The subconscious

Front matter

I

.

2, •?

Preface

The purpose of this essay in descriptive psychology is to provide a survey of a comprehensive aspect of human psychic endowment. The very definition of psychology as the science of consciousness has tended to focus attention upon conditions of high introspective lucidity, and, by implication, to look upon areas from which such illumination is withdrawn, as quite too obscurely lighted for profitable examination. Thus casually visited, and with no vital share in the psychologist's concerns, the abode of the subconscious has drifted into the service of a lumber-room, in which to deposit what finds no place in the mind's active economies.

The word subconscious has a dubious sound ; and those to whom it brings slight illumination associate it with questionable phenomena of rare occurrence and unusual significance. It should be a homely term ; and its place is close to the hearth of our psychological interests. The word, in company with others of analogous origin, has been made the symbol of an inner mystery, a pale double of ourselves, disporting itself strangely when our oversight is relaxed, and capable, if only viii PREFACE

its excursions could be followed, of overthrowing the limitations of sense and of discounting our most accredited psychological currency. Not mainly as a corrective to such unwarranted misconception, — though quite willing that the work should be thus serviceable, — but as a statement of its natural import, its comprehensive scope in the familiar fields of normal life and in the perplexing mazes of the abnormal, I have undertaken a systematic exposition of subconscious functioning. It requires a volume to convey a proper conception of the intimacy of such participation in the normal trend of the mind's affairs ; and, with similarly motived excursions into the abnormal field, of the instructive issues that ensue when its role is imperfectly played. There is, indeed, no corner of the mental establishment that can well remain un visited, if one would appreciate the pervasiveness of this influence in the household. It is for such a tour of inspection, undertaken with systematic purpose, that the book offers its services as a modest cicerone.

Apart from the extensive data recorded with the interest of the professional student of mental disorder, the resources that the prospector in these fields finds at command are, though eagerly availed of, not notably helpful to his projects. I have given sparing notice of the many sources examined j for I commonly found little profit in

PREFACE ix

such pursuit, and think it safe to assume that only the interest of one to whom the literature is known, would take heed of what I might thus have offered. I have given credit, when it seemed pertinent, to the data and the expositions that have helped me, and have been content with that. Only a few, and in the main slight general surveys of the field have been published. The one notable exception is the work of the late Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers (" Human Personality," 2 vols. 1903). In respect to that, I record with pleasure my appreciation of the ability and devotion of the author, as well as of the skill of his presentations ; and I record with regret, that in spite of a common interest in the same ranges of phenomena, and a fair measure of agreement in the interpretation of the more objective and verifiable data, I yet find my point of view so little in accord with his, that I have been able to profit but slightly by his discerning labors. It is rare that any writer on psychology can carry through his purpose without acknowledging his obligations to Professor William James, — a privilege that I am wholly unwilling to forego. Dr. Morton Prince has kindly revised my account of his interesting " case." There is hardly a page of the book that is not under obligations to the critical care of my wife.

Joseph Jastrow.

Madison, Wisconsin, March, 1906.

