LECTURE XVIGENERAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS
The awakening of intense emotional impulses we have seen tends to intensify certain activities and to inhibit other conflicting ones. Further when that which is inhibited is a sentiment possessing an intense emotion the sentiment tends to become dissociated[245]from the personal consciousness and freeto become by the force of its own emotional dispositions a subconscious process. As a consequence of these tendencies there may result a number of psycho-physiological conditions of personality with some of which we should become familiar. They are observable, as would be expected, in every-day life, and when highly accentuated become pathological phenomena. Let us now consider some of them in detail.
Contraction of the field of consciousness and of personality.—In every-day life intense emotion excludes from the field of awareness thoughts that are unrelated, antagonistic to and incompatible with the ideas exciting the emotion, and perceptions of the environment that ordinarily would enter awareness. The field of consciousness is thereby contracted and limited to thoughts excited by or associated with the emotion. Thus, for example, in the heat of anger the mind is dominated by the particular object or thought which gave rise to the anger, or by anger exciting associated ideas. Conflicting memories and correlated knowledge that would modify the point of view and judgment and mollify (inhibit) the anger are suppressed and cannot enter the focus of attention. Further, a person in such a state may not perceive many ocular, auditory, tactile, and other impressions coming from the environment; he may not see the people about him, hear what is said, or feel what is done to him, or only in an imperfect way. All these sensations are eitheractually inhibited or prevented from entering awareness (dissociated) by the conflicting conative force of the emotion. In other words there is a dissociation (or inhibition) of consciousness and consequent contraction of its field to certain emotional ideas.
To take a concrete example, you are playing a game of cards and with zest throw yourself into the game. Something happens to arouse your anger. At once there is a conflict: The impulsive force of your pugnacity instinct meets with the impulsive force of your play instinct and its pleasure feelings. If the former is the stronger, the latter with the ideas to which it is linked are inhibited, repressed, driven out of consciousness. The pleasure of play ceases and its impulses no longer determine your thoughts. Further, you forget the cards that have been played though you knew them well a moment before, you may forget your manners, become oblivious to social etiquette and the environment. You can no longer reason on the play of the cards; you forget your card knowledge. All these processes are inhibited, and consequently the field of consciousness and personality becomes contracted.
On the other hand, the emotion of anger dominating the mind, ideas associated with or which tend to carry your pugnacity instinct to fruition, arise and direct and determine your conduct. Habit reactions are likely to come automatically into play, and you break out into angry denunciatory speech,if that is your habit. I leave you to fill out the details of the picture for yourselves.
And yet, again through training in self-control, a self-regarding sentiment conflicting with the anger impulse may be awakened, and the latter in turn be dominated, repressed, inhibited.
In the case of an intense fear it is common observation that this contraction may reach a high degree. In the excitement of a railroad accident the frightened passenger does not feel the bruising and pain which he otherwise would suffer, nor hear the shrieks of his fellow passengers nor perceive but a small part of what is occurring about him, but driven only by the intensely motivating idea of escape from danger he struggles for safety. His field of consciousness is limited to the few ideas of danger, escape, and the means of safety. All else is dissociated by the conative force of the emotion and cannot enter the focus of attention. He could not philosophize on the accident if he would. In ordinary concentration of attention or absent-mindedness the same phenomenon of contraction of the field of consciousness occurs occasioned by interest; but with cessation of interest the field of awareness quickly widens. So in contraction of this field from emotion the normal is restored so soon as the emotion ceases.
When this same general contraction of the field of consciousness, effected by the repressing force of emotion, reaches a certain acme we have a pathologicalcondition—thehysterical state. The field of consciousness is now occupied by the single dissociating idea or complex of ideas with its emotion that did the repressing—a condition of mono-ideism. All other conscious processes are inhibited or dissociated. When the complex is an intensely emotional one, its nervous energy, now unbridled, is free to discharge itself in many directions, perhaps producing convulsive phenomena of one kind or another.
To attribute these effects of emotion to repressionfrom conflictis only to express the facts in different terms. But it would be often an over-emphasis to describe what takes place as a specific conflict between particular sentiments. It is often rather the discharge of a blind impulsive force in every direction which, like a blast of dynamite, suppresses or dissociates every other process which might come into consciousness and displace it.
Systematized dissociation.—Quite commonly the dissociated field, by whatever force isolated, instead of being general may be systematized. By this is meant that only certain perceptions, or groups or categories of ideas that have been organized into a system, or have associative relations, are prevented from entering the personal synthesis. In other respects the conscious processes may be normal. The simplest type is probably systematized anesthesia, exemplified in every-day life in anyone who fails to perceive his eye-glasses,or any other object he is in search of that is lying under his nose on the table before him; and by the post-hypnotic phenomenon exhibited by the subject who fails to perceive amarkedplaying card or to hear or see a given person, though he perceives all the other cards in the pack and everyone else in the room; and by the hysteric who likewise fails to perceive certain systematized sensations, such as the printing on a page which, itself, therefore appears blank. That which is dissociated in these examples is a comparatively very simple complex, but it may involve larger and larger groups of remembrances, perceptions, sentiments (with their emotions and feelings), settings, attitudes, instincts, and other innate dispositions, etc., organized into a system about the sentiment of self. Such groups and systems may, as we saw when studying the organization of complexes (Lecture IX), be dissociated in that they cease to take part in the functioning of the personality. The personality becomes thereby contracted.
