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Hypnosis is a sleeplike and passive state that is nevertheless attentive and concentrated. It appears as if the subject were awake at just one point, namely at the point of relation with the hypnotizer. To stimuli from other sources, external or internal, he is inaccessible. His field of activity is narrowed down to a point, though at that point he may be intensely active.
The depth of the hypnotic state varies from shallow to profound. Comparatively few individuals can be deeply hypnotized, but many can be got into a mild receptive state, in which they accept the suggestions of the hypnotizer more readily than in the fully awaking state. The waking person is alert, suspicious, assertive, while the hypnotized subject is passive and submissive. The subject's coöperation is necessary, in general, in order to bring on the hypnotic state, whether shallow or deep.
The means of inducing hypnosis are many and varied, but they all consist in shoving aside extraneous thoughts and stimuli, and getting the subject into a quiet, receptive attitude, with attention sharply focussed upon the operator.
When the subject is in this state, the "suggestions" of the operator are accepted with less criticism and resistance than in the fully waking state. In deep hypnosis, gross illusions and even hallucinations can be produced. The operator hands the subject a bottle of ammonia, with the assurance that it is the perfume of roses, and the subject smells of it with every appearance of enjoyment. The operator points to what he says is a statue of Apollo in the corner, and the subject apparently sees one there.
Loss of sensation can also be suggested and accepted. Being assured that his hand has lost its sensation and cannot feel a pin prick, the subject allows his hand to be pricked with no sign of pain. Paralysis of the arm or leg can be similarly suggested and accepted.
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Acts may be suggested and performed. The subject is handed a cardboard sword with the assurance that that is a sword, and directed to attack some person present, which he does with the appearance of serious intent.
Now, however, let the subject be given a real sword with the same command as before. Result--the subject wakes up! This suggestion was too much; it aroused dormant tendencies, broadened out the field of activity, and so produced the waking condition. A suggestion that runs counter to the subject's organized character and tendencies cannot get by without arousing them and so awakening the subject. Consequently, there does not seem to be much real danger of crimes being performed by innocent persons under hypnosis.
In mild hypnosis, the above striking phenomena are not produced, but suggestions of curative value may be conveyed, and so taken to heart that they produce real results. The drowsy state of a child just falling to sleep can be similarly utilized for implanting suggestions of value. One little boy had a nervous twitching of the face that was very annoying. His father, just as the child was dropping off to sleep, conveyed the suggestion that the child didn't like this twitching; and this suggestion, repeated night after night, in a few days caused the twitching almost wholly to disappear.
Suggestion often succeeds in a waking state. In a certain test for "suggestibility", the task is set of copying a series of lines. The first line is short, the second longer, the third longer still, the rest all of the same length, but the more suggestible individual keeps on making each succeeding line longer. There are, however, various tests for suggestibility, and an individual who succumbs to one does not necessarily succumb to another, so that it may be doubted whether we should baldly speak of one individual as more suggestible than another.
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Suggestion may be exerted by a person, or by the circumstances. If by a person, the more "prestige" he enjoys in the estimation of the subject, the greater his power of suggestion. A prestige person is one to whom you are submissive. A child is so dependent on older people, and so much accustomed to "being told", that he is specially susceptible to prestige suggestion.
Suggestion exerted by the circumstances is about the same as what is often called "auto-suggestion" or "self-suggestion". A man falls and hurts his hip, and, finding his leg difficult to move, conceives that it is paralyzed, and may continue paralyzed for some time.
"Counter-suggestion" applies to cases where a suggestion produces the result contrary to what is suggested. You suggest to a person that he should do a certain thing, and immediately he is set against that act, though, left to himself, he would have performed it. Or, you advance a certain opinion and at once your hearer takes the other side of the question. Quite often skilful counter-suggestion can secure action, from children or adults, which could not be had by positive suggestion or direct command.
