The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

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