Spiritualism and the New Psychology

From the moment of waking till we fall asleep again our thoughts are busy, one thought following another all day long without a break and each being in some way related to the preceding one. Memories come up into the stream, the outer world is constantly affecting it through our senses, and we tend to think that all our mind-work is done in this 'stream of consciousness'.

But beneath our stream of consciousness lies a deep sea of memories, feelings, and directive influences. All our previous experience is buried there, and no man knows how much he knows. Every one has experienced the sudden recollections which come up unsought when a sight, a sound, or a scent makes association with something long past and apparently forgotten; and not only our memories of things, places, and people, but our past mental processes themselves lie in this deep sea of the unconscious, to help or hinder us in the present or future.

I speak of the unconscious, though there are objections to the use of the word, which may lead to such a contradiction of terms as 'unconscious knowledge'. It is much more than a storehouse of memories: it is the seat of mental processes which take place unknown to us and are revealed at times in strange and unexpected ways. It comes into contact with the stream of consciousness, and, as we so often find in attempting to classify natural phenomena, there are no well-marked lines of demarcation between one and the other, though the extremes are definite enough.

The unconscious is not always a willing servant and often refuses to obey the wishes of its owner. Every one has at some time vainly tried to recall a name which is 'on the tip of the tongue', and one name after another is tried till perhaps the right one comes up and leaves us wondering where the difficulty was. There is, according to the teaching of some psychologists, always a reason for this failure to remember, though even an apparently ordinary example may need a skilful analysis to show how the failure arose and why the other names presented themselves. Slips of the tongue are likewise dependent upon unconscious influences, and, although I was once sceptical, a few examinations of my own slips have convinced me of the truth of this little theory. Here is an example of one of them, such as occurs often enough and would ordinarily be passed over without further examination:-

Sitting one evening with friends who were interested in this subject, I read aloud a paragraph from the book I was reading, and was asked the name of the author. My answer, after a slight pause, was 'Robert Brown'; it was immediately corrected by one of my friends, who pointed out that the author was Robert Smith (the names are fictitious), and called upon me for an explanation of the mistake. The first question was, 'Who is Brown?' and the only Brown I knew was a man concerning whom I had a few days before received a letter with information about him which led me to regard him with strong dislike. The next point was that we had been recently discussing the private life of Robert Smith, and I had manifested dislike towards his actions. Then I remembered that when I was asked the name of the author there had flashed into my consciousness the feeling that he was not precisely the sort of man I liked. Although the rest of the chain of thought was unknown to me at the time, yet it became plain, under my friends' cross-examination, that this feeling of dislike had called up the name of the other victim of my displeasure, though questions from my friends were necessary before I could remember to whom the other name referred.

The last point is quite characteristic, for there seems to be a definite resistance in the mind of the perpetrator of the slip against piecing together his thought processes, and the aid of some one else is necessary to enable, or force him, to do it; then he feels compelled to acknowledge the hidden thoughts. The difficulty in recognising and admitting the cause of such slips is due to their being so often the expression of feelings which the owner does not like to publish to the world or perhaps even acknowledge to himself.

But the unconscious is not always, or even often, such a useless intruder upon our everyday life. It economises our energies, and often takes us by short cuts to ends which would otherwise need continued reasoning. 'Intuition' is the product of previous experience, and rises into the consciousness as a finished judgement without the owner of the gift being aware of the factors concerned in its formation. One kind of intuition is improperly called in my profession 'clinical instinct', but, unlike instinct, it is a result of training and experience, and is never seen without them. Here is an example which came under my notice: An ophthalmic house-surgeon, busy with new patients, sees a man aged about thirty-five, who complains of failing sight, and without further investigation he writes on the man's book, 'Tobacco amblyopia?' and sends him in to his chief. Later on his chief asks him, 'How did you spot this case?' and the house-surgeon answers, 'I don't know, but he looked like it'. The chief agrees that there is something which can be seen but not described in the looks of a sufferer from this complaint. Now this house-surgeon, though keen on his work, had seen only a few cases of that disease, and I do not now accept his explanation of how he 'spotted' it. A man of thirty-five may find his sight failing from various causes, but the common ones are not many. If the cause had been 'long-sight', he would have complained that he could not see to read; certain general diseases causing loss of sight at that age would perhaps have visible symptoms; the man was too young for cataract, and his eyes looked healthy. In short, tobacco amblyopia was a reasonable guess, and, when we remember that the disease is caused by smoking strong pipe tobacco, and that the man who smokes that tobacco generally smells of it, it is fair to suppose that it was not the evidence of his eyes alone that guided the house-surgeon in his guess, though he was not conscious of any train of reasoning nor was he aware of the smell of stale tobacco.

