The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (sites to read books for free TXT) 📖
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philosopher and psychologist. I have not attempted to discuss the
matter from the philosopher’s point of view for the very obvious
reason that I am no philosopher.
Since consciousness is most intense when the new or unfamiliar is
seen, heard, felt or attempted, we may assume it has a chief
function in acquainting the individual with the new and
unfamiliar and in the establishment of habitual reactions, We are
extraordinarily conscious of a queer, unexplainable thing on the
horizon, we bring into the limelight (or IT brings into the
limelight) all our possible reactions,—fear, flight, anger,
fight, circumvention, curiosity and the movements of
investigation; we are thrown into the maelstrom of choice. Choice
and consciousness, doubt and consciousness, are directly related;
it is only when conduct becomes established as habit, with
choosing relegated to the background, that consciousness, in so
far as the act is concerned, becomes diminished.
A moderate constant sensation tends to disappear from
consciousness, as when we keep our hand in warm water. It then
takes a certain increase of the stimulus to keep the sensation
from lapsing out of consciousness. This lapsing out of
consciousness of the steady stimulus, in its ramifications, is
responsible for a good deal of the activity of man, since
sensation is a goal of effort.[1] Under emotion we become aware
of two sets of things,—the reaction of our body in its sum
total of pleasure or the reverse, and second the object that sets
up this reaction. Consciousness fastens itself on the body and on
the world, and the bodily reaction becomes a guide for future
action. Extreme bodily reactions are painful and may result in
the abolishing of consciousness.
[1] The physiologists speak of this phenomenon under the heading
of the Weber-Fechner law, after the two physiologists who gave it
prominence. James pokes a good deal of fun at the “law,” which is
expressed mathematically. Perhaps the mathematics should have
been eliminated as too “scientific” for our present attainment,
but it does remain true that it is not the ACTUAL stimulus
increase that is important in sensation or perception, but the
RELATIVE stimulus increase. This is behind all of “getting used
to things”; it removes the pain from humiliation and also the
novelty from joy. It is the reason behind all of the searching
for novelty and excitement.
We assume that consciousness is organic, though we concede that
it may be true that it is borrowed from a great pool of
consciousness[1] out of which we all come. Consciousness IS
organic because a blow on the head may abolish it as may drugs
and disease, or a shifting of the blood supply as in emotion or
fatigue in the form of sleep, etc. Where does it go to and how
does it come back? The savage answered that question by building
up the idea of a soul, a thing that might migrate, had an
independent existence, took journeys in the form of dreams and
lived and flourished after death. Most of these ideas still
persist, perhaps as much through the fear of annihilation as
anything else, but as to whether or not they are true this book
does not concern itself. We have no proof of these matters, but
we can prove that we can play on consciousness as we play on a
piano, through the body and brain. A blow injures groups of nerve
cells and consciousness disappears; when they recover, it
returns. Where does any function go when structure is injured? We
have practically the same kind of proof for the position of
consciousness as a function of the brain and body that we have
for gastric juice as a secretion of gastric cells.
[1] Even if it were true that consciousness is the only reality,
nobody really believes it in that nobody acts as if it were true.
Conversely, everybody acts as if trees, rocks, and people were
realities; as if fatigue, sickness, age, etc., affected
consciousness. That is why, in this book, we are discarding as
irrelevant the “ultimate” truth concerning consciousness. My
humble belief is that the ultimate truth in this matter will
never concern us because we shall never know it.
However widely we spread the function of consciousness and its
domain, we still leave a large field of activities untouched. And
so we come to the conception of the subconsciousness. There are
two prevailing sets of opinions concerning the subconscious.
The first is quite matter-of-fact. It states that the movements
and activities of a large part of the body are outside of the
realm of consciousness, such as the activities of the great
viscera—heart, lungs, intestines, liver, blood vessels, sex
glands—and are largely operated by the vegetative nervous
system.[1] There are influences pouring into the brain from these
organs, together with influences from muscles, joints, tendons,
and these influences, though not consciously itemized, are the
subconsciously received stimuli which give us feelings of vigor,
energy, courage, hopefulness, or the reverse, according to the
state of the organism. In health the ordinary result of these
stimuli is good, though people may have health in that no
definite disease is present, and yet there is some deficiency in
the energy-arousing viscera which brings a lowered coenesthesia,
a lessened vigor and lowered mood. In youth the state of the
organs brings a state of well feeling; in old age there is a
constant feeling of a low balance of energy and mood, and the
person is always on the verge of unpleasant feeling. In the great
change periods of life—at puberty and the climacteric (or the
menopause)—the sudden change in the activity of the sex organs
may produce great alterations[2] in the coenaesthesia and
therefore in the energy and mood of the individual.
