Through purely theoretical considerations an attempt is made 'to align the psychoanalytic concepts of unconsciousness and consciousness with psychological concepts of attitude, by explaining them both in terms of a single basic neuromuscular sequence'. Bull offers a tripartite concept of attitude: 1, the latent attitude, which is the nonconscious antecedent neural organization existing in the central nervous system; 2, the motor attitude, which is muscular and unconscious at first but conscious immediately after its establishment; 3, the mental attitude, which is the conscious feeling of the motor attitude and gives the sense of orientation and intention.

Theoreticians will find in this paper the old vintage of the James-Lange theory in a new and more elaborate glass. Clinicians will find all this quite abstruse.