LECTURE IXTHE ORGANIZATION OF UNCONSCIOUS COMPLEXES
Everyday life.—It will be well at this point to state in orderly fashion a few general principles governing the organization of complexes or syntheses of ideas[138]which, as we shall see, play an important part in normal and abnormal life. Although this statement will be little more than descriptive of what is common experience it will be helpful in classifying and obtaining a useful perspective of the phenomena with which we shall deal.
Now, as every one knows, the elemental ideas which make up the experience of any given moment tend to become organized (i.e., synthesized and conserved) into a system or complex of ideas, linked with emotions, feelings and other innate dispositions, so that when one of the ideas belonging to the experience comes to mind the experience as a whole is recalled. We may conveniently term such a system when in a state of conservation, anunconsciouscomplex[139]or neurogram, or system of neurograms. If we wish to use psychological terms we may speak of it as a complex or synthesis of dormant ideas. Although we may formulate this principle as the “association of ideas” the formula can have only a descriptive significance pertaining to a relation in time (and not a causal one) unless there be included an unconscious factor by which the association becomes effective in exciting one idea through another—i.e., through a linking of neural dispositions. We cannot conceive of any conscious relation between ideas that can possibly induce this effect. It must be someunconscious dynamic relation[140]and be explained in terms of neural dispositions. If this be so, all ideas are dynamically associated and related in a process which does not appear in consciousness and which is essential for organization into a complex. Every system of associated ideas, therefore, implies conservation through an organized unconscious complex.
Complexes may be very feebly organized in that the elemental ideas are weakly conserved or weakly associated; in which case when we try to recall the original experience only a part or none of it is recalled.
On the other hand, a complex may be stronglyorganized and include a large number of details of an experience. This is usually owing to the fact that the original experience was accompanied by strong emotional tones, or by marked interest and attention, or was frequently repeated.
Emotional Complexes: 1. When the original experience was accompanied by an emotion it may be regarded as having excited one or more of the emotional instincts of anger, fear, disgust, etc. The excitation of the instinct or instincts is in one sense areactionto the ideas of the experience. The instincts then become organized about one or more of the ideas to form a sentiment (Shand) and the whole is incorporated in a complex which then acquires an affective character. The impulsive force of the instinct thereafter largely determines the behavior of the complex. (To this we shall return later when we consider the instincts.) General observation shows that emotional experiences are more likely to be conserved and also voluntarily recalled. Given such an emotional complex nearly anything associated with some detail of the experience may, by the law of association, automatically or involuntarily revive it, or the emotional reaction with a greater or less number of its associated memories. This tendency seems to be directly proportionate to the intensity of the instinct (fear, anger, etc.) incorporated in the complex. Sometimes, it is true, a strongly emotional experience, even an experience of great moment in an individual’s life, is completelyforgotten, so completely that no associated idea avails as a stimulus to awaken it. Usually in all such cases the neurograms are isolated, etc., by dissociation. They still, however, may be strongly organized and conserved as an unconscious complex and sometimes may be excited as a subconscious process by an associated stimulus. In such conditions it very frequently is found that the dissociation is due to conflict between the emotion belonging to the complex and another emotional complex. The impulsive force of the latter dissociates the former complex which then cannot be voluntarily reproduced as memory, nor awakened by any association under normal conditions. We have then a condition of amnesia and often an hysterical condition. To this important phenomenon we shall return when we consider the emotions. Passing over these exceptional conditions of conflicting emotions (which being explained “prove the rule”), it still remains true that in everyday life emotional experiences are not only more likely to be conserved but to be subject to voluntary recall, or awakened involuntarily by an associated stimulus.
If, for instance, we have experienced a railroad accident involving exciting incidents, loss of life, etc., the words “railroad,” “accident,” “death,” or a sudden crashing sound, or the sight of blood, or even riding in a railroad train may recall the experience, or at least the prominent features in it. The earlier events and those succeeding the accident may have passed out of all possibility of voluntaryrecall. To take an instance commonplace enough, but which happens to have come within my recent observation: a fireman, hurrying to a fire, was injured severely by being thrown from a hose-wagon against a telegraph-pole with which the wagon collided. He narrowly escaped death. Although three years have elapsed he still cannot ride on a wagon to a fire without the memory of substantially the whole accident rising in his mind. When he does so he again lives through the accident, including the thoughts just previous to the actual collision when realizing his situation he was overcome with terror, and he again manifests all the organic physical expressions of fear, viz., perspiration, tremor, and muscular weakness. Here is a well organized and fairly limited complex. It is also plainly an imperative memory, that is to say, any stimulus-idea associated with some element in the complex reproduces the experience as memory whether it is wished or not. Try as hard as he will he cannot prevent its recurrence. The stimulus that excites such involuntary memories may be a spoken word (as in the psycho-galvanic and other associative experiments which we shall consider in a later lecture), or it may be a visual perception of the environment—of a person or place—or it may be a repetition of the circumstances attending the original experience, however induced. The phenomenon may also be regarded as an automatism or automatic process. As the biological instinct of fear is incorporated in the complex it is also aphobia.
Whyour fireman suffered the intense terror that he did at the time of the accident, why he experienced the thoughts which surged into his mind, why he suffered this emotional experience, while another man going through the same accident suffers no more than the physical injury (if any) at the time, and why the experience continues to recur as an imperative memory are problems which we are not considering now. The fact is that he did suffer the terror and its agonizing thoughts, and, this being the case, their constant recurrence, i.e., the reproduction of the experience, is a memory. And this memory consists of a well organized complex of ideas, feelings, and physiological accompaniments. I emphasize this point because an imperatively recurring mental experience of this sort is a psychosis, and, so far as the principle of memory enters into it, so far memory becomes a part of the mechanism of obsessions.
