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6 Submerged Instinctive Attributes in Man

In recent years so considerable a literature has arisen about the ‘Subliminal Soul’ that there are few readers who will not have some idea of the present state of knowledge regarding this strange psychological process in man. In arriving at this knowledge, however, considerable allowance must be made for the mysticism which has always found a happy hunting-ground in this half-explored country where even the angels tread fearfully. True subconscious behaviour in man is really illustrated by a psychic process which has certain definite characteristics. But before considering these it would be as well to have a clear conception of the difference between normal unconscious and abnormal subconscious behaviour.

Normal unconscious behaviour is determined by a mental process which occurs as a usual and constant manifestation in nature and which is of immediate benefit to the organism. Abnormal subconscious behaviour is an unusual occurrence which not only is not directly beneficial, but is so often allied to pathological conditions, that, if not a disease itself, it certainly always appears suspiciously like a symptom of a disease. It can occur only under conditions of the conscious mind which are not usual and which certainly are not beneficial.

The most common type of normal unconscious behaviour is exemplified in motor habit, which in man is clearly a phyletic survival of his pre-conscious period. A man learning to ride a bicycle or to do a sleight-of-hand trick or any

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unusual combination of muscular movements has in the beginning to direct his centrifugal impulse with continual conscious mental effort towards the different muscular movements constituting the action. The nervous impulse wears for itself a smooth channel, just as water does through soil, and the movements gradually become quicker and more perfect. The mental effort becomes proportionally smaller until eventually the most complete muscular movements take place without any corresponding representation in consciousness. This ‘learning to do a thing’ is a property common to all muscular movements throughout nature. The same ‘effort’ is needed in minds which are not ‘conscious’ in the human sense. The human baby learning to bring food to its mouth or the more difficult process of bipedal walking, a bird learning to fly or an animal to run, all exhibit a similar struggle. The same difficulty is encountered in teaching an animal a trick which requires any unusual combination of muscular movements. As the movements become more perfect the ‘effort’ becomes less apparent and in the end disappears. Unconscious motor habit is what Henry Maudsley terms the memory of the spinal column. In man this unconscious muscular movement is subconscious only in the sense that it is not at a specific time consciously repressed; but it was at one time and so the movement can voluntarily be called back into consciousness.

Another alleged manifestation of what is often spoken of as ‘subconscious’ is the so-called ‘repressed thought’. Those who accept Sigmund Freud's psychology as true in substance hold that there are many ‘repressed thoughts’ in human mentality which can, and often do, become pathologically potent. These thoughts are - to use Freud's own word - Bewusstseinunfähig. The meaning one attaches to the word ‘incapable of becoming conscious’ is, however, not quite borne out by his teaching. These repressed thoughts were at one time either conscious or hovering dimly on the frontier of consciousness and were then thrust into outer darkness, where, safely hidden, they work their evil spells. Such, I take it, is the real meaning of Freud's theories. And when one comes to consider the aim of his teaching, the word Bewusstseinunfähig becomes even more inappropriate. His aim is to heal, and the healing is rendered possible by the circumstance that these repressed thoughts and tendencies can undergo a rebirth in consciousness - with the obstetric assistance of the psychoanalyst - and in this reappearance they lose their evil potency.

If, therefore, this theory is true it would appear, on his own showing, that the repressed thoughts are outside consciousness in much the same sense that a forgotten word or event is outside memory. The possibility of their recall, if not voluntarily then by means of outside suggestion, always exists, just as the unconscious muscular movements can at any time be made conscious voluntarily. If these ‘repressed thoughts’ do exist, they cannot be classified as ‘subconscious’ in the sense that I understand.

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True subconscious purposive behaviour in a pure form has one feature which serves at once to distinguish it from all other types of mental activity. It is this: the subconscious actions never were conscious and can never under any circumstances become conscious in a true sense. The subject may become aware of the results of his subconscious actions, and he may even - by posthypnotic suggestion, for instance - be made aware of the subconscious actions themselves; but he becomes aware of them in just the same way that a spectator becomes aware of the actions of another person. They are not his actions. They certainly do not originate in his own normal conscious individuality. That is what I wish to be understood by subconscious purposive behaviour in its purest form.

There are intermediate types to which this description may not in strictness seem to apply, but it is nevertheless the common-sense view to regard all these occurrences as manifestations of one and the same psychosis.

In man subconscious purposive behaviour occurs:

1.	Where consciousness is apparently normal. ‘Automatic writing’ is an example. Here there is an apparent doubling of direction. The conscious and subconscious actions occur simultaneously and quite independently of each other. The subject writes connectedly and at the same time carries on a conversation or works out a mathematical problem. He is unconscious of the writing.
2.	Where consciousness is a disturbed condition. In many neuroses and in cases of brain injury, subconscious purposive behaviour sometimes take place while the consciousness is still more or less active. But in such cases it is evident that it is not normal. In hysterical anaesthesia, for instance, a similar ‘doubling’ occurs as in automatic writing - a manifestation which the investigations of Alfred Binet and Pierre Janet have made generally known.
3.	Where consciousness is absent. Subconscious behaviour in its most clearly recognised form occurs when the normal consciousness is apparently entirely obliterated. It has been observed, for instance, during profound unconsciousness, the result of traumatic or pathological lesions in the brain and during certain forms of epilepsy. It occurs during the unconsciousness of normal sleep as somnambulism, and in the somnambulic stage of hypnosis.