This suggests that a stimulus may act upon our thoughts without our being conscious of the origin of the feeling produced, and this is what happens in connection with that well-known sensation, felt on visiting a new place, that one has been there before. If a close examination is made it will be found that there is really something-a picture, a scent, or even so slight a stimulus as a puff of warm air-which has stirred a memory in the unconscious; this memory fails to reach the consciousness in its entirety, or it would immediately be recognised as caused by the particular stimulus, but in its incomplete form it appears as a memory of nothing in particular. Such a memory being inconceivable it is at once joined on to the whole scene, and one feels 'I've surely been here before'. This feeling may be regarded as an intuition in its most useless and incomplete form, but its theoretical importance will be seen later.

Women exercise intuition more than do men, and up to a point this gives them an advantage, though it may annoy the male who prefers to find his reasons on the surface and call them logical.

'The reason why I cannot tell,

But this I know and know full well,

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell',

is a perfect example of intuition, and a full analysis of the unconscious of the poet would undoubtedly recall a wealth of reasons why. Still, intuition is likely to be a fallible guide, and the man who wishes to avoid trouble with his personal dislikes must always be prepared to check it by whatever conscious knowledge and reasoning power he may possess. The lines quoted above would be a poor defence against a charge of assault.

The person who is guided by intuition in some accustomed situation may be incapable of understanding why another person has not that power. I saw an example of this when I was making a short journey in the North Queensland bush with a white boy who had been reared in that district, but was a stranger to the particular locality in which we then were. It was a rainy day, and we were bound for a place which could be reached by following a stream down to the main river and then travelling up the latter, and this route I proposed to take. My companion showed astonishment at this, and said, pointing as it were along the other side of the triangle, 'But that's the way.' I agreed, but told him that I couldn't find the way and should get 'bushed' if I tried. He could not understand, but we set off for a ride of some nine to ten miles through fairly dense timber with the boy as guide. In vain I asked him how he kept his course; in similar circumstances I should have marked a tree as far ahead as possible and ridden towards it, marking another before I reached the first, and so on. All he could say was, 'That's the way', and I puzzled him by my questions more than he puzzled me by his ability to go straight to our destination.

The sense of direction is of course well known amongst animals, and I have often in my bush-days confidently trusted my horse to take me to his and my home on the darkest of nights. Although one talks of the 'sense of direction', there is no need to assume anything more than ordinary sense perceptions interpreted by the unconscious workings of the mind. The man who is over-anxious about his capabilities cannot allow his unconscious to take charge of his thoughts in this way. I was always afraid of being lost in the bush and always preoccupied with the need for carefully watching my course; therefore, although I could find my way, I never developed a 'sense of direction'.

To sum up, the unconscious is a collection of mental processes, memories, desires, and influences of infinite variety which are not always or even often perceived as such by our conscious mind, but the presence of which may and does influence our thoughts and actions. By its aid we obtain results the factors of which are unknown to us, and of which we fail to recognise the origin, and in it is stored not only what we remember but also what we forget. It is in relation to our stream of consciousness and normally blends with it, but the more independently we can allow it to operate the more surely does it reach its end in certain cases.

