From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



Musset listening to the mysterious ' genius ' who dic- 

 tated his verses, Socrates listening to his daemon, 

 Schopenhauer refusing to believe that his unexpected 

 and unsought postulates were his own work, all behaved 

 exactly like mediums. 



Moreover, it is not infrequent that mediumship 

 co-exists with manifestations of artistic inspiration. 

 Musset, for instance, was a sensitive and almost a 

 visionary. 



It is needless to remark that cryptomnesia and crypto- 

 psychism are the foundation both of mediumship and 

 of normal subconscious psychism. In fact it is not 

 always easy to distinguish one from the other. Will it 

 be said that the distinction between subconscious psychism 

 properly so called, lies in the appearance of the super- 

 normal element ? 



But where does the supernormal begin ? The empti- 

 ness and futility of this term ' supernormal ' has been 

 shown in the chapter on physiology. It was there 

 demonstrated that normal and so-called supernormal 

 physiology are equally mysterious and involve one and 

 the same problem. The case is the same for psychology. 

 The subconscious, as a whole, is incomprehensible by 

 classical psychology. 



All that classical psychology has been able to do 

 with the supernormal is to multiply the number of labels. 

 The more numerous the labels the greater the illusion 

 of understanding. We shall then have exteriorisation 

 of sensation, exteriorisation of motor power, exteriorisa- 

 tion of intelligence, telesthesia, telepathy, telekinesis, 

 teleoplasticity, ideoplasticity, etc., etc. 



M. Boirac, finding this nomenclature still too 

 poor, proposes to add hypnology, psychodynamics, 

 telepsychism, hyloscopy, metagnomy, biactinism, dia- 

 psychism, etc. 1 



These classifications, indeed, answer to an innate 



1 Boirac : La Psychologic Inconnue and L'Avcnir des Etudes Psychiques. 



"5 