1. The principle involved is this: When a specific idea or psycho-physiological function (memory, sensation, perception, instinct) is by any force dissociated, the exiled idea or function tends to carry with itself into seclusion other ideas and functions with which it is systematized. The dissociation is apt to involve much more than the particular psychological element in question in that it “robs” the personal consciousness of much else. I have alreadycited in a previous lecture (p. 318) examples of this principle. I need merely remind you of the observation with Miss B., where the systematized dissociation of auditory images pertaining to the experimenter carried with it the associated secondary visual images of him necessary for tactile perception of his hand. Similarly, in B. C. A., the general dissociation of tactile images carried with it the secondary visual images necessary for the visualization of her body. A large number of examples drawn from all kinds of dissociative phenomena might be given. I will content myself with mentioning two or three more: In automatic writing the dissociated muscular control of the hands usually robs the personal consciousness, so far as the hand is concerned, of all sensory perception, and in automatic speech the dissociation of the faculty of speech often robs the personal consciousness of the auditory perception of the subject’s own voice. In hysterics, the specific dissociation of one class of perceptions carries away others systematized with them. In systematized anesthesia it is often easy to recognize this fact. A good example of this is that recorded in the case of Miss B., who, believing she had lost her finger rings, not only could not be made to see or feel them, but also not even the ribbon on which they were hung round her neck, or to hear them click together, or to feel the tug of the ribbon when I pulled it.[246]The perceptions of these associated sensations were therefore also withdrawn.The same principle can be demonstrated by suggestion in suitable subjects. Thus, for example, I suggest to one of these subjects in hypnosis that she will forget an episode associated with a certain person named “August.” After waking she has amnesia not only for the episode but for the name of the person and for the word in its other meanings, e. g., the name of a calendar month. She cannot recall that a month intervenes between July and September.
In these examples the source of the dissociating force is not in every case obvious. But this need not concern us now. What I want to point out is that when the dissociation is the consequence of an emotional discharge the same principle frequently comes into play, the same phenomenon of systematization is of common occurrence. It may be recognized with considerable exactness when a conflict between sentiments has been artificially created. Thus the phenomenon, described in the last lecture (p. 476), of inhibition of sentiments by a self-suggested antagonistic sentiment, may equally well be cited in evidence of this principle. Similarly, O. N. suggested to herself a sentiment antagonistic to a specific sentiment which she previously entertained regarding a particular person. Not only was the latter sentiment dissociated but a number of other allied sentiments systematized around the same person were also incidentally and unintentionally repressed and withdrawn from consciousness, so muchso that her whole point of view was altered.[247](It was easy in hypnosis by the procedures already stated to synthesize the sentiments at will so as to drive out, with suggested antagonistic sentiments, the undesired ones. The change of viewpoint and feeling after waking from hypnosis was often quite dramatic.)
2. By this mechanism we can explain the dissociation of large systems of sentiments leaving a contracted personality—a mere extract of its former self—dissociated and distinguished from what it was by different sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions.[248]The facts seem to show that the awakening of the emotional impulses of certain sentiments inhibits, not only those particular antagonistic sentiments with which the former are incompatible, but large systems of sentiments, and many instincts and other innate dispositions with which the inhibited sentiments are systematized. The contracted self may or may not be able to recall to memory the fact of having previously experienced the dissociated sentiments. But whether so or notthe latter no longer functionally participate in the personality.
This mechanism, to be sure, is an interpretation but the facts are easily demonstrated. Minor types of such dissociations result in what we have described as “moods.” More extreme types are pathological and characterized as phases of personality.
3. The contrast of the sentiments in such moods and phases with the habitual sentiments having identically the same objects is striking. In other words the object is organized with an entirely different group of emotions (instincts). The subject’s sentiment of husband or wife or father or son no longer contains the emotions of love and reverence, etc.; but, perhaps, there are organized within it the emotions of anger, hatred, contempt, etc. A self-regarding sentiment of self-subjection with shame, “feelings” of inadequacy and depression may be substituted for self-assertion, pride, self-respect, etc. These clinical facts are matters of observation. B——n suffers from constantly recurring and very intense attacks of asthma which have certain characteristics which stamp it as an hysterical tic. In the attacks it is noticeable that her personality and disposition—normally amiable, gentle, and affectionate—undergo a change. The parental instinct and sentiments of affection for her family, of whom she is very fond, of modesty, of pride, of consideration for others, etc., disappear and arereplaced by others of an opposite character. Fear, anger, and resentment are easily aroused, etc. B. C. A. in phase B of personality knew nothing of remorse, self-reproach, or despair which characterized the normal phase, and experienced only emotions and feelings of pleasure and happiness.[249]
