LECTURE IVCONSERVATION A RESIDUUM OF EXPERIENCES

A consideration of all the facts of observation and experiment of the kind which I have recited in the last two lectures—and I might have multiplied them many times—forces us to the conclusion that whether or not we can recall any given experience it may be still conserved. Bear in mind that I have used conservation, thus far, only in the sense that under favoring changes in the moment’s consciousness, or by special methods of stimulation, a past experience may reproduce itself, or may be made to reproduce itself, in one form or another of memory.

It may be, for example, that you have to-day only a vague and general recollection of the last lecture and if you should endeavor to write an account of it from memory the result would be but a fragmentary report. And yet it is quite possible that, if one or another of the various technical methods I have described could be applied to some one of you, we should be able to recover quite exact memories, of certain portions at least, of the lecture—perhapsverbatimtranscripts of certain portions, and largenumbers of facts which are quite beyond your present recollection.

Our study of those phenomena of memory which I cited in the last lecture was carried only so far as to allow us to draw the conclusions as to conservation which I have just stated. And, in drawing these conclusions, let me repeat—we have provisionally limited the meaning of the term conservation simply to the potential ability to reproduce experiences, with or without recollection, either in their original form, or translated into a graphic, visual, or auditory expression of them. We have not attempted from these phenomena to draw conclusions as to the nature of conservation, or as to whether it is anything apart from reproduction under favorable conditions. If we do not look below the surface of the phenomena it might be held that memory is only a recurrent phase of consciousness, and that the term conservation is only a figure of speech to express the ability to determine that recurrence in our self-consciousness.

Let us examine now a little more closely some of the phenomena we have already examined but inadequately.

Residual processes underlying automatic motor phenomena: writing, speech, gestures, etc.—We will take writing as a type and the following as an example: In a state of hypnosis a subject learns a verse by heart. It is then suggested that this verse shall be written automatically after he has been awakened.(By arranging the conditions of the experiment in this way we make certain that the script afterwards written shall express a memory and not a fabrication.) After the subject returns to the normal waking state he has complete amnesia for the whole hypnotic state and therefore for the verse. Now, if the experiment is successful, his hand writes the given verse without the subject being aware of what his hand is writing, and it may be without being aware that his hand is writing anything at all. The whole thing has been done without participation of his consciousness and without his knowing that any such phenomenon was to occur. (Of course any of his conscious experiences while in the hypnotic state might have been used as a test, these being known to the experimenter as well.) Now the things to be noted are:

1, that the script expresses a memory; that is, reproduces previousconservedconscious ideas—the verse. It expresses memory just exactly as it would express it if it had been consciously and voluntarily written.

2, that these ideaswhile in a state of conservationand without entering consciousness—i.e., becoming conscious memory—express themselves in written language.

3, that this occurs while the subject has complete amnesia for the conserved ideas and therefore he could not possibly reproduce them as conscious memory.

4, that that which effects the writing is not arecurring phase of the self-consciousness which is concerned at the moment with totally different ideas.

5, that the “state of conservation” is, at least during the writing, a specific state existing and functioning independently and outside of the personal self-consciousness.

6, that in functioning it induces specific processes which make use of the same organized physiological mechanisms which ordinarily are made use of by conscious memory to express itself in writing and that these processes are not in, but independent of, consciousness.

We are forced to conclude therefore that a conscious experience—in this case the ideas of the verse—is conserved through the medium of some kind of residuum of itself capable of specific functioning and inducing processes which reproduce in the form of written symbols the ideas of the original experience.

We need not consider for the present the nature of the residuum, and its process, whether it is the ideas themselves or something else.

