LECTURE IICONSERVATION OF FORGOTTEN EXPERIENCES OF NORMAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL LIFE
Evidence obtained by the method of automatic writing.—If we take a suitable subject, one in whom “automatic writing”[5]has been developed, and study the content of the script, we may find that to a large extent it contains references to, i.e., memories of, experiences which have long been forgotten by the subject and which cannot even by the stimulus of memoranda be voluntarily recalled.These experiences may be actions performed even as far back aschildhood,orpassages read in books, or fragments of conversation, etc. Thus B. C. A., who suffers from an intense fear or phobia of cats, particularlywhitecats, can recall no experience in her life which could have given rise to it. Yet when automatic writing is resorted to the hand writes a detailed account of a fright into which she was thrown, when she was only five or six years of age, by a white kitten which had a fit while she was playing with it. The writing also describes in minute detail the furnishings of the room where the episode occurred, the pattern of the carpet, the decorative designs of the window shades, the furniture, etc. As this observation is typical of many others, it may be well to dwell upon it long enough to describe it in some detail for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this class of phenomena.
After it had been determined, by a searching examination, that B. C. A. could not recall any experience that might throw light upon her phobia, an attempt was made to recover a possible memory in hypnosis. As is well known, the memory often broadens in hypnosis and events which are forgotten when “awake” may be recovered. In this instance the subject was put into two different hypnotic states, but without success. This, again, is a matter of some importance for the principle of conservation. Different hypnotic states in the same individual may be distinguished in that each, among other characteristics, may have different and independentsystems of memories, as we shall see later. The memories which belong to one state cannot be recalled in another. Hence the fact that a memory cannot be recovered in one state is not proof that it is not conserved, nor is a failure to recover the memory of an episode in all states of hypnosis evidence of failure of conservation, any more than is the failure to recover a memory in the waking state at any given moment.
In the experiment with B. C. A., after failing to awaken a possible memory in either state of hypnosis, a pencil was put in her hand while she was still hypnotized. The hand then wrote automatically, without the knowledge of the hypnotized subject, the following account of this childhood episode that I have just mentioned:[6]
“I think I know about the cats. I can remember myself, a little child, playing on the floor with a kitten, and it began to run about the room and had a fit, I think, and it jumped on me, and I was alone, and I screamed and cried and called my mother, but no one came, and I was very much frightened. I do not believe I ever told anyone. It was a whitekitten. It ran out of the room and after a bit I went on playing.”
To test the extent of the conserved memories still further the hand was asked to describe the furnishings of the room and the plan of the house. It wrote:
“There were two windows on the side of the room. The shades were gray, I think, with a border of grapes, or something of that color. The carpet was green or gray with green figures. There was a large old-fashioned sofa between one window and the door which led into the dining-room. A bookcase and desk-combination, you know. There was a mantle, I think, between the windows. It was the ground floor.”
This childhood episode and the furnishings of the room were completely forgotten by B. C. A. in the sense that they could not be voluntarily recalled. Even after reading the script she could not remember them. She had not seen the room since she was six years of age, the family having removed at that time from the town in which the incident took place. As to the accuracy of the “automatic” account and the possibility of fabrication, the description of the room has been corroborated by the independent and written testimony of an older member of the family. It was not possible to confirm the incident of the kitten as there were no witnesses. This portion of the account, therefore, cannot be proved not to be a fabrication, but I have never known a fabricated statement to be made in this subject’s automaticscript, and I have obtained from her a large number of statements of different kinds in the course of several years’ observation.
However that may be, the point is not essential, for the minute description, by a special technic, of the furnishings of a room which had not been seen since childhood, a matter of some thirty-five years, and which were totally forgotten, is a sufficient demonstration of the principle of conservation of conscious experiences that cannot be voluntarily recalled. The reproduction of the conscious experience by automatic writing was, of course, an act of memory effected by a special device, and this fact compels us to postulate the conservation of the experience during this long period of time, notwithstanding that the experience could not be recalled voluntarily. Although the conserved experience could not be awakened into memory by voluntary processes of the personal consciousness it could be so awakened by an artificial stimulus under artificial conditions.