Janet, with his customary accuracy in observing facts, has noted these changes, although I think in his attempt at interpretation he has not quite recognized the mechanism by which they are brought about. “With Renée,” this author remarks, when noting the facts, “we have gradually seen disappearing the taste for finery; her coquetry—vanity, even—disappeared. With others, the love of property is gone; they lose all that belongs to them and do not care. Bertha formerly had great timidity; she now wonders at the loss of it. She goes and comes at night; she looks at dead bones of which she was afraid in past years, and asks: ‘Why does all this make no impression on me now?’ Marie, especially, is very curious as to that. She takes no longer any interest in things or people. Overwhelmed with misfortunes, consequences of her malady, and, after having been in comfortable circumstances, reduced to extreme poverty, she does not perceive that her situation is serious. She loses money, when she has only a few pennies left; she mislays her clothing, can scarcely keep on the dressshe is wearing and does not seem to trouble herself about it in the least. Yet we observe that she is still intelligent and might provide against her situation. She does so very little, and only wonders at her indifference. ‘Formerly I took care of my things; now I do not.’ There are some still more characteristic facts to be observed in this patient. Formerly she loved her husband and was even quite jealous about him. She was devoted to her two children. Since her illness she has gradually abandoned her children, who have been reared by her sisters, and she finally left her husband. For the last three years, instead of her former happy life, she leads about Paris the most miserable existence. Not once did she inquire about her husband or her children. She heard indirectly of the former’s death. ‘Strange!’ she said, ‘it does not affect me in the least; yet, I assure you, it does not make me happy, either ... I simply don’t care.’ ‘But if we were to tell you that your little Louis [it was her favorite child] is dead, too?’ ‘How do you suppose it can affect me? I have forgotten him!’”[250]
4. Janet, when interpreting such phenomena, attributes them to “psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality cannot synthesize more than a certain number of emotions and ideas to form the personal self-consciousness. It certainly cannot perform the synthesis involved in retaining certain formerly possessed sentiments, etc.,but it is not because offeebleness. Many hysterics can synthesize quite asmanypsychological elements as a normal person, but not sentiments and emotions of a certaincharacter, i.e., those which pertain to certain experiences, to certain systems of remembrances. M. Janet has quite correctly pointed out that, in spite of the apathy and lack of emotionality of hysterics in certain directions,—which, I would insist, in the last analysis means the absence ofparticularsentiments and instincts—in other directions these patients are “extremely excitable and susceptible of very exaggerated emotions,” which in turn means the retention of particular sentiments and instincts. These last dominate the personality. Here is the key to the enigma.
From this point of view, the effect of the impulsive force of the dominating emotions has been misinterpreted by M. Janet. These emotions are the causal factors in determining the apathy, i.e., absence of particular sentiments and instincts, and explainwhythey cannot be brought within the personal synthesis. If we bear in mind that emotion means discharge of force, an adequate explanation of such phenomena in a great many instances, at least, is to be found in the principle of conflict and dissociation. The conflict is between the impulsive forces of the emotions pertaining either to antagonistic instincts or to sentiments organized within different systems. With the excitation of emotion, instincts and sentiments which have opposing conative tendencies are inhibited, repressed, or dissociated,and with them the systems with which they are organized. The emotion does not so much cause “psychological feebleness” in consequence of which the personality cannot synthesize sentiments, as it inhibits and dissociates antagonistic sentiments, etc., which consequently cannot be synthesized. Theresultyou may call “feebleness” if you like.
Hence it is that hysterics present the seeming paradox of having, as M. Janet observed, “in reality fewer emotions than is generally thought and [in] that their principal character is here, as it is always, a diminution of psychological phenomena. These patients are in general very indifferent, at least to all that is not directly connected with a small number of fixed ideas.” According to the view which we are maintaining, the “fewer emotions” are due to the dissociation of many sentiments and instincts by the dominating emotional complex.
5. Let us not forget that this explanation is a matter of interpretation, but the interpretation comports with what is common observation of what happens when a new emotion which is incompatible with an existing emotion (fear—anger) is excited. In the case of Miss B., the alternation of the personality coincident with the excitation of an emotion occurred with such frequency, not to say with regularity, that there seemed to be no room to doubtthe causal factor and the mechanism.[251]Sometimes the dissociation resulted in the formation of new phases of personality in which Miss B. reverted to a past epoch of time in which she lived once more, the experiences of all later epochs being dissociated; sometimes in phases with a very contracted field of consciousness without orientation in time or place and with little knowledge of self or environment; sometimes—and in these instances the dissociation of organized systems could most clearly be recognized—in the substitution of one of the already established phases (BI, BIV, or BIII) for another. It is not always easy without intensive study, to determine the exact sentiment or instinct which is responsible for the dissociation, although the actual occurrence of the emotional state just preceding the development of the phenomenon is obtrusively obvious. “At various times as a result of emotionally disintegrating circumstances” at least eight different phases were observed in addition to the three regularly recurrent phases.[252]
In B. C. A. the gradual organization through the circumstances of life of a group of “rebellious” ideas, in which the dominating sentiments and instincts were intensely antagonistic to those previously peculiar to the subject, could be clearly determined. So antagonistic was this group that it was known as the rebellious complex but termedB complex for convenience. It became by successive accretions a large system and phase of personality. The details are too extensive to enter into at this time; suffice it to say that as the result of what is called an “emotional shock” the B system came into being. This interpreted means that the shock was really the excitation of the rebellious sentiments and other emotions belonging to the B system; there was a conflict; the habitual sentiments and the system to which they belonged were inhibited and replaced by the former (B). Later the displaced sentiments and their corresponding A system were awakened, the emotions giving rise to another shock, a conflict, and the B system, in turn, was inhibited. And so it could be recognized that alternations of systems could be evoked by the alternate excitation of sentiments and instincts—or complexes, if you prefer the term—pertaining to each.