Residual processes underlying hallucinations.—We will take the observation of B. C. A. looking into a crystal and reading some printed words—a cablegram—which she had previously unconsciously overheard.[45]The words were, let us say, “Best Wishes and a Happy New Year.” This visual picture was not a literal reproduction of the originalexperience, which was a subconsciousauditoryexperience of the same words, of which she was not aware; but plainly, nevertheless, the visual picture must have been determined somehow by the auditory experience. Equally plainly the visual image was not a recurrent phase of the consciousness, for the words of the message had not been previouslyseen. What occurred was this: the antecedent auditory perception manifested itself in consciousnessafter an interval of timeas a visual hallucination of the words. There was a reproduction of the original experience but not in its original form. It had undergone asecondary alterationby which the visual perception replaced the auditory perception. As a memory it was a conversion ortranslationof an auditory experience into terms of another sense. Now the conversion must have been effected by some mechanism outside of consciousness; that is to say, it was not an ordinary visualization, i.e., intensely vivid secondary images pertaining to aconsciousmemory, as when one thinks of the morning’s breakfast table and visualizes it; for there was no conscious memory of the words, or knowledge that there ever had been such an experience. The visualization therefore must have been induced by something not in the content of consciousness,—something we have called a secondary process, of which the individual is unaware.

We can conceive of the phenomenon originating in either one of two possible modes. Either the hallucination was a newly fabricated conscious experience;or it was a reproduction of secondary visual images originally belonging to the auditory perception at the time of its occurrence and now thrust into consciousness in an intensely vivid form. In either case, for this to have taken place something must have been left by the original experience and conserved apart from and independent of the content of the personal consciousness at any and all moments—something capable of functioning after an interval of time as a secondary processoutside of the personal consciousness. The only intelligible explanation of the phenomenon is that the original auditory impression persisted, somehow and somewhere, in a form capable of conservation as a specific and independent residuum during all subsequent changes in the content of consciousness. This residuum either fabricated the hallucination or thrust its secondary images into consciousness to become the hallucination.

The phenomenon by itself does not permit a conclusion as to the nature of the residuum, whether it is psychological or neural; i.e., whether an auditory perception, as perception, still persists subconsciously outside the focus of awareness of consciousness, or whether it has left an alteration of some kind in the neurons. Whatever the inner nature of the conserved experience itobviously must have a very specific and independent existence, somehow and somewhere, outside of the awareness of consciousness, and one capable of secondary functioning in a way that can reproduce the originalexperience in terms of another sense. In other words, conservation must be in the form of some kind of residuum, psychological or neural. It must be, therefore, something very different from reproduction or a recurrent phase of consciousness. Further, it must form a stage in the process of memory of which reproduction is the final result.

This observation of course does not stand alone. I have cited a number of observations and might cite many more in which the same phenomenon of transformation or conversion of sensory images of one sense into images of another sense was prominent. Indeed a study of hallucinations, artificial or spontaneous, which are representations of former experiences and where the determining factors can be ascertained, will show that in most, if not all, of them this samemechanism of conversionis at work. Take, for instance, the experiment cited in our last lecture, the one in which Miss B. was directed to look into a crystal for the purpose of discovering the whereabouts of some money she had lost without being aware of the fact. In the crystal she sees a vision of herself walking along a particular street in Boston absorbed in thought. She sees herself in a moment of absent-mindedness take some banknotes out of her pocket, tear them up, and throw them into the street.

Now this artificial hallucination was, as we have seen, a picture of an actual occurrence for which there was amnesia. It must, therefore, have beendetermined by that experience. The psychological phenomena manifested, however, were really much more complicated than would appear at first sight. An analysis of this vision, which unfolded itself like a cinematograph picture, would show that it was a composite visual representation of several different kinds of experiences—of past perceptions of her body and face, of her conscious knowledge of her relation to the environment (in the street), of muscular movements, and of her knowledge derived from subconscious tactile impressions of the act. Of these last she was not aware at the time of their occurrence. Much of this knowledge must have persisted as a residuum of the original experience and functioned subconsciously. Thereby, perhaps, the original secondary visual images were reproduced and emerged into consciousness as the hallucination or pictorial memory.

