Boris Sidis

“ Persons who lack scientific, conceptual thought cannot grasp an abstract general proposition without having it first expressed in concrete terms, or fixed in sensory pictures. The savage gets a headache when his thought is forced to flow in a stream of representation. ”

“ Presentative psychic elements are always firmly bound up with an external object and with stimulations of peripheral sense-organs; they can never free themselves from the bondage to the external environment. Not so the representative elements, although appearing at first in connection with sensory elements and peripheral stimulations, they finally end by freeing themselves from this bondage. The representative elements involved in the representation zebra do not originally arise without some presentative elements. ”

“ Tactual and muscular sensations are not so very clear in our perception of space, nor are our rhythmical, respiratory and kinaesthetic sensations quite obvious in our estimation of time. The free associations, however, into which representative elements enter give full scope to their components. The elements are combined without at the same time losing their individuality; they remain clearly defined in their nature and outlines in relation to the other elements with which they form combinations. ”

“ Presentative elements have a permanency and stability which representative elements totally lack; they can be kept up in their full strength by keeping up the same intensity of stimulation, as by maintaining the object before the particular sense organ that forms the nucleus of the percept. Thus the pricking of the needle is perceived as long as the stimulation is continued, and the chair yonder is seen as long as it is kept before the eyes. ”

“ Representative elements bring with them a new fundamental departure in the mental activity of the moment, they may keep up its activity when flagging, may intensify it, but may also deflect it, or distract it, giving rise to another conflicting moment. ”

“ Representative elements manifest even more freedom. In many cases a modification of certain relations in the sensory elements cannot possibly be effected, because the relations of the external stimuli constituting what may be termed the external object do not admit of a rearrangement. ”

“ The two sets of psychic elements, the presentative and representative, stand in inverse relation to each other. When the one is at its maximum the other is at its minimum. When sensory elements appear the free elements become faint. ”

“ In the uneducated mind even of a high type of moment-consciousness representations are still bound up with presentations. The gossip can keep on talking as long as the thought is fixed on the concrete. ”

“ Representative elements on the contrary, are extremely unstable and fluctuating, and are aptly characterized as being very much like "the flare and flicker of a gas flame blown by the wind." When representative elements become permanent, stable, the state of the moment acquires a pathological character manifested in the phenomena of insistent thoughts and fixed ideas. ”

“ They may be ultimately traced to some sensory stimulus and positive after-images, but these are far in the background of consciousness and remain unnoticed. Representative elements come and go in consciousness, they appear independently of all other elements, they are essentially free elements. ”