I. The first thing in the environment of the infant which it notes — apart from the ordinary fixed and static stimulations, such as sounds, lights, etc. — are movements. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention are directed to moving things — a swaying cur- tain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that affect him for pleasure or pain. It is movement that brings him his food, movement that regulates the stages of his bath, movement that dresses him comfortably, movement that sings to him and rocks him to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the feature of moment to him, of immediate satisfaction, or redemption from pain, is this: movements come to succour him. Change in his bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his life, for by it the rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; and these changes are accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the one he sees and feels about him. This, I take it, is the first and great 122 Suggestio7i, 122 Suggestio7i, association of the infant with other persons, the earliest reflection in his consciousness of the world of personali- ties about him. At this stage his 'personality-suggestion' is this pam-moveme7it-pleasure psychosis: to this he re- acts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick.^ Many facts tend to bear me out in this position. My child cried when I handled her in the dark, although I imitated the nurse's movements as closely as possible. She tolerated a strange presence as long as it remained quietly in its place: but let it move, and especially let it usurp any of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or mother, and her protests were emphatic. The move- ments tended to bring the strange elements of a new face into the vital association, pain-movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its familiar course: this constituted it a strange 'personality.'
It is astonishing, also, what new accidental elements may become parts of this association. Part of a move- ment, a gesture, a peculiar habit of the nurse, may become sufficient to give assurance of the welcome presence and the pleasures which the presence brings. Two notes of my song in the night stood for my presence to H., and no song from any one else could replace it. A lighted match stopped the crying of E. for food,^ although it was but a signal for a process of food-preparation lasting several minutes: and a simple light never stopped her crying under any other circumstances. So with this first start in the sense of personality we find also reasons for the 1 Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the otlier similar one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by movement that he gets rid of pain and secures pleasure.
'■^ Observations made in her fourteenth week.
differences of different personalities; but this constitutes the next phase.
2. It is evident that the sense of another's presence thus felt in the infant's consciousness rests, as all associa- tions rest, upon regularity or repetition: his sense of expectancy is aroused whenever the chain of events is started. And this is embodied at this stage largely in two indications: the face and the voice.^ But it is easy to see that this is a very meagre sense of personality; a moving machine which brought pain and alleviated suffer- ing would serve as well. So the child begins to learn in addition the fact that persons are in a measure individ- ual in their treatment of him, and hence that personality has elements of uncertainty or hn'egnlarity about it. This growing sense is very clear to one who watches an infant in its second half-year. Sometimes its mother gives a biscuit, but som.etimes she does not. Sometimes the father smiles and tosses the child; sometimes he does not. And the child looks for signs of these varying moods and methods of treatment. Its new pains of dis- appointment arise directly on the basis of that former sense of regular personal presence upon which its expec- tancy went forth.
This new element of the child's * social sense' becomes, at one period of its development, quite the controlling ele- ment. Its action in the presence of the persons of the household becomes hesitating and watchful. Especially does it watch the face for any expressive indications of 1 I have special observations on H.'s responses to changes in facial expres- sion up to the age of twenty months. Her changes of attitude indicated most subtle sensibility to these differences — and normal children all do, I think. Animals show the same remarkable ' projective intuition,' if the expression be allowed.
1 2 4 Suggestion.
1 2 4 Suggestion.
what treatment is to be expected; for facial expression is now the most regular as well as the most delicate indica- tion. It is unable to anticipate the treatment in detail, and it has not of course learned any principles of interpre- tation of the conduct of mother or father lying deeper than the details. It is just here, I think, that imitation arises, as I shall show later,^ and becomes so important in the child's life. This is imitation's opportunity. The infant waits to see how others act, because its own weal and woe depends upon this * how '; and inasmuch as it knows not what to anticipate, its mind is open to every suggestion of movement. Its attention dwells upon de- tails, and by the regular principle of motor reaction which imitation expresses, it acts these suggestions out.
All through the child's second year, and longer, his sense of the persons around him is in this stage. The incessant 'why.'*' with which he greets any action affect- ing him, or any information given him, is witness to the simple puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of persons. Of course he cannot understand * why ': so the simple fact to him is that mama will or won't, he knows not beforehand which.
