Page:Jung - The psychology of dementia praecox.djvu/50

26 idea of the author is expressed as follows: "Disintegration of consciousness in my sense signifies the simultaneous flow of functionally separated series of associations. To me the chief point lies in the conception that the activity of consciousness is to be considered as a resultant of many synchronous psychophysical processes.

These citations ought to illustrate sufficiently the author's ideas. We can perhaps agree with the view that consciousness, or better, the content of consciousness, is the result of numerous nonconscious or unconscious psychophysical processes. In contradistinction to the current psychology of consciousness, in which beyond the epiphenomenon "consciousness" there immediately begins the nutritive processes of the brain cells, this aspect is really a refreshing progress for psychiatry. Gross seems to think that the psychic content (not the content of consciousness!) flows synchronously in single series of associations. This comparison seems to me somewhat equivocal. I think it more correct to assume successive conscious-becoming ideational-complexes which are constellated by antecedent association-complexes. The cement of these complexes is some definite affect. If the connection between Gross's synchronous series is severed by disease, disintegration of consciousness results. Translated into the language of the French school, it means that if one or more association series are split off there results a dissociation causing weakness of consciousness. Let us not quarrel over words. Here, too, Gross returns to the problem of apperceptive disturbance; he, however, approaches this problem from a new and interesting side, from the side of the unconscious. Gross attempts to uncover the roots of the numerous automatic phenomena which break into the consciousness of dementia præcox with elemental power and strangeness. The symptoms of automatic phenomena in the conscious life of dementia præcox should be known to all psychiatrists. They are the autochthonous ideas, the sudden impulses, hallucinations, the