Part 16

If we consider the psychological relations of the processes involved in the above illustrations, we are led to the conviction that we seldom exert our powers to their full capacity. Instances in which, under the influence of some stirring, perhaps dangerous circumstance, persons exert physical energies ordinarily beyond their resources, are quite familiar; and the same is true though less readily demonstrated of mental effort. The success of the various methods of "mind cure," in which the conviction of the possibility of a cure so markedly aids its realization, adds another class of illustrations; and among the experiments with hypnotized persons occur countless instances of the performance of actions, both physical and mental, quite surpassing what is regarded as normal. The powers which are here called upon through somewhat extreme and drastic means, can doubtless be drawn upon to a less extent by the use of more moderate agencies; and this at once suggests the educational utilization of the mental attitude in question. Perhaps the ideal aim is to impress the student indirectly rather than directly, by manner rather than by instruction, with the conviction that what is required of him is well within his powers; and to do this without in the least impugning the necessity of honest, hard work for the accomplishment of serious results. The complaint is often made that the American boy takes longer by several years to reach a given grade of scholarship than his foreign brother; and the reason of this difference is usually assigned to the extremely slow progress made in the elementary public schools. The machinery is started at too slow a rate, and seems to leave the impress of its inertia upon all succeeding periods.

It is not possible to devise any readily formulated and easily applied cure for this mental prepossession; our aim must be to sterilize the mental atmosphere, so that the germs of the disease may not gain a foothold; to set a healthy normal step and take it for granted that it can be followed by all but the laggards. But in spite of all effort, the failing is quite certain to crop out, and will always continue to demand for its treatment much educational tact and insight.

When we come to a slippery place in the road, we involuntarily take short steps and become extremely conscious of our locomotion. It is important to prevent the growth of the habit of imagining slippery places in the paths about to be trodden; and even when they are actually to be encountered, it is well to meet them with the bracing effort that comes from the use of a reserve energy, to proceed without too much consciousness of the path, and with as nearly a normal gait as possible. There are sufficient difficulties in the various walks of life without adding to them those that arise from mental prepossession, and that lead to mental inertia.

FOOTNOTES:

This account I owe to Mrs. May Cole Baker, of Washington, D.C.

It should be noted that it is only the classification of occupations that requires so extremely elaborate and artificial a system; the returns for nationality, age, sex, marital condition, etc., are far simpler to record. The editing consists in writing the symbols on the returns, so that they need not be memorized.

A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS

Quite a number of delusions find a common point of origin in the natural tendency to view our mental life--the aggregate of our thoughts and doings--as coextensive with the experiences of which our consciousness gives information and which our will directs. The significance of the unconscious and the involuntary is apt to be underestimated or disregarded. We are more ready to acknowledge that in certain unusual and semi-morbid conditions persons will exhibit these peculiar expressions of the subterranean strata of our mental structure--that some have the habit of walking or talking in their sleep, that others occasionally fall into an automatic, trance-like condition, that hypnotism and hysteria and obscure lapses of consciousness and alterations of personality bring to the surface curious specimens of the mysteries of this underworld,--but we are slow to appreciate that the subconscious and the involuntary find a common and a natural place amidst the soundly reasoned and aptly directed activities of our own intelligence. While it is reasonable and proper to have faith in the testimony of consciousness, it is desirable that this confidence should be accompanied by an understanding of the conditions under which such testimony is presumably valid, and when presumably defective or misleading. Sense-deceptions, faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the psychologist, but stern realities; and their existence emphasizes the need in the determination of truth and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, of an appreciation of the circumstances under which it is peculiarly human to err. A demonstration of the readiness with which perfectly normal individuals may be induced to yield visible evidence of unconscious and involuntary processes, thus possesses a special interest; for when the naturalness of a few definite types of involuntary movements is made clear, the application of the experience to more complex and more indefinite circumstances will easily and logically follow. While the circumstances under which involuntary indications of mental activity are ordinarily given, are too various to enable one to say ab uno disce omnes, yet the principle demonstrated in one case is capable of a considerable generalization, which will go far to prevent misconception of apparently mysterious and exceptional phenomena.

