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The authors report in detail the results of their study on the effect of tachistoscopic visual stimulation at subliminal levels upon the subsequent drawings
and dreams of eleven volunteer subjects. They conclude that visual registration and subsequent elaboration of subliminal stimuli in imagery and dream constitute a genuine phenomenon. They describe the process involved ('Pötzl Phenomenon') as comprising four phases: 1, subliminal registration; 2, cognitive working-over outside awareness, so that the registration becomes a memory trace or is recruited to a preexisting memory schema; 3, delayed emergence of the worked-over registration into subsequent dreams and images; 4, reproduction by elaboration into words and action. The authors feel their data indicate that laws and concepts derived from classical laboratory studies (for example, gestalt psychology), utilizing subjects operating in a state of consciousness highly committed to reality appraisal and distinction-making, may be valid only for this particular state of consciousness, and not for those which, like subliminal registration, are more accessible to primary process modes.