After a consideration of actions so habitually performed that they become automatic and free from conscious direction (so-called habit-reactions), of actions performed by decerebrate animals, of cerebro-spinal reflexes, and many motor activities of lower forms of animal life, we came to the conclusion that they also were performed by unconscious neural dispositions and processes, analogous to, or identical with (as the case might be) the acquired dispositions and processes correlated with conscious processes. Many of them may likewise be acquired and in a pragmatic sense intelligent. We thus were able to broaden our conception of the unconscious and its functioning, and at the same time see the further necessity of distinguishing the unconscious as a subdivision of the subconscious.
Proceeding further we found that besides subconscious processes that are distinctly unconscious, there are others which are distinctly conscious (or at least unconscious processes with conscious accompaniments) but which do not enter the focus or fringe of awareness—in other words, true subconscious ideas. These were termed coconscious as a second subdivision of the subconscious. They may include true perceptions, memories, thoughts, volition, imagination, etc. As with unconscious processes, any conserved experience of life, under certain conditions and given certain other factors, may thus function coconsciously, particularly if organized with and activated by an innate emotional disposition. So we may have subconscious processes both without and with conscious equivalents. We have also seen that coconscious processes may exhibit intelligence of a high order, and the same thing is possibly true in a less degree of unconscious processes. We found evidence showing that a conserved idea may undergo subconscious incubation and elaboration, and that subconscious processes may acquire a marked degree of autonomy, may determine or inhibit conscious processes of thought, solve problems, enter into conflicts, and in various modes produce all sorts of psychological phenomena (hallucinations, impulsive phenomena, aboulia, amnesia, dissociation of personality, etc.).
We have seen how, by the use of the experimental method of “tapping,” and by hypnotic and other procedures, that this same autonomy can be demonstrated, manifesting itself by impulsive phenomena (writing, speech, gestures, and all sorts of motor automatisms) on the one hand, and sensory automatisms (hallucinations) on the other. And we have seen that by similar procedures, in specially adapted individuals, remembrances of coconscious processes that have induced identical phenomena can be recalled. With this precise knowledge of the processes at work these automatisms were correlated with the spontaneous occurrence of the same kinds of phenomena in the psychoses and in normal conditions. Their occurrence in all sorts of pathological conditions thus becomes intelligible.
Evidence has been adduced to show that life’s experiences, and therefore acquired dispositions, tend to become organized into groups. The latter, termed for descriptive purposes neurograms, thereby acquire a functional unity; and they may become compounded into larger functioning groups, or complexes, and still larger systems of neurograms. Whether their origin is remembered or not they become a part of the personality. Such complexes and systems play an important part by determining mental and bodily behavior. Amongst other things they tend to determine the points of view, the attitudes of mind, the individual and social conscience, judgment, etc., and, as large systems, may become “sides to one’s character.” When such complexes have strong emotional tones they may set up conflicts leading to the inhibition of antagonistic sentiments, and sometimes to the contraction and even disruption of the personality. All these phenomena can be induced by the artificial creation and organization of complexes and this principle becomes an important one in therapeutics.
When studying ideas we found that, besides sensory images, they have meaning derived from antecedent associated experiences that form the setting or context. Further evidence was adduced to show that this setting and the idea formed a psychic whole; but that often the former remained subconscious while the idea only, or the affect only, or both, emerged into the content of consciousness. The significance of this mechanism lay in the fact that it enabled us to understand the insistency of emotional ideas or obsessions. Indeed reasons have been given for holding that subconscious processes perform a part in most processes of thought.
Besides acquired dispositions, organized and, so to speak, deposited by life’s experiences, personality includes many that are innate, and therefore conditioned by inherited pre-formed anatomical and physiological arrangements of the nervous system. These function after the manner of a physiological reflex; and the theory was adopted that the emotions are the central elements in certain of such dispositions. These may therefore be called emotional dispositions or instincts. By the excitation of such emotional reflexes the organism reacts in an emotional manner to the environment.
In the organization of life’s experiences the emotional dispositions tend to become synthesized with ideas to form sentiments and therefore synthesized with the neurographic residua by which ideas are conserved. Thus, on the one hand, neurograms and systems of neurograms become organized with innate emotional dispositions, and, on the other, ideas become energized by the emotional impulsive force that carries the ideas to fruition.
As to general psycho-pathological and certain physiological phenomena, a large variety such as anxiety states, hallucinations, and automatic motor phenomena, are clearly the manifestations of automatic subconscious processes; some are the resultants of conflicts between the impulsive forces of distinctly conscious sentiments, others between those of conscious and subconscious sentiments; others are the physiological manifestation of emotional processes, conscious or subconscious. Some, indicative of losses from personality (such as amnesia, anesthesia, paralysis, altered personality, etc.), are the resultants of inhibitions or dissociations of acquired or innate dispositions, effected by the conflicting force of antagonistic factors. These resultants may or may not be associated with the excitation and dominance of complexes, or large systems of acquired dispositions. If so, moods, trance states, fugues, somnambulistic states, secondary personalities, and other hysterical states come into being. In all cases these various pathological conditions are functional derangements of the fundamental factors of a given human personality—expressions of the same mechanisms which the organism normally makes use of to adapt itself harmoniously to its own past or present experiences and to its environment.
Finally, out of the innate and acquired dispositions organized by experience to a very large extent into unitary dynamic systems human personality is constructed by the integration of these systems (and other dispositions) into a composite functioning whole. And according as certain systems acquire dominance and determine fixed and predictable reactions to the environment character traits are developed. But as personality is thus a composite, that is an integrated system of lesser systems these latter are capable of being reassembled or integrated in varying combinations into many and different composites and thus multiple personality may be formed. The forces which bring about the disintegration of the normal composite and the resynthesizing of the unitary systems into new personalities are to be found in the dynamic dispositions of conscious and unconscious mechanisms. And we have also seen that as the empirical ego is a unitary system organized by experience each personality may contain its own differentiated ego.
Viewing as a whole the phenomena we have studied, we see why it is that personality is a complex affair in that in its make-up there enter many factors, some acquired and some innate. Each of these is capable of more or less autonomy and upon their harmonious coöperation depends the successful adaptation of the personality to its environment. It is, we may say with almost literal truth, when these factors work to cross purposes that a personality ceases to be a harmonious whole; just as the individuals composing a group of persons, a football team, for example, when they fail to work together and each strives to fulfill his own purposes, cease to be a single team. Consciousness is not a unity in any sense that the term has any significant meaning beyond that which is a most banal platitude. The “unity of consciousness” seems to be a cant-expression uttered by some unsophisticated ancient philosopher and repeated like an article of faith by each successive generation without stopping to think of its meaning or to test it by reference to facts. Neither a reference to the evidence of consciousness or to its manifestations gives support to the notion of unity. The mind is rather an aggregation of potential or functioning activities some of which may combine into associative functioning processes at one time and some at another; while again these different activities may become disaggregated with resulting contraction of personality, on the one hand, and conflicting multiple activities on the other.