When some years ago, the American public was confronted with the striking exhibitions of muscle-reading, the wildest speculations were indulged in regarding its true modus operandi; and the suggestion that all that was done was explicable by the skillful interpretation of the unconscious indications given by the subjects, was scouted or even ridiculed. It was not supposed that such indications were sufficiently definite for the purposes of the "mind-reader," or were obtainable under the conditions of his tests. Again, it was urged that this explanation was hardly applicable to certain striking performances, which in reality involved other and subtler modes of thought-interpretation, and the accounts of which were also exaggerated and distorted. And furthermore, it was argued, too many worthy and learned persons were absolutely certain that they had given no indications whatever. For a time the view that mind-reading was muscle-reading rested upon rather indirect evidence, and upon a form of argument that carries more weight with those familiar with the nature of scientific problems than with the public at large. But the development of experimental research in the domain of psychology has made possible a variety of demonstrations of the truth and adequacy of this explanation. It was with the purpose of securing a visible record of certain types of involuntary movements, that the investigation, the results of which are here presented, was undertaken.

Inasmuch as the movements in question are often very slight, somewhat delicate apparatus is required to secure their record; the apparatus must in a measure exaggerate the tendency to motion though without altering its nature. The form of apparatus which I devised for this study, and which may be appropriately called an automatograph, is illustrated in the accompanying figure (p. 310). It consists of a wooden frame, enclosing a heavy piece of plate glass (fifteen inches square), and mounted upon three legs which are provided with screw adjustments for bringing the plate into a perfect level. Upon the plate of glass are placed in the form of a triangle three well turned and polished steel or brass balls; and upon the balls rests a thin crystal-plate glass set in a light wooden frame. The finger-tips of one hand rest upon the upper plate in the position indicated. When all is properly adjusted and glass and balls are rubbed smooth with oil, it is quite impossible to hold the apparatus perfectly still for more than a few seconds; the slightest unsteadiness or movement of the hand at once sets the plate rolling with an irregular motion. If one closes the eyes and fixes the attention upon a definite mental image or train of thought, it is easy to form the conviction that the plate remains quiet, but the record proves that this is not the case. The other parts of the apparatus are designed to give a record of the movements of the plate. Fastened to the light frame containing the upper glass plate is a slender rod some ten inches long, bearing at its end a cork; and piercing the cork is a small glass tube within which a snugly fitting glass rod has room to move. The rod is drawn to a smooth, round point; and when in position rests upon a piece of glazed paper that has been blackened over a flame and then smoothly stretched over a small glass plate. The point of the rod thus records easily and accurately every movement of the hand that is imparted to the upper plate, and by the manner of its adjustment accommodates itself to all irregularities of movement or recording surface. This recording device is shown in greater detail in the illustration, and was used to good advantage as a simple automatograph in independence of the balls and plates. In that case the recording part is held in the hand as though it were a pencil, but in a vertical position, and the record plate may be placed upon a table; or for special purposes the plate may be held in the other hand or fastened to the top of one's head. When not otherwise stated, the records here reproduced were obtained by use of the automatograph. Some of the records are noted as having been secured with the simpler device just described.

The process of securing a record is as follows: the subject, standing, places his hand upon the automatograph, with the arm nearly horizontal and not quite fully extended, and the elbow bent in a fairly comfortable posture; his attention is engaged by asking him to listen to and count the strokes of a metronome; to look at and count the oscillations of a pendulum; to read from a book; to call out the names of colors; to think of a given direction or locality, or the position of an object; and so on. He is instructed to think as little as possible of his hand, making a reasonable effort to keep it from moving. To cut off the apparatus from the subject's field of vision and attention, a large screen is interposed between him and the record, a curtain with a suitable opening for the arm forming part of the screen. The operator holds the glass pencil in his hand, and when all is in readiness allows it to slip through the glass tube and begin to write, removing it again after a definite interval or when the record seems completed.