I must add that Freud introduces a foreconscious to indicate the mind-contents which are accessible to the consciousness, but are not of it, but for the sake of simplicity I have avoided the use of that word. The reader must bear in mind that such terms are used to describe not phenomena, but conceptions. Newspapers, the voices of men in the train or the street, marks on ballot-papers, are all phenomena, but 'public opinion' is only a conception useful to facilitate the expression of ideas. If one asks, 'Where is this unconscious and what does it look like?', I can only answer by asking, 'Where is this "public opinion" and what does it look like?'

The same caution is necessary in regard to other phrases. The stream of consciousness and dissociation are conceptions only, and are not intended to indicate the existence of things having relation to each other in space; the words are used as convenient means to sum up processes which I hope to show really take place.

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Every man likes to think that his creed, religious, political, or social, is founded upon reason; but let the reader consider the beliefs of his acquaintances and he will soon realise that they depend far more upon early training, social position, and the general influence of surroundings than upon any reasoning process. After this exercise let him turn his critical powers upon his own beliefs and examine closely how far they are dependent upon reason or upon influences which he has not recognised before.

Who can say that, in the days when Home-Rulers and anti-Home-Rulers abounded, the average voter was swayed by a reasoned knowledge of the subject? Yet he was quite sure that his side was right and the other wrong, and found it hard to understand how any sane man could own the opinions the other fellows held. Let us picture two neighbours of opposite political beliefs:-if they are both keen gardeners they may exchange views about methods and manures, and in case of difference of opinion one will possibly convince the other by argument. On other matters, too, they will mutually be open to conviction. If one favours Ilfracombe for a holiday and the other swears by Torquay, the latter may decide to try Ilfracombe for a change. But let them discuss Home Rule till the crack of doom and neither will convince the other by any process of reasoning; yet each will believe firmly that his opinions are the results of reason, finding an infinity of argument to support them.

Or let anyone start a discussion on a so-called moral question, such as polygamy. He will arouse the warmest expressions of opinion that polygamy is sinful, absurd, and unworkable, and may point in vain to such countries as China, where it apparently works with no more trouble than occurs with our system. Reasons will be showered on him, but scarcely anyone will admit that he objects to polygamy because he has been taught to regard monogamy as the only proper state of marriage.

A man, honestly believing that he is always actuated by certain moral principles, may do things which others regard as opposed to those principles, and if approached on the subject will be greatly annoyed and produce a chain of argument to justify his actions.

Scarcely any of us are free from these failings; certain beliefs we keep stored away, allowing nothing to interfere with them. They are placed in logic-tight compartments and carefully guarded by a pseudo-reasoning which satisfies our desire for logical explanation.

To this pseudo-reasoning is given the name of 'rationalisation', and, lest anyone may be offended by finding the same term applied to the process by which lunatics defend their delusions, I will add that there is no dividing line between health and disease, and the modes of thought of the insane are not so very different from those of the ordinary man.

To return now to the subject of 'logic-tight compartments'. Each contains a collection of ideas which are treated by the owner in a special way, cherished and guarded carefully from those forces which may cause modification. At the same time he will probably refuse to admit that they influence his consideration of certain questions related to them. The more logic-tight the compartment is, the more warmly does its owner defend it; but where plain reasoning is concerned few men can be roused to enthusiasm. Even though there may be people who regard the reasonings of Euclid as purely appeals to the emotions, what mathematician could grow excited about a man who denied the truth of the Fifth Proposition? But to run counter to a man's political or social beliefs is a sure way to raise the controversial temperature.

As will be easily seen, rationalisation is of everyday occurrence with all of us, and the man who rationalises always believes he is reasoning.

Consider now the business rogue who makes a success of his roguery and then launches out as a philanthropist, still continuing his roguery as a permanent side-line. Such cases are not unknown, and the man seems able to carry on without any sense of conflict between his two activities. Or consider those not uncommon instances where a man prominent in religious work is detected in some financial crime; it is usual to regard him as a hypocrite who has used religion as a cloak, but it is equally probable that he was honestly religious, that his earliest steps into crime were reconciled to his principles by rationalisations, and, as he advanced, a logic-tight compartment was built up to prevent conflict between his wrong-doing and his self-respect.