6. This summary of the phenomena of conflict inducing dissociation of personality would be incomplete if thedissociations effected by entirely subconscious processeswere not mentioned. These can be very neatly studied with coconscious personalities, as such personalities can give very precise information of the mode by which the displacement of the primary personality is effected. In the cases of Miss B. and B. C. A. “Sally” and “B,” respectively, have done this. It appears, according to this testimony, that coconscious “willing”or strong conation, even simply a wish to inhibit the principal consciousness, would effect that result. Thus, for instance, B testified: “When A is present I can ‘come’ voluntarily by willing, i.e., blot A out and then I ‘come.’... By willing I mean I would say to A: ‘... Go away’: ‘Get out of the way’: ‘Let me come: Iwillcome,’ and then A disappeared. She was gone and I was there. It was almost instantaneous.... Sometimes the wish to change would blot out A without actual willing.”
In the case of Miss B. similar testimony of the effect of coconscious willing and wishes was obtained.
When the coconscious wishes, sentiments, etc., are not synthesized into a large self-conscious system (i.e., coconscious personality) which can give direct testimony as to thesubconscioussubconsciousconflicts, the former and the process which they incite must be inferred from known antecedent factors and the observed phenomena of inhibition or dissociation. That general and systematized dissociation are phenomena which can be, and frequently are, induced by the conative force of purely subconscious processes, in view of the multiform data offered by hysterics can be open to no manner of doubt. The process may be also formulated in terms of conflict.
Laws governing the lines of cleavage of personality.—In systematized dissociation there is a cleavage between certain organized systems of experiences andfunctions and the remainder of the personality. The contracted personality is consequently shorn of much. But we understand only very incompletely the laws which determinethe direction of the line of cleavageand the consequent extent of the dissociated field. Unquestionably this follows the law of organization of complexes in a general way, but not wholly so. For instance, it is impossible by this law or by any known mechanism to explain the anesthesia which sometimes, apparently spontaneously, appears in certain hypnotic states. A given subject, e. g., B. C. A., is simply hypnotized by suggestion and successively falls into two different states. In one state the subject is found to be completely anesthetic and in the other normally esthetic. The subject is one and the same and the dissociating suggestion, which is the same in each case, contains nothing specifically related to sensation; and yet the line of cleavage is within the field of sensation in the one case and without it in the other; i.e., that which is dissociated includes the sensory field in the one state and not in the other. Similarly when the disaggregation of personality is brought about by the force of a conflicting emotion, the resulting hysterical state or dissociated personality may be robbed of certain sensory or motor functions, although these functions are not as far as we can see logically related to the emotion or the ideas coupled with it. Thus a person receives an emotional shock and develops a one-sided anesthesia and paralysis—a very common phenomenon.Louis Vivé used to pass into one state in which he had left hemiplegia and into another in which he had right hemiplegia, another with paraplegia. Each state had its own systematized memories, but why each had its own and different motor and sensory dissociations cannot be explained. In Miss B. the dissociation which resulted in the formation of the secondary personality, Sally, withdrew, without apparent rhyme or reason, the whole general field of sensations so that Sally was completely anesthetic.[253]The sensory functions seemed to be wantonly ejected along with the repressed complexes of ideas.Per contra, by the same process which results in dissociation, lost functions are often paradoxically synthesized. Mrs. E. B. and Mrs. R., anesthetic when “awake,” are found to be normally esthetic in hypnosis; i.e., the sensory functions are spontaneously synthesized with the hypnotic personality. In other words, in hypnosis the personal synthesis is in this respect more normal than in the “waking” state.
Again, when amnesia results it may cover a past epoch—retrograde amnesia—without obvious reason for the chronological line of cleavage. In short the suppression by dissociation of a specific psychological element—remembrance, perception, sentiment, etc.—not only tends to rob the personality of a whole psychological system in which it is organized but of other faculties, the relation ofwhich to the specifically dissociated element is obscure. It seems as if the dissociation sometimes followed physiological as well as psychological lines.[254]It is in accordance with this principle that instincts and sentiments which are not immediately concerned in the specific conflict nor antagonistic to the dissociating emotion are often suppressed. Thus it is that hysterics, as we have seen by examples, have lost so many emotions (instincts) and the sentiments involving them, though they are so excitable to the emotions that are retained. In the case of B. C. A. the secondary personality B, the resultant (as I interpret the case) of the conflict between the play instinct and sentiments of duty, responsibility, etc., lost the parental instinct with the emotion of tender feeling (McDougall) and that of fear, with their corresponding sentiments. She was shockingly devoid of filial and maternal love and, indeed, of affection, in the true sense, for her friends. Likewise Sally (in the case of Miss B.), also the product of conflict between the impulses of the play instinct and those of the religious emotions, was entirely devoid of fear, of the sexual, and of certain other instincts not antagonistic to the dominating play instinct. She had lost also a great many, if not all, sentiments involving the tender feeling. As in the examples given of dissociation of motor, sensory, and other functions, the dissociative line ofcleavage had excluded more than was engaged in the conflict. Of course, there always must be some reason for the direction taken by any line of cleavage, following the application of force, whether the fracture be of a psycho-physiological organism or of a piece of china; but when the conditions are as complex as they are in the human organism their determination becomes a difficult problem. When we come to study multiple personality we shall see that the suppression of instincts plays an important rôle.
