In the post-hypnotic motor acts conation is obvious. Here too there is a series of subconscious processes covering a period of time and carrying out a purpose. The suggested causal idea did not include the acts necessary for the fulfillment of the idea. Each step was adapted to an end, ceased as soon as it accomplished that end, and was followed by another in logical sequence, the whole taking place as if performed by an intelligence. Reasoning may or may not be involved according to the complexity of the actions.
Third; the coconscious figures in the calculation experiments do not constitute the whole of the process. They would seem to be the product of some deeper underlying process. The figures “kept coming and going” and seemed to “add themselves.” There was no conscious process that related the figures to one another and determined whether the problem was one of addition or multiplication—as is the case when we do a calculation consciously; that is to say, of course, if the hypnotic personality remembered the whole of the conscious calculation. It was more as if there was an underlying unconscious process which did the calculation, certain final results of which appeared as dissociated states of consciousness, i.e., figures which did not enter the personal consciousness. The process reminds us of the printing of visible letters by the concealed works of a typewriter; or of visible letters of an electrically illuminated sign appearing and disappearing according as the concealed mechanism is worked. This interpretation is in entire accord with the spontaneous occurrence of the coconscious images during the everyday life of these subjects. These images were pictorial representations of antecedent thoughts and seemed to be the products or elements of these thoughts apparently functioning as underlying unconscious processes. Likewise, in post-hypnotic suggested actions, I have not been able to obtain memories of coconscious thoughts directing the actions, but only the images described. These behave as if they were the product of another underlying process determining the action. Inferences of this sort are as compulsory as the inference that the illumination of a sensitive plate observed in the study of radio-activity must be due to the bombardment of the plate by invisible particles emitted by the radio-active substance. These particles and the process which ejects them can only be inferred from the effects which they produce. So, in the above observations, it would seem as if the coconscious figures, and other images involved, must be ejected as conscious phenomena by an underlying process. There is no explicit evidence that this is conscious.
I said advisedly, a moment ago, “if the hypnotic personality remembered the whole of the conscious calculation,” for, as a matter of fact, we find, when we examine several different hypnotic states in the same subject, that their memories for coconscious ideas are not coextensive, one (or more) being fuller than another. Indeed in certain states there may not be any such memories at all. It is necessary, therefore, to obtain by hypnosis a degree of dissociation which will allow the complete memories of this kind to be evoked. In the subjects I made use of this procedure was followed. Theoretically it might be held that, no matter how complete the memories evoked in the various states, some other state might possibly be obtained in which still more complete memory would be manifested. Theoretically this is true and all conclusions are subject to this criticism. Practically, however, I found, when making these investigations, that I seemed to have come to the limit of such possibilities, for, obtain as I would new dissociated arrangements of personality, after a certain point no additional memories could be evoked. There is still another possibility that there may be coconscious processes for which no memories can be evoked by any method or in any state.
II. Artificially induced visual hallucinations with which we have already become familiar can, as we have seen, only be interpreted as the product of subconscious processes. If only because of the important part that hallucinations play in insanity and other pathological states and of the frequency with which they occur in normal people (mystics and others), the characteristics of the subconscious process are well worth closer study. What is found to be true of the experimental type is probably true of the spontaneous variety whether occurring in pathological or normal conditions. Indeed, as we shall see, spontaneous hallucinations have the same characteristics. We have considered them thus far only from two points of view, viz. (1) as evidence of conservation of forgotten experiences, and (2) as evidence for specific residua of such experiences functioning as subconscious processes. Now, artificial visual hallucinations, like the spontaneous ones, may be limited—relatively speaking—to what is apparently little more than an exact reproduction of an antecedent visual perception, e. g., a person or object. But, generally speaking, it is more than this and when analyzed will be found almost always to be the expression of a complicated process. For instance, take the relatively simple crystal vision, of the subject smoking a cigarette in a particular situation during hypnosis, which I have previously cited. (Lecture III.) As a matter of fact, the subject had no primary visual perceptions at the time of the original episode at all. She was in hypnosis, her eyes were closed, and she did not and could not see herself (particularly her own face) or the cigarette or her surroundings. And yet the vision pictured everything exactly as it had occurred in my presence, even to the expression of her features. Looking into the crystal the subject saw herself sitting in a particular place, enacting a series of movements, talking and smoking a cigarette with a peculiar smile and expression of enjoyment on her face.[[91]] For this experience there was complete amnesia after waking from hypnosis and at the time of the vision.
