Chapter IX: Memory in Dreams (2)

If we realise these characteristics of paramnesia we can scarcely fail to conclude that we are concerned here with illusions which, while they fall within the sphere of memory, are largely conditioned by the whole psychic condition. As in dreams, it is inattention, failure of apperception, defective association of the mental contents, which make the paramnesia possible. Paramnesia is, as Fouillée has said, a kind of diplopia or seeing double in the mental field. 'I have the impression,' says one of the writers on this subject who himself experiences the sensation, 'that the present reality has a _double_.' Actual double vision is due to the failure of that muscular co-ordination which, as Ribot and others have insisted, is of the very essence of attention. This wider psychic basis on which paramnesia rests has of late been recognised by several psychologists. Thus Léon-Kindberg states that in paramnesia there is an absence of mental attention, of the effort of synthesis necessary to grasp an actual occurrence, which is, therefore, perceived with the same facility as a memory not requiring synthesis, with the resulting illusion that it is a memory.[236] Ballet, again, regards paramnesia as a transitory or permanent psychasthenic state, due to dissociation.[237] Dugas, also, who has repeatedly returned to this subject during many years, in his latest contributions attaches primary importance to this broader factor of paramnesia. In analysing memory, he says, there is an element which, though often overlooked, is capital: the recognition of a state of consciousness not merely as passed, but as bound up with our own personal past; when that synthetic function ceases to be accomplished, or is only accomplished defectively, then memory is lacking or perverted. Nervous weakness, he proceeds, produces failure of attention, the inhibitory power of attention being no longer exerted, and the psychic elements fall back to anarchy. Now many psychic states, such as sensations, recollections, and images, differ from each other less by their substance than by the way in which the mind takes hold of and apprehends them. The mind seizes a sensation with a stronger grasp than a recollection, and a recollection with a stronger grasp than an image. When attention is relaxed the line of demarcation between these psychic states tends to be effaced; the sensation becomes vague and floating like the recollection and the image, while the recollection and the image, on the contrary, become objective and acquire something of the brilliance and relief of the sensation. The very same cause--enfeeblement of attention--thus produces opposite effects, on the one side raising the tone, on the other lowering it, so that states of mind which are ordinarily distinct tend to be approximated and confused, as we may observe in the hypnagogic condition.[238]

Although Dugas makes no reference to Janet, it is not difficult to see that he has assimilated some of the views of that distinguished investigator of psychic mysteries. Janet, as we know, in various morbid psychic conditions, attaches great explanatory force to the individual's loss of hold, through psychic weakness, of his own personality, and to the diminished sense of reality and even depersonalisation thence ensuing. It so happens that Janet himself has set forth a theory of pseudo-reminiscence which is characteristic of his own attitude, and also harmonises with the wider outlook which now marks the attempts to explain these perversions of memory. Janet declares that pseudo-reminiscence is a negative phenomenon and belongs to a group in which various other feelings of diminished sense of reality belong. These people all say in effect: 'It seems to me that these things are not real; it seems to me that these events are not actual or present.' The essence of this form of paramnesia is thus more a negation of the present than an affirmation of the past. 'The function of adaptation to the present moment,' Janet remarks, 'is the most complicated and the most recent of all. The function of the real is the most elevated and the most difficult of all cerebral functions.' Under various influences there is a diminution of nervous and psychic tension, and such suppression of the high tension of the mind leaves only the lower functions subsisting. When that fall of tension is rapid, there may be a crisis of which pseudo-reminiscence is one of the symptoms.[239] Janet would thus place pseudo-reminiscence among the manifestations of psychasthenia, though he leaves untouched the difficult question of its precise mechanism.