An observation like this, dealing with the conservation of long forgotten childhood or other experiences, is not unique. Quite a collection of recorded cases might be cited. Mr. C. Lowe Dickinson has put on record[7]one of a young woman (Miss C.), who, in an hypnotic trance, narrated a dream-like fabrication of a highly imaginativecharacter. On one occasion, through the imaginary intermediation of the spirit of a fictitious person, who was supposed to have lived in the time of Richard II, she gave a great many details about the Earl and Countess of Salisbury, “and other personages of the time, and about the manners and customs of that age. The personages referred to, the details given in connection with them, and especially the genealogical data, were found on examination to be correct, although many of them were such as apparently it would not have been easy to ascertain without considerable historical research.” Miss C. after coming out of the hypnotic trance was in entire ignorance of how she could have obtained this knowledge and could not recall ever having read any book which contained the information she had given. Through automatic writing, however, it was discovered that it was to be found in a book calledThe Countess Maud, by E. Holt. It then appeared—and this is the point of interest bearing on the conservation of forgotten knowledge—that this book had been read to her by her auntfourteen years previously, when she was a child about eleven years old. Both ladies had so completely forgotten its contents that they could not recall even the period with which it dealt. Here were conscious experiences of childhood which, if voluntary recollection were to be made use of as a test, would be rightly said to have been extinguished, but that they had only lain fallow, conservedin some unconscious fashion, was shown by their reproduction in the hypnotic trance.[8]
In this connection I may instance the case of Mrs. C. D., who suffers from a fixed fear of fainting. She cannot recall, even after two prolonged searching examinations, the first occasion when this fear developed, or why she has it, and is, therefore, ignorant of its genesis. Yet put into abstraction or light hypnosis she recalls vividly its first occurrence as the effect of an emotional scene of twenty years ago. The details of its psychological content come clearly into consciousness, and its meaning, as a fear of death, is remembered as a part of the original episode. That the fixed idea is a recurrence or partial memory of the original complex becomes logically plain and is recognized as such.
Instances of the reproduction in automatic script offorgotten passages from booksare to be found in Mrs. Verrall’s[9]elaborate records of her own automatic writings. Investigation showed that numerous pieces of English, Latin, and Greek scriptwere not original compositions but only forgotten passages from authors previously read.
Mrs. Holland’s script records, as investigation seemed to show, the exact words expressing a personal sentiment contained in a letter written to hertwenty yearsbefore and long forgotten. The letter proving this was accidentally discovered.[10]
The following instance of a forgotten experience is, in itself, common enough with everybody, but its recovery by automatic writing illustrates how conservation of the thousand and one simplyforgotten acts of everyday lifemay still persist. It forces, too, a realization of the reason why it is possible that though an act may be forgotten at any given moment it may later at any time flash into the mind. It is still conserved.
B. C. A. had been vainly hunting for a bunch of keys which she had not seen or thought of for four months, having been in Europe. One day, soon after her return, while writing a letter to her son she was interrupted by her hand automatically and spontaneously writing the desired information.The letter to her son began as follows: “October 30, 19—. Dear Boy: I cannot find those keys—have hunted everywhere”.... [Here the hand began to write the following, automatically.] “O, I know—take a pencil” [Here she did as she was bidden] “you put those keys in the little box where X’s watch is.”
In explanation B. C. A. sent me the following letter: “The keys were found in the box mentioned. I had hunted for them ever since coming home, October 4th. One key belonged to my box in the safety deposit vault and I had felt very troubled and anxious at not being able to find them. I have no recollection now of putting them where I found them.” [Nor was recollection subsequently recovered.]
I could give from my own observation if it were necessary as many instances as could be desired of “automatic” reproductions of forgotten experiences of one kind or another the truth of which could be verified by notebook records or other evidence. By a forgotten experience of course is meant something more than what cannot for the moment be voluntarily recalled. I mean something that cannot be remembered at any moment nor under any conditions,even after the memory has been prodded by the reproduction in the script—something that is apparently absolutely forgotten. The experience may not only be of a trivial nature but something that happened long in the past and of the kind that is ordinarily absolutely forgotten. Ihave often invoked the automatic writing (memories) of the subject to recover data elicited in the past in psychological examinations but which both I and the subject had forgotten. Reference to notes always verified the automatic memories. The records of automatic writing to be found in the literature are rich in reproductions showing conservation of forgotten experiences. In fact, given a good subject who can write automatically it is easy to obtain experimentally evidence of this kind at will.
