The subconscious.

  • Jastrow, J.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The subconscious. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    all the while fully alert to his surroundings. In acting out a post-hypnotic suggestion, the subject may display closely allied powers. Yet some indi- viduals cannot command automatic writing with- out first going into a trance that entails to some extent a loss of the actual objective situation. The trance-state is in this respect quite variable, and is compatible with almost all varieties of orientation, from full responsiveness to the envi- ronment to complete exclusion therefrom. Quite characteristic of the fully privileged initiative is the feeling of intention that precedes, by an instant or longer, the actual execution ; it is with the presence of this factor, more intimately than with any other, that there arises the feeling of freedom as well as of personal motive. This has altogether disappeared in developed automatic writing, as also in any activity of similar status in which the per- former regards his action as an interested spec- tator would look upon an intruded control of his muscles from some source outside himself. In the slighter departures from abnormality there is hardly an actual impulsion; for the procedure involves an assisting though not directing disposi- tion. Yet the impaired initiative, even in such alert states, is apt to bring about some measure of anaes- thesia,— an issue that accords with our general formula.1 It has been verified that frequently the