The attack followed just as if he had seen the flame.
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
There are, as we know, certain views which would restrict everything psychic to consciousness, as being identical with it.
I do not believe this is sufficient.
If we assume that there is anything at all beyond our sense-perception, then we are entitled to speak of psychic elements whose existence is only indirectly accessible to us.
For anybody acquainted with the psychology of hypnotism and somnambulism, it is a well-known fact that though an artificially or morbidly restricted consciousness of this kind does not contain certain ideas, it nevertheless behaves exactly as if it did. For instance, there was an hysterically deaf patient who was fond of singing.
One day the doctor unobtrusively sat down at the piano and accompanied the next verse in another key, whereupon the patient went on singing in the new key. Another patient always fell into “hystero-epileptic” convulsions at the sight of a naked flame.
He had a markedly restricted field of vision, that is, he suffered from peripheral blindness (having what is known as a “tubular” field of vision).
If one now held a lighted match in the blind zone, the attack followed just as if he had seen the flame.
In the symptomatology of such states there are innumerable cases of this kind, where with the best will in the world one can only say that these people perceive, think, feel, remember, decide, and act unconsciously, doing unconsciously what others do consciously.
These processes occur regardless of whether consciousness registers them or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 295
