LECTURE VIISUBCONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE(Continued)
III.Subconscious intelligence underlying spontaneous hallucinations.—Spontaneous hallucinations often offer opportunities to study subconscious processes exhibiting constructive intelligence. Although properly belonging to clinical phenomena, they often can be so clearly related to an antecedent experience as to allow us to determine the causal factor with the same exactness as in the experimental type, and, therefore, to infer the connecting subconscious link with equal probability. Some of these spontaneous visions indicate that the subconscious link must be of considerable complexity and equivalent to logical processes of reasoning, volition, and purposive intelligence. Sometimes the same subconscious processes which fabricate the vision determine also other processes of conscious thought and movements.
In illustration I may cite an incident in the life of Miss B., which I have previously described:
“Miss B., as a child, frequently had visions of the Madonna and Christ, and used to believe that she had actually seen them. It was her custom when in trouble, if it was only a matter of her school lessons, or something that she had lost, to resort to prayer. Then she would be apt to have a vision of Christ. The visionnever spoke, but sometimes made signs to her, and the expression of His face made her feelthat all was well. After the vision passed she felt that her difficulties were removed, and if it was a bothersome lesson which she had been unable to understand it all became intelligible at once. Or, if it was something that she had lost,she at once went to the spot where it was.”... [For example, while under observation.] "Miss B. had lost a bank check and was much troubled concerning it. For five days she had made an unsuccessful hunt for it, systematically going through everything in her room. She remembered distinctly placing the check between the leaves of a book, when some one knocked at her door, and this was the last she saw of the check. She had become very much troubled about the matter, and in consequence, after going to bed that night she was unable to sleep, and rose several times to make a further hunt. Finally, at 3 o’clock in the morning, she went to bed and fell asleep. At 4 o’clock she woke with the consciousness of a presence in the room. She arose, and in a moment saw a vision of Christ, who did not speak, but smiled. She at once felt, as she used to,that everything was well, and that the vision foretold that she should find the check. All her anxiety left her at once. The figure retreated toward the bureau, but the thought flashed into her mind that the lost check was in the drawer of her desk. A search, however, showed that it was not there. She then walked automatically to the bureau, opened the top drawer, took out some stuff upon which she had been sewing, unfolded it, and there was the check along with one or two other papers.
“Neither Miss B. nor BII [hypnosis] has any memory of any specific thought which directed her to open the drawer and take out her sewing, nor of any conscious idea that the check was there. Rather, she did it, so far as her consciousness goes, automatically, as she used to do automatic writing.”[98]
Further investigation revealed the fact that the money had been put away absent-mindedly and “unconsciously”;in hypnosis the memory of this act was recovered.
In this observation we have two so-called automatic phenomena of different types—one a sensory automatism, the vision, the other a motor automatism or actions leading to the finding of the money. The motor acts being automatic were necessarily determined by subconscious processes and plainly required a knowledge of the hiding-place. This knowledge also plainly must have been conserved in the unconscious and now, in answer to her wish to find the lost money, acting as a subconscious process, fulfilled her wish in a practical way.
The vision was of Christ smiling. Seeing it the subject at once “felt that all was well,” and her anxiety vanished. It was plainly therefore a fabricated visual symbolism though one which she had frequently before experienced. It may be taken as a message sent by subconscious processes to her anxious consciousness and it is not too much to say had a purposive meaning, viz., to allay her anxiety. The question is, What was the causal factor which determined this symbolism? Logically it is a compulsory inference that the same conserved knowledge and subconscious processes, which eventuated in the motor automatisms, must have been the causal factor that determined the visual symbolism which carried the reassuring message to consciousness. This subconscious knowledge first allayed her anxiety and then proceeded to answer her problem of the whereabouts of the lost money.More specifically, the primary causal factor was the preceding anxious wish to find the money; the resulting phenomena were the sensory and motor automatisms, allaying the anxiety and fulfilling the wish;between the two as connecting links were subconscious processes of an intelligent, purposive, volitional character which first fabricated a visual symbolism as a message to consciousness and then made use of the conserved knowledge of her previous absent-minded act to solve her problem. The subconscious process as a whole we thus see was of quite a complicated character. In this example it is impossible to determine from the data at hand whether the subconscious process was coconscious or unconscious.
The observation which I have elsewhere described as “an hallucination from the subconscious”[99]is an excellent example of an intelligent subconscious process indicative of judgment and purpose. The hallucination occurred in my presence as a result of an antecedent experience for which I was a moment before responsible. It was therefore of the nature of an experiment and the causal factor was known. The antecedent experience consisted of certain remarks and behavior of the subject while under the influence of an illusion during a dissociated state for which there was subsequent amnesia. The vision was of a friend whose face was sad, as of one who had been injured, and seemed to reproachher. At the same moment she heard his voice which said, “How could you have betrayed me?” The hallucinatory words and the visual image were in no sense a reproduction of the causal, i.e., antecedent, experience. They were the expression of asubconscious self-reproachin consequence of that experience. This reproach connoted a subconscious belief or logical judgment, drawn from the experience, that she had broken a promise.[100]It was a subconscious reaction to a subconscious belief. I say both the reproach and the judgment were subconscious because, in the dissociated state, owing to the illusion, and in the normal after-state owing to the amnesia, she was entirely ignorant of having done anything that could be construed into breaking a promise. This interpretation of the episode must therefore have been entirely subconscious. The self-reproach emerged into consciousness but translated into visual and auditory hallucinations. These were plainly a condemnatory message sent from the subconscious to the personal consciousness and might aptly be termed “the prickings of a subconscious conscience.” The primary causal factor was simply certain statements (conserved in the unconscious) made to me by the subject and for which afterwards there was amnesia. Intervening between this antecedent experience and the resulting hallucinatory phenomena a subconscious process must be postulated as a necessary connecting link.This process plainly involved memory and an intelligent judgment, an emotional reaction, and an expression of this judgment and reaction translated into hallucinatory phenomena. Apparently also a distinct purpose to upbraid the personality was manifested.
