Residual processes underlying physiological bodily disturbances.—Before proceeding further I would invite your attention to another class of facts as these facts must be taken into consideration in any theory of conservation. These facts show that the residua can, by subconscious functioning, induce physiological bodily manifestations without reproducing the original mental experience as conscious memory. In certain abnormal conditions of the nervous system, i.e., in certain psychoneuroses, we meet with certain involuntary actions of the limbs or muscles known as spasms and contractures; also with certain impairment of functions such as blindness, deafness, loss of sensation (anesthesia), paralysis, etc. These disturbances are purely functional, meaning that they are not due to any organic disease. Now the evidence seems to be conclusive that these physiological disturbances are caused sometimes by ideas after they have passed out of consciousness and become, as ideas, dormant, i.e., while they are in a state of conservation and have ceased to be ideas—or, at least, ideas of which the subject is aware. A moment’s consideration will convince you that this means that ideas, or, at least, experiences in a state of conservation, and without being reproduced as conscious memory, can so function as to affect the body in one or other of the ways I have mentioned. To do this they must exist in some specific form that is independent of the personal consciousness of the moment. To take, for example, an actual case which I have elsewhere described:
B. C. A., in a dream, had a visual hallucination of a flash of light which revealed a scene in a cave and which was followed by blindness such as would physiologically follow a tremendous flash. In the dream she is warned that if she looks into the cave, she will be blinded. She looks; there is a blinding flash and loss of vision follows; after waking she was still partially blind, but she continued from time to time to see momentary flashes of light revealing certain of the objects seen in the dream in the cave, and these flashes would be succeeded temporarily by absolute blindness as in the dream. She had no memory of the dream. Now psychological analysis disclosed the meaning of the dream; it was a symbolical representation of certain conserved (subconscious) previous thoughts—thoughts apprehensive of the future into which she dared not look, thinking she would be overwhelmed. While in a state of conservation the residua of these antecedent thoughts had translated themselves into the symbolical hallucination of the dream and the loss of vision. Similarly after waking, although she had no memory of the dream, the conserved residua of the same thoughts continued to translate themselves into visual hallucinations and to induce blindness.[[49]] It would take too long for me to enter here into the details of the analysis which forces this conclusion.[[50]]
Similarly, as is well known, convulsions resembling epilepsy, paralysis, spasms, tics, contractures, etc., may be caused directly or indirectly by ideas, after they have passed out of consciousness and ceased to take part in the conscious processes of thought. At least that is the interpretation which the facts elicited by the various methods of investigation seem to require.
There is an analogous class of phenomena which ought to be mentioned among the possible data bearing upon the theory of memory, although too much weight cannot be placed upon them as their interpretation is not wholly clear. I will discuss them in detail later in connection with the phenomena of the emotions. They are certain emotional phenomena which are attributed by some writers to ideas in a state of conservation. It has been demonstrated that ideas to which strong feeling tones are attached are accompanied by such physiological effects as disturbance of respiration, of the heart’s action, of the vaso-motor system, of the secretions, etc., and also by certain galvanic phenomena which are due to the diminution of the electrical resistance of the body, probably caused by increased secretion of sweat.[[51]]
Now the point is that such phenomena are sometimes experimentally obtained in connection with certain test words[[52]] spoken to the subject experimented upon, although he has no recollection of any incident in his life which could have given an emotional tone to the word and, therefore, can give no explanation of the physical reaction. By various technical methods, however, memories of a forgotten emotional experience in which the idea (represented by the word) plays a part and through which it derived its emotional tone are resurrected. I have been able to obtain such reactions from test words which investigation showed referred to the incidents of terrifying dreams which were completely forgotten in the waking state. When the test word was given, the subject might, for instance, exhibit a respiratory disturbance—a sudden gasp—without conscious knowledge of its significance, and the galvanometer, with which the subject was in circuit, would show a wide deflection. Recovery of the dream in hypnosis would explain the meaning of the emotional disturbance excited by the word. The interpretation which has been put upon such phenomena is that the residua of the forgotten experience are “struck” by the test word. As the forgotten experience originally included the emotion and its physiological reaction, so the residua are linked by association to the emotional mechanism and when stimulated function as a subconscious process and excite the reaction. If this interpretation, strongly held by some, be correct, the phenomena are important for the support they give to the theory of conservation. They would indicate that conscious experiences must be conserved in a very specific subconscious form, one that is capable, without becoming conscious memory, of exciting the physiological apparatus of the emotions in a manner identical with that of conscious emotional ideas. They are open, however, to a simpler explanation, whether more probable or not: namely, that it is not the residua of the forgotten experience which unconsciously excite the physiological reaction, but the auditory symbol, the test word itself. The symbol having been once associated with the emotional reaction, it afterwards of itself, through a short circuit so to speak, suffices to induce the reaction, though the origin of the association has been forgotten and, therefore, the subject is in entire ignorance of the reason for the strong feeling manifestation. On the other hand, in some instances test words associated with emotional experiences which originally were entirely coconscious and had never entered conscious awareness at all give the reactions in question.[[53]] As coconscious memories of such experiences can be demonstrated it would seem at first sight as if under such conditions the word-reactions must come from a true subconscious process—the subconscious memory. And yet even here it is difficult to eliminate absolutely the possibility of the second interpretation. There are, however, a large number of emotional phenomena occurring in pathological conditions which can only be intelligibly interpreted as being due to the residua of previously conscious experiences functioning as a subconscious process. These phenomena we shall have occasion to review in succeeding lectures. They are too complex to enter upon at this stage.
Aside, then, from these word-reactions we have a sufficient number of other phenomena, such as I have cited, which indicate that conscious experiences when conserved must persist in a form capable of exciting purely physiological reactions without the experiences themselves rising into consciousness again as memory. The form must also be one which permits of their functioning as intelligent processes although not within the conscious field of awareness of the moment.
As a final summing up of the experiments and observations of the kind which I have thus far cited, dealing with forgotten experiences, we may say that they lead us to the following conclusions:
1. That conservation is something very different from reproduction.
2. A given experience is conserved through the medium of some kind of residuum of that experience. This residuum must have a specific existence independent of consciousness, in that it is capable of specific and independent functioning, coincidentally with and outside of the consciousness of any given moment. Its nature must be such that it can incite through specific processes the following phenomena in none of which the conscious processes of the moment take part as factors:
(a) Specific memory for the given experience expressed through the established physiological mechanisms of external expression (speech, writing, gestures) after the manner of a mnesic process.