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that tlieir distance-energy is enlarged and their level-energy has 

 decreased. • 



It seems to me tliat there is anothei- resemblance of some signi- 

 ficance. Perceptions, as we observed, do not fade ont altogether, 

 they leave traces, which will be present in consciousness again 

 through association, but which, of themselves, also possess a tendency, 

 a certain potency to emerge. There is a continual competition among 

 the subconscious tendencies. Their potency varies with various 

 conditions inter alia of novelty, emotionality, fortuitous associations. 

 In ordinary circumstances there is an uninterrupted inhibition exerted 

 by other ideas. When this inhibition is taken away, as is the case 

 in dozing and during sleep, these subconscious ideas may be pi-esent 

 in consciousness again. This may be brought about by association, 

 but surely their own energy may also co-operate. This appears from 

 the difference in own energy appropriate to various ideas. For 

 example: a personal name may recall the image of the person, but 

 the latter does not always call up the name. An accident will be 

 reproduced more readily when witnessed than when only read 

 about. That own energy of ideas or perceptions to become central 

 consciousnesses, which energy has been tei-med by Heymans distance- 

 energy, is utilized partly by obviating resistances and, when at the 

 ingress into consciousness some energy is still left, this lemainder 

 is spent entirely in repulsing ihe resisting complexes of consciousness 

 as far as possible into unconsciousness. These conditions occur with 

 the just-mentioned retrograde amnesia, analogous phenomena of 

 which are met with in the repulse of some reflexes by others, which 

 lie still nearer to the threshold of consciousness. But Heymans also 

 puts the case that there are hardly any resistances, so that there 

 cannot be any question about a loss of distance-energy through 

 repulse. In such a case that energy will be applied in consciousness 

 as energy of association, of sentiment, of thought and of will. Now, 

 do similar manifestations also arise with subconscious phenomena? 

 As regards some reflex manifestations, we are in a position to select 

 such conditions as are perfectly similar to those required for the 

 phenomena of consciousness, so that when they occur there will be 

 no resistances in their way. In this connection we may take it for 

 granted, that knee-jerks are inhibited by simultaneous centrifugal 

 cerebral iujpulses. Affections of the pyramidal tract have disturbed 

 the conduction of these impulses, so that the knee-jerks are no longer 

 subject to inhibition. Well then, in these conditions many reflex- 

 associations occur, viz. contraction of the adductors, and also frequently 

 of the m. quadriceps of the other leg. 