Amnesia.—It is a general rule that when a person passes from a condition of extreme dissociation to the normal state there is a tendency foramnesiato supervene for the previous dissociated state (multiple personalities, epileptic and hysterical fugues, hypnotic and dream states, etc.). Likewise in everyday life it frequently happens, when the dissociation effected by emotion results in an extremely retracted field of consciousness, that, after this emotional state has subsided and the normal state has been restored, memory for the excited retracted state, including the actions performed, is abolished or impaired. Even criminal acts committed in highly emotional states (anger, “brain storms,” etc.) may be forgotten afterwards. In other words, in the normal state there is in turn a dissociation of the residua of the excited state. The experiences of this latter state are not lost, however, but only dissociated in that they cannot be synthesized withthe personal consciousness and thereby reproduced as memory. That they may be still conserved as neurographic residua is shown in those cases suitable for experimental investigation where they can be reproduced by artificial devices (hypnotism, abstraction, etc.).
Thus B. C. A. could not recall a certain emotional experience although it made a tremendous impression upon her, disrupted her personality, and induced her illness. In other respects her memory was normal. Janet has described this amnesia following emotional shocks, notably in the classical case of Mme. D.
1. On first thought it seems strange that a person cannot remember such an important experience as that, for example, of B. C. A., when for all else the memory is normal. That this experience had awakened conflicting ideas and intense, blazing emotions with great retraction of the field of consciousness of the moment is shown by the history. Later there was found to be a hiatus in the memory, the amnesia beginning and ending sharply at particular points, shortly before and shortly after this experience. In other words, the extremely dissociated and retracted emotional field could not be synthesized with the personal consciousness or, one might say, with the sentiment of self. In hypnosis, however, this could be done and the memory recovered. Freud has proposed an ingenious theory involvinga particular mechanism by which such amnesic effects are produced. According to this theory the dissociated experience cannot be recalled because it is so painful that it cannot be tolerated by consciousness; i.e., attempted emergence as memory meets with the resistance of conflicting subconscious thoughts, acting as a censor or guardian, and the experience is repressed and prevented from entering consciousness. (It would be, perhaps, within the scope of this theory to say that the impulsive force of the conflicting sentiments (involving pride and self-respect and the instinct of anger) awakened at the moment of the experience continued more or less subconsciously to repress the memory of the whole experience.)
2. If expressed in the following form I think the theory would equally well explain such amnesias, be in conformity with certain known hypnotic phenomena and, perhaps, be more acceptable: An experienced desire not to face, or think of, i.e., to recall to memory, a certain painful experience is conserved in the usual way. When an attempt is made to recall the episodethis desire becomes an active subconscious processand inhibits the memory process. The analogue of this we have in posthypnotic amnesia induced by suggestion. In the hypnotic state the suggestion is given that the subject after waking shall have forgotten a certain experience, a name, or an episode. After wakingthe conative force[255]of the suggested idea, functioningentirely subconsciously(as there is complete forgetfulness for the hypnotic state), inhibits the memory of the test experience in that there is found to be amnesia for the latter. One may say there has been a subconscious conflict followed by inhibition of one of the belligerents. That antecedent thoughts of the individual can likewise become activated as subconscious processes and come into conflict with other processes and inhibit them, thus preventing them from becoming conscious, we have already seen. The antagonism of the motives in the two processes is often obvious. Numerous examples of inhibitions (induced by conflicts with subconscious ideas, emotions, and conations) of mental processes which could afterwards be recalled to memory in a secondary state of personality have been recorded in the case of Miss B.[256]Likewise in B. C. A. similar phenomena were testified to as due to subconscious conflicts.[257]There would seem to be no question therefore of either the occurrence of subconscious conflicts or their efficiency in producing amnesia.
3. However all this may be, there is no need for us now to enter into the question of mechanisms. Certain it is, though, that we often forget what we want to forget, which means memories that are unpleasant; and certain types of pathological amnesia answer to the Freudian mechanism or some modification of it. Certain amnesias undoubtedly follow deliberate wishes to put certain experiences out of mind, just as they follow hypnotic suggestions that they shall be forgotten. A very neat example is that of the observation previously given (Lecture III, p.74) of the subject who, in a moment of despair and resentment against criticism, expressed a wish to forget her own marriage name, and lo! and behold! on waking the next day she found she could not recall it. But amnesias of this kind differ in an important respect from the classical amnesias of hysteria. In the latter variety the dissociation is so extensive that reproduction cannot be effected by any associated idea of the personal consciousness; for reproduction another state of consciousness (hypnosis, alteration of personality, etc.) with which the forgotten experience is synthesized must be obtained or the subconscious must be tapped. In the former variety although the reproduction cannot be effected through an idea with which it stands in affectively painful association, it can be by some other indifferent idea or complex with which it is systematized. For instance, in the case of the phobia for the ringing of bells in a tower which we have studied, the originalepisode could not be recalled in association with the object of the phobia, notwithstanding that this object was an element in the episode, but it was readily recalled in association with contemporary events of the subject’s life. In the case of C. D., who had experienced a painful episode of fainting the same amnesic relations obtained.
4. On the other hand there are other forms of amnesia which theFreudian mechanism is totally inadequate to explain, or of which it offers only a partial explanation. I refer to the persisting amnesias of reproduction exemplified by much of the common forgetfulness of every-day life (often due to dis-interest); by the amnesias for whole systems of experiences in hypnotic states, in different phases of multiple personality, fugues, and deliria; by certain retrograde, general, and continuous amnesias of hysteria, alcoholic amnesia, etc. In some of these the amnesia is a dissociation of systems undoubtedly effected by the force of emotional impulses discharged by antagonistic complexes. This is to view the amnesia from its psychological aspect. But it may also be viewed from itscorrelated physiological aspect.
