Instinct and the Unconscious. W.H.R.Rivers
especially associated with instinct. This close relation between emotion and instinct leads us to a definite theory concerning suppression and the unconscious. It has been found that experience which becomes unconscious through the agency of suppression either belongs definitely to the affective aspect of mind or, when intellectual in character, has [p. 38] been suppressed on account of its association with affective elements. The relation of affect to instinct suggests that the special function of the unconscious is to act as a storehouse of instinctive reactions and tendencies, together with the experience associated with them, when they are out of harmony with the prevailing constituents of consciousness so that, when present, they produce pain and discomfort.
If, now, we study our examples of suppression on the sensori-motor level, we find that they lead us in the same direction. The crude, immediate, and, as it were, unreflecting reactions of protopathic sensibility, which need suppression in the interests of the later and more delicate reactions of epicritic sensibility, are just such as we associate with instinct. According to the view put forward in the last chapter they are reactions belonging to an older order which have been suppressed because they are out of harmony with later and more exact modes of behaviour. We are in similar case when we turn' to the reflexes. Reflex action is generally acknowledged to be clearly related to instinct. Reflex acts are products of evolution even more highly organised than the instincts. It is therefore quite in accordance with the function of suppression in relation to instinct that this process should come into action in connection with the reflexes.
If, therefore, we accept the close relation between emotion and instinct, all branches of our inquiry lead us to the view that the content of the unconscious is made up, in the first place, of the feelings and affects which normally form the conscious aspect of instinctive reactions and tendencies, and in the second place of sensory and intellectual elements which have been associated with these instinctive and affective reactions and tendencies. It is thus suggested that there is the closest relation between the unconscious and instinct, that the unconscious is a storehouse of experience associated with instinctive reactions. Moreover, I have shown that suppression, the process by which the conscious becomes unconscious, itself takes place unwittingly. The question arises how far the unwitting character of a process is a mark of instinct and is associated with instinctive reactions.
The argument of this book has now brought into connection [p. 39] with one another the two concepts which form its title. Up to this point I have been chiefly occupied in making clear what I mean by the unconscious and describing its mechanisms and its content. It is now necessary that we shall become equally clear concerning the meaning to be attached to instinct, and I shall enter upon this task in the next chapter.
Footnotes
[1] See, for instance, E. B. Holt, The Freudian Wish, London (1915)
VI. The Nature of Instinct
It is not long since it was regarded as a sufficient definition of instinct that it is the mode of mental activity proper to animals as distinguished from the intelligence which was believed to be the chief, or even the only, factor of any importance in regulating Man's behaviour. All recent work in psychology 'has shown this distinction to be of little value. On the one hand, it has been found that the behaviour of animals, even such animals as the insects which are regarded as pre-eminent patterns of the instinctive, shows many features, such as adaptability to unusual conditions, which can only be explained by qualities of the same order as those belonging to intelligence.[1] Exact observation on animals has shown that their reactions to their surroundings have not the rigid and mechanical character which was once ascribed to them. Not only do failures occur in the adjustment of action to circumstance, but when these failures occur, or when the conditions are such as would lead to failure if the reactions took their ordinary form, animal behaviour has been found to be capable of modification. On the other hand, we have learnt that the behaviour of man is far less subject to reason and intelligence than was once supposed, and that his reactions to circumstance are often with difficulty to be distinguished from the behaviour of the unreasoning brutes. This absence or deficiency of reason is especially pronounced in those social reactions in which individual differences dictated by reason sink into insignificance before the mass-reactions of the crowd. We are learning, that the behaviour [p. 41] animals does not differ from that of Man in kind, but rather in the relative degree and importance of the different modes of reaction of which the behaviour consists.
A second way of distinguishing between instinct and intelligence is psychologically even less valid than the last. In the higher vertebrates, i.e., in those which have developed a cerebral cortex or neo-pallium as part of their central nervous system, instinct is regarded as the product of sub-cortical activity, while intelligence is held to depend on the activity of the cortex or neo-palium. It is an instructive commentary on the difficulties presented by current definitions of instinct that In the last resort even so psychological a writer as Lloyd Morgan is repeatedly driven to employ this anatomical distinction in his work on instinct and intelligence, thus virtually giving up the attempt to make a psychological distinction between the two.[2]
A third and most important distinction which has been made between instinct and intelligence is that the former is innate and the latter acquired. If an animal or man behaves in a way which is quite independent of any experience it can have acquired in its individual existence, the behaviour is regarded as purely instinctive. if, on the other hand, it were possible to say that the behaviour of an animal or man was wholly determined by the experience of the individual, we should regard the behaviour as an example of pure intelligence. Since, however, it is impossible to exclude innate factors, all that we can do is to recognise as intelligent those components of behaviour which can be ascribed to individual experience.
This difference between instinct and intelligence is one of great value and probably furnishes the best theoretical distinction between the two kinds of behaviour, but when we endeavour to use the theoretical difference as a guide in practice and research, we are met by several difficulties. The distinction is one which is difficult to utilise in practice, for, as soon as an animal has acquired experience of any kind, it becomes a matter of the greatest difficulty to distinguish between the innate and the acquired conditions, while, as already pointed out, in all [p. 42] examples of intelligent behaviour, it is impossible to exclude innate factors. Often, as in the case of insects and other animals which carry out actions of a most complicated kind, wholly independent of individual experience, the distinction is valid and useful. Thus, the butterfly which lays its eggs on a special kind of plant in the absence of any experience derived from the observation of this action by others of its species may be regarded as a typical example of instinct. An especially striking and often quoted example of this kind is that of the yucca-moth (Pronuba yucadella) which, preparatory to laying its eggs in the ovary of the yucca plant, cuts open the pistil and stuffs into it the pollen from another plant, so that at one stroke it both fertilises, and ensures the persistence of, the plant which is essential for the future welfare of its progeny. A still better example is given by the behaviour of the grub of the Capricorn beetle (Cerambyx miles). After a larval life spent wholly in the channels within a tree-trunk which it itself manufactures, this creature, little more than a piece of crawling intestine, as Fabre says, makes elaborate preparations to ensure that after the pupal state it shall escape from the woody prison in which it has itself been for all its life immured.[3] I call this insect a better example than the butterfly or the moth because it is quite impossible that the behaviour of the grub can have been in any way influenced by the imitation of its kind.
The exclusion of individual experience which is possible or even easy in the insect is beset with the greatest difficulties in the case of the higher animals. These difficulties become especially great in those animals, of which Man is the best example, which are born in a state of great-immaturity. The years spent by the child in acquiring experience, which it is impossible to record with any degree of accuracy, make it