THE UNCONSCIOUS THE UNCONSCIOUS AN INTRODUCTION TO FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY BY ISRAEL LEVINE, M.A. • • # LECTURER IN PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF THE SOUTH-WEST, EXETER NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 •; * 3 ■ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PREFATORY NOTE The essay which follows is not intended to be a comprehensive account of Psycho-analysis. It is rather an attempt to study the pure theory on which Psycho-analysis rests; and as a result it is mainly concerned with the first step from which that theory proceeds, namely, the hypothesis of unconscious mental processes. The conclusion at which it arrives is that such a hypothesis, in the way in which it is maintained by Freud, is indispensable at present to the science of psychology. The hypothesis of the Unconscious, however, cannot be isolated from the psycho-analytic setting in which it plays so important a part. The scope of the essay tends, therefore, to broaden in the last two chapters, and an attempt is made to indicate something of the significance of the psycho-analytic conceptions for the problems of mental life. Although Psycho- analysis is in no sense itself a philosophy, an inter- pretation of life, it does bring to the solution of philosophical questions a wealth of new and sug- gestive data. It is from this standpoint that the material in the last chapter of the essay is presented. 5 6 THE UNCONSCIOUS Dr. Ernest Jones, President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, has very generously gone through the chapters dealing with Freud’s doctrine, and has guided me in many important points. It is a privilege to acknowledge his invalu- able help and encouragement. I am greatly in- debted, also, to Principal H. J. W. Hetherington for his constant readiness to advise and for much illuminating comment. ISRAEL LEVINE. University College of the South-West, Exeter. CONTENTS PAGE Prefatory Note ........ 5 PART ONE THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD Introduction—Leibniz—A Note on Leibniz—Schopenhauer —A Note on Schopenhauer—Maine de Biran—Hart- mann—A Note on Hartmann—Fechner—Notes on Fechner—Nietzsche—A Note on Nietzsche—Butler— General Conclusions ....... 11-45 PART TWO FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS Introductory—The Meaning of ‘Unconscious’ in Freud— Dreams — Errors — Wit — The Neuroses — Recapitu- lation ......... 49-70 PART THREE THE VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS Criticism of the Unconscious: Endocrines—Mneme—Reply. The Validity of Psychology—Psychology and Physi- ology—The Unconscious. A Paradox—The Nature of Consciousness—Arguments for the Unconscious— Conclusions. ........ 73-98 7 8 THE UNCONSCIOUS PART FOUR THE SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS PAGE Life and Conflict—The Pleasure and the Reality Prin- ciples—The Basis of Mental Activity. Stimuli— Mental Categories, The Polarities—The Nature of Ambivalence—Metapsychology Defined—Repression— Repression and Affect—Repression and Topography —Development of the Unconscious System—Character- istics of Unconscious Processes—Relations between the Systems—System Consciousness—Instincts—Re- capitulation ....... 101-142 PART FIVE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS Notes on Psycho-analysis and Education . . .145 Sublimation—Character and the Unconscious Psycho-analysis and Crowd Psychology . . . 153 Psycho-analysis and Personality . . . .159 Repression and Dual Personality—The Subconscious Self—Jung’s View of Personality. Psycho-analysis and Ethics . . . . .170 Ethics and Psychology—Psycho-analysis and Hedonism —Responsibility—Free-Will—Conclusions. Psycho-analysis and Esthetics 184 Art and Phantasy—Art and the Affects—Art and Repression—Art and the Unconscious, Conclusions. Psycho-analysis and Philosophy .... 198 Philosophers and the Unconscious—The Problem of Meaning — Reason and the Reality-principle — Conclusion. Index ....... . . 211 PART ONE THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD § 1 Introduction. The conception of unconscious mental processes (that is, processes of which a person has no conscious knowledge, but which nevertheless determine his conscious thought and action) has been suggested more than once in the history of philosophy. It is associated, in particular, with the names of Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Nietzsche, to mention these only. There is, one might almost say, an ‘ Unconscious ’ tradition, numbering many distin- guished philosophers among its adherents. It is true, of course, that the conception of the Unconscious which is of importance now is quite recent. It dates back no further than Freud’s Traumdeutung (1900), and the science known as Psycho-analysis. But to survey some of the Pre- Freudian conceptions of the Unconscious has more than merely an historical interest. It not only serves to elicit certain significant facts, but brings into clear relief the exact contribution of Freud himself, and the complete contrast which his con- ception affords to that of all his predecessors. I propose, therefore, to attempt at the outset such a survey, before describing the Unconscious in Freud. 11 12 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 2 Leibniz (1646-1716). The wealth of learning for which Leibniz is so renowned makes it natural to find that he has offered indications of his views even on the subject of the Unconscious. He introduces the conception to illustrate a fundamental principle in his philo- sophy, the principle of continuity. All existence, Leibniz held, is continuous. It is of one kind all through, but has every conceivable degree of being. The unit of existence, if such an expression is permissible, is represented by the ‘ monad ’ of his metaphysical construction. A monad stands for the barest individual atom of being. Yet, after its own fashion, it reflects the whole of existence, because it is the same in essence as all else that exists. Other existents are continuously developed or graded monads. The nature of a monad can be conceived only on the analogy of that one existent which we know directly and certainly, namely, our own self. It consists, therefore, of effort, striving, will (appetit, tendance). This effort, or ‘ conatus,’ expresses itself in a series of existents, each developed continuously in relation to its predecessor. We are prone to construe the variety of expressions achieved by the ultimate striving as a variety of kind or nature. But reflection and analysis reveal the apparent differences of kind to be merely successive grades THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 13 of what is one continuously developing tendency or effort. A difference of degree or grade is simply a differ- ence in clearness and distinctness, it is to be noted. To describe one existent as more developed than another means, in the last analysis, that the former is more clear and distinct than the latter. The universe as we know it presents every conceivable degree of darkness and clearness. It is, in fact, a series of continuously graded existents, all the same in essence, but at every stage from obscure and undeveloped to developed and distinct. This, I think, is what Leibniz means by his use of the principle of continuity. The best-known application of the principle in Leibniz is no doubt his invention of the infinitesimal calculus, where he deals with continuous, infinitely small changes in quantities. But he applies it to mental life also. It appears there in two ways :— (a) Thought itself must be continuously developed out of processes less clear and distinct, but the same in kind. In other words, consciousness is not to be regarded as a ‘ sudden arrival.’ Nature never makes sudden leaps. The principle of con- tinuity makes it necessary to interpret conscious- ness as a clearer, more developed degree of what in less clear or developed degrees is called inanimate, or inorganic. (&) Conscious processes themselves, however, also illustrate continuity. For there are mental pro- cesses, according to Leibniz, of every degree of 14 THE UNCONSCIOUS clearness, ranging from what is unconscious, obscure, undeveloped, to what is fully developed, distinct, conscious. In particular, three main phases of such processes can be differentiated :— (1) Perception, or the bare “ expression of many things in one ” ; the “ inner state of the monad representing outer things." (2) Perception which is “ more distinct, and is accompanied by memory.” Monads at this stage are properly to be called souls. (3) Apperception, or reflective consciousness (self- consciousness). This is the “ reflective knowledge of the inner state " which constitutes perception. (Leib- niz, The Monadology, § 14, § 19. Principles of Nature and Grace, § 4.) Leibniz indicates his view of the nature of ‘ un- conscious ’ perceptions more explicitly in the Intro- duction to the New Essays. “ There are countless indications," he writes there, “ which lead us to think that there is at every moment an infinity of perceptions within us, but without apperception and without reflexion ; that is to say, changes in the soul itself, of which we are not conscious, because the impressions are either too small and too numerous, or too closely combined, so that each is not distinctive enough by itself, but nevertheless in combination with others each has its effect, and makes itself felt, at least confusedly, in the whole.” (Latta, Leibniz, p. 370.) Leibniz goes on to illustrate his meaning by the case of people who live near a mill or a waterfall. THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 15 In the course of time they cease to attend con- sciously to the motion it makes. But the motion is all the time perceived, in an unconscious way. Again, to hear the moaning or sound of the sea when we are on the shore we must hear the individual little sounds made by each wave ; though a single such sound, if alone, would not be heard. All we hear is a combination of many sounds taken together. Yet “ we must have some perception of each, however little ; otherwise we should not have the perception of a hundred thousand waves, for a hundred thousand nothings cannot make something.” {Ibid., pp. 371- 372-) Hence, Leibniz concludes, “ These petites per- ceptions have through their consequences an influence greater than people think.” They constitute “ the identity of the individual.” They “ determine us on many occasions without our thinking it.” It may even be said that “ in consequence of these petites perceptions the present is big with the future and laden with the past.” In short, “ Unconscious perceptions are of as great use in pneumatics ” (that is, philosophy of mind) “ as imperceptible corpuscles are in physics.” {Ibid., pp. 372, 373, 375, 376.) The view of Leibniz, then, is that there are un- conscious perceptions which influence subsequent conscious thought and action. Perception is of continuously graded clearness, and ‘ conscious ’ per- ception evolves by degrees from those shadowy, indistinct, unconscious perceptions which are too small to command attention, 16 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 3 A Note on the View of Leibniz.1 The line of psychological enquiry which relates itself to the above view of Leibniz is found in the conception of a ‘ threshold ’ of attention, and in that of a ‘ subliminal ’ consciousness, which are familiar from the discussions of Herbart, Fechner, James, and Myers. It is indeed in such conceptions, rather than in the conception of an Unconscious, in Freud’s sense, that the facts which Leibniz adduces can be most appropriately resumed. For Freud’s view is that “ mental processes are essentially unconscious, and those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic entity.” (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1922, p. 16.) It is evident that this proposition, to which Freud ascribes, it may be mentioned, much of the intellectual prejudice shown against his work, is in a completely different category from the view of unconscious perception suggested by Leibniz. The petites perceptions of Leibniz have in fact been summarily dismissed by later critics. James, to mention only one, characterizes them as an “ ex- cellent example of the so-called ‘ fallacy of division.’ ” It does not follow, he argues, that because a thousand things together cause sensation, one thing alone must cause it. The one thing alone affects the nerve only. “ There is not the slightest ground for sup- posing it ” (this nerve affection, that is to say) “ to 1 A fuller discussion of the subject is contained in Ganz, Das Unbewusste bei Leibniz in Beziehung zu modernen Theorien, Zurich, 1919. THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 17 be a ‘ perception * unconscious of itself.” (.Prin- ciples of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 164.) It does not seem necessary, therefore, to do more at this stage than merely indicate, as has been done, the sense in which Leibniz uses the term ' uncon- scious.’ § 4 Schopenhauer (1788-1860). The conception of the Unconscious in Schopen- hauer differs considerably from that found in Leibniz. It is more far-reaching, more metaphysical. The only points of resemblance, in fact, are the use of the analogy from our own psychic life, and the influence of the principle of continuity. The meaning of ‘ unconscious ’ in Schopenhauer is best elucidated by reference to his conception of Will. He regards Will as the essence of both the individual and the universe. (1) In the individual it appears as the Will to Live, an inner impulse or striving or effort, a “ force of spontaneity.” To this source the variety of psychic life is ultimately due. It is the incessant, groping urge of the Will to Live, ever seeking more and more adequate self-expression, which gives rise to the different feelings and emotions of life, to pleasure and pain, love and hate, hope and fear. Man is primarily Will. Even his body is just a reification of Will. “ The brain is the will to know, the feet the will to walk, the stomach the will to digest.” (2) In the universe in general it is again Will 18 THE UNCONSCIOUS which is the essence, the inspiration, of all life, whether plant, animal, or human. Even in so-called mechanical activity, where ‘ natural force,’ as we say, prevails, there is a degree of Will present, for the cosmic, world-will is everywhere operative, in the physical realm no less than in the organic. It is the fundamental principle of the universe, and its expressions range over every degree of achieve- ment, from the lowest mechanical force to the highest psychic conation. What, it will be asked, is the bearing of this on the Unconscious ? Schopenhauer makes a distinc- tion between the empirical, individual will, which is the real essence of a self, and consciousness. Unconscious is connected by him with pure will. In particular, there are three features of Schopenhauer's doctrine which bear directly on the conception of the Unconscious found in Psycho-analysis. (a) A contrast is drawn between unconscious will and conscious, rational processes. It is the former which is the essence of life. Schopenhauer holds that this essence of life, this restless urge of Uncon- scious Will, is irrational, is mere blind impulse. He dwells on the comparative impotence of reason. The secrets of the universe, he believes, cannot be penetrated by conscious, reasoned knowledge, but only by a “ subterranean passage in our own breasts,” the unconscious source of our ideas and psychic life. (Those who are interested in showing an affinity between Schopenhauer and Bergson can parallel this view with the latter’s basic contrast of impulse and intellect.) The Unconscious is thus more ultimate, so to THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 19 speak, than consciousness. Consciousness, as we would now put it, is a late product in the course of evolution. It is a device to enable the organism to dispense with the actual presence of stimuli, thereby securing an incalculable extension in the range of possible self-expression. But its source and origin are in Unconscious Will, which has devised consciousness as an instrument or tool, in the process of achieving its own fruition. (b) In the next place, Schopenhauer notes (the influence of Unconscious Will on conscious thought and action. The details are too lengthy to quote, and I avail myself of a passage from Hoffding which shortly expresses Schopenhauer’s argument. “ When we imagine life to be a good,” it runs, “ and in consequence strive to preserve and develop it, this is entirely due to the influence of the world- will (that is, the unconscious) on our ideas, although we ourselves are not conscious of it. It dangles goods before us, and is constantly exciting new expectations, merely to procure for itself new means of clinging to existence. ... We are goaded on from behind, while all the time we believe ourselves to be making for our own freely-chosen ends.” (Hoff- ding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 231.) This suggestion, that unconscious motives play a leading part in the determination of conscious life, has the closest affinity with the doctrine of Psycho- analysis. The fact, too, that “ we believe ourselves all the time making for our own freely-chosen ends ” (as Hoffding puts it) is a good illustration of the mechanism now known as ' Rationalization,’ which Freud’s co-worker, Ernest Jones, has elaborated so 20 THE UNCONSCIOUS brilliantly in one of his essays. In other words, consciousness seems to invent rational, plausible excuses or defences, which carry conviction to itself, in order to mask the activity of unconscious motives which the self would openly repudiate. Such, trans- lated into modern terms, is the fact to which Schopen- hauer refers. (It is significant too, I think, to compare the point of view Schopenhauer suggests with the view of desire held by so modern a writer as Bertrand Russell. In his Analysis of Mind, chap, iii., Russell argues that the unconscious desires elucidated by Psycho- analysis make it imperative to re-state what consti- tutes desire. It is no longer possible to hold that there is a mental entity called conscious desire, which aims at some end. He suggests, therefore, that desire is a characteristic of a certain series of movements or behaviour-cycle. The initial stimulus to such a cycle is, he says, an impulsion from behind, not an attraction from the future. The coincidence in the language is probably not without deeper meaning.) (c) In the next place, the Unconscious of Schopen- hauer’s system transcends the limits of an individual. It is the impulse which underlies the existence of the race. It is the ultimate source, in fact, of the actions and achievements of humanity as a whole, and merely operates through individuals, as means to further its own universal ends. The best illus- tration of this is afforded by the nature of sexual mating. In this, Schopenhauer holds, man is “ only a means to the striving of the will after persistence in the race. Even in choosing his partner in the sexual relation, the individual is attracted, without THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 21 his knowledge, to that individual who, in conjunction with himself, can leave to the world the best possible posterity.” (Ibid. Italics mine.) This suggestion of the Unconscious as, in some sense, racial or collective, has been revived in modern form by Jung. The rich symbolism which seems to pervade unconscious phantasies, myths, legends, and other products of unconscious thought, in all ages, seems to be indicative of a common racial storehouse, so to speak, however the conception is ultimately to be understood. The other implications of the view, in respect to sexual mating, belong to the work of Galton and Weismann, rather than to writers on the Unconscious. It may be noted, however, that Psycho-analysis has fruitfully traced the connection between choice of partner and the unconscious mother-image. In these three features, then, (a) the contrast between unconscious will and reason or conscious- ness, (b) the influence of the unconscious in deter- mining conscious thought and action, and (c) the hypothesis of an Unconscious which transcends the limits of any one individual, Schopenhauer’s writings suggest some of the results of Psycho-analysis. Freud relates, too, that Otto Rank once pointed out to him a passage in “ The World as Will and Idea,” on Madness, from which the conception of Repression itself, which is such an outstanding feature of Freud’s own work, can be constructed. (Freud, Sammlung Kleiner Schriften, IV, s. n.) The conception of the Unconscious in Schopen- hauer, however, as must be evident from what has been said, is on the whole a highly speculative, as 22 THE UNCONSCIOUS well as extremely vague, notion. The conception in Freud, on the contrary, ranks as a scientific induction, and rests on a wealth of observations and facts of mental life which are for the most part outside the purview of Schopenhauer’s enquiries. § 5 A Note on the Personality of Schopenhauer. It is, I think, significant for the dualism of Un- conscious and conscious which comes out in the system of Schopenhauer to remember that the author of the system seems himself to have been swayed in life constantly by conflicting passions. On the one hand, he was strongly sensual, and his exaggerated reflections on women colour some of his writings very strikingly. W. Wallace, in his study of Schopenhauer, refers in this connexion to the well-known chapter on “ The Metaphysics of Sexual Love,” where Aphrodite is glorified as “ the truly universal deity of the natural and unregenerate human being.” There are references, too, in a copy of the Parerga to some papers on love and matrimony, “ too plain for publication,” as Wallace puts it. Apparently they were destroyed, after the death of Schopenhauer, by his executor and biographer. On the other hand, there was a side of his nature which craved for the peace and fullness of the contemplative life, in Aristotle’s sense, and which ex- pressed itself in his love of abstract speculation, and particularly in the doctrines of Ethics and in the third and fourth books of his greatest work. THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 23 What I am suggesting, then, is that a conflict of this kind, projected from the warring elements of his own nature on to the cosmic level, has a real significance for the understanding of that dualism of blind will and reason which is at the basis of his system. His colossal egotism and self-esteem are further personal characteristics which, curiously enough, are exhibited by certain later exponents of the Uncon- scious also. (Nietzsche is meant.) The fact of an unusually strong sex preoccupation is, on the surface, a point of contact with Psycho-analysis. But it is doubtful whether much significance should be attached to this. § 6 Maine de Biran (1766-1824). I mention merely, in passing, this critical student of Pascal, because his posthumous work, the Journal Intime, contains many psychological observations which have since been elaborated. He analyses consciousness, for example, by comparing it to the centre of a circle, from which radiate, on all sides, unconscious processes, growing more and more faint as they recede from the centre. He brings out, too, the contrast between conscious knowledge and the inner self, or unconscious. “ There exists within us,” he writes in one place, “ altogether independent of our conscious will, a host of changing phenomena which the Ego encounters when it becomes conscious of itself. These phenomena must proceed from some inner cause other than the Ego.” 24 THE UNCONSCIOUS These dim sensations in us are called by Biran ‘ pure impressions ’ or ‘ simple impressions.’ They are essentially similar to the petites perceptions of Leibniz. Maine de Biran holds that “ simple impressions may constitute an absolute sort of existence sui generis apart from any distinct per- sonality or consciousness of self.” Levy-Bruhl points out that “ At about the same epoch Schopenhauer in Germany was saying the same thing.” There is, in fact, a close affinity between the two philosophers, in respect to their doctrine of the Unconscious. “ Both these men alike oppose to the conscious personality of the Ego the dim unconscious background which enfolds it, sways it, and even directs it, and predetermines, unknown to ourselves, our thoughts and actions, our intelligence and character.” (Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France, pp. 325-326.) § 7 Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1907). The Philosophy of the Unconscious, as Hartmann’s chief work is called, brings the speculative conception of an Unconscious into the forefront of an entire system. The book had a remarkable reception. It had an extraordinarily popular vogue, ran through edition after edition, and evoked almost a literature of its own. The author, who was only twenty- seven years old, had undoubtedly been influenced by Schopenhauer to a marked extent. But the whole conception of the Unconscious is elaborated much more thoroughly in Hartmann. In the Preface THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 25 to one of the later editions, too, Hartmann explicitly repudiates his designation as “ the continuer ” of Schopenhauer. Hartmann seeks to establish the co-operation of unconscious processes in even the simplest phases of mental activity. The following are some of his main grounds:— (a) In ordinary sense-perception, which forms the foundation, according to Hartmann, of all conscious mental activity, analysis will resolve what is appar- ently immediate or intuitive knowledge into inference and anticipation, based on “a whole series of unconscious processes.” The detailed proofs of this, it may be pointed out, had been propounded at length by Wundt and Helmholz, before Hartmann. Hartmann, in fact, quotes passages from Wundt establishing the view that perception is essentially an unconscious process, and that only its results appear in consciousness. But the thoroughness with which Hartmann develops this position outdoes, as James somewhere says, even that of Wundt. (Hart- mann, op. cit., chap, viii.) (b) Secondly, Hartmann suggests that in asso- ciation of ideas it is not consciousness which selects the suitable or the desired idea. The actual selection of ideas “ takes place before their emergence.” It is the Unconscious which really makes the appro- priate selection, in accordance with the special interest or purpose of the moment. This holds good of the association of ideas “ in abstract thinking as well as in sensuous imagining and artistic combina- tion.” It is the Unconscious which performs the 26 THE UNCONSCIOUS actual task of finding the right idea. “ All aids and artifices of the understanding can only facilitate the office of the Unconscious, but never take it away” (chap, v.) Hartmann illustrates his meaning here by the case of Wit, which, properly called a flash, is always “ a gift from above,” can never be com- pelled, but clearly reveals its unconscious origin by its refusal to yield to conscious, intentional effort. There are two points of historical interest in this section, which I should like just to mention. One is the relation of Hartmann’s view to the develop- ment of psycho-analytic technique. It is the method of “ free associations ” which Freud has found so valuable in tapping unconscious material, and it is through Word-Associations that Jung has been able to detect the operation of unconscious * complexes.’ Hence the importance of Hartmann’s views should not be too hastily minimized. He was evidently on fruitful lines. The other point is Hartmann’s choice of Wit to illustrate his view. Freud, it is well- known, was led, by noting certain resemblances between the dream-work and the technique of wit, to analyse at length the relation of Wit to the Unconscious. (c) In the next place, Hartmann holds that the Unconscious plays a part in Feeling too. He believes that “ the obscure, ineffable, inexpressible in feeling lies in the unconsciousness of the accompanying ideas ” (chap. iii.). It is impossible to exaggerate, he writes, the role played by the Unconscious in this sphere. It is notorious that feelings are often not recognized, THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 27 not understood. We are “ liable to the greatest self-delusions with regard to them.” We are often “ mastered by a feeling which has already struck firm roots in our inmost being without our suspecting it. In short, we can never consciously grasp the whole extent of feeling. Always there is “an irresolvable remainder,” which " mocks at every attempt to illuminate it with the burning-glass of consciousness.” These, then, are some of the ways in which un- conscious processes co-operate, according to Hart- mann, in determining conscious mental life. Hartmann’s conception of the Unconscious, how- ever, has a much wider sweep than this. I can illustrate it only in a few further contexts, and choose for this purpose the place of the Unconscious in Instinct, Character and Morality, The Origin of Language, Mysticism, and History. (i) Instinct, it is claimed, always involves “ the unconscious idea of purpose.” If often implies data, essential to the result, which “ cannot possibly be consciously known.” It is not “ the result of con- scious reflection,” but “ the end of the instinct is in each case unconsciously willed by the individual, and the choice of means suitable to each case unconsciously made.” However unsatisfactory Hartmann’s language may sound, in the light of the increased knowledge of instinct we now possess, (and even Samuel Butler, forty years ago, found it so), it is still one of the problems in connection with the Unconscious to 28 THE UNCONSCIOUS determine the relation of instinct to mental process. Rivers, in particular, has dealt with the relation of instinct to the Unconscious, in a well-known work. (2) In respect to Character, Hartmann holds it to be established that “ the laboratory of volition is hidden in the Unconscious.” All we can get is the merest superficial view “ into those unconscious depths of the soul where motives and will react.” So, too, as regards the origin of moral predicates. They lie hidden “ in the deepest night of the Unconscious.” (3) The origin of language also lies in an uncon- scious mental activity, for the very possibility of conscious thought, Hartmann says, presupposes language. It springs from the ‘ masses,’ the ‘ people.’ It testifies to a common human mentality which underlies individual differences. (4) Mysticism, again, is defined by Hartmann as “ the filling of consciousness with a content (feeling, thought, desire) through involuntary emergence of the same from the Unconscious.” Every philosopher is a mystic in this sense, at least “in so far as he is original.” Spinoza, according to Hartmann, repre- sents the “ flower of philosophical mysticism,” and the whole course of philosophy is just the attempt to express in logical, consciously reasoned terms what belongs to the mystical roots of the Unconscious. (5) In History, above all, there is clearly operative, Hartmann thinks, “ something else than the con- scious intention of individuals, or the accidental THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 29 combination of their actions.” This something else is, of course, the Unconscious. Hartmann quotes Schelling in support of his view that conscious will is supplemented in history by an unconscious activity, the real nature of which is often concealed under the name of Fate or Providence. (See Schelling’s Works, I. p. 598.) “ What, then, is this Fate or Providence,” Hartmann concludes, “ but the rule of the Unconscious, the historic instinct in the actions of mankind ? ” Such, very briefly, are some of the wider implica- tions of the conception which Hartmann calls the Unconscious. In general, Hartmann holds that conscious reason merely “ denies, criticizes, compares, classifies.” It is never “ creatively productive, never inventive.” In these respects man is “ entirely dependent on the Unconscious.” The Unconscious is the source of man’s inspirations, of all that raises life above monotony. “ The Unconscious, therefore, is indis- pensable for him,” he breaks out, “ and woe to the age which violently suppresses its voice, because in one-sided over-estimate of the conscious, of the rational, it falls irrevocably into a vapid, shallow rationalism,” which can achieve nothing. It is worth while mentioning that Hartmann in one place suggests that Woman stands for the Unconscious, in the same sense as Man stands for conscious, rational life. It must be added, finally, that Hartmann is alive to certain advantages which belong to consciousness. It is more reliable, for instance, it is within our power, it is capable of change and improvement, it 30 THE UNCONSCIOUS is subject to will. It is therefore, in a sense, the “ more important for us” One ought to develop, in other words, one’s conscious reason as much as possible, because to the individual it is “ higher.” 1 § 8 A Note on the View of Hartmann. It is clear that Hartmann’s conception of the Unconscious closely resembles that of Schopenhauer. There is the same sharp contrast between conscious reason and the unconscious; there is the same universality, the same all-pervasiveness of the con- ception, the same comprehensive scope. Where he differs from Schopenhauer is in his inclusion of Unconscious Ideas, as well as Unconscious Will, in the conception. “ I myself,” Hartmann writes, “ place the Unconscious Idea (of Schelling) by the side of Unconscious Will, as metaphysical principle of equal value.” [Introduction.) It is in the words “ metaphysical principle,” just quoted, that the essential characteristic of Hart- mann’s conception is to be found. His facts and proofs fail to carry conviction. The very sweep and range of the application of the principle in his work suggest irresistibly the ‘ Deus ex Machina.’ In the words of James, “ Hartmann fairly boxes the compass of the universe with the principle of unconscious thought. For him there is no namable thing that 1 The quotations from Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious are in most cases taken from the translation of W. S. Coupland, 1884. THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 31 does not exemplify it.” (.Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 169.) James continues in striking vein. “ His logic is so lax,” he writes, “ and his failure to consider the most obvious alternatives so complete that it would, on the whole, be a waste of time to look at his argu- ments in detail.” The same, it should be added, is true of Schopenhauer also, according to James. It is in Schopenhauer, in fact, that “ the mythology reaches its climax.” Whether this be the case or not, it is at least evident that the conception of the Unconscious in both Schopenhauer and Hartmann is essentially a metaphysical principle. It was due to these writers that the conception of the Unconscious met with such contempt at the hands of many psychologists. It was regarded as “ the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology, and of turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for whimsies.” (.Ibid., p. 163.) However much, therefore, Hartmann might appear to have anticipated some of the lines on which later enquiry has proceeded, there is not any fundamental connection between his view and that of Freud. The Unconscious in Freud is not a metaphysical principle, nor is it mythology. It is true that Hart- mann deals in places with the same problems as Freud. But Freud’s method is strictly scientific, and it is from this point of view that the conception of the Unconscious in Psycho-analysis is to be differ- entiated from that found in the philosophical tradition. 