DISCOVERY 



337 



to find a place between cognition ' and action : in a 

 vague way they supfwsed willed action to have been 

 developed out of impulsive and ideo-motor action 

 through self-activity, but their reflections (often preju- 

 diced, doubtless, by conceptions of free-will, moral 

 responsibihty, immortality, etc.) carried them hardly 

 further than this. The emotions were introduced 

 haphazard into their psychological scheme, without 

 any clear relation to the cognitive, affective, and co- 

 native divisions into which they had already divided 

 their subject. 



An escape from this " intellectualistic " atmosphere 

 was offered by the conception first developed by our 

 fellow-countryman, Shand, of the nature and import- 

 ance of what he called "sentiments," and a little later 

 by the publication by McDougall of his Inlrodnclion to 

 Social Psychology - — in which (as Stout had previously 

 done) he included Shand's idetis in his own elaborate 

 treatment and classification of the instincts and 

 emotions. McDougall insisted on the enormous bio- 

 logical and social importance of the emotions, on the 

 closeness of their relation to instinctive and conative 

 action, and on their characteristic, often irresistible, 

 force. Shand had brought cognition into fusion with 

 emotion under the name of " sentiment," which he gave 

 to a past experience that had by association with emo- 

 tion left behind a cognitive, set in a background of 

 emotional, disposition. Thus a cognitive experience, 

 whether it be a percept such as of one's pipe, or a con- 

 cept such as of one 's native land, comes to have ' ' value ' ' 

 and to be endowed with emotional experience and force. 

 One's pipe, when broken, at once produces the emotion 

 and the expression of sorrow ; one's patriotism, when 

 put to the test, at once evokes attack or defence and 

 the emotions of anger, tenderness, etc. A sentiment 

 is thus a system of past ideas or percepts, set in a halo 

 of definite emotional dispositions with which they have 

 by past experience become associated. A sentiment 

 comes to have far greater force than a mere idea or 

 percept, devoid or such emotional halo. 



Still later Shand's notion of sentiment received im- 

 portant and independent development at the hands of 

 Freud. Psychologists had already recognised that 

 mental processes tend to recur, not only by virtue of 

 their previous association with other mental processes, 

 but also by virtue of their inherent and retained energy. 

 The importance of association had long been known, 

 and had somewhat retarded full recognition of the pro- 

 cess of ' ' perseveration, ' ' the tendency of past experiences 

 spontaneously to recur, to force themselves again into 

 consciousness by virtue of their inherent indomitable 

 energy. Such perseveration occurs especially in the 

 case of exciting emotional experience. One who has 



' The act of apprehending. 



' Published by Methuen, 15th edition, 75. td. 



just fallen in love or suffered a bereavement is power- 

 less, try as he will, to avoid the intrusion of the person, 

 the scenes, and the emotions related to his new experi- 

 ence, into his workaday life. But when the system 

 of ideas with which such an emotional disposidon is 

 connected becomes inhibited or " repressed," the emo- 

 tion only gathers force as it meets the opposing force. 

 The system can no longer directly express itself in 

 action, nor can it rest relatively in peace as a " senti- 

 ment." Coincident with its repression, it becomes a 

 "complex."' The repression or inhibition occurs 

 through an incompatibility or a conflict that would be 

 involved, through an unpleasantness and discordance 

 that dare not be faced. For this reason, as a complex, 

 it becomes consciously or unconsciously " repressed " 

 (as we say) into the unconscious. It may lie buried 

 there in total obhvion, absolutely irrevocable save 

 through the agency of some special mental exploration, 

 e.g. by psycho-analysis or under hypnosis, which suc- 

 ceeds by reducing the repressing force. Or the com- 

 lex may be imperfectly repressed. In that event, the 

 energy of the emotional part of the repressed complex 

 may be expended through its " dissociation " from that 

 system of ideas or percepts with which it was originally 

 connected. The emotion may then escape in the form 

 of unreasoned emotion, say of fear or anxiety, unat- 

 tached to any special object. Or, more often, it may 

 become attached to some other, more or less analogous, 

 object. The original scene, when the complex is im- 

 perfectly repressed, may itself recur whenever inhibition 

 is reduced as in sleep ; but even in dreams the scene 

 may recur only in a distorted or symbolic form, in order, 

 apparently, to elude the forces of inhibition success- 

 fuUy. 



Into the unconscious we are perpetually, more or less 

 unconsciously, banishing percepts and ideas which are 

 incompatible and discordant with our general mental 

 life. From the unconscious emerge not only complexes 

 or parts of complexes which have been thus repressed, 

 but also new formations, e.g. the creations of the genius 

 or inventor, which are then presented to his conscious 

 mind for judgment, approval, and elaboration. 



Thus the importance of the unconscious becomes at 

 least as great for psychology as that of the conscious. 

 At first sight, the critical psychologist may hesitate to 

 regard the unconscious as "mental," preferring to con- 

 sider it in terms of " physiological " traces, or disposi- 

 tions, left behind in central nervous tissue, which can 

 only be termed " mental " in the presence of conscious- 

 ness. But the results of investigations by psycho- 

 analysis and under hypnosis, of studies of disordered, 

 alternating, and multiple personaUty, automatic writing, 

 etc., must finally force the impartial psychologist to 



• A system or group of experiences bearing upon one central 

 idea, the whole or part of which system is repressed. 



