But why this meaning of fainting? It must have been derived from antecedent experiences. An idea can no more have a meaning without antecedent experiences with which it is or once was linked than can the word “parallelopipedon” have a geometrical meaning without a previous geometrical experience, or “Timbuctoo” a personal meaning without being set in a personal experience, whether of missionaries or hymn-books.
I will not take the time to give the detailed results of the investigation by hypnotic procedures that followed. I will merely summarize by stating that the fear of death from fainting was a recurrent memory, i.e., a recurrence of the content of consciousness of a moment during an incident that occurred more than twenty years before, when she was a young girl about 18 years of age. At the time as the result of a nervous shock she had fainted, and just before losing consciousness she definitely thought her symptoms meant death. At this thought she became frightened, and ever since she has been afraid of fainting. There was no conscious association between her phobia and this youthful episode. When the memory of the latter was recovered she remarked, “I wonder why I never thought of that before.”
But this again was not all. A searching investigation of the unconscious (residua) in deep hypnosis revealed the fact that death from fainting was organized with still wider experiences involving a fear of death. At the moment of the nervous shock just before fainting (fancied as dying) she thought of her mother who was dangerously ill from cancer in an adjoining room, and a great fear swept over her at the thought of what might happen to her mother if she should hear of the cause of her (the patient’s) nervous shock and of her death. It further transpired that the idea of death and fear of it were set in a still larger series of experiences.[[170]] It had, indeed, dated from a childhood experience when she was eight years of age. At that time she was frightened when a pet animal died and a fear of death had been more or less continuously present in her mind ever since, but not always consciously so; meaning that it was sometimes in awareness and sometimes in the ultra-marginal zone of consciousness. She had been able to conceal the fear until the fainting episode occurred and, as she in hypnosis asserted, fear afterward had continued to be present more or less persistently, although she was not conscious of the fact when awake (excepting in the phobic attacks) and it had attached itself to various ideas of intercurrent illnesses. But these ideas could all be reduced to two, fainting and cancer. Ever since her mother’s illness and death she had a fear of death from cancer, believing she might inherit the disease. This thought and the fear it aroused had been constantly in her mind but never previously confessed. It was the real meaning of her fear of illness which had been conspicuous and puzzling to her physician. She had imagined that each illness might mean cancer, but had successfully concealed this thought. The idea of death and the fear it excited had thus become constellated in a large unconscious complex derived from past experiences which included the fainting episode, her mother’s death from cancer and the possibility of having cancer herself. This last was still consciously believed and was very real to her.
Without pursuing further the details it is evident that although the meaning of fainting—death—was in the fringe of consciousness and subconscious, it had as a setting a large group of fear-inspiring experiences, more particularly those involving cancer. But there was no conscious association between her fear of fainting and that of cancer. Of this setting, during a phobic attack, only the ideas of fainting and fear-inspiring death enter the various zones of consciousness.
As to why this apparently unsophisticated idea of death still persisted in connection with that of fainting is another problem with which we are not concerned at this moment. We should have to consider more specifically the content of the setting in which, besides the cancer-belief, probably subconscious self-reproaches would be found.
Meaning may be the conscious elements of a functioning larger subconscious complex.—However, whatever be its conscious constituents, obviously meaning must be derived from antecedent experiences and without such experiences no idea can have meaning. If, then, antecedent experiences determine the meaning of the idea, it is theoretically possible, particularly with insistent ideas, that the conscious elements involved in meaning are, with many ideas at least, only part and parcel of a larger complex which is for the most part unconscious. That is to say, a portion of this complex—perhaps the larger portion represented by the residua of past experiences—would, under this hypothesis, be unconscious while certain elements would arise in consciousness as the meaning of a given idea. Under such conditions a hidden subconscious process would really determine the conscious setting which gives the meaning. The whole setting would be partly conscious and partly hidden in the unconscious. Such a mechanism may be roughly likened to that of a clock, so far as concerns the relation of the chimes and hands to the works concealed inside the case. Though the visible hands and the audible chimes appear to indicate the time, the real process at work is that of the hidden mechanism. To inhibit the chime or regulate the time rate the mechanism must be altered. And so with an insistent idea: The unconscious part of the complex setting must be altered to alter the meaning of the idea. Of course the analogy must not be carried too far as in the case of the clock the chimes and hands are only epiphenomena, while conscious ideas are elements in the functioning mechanism.
Such a theory would afford an adequate explanation of the psychogenesis and mechanism of certain pathological ideas such as the phobia of C. D. At any rate, it is plain that an explanation of such ideas must be sought, on the one hand, in their meanings and in the antecedent experiences to which they are related, and, on the other, in the processes which determine their insistency or fixation.
The facts which support this theory, to which our studies have led us, we will take up for consideration in our next lecture.
[165]. It is very doubtful whether vivid awareness is a matter of intensity because, among other reasons, subconscious ideas of which the individual is entirely unaware and elements in the fringe may have decided intensity.