But in all this period there is germinating in his con- sciousness— and this very uncertainty is an important element of it — the seed of a far-reaching thought. His sense of persons — moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncer- tain but self-directing, persons — is now to become a sense of agency, of power, which is yet not the power of the regular-moving door on its hinges or the rhythmic swing- ing of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of personal actuation, 'projective agency,' is now forming, and it again is potent for still further development of the social con- sciousness. For he begins to grow capricious himself, and to feel that he can be so whenever he likes. Suggestion begins to lose the regularity of its working; or to become negative and * contrary ' in its effects. At this period it is that obedience begins to grow hard, and its mean- ing begins to dawn upon the child as the great reality. It means the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of some one else.
3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among the persons who constantly come into contact with him grows on apace, in spite of the element of irregularity of the general fact of personality. As before he learned the dif- ference between one presence and another, — a difference which was overcome in the discovery that every presence is of irregular value; so now he learns the difference between one cJiaractcr and another — the regularity of personal agency, as opposed to the regularity of mere asso- ciations of movement and to the irregularity of the ap- parently capricious. Every character is more or less regular in its irregularity. It has its tastes and modes of action, its temperament and type of command. This the child learns late in the second year and thereafter. He behaves differently when the father is in the room. He is quick to obey one person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud, pulls his companions, and behaves reprehen- sibly generally, when no adult is present but his nurse, who has no authority to punish him. This stage in his 'knowledge of man' leads to those active differences of conduct on his part which make imitation, and the dis- cipline of obedience, a sword with two edges, one for good 126 Stcggestio7i.
126 Stcggestio7i.
and one for evil. This general appreciation of character together with the full-blown social feeling, which consti- tutes the fourth phase in my division, may be left for later discussion, as well as the part played by this kind of suggestion in the genesis of the moral sense.^ To sum up: 'personality-suggestion' is the general term for the stimulations to activity which the child gets from persons. It develops through three or four roughly dis- tinguished 'stages,' all of which illustrate what I have called his 'projective' sense of personality; namely, i. a bare distinction, on the ground of peculiar pain-movement- pleasure complexes, of pc7'sons front tJiings; 2. a sense of the irregularity or capriciousness of the behaviour of these persons, which is the germ of his sense of agency^ as op- posed to the regular causal series of conditions which things go through; 3. his distinction, vaguely felt but re- acted to with great exactness, between the characteristic modes of behaviour or personal character of different per- sons; 4. after his sense of his own subject-agency arises by a process of imitation, he gets what is really social feel- uig: the sense of others as 'ejective,' that is, as like and equal to himself.^ III. Deliberative Suggestion. — By 'deliberative sugges- tion ' I mean a state of mind in which co-ordinate sense- 2 The reader may notice in this connection the section below on * bashful- ness,' which is found to be a native organic response to the presence of per- sons, considered as 'projects' of a personal kind. It is curious to note that, besides general gregariousness which many animals show in common, they have in many instances special sense indications of the presence of creatures of their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs and cats each recognize both dogs and cats by S77iell. Horses seem to be guided by sight. Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on the cries which they hear of their kind or their young.
stimuli meet, confront, oppose, further, one another. Yet I do not mean 'deliberation' in the full-blown volitional sense, but suggestion that appears deliberative, while still inside the reactive consciousness and still representing a single reaction upon a single state of consciousness. In real deliberation, as appears below, there are two or more pictured alternatives, upon the conscious co-ordination of which action follows. But here the different elements are ingredients in a single sensory complex, — one suggestion, — and the motor reaction waits upon the issue of the whole. The competition of processes is probably in large measure subcortical. So the state is still to be classed as sensori-motor, not ideo-motor, since it does not require .intelligent memory and representation. The last three months of the child's first year are, I think, clearly given over to this kind of consciousness. Motor stimula- tions have multiplied, the emotional life is budding forth in a variety of promising traits, the material of conscious character is present; but the 'ribs' of mental structure may still be seen through, response answering to appeal in a complex but yet mechanical way. The child lacks self-consciousness, self-decision, self in any form.
As an illustration of what I mean, I may record the fol- lowing case of deliberative suggestion from H.'s thirteenth month: it was more instructive to me than whole books would be on the theory of the conflict of impulses. When about eight months old, H. formed the peculiar habit of suddenly scratching the face of her nurse or mother with her nails. It became fixed in her memory, probably be- cause of the unusual facial expression of pain, reproof, etc., which followed it, until the close proximity of any one's face was sufficient suggestion to her to give it a violent 1 28 Stcggestion.
