204 FROM FISH TO PHILOSOPHER 



lation into English of Freud's German unbewusst, which 

 literally means 'unbeknown.' Freud meant that memories 

 may be primarily established or secondarily repressed 

 away from the focus of immediate awareness— away, so 

 to speak, from the center of the screen. His great con- 

 tribution to the science of man was his demonstration 

 that under certain circumstances these 'imbeknown' 

 memories resist recall, or are incapable of recall into 

 awareness, and yet they can modify conscious, idea- 

 tional, and emotional Hfe and thus determine many be- 

 havior patterns. But the 'unbeknown,' like the known, is 

 also a matter of degree, of more or less easy recall into 

 the focus of attention. 



A man is momentarily, however belatedly, conscious 

 of his immediate voluntary actions, but the conscious 

 record is sometimes so faint and transient that it is as 

 readily forgotten as a dream and he finds himself be- 

 having like an automaton. He may spend a busy day 

 at the oflBce engaged in seemingly intelligent conversa- 

 tion with his secretary and a dozen associates, answer 

 the telephone, read his mail and write letters, and then 

 drive five miles through congested trafiic and stop for 

 innumerable red lights on his way to dinner, without 

 remembering one-tenth of his volimtary and (at the 

 time) fully conscious actions; and by the time he has 

 had dinner he may have completely forgotten where he 

 parked his car, if indeed he can recall whether he drove 

 the car uptown. These consciously directed but un- 

 consciously mediated actions are called 'automatisms.' 

 (Such automatisms must be clearly distinguished from 

 instincts, which are genetically predetermined, specific, 

 stereotyped, and invariable patterns of behavior charac- 

 teristic of a given species, the acquisition of which does 

 not depend on learning, as does the acquisition of all 

 automatisms. Man has relatively feeble instincts as com- 

 pared with the lower animals, and these are dominant 

 in his behavior only in the first months and years of life.) 