The accounts ofsudden religious conversionare full of instances of hallucinations occurring at the time of the “crisis” and these—visions and voices—are often logical symbolisms of antecedent thoughts of the subject. By analogy with similar experimental phenomena we are compelled to interpret them in the same way and postulate these antecedent experiences as the causal factors. If this postulation is sound then the connecting subconscious link is often a quite complicated process of an intelligent character.
In one instance in which the occurrence was similar in principle to sudden religious conversion I was able to determine beyond question the causal antecedents of the hallucinatory phenomenon. I will not repeat the details here;[101]suffice it to say that the hallucination, consisting of a vision and an auditory message from the subject’s deceased husband (see p. 40), answered the doubts and scruples with which the subject had been previously tormented. It was a logical answer calculated to allay distressing memories against which she had been fighting, “the old ideas of dissatisfaction with life, the feelings of injury, bitterness, and rebellionagainst fate and the ‘kicking against the pricks’ which these memories evoked.” It expressed previously entertained ideas which she had tried to accept but without success. The exposition of this answer in thehallucinatory symbolismrequired a subconscious process involving considerable reasoning.The phenomenon as a whole was a message addressed to her own consciousness by subconscious processes to answer her doubts and anxious questionings of herself, and to settle the conflict going on in her mind.The logical connection between the different elements of this hallucination and certain antecedent experiences which had harassed the subject are so close that there is no room left for doubting that these experiences were the causal factors. And so I might analyze a large number of spontaneous hallucinations wherein you would find the same evidence for subconscious processesshowing intelligent constructive imagination, reasoning, volition, and purposive effort, and expressing themselves in automatisms which either solve a disturbing problem or carry to fruition a subconscious purpose.
I offer no excuse for multiplying these observations of hallucinatory phenomena, even at the expense of tedious repetition, for such studies give an insight into the mechanism of the hallucinations met with in the insanities and other pathological states. They offer, too, an insight into the basic process involved in dreams as these are a type of hallucinatory phenomena. It is by a study of hallucinationsexperimentally created, and others where we are in a position to know the causal factors, that we can learn the mechanisms underlying similar phenomena occurring in normal pathological conditions. As a rule in the latter conditions it is difficult to determine beyond question the true causal factors and, therefore, the particular subconscious processes involved. Such phenomena as I have presented justify the conclusion of the “new psychology” that thehallucinations of the insaneare not haphazard affairs but the resultant of subconscious processes evoked by antecedent experiences. In conclusion, then, we may say thatin artificial hallucinations as experimentally conducted, and in certain spontaneous hallucinations, we have two known factors; the causal factor (the antecedent experience) and the hallucinatory phenomenon—the effect. Intervening between the two is an inferred subconscious process of considerable complexity which is required to explain the causal connection. With the exact mechanism of hallucinatory phenomena we are not at present concerned, but only with the evidence of the actuality of a subconscious process, of its character as an intelligence, and with its intrinsic nature.
As to the last problem it is plain that further investigations are required and that the methods at present at our disposal for its solution leave much to be desired. All things considered a conservative summing up would be that the subconscious process may be both coconscious and unconscious.
IV.Subconscious intelligence underlying dreams.As is well known, Freud advanced the theory, now well fortified by numerous observations of others, that underlying a dream is a subconscious process which fabricates the conscious dream. According to Freud and his followers this subconscious process is always an antecedent wish and the dream is an imaginary fulfillment of that wish. This part of the theory (as well as the universality of an underlying process) is decidedly questionable. My own observations lead me to believe that a dream may be also the expression of antecedent doubts, scruples, anxieties, etc., or may be an answer to an unsolved problem. We need not concern ourselves with this particular question here. I refer to it simply to point out that its correct solution depends upon the correct determination of the true causal factor which is necessarily antecedently unknown and must be inferred. It is inferred or selected from the associated memories evoked by the so-called method of analysis. Hence it must be always an element open to greater or less doubt.Dreams are a type of hallucinatory phenomenaand therefore we should expect that their mechanism would correspond more or less closely with that of other hallucinatory phenomena.
With the object in view of determining whether a dream could be producedexperimentallyand brought within the category of phenomena where the causal factor was antecedently known, and thus determine the actuality of a subconscious process asa necessary intervening link between the two, I made the following experiment. It should be noted that a wishfulfilmentnecessarily means a dream content so far different in form from the content of thewish itselfthat the postulation of a connecting link, conscious or subconscious, is required. I also sought, if a subconscious process could be postulated, to discover how elaborate and what sort of a work of constructive imagination a subconscious wish could evolve.
To a suitable subject while in a deep hypnotic trance state I gave a suggestion in the form of a wish to be worked out to fulfilment in a dream. It so happened that this subject was going through a period of stress and strain for which she sought relief. I also knew that she had a very strong desire to do a good piece of original psychological work and had advised her to take up the work as a solution of her difficulties. So, taking advantage of this desire, I impressed upon her, for the purpose of emphasizing the impulsive force of the desire, that she now had the longed-for opportunity as the culmination of her previous years of training to do the work. I then gave her the following suggestion: “You want to do a good piece of original work and your dream to-night will be the fulfillment of the wish.” No hint as to what form the dream fulfilment should take was given, nor had she any knowledge before being put into the trance state that I intended to make an experiment.
It is interesting to note how the dream has alogical form which is unfolded as an argument. This itself is an allegorical transcript of the reasons previously suggested to her for the particular solution of her problem.
