558 The Outline of Science 



which the wish belongs; hence, for example, the fact that we can 

 rarely remember our infancy-time at all. 



The Subconscious 



We have all some experience of what is called subconscious- 

 ness; an idea, as it passes to and from the focus of consciousness, 

 gradually becomes clear and vivid, then fades away into dimness 

 and vagueness, till it is merged in the general mass of feeling and 

 loses all distinctiveness ; a word is "on the tip of the tongue," 

 later it is clearly thought and spoken. I have an appointment to 

 remember. I do not think of it for hours, and then in good time, 

 perhaps it walks into my "consciousness." I resolve to awake 

 at six in the morning, and if my mind is of the right kind as the 

 clock strikes six, or just before it, I awake. These are different 

 cases in which an idea, a thought, is apparently not in conscious- 

 ness, and yet not wholly out of it. The term "subconsciousness" 

 has been used for this class of phenomena, where, apart from the 

 "dominant" or "personal" consciousness, certain strands of ex- 

 perience, which have once been conscious, continue somehow to 

 live, and in due time make their influence felt in the dominant 

 consciousness. 



The theory of Freud is, that in the unconscious part of the 

 mind there lie dormant memories of the past and especially "re- 

 pressed" impulses. These repressions represent the resistance 

 we make to a wish or impulse which we think we ought not to 

 satisfy, bcause it conflicts with some other interest; or they mean 

 the effort we make to put out of our mind some unpleasant 

 memory. The effort to repress may not be deliberate, it may be 

 unconscious repression. In any case there may be a repression to 

 such an extent that the memories pass entirely from us, or as it 

 is held, they are pushed deep into the unconscious, where they 

 continue to exist. We are asked to believe that "the unconscious 

 includes many impulses and memories which remain buried in the 

 depths of the mind," and that they persist in trying to return to 