Part I — Normal Chapter Paoe

I. Introduction 3

II. The Function of Consciousness .... 7

III. Consciousness and the Nervous System . . . 16

IV. Consciousness and Volition 34

V. The Distribution of Attention 50

VI. The Mechanism of Consciousness .... 64

VII. The Subconscious in Mental Procedure . . .82

VIII. The Subconscious Maturing of Thought . . 98

IX. The Lapses of Consciousness 116

X. Self-Consciousness 140

Part II — Abnormal

I. The Range of the Abnormal 163

II. Dream-Consciousness 175

III. The Variants of Dream-Consciousness . . . 222

IV. The Dissociated Consciousness .... 266 V. The Genesis of Altered Personality . . . 323

VI. Disintegrating Lapses of Personality . . . 374

Part III — Theoretical

I. The Conception of the Subconscious . . .411

II. The Subconscious as Abnormal .... 464

III. Conclusion 530

Index 545

Introduction

The submerged life of the mind, however seemingly mysterious and really elusive, yet persistently attracts the naturalist of the mental world. At favorable moments, when the sea of consciousness is unruffled and calm contemplation seems promising, he peers intently into the shadowy depths, and is disappointed to find how little he can distinguish of what lies below the surface, how constantly the waters send back merely the reflection — partly distorted — of his own familiar features. His curiosity unsatisfied, he is tempted to wish for the intervention of some fairy of kindly disposition toward psychologists, who would invest him with a magical diving-suit enabling him to sink below the waters and examine leisurely the life of those hidden depths, while maintaining a supply of fresh air from the consciousness above. For psychologist and layman alike, the ordinary endowment permits only a plunge for a moment or two into the waters of the subconscious, and a return to the surface with some brief glimpse of the world below. If we remain there longer, our vision becomes clouded, impressions become vague, the memory uncertain ; we seem absorbed in close contemplation, and yet but dimly realize what it is we contemplate ; we dream — and hardly know upon awakening what was really seen and what imagined. At times strange tales are told of those depths, — of curious forms of life, part of this world and part suggestive of some unreal world beyond. Monsters and sprites and elves are there, who on rare occasions, it is said, disport themselves upon the tops of the waves, much to the consternation of those who bring the tale. Ghosts of our former, or of our other selves are said to lurk in this night-side of mind, at times reasserting their portion in the conscious life that alone we call our own. As we turn to observe them, to stare at them with the waking eye, the cock crows, the dawn of consciousness looms above the horizon ; we are again awake — and the ghosts have vanished.

It is certainly not easy to discover how this other half — supposing that it be our other half — lives, and where it moves and whence it has its being. In some measure the difficulty seems inherent in the nature of what, without thereby solving the riddle, we are content to speak of as consciousness. For this word we have no true synonym ; it expresses something that is too intimately part and parcel of our mental existence to be readily para-

INTRODUCTION 5

phrased. It represents the most fundamental of all the conceptions by means of which we aim to make intelligible the story of our intellectual life. Fortunately it is easier to render an acceptable account of what consciousness effects than of what it is ; and it is solely with the practical workings of consciousness that we shall be concerned in this study. The first step in the inquiry as to how we come to know what we do, to think and feel and act as we do, brings conspicuously before us the supreme service of consciousness ; the term sums up for our practical understanding the most comprehensive aspect of psychic activity. We realize that — neglecting extreme instances — we are always intently or diffusely, observingly or reflectively, actively or passively, pleasantly or unpleasantly conscious ; that however fluctuating its protean aspects, consciousness is continuously present in all psychic life ; that to live means for us to be variously conscious. In this sense we know intimately and familiarly the role of consciousness as a pervading influence in our mental existence ; in this sense we can intelligibly discuss its operations, its efficiency, its sphere of influence. And that is all that is requisite for the special purpose of the present undertaking, — which is the more precise comprehension of those manifestations of consciousness, and of those varieties of its activities, that take place below the threshold of our fully waking minds, those subconscious products of our intelligence wrought — to appropriate Dr. Holmes's phrase — in the underground workshop of thought.

II

What, then, is the efficiency and scope and purpose — or in brief, the function — of ordinary consciousness ? To approach this question profitably, we must recognize certain broad and readily verifiable distinctions. The most casual psychologist will have noticed that his consciousness may be directed inwardly towards experiences within himself, or externally towards something occurring in the environment without. By the activity of the one kind I am made aware at the present moment that I still have some of the unpleasant after-effects of a lingering cold in the head, that I have been wearing a new pair of boots all day, that occasionally I still feel a little annoyed because in the afterdinner speech I made last night I omitted some of my best points, that in the interstices of the attention which I am giving to my present task I am groping about to recall the address of one of my correspondents, that I am just dismissing from my attention a rambling reexperiencing of my last night's dream, and that in anticipation of the writing of a note — for which I must in a moment interrupt my present occupation — I am looking about for the most presentable reasons for declining an invitation that promises little pleasure. 1 By the other form of awareness I come to realize — and as before to a more or less absorbing extent — that the inkstand needs refilling, that the wind is blowing in the trees, that the clock is sounding a premonitory whirr which I recognize as the herald preceding by a few minutes the stroke of the hour, that the lamp has been smoking, and that my paper is lying partly in the shadow of a row of books to my left. Naturally these several forms and directions of awareness do not appear with equal distinctness at the same moment. They are fitfully revealed by the sweep of the search-light of attention as it plays upon this and that detail of the composite picture ; yet they are all present in the shadowy background and contribute something to the genre of the whole. Naturally also do the two kinds and the several manifestations of awareness constantly intermingle and antagonize and cooperate in the ceaseless flow of moods and states, of occupations and attentions, — wave upon wave of complex emotional, intellectual, and volitional content. Thus I may explain that it was because I was too much absorbed in my inward contempla-

1 I am here throwing together the awareness by inner observation of bodily sensations, and of the elaborate products of memory, reflection, desire, intent, and the like. The distinctive status of the two is recognized when a more careful analysis becomes necessary.