Evidence from abstraction.—One of the most striking of artificial memory performances is the recovery of the details of inconsequential experiences of everyday life by inducing simple states ofabstractionin normal people. It is often astonishing to see with what detail these experiences are conserved. A person may remember any given experience in a general way, such as what he does during the course of the day, but the minute details of the day he ordinarily forgets. Now, if he allows himself to fall into a passive state of abstraction, simply concentrating his attention upon a particular past moment, and gives free rein to all the associative memories belonging to that moment that float into his mind, at the same time taking care to forego all critical reflection upon them, it will be found that the number of details that will be recalled will be enormously greater than can be recovered by voluntary memory. Memories of thedetails of each successive moment follow one another in continuous succession. This method requires some art and practice to be successfully carried out. In the state of abstraction attention to the environment must be completely excluded and concentrated upon the past moments which it is desired to recall. For instance, a young woman, a university student, had lost some money several days before the experiment and desired to learn what had become of it. She remembered, in a general way, that she had gone to the bank that day, had cashed some checks, made some purchases in the shops of the town, returned to the university, attended lectures, etc., and later had missed the money from her purse. Her memory was about as extensive as that of the ordinary person would be for similar events after the lapse of several days. I put her into a state of abstraction and evoked her memories in the way I have just described. The minuteness and vividness with which the details of each successive act in the day’s experiences were recovered were remarkable, and, to the subject, quite astonishing.As the memories arose she recognized them as being accurate, for she then remembered the events as having occurred, just as one remembers any occurrence.[11]In abstraction, she remembered with great vividness every detail at the bankteller’s window, where she placed her gloves, purse, and umbrella, the checks, the money, etc.; then there came memories of seating herself at a table in the bank, of placing her umbrella here, her purse there, etc.; of writing a letter, and doing other things; of absent-mindedly forgetting her gloves and leaving them on the table;[12]of going to a certain shop where, after looking at various articles and thinking certain thoughts and making certain remarks, she finally made certain purchases, giving a certain piece of money and receiving the change in coin of certain denominations; of seeing in her purse the exact denominations of the coins (ten and five-dollar gold pieces and the pieces of subsidiary coinage) which remained; then of going to another shop and similar experiences. Then of numerous details which she had forgotten; of other later incidents including lectures, exercising in the gymnasium, etc. Through it all ran the successive fortunes of her purse until the moment came when, looking into it, she found one of the five-dollar gold pieces gone. It became pretty clear that the piece had disappeared at a moment when the purse was out of her possession, a fact which she had not previously remembered but had believed the contrary. The hundred and one previously forgotten details which surged into her mind as vivid conscious recollections would take too long to narrate.
(I have made quite a number of experiments of this kind with similar results. That the memories are not fabrications is shown by the fact that, as they arise, they become recollections in the sense that the subject can then consciously recall the events and place them in time and space as one does in ordinary memory, and particularly by the fact that many of them are often capable of confirmation.
I would here point out that the recovery of forgotten experiences by the method ofabstractiondiffers in one important psychological respect from their recovery byautomatic writing. In the former case the recalled experiences being brought back by associative memories enter into the associations and become true conscious recollections, like any other recollections, while in automatic writing the memories are reproduced in script without entering the personal consciousness at all and while the subject is still in ignorance. Often even after reading the script his memory still remains a blank. It is much as if one’s ideas had been preserved on a phonographic record and later reproduced without awakening a memory of their original occurrence.[13]The significance of this difference for the theoryof conservation I will point out later after we have considered some other modes of reproduction.)
