[166]. The development of amnesia seems to be inversely proportionate to the degree of awareness, provided there are no other dissociating factors, such as an emotional complex.
[167]. This is due to the well-known fact (demonstrated in a large variety of phenomena) that ideas dissociated from the personal consciousness awake may become synthesized as memories with this same consciousness in hypnosis.
[168]. See Proceedings, also The Psychological Review, March-May, 1905.
[169]. All pathological processes are only the normal under altered conditions.
[170]. Among them was the following: A few months later her mother died. C. D. was in the room with the body, her back turned toward the bed where the body lay. Suddenly she was startled by the window curtain blowing out of the window. The noise and the partial vision of the curtain gave her a start, for she thought the body had risen up in bed. At this point, while in hypnosis, C. D. remarked, “Ah! that explains the dream which I am always having. I am constantly having a frightful dream of my mother lying dead and rising up as a corpse from the bed. This dream always gives me a great terror.”
LECTURE XII
SETTINGS OF IDEAS AS SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES IN OBSESSIONS
In our last lecture we were led to two conclusions: (1) that the conscious elements which are the meaning of an idea may be in the marginal zones; and (2) more important, that “meaning” may be only a part of a larger setting of antecedent experiences, which is an unconscious complex.
Let us now consider the further question raised in the theory finally proposed; namely, whether the submerged elements of a complex remain quiescent or whether, in some cases at least, this portion functions subconsciously and takes part as an active factor in the whole process by which the meaning of an idea and its accompanying emotional tone invades the content of consciousness. If the latter be true, a hidden subconscious process would, according to the theory (to repeat what was previously said), really determine the conscious setting which gives the meaning. Such a mechanism was roughly likened to that of a clock. If such were the mechanism in insistent ideas, obsessions, and impulsions, it would, as I have intimated, explain their insistency, their persisting recurrence, the difficulty in modifying them, notwithstanding the subject realizes their falsity, the point of view often inexplicable to the subject, and the persistence of the affect. There is a constant striving of affective subconscious processes, when stimulated, to carry themselves to fulfilment. Consequently as we know from numerous observations, the feelings and emotions (pleasantness and unpleasantness, exaltation and depression; fear, anger, etc.) pertaining to subconscious processes tend to emerge into consciousness;[[171]] and likewise ideational constituents of the process often emerge into the fringe of the content of consciousness and even the focus of awareness. Given such a subconsciously functioning setting to an idea, it would necessarily tend by the impulsive force of its emotion to make the latter insistent, and resist the inhibiting control of the personal consciousness.
In the case of C. D., cited in the last lecture, we were led to the conclusion, as the result of analysis, that her insistent phobia might be due to the impulsive force of such subconscious complexes. The whole problem is a very difficult one, dealing as we are with complicated mechanisms and such elusive and fluid factors as conscious and subconscious processes. It is useless, therefore, to attempt to formulate the mechanisms with anything like scientific exactness.
It must be borne in mind, further, that the method of analysis (employed with C. D.), meaning thereby the bringing to light associated memories of past experiences, cannot positively demonstrate that those experiences take part as the causal factor in a present process. It can demonstrate the sequence of mental events, and, therefore, each successive link in a chain of evidence leading to the final act; or it can demonstrate the material out of which we can select with a greater or less degree of probability the factor which, in accordance with a theory—in this case that of subconscious processes—seems most likely to be the causal factor. Thus in the analysis of a bacterial culture we can select the one which seems on various considerations to be the most likely cause of an etiologically undetermined disease, but for actual demonstration we must employ synthetic methods; that is, actually reproduce the disease by inoculation with a bacterium. So with psychological processes synthetic methods are required for positive demonstration.