scratch. In order to break up this habit, I began to punish her by taking at once the hand with which she scratched and 'snapping' her fingers with my own first finger hard enough to be painful. For about four weeks this seemed to have no effect, probably because I only saw her a small part of the time, and only then did she suffer the punishment. But I then observed, and those who were with her most reported, that she only scratched once at a time, and grew very solemn and quiet for some mo- ments afterwards, as if thinking deeply; and soon after this climax was reached she would scratch once impul- sively, be punished, and weep profusely, then become as grave as a deacon, looking me in the face. I would then deliberately put my cheek very close to her, and she would sit gazing at it in ' deep thought ' for two or even three minutes, hardly moving a muscle the whole time, and then either suddenly scratch my face and be punished again, or turn to something (noise, object, watch-chain, etc.) which I was careful enough to provide in order to aid her by drawing off the attention. Having scratched, she began to cry, in anticipation of the punishment. Gradually the scratching became more rare. She seldom yielded to the temptation after being punished, and so the habit entirely disappeared. I may add that her mother and myself endeavoured to induce a different reaction by taking the child's other hand and gently stroking the face which she had scratched. This movement in time replaced the other completely, and the soft stroking became one of her most spontaneous expressions of affection.
Now the first act of scratching was probably accidental, one of the spontaneous reactions or physiological sugges- tions so common with an infant's hands; it passed, by reason of its peculiar associations, into a sensori-motor reaction whenever the presence of a face acted as sugges- tion,— so far a strong direct stimulus to the motor centres. Then came the pain, — a stimulus to the inhibition of the foregoing, not by exciting a clear memory, on the next occasion, but by working itself directly into the suggesting psychosis, and thus reducing the motor tendency. For a time the tendency remained strong enough, however, to cause the reaction; then there followed an apparent balance between the two, and finally the pain element predominated in the suggestion, and the reaction was per- manently inhibited. The stroking reaction gained all the strength of violent and intense association with the ele- ments of this mental conflict, and was thus soon fixed and permanent.
Taking this as a typical case of 'deliberative suggestion,' — and I could instance many others from H.'s life history and from E.'s, — two inferences may be brought out in passing: tJicre is notJiing Jiere that requires volition, mean- ing by * volition ' a new influence of any kind, — active con- ciousness; if we do call it so, we simply apply a different term to phenomena which in their simplicity we call by other names. And, second, suggestion is as original a motor stimulus as pleasure ajtd pain. Here they are in direct conflict. Can we say that H. balanced the pleasure of scratching and the pain of punishment, and decided the case on this egoistic basis? What pleasure did the scratching have more than any other muscular exercise? It was simply a sensori-motor habit which the pain inhibi- tion tended to break up.
So also, apart from pathological aboulia, which is de- scribed later on, we find a corresponding condition in K 1 30 Suggestion.
adult life. As I have said elsewhere, "there is a state of conflict and hindrance among presentations which is mechanical in its issue,...so states of vexation, divided counsel, conflicting impulse, and hasty decision against one's desire for deliberate choice. We often find our- selves drawn violently apart, precipitated through a whirl of suggested courses into a course which we feel unwilling to acknowledsre as our own.''^ The conditions of delibera- tion are there, but without the fact of it.
By ideo-motor suggestion I mean the condition in which the stimulus is a clearly pictured idea, a presentation or object with all its 'meaning,' or a revived image of memory or imaoination.
o Imitation? — For a long period after the child has learned to use all his senses, and after his memory is well developed, he lacks conscious imitation entirely. I have been quite unable with my children to confirm the results of Preyer, who attributes imitation to his child at the age of three to four months.
In support of the assertion that imitation is rather late in its rise, the following experiences may be reported. As a necessary caution, the rule was made that no single performance should be considered real imitation unless it could be brought out again under similar circumstances. This rule is necessary, I think, merely for caution, since 1 Handbook, II., p. 299. This kind of complex suggestion, however, un- doubtedly serves to give a ready organic basis for the earlier and more obscure acts of volition, which are described later on (Chap. XIII. § 4).
2 In this chapter the word ' imitation ' is used to denote ' conscious ' imita- tion— its usual popular sense — in distinction from the phylogenetic sense in which it is used in Chap. IX. below.