The most comprehensive attempt to explain the mystery of paramnesia in recent years is certainly that made in an elaborately eclectic study by one of the most distinguished of living French thinkers, Professor Bergson.[240] He first casts a glance over what he considers the two main groups of explanations of this puzzling phenomenon: (1) those, advocated by Ribot, Fouillée, Lalande, Arnaud, Piéron, Myers, etc., which involve the more or less simultaneous existence in consciousness of two images, of which one is the reproduction of the other; (2) those advocated by Janet, Heymans, Léon-Kindberg, Dromard and Albès, etc., which insist on the lower mental tone, the diminished attention, the lack of synthetising power, which mark the condition in which paramnesia occurs. Bergson is quite ready to accept the principles of both these groups of explanations, and to combine them. But, he argues, to understand the phenomenon adequately, we must go deeper; we must analyse the normal mechanism of memory. And he finds, if we do this, that not merely the moment of a paramnesic illusion, but every moment of our life, offers two aspects, actual and virtual, perception on one side, and memory on the other. The moment itself, indeed, consists of such a scission, for it is always moving, always a fleeting boundary between the immediate past and the immediate future, and would be a mere abstraction if it were not 'precisely the mobile mirror which ceaselessly reflects perception in recollection.' When the matter is thus regarded a recollection is seen to be, in reality, not something which has been, but something which is, proceeding _pari passu_ with the perception it reproduces. It is a recollection of the moment taking place at that moment. Belonging to the past as regards its form, it belongs to the present as regards its matter. It is recollection of the present. Now this is exactly the state in which the paramnesic person consciously finds himself, and the only problem before us, therefore, is to ascertain why every one at every moment is not conscious of the same experience. Bergson replies that nothing is more useless for present action than the recollection of the present. It has nothing to tell us; we hold the real object, and to give up that for its recollection would be to sacrifice the substance to the shadow. Therefore we obstinately and persistently turn away from the recollection of the present. It emerges consciously only under the influence of some abnormal or pathological disturbance of attention. Paramnesia is an anomaly of this kind, and it is due to a temporary enfeeblement of the general attention to life, a momentary arrest of the forward movement of consciousness. 'False recognition,' Bergson concludes, 'may thus be regarded as the most inoffensive form of inattention to life. It seems to result from the combined play of perception and memory given up to their own energy. It would take place at every moment if it were not that will, ceaselessly directed towards action, prevents the present from folding in on itself by pushing it indefinitely into the future.'

So far as my own explanation is concerned, it will be seen that I still place weight on the general condition of temporary or chronic nervous fatigue as the soil on which paramnesia arises--a belief now accepted by most psychologists[241]--and that I think we must search for the clue to the mechanism of the illusion in those dreaming and hypnagogic states in which it most often occurs. As regards a definite explanation of the mechanism we must, in the face of so many ingenious and complicated theories, perhaps still await more general agreement.[242] What I have suggested, and am still inclined to maintain, is that the psychic enfeeblement, temporary or chronic, which is the general preliminary condition of paramnesia, whether or not there is any subjective sensation of increased power, may account for the paramnesia by bringing an externally aroused perception down to a lower and fainter stage on which it is on a level with an internally aroused perception--a memory. Just as in hypnagogic paramnesia the vivid and life-like dream, or internal impression, is raised to the class of memories, and becomes the shadow of a real experience, so in waking paramnesia the external impression is lowered to the same class. Perception is alike dulled in each case, and the immediate experience follows the line of least resistance--this time too carelessly or too prematurely--to join the great bulk of our experiences.

We thus realise how it is that that doubling of experience occurs. The mind has for the moment become flaccid and enfeebled; its loosened texture has, as it were, abnormally enlarged the meshes in which sensations are caught and sifted, so that they run through too easily. In other words, they are not properly _apperceived_. To use a crude simile, it is as though we poured water into a sieve. The impressions of the world which are actual sensations as they strike the relaxed psychic meshwork are instantaneously passed through to become memories, and we see them in both forms at the same moment, and are unable to distinguish one from the other.

In sleep, and in the hypnagogic state, as in hypnosis, we accept a suggestion, with or without a struggle. In the waking paramnesic state we seem to find, in a slighter stage of a like condition, _the same process in a reversed form_. Instead of accepting a representation as an actual present fact, we accept the actual present fact as merely a representation. The centres of perception are in such a state of exhaustion and disorder that they receive an actual external sensation in the feebler shape of a representation. The actual fact becomes merely a suggestion of far distant things. It reaches consciousness in the enfeebled shape of an old memory--

'... like to something I remember
A great while since, a long, long time ago.'

Paramnesia is thus an internal hallucination, a reversed hallucination, it is true, but while so reversed, the stream of consciousness is still following the line of least resistance.