Among the conserved forgotten experiences are often to be found fleeting thoughts, ideas, and perceptions, so insignificant and trifling that it would not be expected that they would be remembered. Some of them may have entered only the margin or fringe of the content of consciousness, and, therefore, the subject was only dimly aware of them. Some may have been so far outside the focus of awareness that there was no awareness of them at all, i.e., they were subconscious. Instructive examples of such conserved experiences may be found in persons who suffer from attacks of phobia, i.e., obsessions. The experiences to which I refer occur immediately before and during the attacks. After the attack the ideas of these periods are usually largely or wholly forgotten, particularly the ideas which were in the fringe of consciousness and the idea which, according to my observation, was the exciting cause of the attack. By the method of abstraction I have been able to recover the content of consciousness during the periods in question, including the fringe of consciousness, and thus discover the nature of the fear of which the patient was unaware because the idea was in the fringe.
Mrs. C. D., whom I have mentioned as having suffered intensely from attacks of fear, and Miss F. E., who is similarly afflicted with such attacks accompanied by the feeling of unreality, are instances in point. As is well known such attackscome on suddenly in the midst of mental tranquillity, often without apparent cause so far as the patient can discover. While in the state of abstraction the thoughts, perceptions, and acts of the period just preceding and during the attack, as they successively occurred, could be evoked in these subjects in great detail and with striking vividness. The recovery of these memories has been always a surprise to the patient who, a moment before, had been utterly unable to recall them, and had declared the attack had developed without cause. In the case of Mrs. C. D. it was discovered in this way the real fear was of fainting and death, and in that of Miss F. E. of insanity. These ideas having been in the fringe of consciousness, or background of the mind, the subjects were at the time scarcely aware of them and, therefore, were ignorant of the true nature of their phobias, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of the attacks. Among the memories recovered in these and other cases I have always been able to find one of a thought or of a sensory stimulus from the environment which immediately preceded and which through association occasioned the attack. When this particular memory was recovered the patient, who had declared that the attack had developed without cause, at once recognized the original idea which was the cause of the attack, just as one recognizes the idea which causes one to blush. The idea sometimes has been a thought suggested by a casual and apparently insignificant word in a sentence occurring in a conversationon indifferent matters, or by a dimly conscious perception of the environment, sometimes an idea occurring as a secondary train of thought perhaps bearing upon some future course of action, and so on.
As instances of such dimly-conscious perceptions of the environment which I have found I may mention a gateway through which the subject was passing, or a bridge about to be crossed; these particular points in the environment being places where previous attacks had occurred. The perceptions which precipitated the attack may have been entirely subconscious and yet may be brought back to memory. With the pathogenesis of the attacks we are not now directly concerned. The point of interest for us lies in the fact that such forgotten casual ideas and perceptions, some of which had been actually subconscious and some had only entered the margin of the focus of attention may, notwithstanding the amnesia, be conserved; and the same is true of any succession of trivial ideas occurring at an inconsequential moment in a person’s life.
However that may be, if you will try to recall in exact detail the thoughts and feelings which successively passed through your mind at any given moment say three or four weeks ago—or even days ago—and their accompanying acts, and then (if you can do this, which I very much doubt) try to give them in their original sequence, I think you will realize the force of these observations and appreciate the significance of the conservation of suchminute experiences and of their reproduction in abstraction.
Evidence furnished by the method of hypnosis.—It is almost common knowledge that when a person is hypnotized—whether lightly or deeply—he may be able to remember once well-known events of his conscious life which he has totally forgotten in the full waking state. It is not so generally known that he may also be able to recall conscious events of which he was never consciously aware, that is to say, experiences which were entirely subconscious. The same is true, of course, of forgotten experiences which originally had entered only the margin of the content of consciousness and of which he was dimly aware. Among the experiences thus recalled may be perceptions of minute details of the environment which escape the attentive notice of the individual, or they may be thoughts which were in the background of the mind and, therefore, never in the full light of attention. You must not fall into the common error of believing every hypnotized person can do this, or that any person can do it in any state of hypnosis. There are various “degrees” or states of hypnosis representing different conditions of dissociation and synthesis. One person may successively be put into several different states; many persons can be put into only one, but the degree of dissociation and capacity for synthesis in each state and in every person varies very much, and, indeed, according to the technical devicesemployed. Each state is apt to exhibit different systems of memories, that is, to synthesize (recall) past conserved experiences in a different degree. What cannot be recalled in one state may be in another. We may say as a general principle thattheoreticallyany experience that has been conserved can be recalled in some state, and, conversely, there is theoretically some state in which any conserved experience can be recalled. Practically, of course, we can never induce a state which synthesizes all conserved experiences, nor always one in which any given experience is synthesized. I shall later, in connection with particular types of conscious states, give examples of hypnotic memories showing conservation of such experiences as I have just mentioned. The point you will not lose sight of is that we are concerned with hypnotic phenomena only so far as they may be evidence of the conservation of forgotten experiences.
