remains the same, just as we do not change consciousness if we feel
ourselves in one hour as members of our family, in the next hour as
professional workers in our office, again later as social personalities
at a party or as citizens at a political meeting or as aesthetic
subjects at the theater. Each time we are to a high degree a different
personality, the idea of our self is each time determined by different
groups of associations, memories, emotions, and impulses. The
differentiation is to be considered as normal only because broad memory
bridges lead over from one to the other. The connection of the various
contents with the various ideas of the own personality constitutes thus
in no way a break of consciousness itself and relegates no one content
into a subconscious sphere.

Finally the same holds true, if the idea of the personality as content
of consciousness in the patient is split into two simultaneous groups,
of which each one is furnished with its own associations. Yet the
interpretation here becomes extremely difficult and arbitrary. Take the
case that a patient in severe hysteria at our request writes down the
history of her life. We should not hesitate to say that she is doing it
consciously but now we begin to talk with her and slowly the
conversation takes her attention while her pencil is continuing to write
down the connected story of her youth. Again the conversation by itself
gives the impression of completely conscious behavior. As both functions
go on at the same time, the person who converses does not know what the
person who writes is writing, and the writer is uninfluenced by the
conversation. Various interpretations are possible. Indeed we might
think that by such double setting in the pathological brain two
independent groups in the content of consciousness are formed, each one
fully in consciousness and yet both without any mutual influence and
thus without mutual knowledge. In the light of such interpretation, it
has been correctly proposed to speak of coconscious processes, rather
than subconscious. Or we may interpret it more in harmony with the
ordinary automatic writing or with other merely physiological reactions.
Then we should suppose that as soon as the conversation sets in, the
brain centers which control the writing movement work through channels
in which no mental factors are involved. One of the two characteristic
reaction systems would then be merely physiological. We saw befor