[1] This is not the place to describe the vegetative nervous
system. (It was formerly called the sympathetic nervous system,
but this term is now limited to one part of this system, and the
term autonomic to another part, although some writers still use
the term sympathetic for the whole, and others [the English] the
term autonomic for the whole.) This system is the nervous
mechanism of organic life, regulating heart, lungs, blood
vessels, intestines, sex organs, acting together with endocrines,
etc. A huge amount of work has been done of late years on this
system and we know definitely that it stimulates, inhibits and
regulates these organs, and also that it records their
activities. We are commencing to believe that this system is
fully as important, in mental life, as the brain. See Langley,
Schaeffer, Higier, etc.
[2] This is especially true of the menopause in women, and often
enough of each menstrual period. That there is a climacteric in
men is not so clear, but something corresponding to it occurs, at
least in the case of some men.
In addition, these activities, which are so all-important,
determine the basic conduct by arousing the basic appetites and
desires of the individual. It is the change in the
gastro-intestinal tract and in the tissues of the body that
starts up the hunger feeling and the impulses which prompt men to
seek food; in other words, this type of coenaesthesia has set
going all the physical and mental activities relating to food; it
is the basic impulse behind agriculture and stock raising, as
well as energizing work activities of all kinds. It is the
tension in the seminal vessels of the male that wakes up his
passion, if it is not the sole source of that passion. Sex desire
in the adult male has many elements in it, not pertinent at
present, but the coenaesthetic influence of the physical
structures is its starting point. In men as well as women there
is a cycle of desire, with height due to physical tension and
abyss following the discharge or disappearance of tension, that
profoundly influences life and conduct. Here the sympathetic
nervous system and the internal secretion of the genital glands
awaken into sexual activity brain, spinal cord and muscles, so
that the individual seeks a mate, plunges into marriage and
directs his conduct, conscious of taste and desire, but largely
unconscious of the physical condition that is impelling him on.
In this sense the subconscious activities dominate in life,
because the functions of nutrition and reproduction are largely
unconscious in their origin, but there is no organized, plotting
subconsciousness at work.
Once a thing is experienced, it is stored in memory. What is the
basis and position of a memory when we are not conscious of it,
when our conscious minds are busy with other matters? What
happens when a desire is repressed, inhibited into inaction; when
consciousness revolts against part of its own content? Is a
“forgotten” memory ever really lost, or a desire that is
squelched and thrust out of “mind” really made inactive? Do our
inhibitions really inhibit, or do we build up another self or set
of selves that rise to the surface under strange forms, under the
guise of disease manifestations?
Sigmund Freud and his followers have made definite answers to the
foregoing, answers that are incorporated in a doctrine called
Freudianism. Freud is an Austrian Jew, a physician, and one that
soon specialized in nervous and mental diseases. Early in his
career he did some excellent work in the study of the paralysis
of childhood (infantile hemiplegia), but his attention and that
of an older colleague, Breuer, were soon drawn (as has occurred
to almost every neurologist) to the manifestations of that
extraordinary disease, hysteria. Hysteria has played so important
a role in human history, and Freud’s ideas are permeating so
deeply into modern thought that I deem it advisable to devote a
chapter to them.
CHAPTER V. HYSTERIA, SUBCONSCIOUSNESS AND FREUDIANISM
Hysteria was known to the ancients and in fact is as old as the
written history of mankind. Considered essentially a disease of
women, it was given its present name which is derived from
“hysteron,” the Greek name for the womb. We know to-day that men
also are victims of this malady, though it arises under somewhat
different circumstances than is the case with the other sex. Men
and women, living in the same world and side by side, are placed
in greatly different positions in that world, are governed by
different traditions and are placed under the influences of
differing ambitions, expectations, hopes and fears. Hysteria
arises largely out of the emotional and volitional reactions of
life, and these reactions differ in the sexes.
It was a group of French neurologists, headed by Charcot—and
including very illustrious men, such as Janet and Marie, who paid
the first scientific attention to the disease. Under their
analyses hysteria was defined as a mental disease in which
certain symptoms appeared prominently.
1. Charcot especially paid attention to what are known as the
attacks. The hysteric patient (usually a woman, and so we shall
speak of the patient as “she”) under emotional stress and strain,
following a quarrel or a disagreement or perhaps some
disagreeable, humiliating situation, shows alarming symptoms.
Perhaps she falls (never in a way to injure herself) to the floor
and apparently loses consciousness, closes her eyes, rolls her
head from side to side, moans, clenches her fists, lifts her body
from the floor so that it rests on head and heels (opisthotonic
hysteria), shrieks now and then and altogether presents a
terrifying spectacle. Or else she twitches all over, weeps,
moans, laughs and shouts, and rushes around the room, beating her
head on the walls; or she may lie or stand in a very dramatic
pose, perhaps indicating passion or fear or anger. The attacks
are characterized by a few main peculiarities, which are that the
patient usually has had an emotional upset or is in some
disagreeable situation, that she does not hurt herself by her
falls, that consciousness
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