tions that I did not sooner notice the soot from the lamp ; and because of an indolent disinclination to interrupt my present business that I was not sufficiently disturbed by the shadow on my paper to induce me to stop and remove the pile of books. The inward awareness of the type that is concerned with organic sensations is likely to have a decided flavor of pleasure or pain, an immediate bearing upon the welfare of the body. The outward awareness is information-bringing in purpose ; it assumes an intellectual attitude presenting the query : What is this that affects my senses ? Such curiosity in regard to the conditions that confront us will naturally be utilized in the service of the evolutionary struggle that animates and directs conduct. It is because consciousness, like other endowments, has proved of use in securing for the individual the utmost expansion of his life possibilities, that it has been developed so far and just as we now enjoy it. The evolution of consciousness has been shaped by the results of its functional utility; which means that we possess the particular kinds and degrees of consciousness that we normally exercise, because in our environment those forms of consciousness have proved themselves, all things considered, the most serviceable.

Consider in this light the physiological functions ; normally, many of these give rise to no sen-

10 THE SUBSCONSCIOUS

sations whatever. Glands are secreting, waste matter is accumulating, nutriment is being absorbed, and an indefinite complex of upbuilding and downtearing changes are g ag on in all the systems of the bodily economy with a minimum of accompanying sensation ; they go on equally well when the brain is drowsy with sleep, or drugged with anaesthetics. In health these functions conduct themselves invisibly, silently, imperceptibly — like well-trained servants. But when the delicate balance of one or another of these functions is interfered with, all sorts of sensations, more or less vaguely localized and indefinitely realized and difficult to describe, but all variously unpleasant, make themselves known. When the servants do not perform their duties properly, the master's comfort is disturbed, of which disturbance he becomes unpleasantly aware. Occasionally, by way of compensation, we seem really to enjoy the feeling of unusual bodily well-being ; such is the reaction of a vigorous body to the glow of exercise, or the tonic that comes with the breezes of the sea, or the balm of those rare days in June. Feelings of this kind are probably realized in terms of activities, such as ease of movement and respiration, with which a minor degree of awareness is commonly experienced. Getting well is rarely a positive joy, but in the main a vaguely or keenly felt release from pain and discomfort. The very diversity of the catalogue of pains, along with the difficulty of their description, offers a source of perplexity to the physician and taxes the introspective skill of the patient. They are* jture' s-^ cries of distress, a peremptory demand to a hearing before consciousness, even to the exclusion of every other demand. An intense pain monopolizes the attention and prevents all rational thought or interest in the ordinary affairs of life ; among the mental tokens of convalescence is the resumption of concern in less subjective matters than aches and bodily symptoms. The fact that there is normally no consciousness connected with the performance of function of so many of our bodily organs finds explanation in the lack of any useful service that could thus be ministered. We do not need to be, surely have no desire to be conscious of the workings of our livers or of our intestines ; it would be a superfluous kind of awareness, and thus has not been developed. 1 Likewise have we no sensation, in turning the eyes to the light, of the closing in of the pupil to shut out the glare ; the process

1 " Movements of viscera that do not discharge their contents externally have no accompanying sensation. No useful purpose can be served by the acquisition of such a sensation, and therefore no such sensation has been acquired. Had it been as important to the welfare of the individual to be as aware of the distention and emptying of his gall bladder as of the distention and emptying of his urinary bladder, no doubt the sensations accompanying these conditions in the one would have been as vivid as in the case of the other." — Mercier.

goes on feelinglessly, makes no report to consciousness because none is needed. There seem established within the body provisions for rare and unusual forms of awareness in connection with disturbance of function, along with a serviceable apportionment of consciousness among the normally functioning activities.

The principle of utility thus appears as effective in the workings of the inherited, fundamentally physiological functions ; and it appears likewise in the manner of our possession of a large number of acquired habit activities that ordinarily demand but a minimum of conscious attention, and are performed upon appropriate occasions at the command of an intelligence that directs them only sufficiently to recognize the appropriateness of the occasion ; or, it may be, by an almost instinctive response to the presence of their natural stimuli. By this means the higher forms of conscious attention are reserved for those activities that require such concentration ; while the centres controlling the more habitual actions need no direct initiative of their chief to attend to the common demands of daily life; all of which is obviously a highly economical division of labor. Once over the heroic infantile struggles with equilibration, we need not concern ourselves with how we walk ; and after a language has been learned, we may devote the attention to thinking of what we wish to say and let the speech-habits attend to the utterance. We need not throw the maximum of our reflection upon the guiding of the pen, but upon the content of what ■we wish to write. We can appreciate the bright sallies of our neighbor at a dinner party, and set our wits to work for an equally apt repartee, while our hands are manipulating knife and fork, and the teeth and their partners are preparing the food for digestion. Yet our central consciousness is constantly on the alert, ready to take charge of the process when there is any need, when the routine of habit is diverged from. When in walking we come to the edge of a hill or to the crossing of a crowded street or to a stretch of slippery sidewalk, we consciously pick our steps ; when speaking in public in a hall of poor acoustic qualities, or when speaking to a foreigner or to a person hard of hearing, we consciously attend to our enunciation ; when at the table we are served with fish, we give enough attention to the machinery of mastication so as not to swallow the bones; and when we wish to be sure to use the proper fork or spoon for the salad or sherbet, we deliberately stop and choose. What is thus accomplished by the principle of utility is the delegation of as many as possible of the frequently repeated routine activities to semi-automatic mechanisms, and the consequent freedom more effectively to devote the main directive attention to complex deliberation and expression.