In these examples we have a part of the stream which comes into contact with the main stream of consciousness only by means of a process of rationalisation which allows the two to exist without great mental conflict, but this will never be admitted by the owner, though other people may be acutely conscious of it.

Here, to simplify explanation, I must introduce the word complex as used to indicate a system of ideas having a common centre,[2] whether the system is present in the consciousness or exists only in the unconscious.

Our ideas of morality, religion, or politics form complexes, as do our desires and disappointments. An ardent photographer or naturalist is possessed of a complex concerning his hobby, and this complex tends to turn his thoughts in the corresponding direction. If a keen botanist and an equally keen amateur photographer are travelling by train each views the scenery according to his complex: the one might note the trees and plants, their flowering or bursting into leaf, and how they vary with the soil, and might speculate as to what finds a closer view might produce; the other sees the same objects, but is busy composing pictures, thinking out distances and exposures, or differences of light and shade.

The man with 'a bee in his bonnet' gives an example of a single powerful complex; but all our thinking is a matter of complexes except on those rare occasions when logic alone is concerned, such as the consideration of a problem of mathematics. Scientific men are prone to believe that their mind-work is purely logical; so it is, up to a certain point, and the more exact the science the less room there is for thinking in complexes; but the reception of a new theory is always opposed by those whose firmly established complexes are offended by it. The aim of scientific training is to eliminate complex thinking and substitute logic, and in the exact sciences this is practically attained; but as soon as the trained man forsakes his laboratory or workshop methods he is at the mercy of his complexes and becomes the ordinary rationalising human being.

There is a great difference between a complex, such as photography, of which the influence is recognised and admitted by its owner, and another, such as a political one, where the influence is strongly denied. The latter is kept in a logic-tight compartment and reconciled to the reason by rationalisations.

Instincts have their abode in the unconscious and differ from acquired influences in being inborn and common to the race. It is difficult to determine what emotions and desires are truly inborn, as Benjamin Kidd shows in a valuable personal observation.[3]

He found a wild duck's nest as the young birds had just emerged from the egg, the mother-bird flying off at his approach. He took the young birds out of the nest and they showed no fear, nestling from time to time on his feet. Then he moved away and saw the mother-bird return with 'the great terror of man' upon her; next he approached the group again, but the mother-bird flew away with warning quacks and the little ones scattered to cover. He found one of them, but it was now 'a wild transformed creature trembling in panic which could not be subdued'.

McDougall, whose work on Instinct holds high rank, places 'flight' with its emotion of 'fear' among the primary instincts. The apperception of danger is necessary in order to call up this instinct, and Kidd shows that when once the fear of danger from man is planted in the young birds it becomes integrated with the instinct and inseparable from it. Acquired tendencies associated with emotion can therefore share the strength of instincts (the application of this fact is the theme of Mr. Kidd's book), and we accordingly find the results of early training accepted by the consciousness as perfect and unquestionable. This same characteristic applies, in a modified degree, to all complex thinking. Carry on an argument with an intelligent man on any complex-governed subject, and he will nearly always come down to the bed-rock foundation that he believes his view to be right because he feels it. Then you may cease the discussion.

It is by this reasoning that we can understand the attributes of the German mind. The German had certain complexes concerning the Right of Might so built into his unconscious that he gave them the obedience that is demanded by an instinct, and nothing short of national disaster could induce him to relinquish them.

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How we remember is an old and unsolved question, but few people think of asking how we forget: and yet one problem is as important as the other. I cannot answer either except by putting a new one, which is, 'Do we ever forget?'

If we specify the factors concerned in memory and say that it depends upon impression, retention, and recall, then what do we mean by 'forgetting'? If an event makes no impression upon the mind there is neither remembering nor forgetting; if there is retention of a memory, but one cannot recall it, it is nevertheless stored in the mind and may yet be revived by some association. So that the only certain factor in forgetting is the loss of power of recall, for what is apparently quite forgotten may still be retained in the unconscious.

