SUGGESTIBILITY AND KINDRED PHENOMENA. 521 



side any consciousness whatever. We can not, however, logic- 

 ally stop at this point. If a single cortical process and its con- 

 comitant mental state may be dissociated from others, there 

 appears no a priori reason why many may not be simultane- 

 ously dissociated, nor yet why the entire system may not be 

 dissolved and reduced to a chaotic mass of physical processes 

 and concomitant mental states. For such a supposititious con- 

 dition I would propose the term disordination, the etymological 

 opposite of coordination. We may well believe that if a dis- 

 ordinated state occurred it would not be remembered. Memory 

 depends, from the psychological point of view, upon the law of 

 association, and from the physiological upon the fact that be- 

 tween the cortical processes underlying the present state of con- 

 sciousness and the traces left in the cortex by those accompany- 

 ing the state remembered, there is a continuous system of traces, 

 representing actual processes that discharged successively into 

 one another. In a disordinated state there is no such continuous 

 system and consequently no memory. But it is also conceivable 

 that, from a present state succeeding a state of disordination, a 

 single devious thread of traces, so to speak, might lead us back a 

 little way into the maze of confusion which lies behind. As I 

 shall later show, our memory of a dream depends upon such a 

 line of continuous discharge. 



In a disordinated state the dissociated elements would not of 

 course be what they would be in a well coordinated state. In the 

 latter the characteristics of each element are largely determined by 

 the relation which it bears to other elements of the system with 

 which it is interwoven. Freed from the restrictions and incite- 

 ments of the others, each process would tend to work out its own 

 proper results in a very different way from that which it would 

 otherwise have been compelled to follow. 



Furthermore, it is conceivable that co-ordination might be 

 defective without being absolutely lacking. I would term this 

 incoordination. It might occur in either of two forms, or in both 

 at once. The coordinated system underlying the upper con- 

 sciousness might consist of relatively few elements as compared 

 with those of other persons, there being a larger subconscious 

 field. The upper consciousness would then habitually be narrow ; 

 the individual would be unable to grasp many considerations at 

 once and would be easily abstracted. Or, the elements actually 

 coordinated might be defectively coordinated. The conscious- 

 ness would tend to be confused, the individual would see dimly 

 things which would persistently refuse to get clear, and would be 

 in general what we call " muddle-headed." And, as I have sug- 

 gested, many are both muddle-headed and narrow-minded. 



It is evident that the distinction between disordination and 



VOL. XLVIII. 37 