In the last two instances the subconscious behaviour may be said to appear as a result of disturbances of consciousness, and even in the first case, where subconscious behaviour appears in apparently normal men, the psychopathologist holds - and not without reason - that automatism never manifests itself in apparently normal men as other than a syndrome which is the accompaniment of

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hysteria or other conditions implying a disturbed or diseased state of consciousness. It is a rule, therefore, that subconscious behaviour is either the result of, or a symptom of, some degree of disorganisation of the normal consciousness. There may be exceptions, but the rule is so general that one would be justified in regarding alleged exceptions with suspicion.

It would lead too far afield to consider all other known types of subconscious behaviour, but I do not think that the description given is inconsistent with the general view that such occurrences as the alteration of personality, insane delusions, ‘possessions’, and spiritual mediumship are all more or less impure incipient forms of the same psychological process. The subconscious purpose of behaviour under hypnosis agrees with other types in that it appears only during an abnormal state of consciousness.

In its activity, however, hypnotic subconscious behaviour differs considerably from that of all other types. Outside hypnosis, subconscious behaviour is generally very much like conscious behaviour. The mind that contains it reacts in the same way as the conscious mentality does and its attributes do not differ qualitatively or quantitatively from those of the conscious mind. In other words, the behaviour is essentially no different from what it would have been had it been directed by the normal conscious mind.

Here the hypnotic subconscious mentality reveals an apparently supreme dissimilarity. It also uses the same senses that the conscious mind does, but it uses them in a very different manner, and in no less a degree does it differ quantitatively in several of its attributes. It is particularly in the perfection of ‘hypnotic memory’ and extreme sense-acuteness that the hypnotic mind is distinguished from the normal conscious mind and from other types of subconscious mentality. These wonderful attributes were mainly responsible for the creation of the wrong hypothesis and for that sense of the mysterious which overshadowed the work of the first explorers into this condition. But even today it is difficult to look with contempt on those early errors. More systematic knowledge has not rendered these attributes any the less wonderful. They still exert a powerful influence on human imagination and often thus stand as an impediment between investigation and the attainment of truth.

It must always be borne in mind that the wonder of this hypnotic sense-acuteness and memory is entirely relative to the standard by which they are judged. When judged by the normal conscious mind, they seem to lie outside the order of nature. But when it is realised that this same sense-acuteness and perfection of ‘memory’ - in a certain sense - constitute the ordinary psychic life of the lower animals, that even in so high a primate as the chacma the same sense-acuteness is a normal manifestation, then the marvellousness of these attributes becomes less obtrusive.

The great number and sometimes contradictory theories that have been ad-

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vanced to account for the phenomena of hypnosis need not detain us. The general effect of most hypotheses, whether they be stated in terms purely psychological or purely physiological, is identical. In one particular area there is unanimity in authoritative thought, and that is that hypnosis means a temporary suspension of the cerebral functions. That was the view first advanced by Professor Martin Heidenhain of Breslau, and all later investigation has tended to confirm it.

Now we have seen that it appears to be a general rule that if the functions of the later-developed mental organs are destroyed or inhibited, the function of the earlier ones can and, under certain circumstances, do become independently active. Functions which have been partially or entirely inhibited by the action of the newer organs can under such circumstances emerge and become dominant in behaviour.

And this is what happens in hypnosis. The functions of the cerebral cortex are suspended and the instinctive mentality with some of its inhibited attributes emerges and becomes visible in behaviour.

Apart from any other proof, the occurrence of the same behaviour in some form in all organisms from the reptile to the lower primate would have led one to suspect the possibility of its occurrence in man (under favourable conditions and in a degree proportionate to the evolutional stage his newer mental organs have reached). And proofs are not wanting in hypnotic behaviour itself that the ‘subliminal soul’ is in reality only the ‘animal soul’ still present in man's mentality.

One would not expect that in man the separation of mental functions could be brought about in so complete a manner as in lower forms of evolution. In man the development of individual causal memory has reached the zenith. It is in him an evolutionary process of longer duration than in any other existing species, and the newer mental organs are, therefore, far more closely knit than in any other animal. One would expect, therefore, that, however complete the eclipse of the functions of the higher organs may seem during hypnosis, the subconscious behaviour would still be coloured and influenced by some of them. And that proves to be so in fact. Yet, when due allowance is made for the influence of causal memory, certain characteristic attributes of the instinctive mentality at once become clearly recognisable in hypnotic behaviour. The chief of these are:

1.	Absence of consciousness.
2.	Suggestibility. (No trainer of wild animals would fail to recognise this as an especial attribute of the animal mind. By taking advantage of it man bends to his will the lion and the elephant.)
3.	Extreme sense-acuteness.
4.	High perfection of the ‘place memory’.

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The first two characteristics will be self-evident to all students of hypnotism. More detailed attention will, however, have to be devoted to the last two, the general sense-acuteness and the sense of locality, in order to make clear their link with the instinctive mind.