Journal of Abnormal Psychology Author:Morton Prince Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DR. PRINCE AND THE QUESTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS BY H. W. CHASE PROFESSOH OF PSYCHOLOGY, CNIVKRBI'I Y OF NORTH CAROLINA A criticism of experimental find... more »ings in terms of a theoretical viewpoint is likely to leave matters about where it found them, especially when the critic lacks first-hand knowl- ledge of the experiments which he presumes to discuss. The stimulating paper by Dr. Prince, however, in a recent number of this Journal,1 raises an issue which is of such interest that perhaps some discussion of its findings may be pardoned. In this paper are described phenomena which, in the author's words, "afford direct evidence of specific subconscious processes occurring under certain conditions." The subjects, three in number, were able, through retrospection in hypnosis, to recall " coconscious " images, usually visual, sometimes auditory, which had never entered the field of consciousness, and were not integral elements of the conscious stream of thought at the time of their original occurrence. The results were obtained many times, and "there was never any doubt about them as memories, nor any doubt about them as previous realities, that is to say, real psychical occurrences." Admitting, as there is every reason to do, the good faith and competency of the observers, and the significance of the results, the question may none the less be raised whether these results do offer direct proof of the existence of subconscious mental processes. The argument may best take its start from a typical case cited by Dr. Prince. One subject, in hypnosis, was told that upon awakening, at the moment that the physician performed a specified act, she would walk across the room to a couch, pick up a leather case there lying, and take out a key which had been placed within it. This sh...« less