In what I have said thus far I have had another purpose in view than that of a mere exposition of the psycho-physiological theory of memory. This other and chief purpose has been to lay the foundation for a conception of the Unconscious in its larger aspect. We have seen that thoughts and other conscious experiences that have passed out of mind may be and to an enormous extent are conserved and, from this point of view, may be properly regarded as simply dormant. Further we have seen that all the data collected by experimental pathology and other observations lead to the conclusion that conservation is effected in the form of neurographic residua or brain neurograms—organized physiological records of passing mental experiences of all sorts and kinds. We have seen that these neurographic records conserve not only our educational acquisitions and general stock of knowledge—all those experiences which we remember—but a vast number of others which we cannot spontaneously recall, including, it may be, many which date back to early childhood, and many which we have deliberately repressed, put out of mind and intentionally forgotten. We have also seen that it is not only these mental experiences which occupied the focus of our attention that leave their counterpart in neurograms, but those as well of which we are only partially aware—absent-minded thoughts and acts and sensations and perceptions which never entered our awareness at all—subconscious or coconscious ideas as they are called. Finally, we have seen that the mental experiences of every state, normal, artificial, or pathological, whatever may be the state of the personal consciousness, are subject to the same principle of conservation. In this way, in the course of any one’s natural life, an enormous field of neurograms is formed representing ideas which far transcend in multitude and variety those of the personal consciousness at any given moment and all moments, and which are far beyond the voluntary beck and call of the personal consciousness of the individual.
Neurograms are concepts and, by the meaning of the concept, they are unconscious. It is not necessary to enter into the question whether they are in their ultimate nature psychical or physical. That is a philosophical question.[[72]] They are at any rate unconscious in this sense; they are devoid of consciousness, i.e., have none of the psychological attributes of any of the elements of consciousness, and in the sense in which any physiological arrangement or process is not conscious, i.e., is unconscious. We have here, then, in the concept of brain residual neurograms the fundamental meaning of the Unconscious.[[73]] The unconscious is the great storehouse of neurograms which are the physiological records of our mental lives. By the terms of the concept neurograms are primarily passive—the potential form, as it were, in which psychical energy is stored. This is not to say, however, that, from moment to moment, certain ones out of the great mass may not become active processes. On the contrary, according to the theory of memory, when certain complexes of neurograms are stimulated they take on activity and function—the potential energy becomes converted into dynamic energy. In correlation with the functioning of such neurographic complexes, the complexes of ideas which they conserve—the psychological equivalents—are reproduced (according to the doctrines of monism and parallelism) and enter the stream of the personal consciousness. The unconscious becomes the conscious (monism), or provided with correlated conscious accompaniments (parallelism), and we may speak of the ideas arising out of the unconscious.[unconscious.]
Neurograms may also function as subconscious processes exhibiting intelligence and determining mental and bodily behavior.—Here two important questions present themselves. Is it a necessary consequence that when unconscious neurograms become active processes psychological equivalents must be awakened; and when they are awakened, must they necessarily enter the stream of the personal consciousness? If both these questions may be answered in the negative, then plainly in either case such active processes become by definition subconscious processes—of an unconscious nature in the one case and of a coconscious nature in the other. They would be subconscious because in the first place they would occur outside of consciousness and there is no awareness of them, and in the second place they would be a dissociated second train of processes distinct from those engaged in the conscious stream of the moment. Theoretically such subconscious processes, whether unconscious or coconscious, might perform a variety of functions according to the specificity of their activities.