The reason why the man at the moment of the accident experienced the terrorizing thoughts that he did, and why he continued to experience them, must be sought in associated conserved experiences of his past. These experiences were the psycho-genetic factors. It would take us too far out of the way to consider this problem, which belongs to the obsessions, at this time, but, as I have touched upon it, I may say in passing that the accident would have awakened no sense of terror and no emotional shock if apsychological torchhad not already been prepared. This torch was made up of ideas previouslyimbibed from the social environment and made ready to be set aflame by the match set to it by the accident. In the unconsciousness of this man were written in neurographic records the dangers attending accidents of this kind and dangers which still threatened his present and future.
Likewise theinsistenceof the memory can be related to a setting of associated thoughts which gave meaning to his perception of himself as one affected, as he believed, with a serious injury threatening his future. His fear was also, therefore, a fear of the present and future. Thus not only the experiences of the accident itself became organized into a group and conserved as a memory, but were organized with memories of still other experiences which stood in a genetic relation to them. If it were necessary I could give from my personal observation numerous examples of this mode of organization of complexes through emotional experiences and of their reproduction as automatic memories.
An historical example of complex-organizing of this kind is narrated in Tallentyre’s delightful life of Voltaire. Toward the end of Voltaire’s famous residence at the court of Frederick the Great, as the latter’s guest, one of those pestiferous friends who cannot help repeating disagreeable personal gossip for our benefit swore to Voltaire to having heard Frederick remark, “I shall want him (Voltaire) at the most another year; one squeezes the orange and throws away the rind.” From that momenta complex of emotional ideas was formed in Voltaire’s mind, that, do what he would, he could not get rid of. He wrote it to his friends, thought about it, dreamed about it; he tried to forget it, but to no purpose; it would not “down”; the rind kept constantly rising. It brought with it every memory of Frederick’s character and actions that fitted the remark.
Voltaire, like many men of genius, was a neurasthenic and his ideas with strong emotional tones tended to become strongly organized and acquire great force. “The orange rind haunts my dreams,” he wrote; “I try not to believe it.... We go to sup with the king and are gay enough sometimes;—the man who fell from the top of a steeple and found the fall through the air soft and said, ‘Good, provided it lasts,’ is not a little as I am.” The emotional complex which so tormented Voltaire that it literally became an obsession was a recurring memory. The experience had been strongly registered and conserved, owing to the emotional tone, but the reasonwhythere was so much emotion, andwhyit absorbed so many associated ideas into itself and kept recurring would undoubtedly have been found to lie, if we could have probed Voltaire’s mind, in its settings—his previous stormy experiences with Frederick, his knowledge of Frederick’s character, his previousapprehensionsof what later actually occurred, and, most probably, self-reproach for his own behavior,the consequences of which he feared to face. All this, conserved as neurograms, was setablaze by the remark and furnished not only the emotion but the material for the content of the complex. These previous experiences, therefore, stood in genetic relation to the latter, excited the emotional reaction of anger, resentment and fear, and prevented the complex from subsiding. The exciting cause for each recurrence of the complex was, of course, some associated stimulus from the environment, or train of thought.
Another interesting historical example is the foolish complex which is said to have disturbed the pretty Mme. Leclerc (Pauline Bonaparte, who was afterward the Princess Borghese). This fascinating and beautiful woman was enjoying her triumph at a ball. Seated in a little boudoir off the ball-room she was entertaining “guests who came to admire her and fill her cup to overflowing. There was, however, a Mme. de Contades, who had been deserted by her own cavaliers at the appearance of Pauline. Approaching, now, on the arm of her escort, she said in a tone sufficiently loud so that every one, including Pauline, could hear perfectly: ‘Mon Dieu, what a misfortune! Oh, what a pity! She would be so pretty but for that!’ ‘But for what?’ asked her cavalier. All eyes were turned upon poor Mme. Leclerc, who thought there must be something the matter with her coiffure and began to redden and suffocate. ‘But do you not see what I mean?’ persisted Mme. de Contades, with the cold cruelty of a jealous woman. ‘What a pity! Yes, truly, how unfortunate! Such a really prettyhead to have such ears! If I had ears like those I would have them cut off. Yes, positively, they are like those of a pug dog. You who know her, Monsieur, advise her to have it done; it would be a charitable act.’ Pauline, more beautiful than ever in her blushes, rose, tears blinding her eyes, then sank back upon the sofa, hiding her face in her hands, sick with mortification and shame. As a matter of fact, her ears were not ugly, only a little too flat. From that day, however, she always dressed her hair over them or concealed them under a bandeau, as in the well-known painting of her.”[141]
Fixed ideas relating to physical blemishes are not uncommonly observed as obsessions in psychasthenics. With our knowledge of such psychical manifestations it is easy to imagine Pauline’s antecedent thoughts regarding her own flat ears, and repugnance to this defect in others, her suspicions of unfavorable criticisms and of not being admired, etc., all organized with the instinct of self-abasement (emotion of subjection) and forming a sentiment of self-depreciation and shame in her mind.
