FREUD'S THEORIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 355 



FREUD'S THEOEIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 



By Professor H. W. CHASE 



UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 



ONCE upon a time it was the fashion to demonstrate witchcraft 

 by sticking pins into the unlucky suspect. If any spots were 

 found that appeared insensitive to pain, the unfortunate was forthwith 

 declared a witch, with dire consequences to herself. Now-a-days such 

 anesthesias are recognized, not as signs of a compact with the devil, but 

 as symptoms of that mysterious disease of personality, hysteria. 



This reversal of the point of view is typical. "We have come to look 

 upon many phenomena that were formerly ascribed to supernatural 

 agencies — crystal gazing, second sight, hallucinations, double person- 

 ality, possessions, ghosts, even mediumship — not as manifestations of 

 supernatural powers, but as due to an abnormal condition of mind in 

 the subject. In less enlightened days the Miss Beauchamp of whom 

 Prince tells us in his " Dissociation of a Personality," who was several 

 personalities by turns and had, as a rule, as one personality no recollec- 

 tion of the acts she performed as another, might have been burned as a 

 witch. To-day she is a problem for the psychologist. 



As knowledge of the psychological nature of such abnormal phe- 

 nomena has grown, the need has increasingly been felt for some com- 

 prehensive explanation of their character. Here, for example, we have 

 a girl (in a case reported by Janet) who has nursed her mother through 

 a painful illness from consumption, resulting in death. The pov- 

 erty of the family would not allow her even proper nourishment for her 

 suffering mother. Her grief and despair may be imagined. But after 

 the funeral she has apparently forgotten the whole series of events ; the 

 entire " complex " has dropped from consciousness. She is bewildered 

 by any mention of the circumstances. But, on occasion, she falls into 

 a trance-like state, in which she rehearses the circumstances of the 

 illness and death of her mother with the utmost fidelity. And then, 

 suddenly, she is normal again, but again she has no recollection of the 

 crisis through which she has just passed. Here is a series of events 

 apparently split off from her conscious personality altogether, yet in- 

 stinct with energy that at time brings it to the surface. Here is an- 

 other hysterical patient who has forgotten all about the shock that the 

 physician suspects must have occurred as the starting point of her dis- 

 disease, and yet in hypnosis the whole thing comes out as vividly as 

 ever. Consciously it could not be recalled, and yet it was existing and 