Now, in preceding lectures, when marshalling the evidence for conservation, we met with a large number and variety of phenomena (automatic writing, hallucinations, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams, “unconscious” solution of problems, etc.), which clearly demonstrated that memory might be manifested by processes of which the individual was unaware and which were outside the content of consciousness. Hence these phenomena presented very clear evidence of the occurrence of processes that may be properly termed subconscious.[[74]] Attention, however, was primarily directed to them only so far as they offered evidence of conservation and of the mode by which conservation was effected. But necessarily these evidences were subconscious manifestations of forgotten experiences (memory), and in so far as this was the case we saw that unconscious neurograms can take on activity and function subconsciously; i.e., without their psychological equivalents (i.e., correlated conscious memory) entering the stream of the personal consciousness. We may now speak of these processes as subconscious memory. But when their manifestations are carefully scrutinized they will be found to exhibit more than memory. They may, for instance, exhibit logical elaboration of the original experiences, and what corresponds to fabrication, reasoning, volition and affectivity. Theoretically this is what we should expect if any of the conserved residual experiences of life can function subconsciously. As life’s experiences include fears, doubts, scruples, wishes, affections, resentments, and numerous other affective states, innate dispositions, and instincts, the subconscious memory process necessarily may include any of these affective complexes of ideas and tendencies. An affective complex means an idea (or ideas) linked to one or more emotions and feelings. In other words, any acquired residua drawn from the general storehouse of life’s experiences may be systematized with feelings and emotions, the innate dispositions and instincts of the organism. Now it is a general psychological law that such affective states tend by the force of their conative impulses to carry the specific ideas with which they are systematized to fulfilment through mental and bodily behavior. Consequently, theoretically, it might thus well be that the residua of diverse experiences, say a fear or a wish, by the force of such impulses might become activated into very specific subconscious processes with very specific tendencies expressing themselves in very specific ways, producing very specific and diverse phenomena. Thus memory would be but one of the manifestations of subconscious processes.
Now, as a matter of fact, there are a large number of phenomena which not only justify the postulation of subconscious processes but also the inference that such processes, activated by their affective impulses, may so influence conscious thought that the latter is modified in various ways; that it may be determined in this or that direction, inhibited, interrupted, distorted, made insistent, and given pathological traits. There is also a large variety of bodily phenomena which can be explicitly shown to be due to subconscious processes, and many which are only explicable by such a mechanism. Indeed, a subconscious process may become very complex and constellated with any one or many of the psycho-physiological mechanisms of the organism. In special artificial and pathological conditions where such processes reach their highest development, as manifested through their phenomena, they may exhibit that which when consciously performed is understood to be intelligence, comprising reasoning, constructive imagination, volition, and feeling; in short, what is commonly called thought or mental processes. Memory, of course, enters as an intrinsic element in these manifestations just as it is an intrinsic element in all thought. The automatic script that describes the memories of a long-forgotten childhood experience may at the same time reason, indulge in jests, rhyme, express cognition and understanding of questions—indeed (if put to the test), might not only pass a Binet-Simon examination for intelligence, but take a high rank in a Civil Service examination. In these more elaborate exhibitions of subconscious intelligence it is obvious that there is an exuberant efflorescence of the residua deposited in many unconscious fields by life’s experiences and synthesized into a subconscious functioning system.
It is beyond the scope of this lecture to examine into the particular mechanism by which a subconscious process is provoked at all—why, for instance, a dormant wish or fear-neurogram becomes activated into a subconscious wish or fear, or having become activated, the mechanism by which such a wish or fear manifests itself in this phenomenon or that—or to examine even any large number of the various phenomena which are provoked by subconscious processes, and it is not my intention to do so. Such problems belong to special psychology and special pathology. Of recent years, for instance, certain schools of psychology, and in particular the Freudian school, have attempted to establish particular mechanisms by which subconscious processes come into being and express themselves. We are engaged in the preliminary and fundamental task of establishing, if possible, certain basic principles which any mechanism must make use of, and, as a deeper-lying theoretical question, the nature of such processes.
The subconscious now belongs to popular speech and it is the fashion of the day to speak of it glibly enough, but I fear it means very little to the average person. It is involved in vagueness if not mystery. Yet as a necessary induction from observed facts it has a very precise and concrete meaning devoid of abstruseness[abstruseness], just as the other has a precise and concrete meaning. Although subconscious processes were originally postulated on theoretical grounds, the theory is fortunately open to experimental tests so that it is capable of being placed on an experimental basis like other concepts of science. It is possible to artificially create such processes and study their phenomena; that is to say, the modes in which they manifest their activities, their influence upon conscious and bodily processes. We can study their effect in inhibiting and distorting thought, in determining it in this or that direction, in creating hallucinatory, emotional, amnesic, and other mental phenomena, in inducing physiological disturbances of motion, sensation, of the viscera, etc. We can also study the capabilities and limitations of the subconscious in carrying on intelligent operations below the threshold of consciousness. Again, we can investigate the phenomena of this kind as met with in the course of clinical observations, and by technical methods of research explore the subconscious and thus explicitly reveal the process underlying and inducing the phenomena. By such methods of investigation the subconscious has been removed from the field of speculative psychology, and placed in the field of experimental research. We have thus been enabled to postulate a subconscious process as a definite concrete process producing very definite phenomena. These processes and their phenomena have become a field of study in themselves and, from my point of view, the determination of the laws of the subconscious should be approached by such experimental and technical methods of research. After its various modes of activity, its capabilities and limitations have been in this way established, its laws can then be applied to the solution of conditions surrounding particular problems. Though we can determine the actuality of a particular subconscious process this does not mean that we can determine all the components of that process; we may be able to determine many or perhaps none of these: just as among the constituents of a crowd we may discern an active, turbulent group creating a disturbance, though we may not be able to recognize all the components of the group or the scattered individuals acting in conjunction with it. Nor may we be able to determine the intrinsic nature of a subconscious process—whether it is a conscious or unconscious one, but only the actuality of the process, the conditions of its activity, and the phenomena which it induces.
