FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   >>  
tion of the heart, when lived over again in memory, are again accompanied by all these bodily activities. Your memory of a hairbreadth escape will bring to your cheek the pallor that marked it when the incident occurred. The formation and existence of "complexes" explains the origin of many functional diseases of the body--that is to say, diseases involving no loss or destruction of tissue, but consisting simply in a failure on the part of some bodily organ to perform its allotted function naturally and effectively. [Sidenote: _Automatically Working Mental Mechanisms_] Thus, in hay fever or "rose cold" the tears, the inflammation of the membranes of the nose, the cough, the other trying symptoms, all are linked with the sight of a rose, or dust, or sunlight, or some other outside fact to which attention has been called as the cause of hay fever, into a complex, "an automatically working mechanism." And the validity of this explanation of the regular recurrence of attacks of this disease is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that a paper rose is likely to prove just as effective in producing all the symptoms of the disease as a rose out of Nature's garden. Another striking illustration of the working of this principle is afforded by two gentlemen of my acquaintance, brothers, each of whom since boyhood has had unfailing attacks of sneezing upon first arising in the morning. No sooner is one of these men awake and seated upon the edge of his bed for dressing than he begins to sneeze, and he continues to sneeze for fifteen or twenty minutes thereafter, although he has no "cold" and never sneezes at any other time. [Sidenote: _Two Classes of "Complexes"_] Obviously, if absolutely all mental experiences are preserved, they consist altogether of two broad classes of complexes: first, those that are momentarily _active in consciousness_, forming part of the present mental picture, and, second, all the others--that is to say, all past experiences that are _not at the present moment before the mind's eye_. There are, then, _conscious_ complexes and _subconscious_ complexes, complexes of _consciousness_ and complexes of _subconsciousness_. [Sidenote: _The Subconscious Storehouse_] And of the complexes of subconsciousness, some are far more readily recalled than others. Some are forever popping into one's thoughts, while others can be brought to the light of consciousness only by some unusual and deep-probing
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   >>  



Top keywords:
complexes
 

consciousness

 

Sidenote

 

symptoms

 
sneeze
 
mental
 

experiences

 
subconsciousness
 

present

 

working


attacks

 

disease

 
bodily
 

diseases

 
memory
 
sneezes
 

twenty

 

minutes

 
absolutely
 

preserved


Obviously

 

Complexes

 

fifteen

 
Classes
 

begins

 
morning
 

sooner

 

arising

 

hairbreadth

 

unfailing


sneezing

 

escape

 
dressing
 

accompanied

 

activities

 

seated

 
continues
 
readily
 

recalled

 

forever


Subconscious

 

Storehouse

 

popping

 

thoughts

 
unusual
 

probing

 
brought
 

subconscious

 
conscious
 

active