The same principle of utility may be discovered in the purpose served by the highest forms of reflective consciousness. Such conscious reflection has made possible within the lifetime of the individual an enormously variable complexity of appropriate responses that, without its aid, would have required — supposing it to be possible for them to have been acquired at all — the sacrifice of countless generations to bring about by the slow and circuitous establishment of the survival of the fittest. The measure of consciousness that accompanies and guides conduct is influential in determining the direction and the efficiency of such conduct. Here a definitely formulated policy, there a deeply felt but imperfectly analyzed conviction, now an unreasonable but decidedly powerful prejudice, and again an irresistible and incomprehensible impulse, — these suggest the range of the motives of conduct, each of which implies a certain manner and distribution of awareness, and each of which also suggests the intellectual rank and the practical mode of working of its type of reflective conduct. Students of human progress recognize in the conscious elaboration of means and measures an increasingly distinctive factor in the civilizing movement of the ages. Much of what we approve and of what we avoid, we now direct by reasons of which we are or may become quite definitely aware, whereas the attitude of former generations was — as the attitude of the less reflective portions of the community still is — largely a matter of vaguely realized impulse and inclination. Conscious evolution has in these psychological days been properly recognized as coordinate in importance with the other dominant factors of that illuminating conception of the mainsprings of life.

Ill

All forms of consciousness occur in intimate dependence upon some mode of working of our nervous system. Of the intrinsic nature of the bond or manner of correlation between some hypothetical activity in the nervous elements and the mental phenomena known by us through consciousness, we know next to nothing. Yet the path of the investigation is by no means blocked ; we know many things about the distribution of this correspondence that are distinctly helpful. To begin with, it brings about a unified, coordinated conduct of all parts of the body ; that eye and ear and hand and tongue and head and limb shall act in concord. In order that the right hand may know what the left hand is doing there must be some common authority to which the actions of both are reported. The vast army of organized activities, though in a system very different from that of an army of men, may be thought of as combined in groups ; and these with complex relations to other groups, no one precisely duplicating the service of any of the others ; and each group liable to be combined with others for different offices ; and all under the regulated command of leaders ; and the leaders, in turn, of coordinate or subordinate authority to other commanders ; and yet all in varying measure under the controlling and paramount directorship of the commander-in-chief. Many, indeed most, of the details of the mental campaign do not come to him for decision ; and those of which he does take cognizance reach him indirectly and progressively through well-organized channels ; others he ordinarily intrusts to subordinates, but on critical occasions reserves their direction for his personal attention, at times reversing the orders or checking the intentions of his commissioned officers.

From the physiological arrangements we know also that the only mode of carrying out the commands, by whatever authority issued, is through the muscles ; these alone can transform the impulses into movements. The higher centres cannot directly set muscles into action, but can do so only by influencing those other groups of centres that are specifically organized to discharge along motor routes. It is accordingly, under normal circumstances, through the cooperation of the two that the directive activities reach actual expression in conduct. Further, we know that it is with the most highly developed nerve-centres — with the brain and specifically with the most elaborately organized centres of the brain — that this directing consciousness is most intimately associated. Conscious activity of the type that we usually have in mind is activity of these choicest products of the evolutionary process, — the gray matter of the cortex of the human brain. While it is thus helpful to bear in mind the dependence of consciousness upon the integrity of this nervous substratum, and to learn as much as we can of the nature of the changes that go on in the nervous system concomitant with varieties of mental experience, it should not be overlooked that we know indefinitely more of the mental experiences than we do of the nervous concomitants. Our knowledge of consciousness remains predominantly and inevitably psychological.

