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
An examination of all crystal visions, so far as they are translated
memories of actual experiences, will show this same evidence for a
conserved residuum.
That _conservation is not merely a figure of speech_ to express the
ability to determine the recurrence of a previous experience, but means
a specific residuum capable of independent and elaborate functioning, is
brought out more conspicuously in those visions which are elaborately
fabricated symbolisms of an antecedent experience. In other words, the
vision is not a literal recurrence of a previous phase of consciousness,
in that the latter has been worked over, so to speak, so as to appear in
consciousness in a reconstructed form. Though reconstructed it either
still retains its original meaning or is worked out to a completion of
its thoughts, or to a fulfilment of the emotional strivings pertaining
to them (anxieties, wishes, etc.). These visions, perhaps, more
frequently occur spontaneously, often at moments of crises in a person’s
life, but also are observed under experimental conditions. Sometimes
they answer the doubts, scruples and other problems which have troubled
the subject, sometimes they express the imaginary fulfilment of intense
longings or of anxieties and dreads which have been entertained, or
disturbing thoughts which have pricked the conscience.[46] We are
obliged to conclude, in the light of experimental observations of the
same class, that such phenomena are determined by the specific residua
of antecedent thoughts which must be conserved and function in a
specific manner to appear in this metamorphosed form.
=Similar residual processes underlying post-hypnotic
phenomena.=—Conserved experiences which give rise to more complicated
secondary elaboration may be observed in suggested post-hypnotic
phenomena. Experiments of this kind may be varied in many ways. The
phenomenon may be an hallucination similar to the one I have just
described in hysterics, or a so-called subconscious calculation. You
suggest in hypnosis to a suitable subject that he shall multiply certain
numbers, or calculate the number of seconds intervening between certain
hours—let us say between 10:43 and 5:13 o’clock—the answer to be given
in writing on a certain day. The subject is then awakened immediately,
before he has time to do the calculation while in hypnosis. Later, if
the experiment is successful, at the time designated the subject will
absent-mindedly or automatically write the figures giving the answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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