312 Professor Sigm. Freud, M.D. [PART

III.

A NOTE ON THE UNCONSCIOUS IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.

By Proresson SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D. (VIENNA).

I WISH to expound in a few words and as plainly as possible
what the term “unconscious” has come to mean in Psycho-
analysis and in Psycho-analysis alone.

A conception—or any other psychical element—which is
now present to my consciousness may become absent the next
moment, and may become present again, after an interval,
unchanged, and, as we say, from memory, not as a result of
a fresh perception by our senses. It is this fact which we are
accustomed to account for by the supposition that during the
interval the conception has been present in our mind,
although latent in consciousness. In what shape it may have
existed while present in the mind and latent in consciousness
we have no means of guessing.

At this very point we may be prepared to meet with the
philosophical objection that the latent conception did not exist
as an object of psychology, but as a physical disposition for
the recurrence of the same psychical phenomenon, i.e. of the
said conception. But we may reply that this is a theory far
overstepping the domain of psychology proper; that it simply
begs the question by asserting “conscious” to be an identical
term with “psychical,” and that it is clearly at fault in denying
psychology the right to account for its most common facts,
such as memory, by its own means.

Now let us call “conscious” the conception which is present
to our consciousness and of which we are aware, and let this
be the only meaning of the term “conscious.” As for latent

LxviL] A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis. 313

conceptions, if we have any reason to suppose that they exist
in the mind—as we had in the case of memory,—let them be
denoted by the term ^ unconscious."

Thus an unconscious conception is one of which we are not
aware, but the existence of which we are nevertheless ready
to admit on account of other proofs or signs.

This might be considered an uninteresting piece of descriptive
or classificatory work if no experience appealed to our judg-
ment other than the facts of memory, or the cases of
association by unconscious links. The well-known experiment,
however, of “the post-hypnotic suggestion " teaches us to insist
upon the importance of the distinction between conscious and
unconscious, and seems to increase its value.

In this experiment, as performed by Bernheim, a person is
put into a hypnotic state and is subsequently aroused, While
he was in the hypnotic state, under the influence of the
physician he was ordered to execute a certain action at a
certain fixed moment after his awakening, say half-an-hour
later. He awakes, and seems fully conscious and in his
ordinary condition; he has no recollection of his hypnotic
state, and yet at the pre-arranged moment there rushes into
his mind the impulse to do such and such a thing, and he
does it consciously, though not knowing why. It seems
impossible to give any other description of the phenomenon
than to say that the order had been present in the mind of
the person in a condition of latency, or had been present
unconsciously, until the given moment came, and then had
become conscious. But not the whole of it emerged into
consciousness: only the conception of the act to be executed.
All the other ideas associated with this conception,—the order,
the influence of the physician, the recollection of the hypnotic
state, remained unconscious even then.

But we have more to learn from such an experiment. We
are led from the purely descriptive to a dynamic view of the
phenomenon.. The idea of the action ordered in hypnosis not
only became an object of consciousness at a certain moment,
but the more striking aspect of the fact is that this idea grew
active: it was translated into action as soon as consciousness
became aware of its presence. The real stimulus to the action
being the order of the physician, it is hard not to concede

314 Professor Sigm. Freud, M.D. [PART

that the idea of the physician's order became active too.
Yet this last idea did not reveal itself to consciousness, as did
its outcome, the idea of the action; it remained unconscious,
and so it was active and unconscious at the same time.

A post-hypnotic suggestion is a laboratory production, an
artificial fact. But if we adopt the theory of hysterical
phenomena first put forward by P. Janet and elaborated by
Breuer and myself, we shall not be at a loss for plenty of
natural facts showing the psychological character of the post-
hypnotic suggestion even more clearly and distinctly.

The mind of the hysterical patient is full of active yet
unconscious ideas; all her symptoms proceed from such ideas.
It is in fact the most striking character of the hysterical
mind to be ruled by them. If the hysterical woman vomits,
she may do so from the idea of being pregnant. She has,
however, no knowledge of this idea, although it can easily be
detected in her mind, and made conscious to her, by one of
the technical procedures of Psycho-analysis. If she is executing
the jerks and movements constituting her “fit,” she does not
even consciously represent to herself the intended actions, and
she may perceive those actions with the detached feelings of
an onlooker. Nevertheless analysis will show that she was
acting her part in the dramatic reproduction of some incident
in her life, the memory of which was unconsciously active
during the attack. The same preponderance of active un-
conscious ideas is revealed by analysis as the essential fact in
the psychology of all other forms of neurosis.

