Adventurings in the Psychical Part 14

He had not been working an hour when he came to a dispatch, which he tossed aside, with the muttered comment, "That's an old story, sure.

I've read it somewhere before."

Then, remembering the mistakes he had been making, he hesitated, picked it up, and read it carefully. Every word in it seemed familiar. But where could he have read it? In the evening papers? He went through them one by one, without result. Then it suddenly occurred to him that possibly, in opening the dispatches, he had, without being aware of it, glanced at this particular item, and had obtained a subconscious knowledge of it, which was now welling up confusedly as a conscious memory.

To test this theory, he directed the office boy to open the dispatches without fail for the next few nights. On none of these did he suffer from memory confusion.

Possibly, if he had a.n.a.lyzed the matter further, he would have found that the news items which had caught his eye while smoothing out the dispatch sheets related to subjects of some special interest to him.

For just as one's conscious attention is arrested by that which is particularly interesting, so does the subconscious select for presentation to the upper consciousness information of temporary or habitual interest and significance.

Sometimes, too, there is involved a harking back to interests of an earlier period of life. A simple but instructive ill.u.s.tration of this is found in a little incident that occurred to Doctor Richard Hodgson while on a visit to England. It may best be reported in his own words:[35]

[35] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xi, p. 415.

"Yesterday morning (September 13, 1895), just after breakfast, I was strolling alone along one of the garden paths of Leckhampton House, Cambridge, repeating aloud to myself the verses of a poem. I became temporarily oblivious to my garden surroundings, and regained my consciousness of them suddenly, to find myself brought to a stand, in a stooping position, gazing intently at a five-leaved clover. On careful examination, I found about a dozen specimens of five-leaved clover, as well as several specimens of four-leaved clover, all of which probably came from the same root.

"Several years ago I was interested in getting extra-leaved clovers, but I have not for years made any active search for them, though occasionally my conscious attention, as I walked along, has been given to appearances of four-leaved clover, which proved, on examination, to be deceptive. The peculiarity of yesterday's 'find' was that I discovered myself, with a sort of shock, standing still and stooping down, and afterward realized that a five-leaved clover was directly under my eyes."

Compare with this an incident reported by an English clergyman, the Reverend P. H. Newnham. We find in it exactly the same element of selective subconscious attention, accompanied, however, by an auditory hallucination as a means of notifying the upper consciousness of the fact subconsciously observed.

"I was visiting friends at Tunbridge Wells," says Mr. Newnham, "and went out one evening, entomologizing. As I crossed a stile into a field, on my way to a neighboring wood, a voice said distinctly in my right ear: 'You'll find "Chaonia" on that oak.' This was a very scarce moth, which I had never seen before, and which most a.s.suredly I had never consciously thought of seeing. There were several oaks in the field, but I instinctively walked up to one, straight to the off side of it, and there was the moth indicated."[36]

[36] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xi, p. 411.

The psychological explanation of this is simple enough, and is equally applicable to similar, if more sensational, hallucinations widely heralded as of supernatural character. It is manifestly absurd to suppose that a "spirit" announced to the entomologizing clergyman the presence of the rare and greatly sought-after moth which it was his good fortune to capture. But it is not at all absurd to suggest that quite likely, although he had consciously forgotten all about it, he had at some time seen Chaonia, or an entomological text-book picture of Chaonia; that he had subconsciously caught a glimpse of it, fluttering across the field and settling on the oak, and that his subconscious recognition of its ident.i.ty had set in motion the proper mental mechanism to notify his upper consciousness of a fact in which it would naturally be much interested.

There may also be a subconscious intensification, or "hyperaesthesia," of other senses than that of sight. In all probability hyperaesthesia of the sense of hearing is sufficient to account for the dramatic central incident in the following story, told by a lady whose ident.i.ty I am unable to reveal:

"I was living one summer in a little mining camp in the Rocky Mountains.

Our house, a frame building, was some little distance from any other, at the top of a steep hill; the only disadvantage of this being the additional difficulty of getting water, which was an expensive commodity in the camp, as the adjacent mines had drained most of the wells.

"The house contained six rooms, all opening one out of another, my own room, with a dressing closet beyond, where my child slept, being at one end, and the front porch, which overlooked the valley, at the other.

"One evening, after my little girl was asleep, I lit a tiny night lamp, always left burning on a bracket in her room; and, leaving all doors and windows open, on account of the intense heat, went to sit on the front porch. I may have sat there half an hour, when my attention was caught by a great blazing light in the direction of the farthest houses. It appeared evident that one at least had taken fire, and the difficulty of getting water, and the hope that no children were in danger, flashed through my mind.