There is a class of hypnotic memory phenomena which acquire additional importance because of the bearing they have upon thepsycho-genesisof certain pathological conditions. They show the conservation of the details of an episode in their original chronological order with an exactness that is beyond the powers of voluntary memory to reproduce. These phenomena consist of the realistic reproduction of certain emotional episodes which as a whole may or may not be forgotten. The reproduction is realistic in the sense that the episodesare acted over again by the individual as if once more he were actually experiencing them. Apparently every detail is reproduced, including the emotion with its facial expressions and its other physiological manifestations, and pathological disturbances like pain, paralysis, anesthesia, movements, etc. I will cite the following three examples:
M——l, a Russian, living in this country, suffers from psycholeptic attacks dating from an episode which occurred seven years previously andwhich he has completely forgotten. At that time he was living in Russia. It happened that after returning from a ball he was sent back late at night by his employer, a woman, to look for a ring which she had lost in the ballroom. His way led over a lonely road by a graveyard. As he was passing this place he heard footsteps behind him and became frightened. Overcome with terror he fell, partially unconscious, and his whole right side became affected with spasms and paralysis. He was picked up in this condition and taken to a hospital. Each year since that time he has had recurring attacks of spasms and paralysis.[14]
Inhypnosishe remembers and relates a dream. This dream is one which recurs periodically but isforgotten after waking from sleep. This is the dream: He is back in his native land; it is the night of the ball; he sees his employer with outstretched hand commanding him to go search for the ring.Once more he makes his way along the lonely road; he hears footsteps; he becomes frightened, falls, and then awakes, with entire oblivion for the dream, to find his right side paralyzed and in spasms.
The following experiment is now made. By suggestion in hypnosis he is made to believe that he is fifteen years of age. As a consequence in his hypnotic dream he is once more living in Russia before he had learned English. It is now found that he has spontaneously lost all knowledge of the English language and can speak only Russian. He is told it is the night of the ball and, as in a dream, he is carried successively through the different events of that night. Finally he returns in search of the ring, passes again over the lonely road, hears the footsteps and becomes frightened. At this point his face is suddenly contorted with an expression of fright, the whole right side becomes paralyzed and anesthetic, and the muscles of face, arm, and leg affected with clonic spasms. At the same time he moans with pain which he experiences in his side, which he hurt when he fell. Though consciousness is confused he answers questions and describes the pain which he feels. On being awakened all passes off.
Mrs. W. on her return to Boston after an absence in Europe happened to pass by a certain house on her way to her hotel; the house (a private hospital) was one with which she had very distressing associations. On leaving the steamer she took a street car which she left a block distant from thehotel. She walked this distance and as she passed the house she was seized with a sudden attack of fear, dizziness, palpitation, etc. Although it is beside the point I may say that she had not noticed the locality and did not consciously recognize the house until the attack developed. The attack was, therefore, induced by a subconscious perception.[15]She recalls the incident and describes the attack, remembers that it occurred at this particular spot, but without further detail.
Now in hypnosis she is taken back to the day of her arrival on the steamship. In imagination, as in a sort of dream, she is living over again that day; she disembarks from the ship, enters the street car in which she rides a certain distance; she leaves the car at the point nearest her destination and proceeds to walk the remainder of the distance; suddenly her face exhibits the liveliest emotion; she becomes strongly agitated and her respiration is short and quick; her head and eyes turn toward the left and upward, as if in search of a cause, and she exclaims, “Yes, that’s it, that’s it,” as she recognizes in imagination the house which had been the scene of her previous distress. Then the attack subsides as she passes by, continuing her way toward her hotel.
