University of Virginia Library

Section 48. (c) The Subconscious.

It is my opinion that the importance of unconscious operations[1] in legal procedure is undervalued. We could establish much that is significant concerning an individual whose unconscious doings we knew. For, as a rule, we perform unconsciously things that

are deeply habitual, therefore, first of all what everybody does— walk, greet your neighbor, dodge, eat, etc.; secondly, we perform unconsciously things to which we have become accustomed in accordance with our especial characters.[2] When, during my work, I rise, get a glass of water, drink it, and set the glass aside again, without having the slightest suspicion of having done so, I must agree that this was possible only in my well-known residence and environment, and that it was possible to nobody else, not so familiar. The coachman, perhaps, puts the horses into the stable, rubs them down, etc., and thinks of something else while doing so. He has performed unconsciously what another could not. It might happen that I roll a cigarette while I am working, and put it aside; after awhile I roll a second and a third, and sometimes I have four cigarettes side by side. I needed to smoke, had prepared a cigarette, and simply because I had to use my hands in writing, etc., I laid the cigarette aside. In consequence, the need to smoke was not satisfied and the process was repeated. This indicates what complicated things may be unconsciously performed if only the conditions are well-known; but it also indicates what the limits of unconscious action are: e. g., I had not forgotten what would satisfy my need to smoke, nor where my cigarette paper was, nor how to make a cigarette, but I had forgotten that I had made a cigarette without having smoked it. The activities first named have been repeated thousands of times, while the last had only just been performed and therefore had not become mechanical.[3]

Lipps calls attention to another instance: "It may be that I am capable of retaining every word of a speech and of observing at the same time the expression which accompanies the speech. I might be equally able to trace a noise which occurs on the street and still to pay sufficient attention to the speech. On the other hand, I should lose the thread of the speech if I were required at the same time to think of the play of feature and the noise. Expressed in general terms, idea A may possibly get on with idea B and even idea C; but B and C together make A impossible. This clearly indicates that B and C in themselves have opposed A and inhibited it in some degree, but that only the summation of their inhibition could serve really to exclude A." This is certainly correct and may perhaps be more frequently made use of when it is necessary to judge how much an individual would have done at one and the

same time, and how much he would have done unconsciously. An approximation of the possibilities can always be made.

Such complicated processes go down to the simplest operations. Aubert indicates, for example, that in riding a horse at gallop you jump and only later observe whether you have jumped to the right or the left. And the physician Forster told Aubert that his patients often did not know how to look toward right or left. At the same time, everybody remembers how when he is doing it unconsciously, and it may often be observed that people have to make the sign of the cross, or the gesture of eating in order to discover what is right and what left, although they are unconsciously quite certain of these directions. Still broader activities are bound up with this unconscious psychosis, activities for us of importance when the accused later give us different and better explanations than at the beginning, and when they have not had the opportunity to study the case out and make additional discoveries, or to think it over in the mean time. They then say honestly that the new, really probable exposition has suddenly occurred to them. As a rule we do not believe such statements, and we are wrong, for even when this sudden vision appears improbable and not easily realizable, the witnesses have explained it in this way only because they do not know the psychological process, which, as a matter of fact, consisted of subconscious thinking.

The brain does not merely receive impressions unconsciously, it registers them without the co-operation of consciousness, works them over unconsciously, awakens the latent residue without the help of consciousness, and reacts like an organ endowed with organic life toward the inner stimuli which it receives from other parts of the body. That this also influences the activity of the imagination, Goethe has indicated in his statement to Schiller: "Impressions must work silently in me for a very long time before they show them selves willing to be used poetically."

In other respects everybody knows something about this unconscious intellectual activity. Frequently we plague ourselves with the attempt to bring order into the flow of ideas—and we fail. Then the next time, without our having thought of the matter in the interval, we find everything smooth and clear. It is on this fact that the various popular maxims rest, e. g., to think a thing over, or to sleep on it, etc. The unconscious activity of thought has a great share in what has been thought out.

A very distinctive rôle belongs to the coincidence of conscious

attention with unconscious. An explanation of this process will help us, perhaps, to explain many incomprehensible and improbable things. "Even the unconscious psychic activities,—going up and down, smoking, playing with the hands, etc. conversation,— compete with the conscious or with other unconscious activities for psychic energy. Hence, a suddenly-appearing important idea may lead us to stop walking, to remain without a rule of action, may make the smoker drop his smoking, etc." The explanation is as follows: I possess, let us say, 100 units of psychic energy which I might use in attention. Now we find it difficult to attend for twenty seconds to one point, and more so to direct our thought-energy to one thing. Hence I apply only, let us say, 90 units to the object in question, and apply 10 units to the unconscious play of ideas, etc. Now, if the first object suddenly demands even more attention, it draws off the other ten units, and I must stop playing, for absolutely without attention, even unconscious attention, nothing can be done.

This very frequent and well-known phenomenon, shows us, first of all, the unconscious activities in their agreement with the conscious, inasmuch as we behave in the same way when both are interrupted by the demand of another thing on our attention. If a row suddenly breaks out before my window I will interrupt an unconscious drumming with the fingers as well as a conscious reading, so that it would be impossible to draw any conclusion concerning the nature of these activities from the mere interruption or the manner of that interruption. This similarity is an additional ground for the fact that what is done unconsciously may be very complex. No absolute boundary may be drawn, and hence we can derive no proof of the incorrectness of an assertion from the performance itself, i. e., from what has been done unconsciously. Only human nature, its habits, idiosyncrasies, and its contemporary environment can give us any norm.