The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormalPrince, Morton
Science
The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal
Prince, Morton
Psychology, Pathological; Subconsciousness
In this observation we have two so-called automatic phenomena of
different types—one a sensory automatism, the vision, the other a motor
automatism or actions leading to the finding of the money. The motor
acts being automatic were necessarily determined by subconscious
processes and plainly required a knowledge of the hiding-place. This
knowledge also plainly must have been conserved in the unconscious and
now, in answer to her wish to find the lost money, acting as a
subconscious process, fulfilled her wish in a practical way.
The vision was of Christ smiling. Seeing it the subject at once “felt
that all was well,” and her anxiety vanished. It was plainly therefore a
fabricated visual symbolism though one which she had frequently before
experienced. It may be taken as a message sent by subconscious processes
to her anxious consciousness and it is not too much to say had a
purposive meaning, viz., to allay her anxiety. The question is, What was
the causal factor which determined this symbolism? Logically it is a
compulsory inference that the same conserved knowledge and subconscious
processes, which eventuated in the motor automatisms, must have been the
causal factor that determined the visual symbolism which carried the
reassuring message to consciousness. This subconscious knowledge first
allayed her anxiety and then proceeded to answer her problem of the
whereabouts of the lost money. More specifically, the primary causal
factor was the preceding anxious wish to find the money; the resulting
phenomena were the sensory and motor automatisms, allaying the anxiety
and fulfilling the wish; _between the two as connecting links were
subconscious processes of an intelligent, purposive, volitional
character which first fabricated a visual symbolism as a message to
consciousness and then made use of the conserved knowledge of her
previous absent-minded act to solve her problem_. The subconscious
process as a whole we thus see was of quite a complicated character. In
this example it is impossible to determine from the data at hand whether
the subconscious process was coconscious or unconscious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account