We learn therefore by the analysis of neurotic phenomena
that a latent or unconscious idea is not necessarily a weak
one, and that the presence of such an idea in the mind admits
of indirect proofs of the most cogent kind, which are equivalent
to the direct proof furnished by consciousness. We feel justified
in making our classification agree with this addition to our
knowledge by introducing a fundamental distinction between
different kinds of latent or unconscious ideas. We were
accustomed to think that every latent idea was so because it
was weak and that it grew conscious as soon as it became
strong. We have now gained the conviction that there are
some latent. ideas which do not penetrate into consciousness,
however strong they may have become, Therefore we may

LXVL] 4 Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis. 315

call the latent ideas of the first type foreconscious, while we
reserve the term unconscious (proper) for the latter type which
we came to study in the neuroses. The term unconscious,
which was used in the purely descriptive sense before, now
comes to imply something more., It designates not only latent
ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic
character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of
their intensity and activity.

Before continuing my exposition I will refer to two objections
which are likely to be raised at this point. The first of these
may be stated thus: instead of subscribing to the hypothesis
of unconscious ideas of which we know nothing, we had better
assume that consciousness can be split up, so that certain
ideas or other psychical acts may constitute a consciousness
apart, which has. become detached and estranged from the
bulk of conscious psychical activity. Well-known pathological
cases like that of Dr. Azam seem to go far to show that the
splitting up of consciousness is no fanciful imagination.

I venture to urge against this theory that it is a gratuitous
assumption, based on the abuse of the word “conscious.” We
have no right to extend the meaning of this word so far as
to make it include a consciousness of which its owner himself
is not aware. If philosophers find difficulty in accepting the
existence of unconscious ideas, the existence of an unconscious
consciousness seems to me even. more objectionable. The cases
described as splitting of consciousness, like Dr. Azam's, might
better be denoted as shifting of consciousness,—that function—or
whatever it be—oscillating between two different psychical com-
plexes which become conscious and unconscious in alternation.

The other objection that may probably be raised would be
that we apply to normal psychology conclusions which are
drawn chiefly from the study of pathological conditions. We
are enabled to answer it by another fact, the knowledge of
which we owe to psycho-analysis. Certain deficiencies of function
of most frequent occurrence among healthy people, e.g. lapsus
linguae, errors in memory and speech, forgetting of names, etc.,
may easily be shown to depend on the action of strong un-
conscious ideas in the same way as neurotic symptoms. We
shall meet with another still more convincing argument at a
later stage of this discussion.

316 Professor Sigm. Freud, M.D. [PART

By the differentiation of foreconscious and unconscious ideas,
we are led on to leave the field of classification and to form
an opinion about functional and dynamical relations in psychical
action. We have found a foreconscious activity passing into
consciousness with no difficulty, and an wnconscious activity
which remains so and seems to be cut off from conscions-
ness.

Now we do not know whether these two modes of psychical
activity are identical or essentially divergent from their
beginning, but we may ask why they should become different
in the course of psychical action. To this last question psycho-
analysis gives a clear and unhesitating answer. It is by no
means impossible for the product of unconscious activity to
pierce into consciousness, but a certain amount of exertion
is needed for this task. When we try to do it in ourselves,
we become aware of a distinct feeling of repulsion which
must be overcome, and when we produce it in a patient we
get the most unquestionable signs of what we call his resistance
to it. So we learn that the unconscious idea is excluded from
consciousness by living forces which oppose themselves to its
reception, while they do not object to other ideas, the fore-
conscious ones. Psychc-analysis leaves no room for doubt
that the repulsion from unconscious ideas is only provoked by
the tendencies embodied in their contents. The next and most
probable theory which can be formulated at this stage of our
knowledge is the following. Unconsciousness is a regular and
inevitable phase in the processes constituting our psychical
activity; every psychical act begins as an unconscious one,
and it may either remain so or go on developing into con-
sciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not. The
distinction between foreconscious and unconscious activity is
not a primary one, but comes to be established after repulsion
has sprung up. Only then the difference between fore-conscious
ideas, which can appear in consciousness and reappear at
any moment, and unconscious ideas which cannot do so
gains a theoretical as well as a practical value. A rough but
not inadequate analogy to this supposed relation of conscious
to unconscious activity might be drawn from the field of
ordinary photography. The first stage of the photograph is
the “ negative”; every photographic picture has to pass through

1xvL] A Note ‏מס‎ the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis. 317

the "negative process,” and some of these negatives which
have held good in examination are admitted to the “ positive
proeess" ending in the picture.

