By definition, our unconscious minds are unknown to us: if we could ponder our unconscious mental processes, they would no longer be unconscious. Although we have all experienced the forces that our unconscious can exert on our conscious thinking and behavior, discovering the exact way in which our minds work beneath our consciousness is not a straightforward matter.
Sigmund Freud famously believed he had discovered what was in the unconscious mind – a dark, seething mass of repressed sexual desires. Other thinkers built on Freud’s theories, bringing mysticism and surrealist ideas to bear on the issue. Today, psychologists take perhaps the saner view that, in general, the unconscious is involved in much the same things as the conscious mind. The surprising element is that, in some ways, the unconscious can outsmart the conscious brain. This modern view has given us new routes towards an understanding of the unconscious, and answers are emerging to such questions as how do our brains work so effectively on autopilot? How powerful is subliminal perception? And is unconscious learning really a possibility?
Until a little over a century ago, few people believed in the unconscious: the contents of the mind were, by definition, conscious. But today’s psychologists agree with Freud that our lives are rjled by thoughts and feelings of which we are unaware.
When we sink into a deep sleep, faint, or have a general anesthetic, we are unconscious. Being in this state is impossible to describe because it isn’t like anything – we are simply unaware of feeling or thinking. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that the very idea of an active unconscious was scorned by self-respecting thinkers from the ancient Greeks onwards. An ancient Greek who had attempted to discuss the unconscious would have been laughed out of the symposium. The contents of your mind were, by definition, conscious: if you wanted to know what was going on inside your head, all you had to do was look inside with your ‘inner eye·.
Even by the 18th century, philosophers such as David Hume and John Locke regarded all mental events – thinking, knowing, and feeling – as taking place in the playing field of awareness. As Locke wrote: ‘to imprint anything on the mind, without the mind’s perceiving it, seems to be hardly intelligible.’ Minds were transparent – although you could only know for certain what was going on inside your own.
Towards The Unconscious
So what brought us to a belief in the unconscious and the acknowledgment that our lives are ruled by motivations of which we are unaware? The first steps were taken by the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer. Experimenting with hypnotism in Paris at the end of the 18th century, Mesmer showed that unconscious thoughts could exert an effect on the body. Producing paralysis or insensibility to pain. His work was taken up by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who used hypnosis to induce and study hysteria. This medical condition often involves a mixture of psychological and physical symptoms such as blindness, paralysis, and amnesia. Charcot was assisted in these studies by Sigmund Freud, then a brilliant medical student. Together with his mentor, Freud elaborated the theory that the symptoms of hysteria were a disguised means of keeping emotionally charged memories under mental lock and key in the unconscious mind. This led to his development of the technique of psychoanalysis to gain access to the unconscious and effect ‘ cures.’ Freud’s theory that unconscious thoughts are responsible for much of human behavior causes outrage. Apart from the appalling notion that respectable members of society were all being driven by unthinkable sexual desires, where did that leave notions of free will and responsibility?
Nevertheless, Freud’s ideas became increasingly accepted and remain highly influential. As post-Freudians, we are all happy to talk about unconscious motives, and ideas like repression and denial have entered the popular vocabulary. In a way, Freud’s work has made psychologists of us all.
Modern times
Since Freud’s time, scientists have moved away from Freud’s model of the unconscious – a potent broth of traumatic memories and repression that only the psychoanalyst could clarify. Today, the more that scientists study the unconscious, the more rema·r able it seems. Over the last 40 years, experimental psychologists have found that people constantly engage in all sorts of mental activity that is not simply repressed but is totally beyond the scope of consciousness. All sorts of highly sophisticated mental activities – searching memory, solving problems, making inferences – are carried out at an unconscious level. As the capabilities of the unconscious mind become ever more evident, some researchers have even begun to wonder whether we need consciousness at all.
Words To Describe The Unconscious
Different words are used to refer to mental experiences outside consciousness.
- ‘Preconscious’ and ‘subliminal refer to experiences just below the threshold of consciousness.
- ‘Unconscious’ and ‘subconscious’ often indicate more profound inaccessibility.
- Psychologists also refer to ‘implicit’ (in contrast with ‘explicit’) knowledge – that is, the knowledge we have without being able to state it.
