More about the subconscious mind

Our whole inner experience thus becomes a manifold of objects. Our self and the actions of our self are thus alike for the psychologist mere phenomena, mere objects which are perceived. Will and emotion, memory idea and thought–they all are now passing appearances like the sunshine and rain, the flowers and waves.

By this transformation the immediate will character of real life is given up, but instead of it a system of objects is gained, that allows description and explanation. If we are to deal at all with inner life not from a purposive but from a causal point of view, we are obliged to admit this reconstruction. Without it we cannot have any science of the mind, without it we can understand the intentions of our neighbor and appreciate the truth and morality of his meanings but we cannot causally explain his experiences or determine which effects are to be expected. It is thus not an arbitrary substitution but a procedure just as necessary and logically obligatory as the work of the chemist who substitutes trillions of invisible atoms for the glass of water which he drinks.

The possibility of causal explanation of the successive facts demands this remolding of the outer and of the inner world. We have discussed that before and now only have to draw the consequences. Thus for the psychologist the mental world is a system of mental objects. To be an object means of course to be object of some subject which is aware of it. What else could it mean to exist at all as object if not that it is given to some possible subject? But the world of objects is twofold; we have not only the mental objects of the psychologist but also the physical objects of the naturalist. Science must characterize the difference between those two and we pointed once before to the only fundamental difference. Physical objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for every subject; psychical objects are those which are possible objects of awareness for one subject only. The tree which I see is as physical tree object for every man, it is the same tree which you and I see; my psychical perception of the tree is object for one subject only. My perception can never be your perception. Our perceptions may agree but each has his own. As to the physical objects, we can entirely abstract from such reference to the subjects. We say simply: the tree exists or is part of nature; and only the philosopher is aware that we silently mean by it that it exists for every subject and that it is therefore not necessary to refer to any particular subject. But the perception of the tree which is either your idea or my idea evidently gets its existence only if it is referred and attached to a particular subject which is aware of it. Such subject of awareness is that which the psychologist calls consciousness and all the ideas and volitions and emotions and sensations and images which make up the mental life are then contents of the consciousness or objects of the consciousness. To have psychical existence at all means thus to be object of awareness for a consciousness. Something psychical which simply exists but is not object of consciousness is therefore an inner contradiction. Consciousness is the presupposition for the existence of the psychical objects. Psychical objects which enjoy their existence below consciousness are thus as impossible as a wooden piece of iron. If consciousness is nothing but the subject of awareness for the individual objects, we see at once certain consequences which are too often forgotten in the popular, haphazard psychology. In the scientific system of psychology, consciousness has for instance nothing whatever to perform, that is, consciousness itself is in no way active. The active personality of real life has been left behind and has itself been transformed into that self which is merely content of consciousness. The person who acts and performs the deeds of our life is then only a central content of our consciousness which is crystallized about the idea of our organism. It has thus become one of the contents of which consciousness itself is passively aware. Consciousness is an inactive spectator for the procession of the contents. Thus consciousness itself cannot change anything in the content nor can it connect the contents. No other function is left to consciousness but merely that of awareness. Every change and every fusion and every process must be explained through the relations of the various contents to one another. Consciousness has, therefore, not the power to prefer the one idea or to reject the other, to reinforce the one sensation and to inhibit the other. From a psychological point of view, we have seen before that even attention does not mean an activity of consciousness but a change in the content of consciousness. Certain sensations become more impressive, more clear, and more vivid, and others fade away, become indistinct and disappear, but all that goes on in the content of consciousness and the spectator, consciousness itself, simply becomes aware of those changes. Consciousness has also in itself no special span, ideas appear or disappear not because consciousness expands or narrows itself but because the causal conditions awaken or suppress the various contents.

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