Similar phenomena indicative of conservation being effected by means of a residuum of the original experience may be produced experimentally in various ways. For instance, in certain hysterics with anesthesia if you prick a number of times a part of the body—say the hand—in which all tactile sensation has been lost, and later direct the subject to look into a crystal, he will see a number, perhaps written on a hand. This number, let us say five, will correctly designate the number of times the hand was pricked. Now, because of the loss of sensibility, the subject was unaware of the pin-pricks. Nevertheless, of course, they were recorded subconsciously,coconsciously)coconsciously). Their subsequent transformation into a visual hallucination not only shows that they were conserved, but that they left something which was capable of taking part, outside of consciousness, in a secondary process which gave rise to the hallucination.

An examination of all crystal visions, so far as they are translated memories of actual experiences, will show this same evidence for a conserved residuum.

Thatconservation is not merely a figure of speechto express the ability to determine the recurrence of a previous experience, but means a specific residuum capable of independent and elaborate functioning, is brought out more conspicuously in those visions which are elaborately fabricated symbolisms of an antecedent experience. In other words, the vision is not a literal recurrence of a previous phase of consciousness, in that the latter has been worked over, so to speak, so as to appear in consciousness in a reconstructed form. Though reconstructed it either still retains its original meaning or is worked out to a completion of its thoughts, or to a fulfilment of the emotional strivings pertaining to them (anxieties, wishes, etc.). These visions, perhaps, more frequently occur spontaneously, often at moments of crises in a person’s life, but also are observed under experimental conditions. Sometimes they answer the doubts, scruples and other problems which have troubled the subject, sometimes they express the imaginary fulfilment ofintense longings or of anxieties and dreads which have been entertained, or disturbing thoughts which have pricked the conscience.[46]We are obliged to conclude, in the light of experimental observations of the same class, that such phenomena are determined by the specific residua of antecedent thoughts which must be conserved and function in a specific manner to appear in this metamorphosed form.

Similar residual processes underlying post-hypnotic phenomena.—Conserved experiences which give rise to more complicated secondary elaboration may be observed in suggested post-hypnotic phenomena. Experiments of this kind may be varied in many ways. The phenomenon may be an hallucination similar to the one I have just described in hysterics, or a so-called subconscious calculation. You suggest in hypnosis to a suitable subject that he shall multiply certain numbers, or calculate the number of seconds intervening between certain hours—let us say between 10:43 and 5:13 o’clock—the answer to be given in writing on a certain day. The subject is then awakened immediately, before he has time to do the calculation while in hypnosis. Later, if the experiment is successful, at the time designated the subject will absent-mindedly or automatically write the figures giving the answer.

There are two modes in which these calculations may be accomplished. In a special and limited class of cases, where there is a large split-off subconsciouspersonality, or doubling of consciousness, the calculation may be made entirely by this secondary subconscious self, in the same fashion as it would be made by the principal personality if the problem were given in the waking state. The subconscious personality will go through each conscious step in the calculation in the same way.[47]In a second class of cases thecalculations are worked out, apparently, unconsciously, without participation in the process by a subconscious personality even when such exists. At most it would seem that isolated numbers representing different steps in the calculation arise from time to time coconsciously as a limited secondary consciousness (of which the personal consciousness is unaware) until finally the figures of the completed answer appear therein. The calculation itself appears to be still another process outside both the personal and the secondary consciousness. When the problem has been finished the answer is finally given automatically. The whole process is too complicated to go into at this time before we have studied the problems of the coconscious.[48]It is enough to say thatit isit isplain that the hypnotic experience—the suggested problem—must be considered as some kind of specific residuum, psychological or neural, and that this residuum must be one capable of quite elaborate independent and subconscious intellectual activity before finally becoming transformed into the final answer.