Let us note first that reproduction is a synthetic process which requires some sort of dynamic association between the neurogram underlying an idea present in the personal consciousness and the conserved neurograms of a past experience. From this view we may in the future find the explanation ofamnesia (resulting from the dissociative effect of emotion) in the configuration of the physical paths of residua traveled and engraved by an emotional experience. The emotional discharge may have prevented an associative path of residua being established with the dissociated experience.[258]
5. Amnesia is too large a subject for us to go into its mechanisms at this time and we are not called upon to do so. It is enough to point outthe different forms of amnesiawhich at times are the resultants of emotion. Inasmuch as experiences are organized in complexes and still further in large systems, which include settings (that give meaning to the particular experiences) and other associated sentiments, instincts and other innate dispositions, the dissociation of a single experience may involve a large complex of experiences, or a whole system of such, and result either in a simple amnesia alone or in an alteration of personality accompanied by amnesia. Such amnesias are generally classified aslocalized,systematized,general, orcontinuous.
6. The first, as it seems to me, is also in principle systematized, the distinction being clinical rather than psychological. Bylocalizedis meant an amnesia extending over an epoch of time. Thus, in the instance already cited, Miss B. suddenly found that she could not recall a single moment of a particular day, although previously she had remembered well the incidents, owing to a distressing experience the memory of which had tormented her during the whole day. The amnesia was localized in time. It was the result of a suggestion which I gave in hypnosis that the painful experience only should be forgotten; but unexpectedly the remembrances of the whole day disappeared. In other words, the dissociation of a particular remembrance robbed the personal consciousness of all other remembrances with which it was systematized. That it was so systematized was made evident by the fact that throughout the course of the day it had so dominated her mind that she was continuously under its emotional influence. The amnesia was therefore not only localized butsystematizedwith the day’s experiences. It is to be noted that the hypnotic suggestion necessarily exerted its dissociating force subconsciously after waking.
Similarly in multiple personality, one alternating phase often has complete amnesia for the preceding epoch belonging to another phase. This amnesia may extend over a period of from a few minutes to years, according to the length of time that the second phase was in existence. It is therefore localized.But it is also systematized, not in the sense of relating to only a particular category of remembrances, such as those of a particular object—father, child, etc.—but in the sense of bearing upon all the experiences organized within a large system of sentiments, instincts, settings, etc., characteristic of the second personality. With the dissociation of this system the remembrances of its experiences go, too. Undoubtedly the dissociating force is that of the awakened sentiments, etc., of the succeeding phase. These are always antagonistic to those of the dissociated phase, although those of the one are not necessarily painful to the other. They are simply incompatible with one another, and it may quite well be that their force is subconsciously discharged. Systematized amnesia, on the other hand, may not be localized, bearing as it may only on a particular category of remembrances, let us say of a foreign language with which the subject previously was familiar.
7. Theretrogradetype of localized amnesia is common following emotional shocks. The case of Mme. D., made classical by Charcot and Janet, is a very excellent example. This woman lost not only all memory of the painful emotional state into which she was thrown by the brutal announcement of her husband’s death, but of theprecedingsix weeks. The amnesia for the episode might be accounted for on the theory of conflict, but it is difficult to explain the retrograde extension unless it be there wassome systematization covering the six weeks’ period within the mental life of the patient not disclosed by the examination.
General and continuous amnesia, the one covering the whole previous life of the subject, the other for events as fast as they are experienced, also, though rarely, occur as the sequence of emotion.
Subconscious traumatic memories.—When an emotional complex has once been organized by an emotional trauma and more or less dissociated from the personality by the conflicting emotional impulses, it is conserved as a neurogram more or less isolated. The fact of amnesia for the experience is evidence of its isolation in that it cannot be awakened and synthesized with the personal consciousness. Now, given such an isolated neurogram, observation shows that it may be excited to autonomous subconscious activity by associative stimuli of one kind or another. It thus becomes an emotional subconscious memory-process and may by further incubation and elaboration induce phenomena of one kind or another.
This is readily understood when it is remembered that such a memory, or perhaps more precisely speaking its neurogram, is organized with one or more emotional dispositions (instincts) and these dispositions by their impulsive forces tend when stimulated to awaken the memory and carry its ideas to fulfillment. The subconscious memory thus acquires a striving to fulfil its aim. We ought todistinguish in this mechanism between the isolation of the neurogram and that of the process. The former is antecedent to the latter.
The phenomena which may be induced by such a subconscious memory may be of all kinds such as we have seen are induced by subconscious processes and emotions—hallucinations, various motor phenomena, disturbances of conscious thought, dreams and those phenomena which we have seen are the physiological and psychological manifestation of emotion and its conflicts, etc.