It is along some such lines as these, it seems to me, that we may best attempt to explain the phenomena of paramnesia, phenomena which are of no little interest since, in earlier stages of culture, they may well have had a real influence on belief, suggesting to primitive man that he had somehow had wider experiences than he knew of, and that, as Wordsworth put it, he trailed clouds of glory behind him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 192: It is as well to bear in mind that this dream occurred when Maury was a student, long before he began to study dreaming, and (as Egger has pointed out) was probably not written down until thirteen years later. On these grounds alone it is not entitled to serious consideration.]

[Footnote 193: As Sir Samuel Wilks once remarked ('On the Nature of Dreams,' _Medical Magazine_, Feb. 1894), 'The dreamer merely forms a mental picture, and the _description_ of it he calls his dream.']

[Footnote 194: Egger, 'La Durée apparente des Rêves,' _Revue Philosophique_, Jan. 1895, pp. 41-59; Clavière, 'La Rapidité de la Pensée dans le Rêve,' _ib._ May 1897, p. 509; Piéron, 'La Rapidité des Processes Psychiques,' _ib._ Jan. 1903, pp. 89-95; Foucault, _Le Rêve_, pp. 158 _et seq.;_ Tobolowska, _Etude sur les Illusions du Temps dans les Rêves du Sommeil Normal:_ Thèse de Paris, 1900.]

[Footnote 195: Thus Freud tells (_Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen_, vol. i. part ii. p. 387) of a man who was obsessed by the idea that he should never pass money until he had carefully cleaned it, for fear he might be infecting other people, but was quite unaware that this obsession sprang from remorse due to his own sins of sexual impurity. In such a case there is, of course, not only a crumpling of consciousness, but a definite dislocation and transference of the parts.]

[Footnote 196: We also see here an interesting dissociation of the motor (speech) centre from the visual centre; it is the latter which is in this instance most closely in touch with facts.]

[Footnote 197: The 'selvdrolla' dream, recorded in a previous chapter (p. 43), illustrates the same point with the difference that the crumpled up portion of consciousness never became visible in the dream.]

[Footnote 198: R. L. Stevenson, 'A Chapter on Dreams,' in _Across the Plains_, 1892.]

[Footnote 199: In most cases the missing memory, after making itself felt outside the conscious area, seems to reach that area, not so much by its own spontaneous unconscious movement as by a tentative search for clues. Thus I read one day the words 'the breaking of a goblet by a little black imp,' and immediately became conscious that I was reminded of something similar in recent experience, but could not tell what. I asked myself if it could have been in a dream. In a few moments, however, the memory recurred to me that two hours previously I had noticed a broken vase, and casually wondered how it had become broken. Under such circumstances we are for a time thinking of something, and yet have no conscious knowledge as to what we are thinking of.]

[Footnote 200: Jastrow remarks, somewhat in the same way (_The Subconscious_, p. 93), that 'a letting down of the effort, a focusing of the mind upon a point a little or a good deal to one side of the fixation point, distinctly aids the mental vision.' The process seems, however, to be most effective when it is automatic, for attention cannot easily relax its own tension. A large number of the discoveries and solutions of difficulties effected in dreams are due to this dispersal of attention over a wider field, so enabling the missing relationship to be detected. See, for instance, some cases recorded by Newbold (_Psychological Review_, March 1896, p. 132), as of Dr. Hilprecht, the Assyriologist, who discovered in a dream that two fragments of tablets he had vainly been endeavouring to decipher, were really parts of the same tablet.]

[Footnote 201: Hypermnesia, or excessive memory, is found in waking life in various abnormal conditions. It is not uncommon in men of genius; Macaulay is a well-known example. It scarcely seems, however, an especially favourable condition for keen intellectual power; the mental machine that is clogged with unnecessary and unimportant facts can scarcely fail to work under difficulties. 'Hypermnesia,' remarks Stoddart ('Early Symptoms of Mental Disease,' _British Medical Journal_, 11th May 1907), 'occurs most frequently in certain cases of idiocy, and in some cases of chronic mania. One such patient could enumerate all the occasions when any given medical officer had played tennis since he entered the institution.' Hypermnesia in dreams has been dealt with by Carl du Prel, _Philosophy of Mysticism_, vol. ii. ch. i.]

[Footnote 202: This delay is worth mentioning, for it is conceivable that, in the case of a weak recollection, transference to the subconscious sphere of sleep might involve a temporary disappearance from the conscious waking sphere.]