32 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 9 Fechner (1801-1887). The Unconscious in Fechner is not a leading hypothesis. But I mention him because his work links itself up with the petites perceptions of Leibniz, among other reasons. These are called by Fechner ‘ atoms/ by which he means the simplest constituents of consciousness. He suggests that these atoms are ‘ compounded/ so to speak, in conscious perception, a suggestion which raises many further problems. Fechner’s use of the conception ‘ threshold ’ of consciousness has played a great part, too, in relation to certain modern doctrines of a ‘ subconscious' or ‘ subliminal ’ self. It has proved helpful also in the understanding of certain phenomena of attention and sleep to which he refers. In addition to this, however, there are some interesting references in Freud’s own work to theories of Fechner. I mention only two of these here. (i) Freud points out that Fechner has emphasized the difference between dream and waking life. “ If,” writes Fechner, “ the scene of the psychophysical activity were the same during the sleeping and the waking states, the dream could only be a continua- tion of the waking ideation maintaining itself at a lower degree of intensity. . . . But the state of affairs is quite different.” Commenting on this, Freud writes: “ What Fechner really meant has never been made clear. . . The thought may, however, prove ingenious THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 33 and fruitful if it can be referred to a psychic apparatus which is constructed out of many instances ” (that is, systems) “ placed one behind another.” Later, in describing the Psychology of the Dream, Freud again refers to this observation of Fechner, and prefaces it to his discussion of psychic locality. (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 39, 40, 424. Compare Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 73.) The suggestion of Fechner has evidently been found by Freud to confirm his own conception of the essential difference between the waking and the dream activity, and it was in Freud’s work on Dreams, it will be remembered, that his view of the Unconscious was first fully elaborated. (2) Again, in a more recent work of his (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1922) Freud points out that Fechner’s conception of pleasure and pain agrees in essentials with that forced on psycho-analytic workers. The tendency in the psychic apparatus to follow the ‘ pleasure-principle ’ is simply a special case of Fechner’s principle of the Tendency towards Stability. The significance of these conceptions is discussed later, in the account of Freud’s theory of the mind. But the references have been made here to indicate some important points of contact between Freud and Fechner. § 10 Notes on the View of Fechner. The ‘ compounding ’ of mental atoms, which is one of the features of Fechner’s psychology, is not a conception which has found ready acceptance. It has been criticized, for example, on the ground that 34 THE UNCONSCIOUS it does violence to the logical principle of Identity, because it makes the same mental entity at one time conscious and at another time unconscious. It seems more correct to regard the ‘ compound/ with James, as not simply the Unconscious atoms blended or fused, but rather as a new' form, a psychic reaction of a distinct type, newly emerged. Fechner’s general metaphysical view, it may be mentioned, seems to apply the principle of continuity which Leibniz and Schopenhauer so stress. Fechner finds consciousness everywhere, perhaps in every cell of the body, we might say. Lower and higher forms of consciousness are compared to smaller circles within greater ones. Just as there are souls beneath the world of man or animals, so there are souls above that world, the earth-soul, or the spirit of humanity, and the All, or the spirit of the All. There is, too, an interesting personal fact to record of Fechner. He combined in himself a duality of selves, so to speak, one a humorous, fanciful per- sonality, who published some early works as Dr. Mises, and the other Fechner proper, the very learned Professor of Physics. It is from the study of the mechanism of Repression, suggested by Psycho- analysis, that this character-trait, curiously enough, has now been better elucidated. § 11 Nietzsche (1844-1900). With Nietzsche the Schopenhauer-Hartmann con- ception of the Unconscious is resumed. The Will to THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 35 Power may be not unfairly construed as another variation on the same theme, that of the blind, irrational impulse or urge behind all existence. The features of the Unconscious, therefore, which have already been described, reappear in Nietzsche’s scattered remarks on that topic. There is, for instance, the contrast drawn between conscious, rational knowledge, and that other, more deeply-rooted part of the self, the Unconscious. “ All qualities in a man,” Nietzsche writes, “ of which he is conscious—and especially when he pre- sumes that they are visible and evident to his environment also—are subject to quite other laws of development than those qualities which are unknown to him, or imperfectly known, and which by their subtlety can conceal themselves from the subtlest observer, and hide as it were behind nothing.” {Joyful Wisdom, I, 8.) He often reverts to these “ unknown qualities ” in a man, and even uses some of the metaphors that are such a feature of popular distortions of Psycho- analysis. “We have all,” he writes in one place, “ hidden gardens and plantations in us : and by another simile, we are all growing volcanoes, which will have their hours of eruption.” {Ibid., 9.) There is, too, explicit recognition of the influence of unconscious motives in determining men’s actions, and of the nature of Rationalization, both of which appeared in Schopenhauer. We must distinguish clearly, Nietzsche insists, between the actual motives which underlie many deeds, and the motives con- sciously formulated or accepted in connexion with them. These latter, he goes on, only consist of 36 THE UNCONSCIOUS beliefs in this or that motive. They are “ wha men assume and imagine to be the actual mainspring of their activity.” The real, underlying motives are the unconscious ones, to which, therefore, atten- tion must be directed, if history is to be understood. Similarly, in the Will to Power, Nietzsche repeats this doctrine, and exclaims, “ How false is the supposition that an action must depend on what has preceded it in consciousness.” Nietzsche’s discussion of the general biological function of consciousness is interesting in the light of later speculation. He regards consciousness as “ the latest development of the organic.” Because it is the latest it is also “ the most unfinished and least powerful of these developments.” It is the source of countless follies and errors. To its activities are due the perplexities and the despair of man. Conscious activity is “ superficial and credulous.” It “ judges perversely and dreams with open eyes.” It is the Unconscious, or the instincts, to which man’s preservation is really to be ascribed. The immature development of consciousness may even be said to constitute a ‘ positive danger ’ to the organism. The danger is reduced, however, according to Nietzsche, because our nature has among its mechanisms a certain device to protect it against immaturity on the part of one of its functions. Our real, unconscious self allows, or induces, a certain false valuation of consciousness, by means of which the latter secures unfettered development. We are so proud of consciousness, in fact, that “ we don’t trouble to acquire it.” We allow it instead to develop freely along its own THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 37 lines, and in so doing we really enhance its biological utility. This happens in the following way. “ It is thought,” Nietzsche writes, “ that here, in conscious- ness, is the quintessence of man; that which is enduring, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. Consciousness is regarded as a given, fixed magnitude. Its growth and intermittences are denied. It is accepted as the ‘ unity of the organism.’ This ludicrous over-valuation and misconception of con- sciousness has as its result the great utility, that a too rapid maturing of it has thereby been hindered. . . . It is still an entirely new problem just dawning on the human eye ... to embody knowledge in ourselves and make it instinctive.” {Joyful Wisdom, I, ii.) From these quotations, then, it will be seen that Nietzsche’s occasional references to the Unconscious and its character follow closely the lines laid down in Schopenhauer and Hartmann. § 12 A Note on the Personality of Nietzsche. I drew attention above to the colossal egotism of Schopenhauer. He had, it is well known, the most sublime conviction of his own genius. Nietzsche, it is interesting to note, offers a parallel to Schopenhauer in this respect. His ‘ Ecce Homo,’ in particular (his autobiography), reveals in its substance and even in the titles of its chapters (e.g. “ Why I am 38 THE UNCONSCIOUS so Wise,” “ Why I write such excellent Books ”) an egotism so pronounced as to warrant being called pathological. It is possible that the parallel has some signi- ficance. A study of the early childhood of both men would perhaps elucidate some of their subse- quent conduct and traits of character. Nietzsche, for instance, lost his father when he was only a few years old; and it is a commonplace of Psycho- analysis now to emphasize the significance of the father’s personality for the development of the individual. This significance is partly connected with the way in which the idea of God arises at the time of puberty, as a more adequate image for the real father. Nietzsche’s views on Christianity and God are probably not unconnected with a certain weakening of authority in his early life. (Jung’s essay, Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal des Einzelnen, deals with the general aspects of this whole theme.) Schopenhauer, too, seems to have shown curiously ‘ unfilial ’ relations to his mother, in his later years. So slight a treatment of questions of this kind is apt to be misleading. But Fliigel’s recent work, The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family, has brilli- antly demonstrated what fruitful results can be obtained by Freudian principles from considerations of this nature. Without stressing any exact inter- pretation, therefore, I merely mention some of the facts. The full treatment of these facts belongs to the new science of ‘ Psychography.’ THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 39 § 13 Samuel Butler (1835-1902). The contribution of Butler to the Unconscious doctrine is a highly specialized one. It consists of the hypothesis of ‘ Unconscious Memory.’ By this Butler intends to correlate the facts of habit, instinct, growth and reproduction (facts which we ordinarily do not ascribe to memory) with the facts of memory proper. His theory was published first in Life and Habit (1877), and involves these principles :— (1) The “ oneness of personality between parents and offspring.” (2) “ Memory by the offspring of certain actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers.” (3) “ The latency of that memory ” till rekindled. (4) “ The unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed.” (See Unconscious Memory, 1910 edition, p. 19.) On this last principle Butler dwells at length. The clue to its meaning is to be found in the unconsciousness with which men perform even com- plicated habitual actions in ordinary life. ‘ Uncon- scious ’ in Butler seems to be a synonym for what is known perfectly. Every action, it is shown, involves conscious effort or volition at its inception. But frequent repetition reduces the degree of con- scious volition required, until at length the action is performed unconsciously. Butler points out, for instance, that “If we know how to read well, we are as unconscious of the means and processes whereby we attain the desired result as we are about the 40 THE UNCONSCIOUS growth of our hair or the circulation of our blood.” {Life and Habit, p. 9.) The relation of consciousness to the Unconscious seems, therefore, to be that of doubt or difficulty to perfect familiarity. “ Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty. When we are very certain, we do not know that we know.” Even physiological functions, on this view, are to be construed as instances of unconscious memory. The crab’s invention of claws, or the ability of the infant to breathe a few minutes after birth, are alike covered by Butler’s hypothesis. Butler’s theory is historically related to the view of memory suggested by Hering, in 1870, in his lecture “ On Memory as a Universal Function of Organized Matter.” In his book called Unconscious Memory Butler offers a translation of this lecture, from which it will be sufficient to quote this passage. It is clear, Hering says, “ that memory is a faculty not only of our conscious states, but also, and much more so, of our unconscious ones. I was conscious of this or that yesterday, and am again conscious of it to-day. Where has it been meanwhile ? Our ideas tread but for a moment on the stage of con- sciousness, and then go back again behind the scenes. . . . How do they live when they are off the stage ? . . . The bond of union which connects the individual phenomena of our consciousness lies in our unconscious world ” (pp. 70-71). Butler is at great pains, it should be said, to dis- sociate his own view and that of Hering from the Unconscious of Hartmann, with all its metaphysics and * clairvoyance ’ (to use the expressive term of THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 41 Sully). Butler and Hering base their conception on “ a fact of daily and hourly experience,” namely, the tendency shown by the repetition of an action to result in the unconscious performance of the action. Butler’s view, in fact, belongs strictly to a phase of enquiry different from that of the Unconscious as described up till now. It belongs to the general problem of the psycho-physical relation, which con- cerns biology and physiology as well as psychology. The facts which Butler adduces are probably better expressed now in purely physical terms, as in the ‘ Mnemic ’ hypothesis of Semon. Butler speaks of ' unconscious thought ’ also. In a letter to a friend defending the use of the ex- pression ‘ unconscious memory ’ he remarks, “ More- over, I think there is such a thing as unconscious thought, thought, I mean, too rapid and subtle for conscious analysis.” (Memoir of Butler, by H. F. Jones, Vol. I, p. 346.) There are, finally, some points of contact between Butler and Leibniz. Leibniz seems to have antici- pated Butler’s theory in his notion of a mass of unconscious processes as forming the nucleus of personality. Butler, again, seems to subscribe to a view reminiscent of Leibniz when he writes, in another letter, “ I have finally made up my mind that there is no hard and fast line to be drawn, and that every molecule of matter is full of will and consciousness.” {Ibid., p. 333.) From these various references, then, it will be clear what Butler intended to convey by his use of the 42 THE UNCONSCIOUS term ‘ Unconscious,’ and how far it agrees with the use of the term in the writers who preceded him. § 14 General Conclusions. Although the survey which I have now concluded is by no means a complete account of all Pre-Freudian views on the Unconscious, it is representative. If, then, the facts which have emerged be examined, what general impression remains ? It appears that several individual thinkers, noted in most cases for their learning or brilliance, have insisted on both the existence and the importance of something they call unconscious. The thinkers in question base their view on very varied arguments. Leibniz, and Schopenhauer to some extent too, deduce it as a necessary consequence of the principle of continuity. Hartmann supports it by a mass of considerations drawn from both psychology and philosophy. In Nietzsche and Butler it almost stands out as a paradox reflecting the perversity of their personalities. But it is equally apparent that, however the conception has been reached, it always bears the marks of vagueness and speculative thought. It is the unconscious perceptions, for instance, which “ constitute the core or permanent identity of a self.” The Unconscious is “ blind will,” is a “ force of spontaneity.” It is the antithesis of “ conscious reason.” It is “ Fate,” “ Providence,” the “ Life- Force,” the “ Will to Power.” THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 43 All such descriptions, however valuable as specula- tive generalizations, are not amenable to the rigorous scrutiny of scientific hypotheses. It may be admitted that the facts which they ‘ explain ’ require the intro- duction of some new conceptions. But a conception which is as vague and sweeping as the “ Unconscious ” is felt not to be so much an explanation as a mere cloak for ignorance. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that, on the whole, classical psychology has rejected the conception of the Unconscious, in the sense used up till now. It finds that it can explain the facts on simpler hypotheses. James, for example, explains them as follows :— He holds that the unconscious or automatic character of habitual actions (Butler’s ground for Unconscious Memory) is due to (a) conscious activity which is so rapid that no memory of it remains, or to (b) a “ split-off cortical consciousness.” He attributes the facts of association (as in Hartmann, for instance) to similar conscious but forgotten activity, or to activity of a “ brain-tract ” alone. While admitting that a mass of inference seems to be involved in ordinary sense-perception, in judgments and decisions, none of which inference is conscious, and while admitting even that “ most of our knowledge is at all times potential,” James nevertheless insists that such facts do not warrant the assumption of unconscious mental processes. They are to be explained as “ short-cuts in the brain.” 44 THE UNCONSCIOUS They result from ‘ tendencies ’ to action, which are simply brain-modifications, or “ particular colloca- tions of the molecules in certain tracts of the brain.” As regards instinct, “ All the phenomena of instinct,” he writes, “ are explicable as actions of the nervous system, mechanically discharged by stimuli to the senses.” Thus the conception of an Unconscious seems superfluous to James. The facts on which Hartmann and the others rely only prove, for James, “ either that conscious ideas were present which the next instant were forgotten, or they prove that certain results, similar to results of reasoning, may be wrought out by rapid brain-processes to which no ideation seems attached.” They do not prove the existence of mental processes which are unconscious. Nor is it any more valid, according to the same writer, to introduce the conception of an Unconscious to explain the core of selfhood. No doubt conduct, when analysed, wall reveal unsuspected motives. No doubt there is a stream of feelings in a person which “ compose in their totality the sense of bodily life.” Doubtless there are innumerable sensations to which we never usually attend, such as those of opening and closing the glottis. But all reasonings from facts of this kind to the existence of an unconscious self are characterized by James as “ one tissue of confusion.” The confusion is a twofold one :— (a) Between “ having an idea at the moment of its presence and subsequently knowing all sorts of things about it.” THE UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE FREUD 45 (b) between a subjective mental process and the objective thing it knows. Once these distinctions are made clear, the hypothesis of unconscious mental activity, according to James, completely falls to the ground. (James, Principles of Psychology, I, p.164 and following pages.) What, then, remains from the historical survey ? It is evidently an easy target for attack. It is useless to examine the arguments of James himself at this stage. I only chose him as representing the best classical attitude. It has to be admitted that the whole conception of the Unconscious in Pre-Freudian writers is vague, speculative, and vulnerable. At the most, it might be conceded that a general impression has been conveyed of a contrast between conscious, rational processes, and some less easily described activity. A case might be granted for further enquiry ; but there would probably be a recommendation to conduct it on physiological lines. That is all. I proceed, in the section which follows, to indicate the meaning of the Unconscious in Freud and Psycho- analysis. PART TWO FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS § 15 Introductory. Freud ranks as a medical psychologist, and is in no sense the founder of a metaphysical system. He reached his conception of the Unconscious, in the first instance, from the study of hysteria and other mental disorders. In method, his work reveals the attitude of patient, scientific amassing of facts. He gives expression to general conclusions with the utmost caution, and only after collating an abundant array of observations. In passing, therefore, from the Pre-Freudian liter- ature to the works of Freud himself we pass from more or less speculative conceptions to what claim to be judged as scientific inductions. § 16 The Meaning of ‘ Unconscious ’ in Freud. It is most appropriate to link up the present chapter with the previous one by indicating, at the outset, what Freud means by his use of the term ‘ Unconscious.’ This question is best approached from the facts of ordinary memory. An idea which is present now may be absent for a time and be revived later in consciousness. How does iLjexist in the interim ? 49 50 THE UNCONSCIOUS It might be answered, It does not exist in the interim at all, as idea. It is merely a physical dis- position. But such an answer, Freud shows, is open to grave objections. It is equivalent to a tacit identification of mental and conscious, which he disputes. It is, too, an illegitimate aspersion on the possibility of a science of psychology to deny it the right of explaining its own data by its own conceptions. Ideas, therefore, which are not present and per- ceived are called by Freud ‘ latent ’ or ‘ unconscious.' “ An unconscious idea,” he writes, “ is one which we do not perceive, the existence of which we are nevertheless ready to concede on the ground of indications and proofs from other sources.” (Samm- lung Kleiner Schriften, Vierte Folge, s. 158.) Not all these unconscious ideas, however, are the same. Some can reach consciousness readily, or with a little effort. These are called ‘ Preconscious.’ Some cannot reach consciousness, and it is these that constitute the Unconscious proper. It may be noted that the existence and nature of unconscious ideas, in this sense, had been demon- strated before the work of Freud. Freud himself points this out. He refers to the facts of post- hypnotic suggestion, as in the experiments of Bernheim which he witnessed. There a person under hypnosis was instructed by the doctor to execute a certain act at a specified time after ‘ waking.’ At the appointed time the person performed the act, without remembering the instruction or any of the attendant circumstances of the hypnosis. The real motive of the action was clearly the instruction of the doctor. But this idea was not present at FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 51 the performance of the act. An idea, therefore, in such cases, seems to be (a) effective, and (b) un- conscious. Unconscious denotes, then, in Freud, “ not merely latent thoughts in general, but is confined to ideas of a definite, dynamic character, which do not reach consciousness, in spite of their effectiveness and intensity.” (Ibid., s. 161.) But why, it is natural to ask here, is there this difference between preconscious and unconscious ideas ? Why is it the latter cannot pass easily into consciousness ? The reason, according to Freud, is that a force of some kind operates to keep unconscious ideas out of consciousness. They seem to have defences. Resistance is evident. There must be something in the nature of the ideas themselves which makes it necessary for them to remain unconscious. They have been repressed, in fact. This, then, is a preliminary account of what is meant by unconscious ideas. The facts from which Freud was led to postulate unconscious mental pro- cesses belong to many distinct spheres. I go on, therefore, to give some account of these now, to indicate more fully the nature of Freud’s conception. § 17 Dreams. “ The interpretation of dreams,” Freud writes, “ is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious 52 THE UNCONSCIOUS in the psychic life.” (The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 483.) The reason for this is that, in his own words, “ during sleep, with the diminution of psychic activity, there enters a slackening in the strength of the resistance which the dominant psychic forces oppose to the repressed. This slackening makes dream formation possible and therefore dreams afford the best means of approach to knowledge of the Unconscious.” (.Ibid., p. 199.) Freud finds that the dream is a significant pheno- menon, that it is capable of interpretation, that it “ takes its place in the concatenation of our psychic activities as a link of full importance and value.” (.Ibid., p. 80.) This is the thesis of his first great work. The dream as it actually presents itself while being dreamt, or as it is related soon after by the dreamer, is known as the manifest dream content. To interpret this content, analysis is necessary. The dreamer is asked to give himself up to self-observa- tion, and especially to refrain from exercising criticism or selection of any kind in reporting the thoughts that arise in his mind. Each element or picture of the manifest dream content is taken as a separate starting-point for such analysis. Now this suspension of the usual critique exercised over the course of one’s ideas, involving as it does a saving of psychic energy, results in an unlimited number of ideas rising into consciousness. In this way a mass of “ Free Associations ” as they are called, is obtained in the course of the analysis. These are technically known as the latent dream thoughts, FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 53 or the “ background thoughts.” It is the examina- tion of these latent thoughts which leads to the inter- pretation of the dream. What does the work of interpretation reveal ? Freud holds that when the interpretation is completed “ the dream may be recognized as the fulfilment of a wish.” {Ibid., p. 102.) There are simple cases where this character of the dream can be readily observed, as in “ convenience dreams,” as they are called. “ There is a dream,” Freud writes, “ which I can cause, as it were experi- mentally. If in the evening I eat . . . strongly salted foods, I become thirsty at night, whereupon I waken. The wakening, however, is preceded by a dream, which each time has the same content, namely, that I am drinking. . . . The occasion for this dream is thirst, which I feel when I awake. The wish to drink originates from this sensation, and the dream shows me this wish as fulfilled. . . . If I succeed in assuaging my thirst by means of the dream that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to satisfy it. It is thus a dream of convenience.” {Ibid., p. 104.) The dreams of children, too, are often simple fulfilments of wishes. A child I know, for instance, about six years old, admired greatly a little ermine coat and hat which she had seen one day in a shop. Next morning she told me she had dreamt that night that she had been walking in the park dressed in the ermine coat and hat. But such dreams are comparatively rare. In most dreams the manifest dream content exhibits no recognizable wish-fulfilment. On the contrary, 54 THE UNCONSCIOUS it may involve fear, or terror, or a host of other painful feelings. What is the explanation of this ? The explanation is that the theory of wish- fulfilment applies to the latent dream thoughts, not to the manifest content. When the latter shows no recognizable wish-fulfilment, “ there must be present a feeling of repulsion towards the wish in question, and in consequence of this repulsion the wish is unable to gain expression except in a disfigured state." {Ibid., p. 120.) The manifest dream is, in fact, a kind of censored product. Wishes are disguised or distorted before they reach the manifest content. Why should wishes have to be distorted in this way ? It is because they are not acceptable to the waking self of the dreamer. Such wishes may be primitive, infantile wishes from which the dreamer would consciously recoil in disgust and horror. They may be wishes of childish egotism or of infan- tile sexuality. They are, in short, such wishes as are incompatible with waking reality or cultural standards. The formula of the dream, therefore, should now be re-worded. “ The dream is the disguised fulfil- ment of a suppressed wish." The various mechanisms which come into play in the process of transforming latent thoughts into a manifest dream content are as follows :— Condensation.—An element in the manifest dream may have been determined by more than one train FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 55 of thought. The amount of condensation is really indeterminable. One dream image may represent an astonishing variety of latent thoughts. This mechanism often operates in the construction of what are called ‘ collective ’ or ‘ composite ' persons, where, for example, the actual features of two or more people are combined in one dream image. Words and things, too, are often treated as identical by the dream, affording rich material for conden- sation. Displacement.—What is important in the latent thought may be trivial in the manifest content. Psychic values are transposed, so to speak, and feelings attach themselves to objects incongruously related to them. Allusion, the representation of an element by its opposite, and inversion are further mechanisms detected under this heading. Dramatization.—Thoughts are presented in a con- crete, visual way. Logical relations among the latent thoughts are not represented abstractly, but by means of certain arrangements, sequences, in the manifest images. Secondary Elaboration.—This is operative through- out the dream, selecting, filling gaps, utilizing material lying ready to hand from day-dreams or phantasies. It really springs from a psychic function “ identical with the work of waking thought.” {Ibid., p. 399.) All this achievement of the dream work—altering, condensing, displacing, representing by allusions or symbols, dramatizing, transforming into visual images —has to be reversed in the process of interpreting the dream. Freud compares this process to the deciphering of hieroglyphics. A helpful feature, how- THE UNCONSCIOUS 56 ever, is the clue which the affects in the dream yield. The displacement of the ideas attaching to affects contrasts with the unchanged nature of the affects themselves. The very contrast, therefore, which a dream may exhibit between an affect and the object to which it apparently attaches—often enough a ludicrous contrast—serves as a valuable aid in the task of interpretation. The hypothesis which now suggests itself, to account for the above facts of dream-formation, is, Freud says, “ to assume, in each human being, two psychic forces (systems), of which one constitutes the wish expressed by the dream, while the other acts as a censorship upon this dream wish, and so forces a distortion of its expression.” [Ibid., p. 121.) The system which constitutes the wish is called by Freud the system Unconscious. The system which does the censoring is called the system Preconscious. To be conscious is simply “ to perceive a content presented from another source.” Consciousness is a kind of “ organ of sense.” Nothing can reach consciousness directly from the Unconscious system. Access to consciousness is the privilege of the Pre- conscious. Access to the Preconscious from the Unconscious is subject, as we have seen, to alteration, distortion, disfigurement. To sum up the sphere of dreams, then, the nature of the Unconscious as so far indicated would seem to be that of a system of psychic life in which repressed wish-tendencies function. Such wish- tendencies are apparently active, dynamic. They cannot reach consciousness directly, or unaltered. They achieve an indirect expression, however, by FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 57 allying themselves to preconscious thoughts, during sleep, when the repressing forces of waking life are partially relaxed. . § 18 Errors. A second group of facts which reveal unconscious motivation in everyone is found by the consideration of Errors. By these are meant the occasional slips one makes in speaking, or reading, or writing ; the temporary forgetting of names or places, the mis- laying of objects, and mistakes in the performance of habitual actions These are usually attributed by us to mere chance, or to certain bodily conditions, like illness or fatigue. But the introduction of ‘ chance ’ is, Freud says, equivalent to a rejection of the whole scientific outlook ; and fatigue cannot be more than a contribu- tory element, because the mistakes often occur in its absence. Freud’s own hypothesis, therefore, is that such errors are really significant of unconscious purposes or tendencies. They show a clash of intentions, one of which intrudes, and interferes with the other. The interfering tendency is not necessarily incompat- ible with conscious thought. But until it has mani- fested itself by this ‘ intrusion ’ into consciousness we are not usually aware that it was part of us. In some cases we may even indignantly repudiate such an interpretation. 58 THE UNCONSCIOUS We may, for instance, completely forget an appoint- ment. On Freud’s hypothesis analysis will show that there was some unconscious motive or impulse in us which made us forget it. Probably the appoint- ment was in some way disagreeable. Or it may be an anniversary of some kind which we have—as we subsequently learn with surprise—forgotten. If we analyse the personal relations involved, some un- conscious tendency will be revealed. The principle behind this is simply that we all have a tendency to forget things in any way painful. As Nietzsche put it : “I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains inexorable. Finally—memory yields.” (Quoted by Ernest Jones, Papers on Psycho-Analysis, p. 44.) Similarly, in slips of the tongue or of the pen, unconscious motivation is revealed. I once noticed a wrong date on a letter from a lady acknowledging a wedding gift which I had sent her. The letter was written on February 25 th. The wedding was to take place in March. Her letter was dated March 25th. The unconscious motive of the slip in this case was obviously one of anticipation or impatience, and it was easy to infer that the lady was happily engaged and looking forward to the month of her marriage. Many similar illustrations will readily occur to most people from their own experience. Ernest Jones, in the essay just mentioned, gives the following one : "A lady once told me,” he writes, “ that an old friend in writing to her had closed the letter with the curious sentence, ‘ I hope you are well and unhappy.’ He had formerly entertained hopes of marrying her himself, and the slip of the pen was FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 59 evidently determined by his dislike at the thought of her being happy with some one else. She had recently married.” {Ibid., p. 67.) Phenomena of this kind are maintained by Freud to be due to “ the play of forces in the mind,” to be “ expressions of tendencies striving towards a goal, which work together or against one another.” They bring into clear relief the dynamic conception of mental processes. (Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, p. 53.) The whole bearing of the subject is this: “If we intend,” he writes, “ to carry through, to their logical conclusions, the interpretations of errors which have proved justified in so many cases, we shall be unavoidably impelled to the assumption that tendencies exist in human beings which can effect results without their knowing of them.” [Ibid., p. 59.) This group of facts, then, drawn exclusively from normal life, forms one of the sources from which Freud's conception of the Unconscious comes. The facts, it is interesting to note, are often subtle indica- tions of traits in our character, or of feelings and impulses in connection with other people, which we should otherwise never even suspect to be in us. (Note.