Chapter XI: The Memory of Feelings (2)

I maintain, on the contrary, that we have here only two different stages of the same thing; the first ineffectual and abortive, the second complete; and the subject which now occupies us must either have been in a very confused state, or very negligently treated, for a clear mind like that of W. James not to have seen that affective memories, like others, aim at becoming actual states of feeling. We ought not, however, to forget the indisputable fact that our consciousness only exists in the present. For a recollection, however distant, to exist, as far as I am concerned, it must re-enter the narrow area of _present_ consciousness; otherwise it is buried in the depths of the unconscious and equivalent to the non-existent. We have thus (not to speak of the present-future) a present-present and a present-past—viz., that of memory; and this is only distinguished from the other by certain additional marks which it is needless to enumerate, but which consist principally in its appearing like an initial state, though, in general, less intense. Now these indispensable conditions of memory are the same for both intellectual and emotional states. If, with my eyes shut, I can call up the vision of St. Peter’s at Rome (if I were an architect, with a good visual memory, I should see it in all its details), my impression is an _actual_ one, and only becomes a memory by the addition of secondary characteristics, such as repetition and a lower degree of intensity. The two cases are similar; in both, the revived impression, according to the law formulated by Dugald Stewart and Taine, is accompanied by a momentary belief which places it in the position of an actual reality. But the recollection of a feeling, it will be said, has this special property, that it is associated with organic and physiological states which make of it a real emotion. I reply that it _must_ be so, for an emotion which does not vibrate through the whole body is nothing but a purely intellectual state. To expect that we should actually revive a state of feeling without reviving also its organic conditions, is to expect the impossible, to state the problem in contradictory terms. We should, in that case, simply have its substitute, its abstraction, _i.e._, the false affective memory which is a variety of intellectual memory; the emotion will be _re_cognised, not _re_vived.

Finally, the ideal of every recollection is that, while keeping its character of being already experienced, it should be adequate in such measure as was possible for the original impression. The revival of impressions is an internal operation, whose extreme form is hallucination. For the two forms of memory, intellectual and emotional, the ideal is the same, only each has its special mechanism for realising it.

There are all possible degrees of transition from the simple bald representation of the words pleasure or pain, love or fear, to the acute, fully and entirely felt representation of these states. In a crowd of people taken at random, one might, with the help of adequate information, determine all the intermediate degrees, from the abstract to the concrete. Still more, these may be met with in the same individual. When the poet says that “Sadness departs upon the wings of Time,” his meaning, in psychological language, is that the affective memory is gradually transformed into an intellectual memory. We know that certain artists, in order to get rid of the memory of a sorrow or a passion, have fixed it in a work of art. This was Goethe’s method; every one knows the story of _Werther_, to quote but one example. One of my correspondents employs the same procedure with success; _i.e._, in the case we are dealing with, the question is how to transfer emotion to the region of the imagination, and, consequently, intellectualise it.

I have said that in certain persons the revival of emotional states seems to be complete. Is it so in fact? I believe that it is impossible to give a precise answer to this question; and here we have a point where the emotional memory differs from the intellectual memory.

A given recollection is considered accurate; but in the majority of cases this is only an illusion. Nearly always, in revived impressions, there are deductions and losses, sometimes additions; sometimes they include _plus_, sometimes _minus_ factors. At any rate, in the intellectual order, there are certain cases where one can say that the recollection is perfect, without the least gap or error; and this affirmation is legitimate because verifiable. It is quite sufficient to compare the copy with the original. If I enter a hall of the Alhambra with my eyes closed, I can ascertain whether the inner vision which I have retained from a former visit is adequate to the reality. I can check my recollection of a passage of music by the actual hearing of the same. The painter mentioned by Wigan who executed his portraits from memory, Mozart reconstructing Allegri’s _Miserere_, are the classic examples of perfect cases where the impression is revived with irreproachable exactitude.