III

We may now consider a few typical results. Fig. 2, an ordinary average result, was obtained while the subject was calling out the names of a series of small patches of color, displayed on the wall facing him, about eight feet distant. It will be observed that the movement (which in all the illustrations has its beginning marked by an A and its end by a Z) proceeds irregularly but decidedly towards the object upon which the attention was fixed. As a rule the subject is unaware of the movement which his hand has made, and exercises no essential control over the results; indeed it is likely that he is considerably surprised when the results are first shown to him. At times he becomes conscious of the loss of equilibrium of the apparatus, but the indication is rarely sufficiently definite to inform him of the direction of the movement. Not infrequently, the movement is performed with complete unconsciousness, and is accompanied by a strong conviction that the apparatus has been stationary. In several cases an intentional simulation of the movements was produced for comparison with the involuntary records; the result was quite generally a very different and coarser type of movement, readily distinguishable from the involuntary writings. A prominent characteristic of practically all of the movements is their irregular and jerky character; the hand for a time oscillates about uncertainly, and then moves rather suddenly and quickly in a given direction; then another period of hesitation, again a more or less sharp advance, and so on. It is probable that it is these repeated brief movements of more vigorous indication of the direction of the subject's attention, that the muscle-reader waits for and utilizes.

It is obvious enough that the results of a test of this kind cannot be anticipated, not alone because there are marked differences between individuals in the readiness with which they will manifest involuntary movements, but also because the intensity of the attention and the momentary condition of the subject are important and variable factors in the result. With very good subjects it becomes quite safe to predict the general nature of the tracing; and the different tracings of the same subject often bear a family resemblance. We must now learn what we can of the various factors which influence these subconscious handwritings. That indefinitely complex combination of natural and nurtural circumstances, to which we give the name of character, or individuality, or personality, doubtless presents the most striking factor in this, as it does in normal handwriting; and in both cases analyses are inevitably vague and confined to prominent points of difference. Extreme types are always interesting and at times instructive. The tracing of Fig. 3 was obtained under the same circumstances as Fig. 2, but with a subject whose tendency towards involuntary movements is far more marked, is indeed unusual. The total extent of the movement is more than three times as great as in the former case, and it twice changes its direction. This latter characteristic is the noteworthy one, for it is due to the fact that the colors which the subject was reading were arranged in three rows; the first row was read from left to right (corresponding to a downward direction in the figure); the second row was read in the reversed direction; and the third row in the original direction again. The completeness of correspondence between the movements of the hand and of the attention leaves nothing to be desired. This subject yielded the most extensive and predictable involuntary movements of any whom I tested. A satisfactory impression of the variety and range of the individual differences which subjects, chosen somewhat at random, are likely to present, may be gathered from the series of records which will be reproduced as illustrative also of other influences. In Fig. 4 is represented another average record quite similar to that of Fig. 2 but produced by another subject, while reading from a printed page for three-quarters of a minute; as before the hand moves towards the focus of attention. It would be easy to present both more decided and extensive, and more uncertain involuntary records of still other subjects; while negative or quite indeterminate tracings are by no means uncommon.

When, to vary the nature of the impression to which the attention is directed, a metronome is used, and to insure attention on the part of the subject he is required to count the strokes, it may be that another form of involuntary movement appears. The tendency to beat time to enlivening music by tapping with the hands, or stamping with the feet, or nodding with the head, is most familiar; and Dr. Lombard has shown that music is capable of effecting such thoroughly involuntary movements as the sudden rise of the leg that follows reflexly upon a blow on the patella of the knee. It is not surprising, therefore, to find evidences of periodic movements in these automatograms; and in some instances, such as Fig. 5, this pervades the whole record. Here the hand moves to and fro, keeping time--not accurately at all, but in a general way--with the strokes of the metronome.

To obtain similar results for a visual impression a silently swinging pendulum is used, the subject following the oscillations with his eyes and counting them. The result is more frequently simply a movement towards the pendulum, Fig. 6; but occasionally there appear periodic movements induced by those of the pendulum. A very excellent instance of the latter appears in Fig. 7 (p. 318).

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We may more closely approximate the ordinary experiment of the muscle-reader by giving the subject some object to hide, say a knife, and then asking him to place his hand upon the automatograph, and to think intently of the place of concealment. As before there is a movement of the hand; and on the basis of the general direction of this movement one may venture a prediction of the direction in which the knife lies. The results will show all grades of success, from complete failure to an accurate localizing of the object; but as good a record as Fig. 8 is not infrequent. As indicated by the letters and the arrow, the hand moved irregularly toward the hidden knife. In this case the eyes are closed, and the concentration of the attention is maintained by a mental effort without the aid of the senses. The peculiar line of Fig. 9 was obtained in an experiment in which a book was slowly carried about the room, the subject being required to read continuously from the page. It is evident that the hand followed the movement of the attention, not in a circle but in an irregular outline closing in upon itself; the change in posture which this process involved has an undoubted influence upon the result.