—One interesting case which has occurred to me is that of the murderer. It is well known that even where all the details of the crime seem to have been premeditated, and all traces removed, there is almost always some one clue or circumstance which leads to detection. Often, indeed, the blunder is elementary or stupid. May not the explanation 60 THE UNCONSCIOUS lie in the clash of intentions to which Freud refers above ?) § 19 Wit. Another group of facts which illustrate how un- conscious tendencies may achieve expression in consciousness, is comprised in the phenomena of Wit. Just as in dreams, so in jests and witticisms, we secure the gratification or pleasurable discharge of wishes which have been repressed and are normally forbidden to consciousness. The ultimate explanation of this is probably somewhat as follows: The process of civilization involves the increasing importance of critical reason in our lives. But there are moments when this critical reason, which is an over-layer, so to speak, is felt to be wearisome, or out of place. The under- layers, or the repressed cravings of unconscious tendencies, then rise to the surface. For these unconscious tendencies are the sphere of childish nonsense and primitive pleasures. They are opposed to reason. If reason, then, is temporarily in abey- ance, this delight in nonsense and these unconscious cravings for primitive pleasures are momentarily liberated, as it were, from the forces that repress them, and overflow into consciousness. The technical means by which wit is effected closely resembles the dream work. There is, for instance, condensation, resulting in economy of expression, which, under the name of ‘ brevity,’ is popularly FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 61 known as the essence of wit. Allusion and inversion are favourite devices of wit. Displacement appears, to some extent, in the ready transition from one context to another, which wit involves. A certain pleasure results, no doubt, from such technical means, and is often indeed the only pleasure, as in many puns. But the main factor in provoking laughter is the wit-content itself. Roughly speaking, the degree of repression habitually exercised over a forbidden tendency or thought will measure the amount of pleasure (or discharge of tension) which its liberation evokes. That is probably why witticisms at the expense of people we dislike or envy, or at the expense of institutions against which we have an unconscious grudge (such as matrimony or an organized Church), often seem to yield intense pleasure. Authority whose grounds are not wholly acceptable invariably offers a ready target for ridicule. The fact that civilized societies deny a direct out- let to a large amount of sexual prompting, which is relegated in consequence to unconscious life, accounts for the remarkable prevalence of this theme in the literature of wit, both ancient and modern. In general, we may say that the kinds of jokes which provoke great laughter in a person are a fair index to his repressed or unconscious wish-tendencies. It is for this reason that nations, and even different strata of the same nation, are often so different in respect to humour. Social conditions are important, as well as individual factors. We find it difficult, for instance, to appreciate at times the witticisms 62 THE UNCONSCIOUS of Aristophanes. Similarly, Bernard Shaw’s comedies are not so effective in Paris as in London. Even in the case of an English entertainer, the reception of, say, Devonian and Lancastrian audiences will be found to exhibit significant differences. It is notable, too, that when repression is unusually prolonged or severe, it gives way periodically to a reaction of corresponding license, as in the case of students, who are everywhere, it is well known, prone to outbursts of exuberant ‘ ragging.’ It would seem, therefore, that the facts revealed by a study of Wit can be appropriately resumed under the hypothesis of a repressed Unconscious. Such is the thesis of Freud’s work on this subject. It is worth noting, in conclusion, that Freud’s analysis seems to lead to a position not fundamentally at variance with the ‘ mechanical ’ view of Bergson. For the latter discreetly hints, towards the close of his essay on Laughter, that the sources of Wit are buried in a soil of human nature which it is perhaps humiliating to penetrate too deeply or too thoroughly. § 20 The Neuroses. The fourth group of facts, in the present order of exposition, comes from the study of certain mental disorders, or psycho-neuroses. This is the most important group of all. It was in this sphere that Freud originated the now famous Psycho-analysis ; and it is from research in this field that knowledge FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 63 and conviction of the reality of unconscious mental processes have primarily been gained. Medicine, in fact, occupies a fundamental place in Freud’s conception of the Unconscious, and Psycho-analysis is, in the last resort, a continuation of psychiatry. The two forms of neurotic disease in connection with which Psycho-analysis originally developed are Hysteria and the Obsessional Neurosis. Freud describes the latter in this way. “ In it,” he writes, “ the patient’s mind is occupied with thoughts which do not really interest him, he feels impulses which seem alien to him, and he is impelled to per- form actions which not only afford him no pleasure but from which he is powerless to desist.” The thoughts may be absolutely “ silly.” The impulses may be childish or terrifying. But the patient “ never carries these impulses into effect.” What he really does “ are harmless, trivial acts—the obsessive actions—which are mostly repetitions and ceremonial elaborations of ordinary everyday performances,” thus made into “ highly laborious tasks.” {Intro- ductory Lectures, pp. 219-220.) What is the explanation of this ? The obsessive act is really full of meaning, according to Freud. It links itself up, as analysis shows, with the most intimate experiences of the patient’s life, often dating from early childhood. The patient is ‘ fixed,’ in technical terms, to a special point in the past. This is, in fact, “ a universal trait common to every neurosis.” {Ibid., p. 232.) But, what is equally significant, the patient is unaware of the meaning behind the symptom. Mental processes have apparently been active in 64 THE UNCONSCIOUS him, of which the obsessive action is the effect. He perceives the effect. But he is not in the least conscious of what has determined that effect. This, Freud writes, “ is the kind of occurrence we have in mind when we speak of the existence of unconscious mental processes.” What is unconscious is not, of course, the obsessive idea, nor the action, the symptom, but “ the mental antecedents of them disclosed by analysis, the connections into which they fit after interpretation.” (Ibid., pp. 234-235.) It is difficult to illustrate this branch of Freud’s work without touching on medical details. Ernest Jones, however, gives a simple, non-technical case, as follows: “A common form of obsessional neurosis,” he writes, “ is that in which the patient has an almost continuous impulsion to wash his hands. With this may be the obsession that the hands are soiled ... or the phobia that the hands may get contaminated. ... The morbid desire for cleanliness . . . may extend so as to involve the whole body, or, in the case of women, the house as well, a not infrequent source of domestic discomfort. . . . This symptom is hard to understand until one begins to analyse the nature and origin of it.” Jones then points out that Shakespeare had really shown its significance in the case of Lady Macbeth. She had “ the ‘ accustomed action ’ of rubbing her hands together, as if washing them, . . . and, appro- priately enough, the patient furnishes the key to the riddle by disclosing her secret thoughts in her sleep. ‘ What, will these hands ne’er be clean ? . . . Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’ This FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 65 is a beautiful instance of how a symptom may come about through the person gratifying a wish connected with one subject, which is unpleasant, by transferring it to an indifferent one.” (Papers on Psycho-Analysis, p. 288.) This explains very clearly why the unconscious mental processes result in symptoms. The connection is one of a substitutive nature. “The symptom is formed,” Freud writes, “ as a substitute for some- thing else which remains submerged. Certain mental processes would, under normal conditions, develop until the person became aware of them consciously. This has not happened : and instead, the symptom has arisen out of these processes which have been interrupted and interfered with in some way and have had to remain unconscious.” {Introductory Lectures, p. 236.) The nature of this ‘ interruption ’ or ‘ interference,’ that is, the force which apparently prevents a mental process from reaching consciousness, is what Freud means by Repression. It is the same force, which, in psycho-analytic therapy, operates to oppose bringing the unconscious into consciousness. The patient exhibits Resistance, as it is then called. It seems, then, that repression “is a necessary pre- liminary condition, a prerequisite, of symptom- formation.” {Ibid., p. 251.) It has been disclosed, too, by psycho-analytic work that the purpose which symptoms serve, in such neuroses, is invariably that of sexual gratification. Repression, as already pointed out, concerns itself very largely in modern communities with sexual promptings, and it is not surprising to learn that 66 THE UNCONSCIOUS the symptoms “ are a substitute for sexual satis- factions which the patient does not obtain in reality.” {Ibid., p. 251.) It should be added, at this point, that the word ‘ sexual ’ has a much wider significance in Psycho- analysis than in ordinary usage. It has been extended so as to include the sexual life of children and perverts. From the study of these Freud found that perversions are explicable in the light of the successive phases which the sexual instinct undergoes in the course of development. The term ‘ Libido ’ is used by Freud to connote the force or energy attaching to sexual instincts. The Libido passes through various phases in the earliest years of childhood (Oral, Sadistic-anal, etc.), and it is better to speak of the different sexual component-instincts than of one sexual instinct. Some of the most striking results of Psycho-analysis (as well as its remarkably bitter and hostile reception) are due to its elucidation of sexual life. The phases of early libido-develop- ment, for instance, throw light on many curious character-traits of later life (anal-erotic traits are meant). Again, the relation of the sexual component- instincts to an object, and in particular the choice of the mother, or rather, parent of the opposite sex, as love-object—the (Edipus complex—have been found to underlie the neuroses. For at the time of puberty the Libido, now acquiring its full strength, again invests the old incestuous objects, but has to detach itself in favour of a love-object in the world instead, if normal growth and outlook are to be attained. It is “ only after this detachment is accomplished that the individual can cease to be a child and so become a member of the social com- FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 67 munity.” In the case of neurotics such detachment is not effectively achieved, and it is in this sense, therefore, that, as Freud says, “ the (Edipus complex is justifiably regarded as the kernel of the neuroses.” {Ibid., p. 283.) This digression on the meaning of sexuality in Freud has been inserted to account for the importance of that factor in neurotic symptom-formation. Symptoms are really compromise-formations. They represent both the repressed sexual impulses and the repressing forces of the Ego. What might be called, then, the immediate cause of a neurosis is a mental conflict of some kind. The personality on one side rejects libidinal longings belonging to another side. The conflict is apparently between sexual impulses and Ego-impulses, the latter reflecting the development of the Ego under the influence of social, moral, and intellectual conditions. It is inevitable that these conditions conflict with the demands of the Libido, and if the conflict proves excessively severe, illness is the result. “ There is no neurosis,” writes Freud, “ without such a conflict.” {Ibid., p. 293.) In general, there are two main possibilities which abnormal Libido-functioning may involve. One is called Fixation. That occurs when one of the component sexual impulses is arrested, so to speak, at an early phase in its development, and loses in consequence what might be named its mobility. A fixation is thus simply “ a specially close attachment of an instinct to an object.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, p. 258.) 68 THE UNCONSCIOUS The other is called Regression. This occurs when an impulse returns to an earlier stage in its develop- ment, being unable to make further progress because of some insuperable obstacles in its way. The whole process, then, of symptom-formation, say in Hysteria, may be described in this way. As the result of a conflict, in the sense defined above, the blocked Libido regresses, so as to avoid the veto of the Ego, and transfers its energy-charge (to use the technical term) to earlier fixations. The ideas to which the Libido is now attached, belonging as they do to the system Unconscious, cannot reach consciousness unaltered. It is for this reason that symptom-formation becomes necessary. The symp- tom, as Freud puts it, is “ a derivative, distorted in manifold ways, of the unconscious libidinal wish-fulfilment ” and secures a “ real,” though “ exceedingly restricted ” and “ hardly recognizable ” satisfaction for the Libido. (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 302.) It is notable that in symptom-formation, just as in dream-formation, the processes of condensation and displacement are observed to be operative. There is one further feature of the neurosis which is significant. The unconscious ideas which the Libido has now re-invested are not necessarily those of actual past experience of the Ego, or rather, patient. Phantasy and truth are somehow inter- mingled. It is, in fact, ‘ psychical reality,’ not material reality, “ which is the determining factor in the world of neurosis.” {Ibid., p. 309.) FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 69 Such, then, is a very general account of neurotic symptoms and their relation to unconscious mental processes. It has to be added, however, that all that has been said applies only to the group of neuroses with which Psycho-analysis has so far specially concerned itself, namely, the Transference- Neuroses. This group consists of the obsessional neurosis, anxiety-hysteria, and conversion-hysteria. Of the neuroses known as narcissistic (that is, those in which the Libido invests the Ego itself in place of objects) 1 Psycho-analysis has hitherto had com- paratively little to relate. As Freud writes, this is the field “ where the next advances in analytic work are to be expected.” (Ibid., p. 352.) § 21 Recapitulation. Although I have presented Freud’s conception of the Unconscious in outline merely, I have indi- cated at least its salient and original features. * Unconscious,’ it seems, means in the first place * repressed.’ Freud assumes two psychic systems in each individual, of which one is a system of repressed wish-tendencies, called for short the Unconscious. This system is not to be conceived as passive, but as actively functioning. We have to assume, there- fore, that “ tendencies exist in human beings which can effect results without their knowing of them.” The analysis of neurotic symptoms offers the most conclusive evidence for this. For it discloses mental antecedents of which the patient is wholly unaware, 1 What is usually called insanity 70 THE UNCONSCIOUS but of which the symptoms, or obsessive actions, are the undoubted effect. The analysis of dreams and errors of everyday life confirms the conclusions suggested from the study of the neuroses. I go on now to examine the validity of Freud’s con- ception in general. Can the facts which he adduces not be interpreted on simpler, perhaps purely physio- logical, hypotheses ? Is the conception of the Un- conscious, in Freud’s sense, a necessary and legitimate assumption for the understanding of mental life ? Further discussion about the significance of the conception is obviously of no value until the validity of the conception itself has been determined. It is to this question, then, that I now proceed. PART THREE THE VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS § 22 Criticism of the Unconscious. The Endocrines. It has been maintained on many grounds that the conception of the Unconscious is invalid : that on the evidence submitted it is neither a necessary nor a legitimate hypothesis. The objections come, in the first instance, from physiology : and perhaps the most radical statement of them arises in connection with what are called the endocrines, or the ductless glands. Leonard Williams, for instance, maintains, in a recent article, that no real purpose is served by probing the Unconscious, until the superior impor- tance of physiological realities is admitted. “ You will arrive at much better results and more helpful,” he writes, “ if you will turn from the rather fanciful analysis of unsubstantial dreams in order seriously to study the evidences of the endocrine pattern. They, and they alone, can read you riddles and show you miracles.” (British Journal of Psychology, Medical Section, July, 1922.) The study of the endocrines is not yet sufficiently advanced to warrant a dogmatic exposition of its significance. What seems to be the position is somewhat as follows :— The viscera, the ganglion nerve cells and the 73 74 THE UNCONSCIOUS ductless glands, form what is called the vegetative system. They are always functioning, but do not call attention to themselves unless some action by the individual is necessary, to secure relief or to reduce pressure. According to Williams, “ The whole of our animal physiological life is dominated by this so-called vegetative system.” Its function, as its name suggests, is to control the processes of breathing, circulation, feeding, excretion, and repro- duction. Its ancestor, if we go back far enough, is the nervous system of invertebrates. That is the oldest correlate of anything that can be conceived as * mind.’ Now in our own life the workings of the viscera, which are apparently so fundamental to the organism, are unconscious. May it not be, then (this is the suggestion Williams, for example, makes), that this whole vegetative system is the solid reality which the expression ‘ unconscious mind ’ represents ? Further, it is probable that “ The endocrines, with their essences, their hormones as they are called, constitute the mainspring of this surprising mechanism,” that is, of the vegetative system. May it not be, then, that the endocrines are the real explanation of unconscious mind ? It is true that assertions about the nature of endocrine activity itself are at present admittedly speculative to some extent. But it seems to be at least probable that the adrenals are the oldest, that there are three others of equal importance, namely, the thyroid, the pituitary, and the gonads or sex glands, and that all are closely interrelated and inter- VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 75 dependent. Berman, in a work which has attracted considerable notice, has equated certain internal secretions with certain types of personality. Williams suggests that the predominance of the adrenals makes a man virile and aggressive, that the function of the thyroid is to stimulate and warm, so that a full measure of thyroid makes us ‘ temperamental.’ The anterior pituitary, we are told, if excessively active, produces giants. The gonads are typically male or female, but most people have, in addition to their prevailing type, streaks of the other type in a subordinate form. Even if it be admitted, however, that the exact details of endocrine activity are still uncertain, this does not affect the general claim that it is the endocrines which are primarily responsible for the phenomena supposed to establish unconscious mental processes. Not only is it evident that “ the with- drawal of a single hormone may produce really astounding mental and physical changes,” but it is maintained by this school that “ Mind itself is primarily physical. . . . Conscious thought is, in its inception, action, and make-up, fundamentally physical and chemical. . . . Thought, reason, intellect, are almost entirely dependent upon causes which are purely animal and chemical.” (Williams, article quoted.) This, then, is one objection to the conception of an Unconscious. 76 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 23 Criticism of the Unconscious. Mneme. The phenomena of memory (and of failure to remember) are vitally bound up with the conception of the Unconscious. But it may be maintained that memory is purely a physiological function of the organism. The ‘ Mnemic ’ hypothesis of Richard Semon implies, for example, some such position. Semon seeks to correlate the various phenomena of habit, memory, reproduction, and heredity under one general heading, and suggests that there is a property of living substance, ‘ mneme,’ as it is called, in virtue of which these different activities are all made possible. His theory may be described as follows :— Psychic energy has its basis in some excitement in the substance of the organism. The substance is by nature susceptible of excitement, or, in technical terms, ‘ irritable.’ The source of the excitement is a stimulus from the surrounding world-energy,’ and it is to such stimuli that psychic energy owes both its initiation and its maintenance. The excitement which a stimulus evokes need not be synchronous with the stimulus itself. It may be ' acolouthic,’ or, more simply, an after-effect of the stimulus. Before the stimulus occurs the organism is said to be in a ‘ primary state of indifference.’ .Stimulus and excitement then take place, let us suppose. The organism now relapses into a ‘ secondary state of indifference.' But this secondary state of indiffer- ence is not just the same as the primary state VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 77 of indifference. The organism has now, in point of fact, been permanently affected. Its capacity to react to the stimulus in question has been altered. A permanent change or effect in an organism, produced in this way, is called by Semon an Engram. An organism, he believes, has a numerous store of engrams, some of which it has inherited, some of which it has acquired. It is to engrams that the phenomena of memory, or mnemic phenomena, are to be attributed. ‘ Mneme ’ is the general term for that property of living substance in virtue of which it admits or is capable of engraphic effects. Remembering, or memory in the narrower sense, might be regarded as a subdivision, so to speak, of mneme. Semon points out that different substances are susceptible to engraphic effects in different degrees. The nervous system shows the greatest amount of such susceptibility. After an engram has been produced it is said to be latent. But it can be reproduced. Under certain conditions engraphic effects can be recalled. These conditions are not merely the return of the original stimulus. A partial recurrence of the stimulus, or an associated engram, or even a general state of the organism resulting from what might be called periodicity, may suffice to evoke the original mnemic excitation. The chief of these factors is, of course, association. All engrams produced simultaneously, as well as those generated in immediate succession, are liable to be associated. 78 THE UNCONSCIOUS To realize the significance of Semon’s hypothesis in concrete life it is necessary to imagine engrams as knit together in a kind of engram-complex, organized in such a way that each of its components releases its successor. The various processes involved in a feat of memory, or in a habitual action, thus seem to follow one another quite mechanically. Even physiological functions proper, the rhythms of sleep and digestion, of growth and nutrition, are explicable on the same principles. In fact, we may say that the whole process by which life unfolds itself from fertilized germ-cell to adult, mature organism, is exactly analogous to the process of repeating a poem which is known by heart. The only difference is that in the former case the mnemic potentiality is racial, whereas in the latter it has been acquired in the lifetime of the individual reciter. This, then, is a very general account of Semon’s mnemic hypothesis.1 § 24 Reply. The Validity of Psychology. The two critical objections just outlined not only attack the conception of unconscious mental processes, but in a sense threaten the validity of psychology itself. For if there is no need to go beyond physiology for the explanation of mind in general, there would seem to be even less need to go beyond it for the explanation of unconscious mind. 1 The English translation of Semon’s Mneme has been used as the basis of the above account. VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 79 It has to be decided, then, at this point, whether a science of psychology is justified or not. Is there an activity which can be called mental and which defies complete expression in terms of chemistry or physiology ? Introspection suggests there is. It is true that in- trospection has come under the ban of Behaviorists,1 and that it seems to be a not wholly satisfactory process. It involves an apparent attempt to arrest, to distort into rigidity, what is really a moving, continuously fluid stream of activity. Its first effect seems to be just a suspension of this very flow or stream. There is a kind of tension on the part of the organism. The various organic movements which ceaselessly throb within become now un- usually stressed. It is as if the environmental situation to which the organism is responding has been curtailed almost to the point of disappearing, and as a result no demand is being made on the organism save the bare readiness to respond. But this apparent effect of introspection, when it is artificially and deliberately exaggerated, is highly significant. For it brings out, in the clearest possible way, the nature of the activity which has been distorted. That activity, when observed from the inside, so to speak, is readiness to respond, relation to stimuli, and control or discharge of tension. These are our rough approximations when we attempt to describe it. 1 The American school of psychologists is meant, who interpret human behaviour without having recourse to the conceptions of ' mind ’ or ' consciousness.’ 80 THE UNCONSCIOUS Now the fact that this activity does not lend itself to exact expression in terms of something else is not, I think, an adequate reason for ignoring it. The Behaviorists are content to reject the words ‘ mental,’ ‘ conscious,’ etc. No doubt this procedure eliminates from psychology many difficulties. But it must bring the science sooner or later to a dead stop. Non-Behaviorists find that the activity popu- larly called ‘ mental,’ so far from being negligible in any complete account of behaviour, is the crucial feature in it. They admit that it cannot be expressed in terms of anything except itself. But it may be pointed out that nothing else can be expressed except in terms of it. On this ground, then, it seems that introspection requires the hypothesis of activity to be called ‘ mental ’ or ‘ psychic.’ It is admittedly sui generis. Neither chemistry not physiology can at present show its development from, nor its exact equiva- lence to, processes of their own type. The science of psychology, which postulates this unique kind of activity, has, therefore, the fullest right to interpret behaviour from its own standpoint throughout, and to work with the hypothesis of ‘ mental ’ processes. § 25 Psychology and Physiology. What has been maintained in the previous section is that the attempt to construct human behaviour from the standpoint of mental activity is a valid one. This does not mean, however, that no other VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 81 standpoint is permissible. It does not involve the belief that psychology provides a complete, self- sufficing account of the phenomena which it studies. These phenomena can be studied fruitfully by physiology, it is obvious. But it is claimed that neither does physiology provide a complete account of the phenomena. The right of physiology to possess the entire field of conceptions is disputed. In reply to the argument based on endocrines, then, (the view that the endocrines are primarily responsible for what are called unconscious mental processes), it must be insisted that knowledge about the endocrines, while of the greatest value for physiology, has nothing to do with the hypothesis of the Unconscious. It is on a different side of the equation, if we conceive the psycho-physical relation as an equation. It may be granted that physical and mental are somehow related. Often they seem to be mutually interdependent, and what is emotional seems to be subtly bound up with what is physiological. It requires no very profound observation to suspect that a fever in the blood is closely related to mental delirium. But it is the task of philosophy proper to hold any theory as to this exact relation. Neither psychology nor physiology should allow assump- tions of this kind to intrude into their scientific constructions. All that knowledge about the endocrines does, then, is to elucidate and amplify our conception of the physical side of unconscious processes. It by no means abolishes the need for a mental side. Just as, on the purely physiological side, the phenomena 82 THE UNCONSCIOUS can be analysed and dissected with the help of know- ledge about the internal secretions, so on the purely psychological side, the phenomena can be analysed and dissected with the help of knowledge derived from ‘ probing the Unconscious.’ That an ultimate synthesis of the two phases may be achieved is a scientific, as well as a metaphysical, possibility. But it is claimed that in our present state of knowledge it is imperative, if fruitful results are to be realized and confusion avoided, to allow psychology and physi- ology to construct their schemes of behaviour in different terms. Both are valuable, and neither contradicts the other. But each must recognize the limits within which its conceptions permit it to progress. On these grounds, then, and with these reserva- tions, psychology is valid, or rather, the attempt to begin psychology is valid. It seems to me that at present a psychological construction of behaviour, as an independent, self-complete system, in which psychic causes are followed by psychic effects, is a legitimate task, and one which offers results no other science can replace. § 26 Criticism of the Unconscious. A Paradox. It may be granted, however, that the science of psychology is valid, without necessarily implying the validity of the conception of the Unconscious. It is on this latter issue that I wish now to concentrate. On what grounds can it be claimed that the conception of the Unconscious should be rejected ? VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 83 It may be maintained that the conception is a mere paradox, devoid of sense and value. One of the clearest statements of such a view appears in a paper by G. C. Field, contributed to a symposium on the question “ Is the Conception of the Uncon- scious of Value in Psychology ?” {Mind, October 1922.) This writer holds that the hypothesis has no value in psychology. “ The only evidence we have,” he goes on, “ of anything in ourselves beyond bodily processes is our experience of our own conscious processes. And the only things we can call ' mind ’ or ‘ mental ’ with any intelligible meaning are these conscious processes.” Anything else, if there is anything, should be described in negative terms simply. It is a large X, an unknown cause. To posit it is no more than a confession of ignorance. The position so clearly expressed here is that the two conceptions ‘ mental ’ and ‘ conscious ’ are synonymous. If they are taken to be so, it is obviously sheer nonsense to speak of unconscious, that is, non-mental, mental processes. Freud, however, definitely challenges the assump- tion that conscious and mental are synonymous. What he maintains is that mental processes are unconscious in themselves, and that “ their perception by consciousness may be compared with the per- ception of the outer world by the organs of sense.” {Sammlung, IV, p. 300.) The Unconscious, on Freud’s view, is the real psychic, which may or may not acquire the attribute conscious. Conscious, therefore, so far from being the universal or essential characteristic of mental pro- 84 THE UNCONSCIOUS cesses, is merely a special function of a particular system of the mental apparatus. The difference between the two positions is evidently crucial. It seems, therefore, that the best way to judge which is more in accordance with the facts is to begin with the concept consciousness itself. Both sides use that concept in some sense or other. If the meaning of conscious can be gleaned, the question as to whether conscious and mental are synonymous may be more readily determined. § 27 The Nature of Consciousness. It was William James who really initiated dis- cussion about the nature of consciousness, in its modern form. In a now famous essay he set himself this simply worded question, “ Does Consciousness Exist ?” His own answer amounted to this, that it does not exist as an entity, but is rather an activity or function. Subsequent writers have arrived at much more radical conclusions. Abbot, for instance, finds in consciousness no more than brain-functioning. Mind is to body, he suggests, what function is to structure. Just as respiration is the function of the lungs, so mind is a function of the body as a whole. {Psycho- logical Review, XXIII, pp. 117 following.) The Behaviorists (by whom I mean the school which acknowledges Watson as their founder) dispense altogether, as has already been mentioned, with the conception of consciousness, at least from their VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 85 official psychology. All that the facts warrant, on this view, is a single organism which responds to simple or composite stimuli by a variety of explicit or implicit motor and language habits. Bertrand Russell, again, has written an Analysis of Mind to refute the theory that consciousness is the essence of everything mental. He gives as his reasons not only the facts of Behaviorism and Psycho-analysis, but facts derived from epistemology and the New Realism of Perry and Holt. It is evident, then, that the nature of consciousness, and even the validity of the concept itself, are the subject-matter of vigorous controversy. It will be best to examine, at this point, a typical instance of behaviour to which the epithet ‘ conscious ’ would be commonly applied, in order to understand what is really involved in the problem. A student, say, is listening to a lecture and taking notes. That will serve as a rough or popular descrip- tion of his behaviour. What does analysis suggest ? i. It reveals, in the first instance, a living organism. But what that involves is by no means certain. It is as difficult to describe in words the essence of life as it is to detect its chemical constitution. We commonly speak of an ‘ urge ’ or pressure, a ceaseless activity, an effort or endeavour or ‘ conatus.’ But the patterns of its working are really the sole indica- tions of the nature of life. Physical chemistry, it is true, gives an inkling of the nature of life. For protoplasm itself is what 86 THE UNCONSCIOUS is called a * colloidal' system. Now when aggregates of molecules form a colloidal solution certain results are observable. The solution reacts in a definite way to different stimuli, and the reaction of the system as a whole is different from the reaction which any particular molecule would show to the same stimulus. The reaction of the system as a whole may, in fact, be described as an integration, in the ordinary (not the mathematical) sense. There is apparently a close connexion between life and integration. The activity which life is seems to spread out, as it were, to differentiate itself, to reach after more and more fullness or complexity of expression : and yet all the time it retains a grip of itself as a whole, it co-ordinates and integrates its manifold constituents. The living animal organism, however far removed from a colloidal solution or an amoeba, still exhibits the same characteristic of integration. In its dealings with stimuli it reacts as a whole. To secure this is, of course, the function of the nervous system. Sherrington, in a recent address, of which the implica- tions have not yet been fully envisaged, declares that the ‘ special office ’ of the nervous system from its first appearance onward throughout the history of evolution “ has been more and more to weld together the body’s component parts into one con- solidated mechanism reacting as a unity to the changeful world about it.’’ It represents, he adds, “ the acme of accomplishment of the integration of the animal organism.’’ (Presidential Address, British Association, 1922.) VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 87 Our student, then, whose behaviour is being examined, in virtue of being a living organism, possessed of a nervous system, may be said to exhibit the capacity of integration. 2. Analysis shows, in the next place, a complex group of stimuli with which the organism is in close relation. Some of these stimuli are environmental. Others originate within the organism itself. A con- venient name (used by E. B. Holt) to denote such a complex group of stimuli is the word ‘ situation.’ It is evident that every element in the situation has some share in determining the behaviour of the organism. If the intra-organic stimuli, for instance, are unusually insistent because of some functional disturbance such as indigestion, or if the environmental stimuli include the presence near the student of a young woman in whom he is interested, the total response will be altered. It is, in fact, the situation as a whole to which the organism is responding, and every element in that situation seems to contribute something to the final behaviour. 3. Analysis shows, in the next place, that there are certain observable responses of the organism, consisting of bodily, and especially of finger, hand, and arm movements. More detailed and more exact observation would reveal these as co-ordinated, integrated, in virtue of the organism’s plasticity and previous habit-formations. Some of the responses seem to be quite automatic or mechanical. These are, for instance, the student’s perception of the auditory stimuli and his translation of them into conventionally significant words. Such responses 88 THE UNCONSCIOUS are evidently so deeply embedded in the structure of the organism that they follow on the stimulus which evokes them as inevitably as the motion of a billiard ball which strikes a cushion. Other responses are executed less spontaneously, and seem to involve effort. But all are fitted into a single, total response. To sum up this analysis, then, the behaviour shows (a) a living organism ; (b) a complex situation, organic and environmental; and (c) an integrated, total response. But so far there is no indication as to what makes the behaviour conscious. Introspection suggests that the behaviour might be reconstructed from the inside, so to speak, with a view to discovering the nature of consciousness. If we regard the behaviour, then, as a snapshot of mental activity, what character- istics can be inferred to belong to it ? (i) In the first place, there is awareness or percep- tion of stimuli. This is evidently something active. It is only by analysis that the * situation ’ and the perception of the situation are separable. The awareness is the activity, and the ‘ situation ’ has no meaning apart from its being perceived, translated, interpreted, by a sentient organism capable of entering into relations with it. In other words, mental activity means more than the bare capacity to receive sense-impressions. It is an active process, really as well as nominally. (2) This active translation, or interpretation, as I have called it, is inexplicable unless it be regarded VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 89 as the result of previous training. The whole past history of the psychic activity of the organism (and indeed there are grounds for believing that it is not merely the individual organism, but to some extent the racial seed of which the individual is just a temporary trustee) is somehow involved in its present activity. It would, no doubt, be difficult to explain how this is possible. But on the physical side Semon’s mnemic hypothesis suggests an inter- esting analogy. (3) The activity, in the next place, is of the nature of a choice, a construction, a selection. It is not accurate to say that the present response is no more than the outcome of the organism's history. The total past history and the present complex situation cannot of themselves account for the form of the actual response. There seems to be some choice, some selection of innate or acquired response-habits, some systematic arrangement or co-ordination of these, as the result of which the response forms a unified, integrated whole. It is in this characteristic of mental activity that the meaning of ‘ conscious ’ becomes faintly dis- cernible. Conscious activity seems to impose a form on its constituents, to trace a pattern in its material. In so doing it achieves successful handling or mastery of stimuli. What would other- wise be a chaos becomes a relatively ordered formula. It seems, too, that the maximum of success in this is reached when the formula is in words. For a word summarizes an indefinitely large amount of stimulus. In a short, conveniently handled form it epitomizes whole tracts of past stimulation. 90 THE UNCONSCIOUS (4) Further, the activity may be characterized as a discharge of the tension or the pressure which the situation involves. The fact that a process becomes conscious gives relief, so to speak. This is perhaps the function of consciousness. It is at any rate one of the things it achieves. The behaviour, then, of the student listening to a lecture and taking notes, in so far as it is * conscious,’ may be summarized in this way:— 1. It is an activity related, in the first instance, to stimuli or sense-impressions. 2. It reflects or incorporates in its present nature all the past activity of the organism from the same standpoint. 3. It can be characterized as giving form or definite- ness (in this case by means of words) to what was unformed. 4. It disposes of the stimulus, in giving this form, and thereby attains relief or discharge of tension. This, then, is what seems to be involved in ‘ con- scious ’ behaviour. It is clear that consciousness and life are intimately associated, for the integration which consciousness displays is only a more complex type of the same fundamental activity characteristic of life itself. Sherrington, in the address to which I have already referred, points out that “ The cortex of the forebrain is the main seat of mind,” and it is just there that “ the animal’s great integrating system is still further integrated, and this supreme integrator is the seat of all that is most clearly inferable as VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 91 the animal’s mind.” (Presidential Address, British Association, 1922.) What has emerged, then, from an analysis mainly psychological seems to agree with the results of a purely physiological study of mind. § 28 Arguments for the Unconscious. The above analysis of behaviour, and the attempt to describe the essence of ‘ consciousness,’ were introduced to aid in the determination of the question whether mental and conscious are synonymous. It has appeared that to be conscious is to ' integrate,’ to impose a form on what is unformed, to discharge tension. How, then, is this ‘ unformed ’ matter to be conceived ? On what does the activity conscious- ness operate ? Is it something of the same nature, or is it something physical ? If it is something of the same nature, then it must be regarded as ‘ mental,’ but not conscious. If it is something physical, then conscious and mental can be strictly equated, or regarded as synonymous. The conception of the Unconscious embodies the former alternative. Those who reject that con- ception must hold (as Field does, for example, in the essay quoted) that “ The explanation of anything that takes place in consciousness, which cannot be sufficiently accounted for by previous events in consciousness, can and must be looked for in physical 92 THE UNCONSCIOUS processes .” (Mind, October 1922, p. 418. Italics mine.) I propose, therefore, to review the arguments which can be adduced in favour of the conception of the Unconscious, before having recourse to this latter difficult alternative. To do justice to the argu- ments I shall give them, as far as practicable, from the standpoint of Freud himself. They are as follows :— (1) It is found by experience that the data of consciousness are “ very incomplete.” Both among normal people and abnormal psychic activities occur which do not contain their own explanation. They presuppose other psychic activity, of which con- sciousness, however, reveals nothing. What is meant is not simply the activity in dreams, errors, obsessions. In everyday experience we meet with “ ideas whose origin we do not know, and thought-products the elaboration of which remains a mystery to us.” The significant fact is that, as Freud writes, “ all these conscious activities remain disconnected and unintelligible, if we persist in the claim that every- thing psychic in us must be consciously experienced ; whereas they fit into a demonstrable, coherent system, if we introduce the unconscious activities that are revealed behind.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, p. 295.) (2) It may be pointed out that successful treatment has been achieved upon the basis of a hypothetical Unconscious. The course of conscious processes is thereby affected. This seems, therefore, to prove VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 93 that the hypothesis of an Unconscious has some real justification. (3) The belief that everything mental must be conscious is either a petitio principii, or it reduces itself to a mere matter of nomenclature. As such, why should it be treated as of special sanctity ? In point of fact, it involves a great many disadvantages. “ It violates the continuity of psychic life; it plunges us into the insoluble difficulties of psycho- physical parallelism ; it is open to the reproach that it exaggerates the role of consciousness without obvious justification ; and it compels us to abandon prematurely the field of psychological enquiry with- out yielding compensation from other fields.” {Ibid., pp. 296-297.) (4) Granted that there is something, physical or mental, which has to be postulated, what use can there be in calling it physical, when the physical sciences, that is, chemistry and physiology, can tell us nothing about its nature ? It is evident, on the other hand, that the unknown factors have some points of contact with conscious processes, that is, with psychology. They can be described by means of the categories appropriate to conscious activity. Words like ‘ idea ’ or ‘ tendency ’ or ‘ impulse ’ can be intelligibly applied to them. They can even, under certain conditions, be translated into conscious- ness. Is it not more justifiable, then, to treat them as data of psychology ? (5) If it be still maintained that the conception of unconscious mental processes is invalid, what can be made of the mass of facts which it has been 94 THE UNCONSCIOUS the special task of Psycho-analysis to bring to light ? Is pathology a myth ? Are errors and mistakes just an ‘ accident ’ ? Are dreams mere meaningless froth or rubbish ? And what of the facts of post- hypnotic suggestion, which even before the time of Psycho-analysis seemed to demonstrate the reality of unconscious mental activity ? (6) It may be pointed out, further, that the hypo- thesis of an Unconscious is neither so startling nor so paradoxical as might at first sight appear. It is reached by no unique flight of unwarranted inference. On the contrary, it is in line with our customary mode of thinking, and with all the other hypotheses framed to interpret mental life. For, strictly speaking, each one of us has knowledge only of his own mental processes. Those of other persons are known by inference (what Lord Balfour calls ‘ inevitable belief.’) At first, indeed, we attribute our own nature and powers to everything in the world, animate or inanimate. Critical reflection makes us reject this view in the case of most things. But in the case of other people the inference withstands the most severe critical enquiry. It still remains, however, an inference. Now Psycho-analysis, according to Freud, only requires us to follow a similar line of inference in the case of our own self. In other words, when we meet with behaviour which has all the appearance of expressing psychic activity, but does not express conscious activity, we are entitled to infer a psychic source in our own being for that behaviour, that is, the Unconscious. It is, then, as valid an inference as that of the consciousness of other persons. VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 95 If it be urged that the correct inference is not that of an Unconscious, but simply of a second conscious- ness, Freud replies that it is meaningless to describe psychic activity of which the self knows nothing as consciousness. Analysis, too, has shown that the processes called unconscious have peculiar characteristics of their own, quite distinct from those of consciousness. The correct inference, there- fore, is not that of “ a second consciousness in us, but the existence of psychic processes which lack consciousness,” that is, unconscious processes. (Freud, Sammlung, IV, p. 300.) On these various grounds, then, the conception of the Unconscious is claimed to be both a necessary and legitimate hypothesis for Psychology. § 29 Conclusions. The above arguments in favour of unconscious mental processes seem to me to be convincing Indeed, once it has been granted that to attempt a psychological construction of behaviour is a legiti- mate task (maintained in § 25 above) it is inconsistent to deny psychology the right to interpret its data by its own hypotheses. A mixture of psychical and physical in one science cannot but lead to confusion. To regard past psychic activity as merely physical alteration of the organ- ism, is, I believe, arbitrary. It certainly curtails the value of such psychology as is possible. It 96 THE UNCONSCIOUS renders the general psycho-physical problem im- mensely more difficult and complicated. Whatever advantages there may be for a particular meta- physical system in juggling, so to speak, with physical and psychical, playing off each at the points where the inadequacies of the other are felt to obtrude, it can scarcely be maintained that a procedure of this kind has much value as a scientific method. Aveling, in the symposium to which reference has been made, offers a line of argument which is sub- stantially in agreement with this standpoint. “ The Unconscious,” he writes, “ can only be known by reflection upon what it does. It provides a nexus, or principle, for the explanation of the processes which occur in awareness.” He adds, “ The hypo- thetical elements which must be introduced to round off a science should be appropriate to the original data. They should not, unless it is impossible to complete the science otherwise, introduce characters which the original data do not display.” {Mind, October 1922, p. 427.) There are, then, objections to that intermixture of physical and psychical which rejection of the Uncon- scious involves : and there are cogent arguments in favour of admitting the conception in the interests of psychology. The conclusion which seems to me to be established is that, from the standpoint of psychological or scientific method, the hypothesis of unconscious mental processes is necessary, legiti- mate, and valuable. It is sometimes urged that the conception of the Unconscious is too hastily assumed. Laird, for VALIDITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 97 instance, asks about it, “ Is it intelligible ? Is it regulative ? Does it compel any specific deductions ? Does the evidence imply it logically ? ” He adds, speaking of the ‘ New Psychologists,’ that " their discussions of all of them ” (that is, all these questions) " are either perfunctory or non-existent.” (Mind, October 1922, p. 433.) This reproach is no doubt justified in respect to the numerous popular accounts of Freud’s work which exist. But Freud himself, as I have tried to show in the last section, does ask and answer these questions in reasoned language, and with a fitting recognition of just how far the conception is valid. The conception of the Unconscious has been com- pared, suggestively, to that of the Ether in physical science. It seems to resume and to illumine an equally enormous mass of facts which are otherwise inexplic- able. But although Freud writes that " the accept- ance of unconscious mental processes represents a decisive step towards a new orientation in the world and in science ” (Introductory Lectures on Psycho- Analysis, p. 17), he nowhere claims that it is more than a necessary hypothesis. It is the hypothesis which at present seems to fit the facts best. No more than this can indeed be claimed for any scientific conception. It is convenient to pause here, to indicate the stage which has been reached in the general survey. At the close of the previous part the meaning of Freud’s conception of the Unconscious had been outlined, and the main groups of facts from which it is drawn had been shortly catalogued, Before discussing the 98 Unconscious in more detail it was essential to decide whether or not the conception itself could be justified. The present part has presented the data on which such a question rests, and it has been argued that the conception is justified. In the course of this argument it has not escaped notice that the conception raises difficulties of its own. In particular, it involves the refusal to regard mental and conscious as synonymous. It implies that there are mental processes which are unconscious, but about which we are able to pronounce certain conscious opinions. All kinds of problems as regards the relation of the Unconscious to consciousness come into view. In short, the conception of the Unconscious involves an entire reconstruction of mental life, and a recasting of psychological theory. I go on, therefore, in the part which follows, to attempt such a reconstruction and recasting. Where possible, I shall quote Freud’s view as he has himself described it, so that this part might not unfairly be called “ Freud’s Theory of The Mind.” It is an attempt to present the whole setting in which the Unconscious has such a central place. Within that setting the conception becomes, I believe, less paradoxical, fully intelligible, and, one may almost say, inevitable. THE UNCONSCIOUS PART FOUR THE SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS § 30 Life and Conflict. Abstractly considered, the business of living consists fundamentally of effort, due to the assertion of one’s being in the face of an environment which offers resistance. For each individual there are just two things that matter, his own self and every- thing else in the world as related to that self. In so far as other things aid or impede the assertion of the self they constitute a reality distinct from the self. To succeed in the task of living requires a certain adaptation of the self to the rest of the world. But this is never an easy process. The self has urgent, imperious wants. The world has stubborn, adaman- tine qualities. It is in the clash between these wants of the self and these qualities of the world that the difficulties in life, the innumerable maladjustments, maladaptations, are born. This clash or conflict is evidently fundamental. It is “ at the very root and source of life.” It is “ the very stuff out of which life is made.” (White, Mechanisms of Character-Formation, p. 63.) Attempts have even been made to find a physiological basis for it, namely, in the conflict between the autonomic and 101 102 THE UNCONSCIOUS the sympathetic nervous systems. Bayliss, how- ever, regards it as doubtful whether the facts justify this. The conflict which makes up the essence of living is simply, in the most general sense, that between Reality or Necessity and the self. There is, however, a more specific use of the term which is peculiar to medical psychology. Conflict there stands for the clash of two wishes or tendencies, one of which remains unconscious. It was pointed out before that conflict, in this sense, is at the root of the neuroses. Freud defines it in this way. “ Conflict is a battle,” he writes, “ between two forces, of which one has succeeded in coming to the level of the preconscious and conscious part of the mind, while the other has been confined on the unconscious level.” (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, p. 362.) That is its essential feature in the neurotic. Conflict, in this special sense, is the clash between the repressed and the repressing forces. The nature of Reality makes it impossible for the self to gratify all its primitive tendencies, if the individual is to take part in the life of the community. Some of these tendencies are, therefore, repressed, and their energy to some extent diverted to ends which are socially valuable and permitted. But where this diversion of energy is not completely achieved the repressed tendencies still clash with the demands of Reality, represented by the repressing forces of the self. This is what is meant by conflict in psycho- analytic theory. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 103 § 31 The Pleasure and the Reality Principles. Conflict may be more clearly envisaged if we consider the principles which seem to govern mental activity. There is one principle which is fundamental, known as the Pleasure-principle. “ It seems/’ Freud writes, “ that our entire psychic activity is bent upon procuring pleasure and avoiding pain.” This is its “ main purpose.” [Ibid., p. 298.) The pleasure-principle regulates mental activity in this way. A process originates in an unpleasant ‘ tension,’ and follows that direction whereby the tension will be relaxed, pain avoided, or pleasure secured. The stream of mental life is thus “ auto- matically regulated by the pleasure-principle.” (Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, s. 5.) The basis of such a view is evidently a quantitative way of regarding the stimuli to which mind reacts. Pleasure and pain are related to the quantity of excitement present in such a way that the sensation of pain corresponds to its increase, the sensation of pleasure to its decrease. No exact proportion or direct ratio is, of course, intended. Nor has the view any necessary implica- tions of Hedonsim as an Ethical theory.1 It may be really regarded, Freud says, as a special case of what Fechner had called the principle of the Tendency to Stability. It simply expresses the function of the mind as “ the endeavour to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible, or at any rate constant.” (Freud, ibid., s. 7.) 1 See § 52, below. 104 THE UNCONSCIOUS The pleasure-principle, then, is a fundamental tendency of the mind. It is a tendency, however, which in the course of time receives a check. The difficulties in securing pleasure begin, we may almost say, at birth. Prior to that all the needs of the infant for protection and nutriment are satisfied by the mother. The mental condition of the child, if it is possible to speak of one, is a state of “ uncon- ditional omnipotence,” to use the phrase of Ferenczi.1 (Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, p. 186.) But from the moment of birth this is changed. Although the care and devotion of nurses secure for the infant, at first, a continuance of this almightiness, gradually and relentlessly the resistance of an outer world becomes an obstacle to the sense of omnipotence. The infant at first shrinks from facing this dis- agreeable fact. Its complete assimilation lies at the end of a path strewn with bitter sorrows and rebuffs. Always, during the period of growth and adolescence, a tendency is evinced to withdraw from the hard facts of Reality, and to reproduce in phantasy or make-believe the original conditions of perfect wish-fulfilment. This check, then, which is imposed on the pleasure- principle may be called the Reality-principle. It is not so much a distinct principle as a complication of the pleasure-principle. When the self meets with the external world and its difficulties the immediate dictates of the pleasure-principle might involve positive danger to the Ego. The pleasure-principle has therefore to be modified. It is replaced in that 1 I.e. every want is satisfied as soon as it arises. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 105 case by a more indirect pleasure-principle, and it is this which is called the reality-principle. “ The Ego learns,” Freud writes, “ that it must go without immediate satisfaction, learn to endure a degree of pain, and altogether forego certain sources of pleasure. ... It becomes ‘ reasonable/ is no longer controlled by the pleasure-principle, but follows the reality-principle.” {Introductory Lectures, p. 299.) The reality-principle, in other words, “ without intending to renounce the ultimate attainment of pleasure, demands and carries through the post- ponement of satisfaction ... as a long detour towards pleasure.” (Freud, Jenseits des Lustprin- zips, s. 8.) This reality-principle is a general name for some- thing not easily defined. The elements which deter- mine the acquisition of a sense of reality in each individual are largely measured by the social, moral, and economic conditions of the community in which the individual lives. These cultural conditions are the standard, so to speak, of reality. Many people are unable to maintain a working approximation to this standard. It may be because of some pre- disposition, or it may be the result of some excep- tionally harrowing experience. Society judges such people to be unfit for real life, and segregates them (or some of them) in asylums. Others carry on the struggle for a time, until at some point the strain becomes intolerable, when they take refuge in what is vaguely known as neuras- thenia or hypochondria. Many people are well adapted to reality, on the whole, but exhibit slight regressions or imperfections, not sufficiently serious, perhaps, to interfere with the main lines of their 106 THE UNCONSCIOUS activity. They are the victims, we say, of some curious superstition or delusion. In short, there are all possible degrees of failure to achieve complete adjustment to reality. But it is only when the reality-principle is invariably the dominant factor in a person’s behaviour that a suc- cessful adjustment can be said to have been reached between the self and the world. We might say that the test of how far an individual has succeeded in this adjustment is to be found in the extent to which he has effected the transition in control, or the re- placement, as between the pleasure-principle and the reality-principle. In the light of these principles, then, the nature of mental conflict becomes clearer. The replacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality-principle is at once imperative for the welfare of the self and yet intensely difficult to achieve. It is noticeable that sexual impulses are less tractable to this replacement than other impulses, so that they provide a fertile source of conflict. Indeed the pleasure-principle often retains its supremacy in their case, to the actual detriment of the self. § 32 The Basis of Mental Activity. Stimuli. If we examine mental activity now more closely we find that it may be defined, in the first instance, as response or reaction to stimuli. These stimuli are of two kinds. They may originate either in SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 107 the outer world or from within the organism itself. In the former case a stimulus is characterized by being a momentary impact, to which there is an equally definite response. The visual perception of a mad dog, for instance, is followed by the motor activity of flight. In the latter case a stimulus partakes rather of the nature of a constant force, against which a single response like flight cannot avail. It is probable, indeed, that the very distinction between inner and outer is closely connected with this difference in response. The “ effectiveness of muscular activity/' as Freud puts it, is what endows certain stimuli with the characteristic ' outer.’ On the physical side the business of dealing with stimuli is carried on through the instrumentality of the nervous system. From the point of view of biology the nervous system is “an apparatus whose function is either to dispose of arriving stimuli, reducing them to the lowest level, or to keep free from stimuli altogether, if that be possible.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 255.) The stimuli from within the organism prove more difficult to control than those which may be called physiological, and have probably contributed more to the development of the .system. On the psychical side stimuli are dealt with by what may be called the psychic apparatus, or the mind* The stimulus which has been described as more of the nature of a constant force is known as an in- stinct-stimulus, perhaps more simply named a ‘ w ant ’ (Bediirfnis). Its removal is called ‘satisfaction' (Befriedigung). 108 THE UNCONSCIOUS The physical or chemical basis of instinct falls outside the sphere of psychology. From the stand- point of mental life instinct consists of its stimulus or impulse, an insistent urge or pressure seeking the goal appropriate to its nature. .Stimuli, then, constitute the raw material with which the mental apparatus has to deal. How does the mind deal with them ? § 33 Mental Categories. The Polarities. As the result of psycho-analytic work it is possible to detect what happens to stimuli a little more exactly, and to reconstruct the fate of impulses, especially sexual impulses, from their earliest appearance. According to this work it seems that impulses “ are brought under the influence of the three great Polarities which govern mental life.’' (Freud., Samm- lung, IV, s. 277.) These polarities are antitheses, or opposite-values, consisting of (a) Subject (Ego).. Object (Outer World). (b) Pleasure .. Pain. (c) Activity .. Passivity. The development of what we call Love and Hate will illustrate what the polarities mean. In the beginning, the Ego can satisfy its impulses, at least partially, by and in itself. At this stage it coincides, we may say, with the pleasurable. The outer world SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 109 is still regarded with indifference. Love is thus, at first, simply “ the relation of the Ego to its pleasure- sources.” {Ibid., s. 272.) [This description, it is curious to notice in passing, recalls the definition of Love in Spinoza, namely, “ Pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” {Ethics, III.)] As experience develops, the Ego enters into rela- tions with the outer world more and more. Some objects in that world are found to be sources of pleasure, and these the Ego annexes, so to speak, or admits into itself, the process known as Intro- jection (Ferenczi). At the same time the Ego comes to feel certain of its own instinct-stimuli as painful, and these it pushes away, the process known as Projection. The result of this is that a Pleasure-Ego emerges from the original Real-Ego, and that the outer world falls into two parts, one a pleasure- source, incorporated in the Ego, and the other a foreign part, hostile and alien, as Hegel would say. Thus, “ the outer, the object, and the hated, are originally identical.” The original sense of hate is, in fact, just this " relation to the foreign, outer world which is the source of painful stimuli.” {Ibid., s. 273.) In this way, then, the polarity Ego—Outer World is illustrated in the development of love and hate. Under the influence of the polarity Pleasure— Pain, love and hate become themselves antithetical. Pleasure and pain signify relations of Ego and Object. Pleasure evokes a motor tendency towards, 110 THE UNCONSCIOUS or to annex, the object, while pain evokes a tendency away from, or to avoid, to destroy, the object. The two polarities, then, working jointly, if the expression is permissible, result in the antithesis of love and hate. The polarity Activity—Passivity is illustrated in this way. An impulse passes through successive phases in the course of its development, and it may happen that a passive correlate which is superseded by an active one remains latent, and is not destroyed. Hence we have the apparent paradox that love and hate “ are often directed to the same object at once.” A special name has been given by Bleuler to describe this conjunction of opposite-feelings. He calls it Ambivalence. § 34 The Nature of Ambivalence. The principle of ambivalency, according to Bleuler, “ gives to the same idea two contrary feeling tones and invests the same thought simultaneously with both a positive and a negative character.” (Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism.) It is familiar to us from Brahmic teachings, and it is a feature of certain religious emotions. James, for instance, points out that “A solemn state of mind is never crude or simple, it seems to contain a certain measure of its own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness.” (Varieties of Religious Experience, 1914 edition, p. 48.) SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 111 The most important sphere of ambivalency which Freud has elucidated is probably that of tenderness and hostility. In his work Totem and Taboo, a series of essays which deal with the “ resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics,” Freud shows that a taboo partakes essentially of this double character. The very word itself, like ‘ sacer ' in Latin, or * Kodaush ’ in Hebrew, has the twofold meaning of (a) sacred, and (&) forbidden, unclean, uncanny. Freud’s theory is that taboos are prohibitions enforced originally from without, and that they concern actions which are strongly desired. The persistence of the taboo is an argument for the persistence of the original impulse, which has, how- ever, in the course of time, become unconscious. ” The basis of taboo,” he writes, “ is a forbidden action for which there exists a strong inclination in the unconscious.” (Totem and Taboo, p. 54.) The taboos or avoidances which regulate the relations between certain people (e.g. son-in-law and mother-in-law) show that the relations are really ambivalent, that is, composed of conflicting tender- ness and hostility. The rules among savages regard- ing the treatment of enemies, the various restrictions or taboos on kings and rulers, who suffer from both an excess of freedom and an excess of discipline, are notable illustrations of this. The psychic impulses of primitive people are no doubt more ambivalent than among us. But it is perhaps not out of place to refer in this connection 112 THE UNCONSCIOUS to the fate of public leaders even of our own time, such as ex-President Wilson, whose fall revealed an amazing undercurrent of hostility in the masses which up till that time had been largely unconscious. Similarly, in the behaviour of crowds, where primitive mentality prevails, ambivalence is very marked. The hero of one moment is the object of contempt and odium the next. The importance of ambivalence in general is confirmed to some extent by philology. It is natural, indeed, that traces of primitive mental habits should be found in speech. For speech is one of man’s primary cultural achievements, and has undergone a continuous development. Freud refers to a work of Karl Abel (liber den Gegensinn der Urworte, Leipsic, 1884), in which it is shown that the oldest languages are characterized by ambivalence, or the conjunction of opposites. The same word appar- ently stands for two opposite ideas, and only later does this one word split off into two distinct terms for the two opposites. Thus both extremes of strong —weak, old—young, far—near, etc., were at first designated by one word in each case. Old Egyptian, Semitic, and Indo-Germanic languages were found by Abel to illustrate this peculiarity. A colleague of my own has furnished me with many examples in English. One is the old root ‘ agan ’ (infinitive), paralleled by the Norse ‘ eiga,’ which has the double meaning of (a) to have, and (b) to owe. Another is the prefix un, which in Old English has the double meaning of (a) very, and (b) not at all. Both senses are found, for example, in Beowulf, the former in the word ' unhar,’ meaning ‘ very SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 113 hoary.’ A third is the use of ‘ for ' in the sense of ‘ against,’ which occurs in Chaucer’s Prologue. (I am indebted for these examples to Miss Buck- hurst, of the English Department, Exeter.) It cannot be forgotten, too, that one of the greatest things in speculative thought—the Hegelian Dialectic —attaches the same fundamental importance to opposites and contradiction. The feature of mentality which ambivalence describes seems to be almost the basis of Hegel’s construction of Reality and of his interpretation of history. These, then, are certain features of mental life which can be detected by examining the development of impulses. The impulses come under the influence of the polarities, and their subsequent fate reveals the working of what has been appropriately named ‘ ambivalence.’ The description up till this stage, however, has been highly general. What have been emphasized are merely certain broad, governing principles or categories, analogous, in a sense, to the Kantian Forms of Sensibility, if the comparison is permissible. The mind deals with stimuli in some such way as these principles suggest. It is possible now, however, to consider mental processes more particularly and more exactly. In Freud’s theory there are three points of view from which at present this can be done. The name which he has coined to denote this triple view-point is ‘ Metapsychology 114 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 35 Metapsychology Defined. In a note attached to one of the essays in his Fourth Series of papers Freud writes that he origin- ally intended to publish as a separate volume, under the title of “ Prolegomena to Metapsychology,” five of these papers, which deal with impulses and their fate, with the Unconscious, with Repression, and with some features of Dreams, Grief, and Melancholy. The purpose of these essays, he adds, was “ to explain and deepen ” the theoretical hypotheses which might serve as the foundation for a psycho- analytic system. It seems from this, therefore, that metapsychology is a general name for the theory which underlies Freud’s account of psychic life. It is the psycho- logical foundation of Psycho-analysis. “We shall find it worth while,” Freud writes elsewhere, “ to designate by a special name these points of view which mark the completion of psycho- analytical enquiry. I propose that when a psychic process can be successfully described in its dynamic, topographic, and economic relations, that should be called a metapsychological presentation.” (Samm- lung, IV, s. 312, s. 339, footnote.) The economic view-point can best be understood in the light of what was said above regarding the Pleasure-principle. It was shown that stimuli are capable of a quantitative representation, which might also be expressed by saying that ideas are ‘ charged ’ SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 115 with a certain amount of energy. “ The final aim of mental activity,” Freud writes, “ which can be qualitatively described as a striving towards pleasure and avoidance of pain, is represented economically in the task of mastering the distribution of the quanti- ties of excitation (stimulus-masses) present in the mental apparatus, and in preventing the accumulation of them which gives rise to pain. (Introductory Lectures, p. 313.) It seems, in fact, as if the mind could only hold so much undischarged energy at a time. It must be somehow distributed. This is what is meant, then, when we speak of the economic view-point. The topographic aspect involves the supposition of distinct systems in the mental apparatus. A par- ticular mental process is conceived as occurring in a particular system. The two systems which have already been distinguished (in the account of Dreams, Part Two) are the system Preconscious and the system Unconscious. These systems, Freud suggests, can be represented topographically, that is, as spatially related. The notion may sound crude, Freud admits. But it is, he claims, “ a useful aid to understanding.” It is helpful to think of the system Unconscious as “ a large ante-room, in which various mental excita- tions crowd,” and to conceive “ a second, smaller apartment, adjoining this, a sort of reception-room, in which, too, consciousness resides.” (Freud, Ibid., pp. 249-250.) The dynamic view-point is the very central essence of Freud’s psychology. He conceives ideas as active, as charged with so much energy. This is specially important in connection with unconscious processes. 116 THE UNCONSCIOUS These we have seen, although repressed, are not destroyed, but function actively all the time. Since the keynote to the system Unconscious is to be found in Repression, a detailed study of that mechanism will throw further light on the whole ‘ metapsychological' presentation of mental processes. § 36 Repression. Repression (Verdrangung) is the mechanism which comes into play in what was described above as the replacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality- principle. By means of it the individual develops social personality. He becomes adapted to the con- ditions of the community in which he lives, and is weaned from the sway of an irrational pleasure-loving principle to a sense of reality and common life which is biologically useful for survival. When impulses cannot be gratified, for some reason or other, the organism cannot run away from them. Stimuli from the outer world which meet with disapproval can be avoided, for instance, by flight. But the stimuli from instincts require different treatment. They are, in fact, repressed.1 From subsequent analysis it is found that the impulse which was repressed could have been satisfied origin- ally, but that its satisfaction was incompatible with the other wishes of the Ego. Repression, therefore, 1 I.e. kept from consciousness. The term has only this meaning when used in its technical sense. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 117 presupposes a certain stage of development on the part of the individual. It is not a defence-mechanism which was present at the very beginning. The important fact about repression is that it does not secure the destruction of the impulse whose satisfaction has been denied, but simply its rejection from consciousness. The impulse is kept out of con- sciousness. It has to remain unconscious. It is evident, then, that ‘ repressed ’ and ‘ unconscious ' are closely related. They are, in fact, to some extent correlative. As Freud puts it, “ Everything that is repressed is unconscious; but we cannot assert that everything unconscious is repressed.” (Delusion and Dream, p. 178.) Repression is thus, as I said above, the keynote to the system Uncon- scious, and to its distinction from the system Preconscious. Repression has two phases : (a) Original Repres- sion (Urverdrdngung), by which consciousness refuses to admit an impulse, or rather, the idea representing the impulse. The idea as a result becomes ‘ fixed,’ remaining attached to the impulse. (b) Repression proper, or Subsequent Repression (Nachdrangen), which applies to products of the originally repressed idea, or to ideas associated with it. For it is clear, according to Freud, that the originally repressed idea is neither dead nor passive. It may be, on the contrary, intensely dynamic and alive. It organizes associations. It creates products of its own. It has a rich, unfettered development, “ in darkness, as it were,” exercising an attraction on everything with which it can connect itself. This is what is meant, then, when it is said that repression does 118 THE UNCONSCIOUS not destroy an impulse. What it really does is “to disturb the relation to the conscious system.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 282.) These creations of the repressed idea continue to develop in phantasy, unchecked, until, under certain conditions, they are enabled to come to light in the neurotic. Often they prove terrifying in their strength when they do come to light. The conditions under which they can reach consciousness are, roughly speaking, the amount of distortion or dis- figurement, the number of removes by association they are from the originally displeasing idea. “ It is as though,” Freud writes, “ the resistance of consciousness against them were a function of their distance from the originally repressed idea.” {Ibid., s. 283.) The ideas which appear in ‘ Free Association,’ when, it will be remembered, criticism and selection are suspended, afford a clue to such creations of a re- pressed idea, and offer the best means of “ translating into consciousness ” the repressed ideas with which they are connected. Repression, then, it is evident, cannot be conceived as a single event, the consequences of which are finished once for all, as soon as it has occurred. It involves, on the contrary, “ a continuous expendi- ture of force.” {Ibid., s. 285.) The repressed idea " exercises a continuous pressure in the direction of consciousness,” and against it the repressing forces exercise “ an uninterrupted counter-pressure.” In this way the “ equilibrium ” of waking life is maintained. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 119 In this connection it might be suggested that the partial relaxing of repression which dream-formation exhibits accounts to some extent for that saving of energy which it is the peculiar property of sleep to furnish. § 37 Repression and Affect. Up till now the words ‘ repressed idea ’ have been used to mean something charged by an impulse with energy. The amount of energy varies, and is reflected in the number and strength of the creations to which the repressed idea gives birth. It is necessary now, however, to analyse ' repressed idea ’ still further. It is distinguishable into two elements : (a) the idea proper, and (b) an affect-quantity. A certain feeling-tone, or affect, it is postulated, is attached to an idea. But it is capable of being diffused or radiated over a field of ideas wider than its original accompaniment. It may also be dis- placed, and attach itself to ideas connected only remotely or even symbolically with the original idea to which it belonged. This displacement of affect, it will be remembered, plays a significant part in the analysis of dreams. Repression, it is to be noticed now, does not operate in exactly the same way on both the idea and the affect. The idea proper is rejected from consciousness, or kept from becoming conscious. But the affect-quantity has more than one possible fate. It may be completely suppressed, to all appear- 120 THE UNCONSCIOUS ances, and disappear. But it may also appear as a qualitatively different affect, and it may be trans- formed into Anxiety. The difference between the fate of the idea and that of the affect may be described in this way. After repression the idea belongs to the system Unconscious as a real entity. The affect, however, has only the possibility of attachment, which may or may not take place. It is in dreams and the neuroses, of course, that the evidence for this is found. It would seem, then, that the relation of repression to affect is of crucial significance. “ Ideas are repressed,” Freud writes in one place, “ only because they are connected with liberations of emotions, which are not to come to light.” (Freud, Delusion and Dream, p. 179.) Affective quality, in fact, is often an important clue to the existence of repressed ideas. More particularly, a contrast of affective quality is a differentiating character of the Unconscious and con- sciousness. As Ernest Jones puts it, “ It may be stated as a general law that what in the Unconscious has a positive affective tone, that is, of pleasure, has in consciousness a negative affective tone, that is, of displeasure.” We may even say that “ The most essential characteristic of repression lies in this affec- tive transformation of pleasure into displeasure.” {British Journal of Psychology, IX, p. 249.) This may explain why we often feel a violent dislike for something without being able to account for it on rational grounds. It may be a conscious defence against an unconscious desire which has SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 121 been repressed. False prudery affords the most obvious illustration. The very intensity, in fact, of a conscious hatred or prejudice is often itself an index to the affective strength of the repressed impulse from which it has been transformed. This view of the relation of repression to affect confirms, it may be noted, the importance of the tendency in the psychic apparatus to the pleasure- principle. For the purpose of repression, clearly, is to avoid pain. It has only succeeded, of course, if the development of the affect is completely sup- pressed. Where the affect is transformed into subsequent pain or anxiety it has failed. There is, one might say, a struggle going on always between the system Consciousness and the system Unconscious for the control of affectivity. From this point of view repression appears as the instrument which the combatant consciousness utilizes. Successful repression, then, does three things, it seems. It secures the rejection of an idea from consciousness. It prevents the development of an affect. In doing these two things it prevents also the motor activity which the repressed affect would involve. § 38 Repression and Topography. Certain problems arise from this account of repres- sion in its relation to the topographical aspect of ideas. When an unconscious idea, for instance, passes into the system Preconscious, in the course 122 THE UNCONSCIOUS of psycho-analytic treatment, is there a new im- pression of the idea, occupying a new psychic locality ? Or is there simply a functional alteration, a change in the nature of the idea, in the same psychic locality ? At first sight the notion of a new psychic locality, however crude it sounds, seems, according to Freud, the most convenient hypothesis. Certainly when a patient is told one of his repressed ideas, it does not alter at all. The repression and the consequences of the repression remain, although the idea is now conscious. It looks as if the same idea were now in different parts of the mental apparatus, (a) as an imparted conscious recollection, and (b) as an unconscious process, formerly experienced. But reflection shows at once that it is not the same idea. To have experienced and to be told are different, psychologically. It seems more probable, therefore, that there is not a new impression, but simply a functional alteration. The energy-charge of the idea has been altered. The Preconscious system withdraws its charge, so to speak, at the moment of repression, and the idea then remains in the system Unconscious. If it is to become conscious again it must regain the withdrawn energy charge.1 After some such fashion, then, repression and topo- graphy are related. It is difficult to decide how far problems of this kind are verbal, arising from the abstract fixity of ‘ idea ’ instead of the concrete 1 Even this, however, is not the true solution, which involves another factor, explained below (§ 40), SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 123 fluidity of a single organism responding to a ‘ situa- tion,’ which is what experience presents. It is difficult, too, to appreciate the problem outside of its context in an actual case. It seems best, there- fore, to leave the subject of repression now, and deal with unconscious processes themselves. § 39 Development of the Unconscious System. The psychic apparatus, as it has been called throughout, is a development of something simpler. Probably in its simpler phase it “ took the form of a reflex apparatus,” Freud suggests, “ which enabled it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible stimulus reaching it from without.” (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 446.) The simple reflex act serves as a model or type of all psychic activity. The mental apparatus, we may say, has a direction, from one end, that of sensory stimuli, to the other end, that of motor innervations. In the reflex act there are no complications. But the inner wants, the physical needs, of the organism enforced a modification of the above simple function. The inner excitement roused by these wants can be removed only by a feeling of gratifica- tion. In the case of the child this is secured by out- side help, and an essential element in the experience is a perception, say, of food. The memory picture of this is now associated with the memory of the excitement, and on the next occasion of the want is itself revived. The psychic feeling thus present 124 THE UNCONSCIOUS is what Freud means by a ‘ wish.' “ The reappear- ance of the perception,” he writes, “ constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full revival of the per- ception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfilment.” (Ibid., p. 446.) In the primitive condition of the apparatus this is the road which is no doubt followed. The wishing then merges into an hallucination. The name Primary Process is given to this regressive tendency to revive the perception by internal means. Experience soon shows, however, that this method is not so effective in allaying the excitement of the want as reviving the perception externally. Various processes, therefore, are set in motion. Regression is inhibited beyond the memory image, and psychic energy is directed to establish the perception from the outer world. “ But this entire complicated mental activity,” Freud points out, “ which works its way from the memory picture to the establishment of the perception identity from the outer world merely represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfilment by experience.” {Ibid., p. 447.) The name Secondary Process is given to this detour. These two types of processes constitute the germ, as it were, of what in later life form the systems Unconscious and Preconscious. Freud’s emphasis on ‘ processes ’ is a useful corrective to the merely topographic view-point which ‘ psychic locality ’ and * systems ’ suggest. It brings out the dynamic mode of presentation. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 125 The contents of the Unconscious are described by Freud in this way. “ If,” he writes, “ there are inherited psychical formations in human beings, anything analogous to the instinct of animals, this constitutes the nucleus of the Unconscious. Later there is added to this that which has been put aside as useless during the development of childhood; this need not show any essential difference from that which is inherited. A sharp, final separation of the contents of the two systems ” (that is, the Uncon- scious and the Preconscious) “ only arises, as a rule, at the period of puberty.” (Sammlung, IV, s. 327.) ‘ Unconscious,’ then, is the name given to denote a certain kind of mental process, developing in the way described. It may stand also for the system which comprises such processes, regarded as a totality. But, from the nature of the ‘ primary process,’ which has been shown to foreshadow the system Unconscious, certain conclusions suggest themselves here. It seems that unconscious really stands for " a regular, inevitable phase in the processes constituting psychic activity.” Freud holds that “ Every psychic act begins as unconscious. . . . The distinction between preconscious and unconscious is not primary, but arises after ‘ Defence ’ is brought into play.” {Sammlung, IV, s. 164.) To illustrate this apparently startling view Freud suggests the analogy of photography. Just as "a photograph is first a negative and then becomes a picture through the printing of the positive, but not every negative is made into a positive,” so, we 126 THE UNCONSCIOUS might say, a mental process “ first exists in an unconscious phase, and only develops out of this into a conscious one,” but not every unconscious process converts itself into a conscious one. [Ibid., and compare Introductory Lectures, p. 248.) What do we know about unconscious processes, in the sense now explained ? § 40 Characteristics of Unconscious Processes. It is evident that unconscious processes are unknowable in themselves [an und fur sich). The system Preconscious controls access to consciousness, we have seen before. But the conditions which pre- vail in dreams and the neuroses, and the various facts from which knowledge of Regression has been won, make it possible to try to reconstruct the characteristics which unconscious processes must have. (1) In the first place, the system knows nothing of negation, doubt, hesitation. It consists of wishes, charged with a certain amount of energy. Unconscious processes, we may put it briefly, are “ typically conative in kind.” (2) Secondly, unconscious wish-tendencies do not mutually obliterate each other, even if their goals seem incompatible to conscious reasoning. What they do is to unite, to form an intermediate goal, a com- promise. More generally, we might say that the SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 127 unconscious system has no logic. As Ernest Jones puts it, it is ‘ non-logical/ or if it has a logic, it is “ a logic of the emotions rather than of the intellect.” (Papers on Psycho-Analysis, p. 636.) (3) In the next place, its energy-charges are not restricted in any way. In technical terms, they are ‘ freely mobile.’ This is shown especially in the mechanisms of displacement and condensation, which are the characteristics of the primary process. (4) Again, unconscious processes are not related according to time. The idea of time “ is one that does not exist in this region of the mind.” (Ibid., third edition, p. 126.) The Unconscious cannot con- ceive of any time factor. As Freud writes, “ Uncon- scious processes remain indestructible. Nothing can be brought to an end in the Unconscious, nothing can cease or be forgotten.” (Interpretation of Dreams, P- 456.) (5) Further, unconscious processes are not subject to the reality-principle, but are exclusively controlled by the pleasure-principle. “ Their fate depends simply on their strength.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 319.) Considerations based on reason or reality are irrelevant here, and all that counts is psychic reality. As Ernest Jones writes, unconscious pro- cesses “ are to an astounding extent isolated from outer reality.” (Papers on Psycho-Analysis, third edition, p. 126.) (6) Contrary ideas mean the same thing in the Unconscious, and are “ interchangeable.” This 128 THE UNCONSCIOUS “ astonishing discovery,” Jones writes, “ remained incomprehensible until it was noted that the same phenomenon was present in the early forms of language, the so-called “ antithetic ” sense of primal words.” [Ibid.) 1 (7) It should be added that the contents of the Unconscious are, as is inevitable, predominantly infantile and sexual. These characteristics follow from the close relation of the Unconscious to Repres- sion. The subject-matter of repression in modern communities is reflected in the nature of what remains unconscious. The civilizing forces which society applies to its members are primarily directed to divert into socially useful channels the energy attaching to instincts of sex and the Ego. What we learn of the Unconscious just reveals the predom- inating strength of these instincts, and their occasional triumph over the socializing forces with which they come into conflict (8) There is one other characteristic of uncon- scious processes, which has a certain significance, it is shown below, for speculative thought. This feature can best be illustrated by some account of a neurosis known as Dementia Praecox. According to psycho- analytic theory this disease signifies a diversion of the Libido or sex-energy from a real object in the world on to the Ego itself. The Ego is now in love with itself, and delusions of grandeur are very typical of this neurosis. (It is possible, of course, that 1 Through the courtesy of Dr. Ernest Jones I have been enabled to quote in this section from the third edition of his Papers on Psycho-Analysis, which has not yet appeared when I write. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 129 love of real objects is itself only a development from a previous state of affairs where Libido and Ego interests coincide. But that is immaterial here.) In Dementia Praecox the patient illustrates the attempt of the Libido to get back to a normal condi- tion. What is of significance here is that these “ efforts of the Libido to get back to its objects, that is, to the mental idea of its objects, do really succeed in conjuring up something of them, something that at the same time is only the shadow of them, namely, the verbal images, the words, attached to them.” In this disease it seems that “ words are subjected to the same process as forms the dream- pictures from the latent dream-thoughts, the process called primary.” The essential feature of the disease, in fact, is the “ preponderance of word-relation over thing-relation.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 331, 333-334-) Now “ This reversed procedure on the part of the Libido,” Freud continues, “ gives us an insight into what constitutes the real difference between a conscious and an unconscious idea.” (Introductory Lectures, p. 352.) The difference is this : “ They are not both different impressions of the same content in different psychic localities, nor even different functional conditions of energy-charge in the same locality, but the conscious idea embraces the presentation of the thing plus that of the word belonging to it, whereas the unconscious idea is the presentation of the thing alone.”1 {Sammlung, IV, s. 334-) 1 This is the solution of the problem raised above (§38). 130 THE UNCONSCIOUS The absence of a verbal cloak or covering, then, is characteristic of Unconscious processes, while the union of thing and word-presentation is character- istic of the system Preconscious. The Preconscious has overlaid, so to speak, the primary thing- presentation with the word - presentation, such ' overlaying ’ being the mark of a higher psychic organization. It must be remembered, of course, that the system Preconscious controls access to consciousness, so that what is meant is that union with word- presentation coincides with the possibility of consciousness. These, then, are the characteristics of Unconscious processes. They are conative, non-logical, freely mobile, timeless, controlled by the pleasure-principle, infantile and sexual to a large extent, and wordless. § 41 The Relations between the Systems. Freud has suggested that between the Unconscious and the Preconscious there is something operative analogous to a Censorship. It is as if a censor stood at the boundary line, and scrutinized applicants for admission to the Preconscious. The hypothesis is closely bound up with that of Repression. Uncon- scious wishes cannot, from their nature, reach con- sciousness unaltered. It is the function, therefore, of the censorship to alter them, as in dream-formation, SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 131 before they can attain conscious discharge. In this way the end of repression is not nullified. From the study of certain neuroses—those called narcissistic in particular—it seems that there exists in the Ego, to quote Freud’s words, “ a faculty that incessantly watches, criticizes, and compares, and in this way is set against the other part of the Ego.” It is an ‘ Ego-Ideal,’ we may say. “ We recognise.” Freud continues, “ in this self-criticizing faculty the Ego-censorship, the ‘ conscience ’ ; it is the same censorship as that exercised at night upon dreams.” {Introductory Lectures, pp. 357-358.) Much of the Preconscious, too, originating as it does in the Unconscious, seems to come under censorship before it becomes conscious. Thus, in addition to the censorship between the Unconscious and the Preconscious, there is apparently a second censorship between the Preconscious and Conscious- ness. It is as if a censorship operated at each passage from one system to another, higher one. The whole process may be described in this way, Freud says. “ The Unconscious is rejected, because of the censorship, at the boundary of the Preconscious. Its products can evade this censorship, organize them- selves, until they reach a certain intensity of charge in the Preconscious. But if they overstep this and press on towards consciousness, they are recognized as products of the Unconscious, and undergo a new repression at the new censorship boundary between Preconscious and Consciousness ” (Sammlung, IV, s. 325-) 132 THE UNCONSCIOUS Proof of this second censorship is afforded by psycho-anafytic treatment, where Preconscious pro- ducts of the Unconscious are subject to resistance before they can become conscious. Apparently the less energy-charge they possess, the less objectionable consciousness finds them. It is noticeable, for instance, that dreams often lend themselves much more readily to analysis and interpretation at a considerable interval after their occurrence. The changes in mental life which have taken place in the interim have lessened the repression, we may assume. It is still the quantitative factor, however, or the amount of energy-charge a repressed idea possesses, which seems to determine whether or not it must remain unconscious. The whole conception of * censorship ’ may sound very fanciful. But it is nowhere presented by Freud as more than an illustration, and he has expressly cautioned against the “ misapplication ” of it. It must be remembered, he writes, “ that piesentations, thoughts, and psychic formations should generally not be localized in the organic elements of the nervous system, but, so to speak, between them, where resistances and paths form the correlate corre- sponding to them. Everything that can become an object of our internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced by the passage of the rays of light. But we are justified in assuming the existence of the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we continue the comparison, we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 133 refraction of rays during their passage into a new medium.”i (Interpretation of Dreams, p. 484.) There are other relations between the systems, in addition to that of censorships. Although in pathological states the Unconscious seems amazingly impervious to influences, it is possible, speaking very generally, for the Preconscious and the Un- conscious to co-operate to some extent. Psycho- analytic therapy shows that consciousness can affect the Unconscious, however difficult the process may be ; and the strength and energy of an unconscious wish sometimes co-operate with a Preconscious Ego- purpose, to result in very extraordinary achievements. The Unconscious, in fact, is accessible in principle to influences of life. “All roads from outer percep- tion to the Unconscious are as a rule free.” (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 326.) § 42 The Conscious System. The main significance of all the preceding analysis of mind is in the view of the nature of consciousness itself to which it points. It was just here, it will be remembered, that the question of the validity of the Unconscious was found to centre. Freud’s position is that consciousness, so far from being a universal characteristic of mental processes, is only 1 This censorship, therefore, as Dr. Ernest Jones has pointed out to me, is akin to the modern neurological concept of inhibition, and represents this on the psychological side. 134 THE UNCONSCIOUS a special function of them (§26, above). It is the functioning of a particular system. Consciousness is compared by Freud to a sense-organ. “ Conscious- ness means to us," he writes explicitly, “ a sensory organ for the reception of psychic qualities." (.Interpretation of Dreams, p. 453.) On this view the identification of mental and conscious, we saw, is unjustified. The unconscious is the real psychic. It may or may not have the attri- bute * conscious ’ eventually, but this does not detract from its full value as a psychic activity, qua unconscious. Consciousness performs the function of perceiving what is psychic. The real inner nature of this psychic is unknown to us in itself. It is just as unknown to us, Freud writes, “ as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.” [Ibid., p. 486.) The analogy between this standpoint and that of Kant is somewhat striking. What we perceive, according to Kant, is not to be identified with reality, or the thing in itself, but is ‘ phenomenal,’ the product of mental forms and categories. So, accord- ing to Freud, conscious perception is not to be identi- fied with the unconscious psychic process which is perceived. “ The psychic,” Freud writes, “ need not, any more than the physical, be really as it appears to us." (Freud, Sammlung, IV, s. 301.) If we examine consciousness more closely, it is seen that it has a double sphere of perception. It SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 135 yields perceptions of outer excitations, and it also yields perceptions of inner feelings (Empfindungen). It may be assumed, then, that the conscious system is on the boundary between outer and inner. As cerebral anatomy puts it, the ‘ seat ’ of consciousness is in the cortical layer, “ the outermost enveloping layer of the central organ.” (Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, s. 22.) The conscious system, then, is in immediate relation to the outer world. As so situated it deals with the constantly multiplying new excitations which present themselves from that world. But these excitations, in addition to being at one moment perceived by consciousness, leave behind memory-traces in the mental apparatus. To which system do these refer ? Are these memory-traces to be assigned to the conscious system as well ? Or are we to assume other systems in the apparatus to which the memory- traces can be assigned ? Freud follows this second alternative. His view is that the system of perceptual-consciousness deals with stimuli, but has no memory. Other systems transform the momentary excitement of the percep- tual system into lasting traces. Being conscious and leaving a memory-trace are processes which do not belong to the same system. “ If one considers,” Freud writes, " how little we know about the origin of consciousness from other sources, one must regard as a significant, definite assertion the proposition that consciousness arises in the place of the memory-trace” [Ibid., s. 23.) 136 THE UNCONSCIOUS Memory-systems are the basis of association, and can be distinguished according as they stand for association through simultaneity, similarity, or other forms of concurrence. But what is even more im- portant, in Freud’s theory, is that memories are unconscious in themselves. They “ develop all their influence in the Unconscious state.” (Something like this was, I believe, the meaning intended by the Pre-Freudian writers who held that Unconscious elements are the core or nucleus of character and personality.) Freud’s view, then, of consciousness is that it perceives what is psychic, is related both to the outer world and to within the organism, and arises in the place of a memory-trace. The peculiar feature of the conscious system, in other words, is that an excitation process makes no permanent alteration of its elements, but disappears, vanishes into thin air (Verpufft), in the phenomenon of becoming conscious. The reason for this peculiarity of the system is to be found, probably, in its exposed situation. Constant impinging of stimuli upon it has deadened its capacity for modification. The excitation process takes a path which is stereotyped, as it were, and can effect no further alteration in the system. The excitations from within the organism, which are also perceived by consciousness, have affected its function much more. For it is the task of dealing with these inner excitations which has really given to the apparatus its distinctive mode of operation. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 137 The inner excitations are what give rise to the pleasure-pain feelings, and it is, we have seen, a fundamental tendency in the mental apparatus to operate on the basis of the pleasure-principle. It is these inner excitations, then, which largely condition the conscious system. The latter has to devote itself primarily to the control and distribution of the stimulus-masses or excitations from within. The index to these inner excitations is known as the pleasure-pain series of feelings. Consciousness of these, we may say, is a means of effecting the distribution and control of the energy-charges within the psychic apparatus. What do we know about these inner excitations, which seem to be so important in the function of psychic activity ? The most prolific source of them is known as so-called instinct. Freud has his own view of instincts, like most psychologists. It goes, indeed, to the very heart of his ultimate theory of life and mind. § 43 The Nature of Instincts. Instinct, according to Freud, is at once the most important and the most obscure region in psycho- logical enquiry. In the last resort it is no doubt the product of external forces which have left their imprints in the organism. But instincts must be treated now as inner needs, as innate in the individual. Instinct has been described by Freud 138 THE UNCONSCIOUS in one place as a “ border-conception" between body and mind. It “ represents the measure of work imposed on the mental through its attachment to the bodily.” (Sammlung, IV, s. 257.)1 Freud suggests a provisional classification of in- stincts into two main groups : (a) The Ego-instincts (b) the sexual instincts. The theory of the neuroses in Psycho-analysis makes such a grouping inevitable. It may be pointed out here that a good deal of Freudian criticism evidently rests on the assumption of a sexual, or rather, exclusively sexual, emphasis, for which there is no adequate justification. I read, for instance, in a leading English journal to-day the phrase “ pestiferous race of psycho-analysts and sexual maniacs.” Now it is true that Psycho- analysis has so far been mainly directed to the 1 In a more recent work (Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920) Freud offers some admittedly speculative, but highly illuminating, con- jecture about the nature of instinct. He suggests that an instinct is " a tendency innate in the living organic which leads to the repetition of a former condition.” It is a kind of “ organic elas- ticity.” It is " the expression of inertia in organic life,” of “ the conservative nature of living beings ” (s. 34). The phenomena of heredity and the facts of embryology are the most convincing evidence of this. “ We see,” Freud writes, " that the germ-cell of a living animal is compelled to repeat in its development—though admittedly in an abbreviated way—the structures of all the forms from which the animal descends, instead of hastening to its own definite formation by the shortest road. . . . Similarly, there is found extending far upwards in the animal world a capacity for reproduction, expressing itself in the replacement of a lost organ by the formation of a new one exactly like it ” (ibid., s- 35)- Instincts, then, are tendencies which hark back to the earliest state of the organism, that is, to death itself. The fact that the organism persists shows, however, that not all instincts hark back to death. There are life-instincts as well, namely, those we call sexual. SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 139 sexual instincts and their ramifications. But it does not deny the existence of other instincts. “ It has been built,” Freud writes, “ upon a sharp distinc- tion between sexual instincts and Ego-instincts. . . . It has no conceivable motive in denying the existence or the significance of the Ego-instincts. Only, Psycho-analysis has been destined to concern itself first and foremost with the sexual instincts, because in the transference neuroses these are the most accessible to investigation, and because it was obliged to study what others had neglected.” {Intro- ductory Lectures, p. 294.) Freud’s classification of instincts into Ego and sex- instincts is confirmed by the hypothesis of Weismann, who distinguished living substance into somatoplasm and germ-plasm, the former doomed to die, the latter potentially immortal. It has an analogy, too, he points out, with the theory of Hering, who distin- guished two kinds of processes in living matter, one anabolic, assimilatory, the other katabolic, dis- similatory. Even in speculative philosophy it is not an isolated view, for Schopenhauer regards death as the “ proper result ” and to that extent the aim of life, while he holds that the sexual instinct is the incarnation of the Will to Live. (Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, s. 47.) What is the bearing of this account of instinct, we may now ask, on the function of the conscious system ? It is just this, that the function of control- ling excitation, of keeping the psychic apparatus as a whole free from excitation, or at any rate keeping the amount of excitation as low or as constant as possible, “ would partake of the most general tendency 140 THE UNCONSCIOUS of everything living, namely, to return to the peace of the inorganic world.” 1 [Ibid., s. 59.) § 44 Recapitulation. It is possible now to survey in outline the general theory of the mind at which we have arrived. The essence of life was described as a clash or conflict, and this conflict, applied to mental activity, was found to lie in the warring of repressed and repressing forces. The principle which governs mental activity was described as the Pleasure-principle, and it was shown how in the course of time it is partially replaced by a modification of itself, called the Reality-principle. Mental activity was next examined more closely. It was defined as response to stimuli, and stimuli were distinguished into outer and inner. The inner excitations, it was shown, constitute what we call instinctive stimuli, or * wants.’ Stimuli were as- sumed to be capable of a quantitative treatment, and the general function of the mental apparatus described as the attempt to control and distribute the energy-charges belonging to stimuli. 1 It may be added that the life or sex instincts seem to have much more to do with our inner perception. They are the constant disturbers of the peace, involving ‘ tensions ' the resolving of which is felt as pleasure. The death or Ego-instincts, on the other hand, seem to go about their business quietly, without attracting attention, It would not be profitable, however, to pursue purely speculative enquiries of this kind much further. Freud himself expressly designates this last phase of his view as merely conjecture. It is, as he says, " the development of an idea from curiosity to see where its consequences will lead.” SETTING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 141 The way in which the mind deals with stimuli was next approached. Certain broad, governing prin- ciples, the polarities, as they are called, were illustrated, and a more detailed account given of the feature known as ambivalence. Mental process itself was then analysed, from the view-point called by Freud ‘ Metapsychological.’ The dynamic, topographic, and economic aspects of mental process were illustrated by a detailed description of Repression, in its relation to the system of the mental apparatus called ‘ Unconscious.’ The development of that system, the nature of primary and secondary process, the meaning of the Freudian ‘ wish,’ and the contents of the Unconscious, were then outlined. The characteristics of unconscious processes were tabulated, the relations between the systems Preconscious, Unconscious, and Conscious- ness were illustrated, and the metaphor of the ‘ censorship ’ described at some length. The function of consciousness itself was next indicated. We saw that Freud regards it as a sensory organ for the reception of psychic qualities, that conscious perception is the function of a particular system in the psychic apparatus. This system seemed to be devoid of memory. It is in immediate contact with the outer world, has acquired, as a result of this exposed situation, a protection against stimuli from without (Reizschutz), and has to attend mainly to the control of the inner excitations. Finally, a short account of these inner excitations, of instincts, was added, and it was shown how 142 THE UNCONSCIOUS Freud’s provisional classification has suggestive parallels in both biology and physiology. Freud’s conception of the Unconscious must be judged, then, in the light of this general setting of psychological theory. It is at first sight a very original, and perhaps puzzling, setting. It is evident, however, that a bare statement of such a radically new position in psychology can do but little justice to all that it implies. The real test of the worth of Freud’s conceptions is, in the last resort, the amount of insight into human affairs and human conduct which they give. Merely to state the conceptions without indicating where they apply is probably as misleading as it is abstract. I proceed, therefore, in the succeeding pages, to supplement the above statement of Freudian psy- chology by some account of its applications. In that way alone will the meaning of the conceptions be quite unmistakably clear. There is an almost embarrassing wealth of material with which one might deal. But I propose to confine myself mainly to the significance of Freud’s work for the mental sciences. In particular, I shall attempt to illustrate that significance in spheres where comparatively little has already been elaborated, in Ethics, in in Logic and Philosophy itself. PART FIVE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS NOTES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND EDUCATION § 45 Sublimation. The basis of educational theory is very largely psychological knowledge, and it is not surprising to find that the application of psycho-analysis to theory of education has given rise to considerable discussion. Theory of education is itself in a rather confusing state. The movement associated with Montessori, and the development of experimental psychology, culminating in Behaviorism, have combined with the results of Psycho-analysis to reduce present psychology of education to what is really a tran- sitional stage. The effect of psycho-analytical view- points on the subject, however, is by now fairly definite. It consists, in the first place, of a more intense and more scientific appreciation of the process known as Sublimation. In tracing the development of impulses Freud points out that certain instincts “ can readily change their objects . . . and are in consequence capable of activities lying far removed from the objects of their original goal.” (Sammlung, IV, s. 268.) The 10 145 146 THE UNCONSCIOUS best illustration of this is afforded by sexual impulses. The energy belonging to them can be diverted from the original sexual goal and directed to ends which have social and cultural value. This diversion of energy is what is meant by * sublimation,’ and the designation implies, as Freud points out, a belief in the superiority of social and cultural to sexual ends. Psycho-analysis was not the first psychology to perceive this fact of diversion or displacement, it should be added. It can be found, for example, in Spinoza, and in the Associationists, as the school is called. It has been emphasized by McDougall, in his Social Psychology. Drever, in his recent Introduction to the Psychology of Education, for- mulates the principle which sublimation involves in this way, following McDougall, as he says: “ Under certain more or less definite conditions, and as a result of experience and circumstances, an instinctive impulse may come to be evoked in con- nection with objects or situations different from, and sometimes entirely unconnected with, those which originally evoke it ” (p. 70). What Psycho-analysis has done has been to detect in many cases the intermediary links, the stages through which displacement has proceeded, and to trace the working of the mechanism in such detail that it has become a valuable educational tool. It is valuable because it is the instinctive sources of psychic energy which are, in the last resort, the raw material of the whole educational process. The way in which that material is handled deter- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 147 mines the subsequent life-history of the individual concerned. The material, we have seen, is never destroyed. Repression does not negate the impulse, but merely forces it to seek an indirect or substitutive outlet. It is the business of education to guide the choice and formation of that outlet. It is essential to the interests of the community—the setting which is a necessary condition of self-development—that the energy belonging to instinctive impulses should be utilized to the utmost in channels which subserve social ends. As Ernest Jones has expressed it, “ the weaning of the child to external and social interests and considerations, which is the essence of sublimation, is perhaps the most important single process in the whole of education.” (Papers on Psycho-Analysis, p. 608.) Sublimation falls naturally in the period of child- hood. The egoistic impulses are those which have to be skilfully treated, and their energy harnessed to activities which are socially desirable. Where this is not completely possible the energy will find an outlet in games, play, and bursts of ordinary high-spiritedness. The exact details by which subli- mation can be achieved will depend on individual factors, as well as on the ends which the social life of a particular community has imposed on its educa- tional theory. But to recognize the process itself and its possibilities in the way of developing char- acter is a valuable aid which Psycho-analysis offers education. 148 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 46 Character and the Unconscious. Education involves insight into mental life, and into the springs of conduct, in a pre-eminent measure. But it has been one of the special functions of Psycho- analysis to contribute to such insight, to show how mental life develops and how character-traits are formed. Its work in this field, therefore, is of practical help to education. There are, for instance, certain mechanisms of character-formation on which Psycho-analysis has thrown light. Of these, what are called ‘ reaction-formations' are fairly common. Bernard Hart cites the case of a person who had been addicted in his early years to stealing small sums of money, and who in later years had such an exaggerated sense of honesty that “ he would devote endless time and trouble to the payment of some trifling excess fare, and an undischarged debt was a source of unceasing worry and self-reproach.” (Psychology of Insanity, p. 107. Quoted also in Drever, op. cit.) The honesty in this case is a reaction-formation rooted in the now repressed impulse to theft. Rank and Sachs mention the case where a child originally cruel seeks gratifi- cation in later life, from intense repression of the impulse to cruelty, in " humanitarian ” activities. It is possible that some of the exaggerated, unreason- able prejudice against vivisection has its pyscho- logical roots in antecedents of this type, wholly unconscious. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 149 A rather different formation is the ‘ defence ’ or 1 compensatory ’ mechanism. Something analogous to this can no doubt be detected on the physiological level. But it is highly significant in mental life too. A simple instance is where an innate defect, or impediment, in a person makes its possessor take special pains to overcome it, and to attain superior- ity in some compensatory form. The example of Demosthenes is well known. The significance of the Unconscious comes out most notably, however, in those individual mannerisms or peculiarities which most children exhibit. To under- stand the psychological antecedents of these it is almost imperative to utilize psycho-analytic hypo- theses. If we do, it is seen that behaviour which appears to be intractable, utterly irrational, and even socially harmful, often has its roots in significant displacements or distortions of normal impulses. Often the displacement is easily recognizable. At any rate the behaviour, when no longer regarded as the result of caprice or wilful malice which defies correction, becomes much more intelligible and amen- able to eventual guidance. As Rank and Sachs put it, “A mass of childish peculiarities, which are either not at all or falsely understood, and are usually rendered worse by bad pedagogical measures, reveal themselves to the educator trained in Psycho- analysis, at first glance, as neurotic traits determined by the Unconscious : the early recognition of these traits . . . can easily render them innocuous.” Faults such as “ stubbornness, shyness, stealing,” which may have resisted " every pedagogical influ- ence,” have been found to disappear when traced back to “ neurotic attitudes towards the parents, or THE UNCONSCIOUS 150 false displacement of instinct.” (Rank and Sachs, The Significance of Psycho-Analysis for the Mental Sciences, pp. 126-127.) It is worth while remembering, too, that the significance of unconscious impulses may be no less real in the case of the teacher or other educator. Anyone who takes a part in moulding the character of others should understand the impulses of his own nature, and, if possible, the repressed tendencies in his own life. His love or dislike of exercising authority, demanding obedience, enforcing rigid discipline, and all the traits of his character which express themselves in personal relations between master and pupil, have a very real bearing on his function as educator, and even on the desirability of his performing that function at all. Psycho-analysis has made one very remarkable, if controversial, contribution to theory of education. That is concerned with sexual matters, and with the very early development of the child. Freud has revealed the importance of the earliest years of life for later manifestations of impulses. The stages through which the development of the Libido passes in the first five years (a period for which there is almost complete amnesia in later life) appear to be of the utmost significance for the period of adolescence and for the whole of life. In particular, the relation- ship of the child to its parents or parent-substitutes can now be reconstructed for this early period. The feature of this reconstruction which has attracted most attention is the emphasis laid on what is known as the CEdipus complex. It consists of SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 151 a “rivalry of affections/’ to quote Freud, “ in which sexual elements are plainly emphasized/’ It is, of course, familiar to ordinary observation that mothers are usually a little more tender to a son, and fathers to a daughter. The odium attaching to Freud’s interpretation of this is due to his introduction of ‘ sexual significance in this connection. But it must be remembered how widely Freud has extended the meaning of * sexual.’1 Freud’s view is that “ The son, when quite a little child, already begins to develop a peculiar tenderness towards his mother, whom he looks upon as his own property, regarding his father in the light of a rival who disputes this sole possession of his ; similarly the little daughter sees in the mother some one who disturbs her tender relation to her father and occupies a place which she feels she herself could very well fill.’’ (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 174.) This (Edipus complex has been referred to before, in connction with the neuroses, which are in many cases directly traced to its operation. But while its main implications are medical, psycho-analysis has shown that it is a regular factor in early mental life. We may infer that subsequent psycho-analytic therapy would probably be rendered unnecessary if the original, earliest ' education of the child ensured its normal development, in respect to the Libido. It is impossible, of course, to suggest definite rules for such early education. But it seems at least certain that it is dangerous to allow the child to regard sexual matters as wholly a region of mystery and secrecy. It should be at least feasible to avoid false or distorted information. For not only is this 1 See § 20, above. 152 THE UNCONSCIOUS intrinsically wrong, but it may, when found out to be false, undermine the trust of the child in his parents altogether, with highly disastrous results. These, then, are some very general considerations which reflect points of contact between Psycho- analysis and theory of education. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CROWD PSYCHOLOGY § 47 In a very recent work (Massenpsychologie und Ich-analyse, 1921) Freud has indicated some features of the fascinating problem of crowds on which Psycho-analysis seems to throw some light. It has often been shown that an individual reacts differently as an individual and as a member of a crowd. Le Bon has described the difference in a well-known essay on this theme. Conway, E. D. Martin, and McDougall have all contributed to the literature on the subject, among English-writing authors. The first consideration which emerges from these descriptions is that the behaviour of a crowd seems to correspond very closely to the characteristics of the system Unconscious. The crowd, we are told, is highly impulsive and fickle. Its impulses are peremp- tory, overriding even those of self-preservation. The crowd is unreasoning, uncritical, amazingly credulous. Its thought is governed by association of images, just as in phantasy which is undirected. It admits of no doubt, no uncertainty, no delibera- tion. All its whims are executed immediately they are conceived. It rushes to extremes, its feelings are at once simple and extravagant. 153 154 THE UNCONSCIOUS All these characteristics, it is evident, are paralleled in the mental life of children, neurotics, and primitive savages. In other words, it seems as if membership of a crowd enables the individual to throw off some of the characteristics of conscious, waking life. In particular, the sense of power and the weakening of responsibility which are produced by crowd- formation suggest that there has been a relaxing of certain repressions involved in social life. Social functions of every type may almost be said to illustrate this relaxing of repression, followed by the expression of unconscious modes of behaviour. Parties, balls, dinners, and similar festivities allow a momentary escape from the rigid restrictions normally imposed by the repressing forces of waking life. The word ‘ party' itself, I noticed in America, is used to connote any unusual source of pleasure or relaxing of restriction. In the next place, a notable feature of crowd-life is the intensification of emotion which it attains. Just as the intellectual life of the crowd is lowered, so its affective pitch is immensely raised. It seems to reach an intensity of feeling and enthusiasm which can sweep all before it. It is usual to explain this feature by resorting to some form of ‘ suggestion.’ Le Bon compares the process to what happens in hypnotism. Tarde calls it imitation. McDougall offers a brilliant analysis based on the principle he names' sympathetic induction of emotion.' It seems worth while indi- cating here, however, Freud’s own explanation of the process. Freud finds that the concept ‘ suggestion ' SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 155 is not self-explanatory. He analyses its constituents, in the light of his Libido conception, that is, the energy attaching to sexual instincts, and reaches some striking conclusions. The force which holds together a crowd, Freud shows, is the most crucial thing about it. “To what force,” he asks, “ could one assign this function in preference to Eros, which holds together everything in the world ? ” (Massenpsychologie, s. 45.) In other words, the essence of crowd-formation is to be found in feeling ties rooted in Love. Such is Freud’s main hypothesis. He illustrates his view by a study of two highly organized, permanent groups, the Catholic Church and an Army. In both there is clearly present the conception of a chief. In the Catholic Church, for instance, it is Christ. In an army it is the commander- in-chief. What preserves such groups is the implicit feeling-relation between the chief and all the members. The chief loves every member in an equal measure. (Compare “ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”) All the claims which can be imposed on a member rest, in the last resort, on this Love. The tie which binds one member to another is the tie which also binds each member to the Chief. On this view the importance of leadership in crowds becomes the supreme factor. A Caesar or a Napoleon can transcend even national or territorial limitations. When leadership is lacking or uncertain, the same army which has faced dangers and terrors 156 THE UNCONSCIOUS will dissolve in panic, though the dangers are not in the least increased from those already surmounted. In the case of a Church it is not so easy to observe dissolution. But what is notable is the bitter hatred which is felt towards religious disbelievers, because they do not share in the love on which the group rests. The fact that intolerance of this kind is less openly expressed in our time does not indicate, Freud says, a softening of man’s nature. It rather means that as religious feeling has weakened, so the ties which are dependent on it have weakened also. ** If the religious bond,” Freud writes, “ were replaced by another, such as the socialistic, the same intoler- ance would be practised towards those outside the fold as in the age of religious strife.” {Ibid., s. 56.) The basis of this view of group-relationships involves, it may be noticed, that ambivalence of feeling which we saw to be a feature of psychic development. The hostile phase is not consciously present in crowd or group-formation, as a rule. The love-relation predominates. But the hostile element is not wholly absent. It comes out in grumbling at one’s superior, in local or national jealousies, in racial enmities, all of which testify to its latent strength. It may seem that it is an illegitimate usage of terms to invoke love-relations to account for cohesion in a group. Yet Aristotle himself shows that * friend- ship ’ is the bond which holds states together. {Ethics, VIII, chap, i.) Freud, throughout this discussion, seems to have in view something of the nature of the Greek conception, Eros. Obviously the love of which he speaks has no direct sexual end which it strives to attain. The love-impulse SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 157 has been diverted from sexual ends. But he points out that object-possession is not the only kind of love-tie possible. There is, for instance, the relation known as Identification. The simplest description, therefore, of what a crowd, with its leader, really signifies, is suggested by Freud to be this : “ It is a number of individuals who have taken one and the same object as their Ego-Ideal, and have in consequence identified them- selves in their Ego with one another.” (Ibid., s. 86.) This, then, is the suggestive view-point which the results of Psycho-analysis bestow on crowd- psychology. The position outlined is evidently opposed to views which postulate a ‘ group-mind.’ It is opposed, too, to the hypothesis of a special primary herd instinct, the view associated with Trotter. Freud finds that no traces of this herd- instinct can be detected in the child at the beginning. It only arises from the relation of children to their parents, and is connected with the reaction which manifests itself to the original jealousy of the older child against the younger. Such jealousy cannot be maintained in view of the equal love of the parents for their later offspring, and as a result identification with the other children takes place, out of which a common feeling emerges. This common feel- ing is further developed in school life, where the claim to equality is again so pronounced on the part of each child. Ultimately, in fact, it may be said that “ social feeling is rooted in the reversal of what was originally a hostile feeling into one which has a positive accent, 158 THE UNCONSCIOUS and forms a bond of the nature of identification.” (Freud, Massenpsychologie, s. 98.) Such is the application of the Libido theory to the problems of group-life. It is, I believe, on such lines that the psychological antecedents in an individual of what is called his ‘ gregariousness ’ can most profitably now be analysed. It does not apply, of course, to the philosophical problems which the existence of social life also involves. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PERSONALITY § 48 Repression and Dual Personality. It is tempting to stress the difference between processes which the conscious, waking self accepts and processes which are unconscious as though it were a difference between two separate selves. Popular expositions of Freudian psychology have in some cases been guilty of presenting some such travesty as follows: “ Each one of us,” the writer might say, “ has an unknown self, dark, mysterious, the reservoir of buried hopes and infantile desires, all of which are alive, charged with dynamic force, and only awaiting relaxed vigilance on the part of our conscious, moralized self to rush in, or break through, and seize the field of consciousness.” Language of this description is, however, picturesque rather than accurate. It elevates metaphor to scientific fact. What Freud’s hypotheses really permit is an interpretation of so-called dual personality by the aid of the conception of Repression. Certain experiences, we saw, are not normally accessible to consciousness. They have been repressed, and are designated * unconscious.’ But cases are on record where this unconscious material 159 160 THE UNCONSCIOUS has apparently succeeded in gaining, for a period of time, control of that motility which normally is confined to the system Consciousness. It thus becomes an independent system of ideas and affects which functions in place of, or alternately with, the ordinary waking self. The conditions which render this change in control of motility possible are the really interesting problem for psychology. But they are obscure, and there is not much evidence to suggest an explanation. James dealt with a few cases, and Morton Prince has patiently investigated the celebrated Sally Beauchamp instance. But no one hypothesis meets all the data. What should be remembered is that the phenomenon is not peculiar to those extreme cases of Double or Alternate or Multiple Personality. It appears, in a less marked degree, in many people. Stevenson's study of Jekyll and Hyde presents it in a striking form, and Barrie, in his recent address to students on Courage, whimsically referred to a ‘ side ’ or ‘ mood ’ of his personality, which he called M’Connachie, and which functioned, he suggested, as a rival, imperious, autocratic self. In literature, too, I mentioned above the example of Fechner and Dr. Mises. A better-known case is that of ‘ Fiona Macleod,’ described also by Morton Prince. ‘ Fiona Macleod ’ was in ordinary life called William Sharp. From a memoir of him by Elizabeth A. Sharp it seems that he was a highly imaginative child, and that his phantasies and day-dreams became organized into a system more or less separable SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 161 from the rest of his mental life. “ He learned,” she writes, “ to shut it away, to keep it as a thing apart.” But from time to time it “ swept aside all conscious control,” and under the influence of some phantasy evolved in the Unconscious everything else was “ blotted out from consciousness,” and he wrote at great speed, oblivious of the world. (Quoted in Prince, The Unconscious, pp. 295 and following.) The phenomenon seems thus to be, quite simply, one of Dissociation. Freud’s hypothesis of Repression enables us to interpret its function. We have seen already what the function of repression is. It marks the development of social personality. It is a mechanism by means of which the individual becomes fit to share in the life of a civilized community. But repression appears in simpler phases too. There is, for instance, the suppression of physiological functions, and there is that inhibition of part of the sensory data present which is presupposed in ordinary attention. In fact, as Prince writes, “ Every mental process involves the repression of some conflicting process ; otherwise all would be chaos in the mind.” {Ibid., p. 548.) It would seem, therefore, that dissociation, as seen in those extreme forms of Double or Multiple Personality, is to be construed as an ‘ exaggeration ’ of this mechanism which is normal and valuable in the development of mental life. Everyone has repressed sides or moods of his nature. Repressed wishes or tendencies, even in the most completely adjusted selves, occasionally obtrude themselves, if only in the form of prejudices, whims, superstitions. 162 THE UNCONSCIOUS Even if we grant, then, that the conditions which make possible the removal of the control of motility from the system Consciousness are obscure, we are not impelled to any new hypotheses to deal with these phenomena of Double Personality. Above all, it is not only completely unwarranted to postulate one or more additional ‘ selves,’ but it is actually confusing. For the different selves admittedly function through one body. They use the same locomotion centres, the same response-habits, in all the innumerable details of behaviour. A change in the conditions of control does not in the least warrant the hypothesis of a duality or multiplicity of selves. Freud’s theory, then, does not involve the popular dualism of selves with which it seems to have been endowed in many quarters. On the contrary, it suggests an interpretation of the very facts on which such a dualism has in certain extreme cases been postulated. § 49 The Subconscious Self. Freud’s psychology should be distinguished from those theories which speak of a ‘ subconscious ’ or ' subliminal ’ self in each of us. These very words themselves imply that ‘ conscious ’ is the essence of mentality, a view which we have seen is foreign to Freud’s doctrine. The conception of the subconscious self is found, for instance, in Frederic Myers (1843-1901). Along with Podmore, Myers took a minor part in the prepara- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 163 tion of Gurney’s Phantasms of the Living. But his chief work is his Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Myers holds that “ The * conscious self ’ of each of us, as we call it—the empirical, the supraliminal Self, as I should prefer to say—does not comprise the whole of the consciousness or of the faculty within us. There exists a more comprehensive consciousness, a profounder faculty, which for the most part remains potential only so far as regards the life of earth, but from which the consciousness and the faculty of earth-life are mere selections, and which reasserts itself in its plenitude after the liberating change of death.” [Human Personality, p. 14.) Admitting that this may sound mystical, Myers devotes himself to placing it on a scientific basis. He indicates what he means by subliminal, in the first instance. It is taken to cover “ all that takes place beneath the ordinary threshold, or say, if preferred, outside the ordinary margin of conscious- ness ; . . . sensations, thoughts, emotions, which may be strong, definite, and independent, but which, by the original constitution of our being, seldom emerge into that supraliminal current of conscious- ness which we habitually identify with ourselves.” [Ibid., abridged edition, pp. 14-15). Since this subliminal activity is continuous, Myers speaks of a subliminal self, that is, “ that part of the Self which is commonly subliminal.” The proof which he offers for its existence is this : “ The subliminal uprushes,” he writes, “ are . . . often characterise- 164 THE UNCONSCIOUS cally different in quality from any element known to our ordinary supraliminal life. They are different in a way which implies faculty of which we have had no previous knowledge, operating in an environment of which hitherto we have been wholly unaware.” [Ibid., p. 16.) The various headings under which Myers classifies his data are Telepathy, Telaesthesia, Alternations of Personality and Hysteria, Sleep, Hypnotism, Sensory and Motor Automatisms. It is perhaps interesting to note that he refers, in the discussion of Hysteria, to a case the details of which were published by Freud in his earliest work. (Breuer and Freud, Studien uber Hysterie, 1895.) Myers states shortly the hypothesis on which his whole work is based, in this way ; “I have assumed,” he writes, “ that man is an organism informed or possessed by a soul. This view obviously involves the hypothesis that we are living a life in two worlds at once ; a planetary life in this material world, to which the organism is intended to react; and also a cosmic life in that spiritual or metetherial world, which is the native environment of the soul.” {Ibid., p. 98.) He writes elsewhere, “ It is, in my view, by no means improbable that effluences, as yet unknown to science, but perceptible by sensitive persons as the telepathic impulse is perceptible, should radiate from living human organisms.” {Ibid., P- I34-) These quotations, then, will indicate the exact nature of the view of Myers. The data on which it SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 165 is based are drawn from fields utilized by Freud also, notably dreams and hysteria. But, from the point of view of scientific hypotheses, the suggested explana- tions of Myers seem to me unwarranted. Freud’s conceptions are less mystical, as well as more verifiable. The whole body of * psychical research,’ in fact, has been a disappointment. It does more to illustrate what Munsterberg called the “ miserable credulity ” of mankind than anything else. But although the conception of a * subconscious self,’ with the implications it possesses in Myers, seems to me of doubtful value, the fact of a certain continuity or gradation in mental process still remains, as Leibniz urged. Janet, indeed, bases his theory of Hysteria on what he calls a “ retraction of the field of consciousness.” There are, he writes, “ Enormous masses of phenomena ” constantly arising in us. “ It is certain that a man never perceives them all.” The number “ that rise to complete consciousness ” varies according to circumstances and the individual. In the case of the neuropath what is characteristic is “ the disappearance of the higher functions of the mind, with the preservation and often with the exaggeration of the lower functions.” It is, in short, a ” lowering of the mental level.” (Pierre Janet, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1920, p. 316.) Some such metaphor, in fact, provides a half-way house, as it were, on the road to Freud’s conception of the Unconscious itself. Psychology has found the distinction of focal and marginal consciousness, or of conscious and less fully conscious, of the utmost value. There are, as Aveling says, " limiting cases ” in which the minimum of consciousness is present. 