Mrs. E. B. suffers from traumatic hysteria as theresult of a slight but emotional accident—a fall—when alighting from a railway train. The accident resulted in a sprained shoulder and neuritis of the arm. She fully remembers the accident and describes it as any one might.
When put into hypnosis, however, the memory assumes a different character. She is taken back in imagination to the scene of the accident. Once more the train is entering the station; she leaves the car, steps from the platform upon a truck; then, unawares, steps off the truck and falls to the ground. As she falls her face suddenly becomes distorted with fear; tears stream down her cheeks, which become suffused; her heart palpitates; she suffers again acute pain in her arm, and so on. Her physical and mental anguish is painful to look upon. Though I try to persuade her that she is not hurt and that the accident is a delusion my effort is not very successful.
In this experiment, as in the others, there is substantially a reproduction in all its details of the content of consciousness which obtained at the time of the accident, and also of the emotion and its physiological manifestations—all were faithfully conserved. Further, each event follows in the same chronological sequence as in the original experience.
But in these observations the reproduction differs somewhat from that of ordinary memory. It is in the form of a dream, hypnotic or normal, and the subject goes back to the time of the experience, which he thinks is the present, and actually livesover again the original episode. Unlike the conditions of ordinary memory the whole content of his consciousness is practically limited to that which originally was present, all else, the present and the intervening past, being dissociated and excluded. The original psychological processes and their psycho-physiological accompaniments (pain, paralysis, anesthesia, spasms, etc.) repeat themselves as if the present were the past. Plainly, for such a reproduction, the original episode must have left conserved dispositions of some kind which when excited were capable of reënacting the episode in all its psycho-physiological details. From a consideration of such phenomena it is easy to understand how certain psycho-neuroses may be properly regarded as memories of certain past experiences. The experiences are conserved and under certain conditions reproduced from time to time.
I may cite one other experiment dealing with the conservation of the details of a day’s experiences after the lapse of several months. The subject was a little girl who suffered from hysterical tics. Hoping to discover the exciting cause of her nervous disturbance, I put her into deep hypnosis, and evoked the memories of the events of the day on which her disease developed,about six months previously. It was astonishing to hear her recall a continuous series of precise thoughts and acts, many of them trivial, of the kind that would be transient and forgotten by anybody. She beganwith the events of the early morning, giving her own thoughts and acts; the remarks of her father and mother, describing exactly the location in the house at the time of each member of the family; her arrival at school; the several lessons of the day; the remarks of the teacher; the happenings during recess; her final entry into the laboratory; and the sudden onset of the tic. Everything was given in chronological order. The memories were vivid and, as they came up into her mind, were recognized as true recollections.[16]All this was forgotten when she was awake, that is to say, although conserved, it could not be reproduced. There was no way, of course, of determining the accuracy of these memories and, therefore, their correctness lacks scientific proof. On the other hand, the facts, which are in entire correspondence with similar results obtained under conditions where confirmation is possible, have value as cumulative evidence.[17]
It is not difficult to arrange experiments which will test the accuracy with which the minute details of experiences may be conserved when reproductionis at fault. A simple test is to have a suitable subject endeavor to repeatverbatimthe contents of a letter written by him at some preceding time—one week, two weeks, a month, or more. Few people, of course, can do this. If, now, the subject is a suitable one for the abstraction or hypnotic method it may be that he will be able to reproduce by one or the other method the test letter, word for word; a comparison of the reproduction with the letter will, of course, determine the accuracy of the memory. In such an experiment I have succeeded in getting two subjects, Miss B.[18]and B. C. A., to repeatverbatimthe contents of fairly long letters, and this even, on certain occasions, when, on account of the subject being a dissociated personality, there was no recollection of the letter at all, not even that it had been written. Such minute reproduction affords further evidence that the conservation of experiences may be much more complete and exact than ordinary conscious memory would lead us to suppose.