Before passing to a more specific interpretation of the data, it may be interesting to illustrate more fully the scope of individual variations; for the great difference in availability of subjects to the muscle-reader is equally prominent in tests with the automatograph. Some movements are direct and extensive, others are circuitous and brief. Fig. 10 is a good type of a small movement, but of one quite constantly toward the object of the attention. This may be contrasted with an extreme record, not here reproduced, in which there is a movement of six and a half inches in forty-five seconds; or with a fairly extensive movement as in Fig. 11. In some cases the first impulse carries the hand toward the object of thought, and is followed by considerable hesitation and uncertainty; a marked example of this tendency may be seen in Fig. 12. There is, too, an opposite type, in which the initial movements are variable, and the significant movement toward the object of thought comes later, when perhaps there is some fatigue. This tendency appears somewhat in Figs. 11 and 13.

What is the origin of the movements involved in these records? To what extent are they movements of the hand, of the arm, or of the entire body? Casual observation is sufficient to show that with a given position of the arm, certain movements are much more readily made than others; and the involuntary tendencies will naturally follow the lines of least resistance. If, for instance, you hold your arm nearly on a level with the shoulders and in line with them, you perceive at once that movements of the hand to the front are much more readily made than to the rear, and movements toward the body more readily than those away from the body; the tendency of the hand is to move forward in a circle of which the shoulder is the centre. What we require is a position in which movements in any one direction are as readily made as in any other; and this may be approximated, though only approximated, by holding the hand at an angle of about 45° with the line joining the shoulders, and with the elbow bent at an angle of about 120°. This was the position in most of the tests, and the usual result was a movement toward the object of attention; but when the object attended to lies in back of the subject, this tendency is sometimes outweighed by the natural tendency for the arm to move forward, and the result may be a movement forward, but a less direct movement forward than when the object of attention is to the front. In a good subject, however, the involuntary tendency is strong enough to prevail, and a movement backward results. An instance of this, obtained under other but comparable circumstances, appears in Fig. 14. It is to be noted that in this figure the tracing marked I. was obtained with the subject seated, and the metronome beating behind him; the hand after some hesitation moves backward slowly towards the metronome to a moderate extent. In tracing II., with the subject also seated, the metronome is to the front, and the hand moves directly and quickly towards it. We conclude that the position of the body is an important factor in the resultant movements, but that it does not interfere with their accepted psychological interpretation.

When observing the subject during a test, we may note the movements of the body as a whole, and of the arm or hand. The movement of the body is an irregular swaying with the feet as the centre of the movement; this swaying is most readily recorded by fixing the recording-plate upon the subject's head, and having the recording-rod held in a suitable position above it. It was found that in connection with the swaying movements there were general movements towards the object of attention; and such movements were as readily made when the object was to the front, to the rear, or to either side. To determine how far this movement is the same in head and hand, it is necessary to record both simultaneously. Fig. 15 illustrates the correspondence of the two movements. It thus becomes clear that the swaying of the body as a whole constitutes an important factor of these automatograph records; that the movements of the head (being farther away from the centre of motion) are more extensive than those of the hand; and that both head and hand are sensitive organs for the expression of involuntary movements. That the muscle-reader is aware of this fact is obvious from the usual positions which he maintains towards his subject in reading the direction of the hidden object.

To eliminate the record of the swaying of the body, we may experiment with the subject seated; we obtain a distinctive record in which certain phases of the fluctuations have almost disappeared, and in which the record approximates to a straight line (tracing II. of Fig. 14). One may also eliminate the record of the swaying by dispensing with the automatograph, and simply holding the recording plate in one hand and the recording device or pencil in the other; for then the plate and pencil sway together, and naturally no record of it is made. The relatively fine movements thus obtained are shown in Fig. 16; the contrast between this record and such records as Figs. 4, 5, 6, is mainly the contrast between a record in which the general swaying of the body is registered, and one from which it has been eliminated. It is interesting to note that in records thus taken, there is but a slight difference in the result when the subject is standing and when he is sitting; which is a further proof that the swaying of the body has been eliminated. (Compare these with Fig. 14.) Traces of periodic oscillations are noticeable in Fig. 16; these are due to movements of respiration, and in tracing II. of Fig. 17, they are unusually distinct and regular, about twenty to the minute. In this case the forearm of the hand holding the record plate was braced against the body, while the recording hand was held free from it; and thus the abdominal movements were registered. The movements toward the object of attention appear throughout. Fig. 17 shows a movement towards the rear of the subject, as well as towards the front; which again shows that under suitable conditions, involuntary movements may be recorded in one direction as readily as in another. Fig. 18 presents a most beautifully regular movement in all four directions. As the metronome, the strokes of which the subject was counting, was carried from one corner of the room to another and so on around the room, the hand involuntarily followed it and recorded an almost perfect square. So striking and regular and so varied an involuntary movement, in conformity with changes in the direction of attention, one can expect to secure but seldom, and then only with a good subject.

