Artificial states.—After a person passes from one dissociated state to another, or from a dissociated state to the full waking state, it is commonly found that there is amnesia for the previous state. This is a general principle. The forgetting of dreams is an example from normal life. For the psychological state of sleep in which dreams occur is one of normal dissociation of consciousness by which the perception of the environment, and the great mass of life’s experiences, can no longer be brought within the content of the dream consciousness. Hence there is a general tendency to the development of amnesia for dreams after waking when the normal synthesis of the personality has been established. Yet, as we have seen, forgotten dreams can generally be recalled in hypnosis or by some other technical method (e. g., crystal visions and abstraction). Now hypnosis is an artificially dissociated state. After passing from one hypnotic state to another,[[33]] or after waking, it is very common to find complete amnesia for the whole of the experience belonging to the previous hypnotic state. By no effort whatsoever can it be recalled and this inability persists during the remainder of the life of the subject. And yet those hypnotic experiences may have been very extensive, particularly if the subject has been hypnotized a great many times. Nevertheless, it is easy to demonstrate that they are conserved and therefore, like all conserved experiences, potentially still existing, subject to recall under favoring conditions; for, as is well known, if the subject be rehypnotized they are recalled as normal memories. With the restitution of the hypnotic state the memories which were dormant become synthesized with the hypnotic personality and conscious.
The method of producing crystal visions may also be used to demonstrate the dormant conservation of experiences originating in hypnotic states. By this method and that of automatic writing, as I have already explained, the memories may be made to reveal themselves, without inducing recollection, at the very moment when the subject cannot voluntarily recall them. The subject, of course, being ignorant of what happened in hypnosis cannot recognize the visions as pictorial memories. In illustration of this I would recall the observation in the case of Miss B. where, in such an artificial vision, she saw herself sitting on a sofa smoking a cigarette.[[34]] This vision represented an incident which occurred during one of the subject’s hypnotic states when she had smoked a cigarette. Naturally Miss B., in her ignorance of the facts, denied the truthfulness of the vision. Other examples of a like kind might be cited if it were necessary.
By automatic writing, also, evidence of the same principle may be obtained. The conserved memories are tapped, so to speak. Thus I suggest to Mrs. R. in hypnosis that after waking she shall write certain verses or sentences. After being awakened she reproduces automatically, as directed, the desired verses or sentences which, of course, belonged to her hypnotic experiences.[[35]] In other words, although the personal consciousness did not remember the hypnotic experience of having received the command and of having given the promise to write the verses, etc., the automatic writing by the act of fulfilling the command showed that all this was conserved; here again was evidence of conservation, in some form, of an experience at the very moment when the personal consciousness was unable to voluntarily recall what had taken place in hypnosis. Such experiments may be varied indefinitely.
The following is an instance of the same phenomenon obtained by tapping without the use of previous suggestion in hypnosis: subject B. C. A. One of the hypnotic states, b, was waked up to become B, this change being followed, as usual, by amnesia. By means of automatic writing an accurate account was now obtained of the experiences which had taken place during the previous moments in hypnosis, the subject being unaware of what the hand wrote. Here were complete memories of the whole period of which the personal consciousness, B, had no knowledge. One of the most striking, not to say dramatic, demonstrations of this kind can sometimes be obtained in cases exhibiting several different hypnotic states. For instance: “c” and “b” are two different hypnotic phases belonging to the same individual (B. C. A.). c knows nothing of the experiences of b, and b nothing of c, each having amnesia for the other. Now one has only to whisper in the ear of c, asking a question of b, and at once, by automatic speech, the dormant b phase responds, giving such information as is sought in proof of the conservation of any given experience belonging to the tapped b phase. The consciousness of c apparently continues uninterruptedly during the experiment. The same evidence could be obtained by automatic writing under the same conditions. Again in the b phase another state known as “Alpha and Omega” can be tapped, giving similar evidence of conservation. In the case of Miss B. the same phenomena could be elicited. In this respect hypnotic states may show the same behavior as alternating personalities of which I shall presently speak.
Suggested post-hypnotic phenomena depend, in part, on the conservation of dormant complexes. In hypnosis I give a suggestion that the subject on waking shall, at a given moment, take a cigarette and smoke it. There is thus formed a complex of ideas which becomes dormant and forgotten after waking. Later, by some mechanism which we need not inquire into now, the ideas of the dormant complex enter the field of the personal self; the idea of smoking a cigarette arises therein and the subject puts the idea into execution. These consequences of the suggestion could not occur unless the experiences were conserved. Or, we may take an experiment where the hypnotic experiences are reproduced automatically by writing. Here the conserved experiences form a secondary system split off from the personal consciousness. This system reproduces the hypnotic experiences as memory outside of the personal consciousness.
