Spiritualism and the New Psychology

tion. Did you think, 'My leg is beginning to feel tired, I'll shift it?' Did you e

e-like the billiard player who carefully studies a shot and then makes a miss-cue. It is not sufficient to call the driving automatic, though that word is often used to describe actions of this type, for it is dependent upon innumerable stimuli that reach the driver's mind through all his senses and t

er carries out puffing actions by his little split-off stream whilst the main stream is solving the problem of the moment. All sorts of trivial actions are done unknown to the doer. For instance, a man whilst

stream and, as in the case of the pianist, the streams are of such balanced complexity that we can regard them as co-equal. Others, like turning over the pencil,

immediately begins to move, for unless the muscular push of one operator is absolutely balanced by that of the other the apparatus moves away from one of them; the other person straightway resists the movement and pushes in an opposite direction, and thus a see-saw motion is kept up which the operators cannot stop. The resulting scrawls on the paper may be deciphered according to fancy, but with practice a legible product is obtained; fur

to come to the surface unrestrained by the cramping control of the consciousness; hence the product of the automatism

ion is given in The Gate of Remembranc

ousness, as I described in the first chapter when writing about intuition; but in automatic writing the main personality is not aware of th

, and others of this kind will be described later; this type I shall call continuous dissociation,

e his recollections ceased; then one day something touched up the hidden memory and in the presence of his doctor he went through a most dramatic scene, showing horror at falling down a dark dug-out upon the bodi

l me about falling

dug-ou

told me abo

mber telling

o, the dug

remember any

med indicative of truth. When the doctor made the man close his eyes and thus shut out his present surround

rose into consciousness and swept every other thought away. The stream of consciousness was suddenly cut off, its place being taken by this new stream with its recollections and emoti

he same time brings this abrupt dissociation into harmony with continuous dissociation. Such a dissociation, but with less emotional contents, can persist for a long time, the subject living, as it were, the life of the dissociated stream. Then we have a man with no memory of his previous life, but whose repressed memories, desires, or troubles, forming a complex in the unconscious, have finally broken across the stream of consciousness and taken its place as a secon

bodily change and the drugs which produced it-can be read with interest as a study of the development of a dissociation, the ma

st a prisoner in the Bastille, insists on retaining his tools and material after he is rescued and brought to England, in times of stress

arles Dickens, who, like all of his craft that live, was no mean psychologist. Even Dr. Manette's insistence upon retaining his tools, una

iation can be represented diagr

n may be given to it by the person most concerned and by other people as well; or it may be the result of a repression, and in that case any interpretation given by the subject mus

es: The pianist and the motor-car driver. A normal phenomenon

the control of the main personality, which is concerned only with the ordinary stream. Exampl

m, completely replacing it for a period. Examples: The case of the ex-soldier and those

uct of dissociation. If he had been imaginative and I credulous he could have foisted upon me a supernatural explanation of his powers and taken his place with clairvoyants and water-diviners. But there are manifestations of distinct

cognised by their owner and the contents kept apart from the modifying influences of the main personality. Hence when the onlooker becomes aware of

e good friends by each ignoring the dissociated prejudices of the other, or in everyday life when in so

rsecutory or grandiose) of most irrational type which is impregnable to explanation or argument. On all other points the man is sane, and the purely mental origin of the disease is suggested by his remaining in good health and without mental