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.

    530/572 (page 512)
    Holding in mind that the debarred privileges and energies are sacrificed only in that distinctive, or possibly equivocal manner that retains them in suppressed or detached function, one may readily trace the consequences of such peculiar loss. It begins with an incorporative impairment; and in- asmuch as such adjustment to experience is the guiding clue to a large range of action, it follows that the field of expression will be almost equally invaded. Knowing and doing are so intimately integrated that anaesthesia in the former field leads to psychic paralysis in the latter. The psychic nature of the defect is in no aspect more definitely discernible than in this relation: the very act, that as an expression of initiative the hysterical patient is unable to perform, becomes easily possible by the direct transfer of stimulus to coordinated movement through the unimpaired lower order of responsiveness, when the maimed personality is circumvented.1 As a further conse- quence, in this deficiency the incapacity is not regulated by the disabling of muscles, but by the organization of conduct. On the one hand, signi- ficant fields of awareness fall away, and on the other, significant groups of behavior; while in both instances the lower orders of assimilation and responsiveness are retained, and by devious paths reach expression. With such comprehension 1 Illustrations thereof will be found on pages 317-319.