Abnormal psychology / by Isador H. Coriat.

  • Isador Coriat
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Abnormal psychology / by Isador H. Coriat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    of one portion of the experience tends to revive the others which are connected with it. This forms the physiological basis of association. Of conscious experiences or rather of experiences which remain in consciousness we are usually aware, and we can revive and suppress them at will. In other words, they lack automatism and independent activity. When an experience is stored up, but cannot be voluntarily reproduced, we speak of it as dissociated or subconscious. A synthesis cannot be formed except through special devices. A mental dissociation is, there- fore, directly opposite to a mental synthesis. By the former, we mean that experiences are detached or split off—by the latter, that these split off experiences are made whole again. In normal mental life, except under special and very transitory conditions, stored-up ex- periences do not tend to become split off from consciousness. When an experience or complex has become dissociated, it tends to act automati- cally, and cannot be controlled by the will. This is well seen in those abnormal mental states which are termed obsessions and in some forms of automatic writing. In certain hys- terical states, in functional losses of memory, or in multiple personality, the subject is not aware of the dissociated experiences. The chief factors in dissociation, whether simple or com-