Parapsychology

“ For instance, we can prescribe a conflict between the subconsciousness and the personal consciousness, between a subconscious wish and a conscious wish, or volition, and observe the resultant mental and physical behavior, which may be inhibition of thought, hallucinations, amnesia, motor phenomena, etc. The possibilities and limitations of subconscious influences can in this way be experimentally studied. Subconscious personalities, therefore, afford a valuable means for studying the mechanism of the mind. ”

“ And yet it is impossible to translate any psychosis into any neurosis, or to say that this organic movement has become this phase of consciousness. Nor is it possible to say that this neurosis has produced that psychosis, as we may say that these two movements in space have combined to produce that movement in space. We evidently have here two orders of reality, one an order of consciousness-of-objects, the other an order of objects-of-consciousness. The problem of psychogenesis is, to trace the origin and development of this consciousness-of-objects. ”

“ We have also seen that it is not only these mental experiences which occupied the focus of our attention that leave their counterpart in neurograms, but those as well of which we are only partially aware—absent-minded thoughts and acts and sensations and perceptions which never entered our awareness at all—subconscious or coconscious ideas as they are called. Finally, we have seen that the mental experiences of every state, normal, artificial, or pathological, whatever may be the state of the personal consciousness, are subject to the same principle of conservation. ”

“ After all, it is the consequences of a theory which count, and this will be seen to be true particularly as respects memory. The pragmatic point of view of counting the consequences, of determining the difference 11that the theory makes in the understanding of the mental processes of normal and abnormal life, reveals the importance to us of validating the theory. The consequences of the psycho-physiological theory are so far-reaching, in view of its bearing upon a large number of problems in normal and abnormal psychology, that it is worthy of sustained and exhaustive examination. ”

“ The annals of psychic science—in different tongues and of different continents—are largely devoted to the investigation of trance, clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, hypnotism, dreams, premonitions, automatic writing, visions, and messages from the dying, multiple personality, and all the phenomena associated with the subconscious self. Many students have dispensed with the spirit hypothesis as an unnecessary and embarrassing complication in a subject already overburdened with difficulties. ”

“ Through the conception of the subconscious as resolvable, on the one hand, into the unconscious, passive or active physiological dispositions, and, on the other hand, into coactive conscious states, the subconscious becomes simplified and intelligible. It offers a basis on which may be constructed comprehensible theories of memory, suggestibility, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams, automatic writing and similar phenomena, artificial hallucinations, the protean phenomena of hysteria, and the psycho-neuroses, as well as the mechanism of thought. ”

“ But the experience leaves its 'unimaginable touch' on the matter of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence. 'Ideas' about the object mingle with the awareness of its mere sensible presence, we name it, class it, compare it, utter propositions concerning it, and the complication of the possible consciousness which an incoming current may arouse, goes on increasing to the end of life. ”

“ We have recognized two distinct mental states—the conscious and the unconscious—and have found them constantly pressing each on the other’s domain. Our study of consciousness reveals the normal in the aspects of sleeping and waking, also various abnormal states. Consciousness may become excited, depressed, confused, delirious, or insane. We shall consider later some of the mental workings that account for these abnormal expressions. At present let us examine the mind’s activities in sleep and in delirium. ”

“ To understand this abnormal thing called "insanity," one must fully understand the normal, called "sanity." There are four distinct states of consciousness in every individual; these must be kept co-related and all of them manifest through the common everyday mind. These four states of consciousness are instinct, reason, emotion and intuition. These four states of consciousness are functions of the normal mind. When a patient becomes over-intensified in either one of these parts of the mind, mental disease results. ”

“ Generally, the various manifestations of mental activity have as their precursor an unconscious form from which they arise. The sensitiveness belonging to living substance, known by the names heliotropism, chemotropism, etc., is like a sketch of sensation and of the reactions following it; organic memory is the basis and the obliterated form of conscious memory. Reflexes introduce voluntary activity; appetitions and hidden tendencies are the forerunners of effective psychology. Instinct, on several sides, is like an unconscious and specific trial of reason. ”

“ We now come to a series of facts which are very important in that they show that what is true of the experiences of everyday life is also true of those of artificial and pathological states of which the normal personal consciousness has no cognizance. These facts are also vital for 62the comprehension of post-hypnotic phenomena, of amnesia, multiple personality, and allied dissociated states. Let us consider some of the states from the point of view of conservation. ”

“ But when we seem to have grasped his point of view, when we have catalogued the memory, fear, instinct, perception, choice and volition, the whole intelligent edifice crumbles; for we are told that “we are not in a position to determine whether these various acts are accompanied by consciousness, or whether they follow as simple physiological processes.” To most of us fear, memory, choice, volition, imply something more than simple physiological processes; they imply not only consciousness, but highly elaborated consciousness. ”

“ Turn now to the psychology of the abnormal mind. Here we find, under the heading of individual psychology, (8) the psychology of deficient and exceptional minds; of blind deaf-mutism, of genius, of the subnormal and the supernormal child; (9) the psychology of temporary mental derangement; of dream, of hypnosis, of intoxications, of occasional hallucination and illusion; and (10) the psychology of permanent mental disorder, of the chronic derangements of insanity. ”

