else than the recognition of a state in which a given thing is present to the senses and to consciousness, next to which another state exists in which the thing is latent, but can reappear, that is to say, the co-existence of perception and memory, or, to generalize it, the existence of unconscious psychic processes next to conscious ones.[1] It might be said that in the last analysis the “spirit” of a person or a thing is the faculty of remembering and representing the object, after he or it was withdrawn from conscious perception.
Of course we must not expect from either the primitive or the current conception of the “soul” that its line of demarcation from other parts should be as marked as that which contemporary science draws between conscious and unconscious psychic activity. The animistic soul, on the contrary, unites determinants from both sides. Its flightiness and mobility, its faculty of leaving the body, of permanently or temporarily taking possession of another body, all these are characteristics which remind us unmistakably of the nature of consciousness. But the way in which it keeps itself concealed behind the personal appearance reminds us of the unconscious; to-day
- ↑ Compare my short paper: “A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis,” in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, London, 1912.
