From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



in abnormal psychology; but it is naturally more 

 prominent in the latter. 



Flournoy 1 is perhaps the psychologist who of all 

 others has studied cryptomnesia most thoroughly. 

 The fact of the re-emergence of forgotten memories 

 which the mind wrongly takes to be new and unpub- 

 lished matter, is, he says, much more frequent than is 

 supposed. 



' Plain men, as well as great geniuses, are subject 

 to these lapses of memory, bearing not on its actual 

 content, since that very content reappears with 

 distressing and treacherous accuracy, but on the 

 local and temporary associations which would, if 

 remembered, have caused its recognition as matter 

 already seen, and would have prevented the user 

 from decking himself in borrowed plumes. Helen 

 Keller the famous blind deaf-mute who, at eleven 

 years old, composed her story of the Frost-king, 

 found herself most unjustly and cruelly accused of 

 plagiarism because this story presented a marked 

 likeness to a story which had been read to her three 

 years before. Nietzsche's Zarathustra has been 

 discovered to contain little details coming, unknown 

 to him, from a work of Kerner's which he had studied 

 when 12 to 15 years old. But it is among persons 

 most disposed to mental dissociation and duplicate 

 personality that cryptomnesia reaches a climax.' 



A classical example of cryptomnesia in normal 

 psychology is the instantaneous recollection of latent 

 impressions at a time of violent psychological disturbance, 

 such as may be produced by the sudden danger of 

 accidental death. Cases have been cited in which all the 

 events of a lifetime, all its acts and thoughts, even those 

 which were insignificant and quite forgotten, are said 

 to have passed through the mind. 



1 Flournoy : Esprits et Mediums. 

 8 9 