But in the region of the feelings this comparison is impossible, because two subjective states, of which one is the original and one the copy, cannot co-exist in the same individual, and because the primary impression cannot be objectivised. I see but one way of getting over the difficulty so as to arrive at an approximately correct answer. This would consist in comparing the revived emotional state with a written document dating from the moment of the first impression; and even this impression is open to doubt. J. J. Rousseau, speaking of the enthusiasm aroused by the love-letters of the _Nouvelle Héloïse_, tells us that they were inspired by his own love for Madame d’Houdetot, and adds, “What would they have said could they have read the originals!” It is possible that Rousseau was more or less mistaken; but this is a comparison of the kind I am suggesting. A correspondent, well equipped for psychological observations, and accustomed to note down the day’s impressions, had promised me to attempt such a comparison between the actual recollection and the written document; but various causes have prevented the accomplishment of this purpose. One might possibly, without much trouble, chance to recover a letter written under the impression of the moment, and compare it with the present emotional recollection which, rightly or wrongly, we consider most correct. For my part, I am inclined to doubt whether, in the case of feelings, there is ever a complete correspondence between the original and the copy; but this is merely a hypothetical view.

It still remains to say a few words on forgetfulness in the region of the emotions. Affective amnesia is found in two forms—one pathological, the other normal.

I pass over in silence the morbid manifestations, whose study would be both extensive and curious, but would lead me away from my principal aim, which is a practical one. We find numerous examples of the loss of altruistic, moral, or religious feelings, of partial or total indifference to the past, of complete insensibility—the _Gemütslosigkeit_ of the German alienists.

I confine myself to the consideration of affective amnesia under its simplest and most widely-known form. Nothing is more frequently met with. In the first place, the single fact that most psychologists either neglect or deny the phenomenon of emotional memory, constitutes a presumption that its function is not a very obvious one. Moreover, that emotional memory which I have designated the false or abstract one, may, without prejudice, be considered as a mitigated form of forgetfulness. Finally, eliminating the non-emotional temperaments as irrelevant to our subject, we may find, even among the emotional, many who feel acutely, but do not retain their emotions. Every one knows people whose whole nature is shaken by sorrow, joy, love, indignation; they seem for a long time as if possessed; a few weeks later, not a trace remains. Emotions glide off their minds as a thunder-shower does off the roofs. Now this affective amnesia has a great influence on conduct.

Here, in fact, are two general truths derived from experience, and in my opinion incontestable:—

On the one hand, pleasant and painful sensations are the most powerful, if not the only motive forces of human activity.

On the other, there are people in whom emotions are revived strongly, weakly, or not at all.

The conclusion is that the portion of individual experience resulting from the pleasures and pains experienced, will show itself, as to its efficacy, strongly, feebly, or not at all, according to the individual. The prodigal who has ruined himself and is restored to opulence by an unexpected chance, if he has not preserved a lively recollection of his privations, will begin his extravagant career over again; if his painful recollections are of a stable character, they will act on his natural tendencies as a restraining or inhibitory force. The drunkard and the glutton will not repeat their excesses as long as the impression of the after-effects remains vivid. The educator, as every one knows, has no hold over a child on whom the recollection of rewards and punishments has no effect. I have already mentioned the state of mind which frequently succeeds dangerous confinements; this, again, is a case of affective amnesia. The absence of sympathy, in many men, is only an incapacity for reviving the recollection of the ills they have suffered themselves, and consequently for feeling them in others. These are well-known facts, of which it is needless to lengthen the list; but however well known they may be, their psychological reason is, in my opinion, not always apprehended, because the importance of the emotional memory has not been recognised.

Affective amnesia, therefore, plays a much more important part in human life than we are apt to think. It often lets us into the secret of strange modes of action, though I would not assert that it _alone_ is sufficient to explain these everywhere and always.

V.

The study just made seems to me to lead to the following conclusions:—

1. There exists an AFFECTIVE TYPE as clear and well-defined as the visual, the auditory, and the motor types. It consists in the easy, complete, and preponderant revival of affective impressions.

I have simply applied to an almost unexplored region of memory the methods of research inaugurated for objective sensations by Taine and Galton, continued by many others, and successful in their hands. It will, perhaps, be objected that the complete emotional type is rarely found; but neither is it certain that the visual, auditory, and motor types are of very frequent occurrence in a pure state. This, however, is of little consequence, the essential point being to determine its existence. Those who belong to this type will easily recognise it. I foresee that those whose memories are of the opposite type will refuse to admit it; but the members of the Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences,—being for the most part possessed of non-visual memories,—when questioned by Galton, failed to understand his queries, and would probably have rejected his conclusions. Many men have an incurable tendency to wish that every one were constituted like themselves, and to refuse to admit the existence of any departures from their type. Yet in psychology, even more than elsewhere, we must be distrustful of too extensive generalisations.