2. The outbreak of suchautomatic memoriesis particularly prone to occur in persons of a particular temperament (the apprehensive temperament, in which the biological instinct of fear is the paramount factor), in fatigue states, and in so-called neurotic people—neurasthenics, psychasthenics, and hysterics. In such people the organization of the complex probably has been largely a previouslysubconsciousincubating process, as in the phenomenon of “sudden religious conversion.” Later the sudden suggestion or awakening by whatsoever means of an idea, which has roots in the antecedent thoughts engaged in the subconscious process, readily gives occasion for the outbreak of the complex. The latter then excites the emotional reaction of anger, horror, antipathy, fear, jealousy, etc., which becomes incorporated in the complex. When once formed the automatism becomes the psychosis. The following case is an illustration:
L. E. W., forty-nine years of age, farmer and lawyer by occupation, a man of strenuous disposition, broke down under stress and strain with severe but common symptoms of mental and physical fatigue modified and exaggerated by apprehensions of incurable illness. At the end of a year there developed scruples and jealous suspicions of his wife’s chastity, not persistent but recurring from time to time in attacks, and always awakened by a suggestion of some kind—an associated idea, a remark heard, an act of some kind on the part of the wife, etc. Between the attacks he was entirely free from such thoughts, but during the attack, which came on with the usual suddenness, these thoughts—always the same doubts, suspicions, reasonings, jealousy, and fear—were dominating, imperative, and painful. An open-minded, frank, intelligent man he fully realized that his scruples were entirely unfounded and even characterized them as“delusions.” It was interesting, so clear was he in this respect, to hear him discuss his attacks between times with his wife, as if they were recurrent appendicitis. The attacks would pass off in a short time after discussing his scruples with his wife, and then he became natural again; they involved great suffering and he feared, as people thus afflicted so often do, that they spelled impending insanity. And yet it was easy to determine that they were onlyimperative recurrent memories, conserved complexes emerging from the unconscious. He had been married twenty-two years. He was of a jealous nature, and before marriage it annoyed him to think that his wife had been courted by other men, that she wrote them letters, etc. He began to think of her as a flirt, that she was going to jilt him, and to have misgivings of her character. He grew jealous and suspicions of possible unchastity worried him, but reasoning with himself he would say, “O, pshaw! it is an abominable suspicion,” “an hallucination,” and put the thought out of his mind, as he said. But we know he really put the thoughtintohis mind to be conserved in the unconscious, as a complex of chastity scruples, and there undergo incubation and further development. Later he had had spells of jealousy during his married life but no true imperative ideas until he broke down in health, and then, as he himself expressed it, “the devil got the upper hand and said, ‘I’ve got you now.’”
The devil was the complex organized twenty-twoyears previously with the emotion of jealousy[142]centered about the idea of his wife and the whole neurographically conserved. The impulsive force of the emotion was constantly striving to awaken and give expression to the unconscious complex. He was able to hold it in check, to repress it, by the conflicting force of other sentiments until these became weakened by the development of the psychasthenic state. Then these latter controlling elements of personality were repressed in turn whenever the more powerful jealousy complex was awakened. The whole mechanism was undoubtedly more complicated than this, in that the jealousy complex had a setting in certain unsophisticated and puritanical ideas of conduct (brought to light in the analysis) which gave a peculiar meaning (for him) to his wife’s actions. So long as this setting persisted it would be next to impossible to modify the jealousy complex.
Whatever the mechanism, ideas with strong emotional tones (particularly fear, anger, jealousy, and disgust), no matter how absurd or repellent, or unjustified, and whether acceptable or unacceptable, tend to become organized and welded into a complex which is thereby conserved. The impulsive force of the incorporated emotion tends to awaken and give expression to the complex whenever stimulated. The recurrence of such an organized complexso far as it is reproduction is, of course, in principle, memory, and an imperative memory orfixed idea. Whether the complex shall be awakened as such a recurrent memory, or shall function as a dissociated subconscious process, producing other disturbances, or remain quiescent in the unconscious, depends upon other factors which we need not now consider.
3. Clinically theperiodic recurrenceof such complexes is anobsession. An obsessionas met withis most likely to be characterized by fear not only because the instinct of fear is the most painful of the emotions, but for another reason. Although biologically fear is useful as a defense for the preservation of the individual, when perverted by useless associations it becomes harmful, in that it is not only painful but prevents the adjustment of the individual to his environment and thereby takes on a pathological taint. Complexes with other emotions are less likely to be harmful and therefore less frequently apply for relief. Yet imperative ideas with jealousy, anger, hatred, love, disgust, etc., centered about an object are exceedingly common though their possessors less often resort to a physician.
From another point of view abnormal complexes, represented by these examples, may be regarded as “association psychoses.” Sometimes the physiological bodily accompaniments form the greater part of the complex which is for the most part made up of physiological disturbances (vasomotor, cardiac, gastric, respiratory, secretory, muscular, etc.); almostpure associationneurosesthey then become. Neuroses of this kind we shall consider in a later lecture.[143]
Sometimes, particularly in people of intensive temperaments, “imperative ideas” are formed by gradual evolution in consequence of the mind constantly dwelling with emotional intensity on certain phases of thought—i.e., through repetition. This we see in the development of religious complexes or faiths, but it is also obtrusive in other fields of thought, political, industrial, social, etc. Hence the evolution offanatics. A. D. is a man of strong feeling and great imagination. As a child he was a constant witness of quarrels between his father and mother. His mind dwelt upon these experiences and there developed in him at an early date strong aversions toward marriage. Aversion means the instinct of repulsion or disgust. This instinct therefore became systematized with the idea of marriage as its object forming an intense sentiment of aversion. Even as a boy the aversion impelled him to determine never to marry and later he formed strong theoretical anti-matrimonial views which became almost a religion. For years he talked about his views, argued and preached about them like a fanatic to his friends. His aversion rose in successful conflict against every temptation to matrimony and his anti-matrimonial complex became an obsession. The consequences were what might have been expected when, later in life, he allowedhimself in a moment of sympathetic weakness and owing to compromising situations to slip within the matrimonial noose. The complex then, like that of Voltaire’s orange rind, would not down at his own bidding, or at that of his devoted spouse for whom he had, in other respects, a strong affection mingled with personal admiration. The resulting situation can be imagined.