If suggestion succeeds by arousing the submissive tendency, counter-suggestion succeeds by arousing the assertive tendency. Suggestion works when it gets response without awakening the resistance which might be expected, and counter-suggestion when it arouses so much resistance that the suggestion itself does not have the influence which might be expected. In terms of stimulus and response, suggestion works when a particular stimulus (what is suggested) arouses response without other stimuli being able to contribute to the response; and counter-suggestion works when a stimulus (what is suggested, again) is itself prevented from contributing to the response. In counter-suggestion, response to the suggestion itself is inhibited, and in positive{550}suggestion response to other stimuli is inhibited. Both involve narrowness of response, and are opposed to what we commonly speak of as "good judgment", the taking of all relevant stimuli into account, and letting the response be aroused by the combination.
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1. Outline the chapter.2. Which of the previous chapters have the closest contacts with the present chapter?3. How does the popular conception of hypnotism differ from the scientific?4. List 8 acts performed during the day, and arrange them in order from the most involuntary to the most voluntary.5. Analyze a complex performance so as to show what in it is voluntary and what involuntary.6. Mention an instance of practice changing a voluntary performance into an involuntary, and one of practice changing an involuntary performance into a voluntary.7. If an individual is influenced by two opposing motives, must he act according to the stronger of the two?8. Illustrate, in the case of anger, several ways of dealing with a rejected motive. i.e., in what different ways can anger be controlled?9. How would you represent purpose in neural terms? How does it compare with "mental set"?
On the importance of self-assertion (and of submission) in will, and on the relation of conduct to impulse and to reasoning, see McDougall'sSocial Psychology, Chapter IX, on "Volition", and Supplementary Chapter I, on "Theories of Action".
For a practical study of the question, how to secure action, see Walter Dill Scott'sIncreasing Human Efficiency in Business, 1911.
On hypnotism, see Albert Moll'sHypnotism, translated by A. F. Hopkirk; or James's Chapter XXVII in hisPrinciples of Psychology, 1890.
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People differ not only in intelligence and efficiency, but in an intangible something referred to as "personality". If your acquaintance is applying for a certain position, and has named you as one of his references, you will be asked by the appointing officer to tell what you know of the candidate's experience, his knowledge and skill in the field where he desires a position, his character and habits, and hispersonality; and in replying you state, if you conscientiously can, that the candidate has a pleasing and forceful personality, that he gets on well with superiors, equals and inferiors, is coöperative, energetic, ambitious without being selfish, clean, modest, brave, self-reliant, cheerful, optimistic, equal-tempered; and you perhaps include here traits that might also be classed under the head of "character", as honesty, truthfulness, industry, reliability, and traits that might be classed under physique, as good appearance and carriage, commanding presence, a "strong face", and even neatness and good taste in dress. Here we have an array of traits that are of great importance to the individual's success in his work, in his social relationships and in his family life; and it is a proof of how much remains to be accomplished in psychology that we cannot as yet present anything like a real scientific analysis of personality, nor show on what elementary factors it depends.
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If we do attempt some sort of analysis, we have first to notice that personality depends in part onphysique. In ordinary life, mental and physical traits are not sharply distinguished, and probably they cannot be distinguished except in the abstract. The mere size of a person affects his attitude towards other people and their attitude towards him--and it is in such social relations that personality most clearly stands out. His size affects the individual's behavior in subtle ways, since the big fellow dominates others easily just by virtue of his size, and so tends to be good-humored, while the little fellow is apt to be strenuous and self-assertive. Muscular development and "looks" also have their effect on personality.
Another factor might, by a sort of play on words, be calledchemique. This corresponds to what is often calledtemperament, a very obscure matter psychologically. We speak of one as having an excitable temperament, a jovial or a sour temperament. "Disposition" is another word used in connection with such traits. The ancients attempted to relate the "four temperaments" to the four great "humors" or fluids of the body. Thus the "sanguine" individual was one with a surplus of blood, the "choleric" had a surplus of bile, the "phlegmatic" a surplus of phlegm, and the "melancholic" a surplus of black bile or spleen; and any individual's temperament resulted from the balance of these four. Sometimes a fifth temperament, the nervous, was admitted, dependent on the "nerve fluid".