2. There exists not only a general emotional type; it admits of varieties, and it is even probable that _partial_ types are the most frequent. Here I note a resemblance between my researches and those made with regard to impressions of objective origin. It is known that some persons have an excellent memory for faces, figures, concrete objects, but not for colours or visual signs, such as printing and writing. Others have an excellent memory for languages but none for music, or inversely. Moreover, have not numerous pathological phenomena demonstrated the fact that, in a determinate category of images, a whole group may disappear, without appreciable injury to the rest?

I have not at present a sufficient supply of documents to enter on the study of the varieties of the affective type; but it is certain that they exist; that, for some, a clear and frequent revival only takes place in the case of pleasurable impressions; in others, of gloomy or of erotic images. I have obtained conclusive affirmative answers on this point, but will only transcribe a case which deals with fear.

Case 7. "I am not what would be called a general emotional type,
but I have a special emotional memory—that of fear, which in me is
very pronounced.... I have had in my life, like every one else,
many joyful moments; I will frankly say that, when I remember
those incidents in my life which have caused me great joy, I feel
no joy whatever. Besides, it is very difficult to recall the
moments in which I felt joyful, or even the incidents which
produced my joy—probably because the representative memory has not
been reinforced by the emotional memory. I do not know how this
may be, and do not attempt to draw any inferences from my own
case. I am only speaking of myself.

"I have tried to recall one of the moments in my life when I had
the acutest sense of joy—it was in April 1888. [Here follows a
long description of honours obtained by the author at the age of
twenty, and the applause—unexpected at his age—of a numerous
public assembly.] I have a clear and very accurate recollection of
the incidents I have just been describing; I can remember the
cause to which, rightly or wrongly, I attributed my success; I
could repeat nearly every word I said on that occasion; I could
remember (though not so easily) the hall and the faces of the
audience; but I find, to-day, no joy whatever in thinking of all
this.

"As regards my capacity for reviving sad recollections the same
may be said as in the case of joyfulness.

"To return to fear. I have two very conclusive examples of special
emotional memory. When a boarder at the S—— _lycée_ at Bucharest,
I dreaded all the staff of the institution on account of a
punishment they were in the habit of inflicting on me—that of
confinement to the schoolroom on holidays. I remember having such
a fear of this imprisonment that, once I had left the building, it
was with great difficulty I could bring myself to pass the
gateway, for fear of being stopped. In later years, having
finished my studies, and kept up friendly relations with all
persons concerned, I used sometimes to return on a visit to the
Lycée, but never without feeling a kind of terrified shudder on my
entrance.

"More than this: having remained three years at Paris, without
visiting my own country, I returned to Bucharest, and went to see
a new director, with whom I was on friendly terms. Even then, when
approaching the door of the institution, I felt a sort of
uneasiness which was nothing else but my old dread in an
attenuated form.

"In the first year of my stay at Paris I entered my name for the
more advanced lectures of the Lycée L——. I only attended them for
a week. In the class-room I was conscious of an uneasy feeling; I
feared something without knowing what it was; I felt a horror of
all the staff, though they were full of consideration for me, and
at my age (twenty-two) I was no longer on the footing of a
schoolboy. What could I have been afraid of? for I might have left
whenever I wished it. Though accustomed to work for many hours
together in libraries, I could do nothing in this class-room. I
believe this state to have been a reminiscence of my old fear—that
of the Bucharest _lycée_.... Long afterwards, when a student
attending the lectures of the Faculté de Droit, I had every day to
pass the Lycée L——. I would hurry past it as quickly as I could,
feeling the same dread as at the time when I used to pass the
gateway of the Bucharest _lycée_.

“I have a good motor, no visual, and a very slight auditory
memory.”

It might be said that in this case the revival is often artificially produced, and associated with special circumstances; but it seemed to me of too clear and definite a character to be omitted.

I need not point out that these individual differences in the revivability of emotional states certainly play a great part in the constitution of different types of character. Moreover, the existence of variations of the emotional type cuts short the question, acrimoniously debated by some writers, whether pains can be more easily remembered than pleasures. Optimists and pessimists have fought fiercely over this phantasmal problem; but it is a vain and factitious question so long as we suppose that it admits of but one solution. There is not, and cannot be, a general answer.

Certain individuals revive joyful images with astonishing facility; sad memories, when they arise, are immediately and easily trodden down. I know an inveterate optimist, successful in all his undertakings, who has much difficulty in picturing to himself the few reverses that he has experienced. “I remember joys much more easily than painful states” is an answer I frequently meet with in my notes.

