Chapter 11: Dissociation
Margaret Floy Washburn
Next | Previous
WHEN any two movement systems go on simultaneously, as they may if they do not contain incompatible movements, the natural tendency is for associative dispositions to be set up between them. When two systems are successively set into activity, the natural tendency is for them to form a single successive movement system. It is natural for us, in recalling an event, to recall its setting or surroundings, and to recollect the events which immediately followed and preceded it. But there are certain circumstances under which the normal and natural formation of associative dispositions fails to occur.
Let us consider some of these circumstances. (1) A person under great stress of emotion is interrupted by a call to the telephone on some trivial business: he answers the call intelligently and is then again overwhelmed by his emotional crisis. Later he has no recollection of the telephone call or of the appointment he made in reply to it. (2) A man is injured in a football game: he has later no recollection of the ten or fifteen minutes which preceded the injury. (3) A person is thrown into the hypnotic trance, and while in this condition he performs various actions at the suggestion of the operator: on coming out of the trance he cannot recall anything that occurred while he was in it. (4) A man finds himself unable to recall a perfectly familiar name. A careful introspective study proves that this name is associated with a disagreeable event, of which the man has been trying not to think. (5) A man is sitting with a pencil in his writing hand, and his attention centred on a book. In response to questions whispered in his ear, his hand writes a few appropriate words: on being recalled from his reading he has no recollection of the questions or of writing.
( 222) These are all cases where movement systems which should normally connect themselves by associative dispositions remain disconnected or dissociated. Four different conditions seem to be involved in them: in (1) and (2) the dissociation is apparently due to a general disturbance or shock to the organism; in (4) the disagreeableness of an experience seems to dissociate it from other experiences; in (ô) concentrated attention appears to be responsible for the dissociation, and in (3) the conditions are those which produce the hypnotic trance.
Why should strong emotion of any kind, including shock, interfere with the normal formation of associative dispositions? A n emotion is a movement system of the greatest possible complexity. When fully developed it involves practically every muscle in the body. Every bodily movement and every idea feel its effect, either in the way of excitation or inhibition. Now ordinarily, when one movement system intervenes upon another one, the interrupted system, while inhibited for the time, remains in a state of readiness to be resumed. In Poppelreuter's (112) suggested experiment,[1] where sentences from two different stories are read alternately, the interruption of one train of thought by another does not prevent the interrupted train from exerting its influence on its continuation. We do not hear the fourth or fifth sentence in story A as if we had never heard its predecessors: the two stories are both perfectly comprehended at the end. If, however, the place of the second story were taken by a violent emotion, story A's effect would be quite obliterated.
It seems most probable that when the two stories, read alternately, are thus connectedly understood; when the first sentence of story A forms associative connections with the second sentence of the same story, across the gap filled by the first sentence of story B, the reason is that the interruption has not been absolute. Some parts of the complicated movement system set going by the first sentence of story A continue in
( 223) activity, even during the interruption: such parts, namely, as do not involve movements incompatible with those of the first sentence of the interrupting story B. Now the more far-reaching and complex the movement systems started by, story B, the less possible will it be for any portion of A's movement systems to remain active over the interval. This would explain why a strong emotion makes so complete an interruption, and prevents the formation of associative dispositions between the events which preceded it and the events which followed it. The emotions and shocks which thus dissociate are always sudden in their onset, and not themselves the natural outcome of what has previously been going on. And they are movement systems so far-reaching and complicated that no portion of the previously active movement systems can last over during the interval filled by the emotion.
That an unpleasant emotion exerts a special dissociating effect apart from and unlike in its manifestations the dissociation produced by any sudden and violent emotion is one of the facts brought to our attention by Freud. We tend. he argues, to avoid recalling unpleasant experiences to consciousness. This tendency may make it impossible to recall anything that is associated even in the most casual way with the unpleasant set of ideas. Thus Freud t39) reports that he unaccountably failed to recall, in a conversation on Italian art, the name 'Signorelli,' and by careful introspection he unearthed the fact that the name was inhibited because its first two syllables, ' Signor,' are associated with the word ' Herr' through their meaning; ' Herr' has the sound of the first syllable of 'Herzegovina,' with which province Freud had at the time a very disagreeable association. To many of us this will seem far-fetched, but association with what is unpleasant and for that reason avoided in thought is very likely one of the actual causes of interference with the normal working of associative dispositions. To form an idea of how this effect is produced, we may first note that if a movement already belongs to a strongly formed movement system, it will enter with great difficulty
( 224) into any system that contains incompatible movements with those of the first system. An example from my personal experience will make this clear. I once had occasion to see almost daily a person named ' Harkness,' who was a new acquaintance, a man of the intensely practical, traveling-salesman type, in the habit of declaring himself a self-made man, and implying suspicion of the value of a university education to one dealing with affairs, —in short, what would in the vernacular be called a 'hustler.' I found it almost impossible to recall this person's name, and after Freudian self-examination, I found an explanation undoubtedly far too simple to satisfy Freud. The name ' Harkness' was uniquely and firmly established in a classical setting in my mind. Not only had I in my youth used Harkness's Latin Grammar, but my Freshman Latin had been studied under the direction of a teacher of pronounced personality, named Harkness. The whole atmosphere of my new acquaintance was so incompatible with that of the classics that I simply could not implant so classical a name in so uncongenial an environment.
Now, if even a small and unimportant movement system, like the classical associations grouped around this name, could suffice, as I believe it could, to interfere with and weaken associative dispositions tending to connect one of its members with a new system incompatible with the old, how much more readily can a great and complicated system like what the Freudians term a 'complex,' a system of ideas bound together by being connected with a strong emotion, produce such interference. The suppression of a complex — that is, of the ideas connected with a disagreeable experience —takes place through the presence of a stronger emotional or affective state of the opposite character. The normal attitude of a healthy individual is an attitude of cheerfulness. Now, an attitude of cheerfulness is an actual static movement system, involving certain innervations, and while it is maintained it will inhibit all incompatible innervations. A person in the attitude of cheerfulness is incapable for the time being of a depressing
(225) thought, for precisely the same reason that he cannot pronounce t and g at the same time: the movements involved are incompatible. "How long, oh healthy reader," asks James, "can you now continue thinking of your tomb?"
Complexes are suppressed, not simply in the case where strongly unpleasant ones come into conflict with a dominant attitude of cheerfulness, but whenever there is incompatibility between their movement systems and those dominant at the time. Thus, a complex may be interfered with because its emotions conflict with all that carefully acquired system of attitudes which we call 'propriety': or an emotion may be suppressed because it is incompatible with the emotion which we know we ought to feel, and which we therefore do often feel, strongly enough at least to prevent the development of incompatible emotions. It is not surprising if, as the Freudians tell us, these cases of the interference of incompatible emotions result in profound bodily disturbances and so-called 'hysterical' symptoms. When one movement system completely inhibits another which involves antagonistic movements, if the inhibited system is small, we may suppose that the comparatively insignificant amount of energy which is thus dammed up finds inconspicuous channels for its escape. But an emotion, with energy enough to involve the whole muscular system, must when inhibited send its energy out with more general disturbance: it cannot merely leak away.