the * copy ' set for imitation is likely to be some simple movement of lips, hands, etc., which the child has made himself before, and is likely to make again. It is possible also from the mere fact of dynamogeny that the motor discharge in shedding itself outward would tend in a gen- eral way to find its most permeable native pathway toward the muscles which repeat the copy, since the movements are natural and easy. At any rate, such cases, if they exist, shade up gradually into conscious imitations. ^ It is probable, therefore, that cases of imitation recorded as happening as early as the third month are merely coinci- dences. For example, I recorded an apparent imitation by H., of closing the hand, as late as May 22 (beginning of the ninth month), but afterwards I wrote, " experiment not con- firmed with repeated trials running through four succeed- ing days." H.'s first clear imitation was on May 24, in knocking a bunch of keys against a vase, as she saw me do it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she repeated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a week later, when, from lapse of time, she had partly for- gotten how to use the keys. But on the same day, May 24, other efforts to bring out imitation failed signally, i.e., with more or less articulate sounds, movements of the lips (Preyer's experiments), and opening and closing of the hands. Ten days later, however, she imitated closing the hand on three different occasions. And a week afterward she imitated movements of the lips and certain sounds, as/^, ma, etc.^ From this time forward the phe- 1 See the remarks on the question of ' instinctive imitation,' below, Chap.
2 The majority of recorded observations agree in making vocal imitations later than visual-movement imitations. Egger, loc. cit., p. 8; Tracy, Infant Psychology, p. 57 (for citations); Stevenson, Science, March 3, 1 893. The 132 Suggestion.
nomenon seemed extended to a very wide range of activi- ties, and began to assume the immense importance which it always comes to have in the life of the young child.
When the imitative impulse does come, it comes in earnest. For many months after its rise it may be called, perhaps, the controlling impulse, apart from the ordinary life processes. As a phenomenon, it is too familiar to need description. Its importance in the growth of the child's mind is largely in connection with the development of language and of voluntary movement generally.
The phenomena may be divided into two general classes, called simple imitation "^xvdi persistent imitation} By 'sim- ple imitations,' reactions are characterized, in which the movement does not really imitate, but is the best the child can do. He does not try to improve by making a second attempt. This is evidently a case of simple sensori-motor suggestion, and is peculiar psychologically only because of the more or less remote approximation the reaction has to the movement which the child copies.
The reaction at which imitative suggestion aims is one which will reprodnce the stimulating impression, and so tend to perpetuate itself. When a child strikes the com- bination required, he is never tired working it. H. found endless delight in putting the rubber on a pencil and off again, each act being a new stimulus to the eye. This is first vocal imitation of my other child, E., was observed in her eleventh month, when she tried to say ' tick,' in reference to the clock, after her mother, to- gether with *■ ps ' for ' pussy,' and ^ p'o ' for * pop.'
^ Preyers distinction between * spontaneous ' and ' deliberate ' imitations (^Senses and Will, p. 293). He is wrong in making both classes voluntary. The contrary is proved for spontaneous imitation by the fact that many ele- ments of facial expression are never acquired by blind children. We could hardly say that facial expression was a voluntary acquisition, however gradually it may have been acquired.
specially noticeable in children's early efforts at speech. They react all wrong when they first attack a new word, but gradually get it moderately well, and then sound it over and over in endless monotony. The essential thing, then, in imitation, over and above simple ideo-motor sug- gestion, is that tJie stimulus starts a viotor process wJiicJi tends to rep7'oduce the stimulus and, througJi it, the motor process again. From the physiological side we have a circular activity — sensor, motor; sensor, motor: and from the psychological side we have a similar circle, — reality, image, movement; reality, image, movement, etc.
The square to the left (Fig. XII.) is the first act of imita- tion; the movement {int) now stimulates (dotted line d) Fig. XII. — Imitation.
the eye again {sg^), giving the second square, which by its movement (int^) furnishes yet another stimulus (dotted line d); and so on.
By ' persistent imitation ' is meant the child's effort, by repetition, to improve his imitations. Its extreme impor- tance justifies its separate discussion in a later place. ^ Summing up the ground which we have gone over so far 1 Chapter XIII. The general discussion of the position of imitation in the mental life, especially its phylogenetic value, is reserved for later chapters (Chaps. IX.-XIII.).
1 34 Suggestion.
in this chapter, the progress of suggestion may be seen by the following brief definitions: — 1. Physiological suggestion is the tendency of a reflex or secondary automatic process to get itself associated with and influenced by stimulating processes of a physiological and vaguely sensory sort. Perhaps the plainest case of it, on a large scale in animal life, is seen in the decay of instincts when no longer suited to the creature's needs and environment.
2. Sensori-niotor and Ideo-motor siiggestio7i is the ten- dency of all nervous reactions to adapt themselves to new stimulations, both sensory and ideal, in such a way as to be more ready for the repetition or continuance of these stimulations.
3. Deliberative suggestion is the tendency of different competing sensory processes to merge in a single conscious state with a single motor reaction, illustrating the princi- ples of nervous summation and arrest.
