the "secondarily automatic" processes, once
conscious, now almost or quite unconscious through the effect of
frequent repetition.

Such unconscious activities occur as _side-activities_, carried on
while something else occupies attention, or as _part-activities_ that
go on while attention is directed to the total performance of which
they are parts. In either case, the automatism may be motor or
perceptive, and the degree of consciousness may range from moderate
down to zero. [Footnote: See pp. 265-267.]

For example, the letters of your name you write almost unconsciously,
while fully conscious of writing your name. When you are reading, the
letters are only dimly conscious, and even the words are only
moderately conscious, while the whole performance of reading is highly
conscious. These are instances of unconscious (or dimly conscious)
part-activities. Unconscious side-activities are illustrated by
holding your books firmly but unconsciously under your arm, while
absorbed in conversation, by drumming with your fingers while puzzling
over a problem, and by looking at your watch and reading the time, but
so nearly unconsciously that the next instant you have to look again.
In all such cases, the unconscious or barely conscious activity has
been made easy by previous practice, and there is no special
fascination about it, except such as comes through the use of that
awesome word, "unconscious".

But now for the real "subconscious mind". You try to recall a familiar
name, but are stuck; you drop the matter, and "let your subconscious
mind work"; and, sure enough, after a few minutes you have the name.
Or, you are all {564} tangled up in a difficult problem; you let the
subconscious mind work on it overnight, and next morning it is
perfectly clear. Just here it is that psychology begins to take issue
with the popular idea. The popular interpretation is that work has
been done on the problem during the interval when it was out of
consciousness--unconscious mental work of a high order. But is it
necessary to suppose that any work has been done on the problem during
the interval?

The difficulty, when you first attacked the problem, arose from false
clues which, once they got you, held you by virtue of their "recency
value". [Footnote: See pp. 390-391.] The matter laid aside, these
false clues lost their recency value with lapse of time, so that when
you took the matter up again you were free from their interference an