3. Personal unconsciousness, a residuum of affective states connected with anterior perceptions, or with events of our life. This emotional residuum, although latent, is no less active, and can be recovered by analysis. This case, one of the most important connected with our subject, has recently been studied by Lehmann[[115]] under the name of displacement (Verschiebung) of the sentiments, and by Sully under the name of transference of feelings; this second denomination seems to me the clearer and more accurate of the two.
Under its most general form—for its mechanism is not always the same—the law of transference consists in directly attributing a sentiment to an object which does not itself cause it. There is no transference in the sense that the feeling is detached from the primary event in order to be connected with another; but there is a moment of generalisation or extension of the sentiment, which spreads like a drop of oil. This transference can be symbolically represented. Let us represent an intellectual state by A, and by s the affective state which accompanies it; A by association excites B, C, D, E, etc., while s is successively transferred to B, C, D, E, etc. Thus we have, first, A
s, B, C, D, E, etc., then A,B,C,D,E, etc.
s, so that C, D, or E can directly produce s quite as A can, and even without the assistance of A. “The feeling is excited without the mediacy of the particular presentative element of which it was originally a concomitant” (Sully).[[116]] This law of transfer is of sufficient importance to delay us a little, because it plays a somewhat important part in the formation of complex emotions, and we shall need to recall it more than once. Besides, it does not always operate in the same manner. I distinguish two principal cases, according as the transfer is the result of contiguity, or of resemblance.
Transference by Contiguity.—When intellectual states have co-existed and formed a complex by contiguity, and one of them has been accompanied by a special sentiment, any one of these states has a tendency to excite the same sentiment.
We can find numerous and simple examples in common life. The lover transfers the sentiment at first called forth by the person of his mistress to her clothes, her furniture, her house. For the same reason, hatred and jealousy vent their rage on inanimate objects belonging to the enemy. In absolute monarchies the reverence in which the king’s person is held is transferred to the throne, to the emblems of his power, to everything directly or indirectly connected with his person. The following charming passage from Herbert Spencer relates to a less simple case of the same nature: “The cawing of rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound; musically considered, it is very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces pleasurable feelings—feelings which many suppose to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest gratifications—with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with Saturday afternoon excursions in schoolboy days; with midsummer holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were replaced by games and adventures in the field; with fresh, sunny mornings, in after years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated with them, rouses a dim consciousness of these delights; just as the voice of an old friend, unexpectedly coming into the house, suddenly raises a wave of that feeling which has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship.” We must remark that in the transfer by contiguity, which, by its very nature is automatic, the intellectual states act as causes, since the extension of the sentiment is subordinated to them.
Transference by Resemblance.—When an intellectual state has been accompanied by a vivid sentiment, every similar or analogous state tends to excite the same feeling.
In this psychological fact lies the secret of the emotion of love, tenderness, antipathy, respect, which we feel towards a person at first sight, without apparent reason, and which we are apt to put down to the account of instinct. But those who devote themselves to the analysis of their own consciousness will discover, in many cases, a more or less close resemblance to a person who inspires, or has inspired, us with love, tenderness, antipathy, or respect. A mother may feel a sudden sympathy for a young man who is like her dead son, or even merely of the same age. The explanation of many of these cases lies in an unconscious state which is not easy to seize, but which, if it returns to consciousness (a process in which the will is only very indistinctly concerned), elucidates everything. There are also so-called instinctive fears, without conscious motives, which, by going a little below the surface, can be referred to the same explanation.[[117]]
This transfer can take place in two ways, one narrow, the other broad. The narrow method rests on resemblance only: B resembles A, the perception or representation of whom is or was accompanied by a certain feeling; the transfer goes no further. The broader method rests on analogy, and has a much wider scope; it passes from one individual to several—to a class or classes. “A friend of mine,” says Lehmann, “hated dogs; circumstances forced him to keep one; he attached himself to this animal, and gradually his feeling of sympathy spread to the whole canine race” (loc. cit.). This possibility of a limited transfer has been a social and moral factor of the first importance; it has allowed of the extension of the sympathetic sentiments from the small exclusive clan to more and more distant groups—the tribe, the nation, the human race. The wider transfer has been the great agent of the transition from particularism to universalism.[[118]]
II.
From the unconscious states to the affective states, of which the subject is fully conscious, the transition is made gradually and through doubtful forms; but whether obscure, semi-obscure, or clear, their influence remains the same. Among the numerous cases in which the association of ideas depends on a conscious affective disposition we may distinguish three groups:—
1. Individual, accidental, ephemeral cases. These can be reduced to a single formula: when two or more states of consciousness have been accompanied by the same emotional state, they tend to be associated with one another. Emotional resemblance unites and intertwines disparate impressions. It is a case of association by resemblance, but not intellectual; impressions are associated because they resemble one another in a common emotional colouring, not qua impressions. Examples of this are abundant. L. Ferri (in his Psychologie de l’Association, where, by-the-bye, he does not note this emotional law) tells us that one day, being stung by a fly, he suddenly remembered a child seen by him, long ago, when himself very young, on its death-bed. Whence this sudden vision? “In the first place, I was lying on my bed, then I had been stung by a fly, and lastly, the sight of the corpse had caused in me a deep sadness, while, at this same moment, I also happened to be very sad.” Association through emotional identity or resemblance is of frequent occurrence in dreams, as has been already said. I remember, among many others, a dream whose unity, in spite of the apparent incoherence of the association, was due to a general sense of fatigue. A road without milestones stretched before me, of which I was about to complete the last stage; steep mountains kept rising one behind another; my eyes were wearied with trying to catch sight of the longed-for town on the horizon; and every time I wished to inquire the way I had to speak a foreign language which I understand but imperfectly, and in which it is very difficult for me to express myself. I awoke, feeling a general aching and heaviness of all the limbs. Sully relates a dream whose unity consisted in a sense of anxiety and vexation. He was suddenly called upon to give a lecture on Herder; he began by stammering out some generalities; then he was addressed by one of his audience, who suggested difficulties to him; then the entire assembly broke up tumultuously. One of his children, who had seen, for the first time, the great clock at Strasburg, and, after an interval of two days, the Swiss glaciers, dreamed on the following night that the figures of the clock were walking about on the snow. In this case the groundwork of the dream is a feeling of admiration or surprise.