The dream was a long one and into it were logically introduced as a part of the argument the actual distressing circumstances for the relief of which I had advised taking up the piece of psychological work as an outlet to her feelings and solution of her problem of life. I will give in detail only so much of the dream as contains the wish fulfilment (which became also a part of the dream argument), summarizing the remainder. The dream begins with an allegorical description of the great task involved in the study of psychology by all the workers of the world. The science of psychology is symbolized by a temple. “I dreamed I was where they were building a great temple or cathedral; an enormous place covering many acres of ground. Hundreds of men were building. Some were building spires, some were building foundations, and some were tearing down what they had built, some parts had fallen down of themselves. I was wandering around looking on.” Then she proceeds to help one of the builders who was building a particular part of the temple by bringing him material in the form of stones. This she had actually done, in real life, contributing much psychological material out of her own experiences. Many of these experiences had been very intimate ones from her inner life and had involved much suffering; hence the stones whichshe contributed in her dream were big and heavy and were beyond her strength to carry, so that she could only roll them,—and some were sharp and made her hands bleed, so that her contribution involved much suffering. This part of the dream was not only a prelude to the suggested wish fulfilment but, as interpreted, contained a wish fulfilment in itself.
Then there was interjected an allegorical but very accurate description of the distressing circumstances to which I have referred and for which, as a problem of life, the suggested work was advised as a solution. Then logically followed the wish fulfilment and solution. She heard the voice of the builder whom she had been helping say to her, “‘Now, here are all the materials and you must build a temple of your own,’ and I [she] said, ‘I cannot,’ and he said, ‘you can, and I will help you.’ So I began to build the stones I had taken him. It was hard work, but I kept on, and a most beautiful temple grew up.... All the stones were very brilliant in color, but each one was stained with a drop of blood that came from a wound in my heart. And the temple grew up; and I handled all the stones; but somehow the temple grew up of itself and lots of people were coming from all directions to look at it, and someone, who seemed to be William James, said, ‘It is the most valuable part of the temple,’ and I felt very proud....’” After another interjection of the distressing problem of her life just alluded to, the dream ends with the figureof “a beautiful shining angel with golden spreading wings and the word ‘Hope’ written on his forehead.” This figure “spread his lovely wings and rose right up through the temple and became the top of the spire, a gorgeous shining figure of Hope.”[102]
After this dream was obtained the subject, who had no knowledge that any suggestion had been given to induce the dream, was told to analyze the dream herself by the method of associative memories. As is customary in the use of this method, in which she had had considerable experience, the memories associated with each element of the dream were obtained. These memories all led back directly to her interest in psychology and desire to contribute some original work, and to her own life’s experiences. Every one of the dream-elements (temple, spires, foundations, stones, bleeding hands, drop of blood from the wound in her heart, etc.) evoked associative memories which justified the inference that these elements were symbolisms of past experiences or of constructive imagination.
That this dream was determined by, and the explicit imaginary fulfilment of the antecedent wish made use of in the experiment and motivated by the suggestion would seem to be conclusively shown.
If, then, in any case a causal relation between an antecedent wish and its dream fulfilment exists, it follows that there must be some link between that wish experienced in the past and the present dream fulfilment, some mode, mechanism, or process by which a past thought, without entering consciousness, can continue to its own fulfilment in a conscious work of the imagination, the dream. I say without entering consciousness because the original specific thought-wish does not appear in the dream consciousness, which is only the fulfilment. The phenomenon as a whole is also inexplicable unless there was some motivating factor or force which determined the form of the dream just as in conscious fabrication and argument “we” consciously motivate and arrange the form of the product. The only logical and intelligible inference is that theoriginal wish, becoming reawakened (by the preceding suggestion) during sleep,continued to function outside of the dream consciousness, as a motivating and directing subconscious process.
But what was the content of this process, and to what extent can its elements be correlated with those of the dream? The experimental data of this dream do not afford an answer to this question. (Those of the observation I shall next give will permit a deeper insight into the character and contentof their process.) It is a reasonable inference, however, inasmuch as the different elements of the dream—temple, stones, etc., the material out of which it is constructed—are found to be logical symbolizations of their associative memories, that these memories took part in the subconscious process and consequently may be correlated with their dream-symbols. In other words the content of the subconscious process was more than a wish, or wish neurogram, it included a large complex of memories of diverse experiences that can be recognized through their symbolizations in the dream. This complex, motivated by a particular wish, fabricated the dream, just as in the hallucinations I have cited an underlying process fabricated the hallucination as a symbolic expression of a subconscious judgment, self-reproach, etc. To do this a process that must be termed asubconscious intelligencewas required. The dream was an allegory, a product of constructive imagination in the logical form of an argument, and if constructed by an underlying process the latter must have had the same characteristics.[103]
This experimental dream confirms therefore the general principle formulated by Freud from the analysis of dreams in which the causal factor is an inferred wish. It is likewise on the assumption of my having correctly inferred this factor that I have insisted that a dream may be a fabricated expression of thoughts other than wishes or may be the solution of an unsolved problem. In this last casethe dream phenomena and mechanism seem to be analogous in every way to the subconscious solution of mathematical problemswhich I have already described. In such and other cases the subconscious process would seem to be a continuation and elaboration of the antecedent suggested problem.
In dreams, then, or, as we should strictly limit ourselves for the present to saying,in certain dreams, there are, as Freud first showed, two processes; one is the conscious dream, the other is a subconscious process which is the actuated residuum of a previous experience and determines the dream.[104]It would be going beyond the scope of oursubject to enter into a full exposition of this interpretation at this time and I must refer you for a discussion of the dream problem to works devoted to the subject.
We have not, of course, touched the further problem of theHow: how a subconscious intelligence induces a conscious dream which is not an emergence of the elements of that intelligence into self-consciousness, but a symbolization of them. This is a problem which still awaits solution. From certain data at hand it seems likely that so far as concerns the hallucinatory perceptual elements of a dream they can be accounted for as theemergence of the secondary imagespertaining to the subconscious “ideas.”
