Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/511

No. 5.] as if two different foci in the brain alternately became the points at which the mental life is converged and unified, each point of view wholly excluding all the mental scenery of the other. (3) The third type is more superficial and creates no absolute break of memory. It consists in a substitution of one personality for another, as when a man regards himself as a woman, or a laborer declares himself to be a king. This seems to be the concomitant of the hypertrophy of a fixed idea, a conception become so ineradicable that it cannot be co-ordinated with the normal psychic life. It appears that this aberration of consciousness is often only functional, not strictly organic, for hypnotized subjects can be made to change sex, or behave like persons other than themselves by mere suggestion. It is certain, however, that even suggestion is correlated with a neurosis that enters into the general web of neural change, for a person directed in the hypnotic state to perform a certain act, — even an extraordinary, an absurd, or a criminal act, — will execute it at the proper time. The subject has no conscious recollection of the suggestion and often endeavors to account for this suggested performance as having some connection with his natural course of thought.

Let us now summarize the results thus far obtained and try to interpret their signification. We started with the antithesis of objects-of-consciousness and consciousness-of-objects, which we represented by the terms “neurosis” and “psychosis.” We found that these antithetical terms embody a distinction that creates the problem of psychogenesis. We traced the progress that has been made in the localization of psychoses in the brain with whose neuroses they are connected as concomitants. We saw that not all, but only some, neuroses are attended with consciousness. We then examined the limits within which consciousness is manifested as indicated by the physiological effects of circulation, respiration, nutrition, temperature, age, and sleep. We next discussed the dependence