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
After it had been determined, by a searching examination, that B. C. A.
could not recall any experience that might throw light upon her phobia,
an attempt was made to recover a possible memory in hypnosis. As is well
known, the memory often broadens in hypnosis and events which are
forgotten when “awake” may be recovered. In this instance the subject
was put into two different hypnotic states, but without success. This,
again, is a matter of some importance for the principle of conservation.
Different hypnotic states in the same individual may be distinguished in
that each, among other characteristics, may have different and
independent systems of memories, as we shall see later. The memories
which belong to one state cannot be recalled in another. Hence the fact
that a memory cannot be recovered in one state is not proof that it is
not conserved, nor is a failure to recover the memory of an episode in
all states of hypnosis evidence of failure of conservation, any more
than is the failure to recover a memory in the waking state at any given
moment.
In the experiment with B. C. A., after failing to awaken a possible
memory in either state of hypnosis, a pencil was put in her hand while
she was still hypnotized. The hand then wrote automatically, without the
knowledge of the hypnotized subject, the following account of this
childhood episode that I have just mentioned:[6]
“I think I know about the cats. I can remember myself, a little child,
playing on the floor with a kitten, and it began to run about the room
and had a fit, I think, and it jumped on me, and I was alone, and I
screamed and cried and called my mother, but no one came, and I was very
much frightened. I do not believe I ever told anyone. It was a white
kitten. It ran out of the room and after a bit I went on playing.”
To test the extent of the conserved memories still further the hand was
asked to describe the furnishings of the room and the plan of the house.
It wrote:
“There were two windows on the side of the room. The shades were gray, I
think, with a border of grapes, or something of that color. The carpet
was green or gray with green figures. There was a large old-fashioned
sofa between one window and the door which led into the dining-room. A
bookcase and desk-combination, you know. There was a mantle, I think,
between the windows. It was the ground floor.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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