[Footnote 203: There is a possible interest in the exact length of the interval. Swoboda (_Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus in ihrer psychologischen und biologischen Bedeutung_, 1904) believes that the recurrence of memories tends to obey a law of periodicity, so that, for instance, a melody heard at a concert may recur at a regular interval. I cannot say that I have myself found evidence of such periodicity, though I have made several observations on the recurrence of such memories.]

[Footnote 204: Similarly, Foucault (_Le Rêve_, p. 79) records the dream of a lady concerning a place called Brétigny, near Dijon, though when awake she was not aware there is such a place there. Elsewhere (p. 214) Foucault also gives examples of sensations, not consciously perceived in the waking state, but revived in dream. Beaunis, in his interesting 'Contribution à la Psychologie du Rêve' (_American Journal of Psychology_, July-Oct. 1903) narrates a dream of his own in which a forgotten or unconscious memory revived. Many such dreams could easily be brought together. An often-quoted dream, apparently of this kind (see _e.g._, _British Medical Journal_, 7th April 1900, p. 850), is that of Archbishop Benson who, like his predecessor, Laud, took an interest in his dreams. He dreamed that he was suffering severely in his chest, and that his doctor, on being called in, told him that he had angĭna pectoris. The archbishop in his dream exclaimed with indignation: 'Angǐna, angǐna!' The dream made such an impression on him that he looked the matter up, but only found the ordinary pronunciation, angīna, recorded. A week later he was at Cambridge, dining in hall at Trinity, and seated next to Munro, the Professor of Latin, who happened to ask him about the death of Thomas Arnold. 'He died of angĭna pectoris,' said Benson. Munro smiled grimly and said softly: 'Of angǐna, as we now call it.' There can be no doubt that Benson, who was closely in touch with the academic world, had met with this correction, which is accepted by all modern Latinists, and 'forgotten' it.]

[Footnote 205: Xenoglossia, as well as the tendency to utter gibberish, are both classed under glossolalia. See _e.g._ E. Lombard, 'Phenomènes de Glossolalie,' _Archives de Psychologie_, July 1907.]

[Footnote 206: In the eighteenth century Lord Monboddo (_Ancient Metaphysics_, vol. iii., 1782, p. 217) referred to a Countess of Laval who, during the delirium of illness, spoke the Breton tongue which she had known as a child, but long since forgotten.]

[Footnote 207: In a somewhat similar manner the muscular contractions of the hysterical may disappear during sleep, as may their paralyses and their anaesthesias, as well as their losses of memory. (These phenomena have been especially observed and studied by Raymond and Janet, _Névroses et Idées Fixes_, vol. ii.) Such characteristics of the sleep of the hysterical may well be a manifestation of the same tendency which in the sleep of normal people leads to hypermnesia. In this connection reference may be made to the interesting opposition between attention and memory developed by Dr. Marie de Manacéïne ('De l'antagonisme qui existe entre chaque effort de l'attention et des innervations motrices,' _Atti dell' XI. Congresso Internazionale Medico_, 1894, Rome, vol. ii., 'Fisiologia,' p. 48). Concentrated attention, she argues, paralyses memory, and there is an absolute antagonism between motor innervation, or real movement, which favours memory, and the concentrated effort which favours attention. 'In psychological researches we must always separate the phenomena of memory from the phenomena of attention, for memory is only possible through muscular movement, and attention, on the contrary, is only active through the suppression of movement.' In sleep, it is true, there may be no actual movement, but there is relaxation of muscular tension and freedom of motor ideas. It should be added that not all investigators confirm Manacéïne's conclusion as to the antagonism between the conditions for memory and attention. Thus R. MacDougall ('The Physical Characteristics of Attention,' _Psychological Review_, March 1895), while finding that muscular relaxation accompanies the recall of memories, finds also, though not so markedly and constantly, a similar relaxation accompanying both voluntary and spontaneous attention.]

[Footnote 208: The term 'paramnesia' was devised by Kraepelin, who wrote the first comprehensive study of the subject, though he offered no explanatory theory of it ('Ueber Erinnerungsfälschungen,' _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, Bd. xvii. and xviii.). A very clear and comprehensive account of the subject, up to the date of the article, was given by W. H. Burnham ('Paramnesia,' _American Journal of Psychology_, May 1889). In the following pages, together with much new matter, I have made use of my paper entitled 'A Note on Hypnagogic Paramnesia,' published in _Mind_, vol. vi. No. 22, in 1896.]

