PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES
Heightened Unconscious Performance 137
We
have now discussed all the essential phenomena presented by our case which were significant for its inner structure.
phenomena have still to be briefly conphenomena of heightened unconscious performance. In this field, we meet with a not altogether unjustifiable scepticism on the part of the scientific pundits. Even Certain accompanying
sidered; these are the
Dessoir's conception of the second ego aroused considerable opposition and was rejected in many quarters as too enthusiastic. As we know, occultism has claimed a special right to this field and has drawn premature conclusions from dubious observations. We are still very far indeed from being able to say anything conclusive, for up to the present our material is nothing like adequate. If, therefore, we touch on this question of heightened unconscious performance, we do so only to do justice to all sides of our case. By heightened unconscious performance we mean that peculiar automatic process whose results are not available for the
conscious psychic activity of the individual.
Under
this category
thought-reading by means of table moveI do not know whether there are people who can guess an entire long train of thought by means of inductive inferences
comes, ments.
first
of
all,
from the "intended tremors." At any rate it is certain that, granting this to be possible, such persons must be making use of a routine acquired by endless practice. But in our case routine can be ruled out at once, and there is no choice but to assume for the present a receptivity of the unconscious far exceeding that of the conscious mind. This assumption is supported by numerous observations on somnambulists. Here I will mention only Binet's experiments, where little letters or other small objects, or complicated little figures in relief, were laid on the anaesthesic skin of the back of the hand or the neck, and the unconscious perceptions were registered by means of signs. On the basis of these experiments he comes to the following conclusion: "According to the calculations that I have been able to make, the unconscious sensibility of an hysterical patient is at certain moments fifty times more acute than that of 80