Evidence from hallucinatory phenomena.—I may mention one more example of conservation of a forgotten experience of everyday life as it is an example or mode of reproduction which differs in certain important respects both from that of ordinary memory and that observed under the artificialmethods thus far described. This mode is that of avisualor anauditory hallucinationwhich may be an exact reproduction in vividness and detail of the original experience. It is a type of a certain class of memory phenomena. One of my subjects, while in a condition of considerable stress of mind owing to the recurrence of the anniversary of her wedding-day, had a vision of her deceased husband, who addressed to her a certain consoling message. It afterwards transpired that this message was an actual reproduction of the words which a friend, in the course of a conversation some months previously, had quoted to her as the words of her own husband just before his death. In the vision the words were put into the mouth of another person, the subject’s husband, and were actually heard as an hallucination. Under the peculiar circumstances of their occurrence, however, these words awakened no sense of familiarity; nor did she recognize the source of the words until the automatic writing, which I later obtained, described the circumstances and details of the original episode. Then the original experience came back vividly to memory. On the other hand, the “automatic writing” not only remembered the experience but recognized the connection between it and the hallucination. (The truth of the writing is corroborated by the written testimony of the other party to the conversation.)
Although such types of hallucinatory memories are not actual reproductions of an experience but rather translated representations, yet they showthe experience must have been conserved in order to have determined the representation. The actual experience, as we shall see later, is translated into a visual or auditory form which pictures or verbally expresses it, as the case may be. This type of hallucination is common. That which is translated may be previous thoughts, or perceptions received through another sense. Thus Mrs. Holland records a visual hallucination which pictured a verbal description previously narrated to her by a friend, but forgotten. The hallucination included “the figure of a very tall thin man, dressed in gray, standing with his back to the fire. He had a long face, I think a mustache—certainly no beard—and suggested young middle age.”... On a second occasion “the tall figure in gray was lying on the bed in a very flung-down, slack-jointed attitude. The face was turned from me, the right arm hanging back across the body which lay on the left side. I started violently and my foot seemed to strike an empty bottle on the floor.”
There is very little doubt that these visions of Mrs. Holland’s represented Mr. Gurney, who had died from an accidental dose of chloroform. Mrs. Holland “took very little interest” in Mr. Gurney, hence she had entirely forgotten that the main facts of his death had been told to her a few months previously by the narrator, Miss Alice Johnson.[19]
In an hallucination of this sort we have a dramatic pictorial representation of previous thoughforgotten knowledge which must have determined it. In order to have determined the hallucination the knowledge must have been conserved somehow. I have frequently observed a similar reproduction of a forgotten experience, which was not visual, through translation into a newly createdvisualrepresentation in the form of an artificial hallucination. The following is of this kind: Miss B., looking into a crystal,[20]saw a scene laid in a wood near a lake, etc. Several figures appeared in this scene, which was that of a murder. Although she had no recollection of anything that could have given rise to the hallucination, investigation showed that the original experience was to be found in one of Marie Correlli’s novels which she had read but forgotten. The vision was a correct representation of the scene as described in the book.
In suitable subjects almost any past experience, whether forgotten or not, can be reproduced in this way if conserved, and observation shows that the number which are conserved is enormous. I shallhave occasion to cite further examples in other connections. The phenomenon of translation we shall find when we come to study it, as we shall do in another lecture, throws light upon the nature of conservation for here we are dealing with something more than simple reproduction; what is conserved becomes elaborated into a new composition.
Evidence obtained from dreams.—Another not uncommon mode in which forgotten experiences are recovered is through dreams. The content of the dream may, as Freud has shown, be a cryptic and symbolical expression or representation of the experience,[21]or a visualized representation or obvious symbolism, much as a painted picture may be a symbolized expression of an idea,[22]or it may be a realistic reproduction in the sense that the subject lives over again the actual experience. A relative of mine gave me a very accurate description of a person whom she had never seen from a dream in which he appeared. After describing his hair, eyes, contour of face, mouth, etc., she ended with the words, “He looks like a cross between a Scotchman and an Irishman.” After she had most positively insisted that she had never seen this person or heard him described—against my protest to the contrary—I reminded her that I had myself described him to her only a few days beforein the identical words, ending my description with the remark, “He looks like a cross between a Scotchman and an Irishman.” Even then she could not recall the fact. Von Bechterew has recorded the case of a man who frequently after hearing an opera dreamed the whole opera through.[23]One subject of mine frequently dreamed over again in very minute detail, after an interval of eight or nine months, the scenes attending the deathbed of a relative. Indeed, in the dream she realistically lived them again in a fashion similar to that of hypnotic dreams such as I have related. Although she had not forgotten these scenes it is highly improbable that she could have voluntarily recalled them, particularly after the lapse of so long a time, without the aid of the dream, so rich was it in detail, with each event in its chronological order.