From a practical point of view this principle of the conservation of the experiences of the hypnotic state is of the utmost importance. The fact that a person does not remember them on waking—if such be the case—is of little consequence in principle, and, practically, this amnesia does not preclude these experiences from influencing the waking personality. As experiences and potential memories they all belong to and are part of the personality. The hypnotic experiences being conserved our personality may still be modified and determined in its judgments, points of view, and attitudes by them, as by other unrecognized memories when such modifications have been effected in the hypnotic state. When the last is the case the hypnotically modified judgments, etc., may introduce themselves into the content of consciousness in the waking state by association without being recognized as memories. There may be no recollection of the source of the new ideas, of the reason for the modification of a given judgment or attitude of mind, because there is no recollection of the hypnotic state as a whole; but so far as the new judgment or attitude is a reproduction of an hypnotic experience it is memory, although not perfect memory or recollection in the sense of localizing the experience in the past.
This principle can easily be demonstrated experimentally. It is only necessary, for instance, to state to a suitably suggestible subject that the weather, with which previously he was discontented is, after all, fine; for although it is raining, still, the crops need rain; it will allay the dust and make motoring pleasant, it will give him an opportunity to finish his neglected correspondence, etc. The whole prospect, he is told, is pleasing. He accepts, we assume, the new point of view. He is then waked up and has complete amnesia for the experience. Now these ideas, developed in the hypnotic state, are conserved as potential memories. Though with the change of the moment-consciousness they cannot be voluntarily recalled, they have entered into associations to form a new viewpoint. Just speak to him about the weather and watch the result. His discontent has disappeared and given place to satisfaction. He expresses himself as quite pleased with the weather and gives the same reasons for his satisfaction as were suggested to and accepted by him in hypnosis. He does not recognize his new views as reproductions, i.e., memories, of previous experiences because he has no recollection of the hypnotic state. He does not remember when and how he changed his mind; but these experiences have determined his views because they have become a part of his conscious system of thought. The principle applies to a large part of our judgments not formed in hypnosis. There is nothing very remarkable about it. The process is similar to that of ordinary thought though it has had an artificial and different origin. The complex of ideas having been formed in hypnosis still remains organized and some of its elements enter the complexes of the personal consciousness, just as in normal life ideas of buried experiences of which we have no recollection intrude themselves from time to time and shape our judgments and the current of our thoughts without our realizing what has determined our mental processes. We have forgotten the source of our judgments, but this forgetfulness does not affect the mechanism of the process.
Pathological states.—In the functional amnesias of a pathological character we find the same phenomenon of conservation. Various types of amnesia are encountered. I will specify only the episodic, epochal, and the continuous, so commonly observed in hysteria. This field has been threshed over by many observers and I need refer only to a few instances as illustrations. In the first two types the experiences which are forgotten may have occurred during the previous normal condition. In the episodic the particular episode which is forgotten may have been, strangely enough, one which from the very important part it played in the life of the subject and its peculiar impressiveness and significance we should expect would be necessarily remembered, especially as memory in other respects is normal. But for the same reasons it is not surprising to find that the experience has been conserved somehow and somewhere although it cannot be recalled. The classical cases of Fräulein O. and Lucy R. reported by Breuer and Freud[[36]] are typical.
From my own collection of cases I will cite the following episode from the case of B. C. A. This subject received a mental shock as the result of an emotional conflict of a distressing character. This experience was the exciting factor in the development of her psychosis, a dissociation of personality. In the resulting “neurasthenic” state, although her memory was normal for all other experiences of her life, this particular episode with all its manifold details, notwithstanding its great significance in her life, completely dropped out of her memory.[[37]]
This incident was a very intimate one and it is not necessary to give the details. When put to the test all effort to recall the episode voluntarily is without result, and even suggestions in two hypnotic states fail to awaken it in those states. Yet when a pencil is put in her hand these memories are made to manifest themselves by automatic writing. During the writing the subject remains in a perfectly alert state but is unaware of what her hand is doing. At a later period after the subject had been restored to the normal condition she could voluntarily recall these memories thus, again, showing their conservation.