"While watching the rapidly growing glare, I heard a faint, crackling sound in my own house. It would not have disturbed me at any other time, as I only supposed that some smouldering piece of cedar in the kitchen stove had blazed up. But, with the present thought of fire in my mind, I went into the kitchen to look, and, glancing through the open doors as I pa.s.sed, saw a volume of flame and smoke pouring from the child's room into mine.

"Thank G.o.d it was still possible to rush through and save her; and I carried her out in a blanket to prevent the scorch, for the room was only burning at one end; the side where the bed stood, though fearfully hot and suffocating, was not yet on fire, and, thanks to the timely warning, the water left in the barrels proved just enough to extinguish the flames before very much was destroyed.

"After all was quiet, I went back to the porch to look at that other burning house, feeling so thankful that my child was safe, and wondering if others were, also. But all was dark, and when I came to make inquiry next day, nothing was known in the camp of any such fire. Had it not been for my strange vision of it, which must have lasted fully ten minutes, I feel sure that my little girl would have been burned to death."[37]

[37] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xi, pp. 418-419.

There is a possibility, though only a possibility, that telepathy between mother and child may have had part in the production of this helpful hallucination. But hyperaesthesia of the sense of hearing seems to afford the likelier explanation, as also in numerous well-authenticated instances, in which railroad men, obeying an unaccountable impulse or hallucinatory monition, have taken action averting disastrous wrecks. A single ill.u.s.trative example must suffice, a case called to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research by Mr. William H. Wyman, of Dunkirk, N. Y.:

"Some years ago my brother was employed on, and had charge as conductor and engineer of, a work train on the Lake Sh.o.r.e and Michigan Southern Railway, running between Buffalo and Erie. I often went with him to the gravel bank, where he had his headquarters, and returned on his train with him.

"On one occasion I was with him, and after the train of cars was loaded, we went together to the telegraph office to see if there were any orders, and to find out if the trains were on time, as we had to keep out of the way of all regular trains. After looking over the train reports, and finding them all on time, we started for Buffalo.

"As we approached Westfield station, running about twelve miles per hour, and when within about one mile of a long curve in the line, my brother all of a sudden shut off the steam, and, quickly stepping over to the fireman's side of the engine, he looked out of the cab window, and then to the rear of his train. Not discovering anything wrong, he put on steam, but almost immediately again shut it off, and gave the signal for brakes, and stopped.

"After inspecting the engine and train, and finding nothing wrong, he seemed very much excited, and for a short time he acted as if he did not know where he was or what to do. I asked what was the matter. He replied that he did not know; then, after looking at his watch and orders, he said that he felt that there was some trouble on the line of the road. I suggested that he had better run his train to the station and find out.

He then ordered his flagman to go ahead around the curve, which was just ahead of us, and he would follow with the train.

"The flagman started and had barely time to flag an extra express train, with the general superintendent and others on board, coming full forty miles an hour. The superintendent inquired what he was doing there, and if he did not receive orders to keep out of the way of the extra. My brother told him that he had not received orders, and did not know of any extra train coming; that we had both examined the train reports before leaving the station. The train was then backed to the station, where it was found that no orders had been given."[38]

[38] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xi, p. 416.

Incidents such as this are of not infrequent occurrence. By the superst.i.tious they are regarded as weird and uncanny, and savoring of the spiritistic. In reality they are only exceptional exemplifications of a process which is ceaselessly taking place in all of us. There is no one who does not, every day, perform acts which he cannot consciously account for, and which, if closely inquired into, would be found similarly to take their rise in unnoticed subconscious impressions. For the matter of that, it is possible to train one-self to subconscious attention to selected impressions, even in sleep.

A familiar ill.u.s.tration is the mother who, undisturbed by other sounds, awakens at the least cry of her infant. The same phenomenon is observable in the case of the conscientious medical nurse, who, no matter how profound her sleep, responds instantly to any movement by her patient. And, in the course of conversation not long ago, a physician said to me:

"As you know, my house is on a car line, and, besides the cars, there is much automobile and carriage traffic on my street for a large part of the night. Nothing of this breaks my rest. I sleep so soundly that a thunderstorm does not arouse me. Yet let the telephone bell begin to ring, and I am out of bed and have the receiver at my ear before the bell has ceased ringing."