Residual processes underlying dreams.—When citing the evidence of dreams for the conservation of forgotten experiences I spoke of one type of dream as a symbolical memory. I may now add it is more than this; it is a fabrication. The original experience or thought may appear in the dream after being worked over into a fantasy, allegory, symbolism, or other product of imagination. Such a dream is not a recurrent phase of consciousness, but anewly fabricated phase. Further, analytical and experimental researches go to show that the fabrication is performed by the original phase without the latter recurring in the content of the personal consciousness. The original phase must therefore have been conserved in some form capable of such independent and specific functioning, i.e., fabrication below the threshold of consciousness. For instance:

The subject dreamed that she was standing where two roads separated. One was broad and bright and beautiful, and many people she knew were going that way. The other road was the rocky path, quite dark, and no one was going that way, but she had to go. And she said, “Oh, why must I go this way? Will no one go with me?” And a voice replied, “I will go with you.” She looked around, and there were some tall black figures; they all had names across their foreheads in bright letters, and the one who spoke was Disappointment; and all the others said, “We will go with you,” and they were Sorrow, Loss, Pain, Fear, and Loneliness, and she fell down on her face in anguish.

Now an analysis of the antecedent thought of this subject and a knowledge of her circumstances and mental life, though we cannot go into them here, make it perfectly clear that as a fact, whether therewas any causal connection or not, this dreamwasa symbolic expression of those thoughts. The rocky path has been shown to be symbolic of her conception of her own life entertained through years—the other road symbolic of the life longed for and imagined as granted to others. Likewise the rest of the dream symbolized, in a way which any one can easily recognize, the lot which she had in her disappointment actually fancied was hers. The thoughts thus symbolized had been constantly recurring thoughts and therefore had been conserved. They were reproduced in the dream, not in their original form, but translated into symbols and an allegory. Something must, therefore, have effected the translation. In other words, the dream is not a recurrent phase of consciousness butan allegorical fabricationwhich expresses these thoughts, not literally as they originally occurred, but in the form of an imaginative story. Now the similarity of the allegorical dream thoughts to the original thoughts can be explained only in two ways: either as pure chance coincidence, or through a relation of cause and effect. In the latter case the dream might have been determined either by the specific antecedent thoughts in question—those revealed as memories in the analysis, or both series might have been determined by a third, as yet unrevealed, series. For the purposes of the present problem it is immaterial which so long as the dream was determined by some antecedent thought. The very great frequency, not to say universality, with which this same similarityor a logical relation with antecedent thoughts is found in dreams after analysis renders chance coincidence very improbable. We must believe, therefore, that the dream was determined by antecedent experiences. It is beyond my purpose to enter here into an exposition of the theory of the mechanism of dreams, although I shall touch upon it later in some detail in connection with subconscious processes. We need here only concern ourselves with this mechanism so far as it bears upon the principle of conservation. Suffice it to say that analytical observations (Freud) have, it seems to me, conclusively shown that conserved experiences may be not only the determining factors in dreams, but thatwhile in a state of conservation they are capable of undergoing elaborate fabrication and afterwards appearing so thoroughly transformed in consciousness as not to be superficially recognizable. I have also been able to reach the same conclusions by the method of experimental production of dreams.

The only question is, in what form can a thought be so conserved that it can,while still in a state of conservation, without itself rising into consciousness, fabricate a symbolism, allegory, or other work requiring imagination and reasoning? The only logical and intelligible inference is that the antecedent conscious experience has been either itself specifically conserved as such outside of the personal consciousness, or has left some neural residuum or disposition capable of functioning and constructing the conscious dream fabrication.

Residual processes underlying physiological bodily disturbances.—Before proceeding further I would invite your attention to another class of facts as these facts must be taken into consideration in any theory of conservation. These facts show that the residua can, by subconscious functioning, inducephysiological bodily manifestationswithout reproducing the original mental experience as conscious memory. In certain abnormal conditions of the nervous system, i.e., in certain psychoneuroses, we meet with certain involuntary actions of the limbs or muscles known as spasms and contractures; also with certain impairment of functions such as blindness, deafness, loss of sensation (anesthesia), paralysis, etc. These disturbances are purely functional, meaning that they are not due to any organic disease. Now the evidence seems to be conclusive that these physiological disturbances are caused sometimes by ideas after they have passed out of consciousness and become, as ideas, dormant, i.e., while they are in a state of conservation and have ceased to be ideas—or, at least, ideas of which the subject is aware. A moment’s consideration will convince you that this means that ideas, or, at least, experiences in a state of conservation, and without being reproduced as conscious memory, can so function as to affect the body in one or other of the ways I have mentioned. To do this they must exist in some specific form that is independent of the personal consciousness of the moment. To take, forexample, an actual case which I have elsewhere described:

