The Psychology of Suggestion by Boris Sidis

The German school, with Wundt at its head, at first started out on similar lines, but they could not make any use of the subconscious, and their speculations ran wild in the fancies Of Hartmann. The reason for this failure is due to the fact that the concept Of the subconscious as conceived by the German school was extremely vague, and had rather the character of a mechanical than that of a psychical process. An unconscious consciousness that was their concept of the subconscious. In such a form as this, the subconscious was certainly meaningless — mere nonsense-and had to be given up. The German psychological investigations are now confined to the content Of consciousness in so far as the individual is immediately conscious Of it. But as this form of consciousness is extremely narrow and circumscribed, the results arrived at, though remarkable for their thoroughness, are after all of a rather trivial nature. It is what Prof. James aptly characterizes the elaboration of the obvious. We may therefore, with full right, assert that it was the French psychologists who made proper use of the subconscious and arrived at results that are of the utmost importance to psychology, although it was well if the French were to conduct their investigations with German thoroughness.