experiences with expert witnesses, and most of us have also observed
that they often give false evidence because they treat the event in
terms of their own interest and are convinced that things must happen
according to the principles of their trades. However the event shapes
itself, they model it and alter it so much that it finally implies their
own apprehension.
“Subconscious perceptions,” somewhat altered, play another rôle,
according to Exner, in so-called orientation. If anybody is able to
orient himself, i.e., know where he is at any time and keep in mind the
general direction, it is important to be aware of the fact when he
serves as witness, for his information will, in consequence, take a
different form and assume a different value. Exner says of himself, that
he knows at each moment of his climb of the Marcus’ tower in what
direction he goes. As for me, once I have turned around, I am lost. Our
perceptions of location and their value would be very different if we
had to testify concerning relations of places, in court. But hardly
anybody will assure the court that in general he orients himself well or
ill.
As Exner says, “If, when walking, I suddenly stop in front of a house to
look at it, I am definitely in possession, also, of the feeling of its
distance from where I left the road--the unconscious perception of the
road beyond is here at work.” It might, indeed, be compared with pure
subconsciousness in which series of processes occur without our knowing
it.
But local orientation does not end with the feeling for place. It is at
work even in the cases of small memories of location, e.g., in learning
things by heart, in knowing on what page and on what line anything is
printed, in finding unobserved things, etc. These questions of
perception-orientation are important, for there are people all of whose
perceptions are closely related to their sense of location. Much may be
learned from such people by use of this specialty of theirs, while
oversight thereof may render them hopeless as witnesses. How far this
goes with some people--as a rule people with a sense of location are the
more intelligent--I saw some time ago when the Germanist Bernhardt
Seuffert told me that when he did not know how anything is spelled he
imagined its appearance, and when that did not help he wrote both the
forms between which he was vacillating and then knew which one was the
correct one. When I asked him whether the chirographic image appeared
printed or written and in what type, he replied significantly enough,
“As my writing-teacher wrote it.” He definitely localized the image on
his writing book of many years ago and read it off in his mind. Such
specialties must be remembered in examining witnesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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