B. C. A., in a dream, had a visual hallucination of a flash of light which revealed a scene in a cave and which was followed by blindness such as would physiologically follow a tremendous flash. In the dream she is warned that if she looks into the cave, she will be blinded. She looks; there is a blinding flash and loss of vision follows; after waking she was still partially blind, but she continued from time to time to see momentary flashes of light revealing certain of the objects seen in the dream in the cave, and these flashes would be succeeded temporarily by absolute blindness as in the dream. She had no memory of the dream. Now psychological analysis disclosed the meaning of the dream; it was a symbolical representation of certain conserved (subconscious) previous thoughts—thoughts apprehensive of the future into which she dared not look, thinking she would be overwhelmed.While in a state of conservationthe residua oftheseantecedent thoughts had translated themselves into the symbolical hallucination of the dream and the loss of vision. Similarly after waking, although she had no memory of the dream, the conserved residua of the same thoughts continued to translate themselves into visual hallucinations and to induce blindness.[49]It would take too long for me to enter here into thedetails of the analysis which forces this conclusion.[50]

Similarly, as is well known, convulsions resembling epilepsy, paralysis, spasms, tics, contractures, etc., may be caused directly or indirectly by ideas, after they have passed out of consciousness and ceased to take part in the conscious processes of thought. At least that is the interpretation which the facts elicited by the various methods of investigation seem to require.

There is an analogous class of phenomena which ought to be mentioned among the possible data bearing upon the theory of memory, although too much weight cannot be placed upon them as their interpretation is not wholly clear. I will discuss them in detail later in connection with the phenomena of the emotions. They are certainemotional phenomenawhich are attributed by some writers to ideas in a state of conservation. It has been demonstrated that ideas to which strong feeling tones are attached are accompanied by such physiological effects as disturbance of respiration, of the heart’s action, of the vaso-motor system, of the secretions, etc., and also by certaingalvanic phenomenawhich are due to the diminution of the electrical resistanceof the body, probably caused by increased secretion of sweat.[51]

Now the point is that such phenomena are sometimes experimentally obtained in connection with certain test words[52]spoken to the subject experimented upon, although he has no recollection of any incident in his life which could have given an emotional tone to the word and, therefore, can give no explanation of the physical reaction. By various technical methods, however, memories of a forgotten emotional experience in which the idea (represented by the word) plays a part and through which it derived its emotional tone are resurrected. I have been able to obtain such reactions from test words which investigation showed referred to the incidents of terrifying dreams which werecompletely forgottenin the waking state. When the test word was given, the subject might, for instance, exhibit a respiratory disturbance—a sudden gasp—without conscious knowledge of its significance, and the galvanometer, with which the subject was in circuit, would show a wide deflection. Recovery of the dream in hypnosis would explain the meaning of the emotional disturbance excited by the word. Theinterpretation which has been put upon such phenomena is that the residua of the forgotten experience are “struck” by the test word. As the forgotten experience originally included the emotion and its physiological reaction, so the residua are linked by association to the emotional mechanism and when stimulated function as a subconscious process and excite the reaction. If this interpretation, strongly held by some, be correct, the phenomena are important for the support they give to the theory of conservation. They would indicate that conscious experiences must be conserved in a very specific subconscious form, one that is capable, without becoming conscious memory, of exciting the physiological apparatus of the emotions in a manner identical with that of conscious emotional ideas. They are open, however, to a simpler explanation, whether more probable or not: namely, that it is not the residua of the forgotten experience which unconsciously excite the physiological reaction, but the auditory symbol, the test word itself. The symbol having been once associated with the emotional reaction, it afterwards of itself, through a short circuit so to speak, suffices to induce the reaction, though the origin of the association has been forgotten and, therefore, the subject is in entire ignorance of the reason for the strong feeling manifestation. On the other hand, in some instances test words associated with emotional experiences whichoriginallywere entirely coconscious andhad never entered conscious awareness at allgive thereactions in question.[53]As coconscious memories of such experiences can be demonstrated it would seem at first sight as if under such conditions the word-reactions must come from a true subconscious process—the subconscious memory. And yet even here it is difficult to eliminate absolutely the possibility of the second interpretation. There are, however, a large number of emotional phenomena occurring in pathological conditions which can only be intelligibly interpreted as being due to the residua of previously conscious experiences functioning as a subconscious process. These phenomena we shall have occasion to review in succeeding lectures. They are too complex to enter upon at this stage.

