PROBLEMS OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 763 



any more than the hysterical mind. It requires but a slight ex- 

 tension of this theory to assume, as some do, that these dissociated 

 mental states become normally synthesized into a second con- 

 sciousness of considerable intellectual capacity, which takes part in 

 our every-day intellectual processes. In every mind the activity of 

 the primary consciousness is supposed to be accompanied by that 

 of a secondary consciousness. On the basis of actually substantiated 

 data, one would think that this was as far as the hypothesis could be 

 logically carried, but the fact that we are not conscious of dissociated 

 ideas gives a certain mysticism to their existence and has offered 

 a temptation to extend further the hypothesis until, in the hands 

 of certain of its advocates, it has outgrown even all demonstrated 

 pathological facts. The subconscious ideas, instead of being mental 

 states dissociated from the main personality, now become the main 

 reservoir of consciousness and the personal consciousness becomes 

 a subordinate stream flowing out of this great storage-basin of " sub- 

 liminal " ideas as they are called. We have within us a great tank 

 of consciousness, but we are conscious of only a small portion of its 

 contents. In other words, of the sum total of conscious states within 

 us, only a small portion forms the personal consciousness. The per- 

 sonal self becomes even an inferior consciousness emerging out of a 

 superior subliminal consciousness present in a transcendental world, 

 and this subliminal consciousness is made the source of flights 

 of genius on the one hand, while it controls the physical processes of 

 the body on the other. It is hardly necessary to follow this new 

 " tank " hypothesis into its different applications. I merely refer to 

 it as it has unquestionably colored the orthodox conception of sub- 

 conscious ideas. Thus Professor Stout, 1 while contending against 

 this doctrine, himself apparently influenced by it, postulates normal 

 dissociated states (he adopts the term " subliminal ") and gives them 

 functions of wide scope. 



"Consider," he says, "the process of recollecting a name. ... It 

 may happen that we fail to revive the name while we are trying to 

 do so, and that it suddenly emerges into consciousness after an 

 interval during which we have been occupied with other matters 

 or have been asleep. This implies that our conscious effort has set 

 going a subliminal process which continues after the conscious effort 

 has ceased," 



Professor Stout then goes on to argue that our conscious process 

 has a way of exciting these dissociated states into trains of thought 

 of which we are wholly unconscious and which solve our problems 

 for us while we attend to other things. 



"In such cases" [solving problems], he says, "conscious endeavor 

 to find an ideal combination which shall satisfy certain conditions 



1 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1903. 



