The Psychology Of Self-Conciousness

Julia Turner

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138875340
• eBook ISBN: 9781136329043
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume XXXV of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. First published in 1923 the author presents ideas of the conceptual life, the fruit of many years of experience in dream psychology. These ideas are presented here from the point of view of general thought and general psychology, a more technical exposition of the Anxiety Hypothesis being reserved.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

CHAPTER I

GENERAL FACTS ABOUT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SELF-CONSCIOUS SUBJECT

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. The most unfortunate errors in psychology have proceeded from not understanding the nature of the difference between animals and man. The mistake was definitely made by Descartes the great philosopher of the 17th century. He confuses thought and consciousness ; man he affirms, is conscious, animals are not ; animals therefore he concludes are machines, hence do not experience pain or pleasure.

One terrible consequence of this confusion of terms was that wholesale vivisection was practised by philosophers of the Cartesian School. The cries of the unhappy victims were compared to the cracking of china when thrown down and broken, and one disciple of Descartes said that the bleating of a goat when beaten meant no more than the sound given out by a drum.

This distinction has again been overlooked in an important new development of psychology. Professor Freud’s theory and practice of dream analysis involves the same confusion of terms as I shall hope to explain in due course in this little book.

Professor Freud has launched psychology on a wonderful new career, but unfortunately he has overlooked the seemingly trifling distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness. As a matter of fact it is the key to the whole situation. When we apply this key, dream analysis becomes a means of unlocking many of the problems which have long defied human speculation ; when we leave it on one side we make confusion worse confounded. This time the sufferer may be the human subject.

2. HUMAN BEINGS UNLIKE THE ANIMALS ARE SELF-CONSCIOUS. Self-consciousness is the important particular in which human beings are different from the animals. Some domesticated animals that live with us in our homes seem to get a certain amount of self-consciousness, but it does not go very deep. Dogs appear to be capable of acquiring it in the highest degree, but probably the dog individually and collectively, if left to himself, would soon lose it all. There is a class of story written for children that represents animals as self-conscious. I remember one that delighted me when I was a child, it represented the experiences of a kitten born in a stable in a barrel and described the mixed desire and fear the kitten felt when wondering what the world might be like outside the barn doors. Having ventured through them the poor little hero got into all kinds of trouble I remember, and was glad to beat a retreat to mother-cat. Such stories are interesting and amusing and generally have a moral attached to them like the old fables. The writer is always thinking of the human self-conscious life when he makes up these tales.

Speaking quite generally it is self-consciousness which explains where and how human beings are more highly endowed than animals. Animals are conscious but not self-conscious, they are driven by motives supplied by something immediately present ; attracted to, or frightened by something outside them, or urged by a condition of their own economy e.g. hunger, they react in a more or less mechanical way. But human beings are able to think of themselves in relation to motives and what they involve, and to form judgments as to various courses of action. They do not always follow the motive which an animal might think the most urgent ; certainly if a dog could form judgments about our conduct he would often be much surprised. It is in consequence of self-consciousness that for human beings there exist a great many more motives than for the most intelligent animal. The appreciation of all that is interesting or important, joyful or pathetic, ridiculous or sublime, originates in self-consciousness.

Someone may object, if he has not thought about it before, that to be self-conscious is neither agreeable nor desirable. What he really means’ however when he objects to being “ self-conscious,” is that morbid or pathological self-consciousness is objectionable to meet with in other people, and painful to experience oneself. In these cases we say “ self-conscious ” for brevity, just as medical people when they mean that a patient has a morbid heart condition say he “ has a heart.” As a matter of fact, we must be self-conscious, or we should suffer from a form of idiocy. We definitely expect people to be self-conscious ; it is as necessary for us as human beings to be self-conscious as to have a heart in order to be alive.

Just as not to be self-conscious would imply, as I have said, to be an idiot, so any degree of morbid self-consciousness implies being something else we do not wish to be. Insanity and criminality are high degrees of disturbance in the self-conscious sphere of our psychology. To be an efficient self-conscious subject means therefore to have self-consciousness sufficient in amount and of a quality not too far removed from the average.

3. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SELF-CONSCIOUS OR CONCEPTUAL SUBJECT AND THE CONSCIOUS OR PERCEPTUAL SUBJECT : MAN IS BOTH. Let us consider a minute what we mean by being self-conscious. Self-consciousness includes the idea of the self as existing. Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) was Descartes’ fundamental proposition. We know we are here, now at the present moment of time ; we can also talk of what we did last week and of what we expect to do next week. Last week is past time and next week future time, so we can think of ourselves in relation to past, present, and future time. We can also think of ourselves as doing things—working, eating, sleeping, etc. We also think of ourselves in relation to other people and things, some of which we know to be helpful to us and others injurious, and as having to find our way and get on by help of the useful things and people and in spite of the harmful ones. This leads us on to thinking of ourselves as projecting plans for the future—plans for work and play and for the conduct of life generally.