This particular chemical derivation of temperament is, of course, out of date, being based on very imperfect knowledge of physiology; but it still remains possible that chemical substances carried around in the body fluids have much to do with the sort of trait that we think of under{554}the head of temperament. Only that to-day, with some knowledge regarding the internal secretions of the "endocrine glands", we should be inclined to connect temperament with them, rather than with blood, bile, etc. Take, for example, the secretion of the adrenal glands, that we found to be poured out during fear and anger and to have so much to do with the bodily condition of readiness for violent action and probably also with the "stirred-up" emotional state. What is more likely than that individuals differ in the strength of their adrenal secretion or in the readiness with which the glands are aroused to pour it out into the circulation? The excitable individual might be one with over-active adrenals. And in the same way the strenuous individual might be one with an unusually active thyroid gland, since there certainly seems to be some connection between this gland and the tendency to great activity. There are several other glands that possibly affect behavior in somewhat similar ways, so that it is not improbable, though still rather hypothetical, that chemical substances, produced in these glands, and carried by the blood to the brain and muscles, have much to do with the elusive traits that we class under temperament and personality.
Once more, consider the instincts in relation to personality. Undoubtedly these instinctive tendencies differ in strength in different individuals. One is more gregarious than another, and this is an important element in his personality. One is more assertive and masterful than another, one is more "motherly" than another, more responsive by tender and protective behavior to the presence of children or others who need help. One is more prone to laugh than another, and the "sense of humor" is admitted to be an important element in personality. And so on through the list; so that personality can be partially analyzed in terms of instinct.
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Hasintelligenceanything to do with personality? It certainly has, in many ways. One who is slow in learning adapts himself poorly to other persons and remains out of touch with his social environment. "Tact" depends partly on instinctive liking for society, no doubt, but partly on the ability to perceive what others want, and on the imagination to put yourself in their place. High principles require the ability to reason things out and see them in perspective. Statistical studies of the rulers of Europe, for a period of several centuries, show that on the whole those with higher intelligence were also of better character and personality. Criminals, taken as a whole, average rather low in intelligence; and it may even be doubted whether the clever, scheming rascal, who defrauds widows of their money, or trains feeble-minded boys to pick pockets for him, has, after all, the brains of the man who can easily see how such schemes could be worked but decides against them himself because he sees something better worth doing.
A sense of inferiority, either physical or mental, is apt to affect the personality unfavorably. It does not necessarily produce humble behavior; far from that, it often leads to a nervous assertiveness. An apparently disdainful individual is often really shy and unsure of himself. Put a man where he can see he is equal to his job and at the same time is accomplishing something worth while, and you often see considerable improvement in his personality.
In a broad, objective sense, the self is the individual, but in a more subjective sense the self is what the individual knows about himself, how he conceives himself, how he feels about himself, what he plans and wishes for himself. It is reasonable to suppose that the newly born infant does not{556}distinguish himself from other objects. Perhaps his foot, as he sees it, seems simply an object among others, like a toy; but he soon learns to connect the visual appearance with the cutaneous and kinesthetic sensations from the foot, and these sensations, along with the organic, always retain in large measure the subjective quality of belonging to the self, whereas sights, sounds, odors and tastes seem to belong to objects distinct from the self.
If we ask how the child comes to make the distinction between the self and the not-self, we have to call to mind the assertiveness that manifests itself very early in the child's behavior--how he resists being pushed and pulled about, struggles against being held, and in many ways, more and more complex as he develops, shows that he has a "will of his own". It is in resisting and overcoming external things that he comes to distinguish himself from them.
Not only external things, but otherpersonsparticularly, have to be encountered and resisted by the child; and often, too, he has to submit to them, after a struggle. Probably he distinguishes between himself and other people even more sharply than between himself and inanimate things. Ask any one to tell you what he knows about himself, and he will begin to tell you how he differs from others. Thus the individual's conception of himself is largely a product of his social experience.
The self is first known as wish or will, and probably that always remains the core of any one's conception of himself. That is to say, I think of myself first of all as wishing, aiming, purposing, resisting, striving, competing. But I may come to know myself more objectively. By dint of experience I know something of my limitations. I know I am not muscular enough to do this, nor mathematical enough to do that, nor artistic enough to do the other. In this progressive age, some children even know their own IQ. We{557}have frequent occasion to measure ourselves against others, or against tasks, and lay some of the lessons to heart. Though most of us are probably inclined to overrate ourselves, many will be found to give a pretty exact estimate of themselves. It is surprising that this should be so, in view of the tendency to believe what one wishes, and of the deep-seated desire for superiority or at least against inferiority. It shows that, after all, there is a good deal of fidelity to fact in our make-up.
