On consciousness : (abstract) / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1925?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On consciousness : (abstract) / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in other words, precedes the differentiated simple complex. So it is largely in the life of consciousness. Simple sensations are not the first experiences. The first post¬ natal or even pre-natal experiences are vague affections of the self—or of what will come in time to constitute the self, as later it becomes differentiated from external situations, and as later external objects come in turn to be differentiated from external situations. At quite an early period many of the infant’s experiences, especially the visual, become “projected” first as situations, then as objects, instead of being, as at the very outset, little more than affections, so to speak, of the self. It is only gradually that the separate, simple sensations, say of whiteness, softness or sweetness, are differentiated from these objects. But sensations, we must remember, are not wholly projected. Bed, for example, clearly resides in the object, but pain lies in ourselves, while such sensations as those of temperature and taste occupy a half-way position. The observations of Head and Gordon Holmes, in conditions of thalamo-cortical interference, indicate that this projection may be lost in lesions of such sort. A prick may be no longer projected as such, but described by the self as a characteristic change in an affection of itself. Indeed, under normal conditions, the less projected the sensation, the more it approximates to an affective modification of the self. Titchener is doubtless right in believing that sensations (hence cognitive states in general) have become evolved out of a consciousness resembling feelings. I believe that this power of projection, the ability of the self to regard its own change of state as something outside itself, is of far greater importance than is generally supposed. It surely culminates in the self looking down, not merely on external independent objects, but also on its own other selves who come to be regarded as acting under its jurisdiction. Thus, the most consummate actor is said to be he who, though he feels the emotions he portrays, experiences them in such a way that it is as if he were looking upon another self that actually felt them. Thus, too, “ sportsmanship,” “fair play,” tact, &c., become possible. Some¬ thing of the same effect, though doubtless of different causation, is observable in that transient, slightly pathological condition known as “ depersonalization,” common to large numbers of us, wherein the external environment appears for the moment as strange, and we seem to be looking on another instead of on ourself as really experiencing it and acting on it. It occurs still more strikingly, of course, in the more definitely morbid condition of loss of reality. Similar processes may account for the alternation of personalities behind which there lies a continuous personality that knows the acts and experiences of the others. The well-known limits of suggestibility in the post-hypnotic state indicate the same preservation of a higher, dominant, however dormant, self. The integrity, the intactness of this supreme self may prove, I even suggest, to be the future criterion between so-called psycho-neurotic and psychotic conditions. While the simple is, so to speak, distilled from the wider complex, nevertheless synthesis goes on as well as analysis; and many instances will easily occur to my audience in which new experiences are dependent on an integration of stimuli or of more primitive experiences. On the one hand, where a reflex occurs or a habit is acquired, consciousness is useless, since the stimulus inevitably releases one and only one reaction. On the other hand, where an instinct appears, consciousness (let us call it instinct feeling) is essential, because intelligence can be brought to bear so as to improve by growing experience the instinctive reaction to the situation. Where emotion enters, the number of alternative conflicting, instinctive reactions to a stimulus has become manifold, e.g., in the case of fear, flight, rigidity, flaccid palsy, crying, clinging to the parent, fighting at bay; and their respective instinct feelings become integrated about a common object on this higher plane to create emotional feeling. Where sentiment enters, a number of alternative emotional feelings have
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