Undoubtedly themental feebleness, manifested by a feeling of exhaustion or fatigue, which so frequently is the sequel of intense conscious emotion, favors the excitation to activity of such subconscious autonomous processes or memory when antecedent isolation has occurred. This enfeeblement of personality probably is the more marked the larger the systems included in the dissociation. Certain it is that in fatigued states, whether induced by physical or mental “storm and stress,” subconscious processes become more readily excited. The greater the dissociation the greater the mental instability and liability to autonomous processes. Time and again it was noted, for instance in the case of Miss B. and B. C. A., that when the primary personality was exhausted by physical and emotional strain, the subconscious personality was able to manifest autonomous activity producing all sorts of phenomena (when it could not do so in conditions of mental health) even to inhibiting the whole primarypersonality.[259]The direct testimony of the subconscious personality was to the same effect.
Mental confusion.—Fortunate is the person who has never felt embarrassment when the attention of others has been directed to himself, or when some act or thought which he wished to conceal has become patent to others, or when called upon without warning to make a speech in public. Unless one is endowed with extraordinary self-assurance he will become, under such or similar circumstances, bashful, self-conscious, and shy, his thought confused, and he will find it difficult to respond with ready tongue. Associated ideasà proposof the matter in hand fail to enter consciousness, his thoughts become blocked even to his mind becoming a blank; he hesitates, stammers, and stands dumb, or too many ideas, in disorderly fashion and without apparent logical relation, crowd in and he is unable to make selection of the proper words. In short, his mind becomes confused, perhaps even to the extent of dizziness. The ideas that do arise are inadequate and are likely to be inappropriate, painful, and perhaps suspicious. The dominating emotion is early reinforced by the awakening of its ally, the fear instinct, with all its physiological manifestations. Then tremor, palpitation, perspiration, and vasomotor disturbances break out. Shame may be added to the emotional state.
1. This reaction becomes intelligible if we regard it as one of conflict resulting in painful bashfulness and shame, inhibition of thought; the excitation of painful ideas, amnesia, and limitation of the field of consciousness. The self-regarding sentiment is awakened and dominates the content of consciousness. The conflict is primarily between two instincts organized within this sentiment—that of self-abasement (negative self-feeling) and that of self-assertion (positive self feeling). The impulsive force of the former, awakened by the stimulus of the situation—let us say the presence and imagined criticism of others—opposes and contends with that of the latter which is excited by the desire of the person to display his powers and meet the occasion. The result of the struggle between the two impulses is emotional agitation orbashfulness. If this bashfulness is “qualified by the pain of baffled positive self feeling” there results the emotion of shame.[260]But these emotional states are not the whole consequences of the conflict. Almost always fear comes to the rescue as a biological reaction for the protection of the individual and impels to flight. The impulsive force of this instinct is now united to that of self-abasement and the conjoined force inhibits or blocks the development of ideas, memories, and speech symbols appropriate to the occasion and dissociates many perceptions of theenvironment. On the other hand, the self-regarding sentiment evokes various associative abasing ideas of self and related memories. The victim is fortunate if unfounded suspicions and other painful thoughts (through which criticism of self is imagined and the situation falsely interpreted) do not arise. Or there may be an oscillation of ideas corresponding to the conflicting sentiments and instincts. A person in such a condition experiences mental confusion and embarrassment. The condition is often loosely spoken of as self-consciousness and shyness.
2. Painfully emotionalself-consciousnessof this type as the sequence of special antecedent psychogenetic factors is frequently met with as an obsession. Then fear, with its physiological manifestations, is always an obtrusive element. Individuals who suffer from this psychosis sometimes cannot even come into the presence of strangers or any public situation without experiencing an attack of symptoms such as I have somewhat schematically described. The phenomena may be summarized as bashfulness, emotion of fear, inhibition, dissociation, limitation of the field of consciousness, ideas of self, confusion of thought and speech, inappropriate and delayed response, delusions of suspicion, tremor, palpitation, etc.
The symptomatic structure of the psychoneuroses.—When studying the physiological manifestations of emotion (Lecture XIV), we saw how a large variety ofdisturbances of bodily functions, induced by the discharge of emotional impulses, may be organized into a symptom-complex which might, if repeatedly stimulated, recur from time to time. On the basis of these physiological manifestations we were able to construct a schema of the physiological symptoms occurring in the emotional psycho-neuroses. We obtained a structure of such symptoms corresponding to the facts of clinical experience. We then went on in the next lecture to examine the psychological disturbances induced by emotion and found a number of characteristic phenomena. The view was held that emotion is the driving force which bears along ideas to their end and makes the organism capable of activity. We found conflicts between opposing impulses resulting in repression, dissociation, and inhibition of ideas and instincts, and limitation of the field of consciousness. We saw that sentiments in which strong emotions were incorporated tended to become dominating, to the exclusion of other sentiments from consciousness, and to acquire organic intensity and thereby to be carried to fruition. We saw also that the dominating emotional discharges might come from sentiments within the field of consciousness, and therefore of which the individual is aware, or from entirely subconscious sentiments of which he is unaware. And we saw that conflicts might be between entirely conscious sentiments or between a conscious and a subconscious sentiment, and so on. (Indeed, a conflict may be between two subconscioussentiments as may be experimentally demonstrated with corresponding phenomena.)
Now the practical significance of these phenomena of emotion, both as observed in every-day life and under experimental conditions, lies in the fact that they enable us to understand the symptomaticstructure, and up to a certain point the psychogenesis of certain psychoneuroses of very common occurrence. (For a complete understanding of the psychogenesis of any given psychoneurosis, such as a phobia, we must know all the antecedent experiences which formed the setting and gave meaning to the dominating ideas and determined the instincts which have become incorporated with them to form sentiments. This we saw when studying the settings in obsessions (Lectures XII and XIII).)