A subconscious process may be provisionally defined as one of which the personality is unaware, which, therefore, is outside the personal consciousness, and which is a factor in the determination of conscious and bodily phenomena, or produces effects analogous to those which might be directly or indirectly induced by consciousness. It would be out of the question at this time to enter into an exposition of the larger subject—the multiform phenomena of the subconscious, but as its processes are fundamental to an understanding of many phenomena with which we shall have to deal, we should have a clear understanding of the grounds on which such processes are postulated as specific, concrete occurrences. The classical demonstration of subconscious occurrences makes use of certain phenomena of hysteria, particularly those of subconscious personalities and artificial “automatic” phenomena like automatic writing. The epoch-making researches of Janet[[75]] on hysterics and almost coincidently with him of Edmund Gurney on hypnotics very clearly established the fact that these phenomena are the manifestations of dissociated processes outside of and independent of the personal consciousness. Among the phenomena, for example, are motor activities of various kinds such as ordinarily are or may be induced by conscious intelligence. As the individual, owing to anesthesia, may be entirely unaware even that he has performed any such act, the process that performed it must be one that is subconscious.
The intrinsic nature of subconscious processes.—Janet further brought forward indisputable evidence showing that in hysteria these subconscious processes are real coconscious processes. It is only another mode of expressing this to say that there is a dissociation or division of consciousness in consequence of which certain ideas do not enter the content of the personal consciousness of the individual. It is possible, as he was the first to show, to communicate with and, in hypnotic and other dissociated states, recover memories of these split-off ideas of which the individual is unaware, and thereby establish the principle that these ideas are the subconscious process which induces the hysterical phenomena. (These phenomena are of a great many kinds and include sensory as well as motor automatisms, inhibition of thought and will, deliria, visceral, emotional, and other disturbances of mind and body.) The hysterical subconscious process is thus determined to be a very specific concrete coconscious process, one, the elements of which are memories and other particular ideas. This type of subconscious process, therefore, may be regarded as the activated residua of antecedent experiences with or without secondary elaboration. All subsequent investigations during the past twenty-five years have served but to confirm the accuracy of Janet’s observations and conclusions. It would be out of the question at this time, before coconscious ideas have been systematically studied, to attempt to present the evidence on which this interpretation of certain subconscious phenomena rests. This will be done in other lectures.[[76]] I will simply say that this evidence for coconsciousness occurring in certain special conditions, artificial and pathological, and perhaps as a constituent of the normal content of consciousness, is of precisely the same character as that for the occurrence of consciousness in any other individual but one’s self. If we reject the evidence of hysterical phenomena, of that furnished by a coconscious personality, and by automatic script and speech, etc., we shall have to reject precisely similar evidence for consciousness in other people than ourselves.[[77]] The evidence is explicit and not implied.
A subconscious personality is a condition where complexes of subconscious processes have been constellated into a personal system, manifesting a secondary system of self-consciousness endowed with volition, intelligence, etc. Such a subconscious personality is capable of communicating with the experimenter and describing its own mental processes. It can, after repression of the primary personality, become the sole personality for the time being, and then remember its previous subconscious life, as we all remember our past conscious life, and can give full and explicit information regarding the nature of the subconscious process. By making use of the testimony of a subconscious personality and its various manifestations, we can not only establish the actuality of subconscious processes and their intrinsic nature in these conditions, but by prearrangement with this personality predetermine any particular process we desire and study the modes in which it influences conscious thought and conduct. For instance, we can prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena, etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities, therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the mind.[[78]]