CONSCIOUS FACT IN MENTAL HEALTH

Our
conscious experiences are thus indeed not only here and there, but usually the
products of chains of processes which go on entirely on the physiological side.
We have no reason at all to seek for those preceding actions any mental
accompaniment outside of consciousness, that means, any subconscious mental
states. Then, of course, this physiological explanation also covers entirely
those after-effects of earlier experiences, especially emotional experiences,
which the physician nowadays likes to call subconscious “complexes.”
We shall see what an important role belongs to these facts, especially in the
treatment of hysteria and psychasthenia, but the interpretation again ought to
avoid all playing with the conception of the subconscious. Emotional experiences
may produce there some strong stable dispositions in the brain system which
become mischievous in reinforcing or inhibiting certain thoughts and actions
without awakening directly conscious experiences. The whole psychological
switch system may have been brought into…