[Footnote 209: It has long been recognised by psychologists that paramnesia occurs in dreams. Thus Burnham refers to it as frequent, and Kraepelin mentions that he once dreamed of smoking a cigar for the fourth or fifth time, though he had never smoked in his life.]

[Footnote 210: In alcoholic insanity, for instance, especially when it leads to the occurrence of Korsakoff's syndrome, there is a notable degree of mental weakness with a tendency to form false memories, both in the form of confabulation (or the filling by imagination of lacunae in memory) and pseudo-reminiscence. (See _e.g._ John Turner, 'Alcoholic Insanity,' _Journal of Mental Science_, Jan. 1910, p. 41.)]

[Footnote 211: Dr. Marie de Manacéïne, who has studied the phenomena of the hypnagogic state experimentally in much detail (_Sleep_, pp. 195-220), finds that in its deepest stage it is marked by echolalia, or the tendency to repeat automatically what is said, and in a less deep stage by abnormal suggestibility or the tendency to accept ideas and especially emotions. She considers that the hypnagogic state becomes abnormal when it lasts for more than fifteen seconds. It may last for more than six minutes, and is then of serious import. She shows reason to believe that the hypnagogic state is substantially identical with the hypnotic state, and she regards it as probably due to cerebral anaemia. She finds it especially marked in children under fifteen, the more so if they belong to the working-class, and rather common among adolescent girls and young women, especially if anaemic, but among adults rarer in women than in men, becoming more frequent in both sexes with old age; the phlegmatic are more liable to it than the sanguine or the nervous.]

[Footnote 212: Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 317. Foucault (_Le Rêve_, p. 300), briefly notes that he has often had the illusion of seeming to remember a fact which does not exist, and of recollecting a person he has never seen.]

[Footnote 213: F. W. Colegrove, 'Individual Memories,' _American Journal of Psychology_, Jan. 1899.]

[Footnote 214: See _e.g._ for such cases in sane persons, Hack Tuke, 'Hallucinations,' _Brain_, vol. xi., 1889. A man with chronic systematised delusions writes: 'I am obsessed at nights; that is, I am made the recipient of projected thoughts which become translated into dreams, and on several occasions I have found, just after waking, and while still in a very passive state, that some one was speaking to me in the ear.']

[Footnote 215: Hughlings Jackson (_Practitioner_, May 1874, also _Brain_, July 1888, and _Brain_, 1899, p. 534) applied this term to the intellectual aura preceding an epileptic attack and considered that 'pseudo-reminiscence' itself might indicate a slight epileptic paroxysm in persons who show other symptoms of epilepsy. Gowers also (_Epilepsy_, 2nd ed., p. 133) considers 'dreamy state' to be closely associated with minor attacks of epilepsy; and Crichton-Browne (_Dreamy Mental States_) holds the same view. It should be added that 'dreamy state' by no means necessarily involves pseudo-reminiscence; see _e.g._ S. Taylor, 'A Case of Dreamy State,' _Lancet_, 9th Aug. 1890, p. 276, and W. A. Turner, 'The Problem of Epilepsy,' _British Medical Journal_, 2nd April 1910, p. 805. Leroy found that pseudo-reminiscence is usually rare in association with epilepsy.]

[Footnote 216: 'The feeling of pre-existence,' writes Dr. J. G. Kiernan in a private letter, 'frequently occurs as a consequence of delusions of memory in epilepsy. The case on which George Sand built her story of _Consuelo_ was one reported of an epileptic who during the epileptic states had delusions of living in a distant historic past of which he retained the memory as facts during the normal state. I know of two epileptic theosophists who base their belief in transmigration on the memories of their epileptic period. In my judgment a large part of Swedenborg's visions were instances of delusions of memory.']

[Footnote 217: Professor Grasset ('La Sensation du "Déjà Vu,"' _Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, Nov.-Feb. 1904) considers that a feeling of anguish is the characteristic accompaniment of a true paramnesic manifestation. This statement is too pronounced. There is usually some emotional disturbance, but its degree depends on the temperament of the person experiencing the phenomenon. Sometimes the sensation of pseudo-reminiscence may be accompanied, as a medical man subject to epilepsy (mentioned by Hughlings Jackson) found in his own case, by 'a slight sense of satisfaction,' as in the finding of something that had been sought for.]