Aside, then, from these word-reactions we have a sufficient number of other phenomena, such as I have cited, which indicate that conscious experiences when conserved must persist in a form capable of exciting purely physiological reactions without the experiences themselves rising into consciousness again as memory. The form must also be one which permits of their functioning as intelligent processes although not within the conscious field of awareness of the moment.

As a final summing up of the experiments and observations of the kind which I have thus far cited,dealing with forgotten experiences, we may say that they lead us to the following conclusions:

1. That conservation is something very different from reproduction.

2. A given experience is conserved through the medium of some kind of residuum of that experience. This residuum must have a specific existence independent of consciousness, in that it is capable of specific and independent functioning, coincidentally with and outside of the consciousness of any given moment. Its nature must be such that it can incite through specific processes the following phenomena in none of which the conscious processes of the moment take part as factors:

(a) Specific memory for the given experience expressed through the established physiological mechanisms of external expression (speech, writing, gestures) after the manner of a mnesic process.

(b) A mnesic hallucination which is a representation of the antecedent perceptual experience but after having undergone translation into terms of another sense.

(c) A mnesic hallucination in which the original experience appears synthesized with various other experiences into an elaborate representation of a complex experience, or secondarily elaborated into a symbolism, allegory or other fabrication.

(d) Mnesic phenomena which are a logical continuation of the antecedent conscious experiences and such as ordinarily are produced by conscious processes of thought—reasoning, imagination, volition(mathematical calculations, versification, fabrication, etc.).

(e) Physical phenomena (paralyses contractures, vasomotor disturbances, etc.).

In other words a specific experience while in a state of conservation and without being reproduced in consciousness can incite or induce processes which incite these and similar phenomena.

45. Lecture III, p.58.

46. For specific instances, see Lecture VII.

47. Morton Prince: Experimental Evidence for Coconscious Ideation,Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April-May, 1908.

48. For further details, see Lecture VI, p. 169.

49. Prince: Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams,Jour. of Abn. Psych., October-November, 1910.

50. If, lacking this knowledge of the data, any one chooses to insist that it was not the conserved residua of previous thoughts, but of the dream itself (the only alternative entertainable explanation) which induced,after waking, the hallucinatory phenomena and blindness, we still fall back upon the same principle, namely, that of the subconscious functioning of conserved residua of a conscious experience producing a physiological (and psychological) effect.

51. According to recent researches of Sidis in conjunction with Kalmus, and later with Nelson (The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic Phenomenon, Psychological Review, March, 1910) similar galvanic phenomena under similar conditions may be caused by thegenerationof an electric current within the body.

52. The test word (e. g., boat, stone, hat, etc.) of course represents an idea which may have various associations in the mind of the subject.

53. Morton Prince and Frederick Peterson: Experiments in Psycho-Galvanic Reactions from Coconscious (Subconscious) Ideas in a Case of Multiple Personality,Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April-May, 1908.

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