This is the explanation of some cases of literary plagiarism: a previously read phrase comes up from the unconscious, and all recognisable connections with memory having been lost it is greeted as a fresh creation and given rank accordingly.

There is still another type of forgetting: most of us know the man who 'draws the long bow', who embellishes his story and embroiders it with imagined incidents, whilst we listen and wonder how much the narrator himself believes. Fishermen's stories and snake yarns are examples, and one explains the mental process of the story-teller by saying, 'He's told the story so often that at last he believes it himself.' The process is really one of forgetting and is closely allied to the repression of an unpleasant memory, for the man is the victim of a mental conflict: on the one side is his desire to tell a good story, and on the other is his moral complex which forbids a lie, so he solves the conflict by forgetting that the embroideries are inventions. This type is an important one, and what I shall call the 'repression of the knowledge of deceit' plays an important part in the explanation of the abnormal phenomena with which this book deals. In tracing the development of the abnormal we must start with what is nearest the normal, and the man who embroiders his story gives an illustration of the simplest form of this particular repression.

Now, just as memories are repressed because they were repugnant to the other contents of the consciousness, so other complexes may be repugnant and meet the same fate. To be torn by conflicting emotions is the fate of most people at some time or other, and the conflict between two complexes may be solved in various ways. The healthy way is to face the difficulty, to reason it out, and reach a conclusion by which action may be guided; another way, a common one, is to seclude one complex in a logic-tight compartment and so avoid the conflict. The man who uses sharp or shady methods in the city and is a gentle-minded philanthropist in other walks of life is using the latter method, and will produce such rationalisations as 'business is business' when the contents of his different compartments need protection from each other.

But for some people such methods are impossible: either they cannot directly solve the conflict or they are too self-critical to build a logic-tight compartment, and in such cases a repression of one of the opposing complexes may result. In this way complexes concerning ambitions and desires may be repressed, and so may those concerning fears and dislikes. The youth put to an uncongenial trade, the man or woman married to an unsuitable partner, may find no escape from the position and decide to bear it and forget its anxiety. How far this succeeds depends upon the previously existing tendencies of the individual: he may suffer no evil from the repression or, like the soldier's repressed war memories, it may manifest itself by indirect means and the unfortunate sufferer becomes a victim of one of the varied forms of neurosis.

The day-dreams of youth are rarely openly expressed: no one can tell what fantasies a child may have, and many of us are familiar with the thoughtful child who sits lost in meditation and presents an impenetrable barrier to the grown-up who would enter into the secrets of the day-dream. These fancies may be, and probably are, completely forgotten, but they can still lie in the unconscious, and Freud and his followers claim that they influence us throughout life.

CHAPTER IV

DISSOCIATION

As you sit reading this book you perhaps cross your legs or move to an easier position. Did you think, 'My leg is beginning to feel tired, I'll shift it?' Did you even know you were shifting it? Watch a friend next time he drives you in his car. If he is an expert driver he will talk to you whilst his car slips through the traffic, and handle the various gears and controls as occasion arises without apparently giving any thought to the action; moreover, if you direct his attention to what he is doing he may do it with less accuracy than before—like the billiard player who carefully studies a shot and then makes a miss-cue. It is not sufficient to call the driving automatic, though that word is often used to describe actions of this type, for it is dependent upon innumerable stimuli that reach the driver's mind through all his senses and there produce sensations and impulses which have to be translated into actions. There is much real mind-work involved, and we must regard the driving as carried on by a part of his consciousness which is temporarily apart from his main stream, the latter being devoted to your intellectual entertainment.

So far as it concerns this example the splitting-off is normal. Most of us develop such capability in some way or other: the skilful pianist will talk while playing from sight a difficult passage, and the smoker carries out puffing actions by his little split-off stream whilst the main stream is solving the problem of the moment. All sorts of trivial actions are done unknown to the doer. For instance, a man whilst reading may have the habit of turning a pencil over and over and if any one gently removes the pencil he will reach out for it and continue to turn it, whilst his main stream knows nothing of the little by-play.

We see that consciousness is not fully and evenly aware of all our actions; some actions with their accompanying mental process can be carried on by an independent stream and, as in the case of the pianist, the streams are of such balanced complexity that we can regard them as co-equal. Others, like turning over the pencil, are associated with such a lack of awareness that they hardly seem conscious, and if they are regarded as due to a split-off stream the stream is a very minor one.

This loss of awareness can be carried further, and actions involving complicated processes can be performed without the main personality knowing of them. The easiest example by way of illustration is automatic writing, often carried out by Planchette, which is a small platform mounted on wheels and bearing a pencil whose point touches a sheet of paper. If two people, sitting opposite each other, place their finger-tips upon the platform it immediately begins to move, for unless the muscular push of one operator is absolutely balanced by that of the other the apparatus moves away from one of them; the other person straightway resists the movement and pushes in an opposite direction, and thus a see-saw motion is kept up which the operators cannot stop. The resulting scrawls on the paper may be deciphered according to fancy, but with practice a legible product is obtained; further, some people are able to concentrate the mind upon, or in other words fill the stream of consciousness with, another set of ideas by means of talking or reading, so that the automatic writing is carried on by a split-off stream of which the main stream is unaware. One person can use Planchette alone, though the experiment is oftener carried out as described above because unintended movements are more readily produced by two operators.

By this trick of splitting-off, or dissociation, the operator is able to allow ideas and memories from the unconscious to come to the surface unrestrained by the cramping control of the consciousness; hence the product of the automatism is usually fantastic and imaginative, though memories are available which may be beyond the reach of the consciousness.

An excellent example of this dissociation is given in The Gate of Remembrance, a book which I shall consider later.

The view might be held that the dissociated