44.Hysterical attacks.It is of practical importance to note another part which emotional complexes may play in psychopathology. In certain pathological conditions in which there is limitation of the field of consciousness (involving a disappearance of a large part of the normal mental life) often all that persists of consciousness and represents the personal self is the obsessing complex which previously tormented the patient. In hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance, and certain types of epilepsy this is peculiarly the case. In these states the content of consciousness consists almost wholly, or at least largely, of a recurrent memory of an experience which originated in the normal life and which has been conserved in the unconscious. Here the obsessing ideas, which at one time were voluntarily entertained by the subject, or, as frequently happens, originated in some emotional experience, automatically recur, while the remainder of the conscious life becomes dissociated and suppressed; in other words the obsessing ideas emerge out of the unconscious (neurograms) and becamesubstantially the whole conscious field. In hysterical attacks, particularly, the complex is accompanied by the same strong emotional tone—such as fear, anxiety, jealousy, or anger—which belonged to the original experience. In such pathological subjects, whenever the complex is awakened, the remainder of the conscious field tends to become dissociated and the psychological state to be reproduced. Hence, in such states, the ideas repeat themselves over and over again with the recurrence of the attacks. The subject lives over again as in a dream the original attack, which is a stereotyped revivification of the original experience. This peculiarity of the mental condition in attacks has been described by various writers. The dream of the hystero-epileptic is substantially always the same. Janet has accurately described the origin and rôle of the fixed ideas in the hysterical attack. “These ideas,” he says, “are not conceived, invented at the moment; they formulate themselves; they are onlyrepetitions. Thus, the most important of the hallucinations which harassed Marcelle during her cloud-attack was but the exact reproduction of a scene which had taken place the previous year. The fixed ideas of dying, of not eating, are the reproduction of certain desperate resolutions taken some years ago. Formerly these ideas had some sense, were more or less well connected with a motive. A desperate love affair had been the cause of her attempts at suicide; she refused to eat in order to let herself die of hunger, etc. To-day these ideas are againreproduced, but without connection and without reason. She has, we convinced ourselves, completely forgotten her old despair, and has not the least wish to die. The idea of suicide comes to her to-day without any relation to her present situation, and she is in despair at the idea of this suicide which imposes itself on her as a relic of her past, so to say. She does not know why she refuses to eat; the ideas of suicide and refusal of food are dissociated. The one exists without the other. At one moment she hears the voice, ‘Do not eat,’ and yet she has no thought of death; at another, she thinks of killing herself and yet she accepts nourishment. We always find in fixed ideas this characteristic of automatic repetition of the past withoutconnectionconnection, without actual logic.”[144]
When certain emotional and distressing ideas of wounded love are awakened in M. C., an hysteric, she is thrown into an hysterical attack in which these ideas recur over and over again and dominate consciousness. In P. M., another hysteric, ideas of loneliness and jealousy, which had previously been entertained but which had been thrust out of her mind again and again in a conscientious struggle with her moral nature, recur, emerge from the unconscious and dominate the field of consciousness in each hysterical attack which they induce.
6. In thepsycholeptic, a variant of the hysteric, the same sensations, motor phenomena, and hallucinations,and the same bizarre ideas—whatever the symptomatic phenomena—characterize each attack. This could be shown experimentally in M——l.[145]
Of course the degree of dissociation of consciousness, the content of the fixed idea, and the physiological manifestations vary in individual cases, according to the nature of the case. Sometimes the disturbance of consciousness is slight and the physiological manifestations predominant.
From a consideration of all the facts we see that a conserved complex associated with strong feeling tones may play a disastrous and pathological part in certain individuals.
It is well to bear in mind here, as before, that in these statements we are only giving a literal description of the psychological events without attempt to form any theory of the mechanism of the processes, or the antecedent psychogenetic factors which lead to the development of the particular fixed ideas or complexes. About this there may be and is a difference of view.
Systematized Complexes.In contrast with the limited group of fixed ideas, organized with one or more emotions (i.e., instincts) I have been describing, are the largesystemsof complexes or associated experiences which become organized and fairly distinctly differentiated in the course of the development of every one’s personality. In many, at least, of these systems there will be found a predominantemotion and certain instinctive tendencies, and a predominant feeling tone—of pleasure or pain, of exaltation or depression, etc. It is quite possible that careful investigation would disclose that it is this conflicting affective force which is responsible for the differentiation of one system from another with opposing affects and tendencies. The differentiation of such systematized complexes is of considerable practical importance for normal and abnormal personality. Among such systems may here be mentioned those which are related to certainsubjectsor departments of human experience, or are related intime, or to certain dispositions ormoodsof the individual. The first may be calledsubjectsystems, the secondchronologicalsystems, and the lastmoodsystems.
1.Subject systems: I find myself interested, for instance, in several fields of human knowledge; (a) abnormal psychology; (b) public franchises; (c) yachting; (d) local politics; (e) business affairs. To each of these I give a large amount of thought, accumulate many data belonging to each, and devote a considerable amount of active work to carrying into effect my ideas in each field. Five large systems are thus formed, each consisting of facts, opinions, memories, experiences, etc., distinct from those belonging to the others. To each there is an emotion and a feeling tone which have more or less distinctive qualities; these coming from the intellectual interest of abnormal psychology differingqualitatively from those of the “joy of battle” excited by a public contest with a railroad corporation or gas company, as it does from that of the exhilarating sport of a yacht race, or from the annoying and rather depressing care of business interests; and so on.
These five subject-complexes do not form independent automatisms or isolated systems which may intrude themselves in any conscious field, but comprise large associations, memories of experiences in a special field of thought. Within that field the ideas of the system are no more strongly organized than are ideas in general; but it can be recognized that the system as a whole with its affective tones is fairly well delimited from the other complexes of other spheres of thought. It is difficult, for certain individuals at least, to introduce the associations of one subject-complex into the focus of attention so long as another is invested with personal interest and occupies the attention of consciousness. They find it difficult to switch[146]their minds from one subject to another and back again. On the other hand, it is said of Napoleon that he had all the subjects of his experiences arranged in drawers of his mind, and that he could open each drawer at will, take outany subject he wished, and shut it up again as he wished. Ability of this kind involves remarkable control over the mind and is not given to all.
I have frequently made observations like the following on myself, showing the organization and differentiation of systems: I collect the various data belonging to one of the problems discussed in these lectures. I arrange all in an orderly fashion in my mind, work out the logical relations and the conclusions to which they lead, as well as their relations to other data and problems. The whole is then schematically arranged on paper to await proper elaboration the next morning, when it will be written out on waking, the preliminary mental arrangement having been done at night. A large complex has been created, the various details of which are luminously clear and the sequence of the ideas vividly conceived, the conclusions definite. There is, further, an affective tone of joy and exaltation which is apt to accompany the accomplishment of an intellectual problem and which produces a feeling of increased energy.
