[22]. Morton Prince: The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, October-November, 1910.
[23]. Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie; 1909, Heft 12.
[24]. According to Freud and his school it is always the imaginary fulfilment of a suppressed wish, almost always sexual. For our purposes it is not necessary to inquire into the correctness of this interpretation or the details of the Freudian theory.
[25]. For an example, see p. [98].
[26]. If the physiological interpretation be maintained, i.e., that the script was produced by a pure physiological process, this phenomenon would be a crucial demonstration of the nature of conservation, that it is in the form of physical alterations in nervous structure. I do not believe, however, that this interpretation can be maintained.
LECTURE III
CONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE
I. Normal Life (Continued)
I have directed your attention up to this point to the conservation of experiences which at the time of their occurrence, although lost beyond voluntary recall, for the most part occupied the focus of attention of the individual—were within the full light of consciousness. If these experiences were the only ones which were subject to conservation—and I would have you still bear in mind that I am using the term only in the limited sense of the ability to recover an experience in some favorable condition, or moment of consciousness, or through some fortunate or technical mode of reproduction—if, I say, these were the only ones to be conserved, then the conservation of the experiences which make up our mental lives would be considerably curtailed. It so happens, however, that a large part of our mental activity is occupied with acts of which at the moment we are only dimly aware—or half aware—in that they do not occupy the focus of attention. Some of these are what we call absent-minded acts. Again, many sensations and perceptions do not enter the focus of attention, so that we are either not aware of them, or, if we are, there is so little vividness attached to them that they are almost immediately lost to voluntary memory. The same is true of certain trains of thoughts which course through the mind while one’s attention is concentrated on some other line of thought. They are sometimes described as being in the background of the mind. Then, again, we have our dream life, and that of reverie, and the important artificial state of hypnosis; also certain pathological states to which some individuals are subject, such as intoxication, hysterical crises, deliria, and multiple personality. Accordingly it is important in any investigation into the extent of the field of conservation to inquire whether all this mental life is only fleeting, evanescent, psychological experience, or whether it is subject to the same principle of conservation. If the latter be the case it presages consequences which are portentous in the possible multiplicity and manifoldness of the elements which may enter into and may govern the mechanism of mental processes. But let me not get ahead of my exposition.
Absent-minded acts.—In a study made some time ago I recorded the reproduction, as a crystal vision, of an absent-minded act, i.e., one which had not fully entered the focus of consciousness during deep concentration of the attention. It is a type of numerous experiments of this kind that I have made. Miss B. is directed to look into a crystal. She sees therein a vision of herself walking along a particular street in Boston in a brown study. She sees herself take out of her pocket some bank notes, tear them up, and throw them into the street. Now this artificial hallucination, or vision, was a picture of an actual occurrence; in an absent-minded reverie the subject had actually performed this very act under the circumstances portrayed in the vision and had retained no memory of it.[[27]]
Similarly I have frequently recovered knowledge of the whereabouts of articles mislaid absent-mindedly. Sometimes the method used has been, as in the above examples, that of crystal gazing or artificial hallucinations; sometimes hypnotism, sometimes automatic writing, etc. By the last two methods not only the forgotten acts but the ideas and feelings which were outside the focus of attention, but in the fringe of consciousness, and prompted the acts are described. It is needless to give the details of the observations; it suffices to say that each minute detail of the absent-minded act and the thoughts and feelings that determined it are described or mirrored, as the case may be. The point of importance is that concentration of attention is not essential for conservation, and, therefore, among the vast mass of the conserved experiences of life may be found many which, though once conscious, only entered the margin of awareness (not the focus of attention) and never were subject to voluntary recollection. In the absence of attentive awareness at the time for such an experience (and therefore of recollection), we often can only be assured that it ever occurred by circumstantial evidence. When this assurance is wanting we are tempted to deny its occurrence and our responsibility, but experiment shows that the process of conservation, like the dictagraph, is a more faithful custodian of our experiences than are our voluntary memories.