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
The experiences that I have thus far cited in evidence of the principle
of the conservation of dormant experiences that cannot be voluntarily
recalled have been drawn almost entirely from normal everyday life. We
now come to a series of facts which are very important in that they show
that what is true of the experiences of everyday life is also true of
those of _artificial_ and _pathological_ states of which the normal
personal consciousness has no cognizance. These facts are also vital for
the comprehension of post-hypnotic phenomena, of amnesia, multiple
personality, and allied dissociated states. Let us consider some of the
states from the point of view of conservation.
=Artificial states.=—After a person passes from one _dissociated state_
to another, or from a dissociated state to the full waking state, it is
commonly found that there is amnesia for the previous state. This is a
general principle. The forgetting of dreams is an example from normal
life. For the psychological state of sleep in which dreams occur is one
of normal dissociation of consciousness by which the perception of the
environment, and the great mass of life’s experiences, can no longer be
brought within the content of the dream consciousness. Hence there is a
general tendency to the development of amnesia for dreams after waking
when the normal synthesis of the personality has been established. Yet,
as we have seen, forgotten dreams can generally be recalled in hypnosis
or by some other technical method (e. g., crystal visions and
abstraction). Now _hypnosis_ is an artificially dissociated state. After
passing from one hypnotic state to another,[33] or after waking, it is
very common to find complete amnesia for the whole of the experience
belonging to the previous hypnotic state. By no effort whatsoever can it
be recalled and this inability persists during the remainder of the life
of the subject. And yet those hypnotic experiences may have been very
extensive, particularly if the subject has been hypnotized a great many
times. Nevertheless, it is easy to demonstrate that they are conserved
and therefore, like all conserved experiences, potentially still
existing, subject to recall under favoring conditions; for, as is well
known, if the subject be rehypnotized they are recalled as normal
memories. With the restitution of the hypnotic state the memories which
were dormant become synthesized with the hypnotic personality and
conscious.
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