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
2. The “thoughts” of the verse were in her “subconscious mind.”[106]
These “thoughts” (also described as “words”) were not logically arranged
or as written in the verse, but “sort of tumbled together—mixed up a
little.” “They were not like the thoughts one thinks in _composing_ a
verse.” There did not seem to be any attempt at selection from the
thoughts or words. No evidence could be elicited to show that the
composing was done here.
3. Concurrently with these subconscious, mixed-up thoughts coconscious
“images” of the words of the verse came just at the moment of writing
them down. The images were bright, printed words. Sometimes one or two
words would come at a time and sometimes a whole line.
In other words all happened _as if_ there was a deeper underlying
process which did the composing and from this process certain thoughts
without logical order emerged to form a subconscious stream and after
the composing was done the words of the verse emerged as coconscious
images as they were to be written. This underlying process, then,
“automatically” did the writing and the composing. Hence it seemed to
the subject even when remembering in hypnosis the subconscious thoughts
and images that both were done unconsciously.
As to whether this underlying process was the same as that which
fabricated the dream and the hallucination, the evidence, albeit
circumstantial, would seem to render this almost certain. In the first
place the verse was only a poetical arrangement of the subconscious
thoughts disclosed; the vision was an obvious symbolic expression or
visual representation of the same thoughts (that is, of course, of those
concerned with the subject matter of the vision). The only difference
would seem to be in the form of the expression—verbal and visual imagery
respectively.[107] In the second place the vision was an exact
repetition of the dream vision. It is not at all rare to find certain
phenomena of dreams (visual, motor, sensory, etc.) repeating themselves
after waking.[108] This can only be explained by the subconscious
repetition of the dream process. Consequently we are compelled to infer
the same subconscious process underlying the dream-vision. More than
this, it was possible to trace these thoughts back to antecedent
experiences of the dreamer, so that in the last analysis the
dream-vision, waking-vision, and poetical expression of the vision could
be related with almost certainty to the same antecedent experiences as
the causal factors.
Certain conclusions then seem compulsory: underlying the dream, vision,
and script was a subconscious process in which the fundamental factors
were the same. As this process showed itself capable of poetical
composition, constructive imagination, volition, memory, and affectivity
it was a _subconscious intelligence_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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