are unable to change all sensations lying at the foundation of the ego. As every-day experience shows, the affect-ego is a feeble complex, and is considerably inferior to the affect-complex in constellated force.
Let us now assume that the dangerous situation clears rapidly. The complex then soon loses some of its attention-tone, because the general sensations gradually resume their normal characteristics. Yet the affect continues to oscillate for a long time in its physical and hence also in its psychical components. "The knees shake," the heart continues to palpitate excitedly for some time, the face is either flushed or pale, "one can hardly recover from fear." From time to time, at first after short, and later after longer intervals, this picture of fear returns and is charged with new associations, thus exciting waves of affect-reminiscences. This perseveration of the affect, in addition to the great emotional force, also contributes towards the proportional increase in the number of the associations. Therefore extensive complexes are always of great feeling tone, and inversely, strong affects always leave behind extensive complexes. This is simply due to the fact that on the one hand strong complexes contain numerous bodily innervations, and on the other hand, strong affects can constellate many associations, owing to their strong and persistent excitement of the body. Affects may normally continue to act for a long time (in the form of disturbances of the stomach, heart, sleeplessness, trembling, etc.). Gradually, however, they die away, the complexes disappear from consciousness, and only occasionally in dreams there appear more or less hidden intimations. In the associations they continue to show themselves for years in characteristic complex disturbances. But their gradual extinction is prevented by a general psychological peculiarity, namely, their readiness to reappear in almost full force on similar or much weaker stimuli. For a long time after, there exists a condition which I should like to designate as complex-sensitiveness. A child once bitten by a dog will scream with
This modification will, as a rule in painful affects, consist of restriction and recession of many parts of the normal ego. Many other wishes, interests, and affects have to give way to the new complex, insofar as they oppose it. The ego in the affect is reduced to its lowest, as can be seen in such scenes as theater fires and shipwrecks, where in a trice all culture disappears, being replaced by the crudest lack of consideration.
