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
If the second alternative—specific differentiated residua—be the medium
by which experiences are conserved, then the residua must be either
specific psychological states, i.e., the original psychological
experience itself as such; or neural residua (or dispositions) such as
when excited are ordinarily correlated with a conscious memory. In
either case the medium would be such as to permit of the experiences
manifesting themselves, while so conserved outside of the personal
consciousness, as a very specific secondary process, not only
reproducing the original experience as memory, but elaborating the same
and exhibiting imagination, reasoning, volition, feeling, etc. Unless
the doctrine of the undifferentiated Psyche be accepted it is difficult
to conceive of any other mode in which conservation can be effected so
as to permit of the phenomena of memory outside of consciousness.
=Conservation considered as psychological residua.=—It is hypothetically
possible that our thoughts and other mental experiences after they have
passed out of mind, out of our awareness of the moment, may continue
their psychological existence as such although we are not aware of them.
Such an hypothesis derives support from the fact that researches of
recent years in abnormal psychology have given convincing evidence that
an idea, under certain conditions, after it has passed out of our
awareness may still from time to time take on another sort of existence,
_one in which it still remains an idea, although our personal
consciousness of the moment is not aware of it_. A coconscious idea, it
may be called. More than this, in absent-mindedness, in states of
abstraction, in artificial conditions as typified in automatic writing,
and particularly in pathological conditions (hysteria), it has been
fairly demonstrated, as I think we are entitled to assert, that
coconscious ideas in the form of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, even
large systems of ideas, may function and pursue autonomous and
contemporaneous activity outside of the various systems of ideas which
make up the personal consciousness. It usually is not possible for the
individual to bring such ideas within the focus of his awareness.
Therefore, there necessarily results a doubling of consciousness,—two
consciousnesses, one of which is the personal consciousness and the
other a coconsciousness. These phenomena need to be studied by
themselves. We shall consider them here only so far as they bear on the
problem of conscious memory. Observation has shown that among ideas of
this kind it often happens that many are memories, reproductions of
ideas that once belonged to the personal consciousness. Hence, on first
thought, it seems plausible that conservation might be effected by the
content of any moment’s consciousness becoming _coconscious_ after the
ideas have passed out of awareness. According to such an hypothesis all
the conscious experiences of our lives, that are conserved, would form a
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