SUBLIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS ( from Lat. sub, under + /men, threshold). Literally a degree of consciousness below a certain theo retical limit of intensity and clearness.
Such a consciousness cannot be proved to exist by direct introspection, but has been assumed to account especially for four groups of facts. ( 1) People often execute blind, impulsive actions or feel curious likes and dislikes (e.g. shivering at grating sounds), for which no adequate reason can be found in consciousness. Hence they may be the product of subconscious processes. (2) Many complicated movements, like piano-play ing, which at first necessitate highly attentive conscious control, become, with time, decreasing ly conscious and finally automatic, yet they seem too complex ever to be purely mechanical. (3) Ideas sometimes appear in consciousness from no assignable source, i.e. neither connected with previous thoughts nor traceable to sense-percep tion. These may have originated subliminally and thence risen to clear consciousness. (4) A mass of 'borderland' and pathological phe nomena, such as automatic writing, trance, post hypnotic suggestion, double personality, reveals many instances in which complex, seemingly quite intelligent, and hence apparently conscious, actions are executed by individuals who are, nevertheless, entirely ignorant of what they say or do. In the phenomenon of alternating per sonality such experiences are so frequent and so well organized as to become aggregated into a so-called subconscious 'mind' or 'personality,' which, under certain conditions, e.g. trance, hys
teria, and the like, becomes the conscious, domi nating personality.
lf, with the best authorities, we deny a sub liminal consciousness, all four groups of facts must obviously be explained in terms of nervous action without consciousness. Organic tenden cies, constitutional dispositions, and various hereditary instincts will then account for the first group of facts, secondary reflexes for the second, inaccurate introspection and unconscious (or marginally conscious) association for the third, and similar principles, supplemented per haps by neuropathic conditions, for the fourth. The most elaborate argument in favor of a sub liminal self is that of F. W. H. Myers.
See ATTENTION; NOETIC CONSCIOUSNESS; SUB CONSCIOUNESS.
BinmoonApnv. Carpenter. Principles of Men tal Physiology (Gth ed.. London, 1891) ; Pierce, ill Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Re search, vol. xi. (ib., 1892) ; Morgan, Introduction to Comparatire Psychology (ib., 1894 ) ; Stout, Analytic Psychology, vol. i. (ib., 1896) ; Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (ib., 1903) ; and Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars (New York, 1900).