The next morning, as I awake and gradually return to full consciousness, another and very different kind of complex almost exclusively fills my mind, owing probably to the fatigue following the previous night’s work. All sorts of gloomy thoughts, memories of experiences better forgotten, course through the mind; and entirely different emotions (instincts), and a strong feeling of depression dominate the mental panorama. The whole—ideas, emotions,and feelings—makes a complex which has been experienced over and over again, and is recognized as such. The same old ideas, emotions, thoughts, and memories, conserved as neurograms, repeat themselves almost in stereotyped fashion. The mental complex has completely changed and the exuberant energy of the night before has given place to listless inertia.
All this is commonplace enough, merely morning depression you will say, due to fatigue; and so it is. But mark the sequel.
I now remember that I have a task to perform and before rising take paper and pencil, lying ready at my side, to write out the theme previously arranged in skeleton. But to my surprise I find that it cannot be recalled. To be sure, I can, by effort of will, recall individual facts, but the facts have lost their associations and meaning, they remain comparatively isolated in memory; all their correlated ramifications, their associated ideas and relations, which the night before stood out in relief and crowded into consciousness, have gone. The emotional tone and impulses which energized the thoughts have also disappeared, and with them the system of complexes as a whole. It has been dissociated, inhibited, repressed, and there isamnesiafor it. With the fatigue depression a new system, with different emotions and feelings, now dominates the mind and the desired system cannot be switched in.
This amnesia is not one of conservation but one of reproduction; for later in the day the fatigue anddepression disappear, a new energizing emotional tone arises and the sought-for system is switched in and returns in its entirety. With this change the depression system in turn disappears, and now it is difficult to recall it, excepting that as an intellectual fact I remember that such thoughts occupied my mind in the early morning hours. The two systems as a whole are distinctly differentiated from and alternate with one another.
All this is only expressing in somewhat technical language a common experience, as most people, I suppose, have suchalternations of complexes. The facts are trite enough; but, because they are of common experience, it is well to formulate them and so, as far as possible, give precision to our conception of the psychological relations which have a distinct bearing on the principles of dissociated personality and other psychoses, on character and psycho-therapeutics. When, at a later time, we take up for study the subject of dissociated personality[147]we shall find that the dissociation of consciousness sometimes takes its lines of cleavage between systems of complexes of this kind.[148]And, above all, the formation of complexesis the foundation stone of psycho-therapeutics.
The methods ofeducation and therapeutic suggestionare variants of this mode of organizing mentalprocesses. Both, in principle, are substantially the same, differing only in detail. They depend for their effect upon the implantation in the mind of ideational complexes organized by repetition, or by the impulsive force of their affective tones, or both. Every form of education necessarily involves the artificial formation of such complexes, whether in a pedagogical, religious, ethical, scientific, social, or professional field. So in psychotherapy by artfully directed suggestion, or education in the narrower sense, complexes may be similarly formed and organized. New points of view and “sentiments” may be inculcated, useful emotions and feelings excited, and the personality correspondingly modified. Roughly speaking, this is accomplished by suggesting ideas that will formsettings(associations) that give new and desired meanings to previously harmful ideas; and these ideas, as well as any others we desire to implant in the mind, are organized by suggestion with emotions (instincts) of a useful, pleasurable, and exalting kind to form desirable sentiments, and to carry the ideas to fulfilment. Thus sentiments of right, or of ambition, or of sympathy, or of altruism, or of disinterestedness in self are awakened; and, with all this, opposing emotions are aroused to conflict with and repress the distressing ones, and the whole welded into a complex which becomes conserved neurographically and thereby a part of the personality.
Under ordinary conditions of every-day mental lifesocial suggestionacts like therapeutic suggestion.But the suggestions of every-day life are so subtle and insidious that they are scarcely consciously recognized.
2.Chronological systems(using complex in a rather extended sense) are those which embrace the experiences of certain epochs of our lives rather than the subject material included in them. In a general way events as they are successively experienced become associated together, and with other elements of personality, so that the later recollection of one event in the chain of an epoch recalls successively the others. Conversely a break in the chain of memory may occur at any point and the chain only be picked up at a more distant date, leaving between, as a hiatus, an epoch for which there is amnesia of reproduction. This normally commonamnesia affords confirmatory evidenceof the associative relation of successive events. Involving as it does the unimportant and unemotional experiences as well as the important and emotional—though the former may be as well conserved as the latter—it is not easy to understand. The principle, however, plays an important part in abnormal amnesia particularly, but not necessarily, where there is a dissociation of personality.
The epoch may be of a few hours, or it may be of days, of months, or years. The simplest example is the frequent amnesia for the few hours preceding a physical injury to the head resulting in temporary unconsciousness. In other cases it is the result ofextensive dissociation effected by suggestion (e. g., in hypnosis), or psychical trauma including therein emotional conflicts. Thus, to cite an experimental example: Miss B. is troubled by a distressing memory which constantly recurs to her mind during the twenty-four hours. To relieve her I suggest that she will completely forget the original experience. To my surprise, though the suggestion is limited to the experience alone, the whole twenty-four hours are completely wiped out of her memory. She cannot recall a single incident of that day. The whole epoch which had associations with the memory is dissociated.
