Applied Psychology for Nurses | Page 6

the re-enacting of some past
sensation or experience of your own, fantastically arrayed. Some day
you stop short in your hurried walk with a feeling of compulsion which
you cannot resist. You know no reason for it, but some association with
this particular spot, or some vague resemblance, haunts you. You
cannot "place" it. One day you hit the tennis-ball at a little different
angle than you planned because a queer thought came unbidden and
directed your attention aside. Again, under terrific stress, with sick
body and aching nerves, you go on and do your stint almost
mechanically. You do not know where the strength or the skill is
derived. But your unconscious or subconscious--as you will--has
asserted itself, has usurped the place of the sick conscious, and enabled
you automatically to go on. For we react to the storehouse of the
unconscious even as we do to the conscious.
Remember that the unconscious is simply the latent conscious--what
once was conscious and may be again, but is now buried out of sight.
The mind may be likened to a great sea upon which there are visible a
few islands. The islands represent the conscious thoughts--that
consciousness we use to calculate, to map out our plans, to form our
judgments. This is the mind that for centuries was accepted as all the
mind. But we know that the islands are merely the tops of huge
mountain-ranges formed by the floor of the sea in mighty, permanent
upheaval; that as this sea-floor rises high above its customary level and
thrusts its bulk above the waters into the atmosphere, is the island

possible.
Just so there can be no consciousness except as that which is already in
the mind--the vast subconscious material of all experience--rises into
view and relates itself through the senses to an outside world. We speak
very glibly of motion, of force, of power. We say "The car is moving
now." But how do we know? Away back there in our babyhood there
were some things that always remained in the same place, while others
changed position. The changing gave our baby minds a queer sensation;
it made a definite impression; and sometimes we heard people say
"move," when that impression came. Finally, we call the feeling of that
change "move," or "movement," or "motion." The word thereafter
always brings to our minds a picture of a change from one place to
another. The process--the slow comprehending of the baby mind--was
buried in forgetfulness even at the time. But had not the subconscious
been imprinted with the incident and all its succeeding associations,
that particular phenomenon we could not name today. It would be an
entirely unique experience. So our recognition of the impression is
merely the rising into consciousness of the subconscious material in
response to a stimulus from the outside world which appeals through
the sense of sight. We can get no response whatever except as the
stimulus asking our attention is related by "like" or "not like"
something already experienced; that is, it must bear some relation to the
known--and perhaps forgotten--just as the island cannot be, except as,
from far down below, the sea-floor leaves its bed and raises itself
through the deeps. The visible island is but a symbol of the submarine
mountain. The present mental impression is but proof of a great bulk of
past experiences.
And so we might carry on the figure and compare the birth of
consciousness to the instant of appearance of the mountain top above
the water's surface. It is not a new bit of land. It is only emerging into a
new world.
"But," you ask, "do you mean to assert that the baby's mind is a
finished product at birth; that coming into life is simply the last stage of
its growth? How unconvincing your theory is."

No, we only now have the soil for consciousness. The island and the
submarine mountain are different things. The sea-floor is transformed
when it enters into the new element. An entirely different vegetation
takes place on this visible island than took place on the floor of the sea
before it emerged. But the only new elements added to the hitherto
submerged land come from the new atmosphere, and the sea-floor
immediately begins to become a very different thing. Nevertheless,
what it is as an island is now, and forever will be due, primarily, to its
structure as a submarine mountain. In the new atmosphere the soil is
changed, new chemical elements enter in, seeds are brought to it by the
four winds--and it is changed. But it is still the sea-floor transformed.
Just so the baby brain, complete in parts and mechanism at birth, is a
different brain with every day of growth in its new environment, with
every contact with