III. Subconscious intelligence underlying spontaneous hallucinations.—Spontaneous hallucinations often offer opportunities to study subconscious processes exhibiting constructive intelligence. Although properly belonging to clinical phenomena, they often can be so clearly related to an antecedent experience as to allow us to determine the causal factor with the same exactness as in the experimental type, and, therefore, to infer the connecting subconscious link with equal probability. Some of these spontaneous visions indicate that the subconscious link must be of considerable complexity and equivalent to logical processes of reasoning, volition, and purposive intelligence. Sometimes the same subconscious processes which fabricate the vision determine also other processes of conscious thought and movements.
In illustration I may cite an incident in the life of Miss B., which I have previously described:
“Miss B., as a child, frequently had visions of the Madonna and Christ, and used to believe that she had actually seen them. It was her custom when in trouble, if it was only a matter of her school lessons, or something that she had lost, to resort to prayer. Then she would be apt to have a vision of Christ. The vision never spoke, but sometimes made signs to her, and the expression of His face made her feel that all was well. After the vision passed she felt that her difficulties were removed, and if it was a bothersome lesson which she had been unable to understand it all became intelligible at once. Or, if it was something that she had lost, she at once went to the spot where it was.”... [For example, while under observation.] "Miss B. had lost a bank check and was much troubled concerning it. For five days she had made an unsuccessful hunt for it, systematically going through everything in her room. She remembered distinctly placing the check between the leaves of a book, when some one knocked at her door, and this was the last she saw of the check. She had become very much troubled about the matter, and in consequence, after going to bed that night she was unable to sleep, and rose several times to make a further hunt. Finally, at 3 o’clock in the morning, she went to bed and fell asleep. At 4 o’clock she woke with the consciousness of a presence in the room. She arose, and in a moment saw a vision of Christ, who did not speak, but smiled. She at once felt, as she used to, that everything was well, and that the vision foretold that she should find the check. All her anxiety left her at once. The figure retreated toward the bureau, but the thought flashed into her mind that the lost check was in the drawer of her desk. A search, however, showed that it was not there. She then walked automatically to the bureau, opened the top drawer, took out some stuff upon which she had been sewing, unfolded it, and there was the check along with one or two other papers.
“Neither Miss B. nor BII [hypnosis] has any memory of any specific thought which directed her to open the drawer and take out her sewing, nor of any conscious idea that the check was there. Rather, she did it, so far as her consciousness goes, automatically, as she used to do automatic writing.”[[98]]
Further investigation revealed the fact that the money had been put away absent-mindedly and “unconsciously”; in hypnosis the memory of this act was recovered.
In this observation we have two so-called automatic phenomena of different types—one a sensory automatism, the vision, the other a motor automatism or actions leading to the finding of the money. The motor acts being automatic were necessarily determined by subconscious processes and plainly required a knowledge of the hiding-place. This knowledge also plainly must have been conserved in the unconscious and now, in answer to her wish to find the lost money, acting as a subconscious process, fulfilled her wish in a practical way.
The vision was of Christ smiling. Seeing it the subject at once “felt that all was well,” and her anxiety vanished. It was plainly therefore a fabricated visual symbolism though one which she had frequently before experienced. It may be taken as a message sent by subconscious processes to her anxious consciousness and it is not too much to say had a purposive meaning, viz., to allay her anxiety. The question is, What was the causal factor which determined this symbolism? Logically it is a compulsory inference that the same conserved knowledge and subconscious processes, which eventuated in the motor automatisms, must have been the causal factor that determined the visual symbolism which carried the reassuring message to consciousness. This subconscious knowledge first allayed her anxiety and then proceeded to answer her problem of the whereabouts of the lost money. More specifically, the primary causal factor was the preceding anxious wish to find the money; the resulting phenomena were the sensory and motor automatisms, allaying the anxiety and fulfilling the wish; between the two as connecting links were subconscious processes of an intelligent, purposive, volitional character which first fabricated a visual symbolism as a message to consciousness and then made use of the conserved knowledge of her previous absent-minded act to solve her problem. The subconscious process as a whole we thus see was of quite a complicated character. In this example it is impossible to determine from the data at hand whether the subconscious process was coconscious or unconscious.
The observation which I have elsewhere described as “an hallucination from the subconscious”[[99]] is an excellent example of an intelligent subconscious process indicative of judgment and purpose. The hallucination occurred in my presence as a result of an antecedent experience for which I was a moment before responsible. It was therefore of the nature of an experiment and the causal factor was known. The antecedent experience consisted of certain remarks and behavior of the subject while under the influence of an illusion during a dissociated state for which there was subsequent amnesia. The vision was of a friend whose face was sad, as of one who had been injured, and seemed to reproach her. At the same moment she heard his voice which said, “How could you have betrayed me?” The hallucinatory words and the visual image were in no sense a reproduction of the causal, i.e., antecedent, experience. They were the expression of a subconscious self-reproach in consequence of that experience. This reproach connoted a subconscious belief or logical judgment, drawn from the experience, that she had broken a promise.[[100]] It was a subconscious reaction to a subconscious belief. I say both the reproach and the judgment were subconscious because, in the dissociated state, owing to the illusion, and in the normal after-state owing to the amnesia, she was entirely ignorant of having done anything that could be construed into breaking a promise. This interpretation of the episode must therefore have been entirely subconscious. The self-reproach emerged into consciousness but translated into visual and auditory hallucinations. These were plainly a condemnatory message sent from the subconscious to the personal consciousness and might aptly be termed “the prickings of a subconscious conscience.” The primary causal factor was simply certain statements (conserved in the unconscious) made to me by the subject and for which afterwards there was amnesia. Intervening between this antecedent experience and the resulting hallucinatory phenomena a subconscious process must be postulated as a necessary connecting link. This process plainly involved memory and an intelligent judgment, an emotional reaction, and an expression of this judgment and reaction translated into hallucinatory phenomena. Apparently also a distinct purpose to upbraid the personality was manifested.
The accounts of sudden religious conversion are full of instances of hallucinations occurring at the time of the “crisis” and these—visions and voices—are often logical symbolisms of antecedent thoughts of the subject. By analogy with similar experimental phenomena we are compelled to interpret them in the same way and postulate these antecedent experiences as the causal factors. If this postulation is sound then the connecting subconscious link is often a quite complicated process of an intelligent character.
In one instance in which the occurrence was similar in principle to sudden religious conversion I was able to determine beyond question the causal antecedents of the hallucinatory phenomenon. I will not repeat the details here;[[101]] suffice it to say that the hallucination, consisting of a vision and an auditory message from the subject’s deceased husband (see p. 40), answered the doubts and scruples with which the subject had been previously tormented. It was a logical answer calculated to allay distressing memories against which she had been fighting, “the old ideas of dissatisfaction with life, the feelings of injury, bitterness, and rebellion against fate and the ‘kicking against the pricks’ which these memories evoked.” It expressed previously entertained ideas which she had tried to accept but without success. The exposition of this answer in the hallucinatory symbolism required a subconscious process involving considerable reasoning. The phenomenon as a whole was a message addressed to her own consciousness by subconscious processes to answer her doubts and anxious questionings of herself, and to settle the conflict going on in her mind. The logical connection between the different elements of this hallucination and certain antecedent experiences which had harassed the subject are so close that there is no room left for doubting that these experiences were the causal factors. And so I might analyze a large number of spontaneous hallucinations wherein you would find the same evidence for subconscious processes showing intelligent constructive imagination, reasoning, volition, and purposive effort, and expressing themselves in automatisms which either solve a disturbing problem or carry to fruition a subconscious purpose.