including lectures, exercising in the gymnasium, etc. Through it all ran the successive fortunes of her purse until the moment came when, looking into it, she found one of the five-dollar gold pieces gone. It became pretty clear that the piece had disappeared at a moment when the purse was out of her possession, a fact which she had not previously remembered but had believed the contrary. The hundred and one previously forgotten details which surged into her mind as vivid conscious recollections would take too long to narrate.
(I have made quite a number of experiments of this kind with similar results. That the memories are not fabrications is shown by the fact that, as they arise, they become recollections in the sense that the subject can then consciously recall the events and place them in time and space as one does in ordinary memory, and particularly by the fact that many of them are often capable of confirmation.
I would here point out that the recovery of forgotten experiences by the method of abstraction differs in one important psychological respect from their recovery by automatic writing. In the former case the recalled experiences being brought back by associative memories enter into the associations and become true conscious recollections, like any other recollections, while in automatic writing the memories are reproduced in script without entering the personal consciousness at all and while the subject is still in ignorance. Often even after reading the script his memory still remains a blank. It is much as if one’s ideas had been preserved on a phonographic record and later reproduced without awakening a memory of their original occurrence.[[13]] The significance of this difference for the theory of conservation I will point out later after we have considered some other modes of reproduction.)
Among the conserved forgotten experiences are often to be found fleeting thoughts, ideas, and perceptions, so insignificant and trifling that it would not be expected that they would be remembered. Some of them may have entered only the margin or fringe of the content of consciousness, and, therefore, the subject was only dimly aware of them. Some may have been so far outside the focus of awareness that there was no awareness of them at all, i.e., they were subconscious. Instructive examples of such conserved experiences may be found in persons who suffer from attacks of phobia, i.e., obsessions. The experiences to which I refer occur immediately before and during the attacks. After the attack the ideas of these periods are usually largely or wholly forgotten, particularly the ideas which were in the fringe of consciousness and the idea which, according to my observation, was the exciting cause of the attack. By the method of abstraction I have been able to recover the content of consciousness during the periods in question, including the fringe of consciousness, and thus discover the nature of the fear of which the patient was unaware because the idea was in the fringe.
Mrs. C. D., whom I have mentioned as having suffered intensely from attacks of fear, and Miss F. E., who is similarly afflicted with such attacks accompanied by the feeling of unreality, are instances in point. As is well known such attacks come on suddenly in the midst of mental tranquillity, often without apparent cause so far as the patient can discover. While in the state of abstraction the thoughts, perceptions, and acts of the period just preceding and during the attack, as they successively occurred, could be evoked in these subjects in great detail and with striking vividness. The recovery of these memories has been always a surprise to the patient who, a moment before, had been utterly unable to recall them, and had declared the attack had developed without cause. In the case of Mrs. C. D. it was discovered in this way the real fear was of fainting and death, and in that of Miss F. E. of insanity. These ideas having been in the fringe of consciousness, or background of the mind, the subjects were at the time scarcely aware of them and, therefore, were ignorant of the true nature of their phobias, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of the attacks. Among the memories recovered in these and other cases I have always been able to find one of a thought or of a sensory stimulus from the environment which immediately preceded and which through association occasioned the attack. When this particular memory was recovered the patient, who had declared that the attack had developed without cause, at once recognized the original idea which was the cause of the attack, just as one recognizes the idea which causes one to blush. The idea sometimes has been a thought suggested by a casual and apparently insignificant word in a sentence occurring in a conversation on indifferent matters, or by a dimly conscious perception of the environment, sometimes an idea occurring as a secondary train of thought perhaps bearing upon some future course of action, and so on.
As instances of such dimly-conscious perceptions of the environment which I have found I may mention a gateway through which the subject was passing, or a bridge about to be crossed; these particular points in the environment being places where previous attacks had occurred. The perceptions which precipitated the attack may have been entirely subconscious and yet may be brought back to memory. With the pathogenesis of the attacks we are not now directly concerned. The point of interest for us lies in the fact that such forgotten casual ideas and perceptions, some of which had been actually subconscious and some had only entered the margin of the focus of attention may, notwithstanding the amnesia, be conserved; and the same is true of any succession of trivial ideas occurring at an inconsequential moment in a person’s life.
However that may be, if you will try to recall in exact detail the thoughts and feelings which successively passed through your mind at any given moment say three or four weeks ago—or even days ago—and their accompanying acts, and then (if you can do this, which I very much doubt) try to give them in their original sequence, I think you will realize the force of these observations and appreciate the significance of the conservation of such minute experiences and of their reproduction in abstraction.
Evidence furnished by the method of hypnosis.—It is almost common knowledge that when a person is hypnotized—whether lightly or deeply—he may be able to remember once well-known events of his conscious life which he has totally forgotten in the full waking state. It is not so generally known that he may also be able to recall conscious events of which he was never consciously aware, that is to say, experiences which were entirely subconscious. The same is true, of course, of forgotten experiences which originally had entered only the margin of the content of consciousness and of which he was dimly aware. Among the experiences thus recalled may be perceptions of minute details of the environment which escape the attentive notice of the individual, or they may be thoughts which were in the background of the mind and, therefore, never in the full light of attention. You must not fall into the common error of believing every hypnotized person can do this, or that any person can do it in any state of hypnosis. There are various “degrees” or states of hypnosis representing different conditions of dissociation and synthesis. One person may successively be put into several different states; many persons can be put into only one, but the degree of dissociation and capacity for synthesis in each state and in every person varies very much, and, indeed, according to the technical devices employed. Each state is apt to exhibit different systems of memories, that is, to synthesize (recall) past conserved experiences in a different degree. What cannot be recalled in one state may be in another. We may say as a general principle that theoretically any experience that has been conserved can be recalled in some state, and, conversely, there is theoretically some state in which any conserved experience can be recalled. Practically, of course, we can never induce a state which synthesizes all conserved experiences, nor always one in which any given experience is synthesized. I shall later, in connection with particular types of conscious states, give examples of hypnotic memories showing conservation of such experiences as I have just mentioned. The point you will not lose sight of is that we are concerned with hypnotic phenomena only so far as they may be evidence of the conservation of forgotten experiences.