The unconscious : $b The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal — John Shaqi
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 we consider memory as a _process_, and not as specific phases of
consciousness, we shall find that it is an essential factor in the
mechanisms underlying a large variety of phenomena of normal and
abnormal life. These phenomena include those of both mind and body of a
kind not ordinarily conceived of as manifestations of memory. I would
have you dwell in your minds for a moment on the fact that I make this
distinction between memory as a process and memory as a phase of
consciousness or specific mental experience. What we ordinarily and
conventionally have in mind when we speak of memory is the conscious
thought of some past mental experience. But when we conceive of memory
as a process we have in mind the whole mechanism through the working of
which this past experience is _registered_, _conserved_, and
_reproduced_, whether such reproduction be in consciousness or below the
surface of consciousness.
Memory is usually looked upon as something that pertains solely to
consciousness. Such a conception is defensible if the meaning of the
term is restricted to those facts alone which come within our conscious
experience. But when we consider the mechanism by which a particular
empirical fact of this kind is introduced into consciousness we find
that this conception is inadequate. We find then that we are obliged to
regard conscious memory as only the end result of a process and, in
order to account for this end result, to assume other stages in the
process which are not phases of consciousness. Though the end result is
a reproduction of the ideas which constituted the previous conscious
experience, this reproduction is not the whole process.
More than this, the conscious experience is not the only experience that
may be reproduced by the process, nor is the end result always and
necessarily a state of consciousness. _Conscious memory is only a
particular type of memory._ The same process may terminate in purely
unconscious or physiological effects, or what may be called
physiological memory to distinguish it from conscious memory. Along with
the revived ideas and their feeling tones there may be a revival of the
physiological experiences, or processes, which originally accompanied
them; such as secretion of sweat, saliva and gastric juice, the
contraction and dilatation of the blood vessels, the inhibition or
excitation of the heart, lungs and other viscera, the contraction of
muscles, etc. These visceral mechanisms, being originally elements in a
complex process and accompaniments of the idea, may be reproduced along
with the conscious memory, and even without conscious memory. As this
physiological complex is an acquired experience it is entitled to be
regarded as memory so far as its reproduction is the end result of the
same kind of process or mechanism as that which reproduces ideas.
Then, again, investigations into the subconscious have shown that the
original experience may be reproduced subconsciously without rising into
awareness.
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