1. The script was written automatically. The subject thought she was writing certain words and expressing certain thoughts and did not perceive that she was writing different words. “Something seemed to prevent her seeing the words she wrote.” There were two trains of “thought.”
2. The “thoughts” of the verse were in her “subconscious mind.”[[106]] These “thoughts” (also described as “words”) were not logically arranged or as written in the verse, but “sort of tumbled together—mixed up a little.” “They were not like the thoughts one thinks in composing a verse.” There did not seem to be any attempt at selection from the thoughts or words. No evidence could be elicited to show that the composing was done here.
3. Concurrently with these subconscious, mixed-up thoughts coconscious “images” of the words of the verse came just at the moment of writing them down. The images were bright, printed words. Sometimes one or two words would come at a time and sometimes a whole line.
In other words all happened as if there was a deeper underlying process which did the composing and from this process certain thoughts without logical order emerged to form a subconscious stream and after the composing was done the words of the verse emerged as coconscious images as they were to be written. This underlying process, then, “automatically” did the writing and the composing. Hence it seemed to the subject even when remembering in hypnosis the subconscious thoughts and images that both were done unconsciously.
As to whether this underlying process was the same as that which fabricated the dream and the hallucination, the evidence, albeit circumstantial, would seem to render this almost certain. In the first place the verse was only a poetical arrangement of the subconscious thoughts disclosed; the vision was an obvious symbolic expression or visual representation of the same thoughts (that is, of course, of those concerned with the subject matter of the vision). The only difference would seem to be in the form of the expression—verbal and visual imagery respectively.[[107]] In the second place the vision was an exact repetition of the dream vision. It is not at all rare to find certain phenomena of dreams (visual, motor, sensory, etc.) repeating themselves after waking.[[108]] This can only be explained by the subconscious repetition of the dream process. Consequently we are compelled to infer the same subconscious process underlying the dream-vision. More than this, it was possible to trace these thoughts back to antecedent experiences of the dreamer, so that in the last analysis the dream-vision, waking-vision, and poetical expression of the vision could be related with almost certainty to the same antecedent experiences as the causal factors.
Certain conclusions then seem compulsory: underlying the dream, vision, and script was a subconscious process in which the fundamental factors were the same. As this process showed itself capable of poetical composition, constructive imagination, volition, memory, and affectivity it was a subconscious intelligence.
As to its intrinsic nature—coconscious or unconscious[unconscious]—according to the evidence at least the process that wrote the script contained conscious elements—the coconscious thoughts and images.
We may assume the same for the dream and the vision. As to the mechanism of the vision it is quite conceivable, not to say probable, that, corresponding to the coconscious images of the printed words during the writing, there were similar images of the vision scene (both in the dream and the waking state), but these instead of remaining coconscious emerged into consciousness to be the vision.[[109]] Whether the still deeper underlying process was conscious or unconscious could not be determined by any evidence accessible and must be a matter of hypothesis.
The chief importance that attaches to this observation, it seems to me, is the insight it gives into the character of the underlying process of a dream. If the conclusions I have drawn are sound, then the subconscious process which determines the conscious dream may be what is actually an intelligence and it matters not whether a coconscious or unconscious one. This seems to me to be a conclusion fraught with the highest significance for the theory of dreams and hallucinatory phenomena in general. Of course we all know well enough that dissociated subconscious processes may be intelligent and influence the content of the personal consciousness, as witness coconscious personalities. If the underlying process of a dream may be something akin to such a personality, something capable of reasoning, imagination and volition, it renders intelligible the fundamental principle of the Freudian theory of a double process—the “latent” and “manifest” dream. One of the difficulties in the general acceptance of this theory has been, I think, the difficulty of conceiving a subconscious process—the “latent dream”—capable of the intelligent fabrication of a “manifest” dream phantasy which is a cryptic symbolization of the subject’s thoughts. Such a fabrication has all the earmarks of purpose, fore-thought and constructive imagination. But if this underlying process can be identified, even though it be in a single case, with such an intelligence as that which wrote the poetical script we have studied, it is plainly quite capable of fabricating the wildest dream phantasy.
I have suggested that the subconscious intelligence may be comparable to the phenomenon of a coconscious personality. It is worth noting in this connection that in the case of Miss B. the coconscious personality, Sally, who claimed to be awake while Miss B. was dreaming, also claimed that Miss B. sometimes dreamed about what Sally was thinking of at the moment.[[110]] In other words, the thoughts of a large systematized coconscious intelligence determined the dream just as these thoughts sometimes emerged into Miss B.’s mind when awake. That a coconscious personality may persist awake while the principal personality is asleep I have been able to demonstrate in another case (B. C. A.). It was also noted in Dr. Barrows’ case of Anna Winsor. Moreover, Sally was shown to be a persistent, sane coconsciousness while Miss B. was delirious and also while she was apparently deeply etherized and unconscious.[[111]] After all it is difficult to distinguish in principle the condition of sleep with a persisting coconsciousness from a state of deep hypnotic trance where the subject is apparently unconscious. In this condition, although the waking consciousness has disappeared, there can be shown to be a persisting “secondary” consciousness which can be communicated with by automatic writing and which later can exhibit memories of occurrences in the environment during the hypnotic trance. (B. C. A.)