It is evident, that, theoretically, if antecedent conditions have prepared the emotional soil, and if an emotional complex, an intense sentiment, or instinct should be aroused by some stimulus, any one of a number of different possible psychopathic states might ensue, largely through the mechanism of conflict, according, on the one hand, to the degree and extent of the dissociation, inhibition, etc., established, and on the other to the character and systematization of the emotional complex or instinct. As with the physiological manifestations of emotion, we can construct various theoretical schemata to represent the psychological structure of these different states. Practically bothtypes—the physiological and psychological—must necessarily almost always be combined.
1. The impulsive force of the emotion might repress all other ideas than the one in question from the field of consciousness, which would then be contracted to that of the limited emotional complex awakened; all opposing ideas and instincts would then be dissociated or inhibited—a state substantially of mono-ideism. Let us imagine the dominating emotional complex to be a mother’s belief that her child had been killed, this idea being awakened by the sudden announcement of the news. The parental sentiment with child as its object would become organized into a complex with the emotions of fear, sorrow, painful depressed feelings, etc., which the news excited. This complex, being deprived—as a result of the ensuing dissociation—of the inhibiting and modifying influence of all counteracting ideas, would be free to expend its conative force along paths leading to motor, visceral, and other physiological disturbances. An emotional complex of ideas would be then formed which after the restoration of the normal alert state would remain dormant, but conserved in the unconscious. Later, when the emotional complex is again awakened by some stimulus (associative thoughts), dissociation would again take place and the complex again become the whole of the personal consciousness for the time being. This theoretical schema corresponds accurately withone type of hysterical attack.
2. If again the awakened complex should be one which is constellated with a large system of dormant ideas and motives deposited in theunconsciousunconsciousby the experiences of life, the new field of consciousness would not be contracted to a mono-ideism. We should have to do with a phase of personality, one which was formed by a rearrangement of life’s experiences. In this case the usual everyday settings (or systems) of ideas being in conflict with the sentiments of the resurrected system would be dissociated and become dormant. The ideas, with their affects, which would come to the surface and dominate, would be those of previously dormant emotional complexes and their constellated system. The prevailing instincts and other innate dispositions would be, respectively, those corresponding to the two phases, the antagonistic dispositions being in each case inhibited. This schema would accurately correspond to a so-called “mood.” If the demarcation of systems were sharply defined and absolute so that amnesia of one for the other resulted, the new state would be recognized as one ofdissociated or secondary personality. A “mood” and secondary personality would shade into one another.
3. Still another theoretical schema could be constructed if, following the hysterical dissociated state represented by schema 1, there were not a complete return to normality, i.e., complete synthesis of personality. The dissociation effected by the impulsive force of the evoked emotional complex and the repressed personal self-conscious-systemmight be so intense that, on the restoration of the latter, the former would remain dissociated in turn. The emotional complex would then, in accordance with what we know of the genesis of subconscious ideas, become split off from the personal consciousness and unable to enter the focus of awareness. Amnesia for the emotional experience would ensue. Such a split-off idea might, through the impulsive force of its emotion and that of its setting, take on independent activity and function coconsciously and produce various automatic phenomena; that is, phenomena which are termed automatic because not determined by the personal consciousness. The dissociation might include various sensory, motor and other functions, thereby robbing the personal consciousness of these functions (anesthesia, paralysis, etc.). Such a schema corresponds to thehysterical subconscious fixed idea(Janet).
In such a schema also, in accordance with what we know of the behavior of emotion, though the ideas of the complex remained subconscious, the emotion linked with them might erupt into the consciousness of the personal self. The person would then become aware of it without knowing its source. The emotion might be accompanied by its various physiological manifestations such as we have studied. If the emotion were one of fear the subject might be in ananxious statewithout knowing why he is afraid—an indefinable fear, as it is often called by the subjects of it.
4. If, owing to one or more emotional experiences,an intense sentiment were created in which is organized about its object one or more of the emotions of fear, anger, disgust, self-subjection, etc., with their physiological manifestations (tremor, palpitation, vasomotor disturbances, nausea, exhaustion, etc.) and their psychological disturbances (contraction of the field of consciousness, dissociation, etc.); and if the whole were welded into a complex, we would have the structure of an obsession. Such an organized complex would be excited from time to time by any associated stimulus and develop in the form of attacks: hence termed a recurrent psychopathic state as well as obsession. (As we have seen, the psychogenesis of the sentiment is to be found in antecedent experiences organized with its object giving meaning and persistence to the obsession.)
5. Finally (to add one more schema out of many that might be constructed), if a number of physiological disturbances (pain, secretory, gastric, cardiac, etc), such as occur as the symptoms of a disease, were through repeated experiences associated and thereby organized with the idea of the disease, they would recur as an associative process whenever the idea was presented to consciousness. Here we have the structure of an “association or habit-neurosis,” a disease mimicry. Numerous examples of the type of cardiac, gastric, pulmonary, laryngeal, joint, and other diseases might be given. The physical symptoms in such neuroses are obtrusive, while the psychical elements (including emotion)which, of course, are always factors, conscious or subconscious, remain in the background.
The study of the individual psychoneuroses belongs to special pathology, and need not concern us here. We are only occupied with the general principles involved in their structure and psycho-genesis.