ABSTRACT
The process of psychoanalysis shows that this is so, that the content of the “unconscious” is made up of tendencies which have undergone repression. There is one phenomenon which can be experimentally produced under appropriate conditions, and which demonstrates very simply and clearly that conscious behaviour can issue from influences which are themselves quite unconscious, viz. the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion. The more superficial resistances are first overcome, the process being gradually carried deeper and deeper, until it is found that tendencies which were previously quite unconscious to the subject are now spontaneously brought to light. The Puritan has built up an excessive horror of forbidden delights as a barrier against the persistent unconscious seeking for such pleasures. The altruism of the conscious level springs straight from such “identification” in the unconscious, and it is through this mechanism that an emotional reconciliation of the claims of self and society is effected.