The word "self-assertion", which has been used more or less throughout the book as a name for the native tendency to resist, persist, master, dominate, display oneself and seek social recognition, can now be seen to be not entirely a good word for the purpose. It seems to imply that the self-assertive individual is necessarily conscious of the self. From what has just been said, it can be seen that this would be putting the cart before the horse. The self-assertive impulse precedes, consciousness of self follows and depends on self-assertion. A true estimate of oneself and one's limitations arises from self-assertion plus experience of failure and the necessity of giving up and submitting.
Self-assertion is not identical with selfishness. Selfishness aims to get, self-assertion to do. Selfish behavior is, however, often dictated by self-assertion, as when a person wishes to get and have, in order to be able to show by his possessions what a great man he is. But sometimes self-assertion squelches selfishness, leading a person to renounce present gain without hope of later gain in compensation, just because he sees in such renunciation the best chance for mastery and proving himself "the captain of his soul".
The "expansion of the self" is an interesting and significant phenomenon. The individual comes to call things, persons, social groups, ideas and principles by the name{558}"mine". Now what is mine is part of me. My self-feeling attaches to my dog; I am proud of that dog, brag of his exploits, am cast down if I see him outclassed; and it is the same way with my house, my son, my town, my country. We spoke of this sort of thing before, under the name of "sublimation of the self-assertive impulse", and we said then that the sublimation was made possible by the combination of this impulse with some other interest. My dog is not entirely myself; he is a dog, and I am interested in him as a dog; I am interested in other dogs, and like to watch their antics. But this particular dog means more than another to me because he is mine; I have expanded myself to include him. In general, the self is expanded to take in objects that are interesting in themselves, but which become doubly interesting by being appropriated and identified in some measure with oneself.
Though the individual is always in one sense a unit, there is a sense in which he needs to achieve unity. His various native tendencies and interests do not always pull together, and in fact some necessarily pull against others. So that we sometimes say of a person that he is behaving so differently from usual that we should not know he was the same person. We may speak of one person as being well integrated, meaning that he is always himself, his various tendencies being so coördinated as to work reasonably well together; whereas of another we speak as poorly integrated, unstable, an uncertain quantity. Integration is achieved partly by selection from among conflicting impulses, partly by coördination, partly by judicious treatment of those impulses that are denied; as was partly explained in the last chapter.
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The self, expanding socially, may expand in more than one direction, with the result that the individual has in a sense two or more selves, one for his business, one for his home; and it may happen that the instincts and interests dominating the individual in these two relations are quite different, so that a man who is hard and grasping in business is kind and generous to his wife and children. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" gives an extreme picture of such lack of integration, a picture rather fanciful than drawn from real life.
But we do find in real life cases ofdissociationof the personality, also called cases of double or multiple personality. The individual passes from one state to another, behaving very differently in the two states, and usually unable to remember in the primary or more lasting state what he has done in the secondary state. In the secondary state he remembers what he did in the primary state, but is apt to speak of it as if done by another person. In many cases, the primary state seems limited and hampered, as if the individual were not his complete self, while the secondary state is a sort of complement to the first, but decidedly imperfect in itself. Thus in the primary state the individual may be excessively quiet, while in the secondary state he is excessively mischievous. It is much as if some of his reaction-tendencies were forcibly kept apart from the rest, so that when they did become aroused to activity, the remainder of the individual went to sleep. The individual seems to function in fractions, and never as a whole.
Often the secondary state likes to have a name for itself and to be considered as a secondary personality, as if two persons were inhabiting the same body--a very forced conception. The secondary personality will even assert that it stays awake in the background and watches the primary personality when the latter is active, spying on it without{560}that personality being aware of it. Thus two fractions of the individual would be functioning at the same time, but still not working together as a unit.