[Footnote 218: _Revue Philosophique_, November 1893.]

[Footnote 219: _Revue Philosophique_, January 1894.]

[Footnote 220: Heymans found that students liable to paramnesia tended to possess an aptitude for languages and an inaptitude for mathematics.]

[Footnote 221: Paul Bourget, the novelist, in an interesting letter published by Grasset (_loc. cit._) states that this experience has been habitual with him from as long back as he can remember, occurring in regard to things heard or felt more than to things seen, and accompanied by an emotional trouble similar to that experienced in dreams of dead friends who appear as living, though even in his dreams the dreamer knows that they are dead. Bourget adds that he is of emotional temperament, and that the phenomenon was more pronounced in childhood than it is now.]

[Footnote 222: Paul Lapie, _Revue Philosophique_, March 1894; Charles _Méré, Mercure de France_, July 1903; Sully, Tannery, and Buccola also considered that this is a factor in the explanation of the phenomenon. Freud (_Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben_, 1907, p. 122) brings forward a modification of this theory, and believes that false recognition is a reminiscence of unconscious day-dreams.]

[Footnote 223: For a minute and searching criticism of the theory of the duplex brain, see especially four articles by Bonne in the _Archives de Neurologie_, March-June 1907.]

[Footnote 224: 'Epilepsy' wrote Binns long ago (_Anatomy of Sleep_, 1845, p. 431), 'is a disease which in some of its symptoms strongly resembles abnormal sleep.' The conditions under which a paramnesic manifestation may really replace an epileptic fit are well described by a literary man with hereditary epilepsy whose case has been recorded by Haskovec of Prague (_XIIIe. Congrès International de Médecine: Comptes Rendus_, vol. viii., 'Psychiatrie' p. 125): 'One day at the theatre, under the influence of the heat and perhaps the music, I experienced extreme excitement and fatigue. I thought I was about to have an attack, and resisted with all my strength, and it failed to take place. But I found myself in a strange psychic state. On leaving the theatre I seemed to be dreaming. I saw and heard everything and talked as usual. But everything seemed strange. Nothing seemed to reach directly _me_ or to be a real impression, but merely the automatic reproduction of something learnt, only I felt that I had lived it all before and felt it; at that moment I simply seemed to be observing it.']

[Footnote 225: _Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde_, April 1886. In some forms of insanity the false recognition of a person may become a fixed delusion. This question has been studied by Albès in his Paris thesis, _De I'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance_, 1906.]

[Footnote 226: E. Maitland, _Anna Kingsford_, vol. i. p. 3. Lalande (_Revue Philosophique_, November 1893, p. 487) gives a precisely similar case in a child.]

[Footnote 227: As quoted by Jastrow, _The Subconscious_, p. 248.]

[Footnote 228: Leroy, _Etude sur l'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance_, 1898, with forty-nine new observations. Leroy states, however (in declared opposition to my view), that only a minority of his cases actually mention fatigue.]

[Footnote 229: Heymans, 'Eine Enquête über Depersonnalisation und Fausse Reconnaissance,' _Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane_, November, 1903; also a further paper in the same journal confirming his conclusions, January 1906.]

[Footnote 230: Féré, 'Deuxième Note sur la Fausse Reconnaissance,' _Journal de Neurologie_, 1905.]

[Footnote 231: Dromard et Albès, 'L'Illusion dit de Fausse Reconnaissance,' _Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, May-June 1905.]

[Footnote 232: Dugas, 'Observations sur des Erreurs "Formelles" de la Mémoire,' _Revue Philosophique_, July 1908.]

[Footnote 233: A friend, liable to this form of paramnesia, wrote to me after the publication of my first paper on the subject: 'I find, as you foretold, that it is difficult to recall an experience of this kind in all its details. I feel sure, however, that it is not necessarily allied with an enfeebled or overwrought nervous system. It was commonest with me in my youth, at a time when my life was a pleasant one, and my brain not fagged as now. I still [aged 43] have it occasionally, but not so frequently as twenty years ago.' It may be added that my friend, of Highland family, was a man of keen and emotional nervous temperament, a strenuous mental worker--whence at one time a serious breakdown in health--and had published two volumes of poems in early life. The greater liability to paramnesia in early life, which is generally recognised, is comparable to the special liability of children to hypnagogic visions, both phenomena being probably due to the greater excitability and easier exhaustibility of the youthful brain.]