The following observation is anexample of subconscious versification andalso ofconstructive imagination. It also, I think, gives an insight into the character and content of the underlying process which constructs a dream. I give the observation in the subject’s own words:
"I woke suddenly some time between three and four in the morning. I was perfectly wide awake and conscious of my surroundings but for a short time—perhaps two or three minutes—I could not move, and I saw this vision which I recognized as such.
"The end of my room seemed to have disappeared, and I looked out into boundless space. It looked misty but bright, as if the sun was shining behind a light fog. There were shifting wisps of fog blowing lightly about, and these wisps seemed to gather into the forms of a man and a woman. The figures were perfectly clear and lifelike—I recognized them both. The man was dressed in dark every-day clothes, the woman in rather flowingblack; her face was partly hidden on his breast; one arm was laid around his neck; both his arms were around her, and he was looking down at her, smiling very tenderly. They seemed to be surrounded by a sort of rosy atmosphere; a large, very bright star was above their heads—not in the heavens, but just over them; tall rose bushes heavy with red roses in full bloom grew up about them, and the falling petals were heaped up around their feet. Then the man bent his head and kissed her.
"The vision was extraordinarily clear and I thought I would write it down at once. I turned on the light by my bedside, took pencil and paper lying there and wrote, as I supposed,practically what I have written here. I then got up, was up some minutes, went back to bed, and after a while to sleep. The clock struck four soon after getting back into bed. I do not think I experienced any emotion at the moment of seeing the vision, but after writing it down I did.
"The next morning I picked up the paper to read over what I had written and was amazed at the language and the rhythm. This is what I had written:
"‘Last night I waked from sleep quite suddenly,And though my brain was clear my limbs were tranced.Beyond the walls of my familiar roomI gazed outward into luminous space.Before my staring eyes two forms took shape,Vague, shadowy, slowly gathering from the mists,Until I saw before me, you—my Love!And folded to your breast in close embraceWas she, that other, whom I may not name.A rosy light bathed you in waves of love;Above your heads there shone a glowing star;Red roses shed their leaves about your feet.And as I gazed with eyes that could not weepYou bent your head and laid your lips on hers.And my rent soul’ ... [Apparently unfinished.]
"‘Last night I waked from sleep quite suddenly,And though my brain was clear my limbs were tranced.Beyond the walls of my familiar roomI gazed outward into luminous space.Before my staring eyes two forms took shape,Vague, shadowy, slowly gathering from the mists,Until I saw before me, you—my Love!And folded to your breast in close embraceWas she, that other, whom I may not name.A rosy light bathed you in waves of love;Above your heads there shone a glowing star;Red roses shed their leaves about your feet.And as I gazed with eyes that could not weepYou bent your head and laid your lips on hers.And my rent soul’ ... [Apparently unfinished.]
"‘Last night I waked from sleep quite suddenly,And though my brain was clear my limbs were tranced.Beyond the walls of my familiar roomI gazed outward into luminous space.Before my staring eyes two forms took shape,Vague, shadowy, slowly gathering from the mists,Until I saw before me, you—my Love!And folded to your breast in close embraceWas she, that other, whom I may not name.A rosy light bathed you in waves of love;Above your heads there shone a glowing star;Red roses shed their leaves about your feet.And as I gazed with eyes that could not weepYou bent your head and laid your lips on hers.And my rent soul’ ... [Apparently unfinished.]
"‘Last night I waked from sleep quite suddenly,
And though my brain was clear my limbs were tranced.
Beyond the walls of my familiar room
I gazed outward into luminous space.
Before my staring eyes two forms took shape,
Vague, shadowy, slowly gathering from the mists,
Until I saw before me, you—my Love!
And folded to your breast in close embrace
Was she, that other, whom I may not name.
A rosy light bathed you in waves of love;
Above your heads there shone a glowing star;
Red roses shed their leaves about your feet.
And as I gazed with eyes that could not weep
You bent your head and laid your lips on hers.
And my rent soul’ ... [Apparently unfinished.]
“The thoughts were the same as my conscious thoughts had been—the vision was well described—but the language was entirely different from anything I had thought, and the writing expressed the emotion which I had not consciously experienced in seeing the vision, but which (I have since learned) I had felt during the dream, and which I did consciously feelafterwriting. When I wrote I meant simply to state the facts of the vision.”[105]
The subject was unable to give any explanation of the vision or of the composition of the verse. She rarely remembers her dreams and had no memory of any dream the night of this vision. By hypnotic procedure, however, I was able to recover memories of a dream which occurred just before she woke up. It appeared that in the dream she was wandering in a great open space and saw this “picture in a thin mist. The mist seemed to blow apart” and disclosed the “picture” which was identical with the vision. At the climax of the dream picture the dreamer experienced an intense emotion well described in the verse by the unfinished phrase, “My rent soul...” The dreamer “shrieked, and fell on the ground on her face, and grew cold from head to foot and waked up.”
The vision after waking, then, was a repetition of a precedingdreamvision and we may safely assume that it was fabricated by the same underlying processwhich fabricated the dream, this process repeating itself after waking.
So far the phenomenon was one which is fairly common. Now when we come to examine the automatically written script we find it has a number of significant characteristics. (1) It describes a conscious episode, (2) As a literary effort for one who is not a poetical writer it is fairly well written and probably quite as good verse as the subject can consciously write; (3) It expresses the mental attitude, sentiments and emotions experienced in the dream but not at the time of the vision.These had also been antecedent experiences; (4) Both the central ideas of the verse and the vision symbolically represented certain antecedent presentiments of the future; (5) The script gives of the vision an interpretation which was not consciously in mind at the moment of writing.