This claim of the secondary personality has been experimentally checked up by Dr. Morton Prince, in the following way. He was able to cause his subject, a young woman, to pass from the primary to the secondary state and back again, by a procedure resembling hypnotism. While she was in the secondary state, he told her that she (the secondary personality) was to solve an arithmetical problem, the general nature of which he described to her then and there, while the actual numbers were not shown till she was put back in the primary state. He then put her into the primary state for a few moments, and placed the numbers unobtrusively before her, without the primary personality seeming to notice them. Put back now into the secondary state, she instantly shouted out the answer to the problem, and asserted that she (the secondary personality) had had the answer ready for some time, and had been impatiently waiting to be brought back and announce it. This is at least prima facie evidence in favor of Dr. Prince's view, that two separate fractions of the individual were both functioning consciously at the same time.
It is weird business, however interpreted, and raises the question whether anything of the same sort, only milder in degree, occurs in ordinary experience. Here is one somewhat similar fact that we are all familiar with: we have two matters in hand at the same time, very different in their emotional tone, one perhaps a worrisome matter of business, the other an interesting personal matter; and the shift from one to the other feels almost like changing personalities. Also, while busy with one, we may sometimes feel the other stirring, just barely awake and dimly conscious.
Also, is not something like this true?--A person, very{561}conscientious in the performance of his duties, always doing what he is told, feels stirrings of a carefree, independent spirit, as if some sides of his nature were not finding expression, and in little ways he gives it expression, not exactly by taking a "moral holiday" [Footnote: This is one of William James's expressive phrases.] or going on a spree of some sort, but by venting his impulses just an instant at a time, so that he scarcely remembers it later, and in such little ways that other people, also, are scarcely aware of It. He has a "secondary personality", only it is little developed, and it has its little place in the conscious life, instead of being dissociated.
In the cases of true dissociation, there was often a violent emotional shock that started the cleavage. One celebrated case started at 8 years of age, when the subject, a little girl, was thrown to the floor by a drunken father angered by finding the child asleep in his bed. From that moment, it would seem that the frolicsome side of childish behavior was banished from the main personality, and could get into action only when the main personality relaxed its control and became dormant; so that thereafter the child alternated between two states, one very quiet, industrious and conscientious, the other vivacious and mischievous; and the main personality never remembered what was done in this secondary, mischievous state. In such cases, it would appear that the cleavage resulted from a violent thrusting out from the main personality of tendencies inconsistent with the dominant (here serious) attitude of that personality.
Here at last, it may strike the reader, we have come to the core of the whole subject of psychology; for many readers will undoubtedly have been attracted by the statements{562}sometimes made, to the effect that the "unconscious" represents the deeper and more significant part of mental life, and that psychologists who confine their attention mostly to the conscious activities are treating their subject in a very partial and superficial manner. There is a sort of fascination about the notion of a subconscious mind, and yet it will be noticed that psychologists, as a rule, are inclined to be wary and critical in dealing with it. Let as take up in order the various sorts of unconscious mental processes.
In the first place,retention is unconscious. The host of memories that a person possesses and can recall under suitable conditions is carried about with him in an unconscious condition. But there need be no special mystery about this, nor is it just to speak about memories being "preserved in the unconscious". The fact simply is that retention is a resting condition, whereas consciousness is an active condition. Retention is a matter of brain structure, neurone connections, neural mechanisms ready for action when the proper stimulus reaches them but remaining inactive till the stimulus comes. An idea is like a motor reaction, to the extent that it is a reaction; and we retain ideas in the same way that we retain learned motor reactions. Now no one would think of saying that a learned motor reaction was retained in the unconscious. The motor reaction is not present at all, until it is aroused; the neuro-muscular mechanism for executing the reaction is present, but needs a stimulus to make it active and give the reaction. In the same way, an idea is not present in the individual except when it is activated, but its neural mechanism is present, and unconscious just because it is inactive.
Unconscious inactivity is therefore no great problem. But there is such a thing asunconscious activity. Two sorts of such activity are well known. First, there are the{563}purely "physiological" processes of digestion, liver and kidney secretion, etc. We are quite reconciled to these being unconscious, and this is not the sort of unconscious activity that gives us that fascinatingly uncanny feeling. Second, there are the "secondarily automatic" processes, once conscious, now almost or quite unconscious through the effect of frequent repetition.
