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
Some minds of a certain philosophical bent will not be able to get over
the difficulty of conceiving how a psychological process can be
conserved by the physical residuum of a physiological process. But this
is only the old difficulty involved in the problem of the relation
between mind and brain of which conservation is only a special example.
That a mind process and a brain process are so intimately related that
either one determines the other there is no question. It is assumed in
every question of psycho-physiology. The only question is the How. I may
point out in passing, but without discussion, that if we adopt the
doctrine of panpsychism for which I have elsewhere argued[62]—namely,
that there is only one process—the mental—in one and the same
individual, and that what we know as the physical process is only the
mode of apprehending the mental process by another individual; if we
adopt this doctrine of monism the difficulty is solved. In other words,
the psychical (and consciousness) is reality, while matter (and physical
process) is a _phenomenon_, the disguise, so to speak, under which the
psychical appears when apprehended through the special senses. According
to this view in their last analysis all physical facts are psychical in
nature, although not psychological (for psychological means
consciousness), so that physiological and psychical are one. To this
point I shall return in another lecture.
=Neurograms.=—Whatever may be the exact nature of the theoretical
alterations left in the brain by life’s experiences they have received
various generic terms; more commonly “brain residua,” and “brain
dispositions.” I have been in the habit of using the term _neurograms_
to characterize these brain records. Just as telegram, Marconigram, and
phonogram precisely characterize the form in which the physical
phenomena which correspond to our (verbally or scripturally expressed)
thoughts, are recorded and conserved, so neurogram precisely
characterizes my conception of the form in which a system of brain
processes corresponding to thoughts and other mental experiences is
recorded and conserved.[63]
Of course it must not be overlooked that such neurograms are pure
theoretical conceptions, and have never been demonstrated by objective
methods of physical research. They stand in exactly the same position as
the atoms and molecules and ions and electrons of physics and chemistry,
and the “antibodies” and “complements” of bacteriology. No one has seen
any of these postulates of science. They are only inferred. All are
theoretical concepts; but they are necessary concepts if the phenomena
of physical, chemical, and bacteriological science are to be
intelligible. The same may be said for brain changes if the phenomena of
brain and mind are to be intelligible.
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