764 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



serves only to set in operation subliminal processes which may or 

 may not yield the requisite result. Here also the process may con- 

 tinue after the consciousness which prompted it ceased. The ordinary 

 man no less than the man of genius may find that what relatively 

 to him are original ideas develop while his thoughts are occupied 

 with disconnected topics, or even while he is asleep. In general, we 

 take an utterly false view of mental construction when we regard 

 it as a mere putting-together of data already present in consciousness 

 analogous to the putting-together of the parts of a puzzle spread out 

 on the table before us." 



It seems to me that these are pure assumptions. As far as my 

 own conscious experience goes, I am compelled to agree with Mr. 

 Andrew Lang, 1 in that as " an ordinary man " I do not find that my 

 conscious activity appeals to " anything else " but my own conscious 

 processes, or that I am conscious of any such easy way of settling 

 my own problems. As an ordinary man, I do not find I can rely 

 upon any other consciousness to write this address but the thoughts 

 which I laboriously elaborate. 



This theory of the normal occurrence of subconscious dissociated 

 thought seems to have arisen as an interpretation of certain well- 

 known but exceptional spontaneous experiences of the kind which 

 Professor Stout accepts as evidence of normal subconscious mental 

 activity, but the theory has a more substantial basis in data which 

 have been obtained through direct objective experimentation. 

 These include (1) various hysterical phenomena, (2) hypnotic 

 experiments, (3) various motor automatisms, particularly automatic 

 writing, and (4) phenomena of absentmindedness or abstraction. 

 A critical analysis of these data will show that they do not permit 

 of inferences applicable to normal and habitual conditions. 



(1) That secondary subconscious states, capable of being synthe- 

 sized into a self, may be developed by disease is a well-attested 

 observation. But, being pathological, they are evidence only of the 

 abnormality of subconscious states. 



(2) As to hypnotic states, it is sometimes assumed that the hyp- 

 notic self represents a persistent consciousness having a continuous 

 existence after the awakening of the personal consciousness. There 

 is no evidence for this. The hypnotic self is a dissociated state of 

 the waking consciousness. On awaking the synthesis of the original 

 self is again made and the hypnotic dissociation ceases to exist. Nor 

 is there any particular hypnotic state. There may be almost any 

 number of such states in the same individual as many as there 

 are possible states of dissociation. In the second place, hypnosis 

 is an artifact an artificial dissociation, not a state of normal life. 

 The phenomena of post-hypnotic suggestion, which are entirely 



1 The Hibbert Journal, April, 1904. 