An animal has no thought about all these things ; when a situation arrives he is aware of only a part of all that it implies for the human subject. He reacts in a much more machine - like manner to the immediate stimulus in a situation, to the thing he wants to dominate for his own pleasure or the thing he wants to get away from because it might injure him. Some of the stimuli are inside his own body, e.g. hunger.

Awareness in the subject of what he himself is and does forms part of what psychologists call “ the self-concept.” Self-consciousness first frames the self-concept and then proceeds to form other concepts. Hence another name for the self-conscious subject is “ conceptual subject.”

On the other hand an animal may be termed a “ perceptual subject,” because he can form percepts.

An immediate sensory stimulus, e.g. sound of dinner-bell, awakens in the animal subject, cat or dog, associations connected with other sensory experience, with let us suppose a certain room and the partaking of food. This correlated sensory experience is termed a precept. For a human being inasmuch as he is also an animal the sound of the bell is also a precept but it is much more besides. For him as conceptual subject this sensory stimulus also links up with many ideas or concepts belonging to the self-conscious life, e.g. ideas as to being in a suitable condition as regards dress, etc., and as to whether his family will consequently be pleased or not : ideas as to eating and drinking and sitting correctly, together possibly with ideas about the food, as, for instance, whether it will be sufficient and suitable. As regards those associations which affect him as a conceptual subject, his mind is set upon making a success of the occasion from the point of view of health in conjunction with the opinion entertained of him by other people. In other words while for the perceptual subject the food only is the ultimate, or real value, for the conceptual subject the values are abstract: health, life, happiness, success, fellowship.

4. THE MATERIAL AND ORGANIC ARE SYMBOLS FOR CONCEPTUAL VALUES ; the symbol extends the conceptual subject’s interest indefinitely.

We note a most important point. It is that in relation to the self-conscious life, everything outside, everything we can see and handle—even our own bodies and their activities—are symbols of the things we want or fear, conceived abstractly i.e. of happiness or failure. Our plans for getting on, for attaining happiness and avoiding failure are sometimes quite fantastic without our being aware of the fact and when this is the case we become morbidly self-conscious for we find that our values for the things about us, including as I have said our own bodies and their functions, are unlike those of other people. While as an animal subject, man lives like any other animal in terms of material things, as a conceptual subject he lives in terms of their symbolic meaning. Hence for the mature conceptual subject neither poverty is incompatible with happiness nor wealth and prosperity with unhappiness.

In consequence of the symbolic use of perceptual experience the range of the conceptual subject’s interest is extended almost indefinitely. A little paper read before the Psychological Aid Society described the interesting observations made by a member of the Society of the doings of birds in an Indian creeper growing just outside her bungalow window. The whole conception of this paper gives admirably the difference between the conceptual and perceptual subjects. We can so well picture the self-conscious or conceptual subject, standing hidden behind the purdah or wire screen, intent on watching her little fellow-participators in the great life-principle which are only at the perceptual level of consciousness. She is interested in them apart from any question of loss or gain to herself—perhaps her own breakfast is cooling on the table meanwhile ! They presumably know nothing of her or what she is. Were they aware of this relatively gigantic presence they would probably experience fear, and, if not too far committed to the care of their family, might remove to some more retired spot. But if circumstances obliged them to remain, familiarity would doubtless breed—not contempt—but satisfied contentment from the presence of some more powerful and more “ grown up ” sentient being.

The bird’s mind is an expression of the life-principle at the stage of instinct and INTELLIGENCE. By instinct activities are mapped out through the coming into operation of impulses within the economy which make insistent the need to seek certain things : food, mate, nest building material, a building site, etc., and on the other hand to keep out of the way of other animals which are likely to be a source of danger, or to fight off those not too dangerously large. Intelligence enables them to vary their performances by using material which comes to hand. The little bird subjects described used the string and scraps of wool from the textile properties of their unknown hostess for nest building.

Man is both a conceptual and perceptual subject. His perceptual interests are almost entirely dominated by his interests as a conceptual subject.

5. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WAY IN WHICH THE PERCEPTUAL LIFE AND THE CONCEPTUAL LIFE RESPECTIVELY DAWN. For all life order and organisation are necessary. The perceptual life comes gradually and having reached its maximum pursues a level course. Range of interest increases with every new species of animal. Among all the objects in his neighbourhood there are only a definite number to which any given animal subject responds in a definite manner, he goes after the things he wants to have, either things to eat or the sexual mate, or he flees from or shows fight towards those which he fears. In regard to all other objects he is either curious or leaves them severely alone. To take a favourite perceptual subject of mine, a drake ; this bird spends much of his time poking his bill into the grass and soil searching for various kinds of small living things which he is intent on finding and eating ; he makes his way to the water and has a swim ; at other times he takes a nap and lives an ordered life with the ladies of his little harem. The drake’s life is mapped out for him practically entirely by instinct. Every perceptual subject is a creature of instinct and likes or dislikes the same things that his ancestors of the same species did before him. Such objects are called “ specific objects ” of instinct. The drake takes no notice of noises that go on beyond his field wall, shouting tennis players or the screeching lawn mower, but he cocks his head and shows signs of being disturbed if a hawk or heron is flying far far up above, looking to me like a dim speck in the sky.