Can we voluntarily forget? If by that is meant, 'Can we voluntarily lose the power of voluntary recall?' I must, strange as it seems at first sight, assert that we can, though I make the proviso that 'voluntarily' is a word with a very elastic meaning, and one whose definition would open up the never-ended argument about Free-will. I will take refuge in a quotation[4]:-

'We ought not to assume that a clear and full anticipation or idea of the end is an essential condition of purposive action, and we have no warrant for setting up the instances in which anticipation is least incomplete as alone conforming to the purposive type, and for setting apart all instances in which anticipation is less full and definite as of a radically different nature.'

Expressing this idea in the terms employed in the previous chapters, we can picture an action as being produced by motives in consciousness, and these motives as being influenced to a greater or less extent by the instincts, emotions, and desires of the unconscious. Every action is influenced by the unconscious, however voluntary it may appear. The young man who seeks the society of a maiden may think he is acting voluntarily and with full consciousness of the end in view, but the end is often visualised by the friends of the pair before the young man realises where his instincts and emotions have led him.

The man who resolutely refuses to think of an unpleasant experience and shuts off the thought of it whenever it rises into his consciousness may not have the intention of placing it beyond reach of voluntary recall, but he may succeed in so doing, and the process by which the end was reached was voluntary. That we have this power is shown by the investigation of war-strained soldiers of the type said to be suffering from 'shell-shock'. These men are often stout fellows who have fought long and bravely, and whose condition is a result of the emotions they have suffered rather than of any particular shell explosion. Their typical symptoms are depression, dreams of battle horrors, tremors and stammerings, and strange fears without apparent cause.

In an ordinary case there is great difficulty in persuading the man to talk about his war experiences: he says plainly that he doesn't want to talk about them, or may persistently avoid the subject, or he gives a poor account and shows difficulty in recall, or he claims to have forgotten and requires stimulating in order to remember, or he may have an absolute blank in his memory for certain periods.

Here we see all grades of the result of trying to forget, and the more successful the result the more difficult is the cure; for though the memories are repressed their associated emotions cannot be so dealt with, but remain in consciousness exaggerated and distorted. The dependence of an emotion upon a repressed memory prevents the sufferer from knowing its cause, and the sufferer from an apparently causeless emotion is to be pitied, for he can see no end to his trouble.

A man who was afraid of walking in the dark for fear of falling into holes which he knew only existed as a product of his fancy, affords a simple example of this condition. He said that his fear was absurd, therefore it was useless to point out to him its absurdity; the proper course was to show that it was not absurd, that it had a cause, and that the cause was something in the past which, when recognised, could be reasoned away. Fortunately the cause was easily found by any one with a knowledge of modern war: there was soon brought to light a 'forgotten' memory of his mates being drowned in shell-holes at night, and the fear disappeared as the patient learnt to look his memories in the face and not sink them into his unconscious.

More striking, however, are those cases in which a man forgets all his war experiences, and, though he is ready to believe that he has spent, say, two years in France, has no recollection of them. Such cases are not rare, the loss of memory often including part or all of the patient's previous life. One man could only remember the last three months of his life and failed to recognise his own father, though his memory was subsequently restored; this loss, occurring suddenly, could hardly be in any degree voluntary, though it served the purpose of excluding many horrible memories from his consciousness. Another nervous lad was so constituted that he forgot all incidents that frightened him, only to be haunted by the emotions attached to them. Seeing a steeple-jack fall was forgotten, and produced nightmares for years; a practical joke gave him a terror of the dark; his sister calling to him when burglars were in the house gave him hallucinations of voices; and minor incidents were equally forgotten, each producing its own symptoms. As the individual memories were brought up from his unconscious he went through the fright again, but the associated symptoms soon disappeared.