Now consider further the facts and their implications. In the mechanism of the process eventuating in the visual phenomenon we obviously have two known factors: the antecedent causal factor—the hypnotic episode—and, after a time interval, the end result—the vision. As there was no conscious memory of the hypnotic episode the neurograms of the latter must have functioned subconsciously to have produced the vision. But what particular neurograms? As the subject’s eyes had been closed in hypnosis, and, in any event, as she could not have seen her own face, there were at the time no visual perceptions of herself smoking a cigarette, and therefore the vision could not have been simply a reproduction of a visual experience. There were, however, tactual, gustatory, and other perceptions and ideas of self and environment, and these perceptions and ideas of course possessed secondary visual images.[[92]] The simplest mechanism would be that the neurograms of this complex of perception and ideas of self, etc., functioned subconsciously and their secondary visual images emerged into consciousness to be the vision. I give this as the simplest mechanism by which we can conceive of a visual representation of an antecedent experience emerging out of a subconscious process.[[93]] There is a considerable body of data supporting this interpretation.
But the original experiences of the episode included more than the mere perceptions and movements of the subject. They included trains of thought and enjoyment of the cigarette smoking experience. All formed a complex of which the tactual and other perceptions of self were subordinate elements. At one moment, of course, one element, and, at another moment another element, had been in the focus of awareness, the others becoming shifted into the fringe where at all times were secondary visual images of herself. Did the subconscious process underlying the vision include the whole of this complex? As to this, one peculiarity of the vision has much significance. In behavior it acted after the manner of a cinematographic or “moving picture,” and delineated each successive movement of the episode, as if a rapid series of photographs had been taken for reproduction. In this manner even the emotional and changing play of the features of the vision-self, expressive of the previous thoughts and enjoyment, were depicted. Such a cinematographic series of visual images would seem to require a concurrent subconscious process to produce the successive changes in the hallucinatory images. As these changes apparently correspond from moment to moment with the changes that had occurred in the content of consciousness during the causal episode, it would also seem that the subconscious process was a reproduction in subconscious terms of substantially the whole original mental episode. This conclusion is fortified by the following additional facts: In many experiments of this kind, if the subject’s face be watched during the visualization, it will be observed that it shows the same play of features as is displayed by the vision face,[[94]] and the visualizer at the same moment experiences the same emotion as is expressed by the features of the vision face,[[95]] and sometimes knows “what her [my] vision self is thinking about.” In other words, in particular instances, sometimes the feelings alone and sometimes both the thoughts and feelings expressed in pantomime in the hallucination arise at the same moment in consciousness. This would seem to indicate that the same processes which determined the mimetic play of features in the hallucination were determining at the same moment the same play in the features of the visualizer, and that these processes were a subconscious memory of substantially all the original perceptions and thoughts. That is to say, this memory in such cases remains sometimes entirely subconscious and sometimes emerges into consciousness. The hallucination is simply a projected visualization induced by what is taking place subconsciously in the subject’s mind at the moment. Whether this shall remain entirely subconscious or shall emerge partially or wholly into consciousness depends upon psychological conditions peculiar to the subject.
That even when the thoughts of the causal experience emerge in consciousness along with the vision a portion of the functioning complex—e. g., the perceptual elements—may still remain submerged is shown by the following example: The vision, one of several of the same kind, portrayed in pantomime an elaborate nocturnal somnambulistic act. It represented the subject walking in her sleep with eyes closed; then sitting before the fire in profound and depressing thought; then joyously dancing; then writing letters, etc., and finally ascending the stairs, unconsciously dropping one of the letters from her hand on the way,[[96]] and returning to bed. During the visualization the thoughts and feelings of the vision-self, even the contents of the letters, arose in the mind of the visualizer whose features and tone of voice betrayed the feelings.
The point to be noted in this observation is that the vision reproduced as a detail of the somnambulistic act the accidental dropping of a letter from the hand of the somnambulist who was unaware of the fact; it reproduced what was not in conscious experience. How came it that an act for which there had been no awareness could appear in the vision? The only explanation is that originally in the somnambulistic state, as is so commonly observed in hypnotic somnambulism, there was a subconscious tactual perception (with secondary visual images?) of dropping the letter and now the memory of this antecedent perception, functioning subconsciously, induced this detail of the vision. The general conclusion then would seem to be justified that this hallucination was determined by a fairly large complex of antecedent somnambulistic experiences of which a part emerged as the hallucination and the thoughts of the somnambulist into consciousness, and a part—the tactual and other perceptions—remained submerged as the subconscious process. How much more may have been contained in this process the facts do not enable us to determine.
An examination, then, of even the more simple artificial hallucinations discloses that underlying them there is a residual process which is quite an extensive subconscious memory of antecedent thoughts, perceptions and affective experiences. Whether this memory is only an unconscious functioning neurogram or whether it is also a coconscious memory, or partly both, cannot be determined from the data.[[97]] The bearing of these results upon the interpretation of insane hallucinations is obvious.
Our examination of subconscious processes in the two classes of phenomena thus far studied—post-hypnotic[post-hypnotic] phenomena and artificial hallucinations—permits the following general conclusions: First, there is positive evidence to show that in some instances, in their intrinsic nature, they are coconscious. In other instances, in the absence of such evidence, it is permissible to regard them as unconscious. Second, that in the quality of the functions performed they frequently exhibit that which is characteristic of Intelligence. This characteristic will be seen to be still more pronounced in the phenomena which we shall next study.