PSYCHOLOGY CLASS.

Shannon News, 15 August 1922, Page 2

PSYCHOLOGY CLASS.

REPRESSED COMPLEXES. At last meeting of the Psychology Class the lecturer, Mr Mander, The lecturer, Mr Ernest Mander, began by reminding his hearers of the conclusions arrived at the previous* week. In every human life, re said, there were continual conflicts between opposing motives, opposing desires. The desire to do one thing clashes with the desire to do some different thing: both desires cannot he fied: one or the other must gain the upperhand and result in action, while the other remains pent-up, unsatisfied. At the previous meeting of the class the 1 lecturer had been discussing one’ of the phases of this conflict of desires. “The victorious motive, the dominant desire,” lie .said, “not only prevents the opposing des.re from being fulfilled (at any rate, directly fulfilled), but it also represses from our consciousness all suen thoughts as would tend to stimulate, fo strengthen, this 'opposing desire. We cannot think such thoughts as are inconsistent with the desire which is dominant in us at the moment. If, for example, a man is torn between .the acquired habit of honesty and tiie desire to do something which he recognises as dishonesty then if liis desire to be honest, is dominant, victorious, lie will not even think such thoughts as would strengthen tire motive to be dishonest. It is not that he will consciously, deliberately refuse to think them: it is that lie will simply not be able to think them: they will not he allowed, by the dominant desire to come into liis consciousness. So, too, if the desire to act dishonestly is victorious, so long as it remains supreme it will'prevent, him from consciously thinking—it will make him forget^—such ideas as would strengthen the opposition, the desire to be honest.” Other illustrations of this principle were found in various other kinds of conflict in which other instincts,, such as the sex instincts, the herd instinct, and the instinct of self-assertion, were involved... '

■ .“But in eael#one of us,” said the lecturer, ‘there is one set of desires which is normally, perhaps always, dominant. Our characters differ according to which desires are normally dominant in us: in one person one kind of desire is usually victorious, in another person another kind of desire. . So, of all the ideas which our minds contain, some (those which are not inconsistent with our dominant, desires) are always free to come into consciousness.-, while .other ideas, and whole complexes of ideas, are constantly repressed. It follows that bn almost every .subject we have two separate complexes of iSeas—the one consisting of the ideas we. can consciously think of, and the other consisting .of ideas which we can never think of.”

“It is this,” continued the lecturer, “Wliidh gives rise to the notion of there being two minds, two selves. If, indeed, there are not two distinct minds, the mind of each of us can, at anyraie, be said to consist of two parts. There is the part which is dominant—the thoughts we can think, the ideas which can come into consciousness. And there is the part of the mind which is repressed, which consists of all those ideas which are prevented from coming to the surface because they would stimulate our defeated —and perhaps unrecognised desires. In' this sense, every Dr. Jekell has his Mr Hyde underneath. But -usually the part of the man which is dominant remains dominant —the two parts do .not alternately get the upperhand, as they do in the, story. It may be the better part of the man which is dominant, or the worst part; but in either case the other part- of himself (tlie defeated desires and repressed ideas) remain below the suriace of his life.