The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sciousness of identity than memory gives. Awake or asleep, we never lose the sense of identity: even in dream we do not for an instant cease to be ourselves. Waking suddenly from the profoundest slumber that was or appeared to be dreamless, the consciousness of identity is not lost for a single instant. So it is when recovering from delirium, from somnambulism and from trance. We may doubt where we are or what we are and have but imperfect perception of objects about us, but we never doubt that we are ourselves, nor forget that we have existed before. Identity is not an act of memory recalling some past sensation; it is an extended consciousness of personal oneness (if the coining of a term may be peiunitted) and of a continuous existence. It is not positively proved, but it is highly probable, that the mind preserves the memory of every impression, how- ever slight, made upon the brain, and this although, at the moment of its reception, there was no consciousness of such an impression having been made. This conjecture is confirmed by many facts not otherwise to be explained. There is the familiar instance of the servant girl who, in the delirium of a fever, talked excellent Hebrew, which was afterwards Tound to be the reproduction from memory of readings aloud in that language by a former master while she was engaged in household duty and neither giving heed to nor understanding what he was muttering. Never- theless, although unnoticed and no attention paid to them, those sounds had been impresssed unconsciously upon the brain and conveyed to the memoi'y, whence they were recalled by some unexplained excitation of the fever. Many cases of insanity are on record in which young girls tenderly nurtured have given utterance to the most obscene and vulgar expressions, which could only have fallen upon their ears rarely and by accident, when they had not been listening “1132]