770 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



to show that the dissociated consciousness is capable of wider and 

 more original synthesis than is involved in adapting habitual 

 acts to the circumstances of the moment. 



(c) Solving problems by the secondary consciousness. So much 

 is to be found in the literature about subconscious solutions of 

 problems that the following testimony of the hypnotic personality 

 is of interest: 



"When a problem on which my waking self is engaged remains 

 unsettled, it is still kept in mind by the secondary consciousness, 

 even though put aside by my waking self. My secondary conscious- 

 ness often helps me to solve problems which my waking con- 

 sciousness has found difficulty in doing. But it is not my secondary 

 consciousness that accomplishes the final solution itself, but it 

 helps in the following way. Suppose, for instance, I am trying to 

 translate a difficult passage in Virgil. I work at it for some time 

 and am puzzled. Finally, unable to do it, I put it aside, leaving it 

 unsolved. I decide that it is not worth bothering about and so put 

 it out of my mind. But it is a mistake to say that you put it out of 

 your mind. What you do is, you put it into your mind: that is 

 to say, you don't put it out of your mind if the problem remains 

 unsolved and unsettled. By putting it into your mind I mean that, 

 although the waking consciousness may have put it aside, the 

 problem still remains in the secondary consciousness. In the ex- 

 ample I used, the memory of the passage from Virgil would be 

 retained persistently by my secondary consciousness. Then from 

 time to time a whole lot of fragmentary memories and thoughts 

 connected with the passage would arise in this consciousness. Some 

 of these thoughts, perhaps, would be memories of the rules of 

 grammar, or different meanings of words in the passage, in fact, 

 anything I had read, or thought, or experienced in connection 

 with the problem. These would not be logical connected thoughts, 

 and they would not solve the problem. My secondary conscious- 

 ness does not actually do this, i. e., in the example taken, trans- 

 late the passage. The translation is not effected here. But later 

 when my waking consciousness thinks of the problem again, these 

 fragmentary thoughts of my secondary consciousness arise in my 

 mind, and with this information I complete the translation. The 

 actual translation is put together by my waking consciousness. 

 I am not conscious of the fact that these fragments of knowledge 

 existed previously in my secondary consciousness. I do not re- 

 member a problem ever to have been solved by the secondary 

 consciousness. It is always solved by the waking self, although 

 the material for solving it may come from the secondary. When 

 my waking consciousness solves it in this way, the solution seems 

 to come in a miraculous sort of way, sometimes as if it came to 