[Footnote 234: For instance, by Allin, 'Recognition,' _American Journal of Psychology_, January 1896.]

[Footnote 235: The explanation of paramnesia here set forth received on its first publication the approval of Léon Marillier, who considered it 'ingenious and seductive,' and as adequately accounting for the phenomena, provided we bear in mind that the loss of a clear feeling of time is characteristic of hypnagogic and allied states, the perception of each moment being immediately transferred into an ancient memory, and consequently recognised (_L'Année Biologique_, third year, 1897, p. 772). This necessity for taking into account the co-existence of perception and illusory remembrance has largely moulded several of the theories of paramnesia. Thus Jean de Pury (_Archives de Psychologie_, December 1902), while affirming that pseudo-reminiscence is due to an _anteriorisation_ of actual perceptions, regards it as of the nature of a double refraction such as that simultaneously produced on two faces of a prism by the same image; under the influence of conditions he is unable to define, an image appears for the moment on the plane both of the past and of the present, and psychically we see double just as physically we see double when the parallelism of our visual rays is disturbed. Piéron, again, taking up a theory at one time favoured by Dugas, and previously suggested in one form or another by Ribot and Fouillée, assumes the formation of two images: one which, owing to distraction or fatigue, reaches consciousness after having traversed subconsciousness, and so takes on a dream-like and effaced character, and almost simultaneously with this a direct perception which has not thus changed its character; the shock of the conflict between these two produces the pseudo-reminiscence ('Sur l'Interpretation des Faits de Paramnésie,' _Revue Philosophique_, August 1902). Albès, in his Paris thesis, criticises this explanation, pointing out that a sequence of this kind very frequently occurs, but produces no pseudo-reminiscence.]

[Footnote 236: Michel Léon-Kindberg, 'Le Sentiment du Déjà Vu,' _Revue de Psychiatrie_, April 1903, No. 4.]

[Footnote 237: G. Ballet, 'Un Cas de Fausse Reconnaissance,' _Revue Neurologique_, 1904, p. 1221.]

[Footnote 238: Dugas, 'Observations sur des Erreurs "Formelles" de la Mémoire', _Revue Philosophique_, July 1908; _ib._ June 1910. Dugas makes no reference to Janet, nor to my paper on Hypnagogic Paramnesia, but his statement of the matter to some extent combines and harmonises those of the two earlier writers.]

[Footnote 239: P. Janet, 'A Propos du Déjà Vu,' _Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, July-August 1905.]

[Footnote 240: H. Bergson, 'Le Souvenir du Présent et la Fausse Reconnaissance,' _Revue Philosophique_, December 1908. It should be remarked that, except in the attempt to explain why paramnesia is not normally habitual, Bergson's paper is based on the ideas or suggestions of previous writers.]

[Footnote 241: Before the appearance of my paper, as already mentioned, Anjel had emphasised the significance of fatigue in the production of paramnesia (_Archiv für Psychiatrie_, Bd. viii. pp. 57 _et seq._). His theory, indeed (only known to me through brief summaries)--according to which the pseudo-reminiscence is due to the tardy apprehension by the fatigued mind of a sensation which is thus degraded to the level of a reproduced impression--seems practically identical with that which I independently reached in the light of hypnagogic phenomena.]

[Footnote 242: I disregard those theories which invoke histological explanations, as by some peculiar disposition of the neurons. Such explanations are as much outside the psychologist's sphere as the old-fashioned explanations by reference to God and the Devil. A known physiological or pathological process may, indeed, quite properly be recognised by the psychologist; such, for instance, as the disturbance of the heart associated with some dreams. Even minute changes in the brain, when they have been properly determined by the histologist, may be effectively invoked by the psychologist if they seem to supply an exact physical correlative to his own findings. But for the psychologist to go outside his own field, and invent a purely fanciful and arbitrary neuronic scheme to suit a psychic process, explains nothing. It is merely child's play. The stuff that the psychologist works with must be psychical, just as the stuff of the physicist's work must be physical.]