Now, inasmuch as these sentiments and interpretations were not in the conscious mind at the moment of writing, the scriptsuggeststhat the process that wrote it was not simply a subconscious memory of the vision but the same process which fabricated the dream. Indeed, the phenomenon is open to the suspicion that this same process expresses the same ideas in verbal symbolism as a substitution for the hallucinatory symbolism. To determine this point, an effort was made to recover by technical methods memories of this process; that is to determine what wrote the verse and by what sort of a process. The following was brought out:
1. The script was written automatically. The subject thought she was writing certain words and expressing certain thoughts and did not perceive that she was writing different words. “Something seemed to prevent her seeing the words she wrote.” There were two trains of “thought.”
2. The “thoughts” of the verse were in her “subconscious mind.”[106]These “thoughts” (also described as “words”) were not logically arranged or as written in the verse, but “sort of tumbled together—mixed up a little.” “They were not like the thoughts one thinks incomposinga verse.” There did not seem to be any attempt at selection from the thoughts or words. No evidence could be elicited to show that the composing was done here.
3. Concurrently with these subconscious, mixed-up thoughts coconscious “images” of the words of the verse came just at the moment of writing them down. The images were bright, printed words. Sometimes one or two words would come at a time and sometimes a whole line.
In other words all happenedas ifthere was a deeper underlying process which did the composing and from this process certain thoughts without logical order emerged to form a subconscious stream and after the composing was done the words of the verse emerged as coconscious images as they wereto be written. This underlying process, then, “automatically” did the writing and the composing. Hence it seemed to the subject even when remembering in hypnosis the subconscious thoughts and images that both were done unconsciously.
As to whether this underlying process was the same as that which fabricated the dream and the hallucination, the evidence, albeit circumstantial, would seem to render this almost certain. In the first place the verse was only a poetical arrangement of the subconscious thoughts disclosed; the vision was an obvious symbolic expression or visual representation of the same thoughts (that is, of course, of those concerned with the subject matter of the vision). The only difference would seem to be in the form of the expression—verbal and visual imagery respectively.[107]In the second place the vision was an exact repetition of the dream vision. It is not at all rare to find certain phenomena of dreams (visual, motor, sensory, etc.) repeating themselves after waking.[108]This can only be explained by the subconscious repetition of the dream process. Consequently we are compelled to infer the same subconscious process underlying the dream-vision. More than this, it was possible to tracethese thoughts back to antecedent experiences of the dreamer, so that in the last analysis the dream-vision, waking-vision, and poetical expression of the vision could be related with almost certainty to the same antecedent experiences as the causal factors.
Certain conclusions then seem compulsory: underlying the dream, vision, and script was a subconscious process in which the fundamental factors were the same. As this process showed itself capable of poetical composition, constructive imagination, volition, memory, and affectivity it was asubconscious intelligence.
As to its intrinsic nature—coconscious orunconsciousunconscious—according to the evidence at least the process that wrote the script contained conscious elements—the coconscious thoughts and images.
We may assume the same for the dream and the vision. As to the mechanism of the vision it is quite conceivable, not to say probable, that, corresponding to the coconscious images of the printed words during the writing, there were similar images of the vision scene (both in the dream and the waking state), but theseinstead of remaining coconscious emerged into consciousness to be the vision.[109]Whether the still deeper underlying process was conscious or unconscious could not be determined by any evidence accessible and must be a matter of hypothesis.
The chief importance that attaches to this observation, it seems to me, is the insight it gives into the character of the underlying process of a dream. If the conclusions I have drawn are sound, then the subconscious process which determines the conscious dream may be what is actually anintelligenceand it matters not whether a coconscious or unconscious one. This seems to me to be a conclusion fraught with the highest significance for the theory of dreams and hallucinatory phenomena in general. Of course we all know well enough that dissociated subconscious processes may be intelligent and influence the content of the personal consciousness, as witness coconscious personalities. If the underlying process of a dream may be something akin to such a personality, something capable of reasoning, imagination and volition, it renders intelligible the fundamental principle of the Freudian theory of a double process—the “latent” and “manifest” dream. One of the difficulties in the general acceptance of this theory has been, I think, the difficulty of conceiving a subconscious process—the “latent dream”—capable of the intelligent fabrication of a “manifest” dream phantasy which is a cryptic symbolization of the subject’s thoughts. Such a fabrication has all the earmarks of purpose, fore-thought and constructive imagination. But if this underlying process can be identified, even though it be in a single case, with such an intelligence as that which wrote the poetical script we have studied, itis plainly quite capable of fabricating the wildest dream phantasy.
I have suggested that thesubconscious intelligencemay becomparable to the phenomenon of a coconscious personality. It is worth noting in this connection that in the case of Miss B. the coconscious personality, Sally, who claimed to be awake while Miss B. was dreaming, also claimed that Miss B. sometimes dreamed about what Sally was thinking of at the moment.[110]In other words, the thoughts of a large systematized coconscious intelligence determined the dream just as these thoughts sometimes emerged into Miss B.’s mind when awake. That a coconscious personality may persist awake while the principal personality is asleep I have been able to demonstrate in another case (B. C. A.). It was also noted in Dr. Barrows’ case of Anna Winsor. Moreover, Sally was shown to be a persistent, sane coconsciousness while Miss B. was delirious and also while she was apparently deeply etherized and unconscious.[111]After all it is difficult to distinguishin principlethe condition of sleep with a persisting coconsciousness from a state of deep hypnotic trance where the subject is apparently unconscious. In this condition, although the waking consciousness has disappeared, there can be shown to be a persisting “secondary” consciousness which can be communicated with by automatic writing and which later can exhibit memories of occurrences inthe environment during the hypnotic trance. (B. C. A.)
