The subconscious, c by Joseph Jastrow... / [Joseph Jastrow].

  • Jastrow, Joseph, 1863-1944.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The subconscious, c by Joseph Jastrow... / [Joseph Jastrow]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    so entirely submerged that the fragments thereof that float upward to the surface appear scattered, meaningless, and isolated. They are like islands scattered seemingly at haphazard along the coast, but which in the relief-map are seen to be the peaks of an irregular but continuous submerged range. It is because the associative and elabora- tive processes of the mind are so indefinitely various, — that the means by which one person recovers these lost fragments of his possessions, or by which he finds solution for the problems of his life work or the occupation for his leisure imaginings, are so certain to be different in detail, however similar in type, from those pursued by another. Yet the kaleidoscopic evanescence of the mental patterns, even though seen as in a glass darkly, owing to their lying so nearly out of range of the penetrating light of introspection, does not remove them from the field of compre- hensible sequence. Such mystery as they offer is no added or peculiar one; it is the mystery of association itself, the elusive strand upon which are strung the beads of conscious thought. It is equally intelligible that these processes are only conditionally at the command of our intent and desires. They do not obey the summons of an imperious will. We cannot order a man to write a poem as we do to dig a ditch. Yet it is equally important to recognize the measure in which our