It is hardly necessary to indicate at all extensively the mutual interrelations of brain functions and consciousness ; it is sufficient to recall that a blow on the head, or the sudden withdrawal of blood from the brain, as in fainting, or the inhalation of chloroform, bring about so decided an alteration of consciousness as to produce a state of unconsciousness ; that a sufficient dose of quinine will induce a singing in the ears ; of santonin will affect our color sensations ; of alcohol will release the tension of self-restraint and induce the freer flow of sentiment and speech, and, in the more acute stages of its action, result in motor entanglement, in stupor, or in terrifying hallucinations ; of hasheesh will glorify the mental atmosphere and transport the dreamer to an earthlyparadise ; of mescal will present luxurious and brilliant artistic pageants ; of morphium will bring painless sleep to an overwrought mind and racked body. Bodily ailments, by their involvement of one or another portion of the nervous system, bring with them characteristic changes in the intellectual behavior, such as the over-sensitive irritability of nervous temperaments, or the melancholic tinge that accompanies disorders of the viscera below the diaphragm ; and again — though the precise relations in each case remain unknown — quite probably all of our minor fluctuations of mood and impulse, of flow of wit or befogged dullness, of capacity and energy, — the ups and downs of the mental meteorology, — are connected with slight and obscure changes in this wonderfully intricate nervous system of ours. All this is familiar but profoundly significant.

It will be adequate to our present pursuit to notice the variety of distribution of the typical forms of consciousness, and of their correspondences in the nervous centres, by the directive guidance of which the mental and bodily functions are discharged. It may be maintained that those functions have a direct psychological significance that normally possess at least a potential representation in consciousness ; and the more habitual and indispensable the representation, the more completely and intrinsically psychological the activity. Rank in the hierarchy of the nervous centres is largely concomitant with the degree and kind of recognition accorded by the throne of consciousness. The highest rank is held by those offices that require the exclusive attention of an alert consciousness for their proper performance. The intermediate ranks are many, and demand for their execution a variable degree of conscious attention, descending by slight grades to those that ordinarily require none at all, and, indeed, are better off without it. We are not ordinarily conscious of winking, but may become so by directing the attention thereto. We may similarly become aware of our respiration or of the beat of the pulse, but ordinarily are both content and able to exclude these from the field of attention. Such functions possess but a small measure of psychological import ; and their investigation belongs in the main to the physiologist. The same holds true of swallowing, coughing, yawning, and of a considerable aggregate of rhythmical, occasional, and irregularly periodic functions that enter into the incidents of life and development.

Such functions are described as ministered to by the lower centres, and participate in the normal life of the body with but little demand upon consciousness. Yet of these it is important to note that the manner of their activity is liable to slight or pronounced modification by reason of the variation of mental and nervous temperaments and conditions. Though normally we receive no report of the uninterrupted beat of the heart and of the rhythm of the respiration, yet the nervous patient may lie awake for hours trying to dismiss from his over-sensitive consciousness the painfully felt stroke of his pulse. 1 The modifications of breathing induced by strong emotions are both outwardly and inwardly observable. When a timid speaker faces his audience, the breaking of the voice, the hesitation of speech, the hurried breathing with occasional gasps or gulps, betray his disquietude, and more painfully to himself than to others. Later, when well under way and absorbed in his task, his breath comes freely and unconsciously. All forms of violent emotion react upon the substrata of consciousness and disturb the even tenor of its ways, and thus participate to make or mar the quality of the performance of higher and lower centres alike. The angry person cannot think clearly, and exhibits his anger in a familiar complex of physiological signs ; the lover has a perspective of life that at least in one respect is unshared by others, who witness with mixed emotions the involuntary betrayal of his optimis-

1 For this enforced inner attention to bodily functions the French have an apt phrase, S'ecouter vivre — to listen to one's self live.

tic beatitude ; the victim of stage fright loses his power of thought and speech, as he becomes distressingly aware that his breath chokes him and that his knees seem strangely insecure ; while sudden terror or surprise may momentarily paralyze both thought and muscles, may daze and throw out of function the lowly and habitual as well as the reflective and discerning mental habits. 1 It is true that the connection of disturbances of nerve-centres with such alterations of consciousness as these proves upon close analysis to be somewhat inferential in character ; but the grounds of our belief, in spite of ignorance of detail, remain cogent, comprehensive, and consistent.

It has thus been set forth that such functions as occupy a lower rank in the psychological scale, and normally demand but a modest share of awareness, are none the less modified, and that often against the will, under the influence of distinctly psychological occasions. Such occasions bring with them a vague or pronounced awareness of inner disturbance ; and it is the distinctive group of sensations thus aroused that in the view of certain psychologists constitutes the essential content of the emotion, which consciousness

1 It is interesting to note that upon such occasions of sudden shock that momentarily throws all functioning out of control, we resort to a physiological corrective ; we take a stimulant to steady the nerves.