You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Subliminally perceived pictures are registered as memory images and appear to the subject during the period of 'free imagery' as formally and structurally similar, though often distorted, visual images. The images range from exact reproduction of the perceptual stimulus to distortions and condensations by other recent memory images, childhood memory images, and unconscious wishes (hence their similarity to the manifest dream reported by the subjects). The appearance of such conscious imagery from subliminal recorded percepts depends in part on defensive activity. The author concludes that preconscious percepts outside of awareness are particularly apt to be utilized by unconscious wishes. Furthermore, conscious perception proceeds via three steps: preconscious registration; contact with pre-existing memory schemata; and emergence into consciousness, the latter step being delayed only if the perceptual stimulus is subliminal. Distortions and condensation of the latter type of stimulus probably occur during the second of these three steps. Besides immediate entry into consciousness, there may be delivery into consciousness after a latent period, in the form of image, dream, or hallucination, or the registered percept may become an unconscious memory image per se.