On the other hand, there are many who say, “I remember sorrows much more easily than pleasurable states.” In the course of my inquiries I have found that the latter are the most numerous; but I do not see my way to draw any conclusion from this fact. One says, “I find it much easier to revive unpleasant feelings, whence my tendency to pessimism. Joyous impressions are evanescent. A painful recollection makes me sad at a joyful moment; a joyful recollection does not cheer me at a sad one.”

These are straightforward cases. Outside them the question above stated can only be solved at haphazard, and by a merely mental view.

3. Revivability depends on cerebral and internal conditions (whatever these may be, known or unknown) rather than on the primary impression itself. To feel emotions acutely and revive them acutely are two widely different operations; one does not imply the other. We have seen that, in many cases, revivability even seems to be in inverse ratio to the intensity of the initial phenomenon. This brings us back to the question of characters. It does not matter whether the impression is a vivid one; what is wanted is that it should be fixed. Often it is heightened by a process of latent incubation depending on individual temperament. Chateaubriand, speaking of a gamekeeper to whom he was much attached, and who was killed by a poacher, says, “My imagination (at sixteen) pictured to me Raulx holding his entrails in his hands, and dragging himself to the hut where he died. I conceived the idea of revenge; I wished to fight the murderer. In this respect I am singularly constituted; at the moment of a blow I scarcely feel it, but it engraves itself on my memory; _the recollection, instead of being weakened, grows stronger with time_; it sleeps in my heart for years together, then the most trivial circumstance awakens it with renewed force, and my wound becomes more painful than on the first day.”[107] Here we have another analogy with what takes place in the order of objective impressions. It is not sufficient to have good eyes in order to have a good visual memory, and I know short-sighted persons whose inner vision is excellent.[108]

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Footnote 107:

_Mémoires_, vol. i. p. 77. The italics are not in the original.

Footnote 108:

This has recently been experimentally demonstrated; the
observations made by Dr. Toulouse (with the assistance of
specialists) on M. Zola may be specially mentioned. In this case
the coincidence of a somewhat low degree of sensory acuteness with
a very high degree of delicacy and precision in revived sensory
impression was found not only in the case of vision, but
especially in that of smell. (Toulouse, _Emile Zola: Enquête
Médico-psychologique_, 1896, pp. 164, 173, 179, 206.)—ED.

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I may terminate this inquiry, which is a sketch rather than a study of the subject, by reminding the reader that the facts ascertained for the other, the intellectual part of memory, have not been the work of one man or of one day.[109]

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Footnote 109:

This chapter was first published in the _Revue Philosophique_ for
October 1894. It called forth some new communications, two only of
which have been added to the original text. The affirmation of a
type of affective memory has, as I expected, provoked both
criticism and denial. My principal opponent, Prof. Titchener, has
published on this subject a somewhat extensive article in the
_Philosophical Review_ (November 1895), in which he reproaches me
with not having cited a single case of pure emotional memory—i.e.,
memory from which all sensory and ideational elements are absent,
and where there is a revival of feeling _as such_. An example of
this kind, which should be quite conclusive, seems to me almost
impossible to produce. A pleasure, a pain, an emotion, are always
associated with a sensation, a representation, or an act; revival
necessarily bringing back the intellectual state which forms part
of the complexus and supports it. But the real question is
elsewhere: Is revival, in certain persons at least, a dry record,
or a _felt_ state? In this last case—and it does occur—there is
the recollection of the emotional state as such.

There is another objection: Can it be said that an emotion is the
reproduction of an antecedent emotion, and not a new emotion? The
reproduction of an emotion can itself be nothing other than an
emotion, but it bears the marks of repetition. Without returning
to what has been said above, I remark that those contemporary
psychologists, who study with admirable patience the mechanism of
memory, neglect that of its most general conditions. Now the chief
of these is that every recollection must be a _reversion_, by
virtue of which, the past once more becoming a present, we live at
present in the past. The recollection of an emotion as such does
not escape the action of this law; it must become actual once
more—must _be_ a real emotion, whether acute or obtuse.

Taking account of the criticisms, and of the new material supplied
to me, I may once again sum up my inquiry thus—

1. The emotional memory is _nil_ in the majority of people.

2. In others there is a half intellectual, half emotional memory,
_i.e._, the emotional elements are only revived partially and with
difficulty, by the help of the intellectual states associated with
them.

3. Others, and these the least numerous, have a true—_i.e._,
complete—emotional memory; the intellectual element being only a
means of revival which is rapidly effaced.

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