What has been said does not touch, of course, the other mechanisms of the Freudian theory nor the unessential, greatly over-emphasized theory that the subconscious dream is always a sexual wish. On the contrary, the principle throws a strong,a prioridoubt upon the correctness of this generalization. It is plainly, however, a matter of fact which might be easily determined by observation were it not for the difficulty of correctly referring clinical phenomena to the correct antecedent experiences as their causal factors. In the last analysis it becomes always a matter of interpretation.
Applied psychology.—Much has been discovered in recent years regarding the part played by subconscious processes in the production of normal and abnormal phenomena. But we do not as yet know the possibilities and limitations of these processes. We have as yet but an imperfect knowledge of what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they do do, and of the mechanisms by which they are called into play and provoke phenomena.Many pathological phenomenahave been shown to be due to subconscious processes; and it is quite probable that these play an important part in determining the mental processes of normal life, but this is still largely theory. In applied psychology and psychopathology the “subconscious” has been made use of to explain many phenomena with which we havepractically to deal. Assumed as a concept the phenomena are explained by it with a greater or less degree of probability. In thosehysterical conditionswhere the subconscious processes have been shown to be split-off conscious processes, we can often recover memories of the latter and demonstrate their relation to the hysterical phenomena by the various technical methods already mentioned. But where this cannot be done, as is ordinarily the case, some conserved antecedent experience must be inferred as the causal factor and assumed to be the functioning subconscious process which determines the phenomenon. To a large extent, then, in applied psychology and psychopathology the postulation in specific cases of a subconscious process is theoretical and open to more or less doubt. In other words, although a principle may be established, its application, as in all applied sciences, is apt to meet withdifficulties.difficulties.
Now the application of the principle of a subconscious process to the explanation of a given phenomenon is rendered peculiarly difficult because for practical purposes it is not so much the question of a subacting process that is at issue as it is of what particular antecedent experience is concerned in the process. The question is of the causal factor. For example, we may know from general experience in a large number of instances that a given hysterical phenomenon—a tic or a convulsive attack or an hallucination or a dream—must be in all probability determined by a subconscious process derived fromsome conserved experience, but what specific experience may be a matter of considerable uncertainty.Hence the different theories and schools of interpretationthat have arisen. The importance of clearly appreciating the nature of such problems and properly estimating the different theories at their true value is so great that I may be permitted a few words in further explanation.
Let us take dreams as a type. The conscious dream may be made up of fantastic imagery and apparently absurd thoughts without apparent logical meaning. Now from general experience we may believe that the dream is a cryptic symbolic expression of a logical subconscious process—perhaps a wish. The question is, what wish? The symbolism cannot be deciphered on its face. Now, by the analytic method associative memories pertaining to each element of the dream are recovered in abstraction. When a memory of antecedent thoughts of which the dream element is a logical symbolism or synonym and which give an intelligent meaning to the dream is recovered, we infer that these antecedent thoughts are contained in the determining subconscious process. Further, as it is found that certain objects or actions (e. g., snakes, flying, etc.) frequently occur in the dreams of different people as symbolisms of the same thoughts, it is inferred that whenever these objects or actions appear in the dream they are always symbolisms of the same underlying thoughts.
Obviously the mere fact of an antecedent experiencearising as an associative memory is not of itself evidence of its being the causal factor. Hundreds of such memories might be obtained. To have evidential value the memory must give logical meaning to the dream or dream element under investigation. Now, as a matter of fact, more than one memory can often be obtained which answers these conditions. Consequently it becomes a matter of selection from memories, or interpretation, as to which is the correct solution of a given dream problem—andmutatis mutandisof a pathological phenomenon. Naturally the selection is largely determined by personal views anda prioriconcepts. It also follows that if one accepts the universality of a given symbolism and is committed to a given theory one can, by going far enough, find associations in vast numbers of dreams that will support that theory. The correct solution of a dream problem, that is, the correct determination of the specific underlying process, depends upon the correct determination of the causal factor and this must be inferred. The inferential nature of the latter factor therefore introduces a possible source of error. There must frequently be considerable latitude in the interpretation. This is not to gainsay that in a large number of instances the logical relation between antecedent experiences (recovered by associative memories) and the dream is so close and obtrusive that doubt as to the true subconscious process can scarcely be entertained.
An example of a condensedanalysis of a dreamwill illustrate the practical difficulty often presented in determining by clinical methods the correct causal factor and subconscious process of a dream. I select a simple one which consists of two scenes:[112]
"C. was somewhere and saw an old woman who appeared to be aJewess. She was holding abottleand aglass, and seemed to be drinking whisky. Then this woman changed into her ownmother, who had the bottle and glass, and appeared likewise to be drinking whisky.
“Then the door opened and herfatherappeared. He had on herhusband’s dressing gown, and he was holdingtwo sticks of woodin his hand.”
Before interpreting this dream I will state that the subject had been tormented (as was brought out by the associative memories) by the question whether poor people should be condemned if they yielded to temptation, particularly that of drinking. This problem she could not answer satisfactorily to herself. It is the inferred causal factor in the dream process. The dream gave an answer to this problem.
Let me also point out that the material, that is, the elements out of which this dream was constructed (indicated by the words italicized), was found in the thoughts of the dreamer on the preceding day and particularly just before going to sleep. The first scene of the dream ends with the mother drinking whisky: the second scene represents the father appearing with two sticks of wood.For the sake of simplicity of illustration I will confine myself to theinterpretationof this first scene as it will answer our present purposes.
