(synonym: subconscious ideas.)
a: Conserved dormant neurograms or neural dispositions.
b: Active functioning neurograms or neuralprocesses.
(synonym: unconscious processes.)
Subconscious as an adjective used to qualify ideas is plainly equivalent to coconscious ideas. This terminology I have found useful in keeping the different classes of conceptual facts separate in my mind and I believe it will prove to be equally useful to others. With the conceptual facts clearly differentiated it will be generally easy to recognize the various senses in which the terms are used when found in the writings of others.
The unconscious as a fundamental of personality.—A survey of all the facts and their relations, which I have outlined in the preceding lectures, brings into strong relief the important principle that no matter in what state complexes of ideas are formed, so long as they are conserved, they become a part of our personality. They become dormant, but, being conserved, they may under favorable conditions be awakened and enter our conscious life. It matters not whether complexes of ideas have been formed in our personal consciousness, or in a state of hypnosis, in dreams, in conditions of dissociated personality, in coconsciousness, or any other dissociated state. They all become parts of ourselves and may afterwards be revived under favoring conditions, whether volitionally, automatically, by artificial devices, by involuntary stimuli, or other agencies. They may or may not be subject to voluntary recall as recollections, but, so long as they form part of our dormant consciousness as physiological neurograms, they belong to the personal self. “After all,” as Miss B. used to say, and correctly, referring to her different dissociated personalities, BI, B III, and BIV, “after all, they are all myself.” It makes no difference in what state an experience has occurred. A potential memory of it may persist and may, in one way or another, be revived, no matter how or when it originated.
Through the conception of the subconscious as resolvable, on the one hand, into the unconscious, passive or active physiological dispositions, and, on the other hand, into coactive conscious states, the subconscious becomes simplified and intelligible. It offers a basis on which may be constructed comprehensible theories of memory, suggestibility, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams, automatic writing and similar phenomena, artificial hallucinations, the protean phenomena of hysteria, and the psycho-neuroses, as well as the mechanism of thought. It enables us also to construct a rational concept of personality and self. As we shall see, when we take up the study of multiple personality in later lectures, out of the aggregate of the accumulated and varied experience of the past conserved in the unconscious may be constructed a number of different personalities, each depending upon a synthesis and rearrangement of life’s neurograms and innate dispositions and instincts. All dormant ideas with their feeling tones and conative tendencies belong to our personality, but they may be arranged with varying instincts and innate dispositions into a number of differentiated systems, each synthesized into a corresponding personality. In the unconscious may be conserved a vast number of life’s experiences ranging in time almost from the cradle to the grave. The hopes, the wishes, the anxieties of childhood may still be there, lying fallow, but capable of injecting themselves under favoring conditions into our personalities. Properly speaking, from this point of view, aside from certain artificial and pathological conditions, there is, normally, no distinct “subconscious self,” or “subliminal self,” or “secondary self,” or “hidden self.” In artificial and pathological conditions there may be, as has been frequently shown, a splitting of consciousness and the aggregation into a secondary coconscious system of large systems of ideas which have all the characteristics of personality. This secondary personality (of which the primary personality is not aware) may have its own memories, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. It may appropriate to itself various complexes of neurograms deposited by the experiences of life which are not at the disposal of the principal personality. Such a coconscious system may properly be spoken of as a subconscious self. But there is no evidence that, normally, such systems exist. All that we are entitled to affirm is that every individual’s consciousness may include ideas of which he is not aware, and that he has at his disposal, to a greater or less extent, a large unconscious storehouse in which are neurographically conserved a large and varied mass of life’s experiences. These experiences may be arranged in systems, as we shall see in the next lecture, but they do not constitute a “self.” To speak of them as a subconscious, subliminal, secondary, or hidden self is to construct concepts which are allegories, metaphors, symbolisms, personifications of concrete phenomena. Their use tends to fallacious reasoning and to perverted inductions from the facts. Becoming major premises in a syllogism, they lead to erroneous interpretations of the simplest facts, just as fixed ideas or obsessions tend to a perverted interpretation of the environment.
We are now in a position to see that the psycho-physiological theory of memory has a far-reaching significance. The facts which have been brought before you in evidence of the theory have been selected largely from those which were capable of verification by experimentation and by other objective testimony. They include a large variety of experiences which occurred in pathological conditions like amnesia and multiple personality, and in artificial conditions like hypnosis and intoxication. Such abnormal conditions enable us to show by testimony, independent of the individual, that these experiences had actually occurred, and, therefore, to show that the reproductions of these experiences were in principle truthful memories. They also enable us to appreciate the enormous variety and quantity of experiences which, although absolutely beyond the power of voluntary recall, may be conserved nevertheless as neurograms, and also to appreciate the minuteness of detail in which the brain records may be preserved.
