Getting to the Root (I) . . .

‘But the fact is that neurological science has by now shown exhaustively that it is possible to trace the evolution and existence of a thought before we become consciously aware of it.’

I wrote this in the posting before last, and since then someone has challenged me to prove the fact. Now I have not Googled it—but I have no doubt that if you choose to Google it, you will find fairly extensive background to the claim. There have been various studies and various methodologies used in researching the matter, including the tracking of minute blood flows in the brain and sequences of cerebral electronic impulses etc.

But there is a much more, to my mind, elegant indication—I hesitate to use the word ‘proof’—of the reality of what I have been describing. This involves the phenomenon called the post-hypnotic suggestion. Hans J. Eysenck, who in his time was one of the most famous and respected clinical psychologists in the world, describes it in the following terms:

‘This is a very curious phenomenon, which has been known for well over a hundred years. A suggestion is given to a person in the hypnotic trance, telling him that after waking up he will carry out a certain act. The suggestion may be to the effect that he will go out of the room, pick up an umbrella, bring it back and open it up in front of an audience at a given time, say when the clock chimes five, or when the experimenter [hypnotist/psychologist] blows his nose. The subject will in almost every case carry out the suggestion. If asked later why he did this particular thing, he will rationalize his conduct by some kind of semi-reasonable explanation . . .’ (Uses and Abuses of Psychology: H. J. Eysenck, Pelican, 1967).

The important point lies in the section I have emphasized. F.L. Marcuse, another eminent clinical psychologist and contemporary of Eysenck’s, describes this specific aspect of the phenomenon as follows: ‘Spurious reasons (rationalizations) for post-hypnotic acts may often follow as a sequel to the post-hypnotic behaviour, especially if the individual has no memory of the suggestion’s origin. This occurs in all probability because we prefer to think of our behaviour as being the result of fully-conscious motives’ (Hypnosis - Fact and Fiction: F.L. Marcuse, Pelican, 1970).

Now what is being said here is that the person who has been hypnotized into carrying out the behaviour (for handiness sake, we will from here on call him the ‘patient’) will generally come up with some rationally-sounding excuse as to why he has done what he has done. Some rationally sounding gibberish, in other words: for the reason given is a purely an after-the-event concoction, one with absolutely no causal connection to the action carried out.

An interesting point is the suggestion made by Marcuse, above, that the motivation for the post-operative rationalization has to do primarily with shoring up the patient’s sense of self, his belief to the effect that he is a consciously rational being.

Now here I have to make a certain leap—not much of a leap, given the scientific evidence, which anyone interested can look up for themselves—and suggest that the post-hypnotic-suggestion process and its aftermath are not very different from what goes on in the general everyday operation of the human psyche. Logically, it seems to me, that that the whole hypnotic process, and especially the possibility of suggestion implicit in it, is something that taps directly into whatever chain of communication exists normally between the unconscious (or instinctive) mind and the conscious mind.

We are creatures who like certainty, routine, who don’t particularly like surprises. Certainly we don’t like unexplained dissonances in our world. If, say, someone you have been acquainted with suddenly starts behaving towards you in an untoward way, then of course you can ask them about it, and receive an answer or not receive an answer, as the case may be. But if for whatever reason you fail to enquire, this I can guarantee: you will instead trawl and trawl through your memories until you come up with a reason for the other person’s attitude—no matter how objectively silly that ‘reason’ may be. And once you have locked on to that reason, you will experience a sudden satisfaction. You may not be any happier, but at least the logical parameters of your world have been restored.

I hesitate to call it an instinct, for instincts are generally those things that tie us to the animal. Yet that is what it may well be. What I am talking about is a fundamental and all encompassing individual human need to make sense of one’s environment, especially one’s social environment. We demand a clear cause and effect in our world, rather like a child with building blocks. If I do this, then this will follow; if such and such a thing has happened, then it is logically because of this something else that . . . etc. etc.

And over time we build up a whole system of tried and trusted 'certainties' regarding people and things, certainties as fundamental and necessary to our individual selves, and to our view of ourselves, as the axioms of mathematics. We demand and need a stable and calculable view of the world around us, especially the social world, and our place in it, even at the cost often of inventing it. And any collapse in this fabric of logical interconnections that make up the backdrop to our personal experience is likely to have the most terrible effects.

As I say, it is an inexorable human need; perhaps even an instinct. It is akin to a bird building a nest. In detail no nest is quite like any other; but the fact is that all—or most—birds build nests. Equally there is a species of crab that scuttles about the ocean floor, disguising its shell with the detritus of the seabed, so that externally no two crabs look alike, though under the shell they are all still sisters and brothers.

It is a universal and an individual process— this underlying process of personally and unconsciously orienting ourselves within the world as we perceive it. It is only when for whatever reason the framework we have created begins to break down that we are forced into the process of rationalization—of consciously reacting to that breakdown, in a way often analogous to that of a patient in the wake of a post-hypnotic suggestion.

It has often been suggested there is an innate human propensity to ‘curiosity’ underlying all our efforts, scientific and artistic and philosophical, at explaining the world. I would suggest it is less a matter of curiosity and more a matter of a compulsive need to make sense of things, to find some point at which our feet hit at least the illusion of solid ground and we can begin building upwards. We hate mysteries, we hate unknowns, we hate the sense that there may be things that do not fit into the general scheme of our knowledge. Perhaps it is this obsessive facet of our natures that accounts for the perennial popularity, in book, TV and film, of the who-dun-it.

I mentioned earlier how any collapse in the illusions that form our unique individual view of the world can have a terrible effect on the person at the receiving end of it. To illustrate this, two very perceptive movie instances spring to mind:

The first involves Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) in The Long Good Friday; the other, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) in Coppola’s The Conversation. In both cases, these men find their assumptions regarding the world and their place in it turned suddenly and menacingly upside down. For each of them it is a watershed moment: one that throws them naked and unprepared into a new reality, while at the same time barring any comforting return to their old way of thinking. The closing scenes of both films are, I would suggest, masterpieces of psychological observation.

[This is the first part of a somewhat longer thread of related discussions. The second part, if anyone’s interested, will appear in the course of the next few days.]