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
I suggest to B. C. A. in hypnosis ideas of well-being, of recovery from
her infirmity; I picture a future roseate with hope, stimulate her
ambitions with suggestions of duties to be performed, deeds to be
accomplished. With all this there goes an emotional tone of exaltation
which takes the place of the depression and of the sense of failure
previously present. This emotional tone gives increased energy to her
organization, revitalizing, as it were, her psycho-physiological
processes [and by conflict represses the previously dissociating affect
and sentiment]. The whole I weave artfully and designedly into a
complex. Whatever neurotic symptoms were previously present I do not
allow to enter this complex. Indeed, the complex is such that they are
incompatible with it. The headache, nausea, and other bodily
discomforts, pure functional disturbances in this instance, are
dissociated and cease to torment. After “waking” there is complete
amnesia for the complex. Yet it is still organized, for it can be
recovered again in hypnosis. It is simply dormant. But the emotional
tone still persists after waking, and invades the personal synthesis,
which takes on a correspondingly ecstatic tone. The aspect of her
environment, her conception of her relation to the world and her past,
present, and future mental life have become colored, so to speak, by the
new feeling, as if under a new light. But, more than this, new syntheses
have been formed with new tones. If we probe deep enough we find that
many ideas of the dormant complex have, through association with the
environment (_point de repère_), become interwoven with those of the
previous personal consciousness and given all a new meaning. A moment
ago [her view was that] she was an invalid, incapacitated, exiled from
her social and family life, etc. What was there to look forward to? Now:
What of that? She is infinitely better; what a tremendous gain; at such
a rate of progress in a short time a new life will be open to her,
etc.—a radically new point of view. Now, too, she feels buoyant with
health and energy, ready to start afresh on her crusade for health and
life. Her neurotic symptoms have vanished. Such is the change that she
gratefully speaks of it as the work of a wizard. But the mechanism of
the transformation is simple enough. The exaltation, artificially
suggested in hypnosis, persists, altering the trend of her ideas and
giving new energy. The perceptions of her environment, cognition of
herself, etc., have entered into new syntheses which the introduction of
new _ideas_, new points of view have developed; thus the content of her
ideas has taken a definite, precise shape. Whence came these new ideas?
They seem to her to have come miraculously, for she has forgotten the
hypnotic complex. But forgetting an experience is not equivalent to its
not having happened, or to that experience not having been a part of
one’s own psychic life. The hypnotic consciousness remains a part of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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