I have myself, like a good many other people, found it possible to make the subconscious do the work of an alarm clock. That is to say, if, on going to bed, I mentally determine to wake at a certain hour, I invariably do so, and this although I am one of the deepest of sleepers.

It matters not what hour I select, nor how late I retire the previous night, the mental sentinel whom I have placed on guard punctually notifies me when the appointed time arrives.

This goes to show, of course, that the subconscious is, to a certain extent, at any rate, amenable to conscious control and direction.

That such control is highly desirable is evinced not merely by the facts reviewed above, but by others which we must next take under consideration--facts of altogether different import. For if, as we have seen, the subconscious is in many ways a docile and helpful auxiliary of the upper consciousness, it also contains within itself dire possibilities of unhappiness, suffering, disease, and even death.

CHAPTER VII

DISSOCIATION AND DISEASE

The subconscious, I repeat, does not always exercise a helpful influence; there are times when it may impose upon us indescribable misery.

It is able to do this by virtue of the intimate relations existing between the mind and the body. At this late day it is scarcely necessary for me to undertake to demonstrate that the state of one's mind has a great deal to do with the health of one's body. What is not so generally known, and what all of us ought to know, is the further fact that many diseases are directly due to distressing mental states, and in such cases usually to subconscious mental states--that is to say, to thoughts and emotions of which the sufferer consciously has no knowledge. The same often holds good even with regard to maladies the symptoms of which are almost wholly if not altogether physical, and the causes of which one would naturally expect to find physical, likewise.

Indeed, ignorance of the tremendous role played by the subconscious in the causation of disease, has in the past been responsible for many medical shortcomings. Nor is the situation as yet much improved, although it is rapidly improving, thanks chiefly to the labors of a little group of scientific investigators known as psychopathologists, or medical psychologists, who have made it their special business to ascertain the different ways in which the subconscious may affect health adversely, and to devise methods for coping with mentally caused diseases.

These men are not "faith healers." They are not making any war on medicine. They are, in fact, themselves physicians, graduates of the best medical schools, of excellent standing in their profession, and seeking, above all things, to increase the usefulness and precision of medical science. Already, though their labors were begun only a few years ago, they have effected numerous cures of a seemingly miraculous character; but always they have effected them by utilizing natural laws which they have discovered by the rigorous processes of scientific experiment.

Of fundamental importance among these laws is one known as the law of dissociation. It might almost be called the law of forgotten memories, for to a large extent its workings depend on the interesting circ.u.mstance, to which attention has previously been drawn, that ideas which have faded from the conscious memory persist in the subconsciousness. As Pierre Janet, the distinguished Frenchman and most eminent of living psychopathologists, has tersely phrased it, "Nothing that goes into the human mind is ever really lost."

No matter how remote, past experiences, as I have shown in earlier chapters, can be recovered and recalled to mind by means of crystal-vision, automatic writing, or other psychological methods of "tapping the subconscious." Obviously we have here no absolute loss of memory, but merely a splitting off, or "dissociation," from the field of waking consciousness.

Now, while the memories thus dissociated and lying hidden in the subconscious usually exercise no appreciable effect other than in the molding of character, the enlargement of our store of knowledge, etc., there are conditions under which, in the case of persons predisposed by circ.u.mstances of heredity or environment, they may give rise to all manner of mental and physical ills.

A person, for instance, experiences a sudden fright. Time pa.s.ses, the fright is completely forgotten, or, at most, vaguely remembered. But one day unmistakable, and sometimes exceedingly peculiar, symptoms of disease appear. The victim, it may be, suffers from a strange obsession or "fixed idea," or from a general "nervous breakdown," or from an actual paralysis of some bodily organ, or from the development of abdominal or other enlargements resembling true organic growths.

Whatever the symptoms, the mechanism of the puzzling malady is always the same. There has been an abnormal dissociation. The ideas connected with the original shock, although submerged beneath the threshold of consciousness--in a word, forgotten--remain vividly alive in the subconscious, to act as perpetual irritants of the nervous system and in time to give rise to the appearance of the symptoms of which the sufferer complains. Often, indeed, the dissociation is instantaneous, and the appearance of the disease symptoms equally rapid.

In either case, the resultant malady is purely psychical in its origin, and can be cured only by psychical, not by physical means. What is needed is to get at the dissociated mental states--the forgotten, disease-creating memories--and rea.s.sociate them with the upper consciousness, or root them out completely by means of "suggestions"

skillfully applied.