Such unconscious activities occur asside-activities, carried on while something else occupies attention, or aspart-activitiesthat go on while attention is directed to the total performance of which they are parts. In either case, the automatism may be motor or perceptive, and the degree of consciousness may range from moderate down to zero. [Footnote:See pp. 265-267.]
For example, the letters of your name you write almost unconsciously, while fully conscious of writing your name. When you are reading, the letters are only dimly conscious, and even the words are only moderately conscious, while the whole performance of reading is highly conscious. These are instances of unconscious (or dimly conscious) part-activities. Unconscious side-activities are illustrated by holding your books firmly but unconsciously under your arm, while absorbed in conversation, by drumming with your fingers while puzzling over a problem, and by looking at your watch and reading the time, but so nearly unconsciously that the next instant you have to look again. In all such cases, the unconscious or barely conscious activity has been made easy by previous practice, and there is no special fascination about it, except such as comes through the use of that awesome word, "unconscious".
But now for the real "subconscious mind". You try to recall a familiar name, but are stuck; you drop the matter, and "let your subconscious mind work"; and, sure enough, after a few minutes you have the name. Or, you are all{564}tangled up in a difficult problem; you let the subconscious mind work on it overnight, and next morning it is perfectly clear. Just here it is that psychology begins to take issue with the popular idea. The popular interpretation is that work has been done on the problem during the interval when it was out of consciousness--unconscious mental work of a high order. But is it necessary to suppose that any work has been done on the problem during the interval?
The difficulty, when you first attacked the problem, arose from false clues which, once they got you, held you by virtue of their "recency value". [Footnote:See pp. 390-391.] The matter laid aside, these false clues lost their recency value with lapse of time, so that when you took the matter up again you were free from their interference and had a good chance to go straight towards the goal.
It is the same with motor acts. On a certain day, a baseball pitcher falls into an inefficient way of handling the ball, and, try as he may, cannot recover his usual form. He has to give up for that day, but after a rest is as good as ever. Shall we say that his subconscious mind has been practising pitching during the rest interval? It is much more likely that here, as in the preceding case, the value of a fresh start lies in freshness, in rest and the consequent disappearance of interferences, rather than in any work that has been done during the interval of rest.
Next, consider the "co-conscious" as Morton Prince has well named the presence and activity of the secondary personality along with the primary, as in his experiment described above. Here it seems that two streams of consciousness were flowing along side by side within the same individual. There is the activity of the main personality, and there is the activity of the secondary personality, going on at the same time without the knowledge of the main{565}personality. This is a way of reading the facts, rather than a simple statement of fact, but at least it is a reasonable interpretation, and worthy of consideration.
Schopenhauer wrote much of the "will to live", which was, in his view, as unconscious as it was fundamental, and only secondarily gave rise to the conscious life of sensations and ideas. Bergson's "élan vital" has much the same meaning. In a sense, the will to live is the fountain of all our wishes; in another sense, it is the sum total of them all; and in another sense, it is an abstraction, the concrete facts consisting in the various particular wishes and tendencies of living creatures. The will to live is not simply the will to stay alive; it is the will tolivewith all that that includes. Life is activity, and to live means, for any species, to engage in the full activity possible for that species.
The will to live is in a sense unconscious, since it is seldom present simply in that bald, abstract form. But since life is activity, any will to act is the will to live in a special form, so that we may perfectly well say that the will to live is always conscious whenever there is any conscious impulse or purpose.
In this simple statement we may find the key to all unconscious motives, disregarding the case of dissociation and split personality. If you analyze your motives for doing a certain act and formulate them in good set terms, then you have to admit that this motive was unconscious before, or only dimly conscious, since it was not formulated, it was not isolated, it was not present in the precise form you have now given it. Yet it was there, implicated in the total conscious activity. It was not unconscious in the sense of being active in a different, unconscious realm. The realm in which it was active was that of conscious activity, and it formed an{566}unanalyzed part of that activity. It was there in the same way that overtones are present in perceiving the tone quality of a particular instrument; the overtones are notseparatelyheard and may be very difficult to analyze, yet all the time they are playing an important part in the conscious perception.