166 THE UNCONSCIOUS It is a short step between this and the frank recognition of ‘ unconscious ’ processes. In the case of perception, for instance, Stout has suggested something of the sort himself. He defends the validity of introspection by pointing out that “ by calling up a process in memory immediately after it is over we are often able to notice much that escaped us when it was actually going on. In like manner the astronomer can call up in memory the image of a star which has just passed across his vision, and can then notice details which had escaped him at the moment of its actual appearance.” (Manual of Psychology, pp. 44 following.) The conclusion which follows from all this is, then, that the notion of a subconscious Self is mystical, but that the distinction of degrees of awareness may be of value, and that, indeed, it leads logically to Freud’s own conception of unconscious mental processes. § 50 Jung’s View of Personality. The view of C. G. Jung, who was one of the first co-workers of Freud, but later founded an independent school (the Zurich school, as it is called) of Analytical Psychology, is not dissimilar to that of Myers in some important respects. Jung argues for a Collective or Impersonal Unconscious. He holds that the Unconscious contains more than the repressed elements of the individual’s life-history. It contains also what he calls " primordial images,” or archetypal ideas. These are distinct SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 167 from personal acquisitions on the part of any in- dividual. They form a “ collective psyche,” which is inherited, fixed, a priori, automatic in its functioning, super-personal or impersonal. This ' collective ’ or * impersonal ’ Unconscious is, according to Jung, " the fundamental structure underlying every personality.” It is the “ mother foundation upon which all personal differentiations are based.” It is “ the common mental function of the sum total of the individual.” (Jung, Analytical Psycho- logy, p. 452.) The facts on which Jung bases his conception are drawn from symbolism in myth and dream, and from the unconscious phantasies of his patients. He admits that there is no rigid cleavage possible between the contents of the Collective Unconscious and those of the Personal Unconscious. But in general he claims that “ the archaic symbols so often found in phantasies and dreams are collective factors. All primary propensities and forms of thought and feeling are collective : so is everything about which men are universally agreed, or which is universally understood, said, or done.” (.Ibid., p. 455.) In fact, Jung continues, “it is astonishing how much of our so-called individual psychology is really collective.” Conscious personality itself, on Jung’s view, reduces to “ a more or less arbitrary excerpt of the collective psyche.” Jung holds, too, that the Unconscious contains “ all that part of the psyche that is found under the threshold ... all the material that has not yet reached the level of conscious- ness.” {Ibid., p. 448.) 168 THE UNCONSCIOUS The facts from which Jung proceeds are in them- selves indisputable. From the study of dreams, for instance, it has become abundantly evident that the individual has access to modes of symbolic expression which are unknown to his conscious self, but are nevertheless common to humanity. The symbols are somehow there, “ ready to hand, perfect for all time,” as Freud puts it. It is as amazing “ as if you discovered that your housemaid understood Sanskrit, though you knew she was born in Bohemia and had never learnt a word of that language.” (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 139.) The same symbol is found among the most widely different races and in widely separated periods of history. “ A symbol,” Ernest Jones writes, “ which to-day we find in an obscene joke is also to be found in a mythical cult of Ancient Greece, and another that we come across only in dream analysis was used thousands of years ago in the sacred books of the East.” (Papers on Psycho-Analysis, P- 143.) What, however, is to be inferred from these facts is more doubtful. It certainly seems as though in the Unconscious we had a primitive universal symbolic language. But it seems dangerous also to take such a figurative description of the facts as if it were a scientific explanation. Jung’s own later work shows an increasingly mystical outlook, it must be added. It is at least possible that some hypothesis which is the counterpart of phylogenesis in the mental realm may be well founded. But at present such hypotheses are largely speculative, and resemble, in the difficulties they raise, philosophical creeds such as Pampsychism, or the doctrine of James SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 169 in the latter sections of his Varieties of Religious Experience. The general conclusions which emerge from this section on Psycho-Analysis and Personality are, then : (a) that the conception of Repression, in Freud’s sense, enables us to understand something of the cases where Dual Personality has been postulated; (b) that the conception of the * subconscious self ’ is inadmissible, in that it tacitly assumes the identifica- tion of conscious and mental, but that the metaphor of a ‘ threshold ’ of attention or of degrees of aware- ness is of great value in psychology; and (c) that Jung’s conception of the Collective Unconscious, as a vast reservoir, so to speak, of Selfhood, of which each individual’s conscious self is just an excerpt, is exceedingly mystical and speculative, though the facts of symbolism on which he bases his view are a real problem for Psycho-analysis, as they are for philosophy itself. Although it seems, therefore, that no very constructive position has been brought to light, as regards personality, it is evident that Psycho-analysis has at least eliminated some of the more doubtful hypotheses with which this most baffling of problems abounds. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ETHICS § 51 Ethics and Psychology. The position of Ethics as a science is not very clear at present. By tradition it ranks, of course, as one of the philosophical disciplines, a tradition which goes back to the Greeks, and to Socrates in particular. In the great systems of Metaphysics it occupies a fundamental place. Spinoza, for instance, bases his Ethics on ultimate metaphysical conceptions, and Kant finds in the nature of the moral life the grounds for metaphysics itself. But philosophy has become more specialized in modem times : and Ethics, in emancipating itself from the philosophical tradition, is claimed in many quarters now to be ‘ scientific.’ It represents, from this point of view, merely generalized conclusions summarizing the known facts of human needs and human aspirations. It is ‘ empirical,’ and draws its data from the group of sciences which seek to reconstruct the history of man as a social and cultural being. In addition to this general uncertainty, there is a special vagueness in the position of Ethics which 170 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 171 is due to quite recent developments. One of these consists of that radical change in human relationships and in the structure of society which has attended the industrial and economic progress of the last century. This economic progress has been so bewilderingly rapid that ethical progress, it almost seems, has lagged behind. Another recent factor is the movement in psychology known as Behaviorism. We have seen already its importance. It consists of an attempt to interpret human activity without having recourse to the conceptions of mind, consciousness, will, etc., as spiritual factors. Behaviorism is so vigorous, its conclusions so refreshingly novel, its standpoint so apparently simple, that its rapid headway, particularly in America, has involved a certain reaction on Ethics, and even a recasting of the foundations of Ethics as a science. The final touch to all this uncertainty has been provided by Freudian psychology, so that at the present time Ethics is in a highly fluid, transitional state. But although the conceptions of Freud’s psychology have a very real significance for Ethics, it is essential to recognize, at the outset, what the relation is between psychology and Ethics in general. Human beings who live in groups regulate their relations to one another and their conduct generally in accordance with certain customs or laws. Ethics is the science which collates and reflects on these customs or laws. It examines, for instance, their claim to have divine origin, to imply necessarily certain metaphysical truths, just as it examines their relation to economic history and to biological principles. 172 THE UNCONSCIOUS In the course of reflection Ethics perceives that all human conduct, including that called moral or immoral, occurs under conditions imposed by the nature of the agent. ‘ Ought ’ implies ‘ can.’ The study of these conditions, then, constitutes what may be called psychological prolegomena to Ethics. In other words, there is a psychological setting about which the facts must be known, and within which the moral process has its being. The nature of motives, impulses, intentions, the will, conscience, the moral self, all these features of the psychological setting are bound up with an understanding of Ethics proper. This, roughly, is the relation between psychology and Ethics, and it is evident that Psycho-analysis must be primarily concerned with the psychological prolegomena to Ethics. Its significance can only lie in the light which it may throw on the human setting within which moral conduct takes place, and on the mechanisms of character-formation, the nature of the impulses, which condition the development of the moral self. From this standpoint the most obvious bearing of Freudian psychology is its apparent support for Hedonism. § 52 Psycho-analysis and Hedonism. Hedonism in morals means two things : (a) that all men are so constituted that their actions invariably express a desire for pleasure, and (6) that pleasure, SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 173 and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends. On the view outlined above regarding the relation between ethics and psychology it is with the former meaning that Psycho-analysis can alone be concerned. Freud’s view, it will be remembered, is that the main purpose of the psychic apparatus is the procuring of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. There is a strong tendency to the ‘ pleasure-principle ' in the apparatus. Even the ‘ reality-principle,’ it was shown, “ at bottom also seeks pleasure—although a delayed pleasure, one which is assured by its . . . relations to reality.” (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 299.) It is clear, therefore, that Freud’s account of the dominant principle of human, or rather, psychic activity, confirms the psychological basis on which Hedonism rests. But it is important to emphasize just how much, and just how little, this signifies for Ethics. It certainly does not, in my opinion, confirm the implications of Hedonism in the second of its meanings given above. Freud’s view is that the business of psychic life is the control of stimuli. It seems reasonable to believe that the efficient prosecution of this task is essential to the survival of the organism. It is, in fact, its most fundamental problem, and the develop- ment of the nervous system is the framework of its solution to that problem. Now the control of stimuli involves what we call pleasure and pain. In what way exactly pleasure 174 THE UNCONSCIOUS and pain arise, and what they are, it is impossible to conjecture. Freud tentatively suggests, however, that “ pleasure is in some way connected with lessening, lowering, or extinguishing the amount of stimulation present in the mental apparatus ; and that pain involves a heightening of the latter.” [Introductory Lectures, p. 299.) All we can say, then, is that the successful control of stimuli—which is the ultimate significance of mental activity— involves what is called pleasure. As Aristotle expressed it, pleasure is just the ‘ accompaniment' of successful functioning. A very clear exposition of some such biological significance in connection with pleasure and pain is to be found in Spencer. He offers proofs of it both in the early chapters of his Data of Ethics, and in his Principles of Psychology (Section 124). “ There exists,” to quote his conclusion, “ a primordial connection between pleasure-giving acts and continuance or increase of life, and, by implication, between pain-giving acts and decrease or loss of life. . . . Each individual and species is from day to day kept alive by pursuit of the agreeable and avoidance of the disagreeable. . . . Sentient exist- ence can evolve only on condition that pleasure- giving acts are life-sustaining acts.” [Data of Ethics, pp 70-71.) The Pleasure-principle is confirmed, then, by broad considerations of this kind. It is confirmed also by observations drawn from another sphere, that of physiological psychology. In learning anything by experience an individual seems to establish a certain SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 175 connection or association between a sensory path, say a visual impression, and a particular motor mechanism. It is the fixing of this connection, and the exclusion of other possible associations, that constitutes the crucial feature of the whole process. What is it, then, which produces this fixing of one particular association ? It is, as Thorndike and McDougall show, simply the pleasure resulting from it. An association which yields pleasure gets “ stamped in,” to use the phrase of Thorndike. The others get “ stamped out.” McDougall refers to the process as the Law of Subjective or Hedonic Selection. He holds it to be a special case of Stout’s general law that “ Lines of action, if and so far as they are unsuccessful, tend to be discontinued or varied ; and those which prove successful, to be maintained.” (McDougall, Primer of Physiological Psychology, p. 148.) These seem to me to be valuable illustrations of the fundamental importance of the Pleasure-principle in psychic activity. The psychological truth which Hedonism contains is thus brought out in clear relief by Psycho-analysis. It is natural, too, that this should happen. For the long history of Hedonism, its constant recurrence in ethical and reflective literature of many ages and many climes, the very vehemence of the opposition which its formulation has always provoked, indicate surely that it expresses something ultimate, something fundamental, in human nature. 176 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 53 Psycho-analysis and Responsibility. Another almost immediate bearing of Psycho- analysis on ethics is its apparent attack on the belief in moral responsibility. Moral responsibility is usually construed to apply to conduct within our control, that is to say, conduct which springs from deliberate, conscious choice. Now Psycho-analysis finds that the roots of our actions are often impulses which are ‘ unconscious/ and, therefore, not within our control. Conscious choice, it finds, really plays almost a negligible part in determining conduct. The real sources or springs of action are unconscious. What is even worse, conscious reason seems to be a mere tool of unconscious forces. It ‘ rationalizes,’ invents plausible excuses to cloak irrational desires on our part. If this is true, then, and if the real motives of behaviour are unconscious, how can an individual be regarded as responsible ? I do not think that the results of Psycho-analysis constitute in any way a denial of the validity of the conception of responsibility. It is not difficult to show this, in the first place, as regards legal responsi- bility. For legal responsibility applies to actions in their practical bearing on the life of society, and Freud himself points out that “ Action and the conscious expression of thought mostly suffice for the practical need of judging a man’s character.” {Interpretation of Dreams, p. 493.) It has to be remembered that Law as a social institution is concerned to regulate the actions of SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 177 men towards their fellows, not to analyse the subtleties of unconscious motivation. No doubt there may arise specific cases where the line is difficult to draw. But the function and social purpose of Law make it imperative, if a common life is to be possible, to define and vindicate legal responsibility in terms of some external criterion. The niceties of psychological research are no doubt of value for the administration of criminal law in the most equitable manner. But there is not the slightest foundation for the assumption that Psycho-analysis, if true, requires the abolition of legal responsibility. What is the case, however, with moral responsibility ? Here the first effect of the findings of Psycho-analysis seems to be, as Laird puts it in a recent article, “ a resolute constriction of the sphere of genuine responsibility.” (Hibbert Journal, July 1922, p. 753.) But moral responsibility really applies, in the last resort, to character as a whole, and to particular actions only in so far as they manifest formed dispositions. The ethical problem, in fact, which the findings of Psycho-analysis raise seems to me to be merely an extension of the classical discussion of Aristotle on responsibility and habit. Aristotle, it will be remembered, restricts moral categories to actions which are * voluntary,’ in his sense of the word, that is, to actions which spring from deliberate choice of means to some end. But, he shows, the frequent repetition of an action appropriate to a certain end results in the formation of a habit or disposition, which expresses itself again 178 THE UNCONSCIOUS in the performance of the action. At a certain stage the habit becomes so ingrained, so essential a part of the person’s character, that it is no longer possible to change the character, or to refrain from the action which expresses the habit. Does this mean, then, that such actions are not morally culpable ? Aristotle’s answer is that it is the individual who has acquired the habit and the character by his frequent repetition of the action. The particular act may not be ‘ voluntary ’ in the same sense as the formation of the habit which it expresses. But this simply means that the sphere of moral responsibility really applies to character as a whole. It does not mean that moral responsibility can be said to vanish. Now what Psycho-analysis does, I think, is just to elucidate the complexities behind character- formation. It does not, therefore, weaken or abolish the doctrine of moral responsibility. It has shown that the development of character is rooted in psychic intricacies and subtleties not hitherto recognized in their proper perspective. But it does not touch the fundamental principle of moral responsibility itself. For the grounds on which that principle rests are, I believe, outside the sphere of psychology altogether. § 54 Psycho-analysis and Free-Will. It might seem, however, that the implications of the psycho-analytic view-point have not been squarely SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 179 faced in the above discussion, and that Freud’s psychology really contradicts the doctrine of Free- Will itself. For, we have seen, Psycho-analysis postulates a rigid psychic determinism. Everything mental is regarded as causally related to antecedents. Nothing, it is claimed, is merely ‘ accidental ’ or spontaneous. The simplest mental expression has a meaning and purpose. It is, indeed, one of the distinguishing features of Freud’s work that he has advanced this postulate in the comparatively novel context of mind. It arouses, therefore, a vague uneasiness on its first acceptance. There is within us, as Freud says, “ a deeply rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice,” with which this notion of a rigid determinism governing the whole of mental life seems to clash. But here, also, the difference between psychology and ethics comes to the forefront. As a postulate of the science of psychology psychic determinism seems to me to be justifiable. Strictly, it is as justifiable as the postulate of physical determinism, for both rest on similar inductive grounds. To conceive a gap, or exception, in the causal sequence of things, no matter where, is really “ to throw over the whole scientific outlook on the world (Weltan- schauung).” (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 21.) Unless we postulate psychic determinism it is difficult to see how a science of mental life is possible. The only test of whether or not the postulate is valid is the extent to which it is necessary to render mental life intelligible. The facts of Psycho-analysis itself must, in the last resort, vindicate, as I believe they do, the use of the postulate. 180 THE UNCONSCIOUS But we may grant this, in the interests of that construction of behaviour which we call psychology, and yet find a meaning in the conception of moral freedom. It may be that the facts of the moral life and the moral consciousness make it imperative to postulate moral freedom in the interests of philo- sophy or metaphysics. The difference between psychology and ethics, as just emphasized, is of crucial importance throughout. The setting, the conditions of human life, within which the moral struggle takes place, must be distinguished from the significance of that struggle itself for the ultimate interpretation of experience. The uneasiness which the postulate of psychic determinism involves becomes readily explicable, I think, if we consider the psychological antecedents of the sense of free-will in an individual. The human organism is so constituted that it reacts as a whole to a stimulus. All its past experience is embodied in itself, so that the capacity it possesses for response becomes, as time goes on, more and more complex. But the whole of this past experience, as latent or potential response, is an element in the constantly changing situation to which the organism is called upon to react. New combinations of stimuli which form situations are thus constantly evoking new or different responses. It is to this fact, I believe, that the origin of the sense of free-will in an individual can be traced. What happens is that the unknown objective factor in future situations has been introjected, as it were, so as to produce a sense of subjective unknowable- ness, or unpredictableness, or free-will. Introjection of this nature was described above, in its relation to SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 181 the early development of mental life. It was shown that objective sources of pleasure or power readily merge into elements of the Ego itself, in virtue of this principle. The conjecture, therefore, which I am hazarding is that consideration of introjection, and recognition of the confusion between psychic reality and material reality which unreflective belief exhibits, may throw light on the psychological antecedents in an individual of the popular sense of free-will. § 55 Psycho-analysis and Ethics. Conclusions. The results of the application of Psycho-analysis to ethics have up till now been largely negative. But they are none the less valuable, I think, on that account. For positive results in ethics can only be reached by reflective analysis of self-consciousness and of moral values, not by the consideration of psychological origins. There are, however, one or two further features of ethics where Psycho-analysis has contributed positive guidance and insight. (a) Broadly regarded, ethics may be said to deal with the principles of social order. Social order involves, on the part of individuals, repression of certain infantile instinctive impulses, for example, impulses of cruelty and of pleasure in domination. To trace the development of these impulses, then, and to understand what McDougall so expressively describes as “ the moralization of the individual by the society into which he is born as a creature in which the non-moral and purely egoistic tendencies 182 THE UNCONSCIOUS are so much stronger than any altruistic tendencies,” is the first requisite of social ethics. But it is just here that the results of Psycho-analysis have been of special interest. In particular individuals Psycho-analysis has traced the way in which such infantile impulses as have just been mentioned are at the basis of ‘ reaction- formations ’; how, in other words, feelings of pity and benevolence can sometimes be construed as conscious equivalents which represent and mask, in the interests of social life, the underlying repressed impulses of cruelty and egoism from which they have been transformed. In the systems of the great ethical writers such facts become significant. Rank and Sachs instance “ the ethical revolutionaries appearing from time to time, who ridicule the coddling morality of pity . . . like Stirner and Nietzsche,” and they refer to Schopenhauer, ” who cannot do enough in the detailed description of evil, cruel, and jealous instinctive impulses.” (Op cit., p. 115.) The subjective antecedents of a particular ethical system may thus be suggestively illumined by psychography ’ of this kind. (£>) Freud himself, in the work on Totem and Taboo to which reference was made before, discusses the relation between taboo and ' conscience.’ He finds that the immediacy and certainty of conscience are paralleled in taboo. “ Taboo,” he writes, “ is a command of conscience, the violation of which causes a terrible sense of guilt which is as self-evident as its origin is unknown.” (Totem and Taboo, p. 115.) It is, therefore, possible, he suggests, “ that conscience also originates on the basis of an underlying feeling SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 183 from quite definite human relations which contain this ambivalence.” The relations meant are those of the (Edipus complex, and Freud brings his theory into line with recent research on the earliest conditions of human society. But the point which is of most interest here is the analogy between the certainty, immediacy, infallibility, of the taboo compulsion and similar features of conscience or of the ‘ categorical imperative.' The ultimate explanation of the analogy may be obscure, but Freud’s suggestions are striking in the extreme, and cannot be ignored. In general, then, it has been evident, I think, that the hypotheses of Psycho-analysis are fertile indeed in the sphere of ethics. At the same time I have rigidly refused to reduce ethics to psychology. It is by a combination of the results of psychological analysis and of reflection on moral values and their significance that insight into the ultimate meaning of the moral life can alone be reached. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ESTHETICS § 56 Art and Phantasy. In showing how the Pleasure-principle is replaced by the Reality-principle in the course of human development, I indicated that the process involves the renunciation of certain sources of gratification. Now such renunciation is effected under compulsion, in a sense. By way of compensation, therefore, man has evolved for himself, Freud writes, “ a mental activity in which all these relinquished sources of pleasure and abandoned paths of gratification are permitted to continue their existence.” (Intro- ductory Lectures, p. 311.) This mental activity is known as Phantasy. It seeks to secure the fulfilment of wishes which reality refuses to satisfy. In the realm of phantasy man “ can continue to enjoy a freedom from the grip of the external world.” Phantasy may be compared to a ‘ reservation,’ something “ reclaimed from the encroaches of the reality-principle.” [Ibid., p. 312.) The simplest example of this function of phantasy is found in day-dreams. In these, which are specially frequent, perhaps, during the period of adolescence, 184 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 185 th* individual is invariably the hero, achieving final triumph and gaining the lady of his heart’s desire in spite of all dangers and obstacles in his path. By such means he realizes, in fancy, all his unsatisfied longings. His fondest ambitions, his omnipotence, his limitless craving for power and glory, can attain in phantasy the sweetness of that perfect bliss which the hard facts of real life destroy. In virtue of the mechanism of ‘ identification ’ day-dreams can be enjoyed without the effort of creating them. What is known as ‘ popular fiction,’ and the dramatic films of the modern cinema, are devices which spare people the trouble of inventing a setting for their phantasies. Day-dreams, however, are only loosely connected, are for the most part nebulous. Phantasy-life has evolved a more specialized phase of creativeness, one which has proved of the utmost cultural significance to man, and one in which the deepest interpretation of life is somehow pictured. This is the phase called Art. Art achieves its end under conditions, conditions of an external medium and conditions of internal structure. But its end is the same as that of all phantasy, namely, the gratifica- tion of longings denied in real life. On this view of the impulse to art it is readily seen that art is universal. The artist understands, Freud writes, “ how to elaborate his day-dreams, so that they lose that personal note which grates upon strange ears, and become enjoyable to others ; he knows, too, how to modify them sufficiently so that their origin in prohibited sources is not easily 186 THE UNCONSCIOUS detected. . . . He thus opens out to others the vay back to the comfort and consolation of their own unconscious sources of pleasure.” (Freud, Intro- ductory Lectures, pp. 314-315.) The impulse to art, we may say, springs from longings universally present in man. The mark of great art must ultimately lie, I believe, in the universal appeal it makes. On psychological grounds, there- fore, the belief that beauty has ‘ absolute ’ or ‘ objective ' value seems to be well founded. The meeting-point of aesthetic theory and psychology is in the Unconscious. For it is there that longings universally present in man are to be found. The Unconscious may be said to epitomize all our past experience, perhaps, as we have seen, all the past experience of the race. The great artist is one who draws on this inexhaustible past, and who gives the most faithful expression to man’s unconscious longings. It is possible to trace some such perception, I think, to the founder of himself. For in the Poetics, in a famous passage contrasting poetry and history, Aristotle writes that “ Poetry is more fundamental and more philosophical than History, because it deals with universal truth, not that which lies in details.” (Chap, ix.) What constitutes the universal character of art, and its relation to something universal in the nature of human life, are aptly illustrated by Symbolism. We saw before that the facts seem to suggest there is in the Unconscious a primitive universal symbolic SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 187 language. The artist draws on this in his creative phantasies, and so reaches meanings that lie beyond his own consciousness. § 57 Art and the Affects. But how, it may be asked, can the representation of suffering and sorrow, which art, and especially tragedy, exhibits, be regarded as the fulfilment of unconscious longings ? What sources of pleasure are apparent in the gradual unfolding of the catastrophe of the (Edipus Tyrannus, or in the blood- stained passion of, say Tosca or Pagliacci ? It may be recalled that Aristotle’s theory of Katharsis was designed to explain this function of tragedy. Tragedy works on the feelings of Pity and Terror, he says, in such a way as to effect the Purging of these very passions. What Aristotle meant has been the subject of considerable discussion. The only clue he himself gave is in a passage of the Politics, dealing with music. There he argues that young people should listen to, rather than perform, exciting music, because in this way the latent excitement in the listener comes to the surface and is worked out of the system, leaving him healthy once more. The principle applies to all feelings, but especially to pity and fear. By evoking a feeling in this artificial way it is ‘ purged' from the system. From this passage, then, it would seem that the specific meaning of 188 THE UNCONSCIOUS Katharsis in Aristotle is medical. Its effect, too, is held by him to be always a pleasurable relief. That is the significant feature of the discussion. “To all persons,” he concludes, “ this Katharsis happens, and they are made tranquil again with pleasure. In the same way, all music which has a kathartic or purifying effect affords a harmless pleasure to mankind.” (Aristotle, Politics, VIII, chap. vii. 1342a.) This, then, is Aristotle’s explanation of why grief and suffering and horrors on the stage afford pleasure to the spectator. Many subsequent writers have found in art this same cleansing of the passions Burke, Shelley, and Nietzsche subscribe to a similar view. Hegel, above all, shows how art can mitigate the grossness of merely selfish or individual passion, and by exhibiting the deepest needs of humanity help to free the individual from the thrall of his own brutal feelings. (Hegel, Msthetik, Einleitung, III, ii.) It is a commonplace, too, of ordinary experience that in lyrics, in song and symphony, sad, haunting, sorrowful themes are the source of much exquisite pleasure. Now the psychology which has been outlined in the preceding part of this essay throws some light on the basis of this kathartic function of art. It was shown that the conditions of real life involve repression, and that repression is closely related to the liberation of emotions which were not to come to light. It seemed that there was a contrast of affective quality between consciousness and the Unconscious. What in the Unconscious has an affective tone of pleasure has in consciousness just SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 189 the reverse. This “ affective transformation,” as I called it, is an essential mark of repression. This analysis has an obvious bearing on the aesthetic pleasure which the representation of tragedy, for example, affords. The artistic representation evokes conscious affects, say of pity, terror, grief. But in doing so it has really touched chords of pleasurable unconscious affect from which the pity, terror, grief, have been transformed. It is in some such fact that the ultimate source of the pleasure is probably to be found. For the Katharsis of Aristotle, then, our psychology enables us to substitute the theory of repression and “ transformation of affect.” The use of the term ‘ katharsis ’ is still appropriate. For, as Rank and Sachs point out, the effect of the representation is “ the discharge of affect, as well as the gratification of the unconscious longings common to artist and spectators.” (The Significance of Psycho-Analysis for the Mental Sciences, p. 97.) Again, there is a psychological basis for the principle on which the drama seeks to effect its Katharsis. The unity of the drama—the unity of a work of art is, of course, an essential element—comes out in the way in which it unfolds a single theme, culminating in the climax or denouement. Greek tragedy is specially notable for its restraint and simplicity, its concentration, its presentation of the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. All the accessory details, the minor characters, the sub-plots, the preliminary narrative, are subservient, in the greatest drama, to one central theme. What is the basis 190 THE UNCONSCIOUS of this ? It is, I think, to effect the Katharsis when the maximum of affect has been evoked, and to secure in this way its most complete discharge. The sub- ordinate elements of the play merely serve to enhance the affective-value of the dominant motif. Enhancement of affective-value is secured in another way too. That is by the simplicity of character- type which some forms of art require. Actual life presents a mass of detail which it is impossible, as it is irrelevant, for art to embody. Art has to concentrate on something universal, typical. In the New Comedy, for instance, of Menander, or in the Roman examples surviving, as in Plautus and Terence, this is seen very clearly. All the characters are artificially simplified, and none of the intricacies of real life is introduced to disturb the crude, abstract type. A gain in pleasure seems to be secured in this way. The most glaring degree to which such artificial simplification can be carried is found in the modern cinema-film or story, where the presentation consists of a series of more or less detached incidents, and everything that would remind one of the irrelevant details of real life is eliminated. Here, of course, art borders on the phase called pure phantasy. The theory of the affects thus implied has a bearing, too, on the controversy over Realism in Art. The essence of Realism seems to be an insistence on detail, and a resolute refusal to indulge in pure phantasy. The appeal which realism in art makes lies, therefore, in sources more allied to waking consciousness and real life than to the Unconscious. Such works may be ' true/ but they do not afford the same pleasure as phantasy does. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 191 § 58 Art and Repression. On the theory of art suggested up till now it is evident that art and repression are closely connected. For the origin of art has been related to the replace- ment of the pleasure-principle by the reality-principle, and it has been shown already that ‘ reality ’ in this context consists of the social, economic, and cultural standards of a community. The kind of desires, therefore, which an individual possesses, but which these standards prevent him from gratifying, should be integral features of the incentive to artistic production. In other words, the kind of art a people creates in any period should reflect the cultural standards or development of that period. A comparison, for example, of Greek and Egyptian Art should be of vital significance for a knowledge of the culture, the ideals, the repressed longings, which these two peoples possessed. But the relation between art and repression can be analysed in more detail, as follows. Art must conform, to some extent, to the conditions which the standards of the community impose. The pure phantasy of unconscious wish-tendencies has to be modified, disguised, sublimated, before it can be acceptable to the waking consciousness. There is a ‘ censor ’ operative here, just as in the dream. Hence the degree of such * distortion ’ (or its almost complete absence) exhibited by works of art will reflect the amount of repression imposed by the 192 THE UNCONSCIOUS cultural demands of that particular epoch and community. The difference in treatment between English and French drama on problems of sex is an illustration of what is meant. Similarly, the difference between the comedies of the Restoration and the comedies of Shaw is significant. What are called ‘ New Movements ’ in Art illustrate also the relation between the censorship and social conditions. It is as if these social conditions, and the subtle modification in cultural repression which new conditions involve, are immediately reflected in the altered or lessened distortion which unconscious phantasies have to undergo. Greater freedom, for instance, in sex relations permits greater freedom in treatment for the artist. The exacting demands of modern economic pressure have been reflected in an increased withdrawal from reality on the part of the artist, and in an abandonment to the fullest play of unconscious phantasy, to the utmost boldness in form and colour and sound. Considerations of this nature suggest one possible factor to account for the comparative paucity of art in America. The general conditions of the new life which was deliberately begun there aimed at avoiding every form of social repression. The pioneer spirit, the freedom, the wealth of material resources and the fascinating opportunities of exploiting them, have been reflected in less need and less readiness to resort to pure phantasy. Even those works of artistic genius which America has produced—the terrific tour de force of Hermann Melville in Moby Dick or the amazing power of Ornstein’s Sinfonietta—are explicable on the very principles laid down. “ There is the beat SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 193 of the age of steel,” a musical critic once wrote, in the music of Bloch, another American. But the clearest instance of the relation between the content of art and the factor of repression is to be found on what may be called the racial level. Myths and legends may be regarded as the expression of a people’s phantasies. They are “ the distorted remnants of wish-phantasies of whole nations.” (“ Rank and Sachs,” op. cit., p. 29.) What, then, are those wishes which are universally present in primitive peoples and which cultural life gradually represses ? They are just the wishes which are present in the unconscious life of humanity, and which express themselves in dreams and the neuroses. In making possible the application of this new stand- point Psycho-analysis has yielded new insight at the same time into the meaning of myths, their relation to problems of the family and the tribe, into the significance of the (Edipus saga and the most funda- mental impulses of human nature. § 59 Art and the Unconscious. Conclusions. Whatever the ultimate metaphysical relation may be between Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, it is possible to hold as almost a truism that a work of art must be judged solely by its own standards, and that art is sovereign in its own sphere. Moralistic theories of art, as in Plato, or as in Tolstoy and Ruskin among the moderns, are not now maintained in a literal or narrow sense by any great school. The 194 THE UNCONSCIOUS aesthetic satisfaction seems to bring with it its own justification. While the grounds for this view are philosophical, there is one feature of the psychology outlined above which confirms it. That is the distinction drawn between psychical and material reality. The reality- principle may be said to control the Ego as a reason- able member of a social group. In that connection material reality is what counts. But the source of aesthetic appreciation is psychical reality, and the intrusion of considerations belonging to the struggle of real life, with the standards appropriate there, is fatal to the illusion. Hence the significance of ‘ Art for Art’s Sake ’ seems to be bound up, in the last resort, with this distinction of psychical and material reality, and all that it implies. Another application of our psychology is to be found in considering why the beauty of Art has so often been ranked higher than that of Nature. Hegel and Croce, for instance, both hold this. Hegel’s rational justification of the view is that artistic beauty reveals the spirit, is free. Croce regards ‘ natural beauties ’ as objects which simply happen to be adapted to the reproduction of images. But, as he writes, the “ always imperfect adaptability, the fugitive nature, the mutability of ‘ natural beauties ’ justify the inferior place accorded to them compared with beauties produced by art.” To affirm that ” a beautiful tree, or river, or even a beautiful human figure,” is superior to “ the chisel-stroke of Michelangelo or the verse of Dante ” belong, Croce thinks, to “ rhetoricians or the intoxicated.” (The Essence of 2Esthetic, p. 47.) SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 195 These views are ‘ rationalizations/ we might say, of feelings or beliefs rooted in the Unconscious. They spring ultimately from the nature of art as originating in Unconscious phantasy, and as in consequence self-sufficient, resenting the intrusion of material reality. It is probably on the same psychological grounds that music is commonly regarded as the purest expression of art, as that most nearly perfect blending or fusion of form and matter which art seeks to realize. This is a view which Balfour elaborates in an early work. It is clear that in music phantasy is least of all trammelled or distracted by associations rooted in reality. Music reaches the Unconscious, we may say, with the minimum of extraneous irrelevancies. Another point of contact between our psychology and aesthetic theory is afforded by the conception of Empathy, or ‘ Einfiihlung/ This conception, applied first to /Esthetics by Lotze and Vischer, I think, is expounded most fully by Lipps. It refers to a kind of merging of the activities of the spectator into the qualities of what he sees. ./Esthetic pleasure is held to be the enjoyment of our own activity. But the activity is not that of the whole, real self. It is the activity of the ‘ ideal,’ contemplative, non-practicai self. This ideal self is, as it were, identified with its object. The ultimate source of aesthetic pleasure lies in this identification. A view of this kind seems to be in essential harmony with the account of mental life given above. The reference of aesthetic pleasure to the activity of a 196 THE UNCONSCIOUS * non-practical' self, and the emphasis on a process which seems to be analogous to what was called Projection, are in particular just applications of the general principles laid down. Finally, what we know of the artist himself seems to confirm the general theory that art has a significant relation to the Unconscious. For in his life the Unconscious very often plays a more striking part than in that of other people. The artist is as a rule less practical, less adapted to reality, that is, less controlled by the reality-principle. He is in many cases notable for the small amount of repression which his sexual impulses admit. Often, indeed, he is actually neurotic. This exceptional dominance of the Unconscious is what popular opinion expresses by its use of the word * temperament ’ as applied to the artist. It is illustrated in facts such as the melancholy of Schiller or Goethe, or the excesses of Burns or Chopin. In all these various ways, then, Freudian psychology suggests an interpretation of certain problems in aesthetic theory. It has at least one merit, that of giving a consistent account which can be verified at every step. In spite of its superficial resemblance to what Croce calls the “ antiquated Hedonistic theories,” it admits of no real doubt, I think, that the psycho-analytic view-point constitutes at least a legitimate aid in the interpretation and understanding of aesthetics. Students of aesthetics would themselves be the last to ignore possible light on their uncertain SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 197 science, even when the light comes from a source so heterodox as Psycho-analysis still ranks. I proceed, in a final section, to discuss the significance of the Unconscious for some problems of Philosophy itself. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PHILOSOPHY § 60 Philosophers and the Unconscious. Systems of philosophy may be regarded, in the first instance, as subjective products. It is a characteristic mark of a philosophy that it expresses the personality of its creator, in spite of its claim to being merely a dispassionate, coldly logical piece of reasoning. Almost as much as a work of art, a system of philosophy breathes the spirit of its maker. Now philosophy begins in wonder, as P14to said. From the psychological side this wonder seems to be rooted in an infantile instinctive impulse of looking or curiosity, and this impulse is, in the last analysis, one of the component impulses of the sexual instincts. Expressed in the technical term, the process which takes place is one of displacement. The original object of the wonder has been displaced on to a substitute. The energy or Libido has been displaced in this case from an outer object to an inner one. It has been, in other words, ' introverted,’ and now invests mental process itself. That is why in philosophy there is a constant regress from outer objects of reality, and even from 198 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 199 the original real content of ideas, as the field of curiosity or wonder, on to a more and more intense, inner concentration, on to thought processes in them- selves, for their own sake. The final form which the displacement may reach is that Intellectualism of the vicious type attacked by James. But in a less degree it is illustrated by philosophers like Schopen- hauer or Fichte, or even by subjective idealism in general, in the Berkeleian sense. The ‘ Copernican Revolution' of Kant himself signifies an explicit formulation of the transition from outer to inner. For it is postulated that reality necessarily conforms to the laws and categories of thought, or at any rate that such conformity is the mark of everything knowable. That the displacement of curiosity to which reference has been made is from an original sexual goal seems to be confirmed by the traditional celibacy of the philosopher. Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, to name but a few, were unmarried all their lives. Shaw remarks in one of his prefaces, borrowing from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, “ A married philosopher is ridiculous.” It is suggested by Rank and Sachs that the fate of sexual impulses in an individual is a factor which determines the lines on which his system of philosophy will be constructed. In certain systems, they point out, “ the whole world is animated in animistic manner and the dualism of the dead physical world and of the spirit permeating it is contemplated under the picture of sexual reproduction ; the rich elabora- tion of this sexual symbolism by individual mystics plainly betrays such systems as the projection of 200 THE UNCONSCIOUS inner Libido processes.” Again, they note that Feuerbach “ once traced back the philosophical contrasts and speculative discussions of the relation of subject and object to the sexual relation of man and woman.” Further, “ the belief in pre-existence, transmigration of souls ... in ultimate analysis proceeds like the corresponding religious dogmas from unconscious mother-womb and rebirth phantasies.” (Rank and Sachs, op. cit., p. 113.) With reference to all such suggestions it must be remarked, I think, that they apply to the subjective roots of a philosophical system in any individual. They do not, of course, of themselves determine the validity of a system. James draws a distinction between origin and value, in the early pages of his Varieties of Religious Experience, which is appropriate here also. To trace the psychological antecedents or conditions which determine the direction of an impulse and contribute to the form of expression which that impulse finally achieves is not equivalent to the complete appraisal of the value and significance which that final expression possesses. With this reservation, then, such suggestions may be accepted from Psycho-analysis as relevant and even important. There is, too, one other relation between philosophers and the Unconscious which is significant. That is the prevalence of phantasy and myth in one type of philosopher, of whom Plato is, of course, the leading representative. Here the indication of unconscious sources is most marked. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 201 § 61 The Problem of Meaning. The importance of Meaning comes out very clearly in the philosophical problem of the relation between body and mind. McDougall’s essay on that theme forms a convenient way of approach. McDougall brings forward a series of arguments against Parallelism, with a view to establishing eventually a belief in a Soul or Souls. One of these arguments (which, I imagine, is found by most readers to be the first really fundamental one) is based on Meaning. The fact of meaning seems to him to impair the creed of Parallelism, because the consciousness of meaning, he holds, has no correlate in cerebral process. McDougall’s position is somewhat as follows. When we think of an object, there is “ more than having present to consciousness a picture of it made up of sensations.” In abstract thinking it is especially evident that “ the imagery is an altogether subordinate part of my total consciousness.” The essential part is the meaning. Consciousness of meaning must, therefore, be added to the sensory content. We often mean something, for instance, which we cannot find exact imagery to convey. In short, “ Meaning is the essential part of a thought or consciousness of an object. The sensory content . . . is a mere cue to the meaning.” More generally, “ Thought is essentially an inter-play of meanings,” and these are “ relatively independent of sensory cues.” (McDougall, Body and Mind, pp. 302, 303, 304, 311. Chap, xxii.) 202 THE UNCONSCIOUS McDougall quotes Wundt and Lotze as supporting the view that meaning has no physical correlate. Hoernl6, in a paper on “ Image, Idea, and Meaning,” (Mind, No. 61) expressed the view that “ every idea is a concrete whole of sign and meaning.” If meaning has no physical correlate, it is apparently an expression of pure ‘ psychical ’ activity. That is the inference intended. McDougall admits that changes of muscular inervation accompany changes of meaning, but he insists that they do not condition them. He points out that the meaning may remain the same, while the sensory content varies. A series of notes, for instance, which constitutes a musical melody may be transposed to a different key. The meaning in this case (the melody) remains the same, though the sensory content has changed. Thus the meaning is in a sense independent of the sensory content. Now this peculiar significance which it is sought to assign to meaning, in the above argument, is by no means indefeasible. In particular, I believe that Freud’s account of mental process weakens it considerably. For one of the criteria which Freud suggests as distinguishing conscious and unconscious ideas is, we saw, the union of thing-presentation and word-presentation. It is a characteristic of the Preconscious system, that is, of the possibility of becoming conscious, to reveal such a union. The unconscious idea is the presentation of the thing alone. There is, in other words, a vital connection between becoming conscious and being expressed in words. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 203 Further, the separation of sensory content and meaning is at least doubtfully valid. The meaning; of a statue which has been modelled in clay and cast in bronze is undoubtedly different, as a sculptor will tell, from the meaning of the statue when cast in plaster of Paris. Yet it is only the ‘ sensory content' which has altered. In a musical melody it is not certain that the transposition to another key leaves the melody or meaning the same. When the transposition of key is slight, as it commonly is, the difference in sensory content, being probably imperceptible to the untrained ear, may seem to make no difference to the meaning. But a transposition at a greater musical interval would make the difference apparent at once. In thought, above all, the sensory content does affect the meaning. In early life, it is apparent, just as in primitive savage mentality, words and things are not even distinguished. The sensory content, in fact, is the very first element in meaning. Meaning might be described as simply the individuality or uniqueness of the association paths which any one person forms. Whether thought is just the ‘ language habit ’ or not, the function of words to which Freud has drawn attention is certainly an integral element in the process. It is evident, too, that communication between individuals rests to a large extent on words. For it is by language that there can most easily be achieved that similarity of associations in each individual which is what makes communication possible. To use the same words, which is, to perceive the 204 THE UNCONSCIOUS same sensory contents, is the most effective way of reaching others. It would seem, then, that consciousness of meaning has not the peculiar significance assigned to it in many quarters, and that it is not an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a thoroughgoing psycho- physics. It involves the associations of the individual and the ‘ affects ’ of his mental life. If these can be expressed in cerebral or physical terms, then meaning must be said to have a cerebral or physical correlate. The Freudian account of mental life and the distinction between unconscious and preconscious processes enables us at least to state the terms of the whole problem of meaning more exactly. § 62 Reason and the Reality-principle. Freud’s account of the Reality-principle is significant, I believe, for philosophy. It throws light on the nature of reason itself. It was shown, in the first part of this essay, that a feature of the Unconscious ‘ tradition,’ exemplified especially in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Nietzsche, is its emphasis on the irrational character of the force which is at the root of life. Reason, on such a view, is held to be a secondary or acquired principle, inferior in certain respects to * instinct' or ‘ intuition.' It has, of course, practical advantages. It is, in fact, essentially the practical instrument. But it is not, on this view, the fundamental principle of life itself. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 205 What becomes, then, it may be asked, of the objective, universal, character of reason ? Has it not categories or innate principles which are the most certain things we can know ? How can Reason be evolved from something which is itself irrational ? Freud’s account was that the reality-principle develops as an elaboration or replacement of the pleasure-principle, and that its development is imperative for the survival of the organism. It is, in fact, the nature of things, the Necessity of the real world, which imposes on the organism the need for adjusting itself by following the reality-principle. The significance of Reason, therefore, seems to me to be bound up with the nature of this Necessity or Real. Reason may be regarded as having been evolved just as sense-organs or instinctive dispositions were evolved. It represents a stage in the process whereby the primal force, the life-urge, as it is called, achieves more adequate expression and headway in its struggle against matter, or the real. It is true that the Real, or Necessity, is perceived by us as the economic, social, cultural standards and conditions of the community in which we live. But in the last analysis it consists of something more elemental. It consists, in fact, of the ‘ Laws of Nature,’ or, even more simply, of the properties of molecules. If I may assume for the moment a dualistic setting for the argument (which would be a matter for ultimate metaphysical justification) what is being maintained is that the essence of life is the interaction of life-urge and molecules, and that the evolution of reason is a stage in this process which 206 THE UNCONSCIOUS reflects the effort of the life-force to control, appreciate, * get round ’ the properties of molecules, in the struggle to achieve its own goal. Reason, in other words, is the name given to a capacity of the organism to maintain itself, at a certain stage of development, in its relations with the real. That this is the significance of reason seems to be confirmed by ordinary usage of the term. Persons who are said to be insane, or to be devoid of reason, are just those persons who do not possess the capacity of effective adjustment to the complex conditions of reality which surround them. To call anyone ‘ unreasonable ' means that that person is out of touch with reality. On this view, then, of the nature of reason, its .genetic relation to reality is the source of its qualities * objective ’ and * universal.’ For these are just the properties of reality. To connect them in the first instance, or exclusively, with reason as an abstract faculty would be another instance of that introjection from outer to inner which has been shown to have an important place in the mechanisms of psychic development. Such a conclusion, suggested by following out the implications of Freud’s account of the Reality- principle, seems to me to enhance the crucial significance of Kant’s position in philosophy. For it reflects, from a different angle, the central problem of Kant’s theory of knowledge, and it suggests a view- point from which the whole movement of Post- Kantian Idealism may be appraised. For, expressed SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 207 quite simply, it embodies the doctrine which Hegel himself phrased so perfectly, “ The real is the rational This conclusion removes, too, the difficulties which inhere in the Pre-Freudian descriptions of life as essentially irrational. If terms are to be used strictly, life is neither rational nor irrational. The life-urge has evolved the capacity of reason at a certain stage in its evolution ; its manifestations, however, show a residue of dispositions which belong to earlier phases of its expression. We call these impulsive, or instinctive. But, strictly speaking, they are not opposed to reason. They should rather be called, I suggest, pre-rational. The terms * pre-rational' and * rational ’ signify more accurately than irrational and rational the relation between the successive phases which can be detected in the evolution of the psyche. Further, the whole development of modern Induc- tive Logic, dating from Bacon, may be regarded as a commentary on the above view of reason. For it may be said to reflect the gradual conviction that the sphere of what is objective and universal must be transferred from a barren, formal system of categories to the real world, or Nature, where it properly belongs. These, then, are illustrations of how Psycho-analysis has a bearing on problems of philosophy itself. 208 THE UNCONSCIOUS § 63 Conclusion. In attempting to illustrate the significance of the Unconscious in the above sections I have sacrificed detail and elaboration in order to secure an impression of range and breadth. I have brought out, I hope, something of the sweep and fertility of psycho- analytic hypotheses. Even so, there remain whole tracts of enquiry, such as ethnology, sociology, law, theory of religion, which have been omitted. In general, it should be remembered (as I indicated in a Prefatory Note) that the essay which I have now concluded is not intended to be a comprehensive account of Psycho-analysis. It has rather been an attempt to study the pure theory on which Psycho- analysis rests. That is why it has been mainly concerned with the first step from which that theory proceeds, namely, the hypothesis of unconscious mental processes. It is no doubt tempting to appraise the results of the psycho-analytic movement in superlatives. For it certainly is an achievement of impressive force. As Shand has said, the psycho-analytic school has “ already achieved wonderful results owing to the genius of its founder, and given a ‘ push ’ to academic psychology that I should be the last to deny or regret.” (Alex. F. Shand, British Journal of Psychology, October 1922, p. 125.) Perhaps the significance of the whole movement is best realized in the light of the well-known prophecy SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 209 of Bergson, who wrote many years ago, “To explore the most sacred depths of the Unconscious, to labour in what 1 have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening. I do not doubt that wonderful discoveries await it there, as important, perhaps, as have been in the preceding centuries the discoveries of the physical and natural sciences.” {The Independent, October 30, 1913). When reflection becomes insistent in a people the world order confronting thought is a vast array of structures which seem more or less independent. Social organization, institutions, laws and customs, religion, language, cultural and artistic creations, all form a magnificent—if bewildering—panorama, or mosaic, of civilized development and achievement. To penetrate beneath this diversity and seeming independence, to trace the gradual unfolding of a single plan and purpose, belongs to the genius of a Plato, a Spinoza, or a Hegel. But the men with ‘ vision ’ are a rare species, and the task of philosophy grows apace in complexity as in grandeur. If the results of Psycho-analysis contribute something —as I have tried to show they do—towards that ultimate understanding of life which is the end of philosophy, that will be not the least of the claims which theory of the Unconscious can legitimately present. INDEX Abbot, 84 Abel, K., 112 184-197 Affects, 56, 119-121 transformation of, 120, 189 Ambivalence, no-113, 156 American art, 192-193 Anxiety, 120-121 Apperception, 14 Aristophanes, 62 Aristotle, 156, 174, 177-178, 186,187-189 Art, 184-193 and affects, 187-190 and phantasy, 184-187 and repression, 191-193 as universal, 185-187 impulse to, 185 Artist, temperament of, 196 Associationists, 146 Association of ideas, 25, 43 Atoms, mental, 32, 33-34 Aveling, F., 96, 165 Awareness, 88 Bacon, 207 Balfour, 94, 195 Barrie, 160 Bayliss, 102 Behaviorism, 79, 80, 84, 145, 171 Beowulf, 112 Bergson, 18, 62, 209 Berman, 75 Bemheim, 50 Biran, Maine de, 23-24 Bleuler, no Bloch, 193 Brahmic teaching, no Breuer, 164 Buckhurst, 113 Burke, 188 Burns, 196 Butler, Samuel, 27, 39-42 Catholic Church, 155 Censorship, 54, 130 ff in art, 191-192 Character, 28, 148-152, 177- 178 Chaucer, 113 Child, peculiarities of, 149 Chopin, 196 Colloids, 86 Complexes, 26 Condensation, 54-55, 60, 68 Conflict, 67, 101-102, 106 Conscience, 182-183 Consciousness, 36-37, 56, 83, 84-90, 134 Conscious system, 133-137, 139 Continuity, 12, 34 and thought, 13 Conway, 153 Coupland, W. S., 30 note Croce, 194, 196 Crowds, 112, 153-158 211 212 THE UNCONSCIOUS Day-dreams, 184-185 Defence-mechanisms, 149 Dementia Prsecox, 128-129 Demosthenes, 149 Desire, 20 Determinism, 179 Discharge of tension, 90 Displacement, 55, 61, 68, 198 Dissociation, 161 Double Personality, 160-162 Dramatization, 55 Dreams, 32, 51-57 Drever, J., 146, 148 Dualism, of conscious and unconscious, 22, 35 of selves, 34, 158 ff Dynamic aspect of mind, 59, 115. 124 Economic viewpoint in mind, 114-115 Education, 145-152 Ego-Ideal, 131, 157 Ego-instincts, 138, 139 Egotism, 23, 37 Empathy, 195 Endocrines, 73-75, 81 Engrams, 77-78 Eros, 155, 156 Errors, 57-60 Ethics, 170-183 how related to Psychology, 170-172, 179-180, 183 Fallacy of Division, 16 Father—image, 38 Fechner, 16, 32-34, 103, 160 Feeling, 26-27, 187 Ferenczi, 104, 109 Feuerbach, 200 Fichte, 199 Field, G. C., 83, 91 Fixation, 63, 67 Flugel, 38 Forgetting, 58 Free-Associations, 26, 52, 118 Free-will, 178-181 Freud, n, 16, 21, 26, 31, 32, 33* 49-7o, 83, 92-95* 97, 98, 102-142, 145-146, 151, 153-158, 161-162, 168, 173, 176, 179, 182- 183, 184-186, 202, 205- 206 Galton, 21 Ganz, 16 note Goethe, 196 Gurney, 163 Habit, 177 Hart, Bernard, 148 Hartmann, 11, 24-31, 40, 204 Hedonism, 103, 172-175, 196 Hegel, 109, 113, 188, 194, 207, 209 Helmholz, 25 Herbart, 16 Herd instinct, 157 Hering, 40, 139 History, 28 Hoemle, 202 Hoffding, 19, 20-21 Holt, E. B., 85, 87 Hypnosis, 50 Hysteria, 63, 68, 164 Identification, 157, 185 Inductive Logic, 207 Inner excitations, 136-137 Instinct, 27, 44, 107-108, 137 INDEX 213 Integration, 86, 90 Intellectualism, 199 Intolerance, in religion, 156 Introjection, 109, 180-181, 206 Introspection, 79 James, William, 16, 30, 34, 43-45, 84, no, 160, 168, 199, 200 Janet, 165 Jones, Ernest, 19, 58, 64, 120, 127, 128, 133 note, 147, 168 Jones, H. F., 41 Jung, C. G., 21, 26, 38, 166- 169 Kant, 113, 134, 170, 199, 206 Katharsis, 187-190 Laird, J., 96, 177 Language, 28, 203 Latent dream thoughts, 52- 53 Latta, R., 14 Law, 176-177 Leadership, in crowds, 155 Le Bon, G., 153, 154 Leibniz, n, 12-17, 41, 165, 199 Levy-Bruhl, 24 Libido, 66, 128-129, 150, 155 Life, essence of, 85-86 Life-urge, 205, 207 Lipps, 195 Logic, in unconscious pro- cesses, 127 Lotze, 195, 202 Love and hate, 108-110, 156 Love, in group-formation, 155 Manifest dream-content, 52, 54 Martin, E. D., 153 McDougall, W., 146, 153, 154, 175, 181, 201-202 Meaning, 201-204 Melville, H., 192 Memory-traces, 135 Menander, 190 Mental activity, 79-80, 106- 107 apparatus, 107, 123 as synonymous with con- scious, 83 ff categories, 108 ff Metapsychology, 113-116 Mises, Dr. 34, 160 Mneme, 76-78 Mobility, of energy-charges, 127 Monad, 12 Montessori, 145 Motility, control of, 160 Miinsterberg, 165 Murderer, 59 Music, 187, 195, 202-203 Myers, F., 16, 162 ff Mysticism, 28 Myths, 193 Narcissism, 69 Nervous system, 86, 107 Neuroses, 62-69 New Comedy, 190 New Movements in Art, 192 Nietzsche, 11, 23, 34-38, 58, 182, 188,199, 204 Obsessions, 63 £f CEdipus complex, 66, 67, 150- 151 Ornstein, 192 214 THE UNCONSCIOUS Pampsy chism, 168 Parallelism, 201 Pascal, 23 Pedagogy, 149 Perry, 85 Personality, 159-169 Petites Perceptions, 15, 16, 24, 32 Phantasy, 184-185, 195, 200 Philology, 112 Philosophy, 198-207, 209 Plato, 193, 198, 200, 209 Plautus, 190 Pleasure and pain, 103, 137, 173-i74 Pleasure-principle, 33, 103- 106, 121, 137, 173-175 Podmore, 162 Polarities, 108 Preconscious, 50, 56, 115, 130-131, 202 Primary process, 124 Prince, Morton, 160, 161 Projection, 109, 196 Psychic locality, 33, 115, 122 Psychical reality, 68, 127, 194 Psychography, 38, 182 Psychology, 78-82 Psycho-physical problem, 41, 81, 96, 201-204 Puns, 61 Quantitative view of stimuli, 103, 114-115 Rank, 21 Rank and Sachs, 148, 149- 150, 182, 189, 193, 199 Rationalization, 19, 35, 176, 195 Reaction-formations, 148, 182 Realism in art, 190 Reality-principle, 103-106, 194, 204-207 Reality, standard of, 105,191- 192, 205 Reason, 18, 29, 204-207 Regression, 68 Repression, 21, 34, 51, 62, 65, 116-123, 159, 161, 188- 189, 191-193 and affects, 119-121 and topography, 121-123 relaxing of, 119, 154 Resistance, 65, 132 Responsibility, conception of, 176-178 Rivers, W. H. R., 28 Ruskin, 193 Russell, Bertrand, 20, 85 Schelling, 29, 30 Schiller, 196 Schopenhauer, 11, 17-23, 24, 30, 31. 35, 37. 139, 182, 199, 204 Secondary elaboration, 55 Secondary process, 124 Semon, Richard, 41, 76-78, 89 Sexual instincts, 66, 138, 139, 150,151,198,199 Shand, A., 208 Sharp, W., 160-161 Shaw, Bernard, 62, 192, 199 Shelley, 188 Sherrington, 86, 90 Spencer, 174 Spinoza, 28, 109, 146, 170, 199, 209 Stevenson, 160 Stimuli, 106-107 Stirner, 182 Stout, 166, 175 INDEX 215 Subconscious self, 162-166 Sublimation, 145-147 Subliminal consciousness, 16, 32, 163 Suggestion, 154 Sully, 41 Symbolism, 21, 167, 168,186- 187 Symptoms, 65, 67, 68 Taboo, hi, 182-183 Tarde, 154 Teachers, and psycho- analysis, 150 Thorndike, 175 Threshold of consciousness, 16, 32 Tolstoy, 193 Topographic view-point, 115 Tragedy, 187, 189 Transference-neuroses, 69 Trotter, 157 Unconscious, the, arguments for, 92-95 Racial or collective, 21, 166-169 Unconscious ideas, 30, 50 memory, 39-41 mind, 74 perceptions, 14 processes, 11, 25, 41, 64, 83, 125, 126-130 purposes, 57, 58 system, 56, 115, 123-126 tendencies, 59-61 will, 18, 30 (See Table of Contents) Vegetative system, 74 Vischer, 195 Wallace, W., 22 Watson, J. B., 84 Weismann, 21, 139 White, 101 Will, 17 Williams, Leonard, 73-75 Wilson, Ex-President, 112 Wish, 53, 54, 56, 124, 193 Wit, 26, 60-62 Wonder, 198-199 Words, 89, 128, 129, 202 Wundt, 25, 202