Dream reproductions, whether in a symbolic form or not, are too common to need further statement. I would merely point out that the frequency with which childhood’s experiences occur in dreams is further evidence of the conservation of these early experiences. The symbolic dream, cryptic or obvious, deserves, however, special consideration because of the data it offers to the problem of the nature of conservation which we shall later study. In this type of dream, if the fundamental principle of the theory of Freud is correct, the content is asymbolical continuation in some form of an antecedent thought (experience) of the dreamer.[24]When this thought, which may be forgotten, is recovered the symbolic character of the dream, in many cases, is recognized beyond reasonable doubt.[25]If this principle is well established, and nearly all investigators are in accord on this point, though we need not always accept the given interpretation of individual dreams—if the principle is sound, then it follows that symbolism includes memory of the original experience which must be conserved. So that even this type of dream offers evidence of conservation of experiences for which there may be total loss of memory (amnesia).
Before closing this lecture I will return to the point which I temporarily passed by, namely, the significance of thedifference in the form of reproductionaccording as whether it is by automatic writing or through associative memories in abstraction. In the latter case, as we have seen, the memories are identical in form and principle with those of everyday life. They enter the personal consciousness and become conscious memories in the sense that the individual personally remembers the experience in question. Abstraction may be regarded simply as a favorable condition or momentwhen the subject remembers what he had at another previous moment forgotten. We have seen also that the same thing is true of remembering in hypnosis (excepting those special realistic reproductions when the subject enters a dream-like or somnambulistic state and lives over again the past experience in question). In automatic writing, on the other hand, the reproduction is by a secondary process entirely separate and independent of the personal consciousness. In the examples I cited the latter was in entire ignorance of the reproduction which did not become a personally conscious memory. At the very same moment when the experiences could not be voluntarily remembered, and without a change in the moment’s consciousness, something was tapped, as it were, and thereby they were graphically revealed without the knowledge of the subject, without memory of them being introduced into the personal consciousness, and even without the subject being able to remember the incident after reading the automatic script. Even this stimulus failed to bring back the desired phase of consciousness. It was very much like surreptitiously inserting your hand into the pocket of another and secretly withdrawing an object which he thinks he has lost. What really happened was this: a secondary process was awakened and this process (of which the principal or personal consciousness was unaware) revealed the memory lost by the personal consciousness. At least this is the interpretationwhich is the one which all the phenomena of this kind pertaining to subconscious manifestations compel us to draw.[26]At any rate the automatic script showed that somehow and somewhereoutside the personal consciousnessthe experiences were conserved and under certain conditions could be reproduced.
We now also see that the same principle of reproduction by a secondary process holds in hallucinatory phenomena whether artificial or spontaneous, and in many dreams. When a person looking into a crystal sees a scene which is a truthful pictorial representation of an actual past experience which he does not consciously remember, it follows that that visual hallucination must be induced and constructed by some secondary subconscious process outside of and independent of the processes involved in his personal consciousness. And, likewise, when a dream is a translation of a forgotten experience into symbolical terms it follows that there must be, underlying the dream consciousness, some subconscious process which continues and translates the original experience into and constructs the dream.
This being so we are forced to two conclusions: first, in all these types of phenomena the secondary process must in some way be closely related to theoriginal experience in order to reproduce it; and, second, a mental experience must be conserved in some form which permits of a subconscious process reproducing the experience in one or other of the various forms in which memory appears. Further than this I will not go at present, not until we have more extensively reviewed the number and kinds of mental experiences that may be conserved. This we will do in the next lecture.