“As to the first scene” (by technical methods of analysis) “a rich collection of memories was obtained. It appeared that on the previous morning the subject had walked with apoor Jewessthrough the slums, and had passed by some men who had beendrinking. This led her to think at the time of the lives of these poor people; of thetemptationsto which they were exposed; of how little we know of this side of life and of itstemptations. She wondered what the effect of such surroundings, particularly of seeing peopledrinking, would have upon the child of the Jewess. She wondered if such people ought to be condemned if they yielded to drink and other temptations. She thought that she herself would not blame such people if they yielded, and that we ought not tocondemnthem. Then in the psychoanalysis there came memories of her mother, whose character she admired and whonever condemned any one. She remembered how her mother, who was an invalid, always had a glass ofwhiskyand water on her table at night, and how the family used to joke her about it. Then came memories again of her husband sendingbottles of whiskyto her mother; of the latterdrinkingit at night; of the men whom she had seen in the slums and who had beendrinking. These, very briefly, were the experiences accompanied by strong feeling tones which were called up as associative memories of this scene of the dream. With these in mind, it is not difficult to construct a logical, though symbolic, meaning of it. In the dreamaJewess (nottheJewess, but a type) is in the act of drinking whisky—in other words, the poor, whom theJewessrepresents, yield to the temptation which the dreamer had thought of with considerable intensity of feeling during the day. The dreamer’s own judgment, after considerable cogitation, had been that such people were not to be condemned. Was she right? The dream answers the question, for the Jewess changes in the dream to her mother, for whose judgment she had the utmost respect. Hermother now drinks the whisky as she had actually done in life, a logical justification (in view of her mother’s fine character and liberal opinion) of her own belief, which was somewhat intensely expressed in her thoughts of that morning, a belief in not condemning poor people who yield to such temptations. The dream scene is therefore the symbolical representation and justification of her own belief,[113]and answers the doubts and scruples that beset her mind.”
Whether or not this is the correct interpretation of this dream depends entirely upon whether the true causal factors were found. If through the analysis this was the case, as I believe—namely, the scruple or ethical problem whether poor people who yield to temptation ought to be condemned—then the interpretation given is logically sound and the dream is an answer to the doubts and scruples that beset the dreamer’s mind. But the answer is a pictorial symbolism and therefore requires an intervening subconscious process which induces and finally expresses itself in the symbolism. We may suppose that this process in response to and as a subconscious incubation of the ethical problem took some form like this: “Poor people like the Jewess are not to be condemned for yielding to the temptation (of drinking) for my mother, who was beyond criticism, showed by her life she would not have condemned them.”
This may or may not be the true subconsciousprocess and the correct interpretation of the dream. But it is one possible and logical interpretation based upon the actually found antecedent experiences and associative memories of the dreamer. Now it so happens that this interpretation and that of other dreams[114]which I endeavored to trace to antecedent experiences have been warmly challenged by certain clinicians because the inferred causal factors were not found to be antecedent repressed sexual wishes. It is insisted on theoretical grounds that the content of the dreams plainly indicated that there must have been such wishes and that if these had been found this dream would have been unfolded as a logical symbolical fulfilment of a sexual wish. Which interpretation is correct is inconsequential for our present purpose. The controversy only relates to the universality of the sexual theory of dreams. The point is that this difference in interpretation shows the possibility of error in the determination of the causal factor and the subconscious process by clinical methods. The dream may be logically related to two or more antecedent experiences and we have no criterion of which is the correct one. To insist upon one or the other savors of pure dogmatism.[115]Indeed, the justification for the postulation in a dream of any subconscious processin the last analysis depends upon the soundness of the postulation of the antecedent experience as the causal factor. If this factor falls to the ground the subconscious process falls with it.
The second point to which this discussion leads us is that the latitude of interpretation allowed by the method of analysis has given rise to different views as to the specific character of the subconscious process found in many dreams. According to the theory of Freud, to whose genius we are indebted for the discovery of this process, it is almost always a sexual wish and the dream is always the imaginary, even though cryptic, fulfilment of that wish. On the other hand, as a result of my own studies, if I may venture to lay weight upon them, I have been forced to the conclusion thata dream may be the symbolical expression of almost any thoughtto which strong emotional tones with their impulsive forces have been linked, particularly anxieties, apprehensions, sorrows, beliefs, wishes, doubts, and scruples, which function subconsciously in the dream. It may be a solution of unsolved problems with which the mind has been occupied,[116]just as in the waking state a mathematical or other problem may be solved subconsciously. In some subjects the problem is particularly apt to be one involving a conflict between opposing impulses,therefore one which has troubled the dreamer.[117]
We have seen that in experimental and spontaneous hallucinatory phenomena, where the causal factor is known, a subconscious process is the essential feature of the mechanism. In this respect the mechanism is identical with that of certain dreams. Indeed, dreams are one type of hallucinatory phenomena. In fact we met with one dream the chief element of which was repeated afterward in the waking state as a vision. We are justified, then, in applying the principle of a subconscious process to the elucidation of thevisions of normal people, although it may be difficult to determine exactly the specific content of the process and the antecedent thought from which it was derived. Sometimes the content of a vision and the known circumstances under which it occurred are sufficient to enable us to interpret the phenomenon with reasonable certainty. In the following historical examples it is not difficult to recognize that the vision was a symbolic answer to a problem which had troubled the conscience of the Archduke Charles of Austria. Unable to solve his problem consciously and come to a decision, it was solved for him by a subconscious process. Indeed, as a fact, the vision was accepted by Charles as an answer to his doubts and perhaps changed the future history of Austria.
“The Archduke Charles (the father of the present Emperor of Austria) was also greatly troubled in his mind as to the right to waive his claim to the crown in favor of his son. According to his own statement he only finally made up his mind when, while earnestly praying for guidance in his perplexity, he hada vision of the spirit of his father, the late Emperor Francis, laying his hand on the head of his youthful grandson and thus putting all his own doubts to rest.”[118]
The likeness in type of the dream which we have just discussed to this vision is instructive. In the former the mother of the dreamer answers the question of conscience by drinking the whisky; in the latter the father of the visualizer does the same by laying his hand on the head of the object of the doubt.
