The existence of phenomena purely as phenomena, their subjective existence irrespective of object, constitutes their psychic existence or that side of the phenomenon from which it becomes an object of psychological research. Under this head come all those phenomena to which science denies an objective value: illusions of the senses, mental hallucinations, and the normal non-scientific representations of things, the creations of the imagination in music and in art, the entire subjective life of feeling and of aspiration, regarded only as a particularly characteristic association of representation, irrespective of all objective truth, which lies beyond the limits of psychology as such.
The characteristic, accordingly, is found in the _unity_ in which the content represents itself in the single or reiterated acts of consciousness. In each act of consciousness the content is simply present, and no time is distinguished. When we distinguish time, a plurality of consciousness also must be distinguished. It may seem difficult to understand how two or more original acts of consciousness are again united into one act; but in reality this takes place. The idea of unity is thus enlarged, and becomes the consciousness of a multiplicity, the necessary unity of a multiple, a successive connection in time, and a simultaneous connection. All consciousness (representation) depends on connection, as is indirectly shown by trying to discover whether the elementary contents of consciousness can be represented in absolute isolation.
Abstract consciousness is thus found to be the relation of given contents to an ego, and connection constitutes the manner in which a multiple content appears or is represented in the reiterated relation to one and the same ego. Connection is the _concrete expression_ of that relation itself, through which consciousness attains its definite and positive value. Abstract consciousness seems poor, but the multiplicity of a definite connection of contents affords a vast field of psychological research, for on that connection depends the concrete significance of the ego, which to us is not subject in general, but above all, is our own particular subject.
And finally at this point there spontaneously arises the question of a theory of the psychic phenomena. Every theory essentially presupposes an _objective_ tendency, while consciousness, as the expression of the purest _subjectivity_ of phenomena, cannot be rendered objective. It clearly follows, therefore, that the _method_ of psychology must be radically different from all methods of the objective sciences.