When the epochal amnesia follows psychical trauma the condition of memory is apt to present the following peculiarity and the personality may be altered. When the epoch is the immediate past, i.e., includes the experiences extending from a certain past date up to the present, it sometimes happens that memory reverts to that past date. That is to say, the personality goes back to the period last remembered in which he believes, for the moment, he is still living, the memory of the succeeding last epoch being dissociated from the personal consciousness. Under such conditions there is something more than amnesia. The neurographic residua of the remembered epoch are revived and its experiences remembered as if they had just been lived. There is not only a dissociation of the memories of one epoch, but a resurrection of the conserved and maybe forgotten experiences of a preceding one.The synthesis of these memories restores again the personal consciousness of that period. Before the cleavage took place the recollection of the resurrected epoch may have been very incomplete and vague; afterward the new personality remembers it as if just experienced. The personality is, however, in other respects generally (always?) something different from the personality of that particular epoch. The dissociation is apt to involve a certain number of acquired traits and certain innate dispositions and instincts, while other outlived and repressed traits and innate dispositions and instincts are apt to be reawakened and synthesized into an altered abnormal personality. But this is another story that does not concern us now.
As an example of epochal amnesia I may cite Mrs. J——, who, after dissociation occurs, has amnesia for all the events of several years succeeding a certain hour of a certain day when a psychical trauma (shock) occurred. She thinks she is living on that day and remembers in great detail its events as if they had just occurred.
Miss B. reverts on one occasion to a day, six years back, when she received a psychical shock; the complexes of her personality of that day are revived as if just lived, all the succeeding years being forgotten; on another occasion she reverts to a day when she was living in another city seven or eight years before.
M——l reverts to an early period of his life whenhe was living in Russia, and forgets all since including even his knowledge of English.
B. C. A. on several occasions reverts to different epochs of her life with complete amnesia for all after events. On each occasion she takes up the thread of her mental life as if living in the past, and recites the events as if just lived.
Likewise, after a subject reverts from the abnormal to the normal state, after a short or long condition of altered personality, there may be a complete amnesia for the abnormal epoch, and although now normal he thinks it the same day on which dissociation occurred.
Thus, Miss O. develops a condition of dissociated personality lasting six months during which, as it unfortunately happens, she falls in love with a man whom she had never known in her normal state. At the end of this period she “wakes up” with a complete loss of memory for the phase of altered personality and, therefore, to find that her fiancé is apparently a stranger to her (!).
The same amnesia in the normal state for prolonged epochs in which the personality was altered was conspicuous in the case of Miss B. In William James’ often-cited case of Ansel Bourne and Dr. E. E. Mayer’s case of Chas. W. the subjects returned to their normal states with complete amnesia for the abnormal epochs of two months and seventeen years respectively.
After all, the commonamnesia for the hypnotic state after waking is the same phenomenon.
Such observations show the possible systematization of epoch complexes, although the determining conditions are not as yet understood.
3.Disposition or Mood systems.—Among the loosely organized complexes in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations, desires, and modes of activity, which, for one reason or another, we tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals, for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life; and yet they may have a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately appeal to all mankind and which many actually pursue; in other words, to yield to the impulsive force of the innate disposition, or instinct, of play. But these desires are repressed. Nevertheless the longing for these pleasures, under the impulses of this instinct, recurs from time to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves a fabric of pictures, sentiments, thoughts, and emotions the whole of which thus becomes organized into a systematized complex.
There may be a conflict, a rebellion and “kicking against the pricks” and, thereby, a liberation of emotional force of the instinct, impressing, on theone hand, a stronger organization of the whole process, and, on the other, repressing all conflicting desires. Or, the converse of this may hold and a person who devotes his life to the lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for the more serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly build up a complex which may similarly express itself. The recurrence of such complexes is one form of what we call a “mood” which has a distinctively emotional tone of its own derived from the instincts and sentiments which are dominant. Such a “disposition” system is often spoken of as “a side to one’s character,” to which a person may from time to time give play. Thus a person is said to have “many sides to his character,” and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal states.
It may be interesting to note in passing that the well-known characteristics of people of a certain temperament, in consequence of which they can pursue their respective vocations only when they are “in the mood for it,” can be referred to this principle of complex formations and dissociation of rival systems. Literary persons, musicians, and artists in whom “feeling” is apt to be cultivated to a degree of self-pampering are conspicuous in this class. The ideas pertaining to the development of their craft form mixed subject and mood complexes which tend to have strong emotional and feeling tones. When some other affective tone is substituted, organizedwithin a conflicting complex, it is difficult for such persons to revive the subject complex belonging to the piece of work in hand and necessary for its prosecution. “The ideas will not come,” because the whole subject complex which supplies the material with which the imagination is to work has been dissociated and replaced by some other. Certain elements in the complex can be revived piece-meal, as it were, but the complex will not develop in mass with the emotional driving energy which belongs to it. Not having their complexes and affects under voluntary control it is necessary for such persons to wait until, from an alteration in the coenesthesis or for some other reason, an alteration in the “feeling” has taken place with a revival of the right complexin mass.
No more exquisite illustration of these “disposition complexes” could be found than in the personality of William Sharp. Sharp’s title to literary fame very largely rests upon the writings which he gave to the world under the feminine name of Fiona Macleod. The identity of the author was concealed from the world until his death, and it is still a common belief that this concealment and the assumption of the feminine pseudonym were nothing more than a literary hoax. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There were two William Sharps; by which I mean, of course, there were two very strongly organized and sharply cut sides to his character. Each had its points of view, its complexes of ideas,its imaginings, and, above all, its creative tendencies and feeling tones. The one side—the one christened William Sharp—was the bread and butter earner, the relatively practical man who came in contact with the world—literary critic, “biographer, essay and novel writer as well as poet”—the experienced side which was obliged to correct its imagination by constant comparison with reality. The other side—Fiona Macleod—was the so-called inner man; what he himself called his “true inward self.” As Fiona he lived in his imagination and dreamed. The development of this side of his personality began while, as he said, “I was still a child.” “He found,” his biographer writes,[149]“as have other imaginative, psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious power of visions unshared by any one about him, so that what he related was usually discredited; but the psychic side of his nature was too intimate a part of his mind to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned to shut it away—to keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a mystery to himself.”