But the distinetion between foreconscious and unconscious
activity, and the recognition of the barrier which keeps them
asunder, is not the last or the most important result of the
psycho-analytic investigation of psychical life. There is one
psychical product to be met with in the most normal persons,
which yet presents a very striking analogy to the wildest produc-
tions of insanity, and was no more intelligible to philosophers than
insanity itself. I refer to dreams. Psycho-analysis is founded
upon the analysis of dreams; the interpretation of dreams is the
most complete piece of work the young science has done up to
the present. One of the most common types of dream-forma-
tion may be described as follows: a train of thoughts has
been aroused by the working of the mind in the daytime,
and retained some of its activity, escaping from the general
inhibition of interests which introduces sleep and constitutes
the psyehical preparation for sleeping. During the night this
train of thoughts succeeds in finding connections with one of
the unconscious tendencies present ever since his childbood in
the mind of the dreamer, but ordinarily repressed and excluded
from his conscious life. By the borrowed force of this un-
conscious help, the thougbts, the residue of the day's work,
now become active again, and emerge into consciousness in
the shape of the dream. Now three things have happened:

(1) The thoughts have undergone a change, a disguise and

a distortion, which represents the part of the un-
conscious helpmate.

(2) The thoughts have occupied consciousness at a time

when they ought not.

(3) Some part of the unconscious, which could mot other-

wise have done so, has emerged into consciousness.

We have learnt the art of finding out the “ residual thoughts,"
the latent thoughts of the dream, and, by comparing them with
the apparent dream, we are able to form a judgment on the
changes they underwent and the manner in which these were
brought about.

The latent thoughts of the dream differ in no respect from
the products of our regular conscious activity; they deserve

318 Professor Sigm. Freud, M.D. [PART

the name of foreconscious thoughts, and may indeed have been
conscious at some moment of waking life. But, by entering
into connection with the unconscious tendencies during the
night, they have become assimilated to the latter, degraded as
it were to the condition of unconscious thoughts, and sub-
jected to the laws by which unconscious activity is governed.
And here is the opportunity to learn what we could not have
guessed from speculation, or from another source of empirical
information,—that the laws of unconscious activity differ widely
from those of the conscious. We gather in detail what the
peculiarities of the Unconscious are, and we may hope to learn
still more about them by a profounder investigation of the
processes of dream-formation.

This enquiry is not yet half finished, and an exposition of
the results obtained hitherto is scarcely possible without entering
into the most intricate problems of dream-analysis. But I
would not break off this discussion without indicating the
change and progress in our comprehension of the Unconscious
which are due to our psycho-analytic study of dreams.

Unconsciousness seemed to us at first only an enigmatical
characteristic of a definite psychical act. Now it means more
for us. It is a sign that this act partakes of the nature of
a certain psychical category known to us by other and more
important characters, and that it belongs to a system of
psychical activity which is deserving of our fullest attention.
The index-value of the unconscious has far outgrown its im-
portauce as a property. The system revealed by the sign
that the single acts forming parts of it are unconscious we
designate by the name “The Unconscious,” for want of a
better and less ambiguous term, In German, I propose to
denote this system by the letters Ubw, an abbreviation of the
German word “ Unbewusst.” And this is the third and most
significant sense which the term “unconscious” has acquired in
psycho-analysis.

· PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

Society for Psychical Research

"y

VOLUME XXVI
(CONTAINING PARTS LXV, LXVI, LXVII)
1913

The responsibility for both the facts and the reasonings in papers
published in the Proceedings rests entirely with their authors

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY BY
ROBERT MACLEHOSE & COMPANY LIMITED
UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW
1913

Agents for the sale of publications

LONDON: FRANCIS EDWARDS, 83 HicH STREET, MARYLEBONE, W.
GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS, 6r 57. Vincent STREET
AMERIC HE W. В. CLARKE CO., 26-28 TREMONT STREET, Boston, Mass,

AU rights reserved

SPECIAL MEDICAL PART

OF THE

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

Society for Psychical Research.

PART LXVI.

NOVEMBER, 1912.

L

SOME TYPES OF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY.
| By T. W. MircHELL, M.D.

WELL-MARKED cases of multiple personality are rare, and if
we confined ourselves to the study of these cases alone we should
make little progress towards an understanding of the strange
and seemingly inexplicable phenomena which they present.
Fortunately, however, these are not the only ones that occur.
When we examine the records we find that a great variety of
forms may be observed, and that there are many gradations
between the well-marked cases and those which can hardly be
looked upon as examples of multiple personality at all. An
examination of some of these latter conditions will provide the
best introduction to the study of the complex phenomena of
double and multiple personality.

It is now very generally admitted by psychologists that in
some persons at least consciousness may be split up into two
or more parts. The split-off or dissociated portion may be but
a fragment of the whole self, or it may be so extensive, so

R