The outline presented in Fig. 19 was obtained in a test in which the movements of the hands were separately recorded, in order to determine the degree of correspondence between them. The result shows a marked general resemblance, indicating in part a common origin of the two movements. The next figure, Fig. 20, shows that this correspondence is dependent in part upon the similarity of the positions of the two hands. The hand that is held away from the body moves more extensively; but the form of the movements remain similar. The records reproduced in Figs. 14-22 and 26 were obtained upon the same subject, though with slightly varying conditions, and are fairly comparable with one another, and thus illustrate the analysis of the resultant movements into their component factors.

Involuntary movements are not limited to the horizontal plane; vertical movements may be recorded by holding the recording device in a slanting position, and fixing the record plate upon the wall. The main characteristic of such a record is the sinking of the arm through fatigue; the movement is rapid and coarse (tracing I. of Fig. 20). If the attention be directed to the front, we obtain a resultant of the tendency to move towards the object of attention, and of the sinking of the arm, as appears in the diagonal line of Fig. 22. Fig. 21 illustrates an interesting point similar to that illustrated in Fig. 14. When the attention is directed downward, the hand falls rapidly (tracing I.); but when the attention is directed upward, very little movement at all takes place,--the tendency to move towards the object of attention constantly counteracting the tendency for the arm to fall (tracing II.).

While I have not been altogether successful in determining by this method the relative efficiency of different sense-impressions in holding the attention, the successful results are especially interesting. In Fig. 23 the tracing marked I. shows the movement of the hand during the thirty-five seconds that the subject was counting the strokes of a metronome; tracing II. shows the movement while counting for twenty-five seconds the oscillations of a pendulum. The latter movement is in this case much more extensive than the former, thus indicating that the visual impression held the attention much better than the auditory. The subject of this record is a well-known writer and novelist; and his description of his own mental processes entirely accords with this result; he is a good visualizer, and visual impressions and memory-images dominate his mental habits.

We may next turn to Fig. 24. The subject was asked to call the names of a series of small patches of color hanging upon the wall in front of him. He did this with some uncertainty for thirty-five seconds, and during this time his hand on the automatograph moved from A to A´. At the latter point he was asked to count the oscillations of a pendulum; this entirely changed the movement, the hand at once moving rapidly toward the pendulum. The pendulum was a more attractive sense-impression than the colors. The special point of interest in this record is, that upon examination the subject's color-vision proved to be defective, and thus accounted for the failure of the colors to hold his attention.

An important problem relates to the possible correlation of types of involuntary movements with age, sex, temperament, disease, and the like. A few observations upon children are interesting in this respect. They reveal the limited control that children have over their muscles, and their difficulty to fix the attention when and where desired. Their involuntary movements are large, with great fluctuations, and irregularly towards the object of attention. Fig. 25 illustrates some of these points; in thirty-five seconds the child's hand moved by large steps seven inches toward the pendulum, and the entire appearance of the outline is different from those obtained upon adults.

Much attention has recently been paid to automatic writing, or the unconscious indication of the nature, not merely the direction of one's thoughts, while the attention is elsewhere engaged. I attempted this upon the automatograph by asking the subject to view or think of some letter or geometric figure, and then searching the record for some trace of the letter or figure; but always with a negative result. While unsuccessful in this sense, the records prove of value in furnishing a salient contrast to the experiments in which the attention was fixed in a definite direction. For example, the subject is thinking of the letter O; he does not think of it as in any special place, and the record (Fig. 26) likewise reveals no movement in any one direction. Two records are shown quite similar in significance, and illustrating as well the difference between the movements while standing and while sitting.