This inner life, as time went on, became a mood which he fostered and developed and in which he built up great complexes of fancies, points of view, and emotions, which, when the other side of his character came uppermost, remained neurographically conserved and dormant in the unconscious. The Fiona complexes he distinctly felt to be feminine in type so that when he came to give expression tothem, as he felt he must, he concealed this side of his character under a feminine pseudonym. “My truest self,” he wrote, “the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life, and joys, and sufferings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”
“From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self, would sweep aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea that had lain dormant in what he called ‘the mind behind the mind’ would suddenly visualize itself and blot out everything else from his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed, hardly aware of what, or how, he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision with which for the moment he was identified.”
“All my work,” he said, “is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you aboutPharais, etc., without telling you my whole life.”
William Sharp himself realized the two moods or “sides,” which became in time developed into two distinct personalities. These he distinctly recognized, although there was no amnesia. “Rightly or wrongly,” he wrote, “I am conscious of something to be done by one side of me, by one-half of me, by the true inward mind as I believe—(apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual mind, and a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within concurring with and oftenest dominating theother)....” This dual personality was so strongly realized by him that on his birthdays he wrote letters to himself as Fiona signed “Will,” andvice versa.
I have dwelt upon this historical example of the exaggerated development of mood complexes because, while well within the limits of normal life, it brings home to us the recognition of psychological facts which we all, more or less, have in common. But, more important than this, in certain abnormal conditions where the dissociation between systems of complexes becomes more exaggerated, mood, subject, chronological and other complexes, linked as each is with its own characteristic emotions and feelings—instincts and other innate dispositions—play a paramount part and dominate the personality. In thehysterical personality, in particular, there is more or less complete reversion to or a subconscious awakening of one or other such complex. Where the hysterical dissociation becomes so extreme as to eventuate in amnesia in one state for another the different systems of complexes are easily recognized as so many phases ofmultiple personality. But in so identifying the ideational content of phases of personality it should not be overlooked that intensive studies of multiple personality disclose the fact that the dissociation of one phase for another carries with it certain of the instincts innate in every organism. What I mean to say is, observation of psychopathological states has shown that instincts,such as play, hunger, anger, fear, love, disgust, the sexual instincts, etc., may be dissociated separately or in conjunction with complexes of ideas. In every case of multiple personality that I have had the opportunity to study each phase has been shorn of one or more of these inborn psycho-physiological dispositions and I believe this obtains in every true case. As a result certain sentiments and traits are lost while those that are retained stamp an individuality upon the phase. And as the conative forces of the retained instincts are not balanced and checked by the dissociated opposing instincts, the sentiments which they form and the emotional reactions to which they give rise stand out as dominating traits. Thus one phase may be characterized by pugnacity, self-assertion, and elation; another by submission, fear and tender feeling; and so on.
This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated personality, but I may point out, in anticipation of a deeper discussion of the subject, that, in accordance with these two principles, in such conditions we sometimes find that disposition and other complexes conserved in the unconscious come to the surface and displace or substitute themselves for the other complexes which dominate a personality. A complex or system of complexes that is only a mood or a “side of the character” of a normal individual, may in conditions of dissociation become the main complex and chief characteristic of the new personality. In Miss B., for instance, the personality known as BI was made up almost entirely of thereligious and ethical ideas with corresponding instincts which formed one side of the original self. In the personality known as Sally we had for the most part the chronological and mood complexes of youth representing the enjoyment of youthful pleasures and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and artificial restraints generally imposed by duties and responsibilities; she was a resurrection of child life. In BIV the complex represented the ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss B., as a whole, normal, without disintegration, it was easy to recognize all three dispositions as sides of her character, though each was kept ordinarily within proper bounds by the conflicting influence of the others. It was only necessary to put her in an environment which encouraged one or the other side, to associate her with people who strongly suggested one or the other of her own characteristics, whether religious, social, pleasure-loving, or intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI, Sally, or BIV stand out in relief as the predominant personality. Then we had the alternating play of these different sides of her character.
Likewise in B. C. A. In each of the personalities, B and A, similar disposition complexes could be recognized each corresponding to a side of the character of the original personality C. In A were represented the complexes formed by ideas of duty, responsibility, and moral scruples; in B were represented the complexes formed by the longing for fun and the amusements which life offered. When thecleavage of personality took place it was between these two complexes, just as it was in Miss B. between the several complexes above described. This is well brought out in the respective autobiographies of B[150]and Sally[151]in these two cases. In many cases of hysteria in which dissociation of personality can be recognized the same phenomenon is often manifest. A careful study will reveal it also, I believe, in other cases of multiple personality, although, of course, as we have seen, the dissociation may be along other lines; that is, between other complexes than those of disposition.
This principle of the conservation, as neurograms in the unconscious, of complexes representing “sides” to one’s character, gives a new meaning to the sayingIn vino veritas. In alcoholic and other forms of intoxication there results a loss of inhibition, of self-control, and the disposition complexes, which have been repressed or concealed by the individual as a matter of social defense, arise out of the unconscious, and, for the time being, become the dominant mood or phase of personality. When these complexes represent the true inner life and nature of the individual, freed from the repressing protection of expediency, we can then truly say “In vino veritas.”
Complexes organized in hypnotic and other dissociated conditions.—1. We have been speaking thus far ofcomplexes formed in the course of every-day life and which take part in the composition of the normal personality. But it is obvious that a complex may be organized in any condition of personality so long as we are dealing with consciousness, however limited or disturbed. Thus inartificial states, like hypnosis and the subconscious process which produces automatic writing, ideas may be synthesized into systems as well as in normal waking life. This is exemplified by the fact that in hypnosis the memories of past hypnotic experiences are conserved and form systems of memories dissociated from the memories of waking life. When the subject regains the normal condition of the personal self, though there may be amnesia for the hypnotic experiences their neurograms remain conserved to the same extent and in the same fashion as do those of the waking life. Consequently on the return to the hypnotic state the memories of previous hypnotic experiences are recovered.
