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
=Physiological memory and processes.=—There is one phase of the
unconscious which for the sake of completeness ought to be touched upon
here, particularly as it is of considerable importance in any biological
conception of intelligence. _There is every reason to believe that_
intrinsically _there is no essential difference between those
physiological dispositions and activities of the lower nervous centers
(subcortical ganglia and spinal cord), which condition and determine
unconscious behavior, and those dispositions and activities of the
higher centers—the cortex—which condition and determine both conscious
and unconscious behavior._ The former are undoubtedly innate in that
they are primarily conditioned by inherited anatomical and physiological
prearrangements of neurons and the latter are pre-eminently acquired
through experience although probably not wholly so. (Our knowledge of
the localization of function in the nervous system is not sufficiently
definite to enable us to delimit the localization of either innate or
acquired dispositions.) The innate activities of the lower nervous
centers so far as represented by movements can be clearly differentiated
from those of the higher centers and recognized in the behavior of
so-called “spinal” animals and of animals from which the cerebral
hemispheres have been removed. In the former the connection between the
spinal cord and all parts of the nervous system above having been
severed, whatever movements are executed are performed by the spinal
cord alone and therefore of course by unconscious processes. The latter
animals, although their actions are more complex and closely approximate
(with important differences) those of normal animals, are also devoid or
nearly devoid of consciousness. I say “nearly devoid” because in the
interpretation of the experiments it is difficult to disprove that, as
some hold, elementary sensations—qua sensation—are retained, though
others regard the animals as purely unconscious physiological machines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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