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
The observation which I have elsewhere described as “an hallucination
from the subconscious”[99] is an excellent example of an intelligent
subconscious process indicative of judgment and purpose. The
hallucination occurred in my presence as a result of an antecedent
experience for which I was a moment before responsible. It was therefore
of the nature of an experiment and the causal factor was known. The
antecedent experience consisted of certain remarks and behavior of the
subject while under the influence of an illusion during a dissociated
state for which there was subsequent amnesia. The vision was of a friend
whose face was sad, as of one who had been injured, and seemed to
reproach her. At the same moment she heard his voice which said, “How
could you have betrayed me?” The hallucinatory words and the visual
image were in no sense a reproduction of the causal, i.e., antecedent,
experience. They were the expression of a _subconscious self-reproach_
in consequence of that experience. This reproach connoted a subconscious
belief or logical judgment, drawn from the experience, that she had
broken a promise.[100] It was a subconscious reaction to a subconscious
belief. I say both the reproach and the judgment were subconscious
because, in the dissociated state, owing to the illusion, and in the
normal after-state owing to the amnesia, she was entirely ignorant of
having done anything that could be construed into breaking a promise.
This interpretation of the episode must therefore have been entirely
subconscious. The self-reproach emerged into consciousness but
translated into visual and auditory hallucinations. These were plainly a
condemnatory message sent from the subconscious to the personal
consciousness and might aptly be termed “the prickings of a subconscious
conscience.” The primary causal factor was simply certain statements
(conserved in the unconscious) made to me by the subject and for which
afterwards there was amnesia. Intervening between this antecedent
experience and the resulting hallucinatory phenomena a subconscious
process must be postulated as a necessary connecting link. This process
plainly involved memory and an intelligent judgment, an emotional
reaction, and an expression of this judgment and reaction translated
into hallucinatory phenomena. Apparently also a distinct purpose to
upbraid the personality was manifested.
The accounts of _sudden religious conversion_ are full of instances of
hallucinations occurring at the time of the “crisis” and these—visions
and voices—are often logical symbolisms of antecedent thoughts of the
subject. By analogy with similar experimental phenomena we are compelled
to interpret them in the same way and postulate these antecedent
experiences as the causal factors. If this postulation is sound then the
connecting subconscious link is often a quite complicated process of an
intelligent character.
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