In these pathological losses of memory, whether for one incident or for a whole period, it is important to note that the patient does not necessarily recognise the incident when he is told of it, just as the lad mentioned above failed to recognise his father when he met him. A patient may in a sleep-walking state act as if performing a definite action, such as bayoneting one of the enemy, and when awake deny all knowledge of such an incident; yet the memory of it may return later with overwhelming emotion. This failure to recognise a personal experience is of great importance in the consideration of some spiritualist phenomena.

It requires little thought to realise that the only memories we try to repress are those that conflict with our other feelings or desires, and their repression is to some extent tolerated by a healthy man and may be regarded to that extent as a normal process.

But in addition to the repression of unpleasant memories there are other ways of forgetting. It has been assumed that each individual has a limit to his capacity for remembering, and that when that limit is reached fresh memories can be stored up only by casting out old ones. Whether that be so or not, it is certain that we can recall to consciousness only a tiny fraction of our past experiences, and no one can say what proportion that fraction bears to the whole contents of the storehouse of the unconscious. Let two men meet and recall old school-days spent together: one memory brings up another, schoolboy phrases and terms of speech appear as it were spontaneously, and by their united efforts the two recall far more than the sum of their recollections before the meeting, and still neither knows how much is left untouched.

The ordinary man reads many books, and each one leaves some impression and has some influence upon his later thoughts, though in time the recollection, not only of the contents of the book, but even of having read it, may fade away. This is the explanation of some cases of literary plagiarism: a previously read phrase comes up from the unconscious, and all recognisable connections with memory having been lost it is greeted as a fresh creation and given rank accordingly.

There is still another type of forgetting: most of us know the man who 'draws the long bow', who embellishes his story and embroiders it with imagined incidents, whilst we listen and wonder how much the narrator himself believes. Fishermen's stories and snake yarns are examples, and one explains the mental process of the story-teller by saying, 'He's told the story so often that at last he believes it himself.' The process is really one of forgetting and is closely allied to the repression of an unpleasant memory, for the man is the victim of a mental conflict: on the one side is his desire to tell a good story, and on the other is his moral complex which forbids a lie, so he solves the conflict by forgetting that the embroideries are inventions. This type is an important one, and what I shall call the 'repression of the knowledge of deceit' plays an important part in the explanation of the abnormal phenomena with which this book deals. In tracing the development of the abnormal we must start with what is nearest the normal, and the man who embroiders his story gives an illustration of the simplest form of this particular repression.

Now, just as memories are repressed because they were repugnant to the other contents of the consciousness, so other complexes may be repugnant and meet the same fate. To be torn by conflicting emotions is the fate of most people at some time or other, and the conflict between two complexes may be solved in various ways. The healthy way is to face the difficulty, to reason it out, and reach a conclusion by which action may be guided; another way, a common one, is to seclude one complex in a logic-tight compartment and so avoid the conflict. The man who uses sharp or shady methods in the city and is a gentle-minded philanthropist in other walks of life is using the latter method, and will produce such rationalisations as 'business is business' when the contents of his different compartments need protection from each other.

But for some people such methods are impossible: either they cannot directly solve the conflict or they are too self-critical to build a logic-tight compartment, and in such cases a repression of one of the opposing complexes may result. In this way complexes concerning ambitions and desires may be repressed, and so may those concerning fears and dislikes. The youth put to an uncongenial trade, the man or woman married to an unsuitable partner, may find no escape from the position and decide to bear it and forget its anxiety. How far this succeeds depends upon the previously existing tendencies of the individual: he may suffer no evil from the repression or, like the soldier's repressed war memories, it may manifest itself by indirect means and the unfortunate sufferer becomes a victim of one of the varied forms of neurosis.

The day-dreams of youth are rarely openly expressed: no one can tell what fantasies a child may have, and many of us are familiar with the thoughtful child who sits lost in meditation and presents an impenetrable barrier to the grown-up who would enter into the secrets of the day-dream. These fancies may be, and probably are, completely forgotten, but they can still lie in the unconscious, and Freud and his followers claim that they influence us throughout life.

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