Like the dawn in the temperate zones the daylight of perceptual consciousness unfolds progressively.

Probably the conceptual life begins suddenly. The human baby for a long time after birth is unable to make his arms and legs work together properly and he used to be made even more helpless than he need have been by the custom of “swaddling.” The unfortunate babies were tied up like little bundles bound round and round with cloth ! The baby subject sees and hears everything but cannot react by moving away if he is frightened. He must drink in all the fear and excitement for he cannot work it off. This may or may not wake the conceptual life but it will certainly prepare the mind for it for we see how disturbed our dogs and cats sometimes become if anything unusual happens, if there is singing or pianoforte playing, if the young people pretend to fight or if anyone dresses up. What doubtless does awaken the conceptual life is when someone on whom he is dependent is angry with the baby, as the mother is bound to be in course of time when she thinks he is careless or naughty and ought to know better. Perhaps we are justified in concluding that in these circumstances, the baby from being a perceptual subject, often excited by the emotional life around him, suddenly becomes a conceptual subject. The apparatus of self-consciousness has been “ sparked.” In his weakness and littleness he finds himself confronted by others of immensely superior power and size, and we may suppose that he feels a gripping terror at the revelation.¹

Like dawn in the tropics the conceptual life awakens with dramatic suddenness.

Is the Creation Story in Genesis I the story of the dawning of the conceptual life ? First chaos is described—formless and void—expressed in the Hebrew by two most unusual words which sound something like tohu and bohu. Then God says “ Let there be light.”

6. INCEPTION OF THE SELF-CONSCIOUS LIFE SEES THE EMERGENCE OF TWO MAJOR DETERMINANTS, LIFE-HUNGER AND FEAR ; ANXIETY RESULTS. The conceptual or self-conscious life, unlike the perceptual consciousness of the animal, awakens more or less suddenly. Probably, as already said, it is in part prepared for by emotional crises in the baby’s little world, but the immediate stimulus, it cannot be doubted, is the exhibition of parental (generally the mother’s) disapproval. This must be an experience of momentous import and must leave behind it an indelible impression, comparable to that left on a sensitised photographic surface exposed to a sudden flash of light from a rapidly burning magnesium wire. The impression left on the baby’s mind is two-fold consisting of (1) SELF REALISATION,—consciousness of his own existence—coupled with the desire to remain at the blissful animal level of mere consciousness for ever and ever : a veritable LIFE-HUNGER, and (2) FEAR of the awesome Not-I which has suddenly emerged and confronted him.

LIFE-HUNGER and FEAR, so blended, give what is known as anxiety, anxiety being characteristic of the subject’s feeling when he is at the moment safe but is threatened by danger from which there is little hope of escaping. In proportion as there is promise of finding a way of escape the anxiety is lessened. Anxiety attaches to situations about which we say : “if only...... such and such a thing would happen ! ”

Probably some time elapses before the baby becomes continuously self-conscious. He lapses, let us suppose, into the little animal again, until a point of development is reached when nothing short of the deep sleep state relieves him from the immediate onus of self-consciousness.

After this sparking of the apparatus of self-consciousness the infant probably goes through a period of initiation into its use. Professor McDougall has remarked on the need for exhibitions of superior physical force in the training of a child, and it is just these at an extremely early period which call out on the one hand the conscious thirst for life and for one’s own way, and at the same time drive in the consciousness of the necessity, which the helpless little subject is under, of submission to or acquiescence in the will of the stronger person.

Experience of early childhood has so little relation to actual facts that later it becomes mythical and remote ; it is charged strongly with emotion, with anxiety. As such it is forgotten—covered by the Amnesia to use Professor Freud’s term. No one remembers his experience as a continuous whole before about three years of age, and few can go back so far in spite of the freshness and plasticity of the organic structures at the time. The material belonging to this period, repressed from memory, is the source of nuclear or naked anxiety.

Out of the darkness of the period covered by the Amnesia a few little situations loom. They stand out like dream pictures, the subject sees himself in a particular setting but fails to find any explanation of the circumstances.

The writer for instance has such a memory picture of being carried in someone’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Content
• Chapter I: General Facts About Self-Consciousness and The Self-Conscious Subject
• Chapter II: Symbolism
• Chapter III: The Life Force At The Perceptual And Conceptual Levels
• Chapter IV: The Mechanisms of Self-Consciousness Are The Dream Mechanisms Which Have Been Described by Professor Freud
• Chapter V: The Anxiety Life
• Chapter VI: The Perfecting Life
• Chapter VII: The Conceptual Subject. His Outlook and His Rights
• Appendices
• Glossarial Indices