If you will stop a moment to think, and give play to your imagination, you will see that the principle of the neurographic conservation of experiences must be true not only of our outer life, of our experiences with our environment, but of our whole inner life, normal as well as abnormal. It is always possible that any thought, any feeling, however trivial and transitory, may leave neurograms in the brain. It is always possible that even a fleeting doubt or scruple, thoughts which flash into the mind and straightway are put out again, all may leave their records and dispositions to function again. Even a passing doubt which any of you may entertain regarding the interpretation of the phenomena I have described, and the correctness of our conclusions, may be recorded. Indeed, it is a matter of some importance for the understanding of abnormal[abnormal] mental conditions that many of those horrid little sneaking thoughts which we do not like to admit to ourselves, the thoughts which for one reason or another we endeavor to repress, to put out of our minds, may leave their indelible traces. In fact, these are the very thoughts, the ones which we try hardest to forget, to push aside, which are most likely to be conserved. The harder we try, the stronger the feelings attached to them, the more likely they are to leave neurograms in the brain though they may never be reproduced. This has been shown by observation of pathological conditions, like hysteria and psychasthenia, and by experimentation. In repressing our thoughts we do not put them out of our minds, but, as the subject previously cited, who in hypnosis could recall such repressed thoughts, said, we put them into our minds. In other words, we conserve them as neurograms.
In one sense, I suppose, we may say that every one leads a double life. Let me hasten to say to you, I mean this not in a moral but in an intellectual sense. Every one’s mental life may fairly be said to be divided between those ideas, thoughts, and feelings which he receives from and gives out to his social world, the social environment in which he lives, and those which belong more properly to his inner life and the innermost sanctuary of his personality and character. The former include the activities and the educational acquisitions which he seeks to cultivate and conserve for future use. The latter include the more intimate communings with himself, the doubts and fears and scruples pertaining to the moral, religious, and other problems of life, and the struggles and trials and difficulties which beset its paths; the internal contests with the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The conventionalities of the social organization require that the outward expression of many of these should be put under restraint. Indeed, society insists that some, the sexual strivings, are aspects of life and human nature which are not to be spoken or thought of. Now, of course, this inner life must also leave its neurographic tracings along with the outer life, and must, potentially at least, become a part of our personality, liable to manifest itself in character and in other directions. But, more than this, abnormal psychology, through its technical methods of investigation and through the perverted manifestations exhibited in sick conditions of mind and body, has shown us that the neurograms deposited as the experiences of this inner life may flower, to use an expression of the lamented William James, below the threshold of consciousness, and, under certain conditions, where the mind is in unstable equilibrium, burst forth in mental and bodily manifestations of an unusual character. Thus in processes of this kind we find an explanation of religious phenomena like sudden conversion; of dreams and of certain pathological phenomena like the hallucinations, deliria, crises, and bodily manifestations of hysteria, and the numerous automatic phenomena of spiritualistic mediums. Such phenomena may then be interpreted as the flowering or functioning of the unconscious.
The essential difference in the consequences which follow from this psycho-physiological conception of memory, based as it is on the unconscious, and those which follow from that conception which is popularly held must be obvious. According to popular understanding the mental life which we have outlived, the life which we have put behind us, whether that of childhood or of passing phases of adult life, is only an ephemeral, evanescent phase of consciousness which once out of mind, put aside or forgotten, need no longer be taken into consideration as pertaining to, much less influencing, our personality. Writers of fiction who undertake to depict human nature almost invariably, I believe, are governed by this point of view. They describe their characters as throwing overboard their past, their dominating beliefs, convictions, and other traits as easily as we should toss undesirable refuse into the ocean. Their heroes and heroines jettison their psychological cargoes as if they were barrels of molasses whenever their personalities show signs of going down in the storms of life’s experiences. According to this view, which is derived from an imperfect conception of mental processes, any passing phase of consciousness ceases to have potential existence or influence as soon as it is forgotten, or as soon as it ceases to be a consciously dominating belief or motive of life. It is assumed that so long as we do not bring it back into consciousness it belongs to us no more than as if it had originated in the mind of another, or had taken flight on the wings of a dove. This is true in part only. A phase of consciousness may not be conserved, or it may become so modified by the clash with new experiences that a rearrangement of its elements takes place and it becomes, for instance, a new motive or belief, or a new setting to give a new meaning to an idea. On the other hand, any passing phase may, as we have seen, still belong to our personality even though it lies hidden in its depths. That we no longer recall it, bring it voluntarily into the field of our personal consciousness, does not negative its continuing (though dormant) existence, and its further influence upon the personality through the subconscious workings of the mind.
In conclusion, and by way of partial recapitulation, we may say, first: The records of our lives are written in unconscious dormant complexes and therein conserved so long as the residua retain their dynamic potentialities. It is the unconscious, rather than the conscious, which is the important factor in personality and intelligence. The unconscious furnishes the formative material out of which our judgments, our beliefs, our ideals, and our characters are shaped.