Outlines of psychology / by Harald Höffding ; translated by Mary E. Lowndes.

  • Harald Høffding
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of psychology / by Harald Höffding ; translated by Mary E. Lowndes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    intention to follow Edward v. Hartmann in the mystical paths which he believes he has opened up in his Philosophie des Unbewussten (“ Philosophy of the Unconscious ”). Hartmann not only without more ado makes the unconscious into a positive conception, but also uses it as an explanatory principle wherever he thinks that the physical and the psychological causal series fail. Psychology is on secure ground only when it confines itself to the clear and certain phenomena and laws of consciousness. But starting from this standpoint, it discovers the unconscious, and sees to its astonish- ment that psychological laws prevail beyond the province of conscious life. In what follows we shall adduce some examples to make this clear.1 2. Reference has repeatedly been made to memory as the typical phenomenon of consciousness. But memory presupposes change in the elements of consciousness. Now what becomes of the ideas that have disappeared, in the interval before their recall ? In daily conversation the memory appears as a storehouse or treasure- chamber, where ideas are saved up for future use. It is only figuratively ,that actual existence can be in this way attributed to the ideas which have disappeared from consciousness. But the remarkable faet is, that it seems as if, nevertheless, they played a part in the actual activity of consciousness. If we want to recall something that is in our memory, and cannot come upon it, it is a well-known resource to leave off the search for it, and to think of quite different things ; then the idea wanted may suddenly emerge. Here we give up the conscious search, and allow instead an absolutely unconscious process to begin. The case is similar when we have collected materials for some work, as e.g. the treat- ment of a scientific question. We are then often so overwhelmed by details, as to be unable to arrange and combine the matter. Here again occupation with quite different matters may be a good resource. In the midst of the new activity, the proper mode of treating the question may suddenly, as of its own accord, present itself to consciousness. Unconscious action has effeeted what conscious, direct, and strenuous work might never perhaps have succeeded in. Of course such results are never obtained in sleep ; strenuous work is presupposed, the unconscious operation crowns the labour. Some psychologists explain phenomena of this kind quite simply, c-1* Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 515 sej., there are a great number of examples. bome of those quoted in what follows above, are taken from this collection. Benecke withT;e^V.,C,hapter- ?fi“s Ppycbobgischcn Skizzen (GOttingen, 1827), has inquired with great acuteness into the relatton between the conscious and the unconscious.
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