This systematization of hypnotic experiences is easily recognized in those cases where several different hypnotic states can be obtained in the same individual. Each state has its own system of memories differing from, and with amnesia for, those of the others. Each system also has its own feeling tones, one system, for example, having a tone of elation, another, of depression, etc. The systematization is still more accentuated in cases like the one mentioned in the second lecture (p. 19), where the subject goes into a hypnotic state resembling a trance,and lives in an ideal world, peopled by imaginary persons, and in an imaginary environment, perhaps a spirit world or another planet. The content of consciousness consists of fabrications which make up a fancied life. In the instance I have mentioned the subject imagined she was living in a world of spirits; in Flournoy’s classical case, Mlle Hélène Smith imagined she was an inhabitant of the planet Mars, and spoke a fabricated language. In these states the same systems of ideas invariably appeared.
2. In consequence of this principle of systematization it is in our power by educational suggestion in hypnosis to organize mental processes andbuild complexesof the same kind and in the same way as when the subject is awake. In fact, it is more readily done, inasmuch as in hypnosis the critical judgment and reflection tend to be suspended. The suggested ideas are accepted and education more easily accomplished. While in hypnosis the individual may thus be made to accept and hold new beliefs, new judgments, in short, new knowledge.[152]After waking he may or may not remember his hypnotic experiences. Generally he does. If he does the new knowledge, if firmly organized (by repetition and strong affective tones) is still retained, and if accepted (i.e., not repressed by conflicting ideas) shapes his views and conduct in accordance therewith.Even if his hypnotic experiences are not remembered, they still belong to his personality, inasmuch as they are neurographically conserved, and, experience shows, may still influence his stream of consciousness. His views are modified by his unconscious personality. His ideas may and generally do awaken the neurograms of associated systems created in hypnosis. Not remembering the hypnotic state as a whole he does not remember theoriginof his new knowledge; that is all.
One point to be borne in mind is that conserved ideas, whether we can recall them or not, so long as they are conserved are a part of our personality, as I have previously pointed out, and ideas can emerge from the unconscious into the field of the conscious though we have completely forgotten their origin. It requires but a single experiment in the induction of suggested post-hypnotic phenomena to demonstrate these principles.
3. As to thosepathological stateswhere there is a splitting of personality—hysterical crises, psycholeptic attacks, trance states, certain types of epilepsy, etc.—complexes may similarly be formed in them. In these conditions there is a dissociation of a large part of the normal mental life, and that which is left is only a limited field of consciousness. A new synthesis comes into being out of the unconscious to represent the personal self. Though the content of consciousness is a reproduction of, or determined by certain previous experiences, it is also true that in these states new experiences may resultin new complexes which then take part in the personality as with hypnotic experiences.
Personality as the survival of organized antecedent experiences.—Of course all our past mental experiences do not persist as organized complexes. The latter, after they have served their purpose, tend to become disaggregated, just as printer’s type is disaggregated or distributed after it has served its purpose in printing. In the organization and development of personality the elements of the mental experiences become sifted, as it were. Normally, in the adaptation of the individual to the environment, the unessential and useless, the intermediate steps leading to the final and useful, tend to drop out without leaving surviving residua, while the essential and useful tend to remain as memories capable of recall. In the unconscious these remain more or less permanently fixed as limited ideas, sentiments, and systems of complexes. Further, those complexes of experiences which persist not only provide the material for our memories, but tend, consciously or unconsciously, to shape the judgments, beliefs, convictions, habits, and tendencies of our mental lives. Whence they came, how they were born, we have long ceased to remember. We often arrive at conclusions which we imagine in our ignorance we have constructed at the moment unaided out of our inner consciousness. In one sense this is true, but that inner consciousness has been largely determined by the vestiges furnished by forgotten experiences.Many of these we imbibed from our environment and the experiences of our fellows; in this sense we are all plagiarists of the past.
Furthermore, we react, to a large extent, to our environment in a way that we do not thoroughly understand because these reactions are determined by the impulses of unconscious complexes organized with innate dispositions. Indeed, our reactions to the environment, our moral and social conduct, the affective reactions of our sentiments, instincts, feelings, and other conative tendencies, our “habits,” judgments, points of view, and attitudes of mind—all that we term character and personality—are predetermined by the mental experiences of the past by which they are developed, organized, and conserved in the unconscious. Otherwise all would be chaos. We are thus the offspring of our past and the past is the present.
This same principle underlies what is called the “social conscience,” the “civic” and “national conscience,” patriotism, public opinion, what the Germans call “Sittlichkeit,” the war attitude of mind, etc. All these mental attitudes may be reduced to common habits of thought and conduct derived from mental experiences common to a given community and conserved as complexes in the unconscious of the several individuals of the community.[153]
Through education, whether scholastic, vocational, or social, we inherit the experiences of our predecessors and become “... the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.” But the conceptions of one age can never represent those of a preceding age. The veriest layman in science todaycould not entertain the conceptions underlying many hypotheses formulated by the wisest of the preceding age—of a Galileo, a Descartes, or Pascal. Lucretius, in the first century B. C., argued, with what for the time was great force, that the soul of man was corporeal and that it “must consist of very small seeds and be inwoven through veins and flesh and sinews; inasmuch as, after it has all withdrawn from the whole body the exterior contour of the limbs preserves itself entire and not a tittle of the weight is lost.”
Lucretius gave much thought to this problem, but to-day the least cultured person, who has never reflected at all on psychological matters, would recognize the foolishness of such a conception and reject the hypothesis.[154]He would call itcommon-sensewhich guided him, but common-sense depends upon the fact that in the unconscious lie memories, the reasons for and origin of which we do not remember; these nullify such an hypothesis. These contradicting ideas, sifted out of those belonging to the social education, have become fixed as dormant or organized memories, and determine the judgments and trends of the personal consciousness. These memory vestiges may work for good or evil, shapeour personal consciousness into a useful or useless form, one that adapts or unfits the organism to its environment. In the latter case they drive the organism into the field of pathological psychology.