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
Besides these coconscious images there was a train of coconscious
thought of which she was not personally aware. There was the thought
that perhaps, after all, it was a mistake to have taken part in the
experiments, as X, the second patient, was not a physician, and her wish
to see the subject hypnotized must have been largely curiosity. Of this
train of thought the subject was not aware. _At the same time_
concurrently there was in her personal consciousness the “thought that
she liked X, that it was very good of her to have come, and awfully kind
of you to take your time to conduct the experiments.” There was also a
conscious emotion of pleasure and something akin to hope, and
nervousness at the situation. By contrast coconsciously there was a
greater feeling of nervousness and the _emotion of fear_ of which she
was not consciously aware. By a few appropriate suggestions all these
phenomena were made to disappear.
It would take us too long and be too much of a digression to go more
deeply into these subconscious phenomena. From what has been given,
which is corroborated by a large number of observations of the same
sort, it seems to me we are justified in concluding that the physical
manifestations of emotion (tremor, etc.) in the instance were determined
by subconscious processes which were the _functioning residua of
antecedent thoughts with their emotions_.
But more than this these antecedent thoughts were obsessing ideas of
self-abasement, i.e., of herself as a person who socially was stamped
with a stigma and, therefore, as a sort of outcast. These thoughts had
formed one setting to the actual situation in which she found herself.
The subconscious complex, therefore, contained a perception plus the
meaning of the situation plus emotion; in other words, the whole of the
psychosis including the affect was subconscious in that none of its
elements emerged into consciousness. Another and rival perception of the
situation was that which was actually in consciousness and which has
been described. The physical phenomena were the manifestation of the
subconscious affect and would have been equally manifested if the affect
had become conscious. In such a case, then, we may say the whole of one
setting actually functions subconsciously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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