In the same way, we may not "realize" that we are helping our friend as a way of dominating over him, but think, so far as we stop to think, that our motive is pure helpfulness. Later, analyzing our motives, we may separate out the masterful tendency, which was present all the time and consciously present, but so bound up with the other motive of helpfulness that it did not attract attention to itself. Now if our psychology makes us cynics, and leads us to ascribe the whole motivation of the helpful act to the mastery impulse, and therefore to regard this as working in the unconscious, we are fully as far from the truth as when we uncritically assumed that helpfulness was the only motive operating.
For man, to live means a vast range of activity--more than can possibly be performed by any single individual. We wish to do a thousand things that we never can do. We are constantly forced to limit the field of our activity. Physical incapacity, mental incapacity, limitations of our environment, conflict between one wish and another of our own, opposition from other people, and mere lack of time, compel us to give up many of our wishes. Innumerable wishes must be laid aside, and some, resisting, have to be forcibly suppressed. Renunciation is the order of the day, from childhood up to the age when weakness and weariness supervene upon the zest for action, and the will to live fades out into readiness to die.
What becomes of the suppressed wishes, we have already briefly considered. [Footnote:See p. 533.] We have noticed Freud's conception{567}that they live on "in the unconscious". Nothing ever learned, he would say, can ever be forgotten, and no wish ever aroused can ever be quieted, except by being gratified either directly or through some substitute response. Each one of us, according to this view, carries around inside of him enough explosive material to blow to bits the whole social structure in which he lives. It is the suppressed sex wishes, and spite wishes growing out of thwarted sex wishes, that mostly constitute the unconscious.
These unconscious wishes, according to Freud, motivate our dreams, our queer and apparently accidental actions, such as slips of the tongue and other "mistakes", the yet queerer and much more serious "neurotic symptoms" that appear in some people, and even a vast deal of our serious endeavor in life. All the great springs of action are sought in the unconscious. The biologist, consciously, is driven by his desire to know the world of plants and animals, but what really motivates him, on this view, is his childish sex curiosity, thwarted, driven back upon itself, and finding a substitute outlet in biological study. And so, in one way or another, with every one of us.
All this seems to depart pretty far from sober reality, and especially from proved fact. It involves a very forced interpretation of child life, an interpretation that could never have arisen from a direct study of children, but which has seemed useful in the psychoanalysis of maladjusted adults. It is a far cry from the facts that Freud seeks to explain, to the conception of the infantile unconscious with which he endeavors to explain them.
Freud's conception of life and its tendencies is much too narrow. There is not half enough room in his scheme of things for life as it is willed and lived. There is not room in it even for all the instincts, nor for the "native likes and dislikes"; and there is still less room for the will to live, in{568}the sense of the zest for all forms of activity, each for its own sake as a form of vital activity. Any scheme of motivation, which traces all behavior back to a few formulated wishes, is much too abstract, as was illustrated just above in the case of the helpful act.
Freud is apparently guilty of yet another error, in supposing that any specific wish, ungratified, lives on as the same, identical, precise wish. A very simple instance will make clear the point of this criticism. Suppose that the first time you definitely mastered the fact that "3 times 7 are 21", it was in a certain schoolroom, with a certain teacher and a certain group of schoolfellows. You were perhaps animated at that moment by the desire to secure the approval of that teacher and to shine before those schoolfellows. Does it follow, then, that every time you now make use of that bit of the multiplication table, you are "unconsciously" gratifying that wish of long ago? To believe that would be to neglect all that we have learned of "shortcircuiting" and of the "substitute stimulus" generally. [Footnote:See p. 338.] That wish of long ago played its part in linking the response to the stimulus, but the linkage became so close that that precise wish was no longer required. The same response has been made a thousand times since, with other wishes in the game, and when the response is made to-day, a new wish is in the game. It is the same with the biologist. Suppose, for the sake of argument, what probably is true in only a fraction of the cases, that the biologist's first interest in making any minute study of animals arose from sex curiosity. As soon, however, as he engaged in any real study of animals, substitute stimuli entered and got attached to his exploring responses; and to suppose that that identical wish of long ago is still subconsciously active, whenever the biologist takes his microscope in hand, is to throw out all{569}these substitute stimuli and their attachments to many new responses, and to see in a very complex activity only one little element.