4. Imitative suggestion is the tendency of a sensory or ideal process to maintain itself by such an adaptation of its discharges that they reinstate in turn new stimulations of the same kind.
Whether any simpler formulation of these partial state- ments may be reached, is a question which may be delayed until we have looked more closely at certain other instances of suggestion, which have not been described before, and at the conditions of nervous adaptation in general. ^ 1 See Chap. VII. on 'The Theory of Development,' and Chap. IX. on * Organic Imitation.'
S^ibconscious Adult Suggestion. 135 § 5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion.
There are certain phenomena of a rather striking kind coming under this head whose classification is so evident that discussion of the general psychological principles which they involve is not necessary. The kind of fact which I have in view may be illustrated with sufficient clearness merely by the recital of the following observa- tions, which are in themselves new.
Time-suggestion. — Professor Ladd has pointed out in detail — what has for a long time been taken for granted — that dream states are largely indebted for their visual elements, what we see in our dreams, to accidental lines, patches, etc., in the field of vision, when the eyes are shut, due to the distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to changes in the external illumination, to the presence of dust particles of different configuration, etc.^ The other senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by equally subconscious suggestions. And there is no doubt, further, that our waking Hfe is constantly in- fluenced by equally trivial stimulations.
I have tested in detail, for example, the conditions of the rise of so-called * internal tunes ' — we speak of 'tunes in our heads' or *in our ears' — and find certain suggestive influences which in most cases cause these tunes to rise and take their course. Often, when a tune springs up 'in my head,' the same tune has been lately sung or whistled in my hearing, though quite unconsciously to myself. Often the tunes are those heard in church the previous day or earlier. Such a tune I am entirely unable 1 Ladd, 'Psychology of Visual Dreams,' in Mind, N. S., Vol. I. (1892), 1 36 Suggestion.
to recall voluntarily: yet when it comes into my mind's ear, so to speak, I readily recognize it as belonging to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various accidental suggestions, such as the tune * Mozart ' sug- gested by the composer's name, the tune 'Gentle Annie' suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness, and after much seeking, that the suggesting influence is discovered.
Closer analysis reveals the following facts. The ' time ' of such internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhyth- mical subconscious occurrence. After hearty meals it is always the time of the heart-beat, unless there be 'in the air ' some more impressive stimulus; as, for example, when on ship-board, the beat is with me invariably that of the engine throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of the foot-fall. On one occasion a knock of four beats on the door started the Marseillaise in my ear: following up this clue, I found that at any time, different divisions of musi- cal time being struck on the table at will by another per- son, tunes would spring up and run on, getting their cue from the measures suggested. Further, when a tune dies away, its last notes often suggest, some time after, another having a similar movement — just as we pass from one tune to another in a 'medley.' It may also be noted that in my case the tune memories are auditive: they run in my head when I have no words for them and have never sung them —an experience which is consistent with the fact that these ' internal tunes ' arise in childhood before the faculty of speech. They also have distinct pitch. For example, on April 9, 1892, I found a tune 'in my head * which was perfectly familiar, but for which I could Subconscio2is Adult Sziggcstioii. 137 find no words. Tested on the piano, the pitch was f-sharp and the time was my heart-beat. I finally, after much effort, got the unworthy words, 'Wait till the clouds roll by,' by humming the tune over repeatedly. The pitch is determined, probably, by the accidental condition of the auditory centre as respects pitch-readiness, or by the pitch- colourins: of the external sound which serves as stimulus to the tune.
Dreams as Emotion Stimulus. — Another important realm of suo'2:estion hitherto overlooked is seen in the influence of dreams on the waking life. Dreams react to deepen waking impressions, and to strengthen the hold of dominant presentations and impulses. This fact seems to have its primary application to emotion. We cannot tell how much of the active momentum of our waking life we owe to dream stimulation. The following case of fact, in the life of my little girl H., indicates that such a stimulus may be of enormous importance. When two years and three months of age, she was accidentally run over by a dog. Before this she had been very fond of dogs. She was not much hurt, but very much frightened, and re- peated to every one the words, 'Doggie run over baby.' The next day she saw a dog on the street and showed some signs of fear until the brute ran away. About the second night after the occurrence her mother and I were awakened by a violent outcry in H.'s room. On going in, the child was found sitting in bed undergoing a paroxysm of fear from a bad dream. She repeated again and again after leaving the room, ' Doggie run over baby ana ' (ana was her word for there), pointing into her bedroom. Evi- dently she had lived over again in her dream the occur-