I have already pointed out the evidence for a subconscious process underlying the hallucinatory phenomena of sudden religious conversion.[119]I may further cite here, as an analogous phenomenon, the following historical example of not only hallucinatory symbolism, but ofexplicitly conscious processes of thoughtwhich were elaborated by subconscious processes. It is Margaret Mary’s vision of the Sacred Heart. Margaret earnestly desired (according to her biographer)——
“To be loved by God! and loved by him to distraction (aimé jusqu’à la folie)!—Margaret melted away with love at thethought of such a thing. Like St. Philip of Neri in former times, or like St. Francis Xavier, she said to God: ‘Hold back, O my God, these torrents which overwhelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception.’”
The answer and the form of the fulfilment of this wish came as an hallucination. She had a vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart
“‘surrounded with rays more brilliant than the sun, and transparent like a crystal. The wound which he received on the cross visibly appeared upon it. There was a crown of thorns roundabout this divine Heart, and a cross above it.’ At the same time Christ’s voice told her that, unable longer to contain the flames of his love for mankind, he had chosen her by a miracle to spread the knowledge of them. He thereupon took out her mortal heart, placed it inside of his own and inflamed it, and then replaced it in her breast, adding: ‘Hitherto thou hast taken the name of my slave, hereafter thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of my Sacred Heart.’”[120]
There is scarcely room to doubt, on the strength of the evidence as presented, that the antecedent longings of Margaret impelled by the conative force of their emotions were the causal factor of this vision. These longings, organized in the unconscious, must have gone through subconscious incubation (as William James has pointed out) and then emerged after maturity into consciousness as a symbolic visualization accompanied by hallucinatory words which were the expression of explicit subconscious imagination. Indeed, all suchhallucinatory symbolisms—like the mental phenomena in general of sudden religious conversion—can only be psychologically explained as the emergence into consciousness of subconscious processes. The problem in each case is the determination of the content of the process.[121]
Reflection, consideration, meditation.—We are entering upon more uncertain ground in attempting to apply the mechanism of subconscious processes to every-day thought. There are certain types of thought, however, which behave as if this mechanism were at work. When, for instance, we take a problem “under advisement,” reflect upon it, give it “thoughtful consideration,” it seems as if, in weighing the facts pro and con, in looking at it from different points of view, i.e., in switching it into different settings, in considering all the facts related to it, wevoluntarilyrecall each fact that comes into consciousness. Yet it is quite possible, and indeed I think more than probable, reasoning from analogy, that the processes which present each fact, switch each point of view, or setting into consciousness, are subconscious and that what we do is chiefly to select from those which are thus brought into consciousness the ideas, settings, etc., which fulfil best the requirements of the question. In profound reflection or attention to thought (a form of absentmindedness)it seems as if it were more a matter of attention to and selection from the “free associations” which involuntarily come into the mind than of determining voluntarily what shall come in. If this be so, it is evident that the subconscious plays a much more extensive part in the mechanism of thought than is ordinarily supposed. We have not, however, sufficient data to allow us to do much more than theorize in the matter. Yet there are certain data which suggest the probability of the correctness of this hypothesis. In this connection I would point out how entirely confirmatory of this view is the testimony of the hypnotic consciousness which was cited in the previous lecture and which I will ask you to recall. You will remember that this testimony was to the effect that when a problem was under consideration associative memories required for its solution kept emerging out of the unconscious into the secondary consciousness.[122]
Consider certain facts of every-day experience. A novel and difficult question is put up to us for decision. We have, we will say, to decide whether a certain piece of property situated in a growing district of a city shall be sold or held for future development: or a political manager has to decide whether or not to pursue a certain policy to win an election; or the President of the United States has to decide the policy of the government in certain land questions in Alaska. Now each of us would probably say that we could not decide such a questionoffhand; we would want time for consideration. If we attempted voluntarily, at the moment the question is put, to recall to mind all the different facts involved, to consider the given question from all aspects, to switch the main facts into their different settings, we would find it an impossible thing to do. We consequently take the matter “under advisement,” to use the conventional expression. We want time. Now what we apparently, and I think undoubtedly, do is to put the problemintoour minds and leave it, so to speak, to incubate. Then, from time to time, as we take up the matter for consideration, the various facts involved in the different aspects of the question, and belonging to their different settings, arise to mind. Then we weigh, compare, and estimate the value of these different facts and arrive at a judgment. All happens as if subconscious processes had been at work, as if the problem had been going through a subconscious incubation, switching in this and switching in that set of facts, and presenting them to consciousness, the final selection of the deciding point of view being left to the latter. The subconscious garners from the storehouse of past experiences, those which have a bearing on the question and are required for its solution, brings them into consciousness, and then our logical conscious processes form the judgment. The degree to which subconscious processes in this way take part in forming judgments would vary according to the mental habits of the individual, the complexity of the problem, the affectivity and conflicting characterof the elements involved. Under this theory we see that there is a deeper psychological basis for the every-day practice of taking “under advisement” or “into consideration” a matter, before giving judgment, than would appear on the surface. There is considerable experimental evidence in favor of this theory. In discussing above the subconscious solution of problems I cited certain evidence, obtained from the memories of subjects in hypnosis, for coconscious and unconscious processes taking part in such solutions. I have been able to accumulate evidence of this kind showing the coöperation of processes outside of consciousness in determining the point of view and final judgment of the subject when a matter has been under advisement; particularly when the subject has been disturbed by doubts and scruples. It is plain that in the final analysis any question on which we reserve our judgment is a problem which we putintoour minds. And, after all,it is only a question of degree and affectivity between the state of mind which hesitates to decide an impersonal question, like a judicial decision, and one that involves a scruple of conscience. This latter state often eventuates in hallucinatory and other phenomena involving subconscious processes. Scruples of conscience, it is true, usually have strong affective elements as constituents, but the former may also have them, particularly when involving personal ambitions, political principles, etc.