In making use of the conception of the unconscious to assist us in interpreting human conduct, we are thus exposed to two errors. First, finding a motive which was not analyzed out by the individual, and which was only vaguely and implicitly conscious, and formulating that motive in an explicit way, we are then liable to the error of supposing that the motive must have been explicitly present, not indeed in consciousness but in the unconscious; whereas the whole truth is exhausted when we say that it was consciously but only implicitly present--active, but not active all alone. Second, having traced out how a certain act was learned, we are apt to suppose that its history is repeated whenever it is performed afresh--that the wishes and ideas that were essential to its original performance must be unconsciously present whenever it is once more performed--neglecting thus the fact that what is retained and renewed consists of responses, rather than experiences. What is renewed when a learned act is performed is not the history of the act, but the act itself. In a new situation, the act is part of a new performance, and its motivation is to some degree new.
Though his theories are open to criticism, Freud has made important contributions to the study of personality. The same can be said of other schools of psycho-pathology. Jung and Adler deserve mention as representing varieties of psychoanalysis that differ more or less radically from that of Freud. Outside of the psychoanalytic school altogether, Janet and Morton Prince have added much to psychological knowledge from their studies of dissociated and maladjusted personalities. In endeavoring to assist the maladjusted individual, all these schools have much in common, since they all seek to bring to his attention elements in his personality{570}of which he is not clearly aware. Clear consciousness of implicit or dissociated elements in one's personality often proves to be a step towards a firmer organization of the personality and towards a better adjustment to the conditions of life.
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1. Outline the chapter.2. Mention some personal traits that appear when the individual is dealing with inanimate things, and some that only appear in dealing with other persons.3. Construct a "rating scale" for the trait of independence, as follows. Think of some one who is extremely independent, and call him A; of some one who is at the opposite extreme and call him E; of some one standing halfway, and call him C; and fill in the positions B and D with other persons standing between A and C and between C and E, in this matter of independence. You now have a sort of measuring rod, with the five persons A, B, C, D and E marking degrees of the trait. To rate any other individual, consider where he belongs on this scale--whether even with A, with B, etc.4. How does the embarrassing "self-consciousness" of one who is speaking in public differ from simple consciousness of self?5. Consider what was conscious and what unconscious in the following case of "shell shock": A sharpshooter had a certain peekhole in the front of the trench through which he was accustomed to take aim at the enemy. The enemy evidently spotted him, for bullets began to strike close by as soon as ever he got up to shoot. He stood this for a time, and then suddenly lost the sight of his right eye, which he used in aiming.6. Explain the difference between unconscious action of the dissociated type and of the implicit type.
For attempts to utilize psychological methods in the study of personality, see F. L. Wells,Mental Adjustments, 1917; also Chapter 11 in Watson'sPsychology, 1919.
Much interesting psychological material, along with a good deal of philosophical discussion, is contained in James's chapter on the "Consciousness of Self" in Vol. I of hisPrinciples of Psychology, 1890.
For a discussion of the unconscious, see the symposium onSubconscious Phenomena, 1910, participated in by Münsterberg, Ribot, Janet, Jastrow, Hart and Prince.
On dissociation, see Morton Prince'sDissociation of a Personality.
For Freud's doctrine of the unconscious, see hisPsychopathology of Everyday Life, translated by Brill.
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Abulia,
499, 539-541, 545-546
Accessory sense-apparatus,
192-196, 200
Acquired reactions,
89-90, 94, 99-102, 112-114, 144, 247, 296-829, 399
Adaptation,
of attention, 247, 260;negative, 302-303, 310, 312;sensory, 224-225, 447
Adjustment,
72, 78-79, 131, 178, 382, 385, 420, 430, 431, 433
Adler,
569
Adrenal glands,
123-124, 554
Advantage,
factors of, 245-248, 259, 382;law of, 256
Aggressive behavior,
160-161, 164-165