“ However that may be, the strange history of yellow in the human mind and its striking vicissitudes are not only full of interest, but they really bring us up to a great problem which the psychologist must constantly face under a myriad of aspects: the respective parts which must be assigned to the innate properties of the psychic organism and to the temporary reactions it has acquired under the influence of a slowly shifting environment. How far, the psychologist must so often ask himself, am I investigating the intrinsic qualities of the stream of consciousness? ”

“ When they 'grow inattentive,' the feeling 'flies back' or 'jumps back,' to the stump. Every degree of consciousness, from complete and permanent hallucination down to something hardly distinguishable from ordinary fancy, seems represented in the sense of the missing extremity which these patients say they have. Indeed I have seldom seen a more plausible lot of evidence for the view that imagination and sensation are but differences of vividness in an identical process than these confessions, taking them altogether, contain. ”

“ Just as we are able to distinguish in every sensation of light, even in the very simplest one, between quality, intensity, and saturation, so we may speak of processes of cognition, of feeling, of will, though we are well aware that no psychic process exists to which all three qualities are not common, even if it is now one, now the other that is in the foreground. ”

“ Observation shows, that all the features I have just described as being met with in cases where participation of the personal consciousness with our mental or physical activity is diminished, are to be found in hallucination and in dreams. ”

“ Many images are buried which would be sufficient to put the consciousness on guard; associated classes of ideas are lost and go on spinning their web in the unconscious, thanks to the psychic dissociation; this is a process which we meet again in the genesis of our dreams.
“Our conscious reflection teaches us that when exercising attention we pursue a definite course. But if that course leads us to an idea which does not meet with our approval, we discontinue and cease to apply our attention. ”

“ We know from psychopathology that certain mental disturbances2 exist which are first manifested by the individuals shutting themselves off slowly, more and more, from reality and sinking into their phantasies, during which process, in proportion as the reality loses its hold, the inner world gains in reality and determining power.3 This process leads to a certain point (which varies with the individual) when the patients suddenly become more or less conscious of their separation from reality. ”

“ The remarkable exhibitions of extreme suggestibility, particularly the hyperæsthesia thus inducible, and again the illumination of the subconscious thereby effected, have brought about a realizing sense of how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. Between savage priest and doctor, and Delphic oracle, and mediæval ascetic, and magnetic somnambule, and inspirational medium, there is an irregular connection in their entrance into a trance-like condition involving a readjustment of the strata of consciousness and of the distribution of authority in the hierarchy of the nervous centres. ”

“ He gives a description of the unconscious, emphasizing its importance in the light of the new psychology, and states that it ‘originated not only in the childhood of man but in the childhood of the world,’ and that in it ‘is condensed and capitulated the cultural history of mankind.’ The process of psychoanalysis is outlined, and its value, not only in the treatment of neuroses, but also for the insight it furnishes into certain character defects, is pointed out. ”

“ But our account of the soul, as a series of events, may be attacked perhaps from the ground of psychology itself. There are psychical facts, it may be urged, which are more than events, and these facts, it may be argued, refute our definition. I must briefly deal with this objection, and my reply may be summed up thus. There are psychical facts, which are more than events; but, if they are not also events, they are not facts at all. ”

“ If, again, it resemble a reality or a set of realities as he knows them, but altogether fail to operate on them or modify their course by producing bodily motions which the psychologist sees, then the psychologist, like all of us, may be in doubt. Let the mental state, for example, occur during the sleep of its subject. Let the latter dream of the death of a certain man, and let the man simultaneously die. Is the dream a mere coincidence, or a veritable cognition of the death? ”

“ Have we not seen clearly enough that these mental facts which are conceived parallel to physiological brain processes do not represent the immediate reality of our inner life, that our life reality is purposive and as such outside of all causal explanation, and that we have to take a special, almost artificial, point of view to consider inner life at all as objects, as contents of consciousness, and thus as psychological material? ”

“ Consciousness and Will, enter into all psychological phenomena such as Hypnotism and Mediumship, and into every form of mental alienation, insanity, obsession and the like.
Moreover, by building out of mental phenomena a distinct entity—largely independent of the self-conscious Intelligence, and almost equally so with consciousness—our “philosophies,” “metaphysics,” and explanations have become as confused and unreliable as the psychical phenomenon itself. ”

“ I wish, in conclusion, to repeat that through the conscientious and most far-reaching analysis of a single dream, or, in fact, of a single element of a dream or a single element or stimulus in the objective or subjective world, one may, at least not infrequently, unearth the full life history of normal or abnormal individuals, and the genesis and evolution of psychopathic affections. ”

“ The deciphering of the purposive tremors demand an extreme sensitiveness and delicacy of feeling, both psychological and physiological, to combine the individual perceptions into a complete unity of thought, if it is at all permissible to make an analogy between the processes of cognition in the realm of the unconscious and the conscious. ”

“ The psychological analysis, therefore, reveals to us mental processes which are known and classed. It shows us, that the dream character of subconscious messages does not differ from that observed in the mental operations of the consciousness, as soon as the latter’s personal and voluntary activity becomes weakened or gradually gives place to spontaneous ideation. ”