Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious

Introduction

Perhaps the first individual to acknowledge that some parts of the mind are necessarily unavailable for introspection was St Augustine. He wrote ‘I cannot grasp all that I am’, meaning that at any single point in time he could be aware of only a fraction of his totality. All his memories and knowledge — most of what contributed to his sense of self – remained beyond awareness. Augustine recognised that consciousness has a limited capacity. It is only possible to suspend a small number of images or words in the medium of consciousness. Yet, even when our conscious minds are fully occupied — watching a sunset, or reading a book – the ‘sense’ of being who we are is generally well preserved. Our personal history – recorded in the form of memories – although far too extensive to be squeezed into a single moment of awareness, continues to impress on us a unique sense of identity. We feel the presence of our unconscious mind like a ghost. Invisible, but nevertheless somehow there.

The concept of the unconscious is surprisingly ubiquitous; scientists and poets, philosophers and artists, neurologists and mystics have all explored or discussed the concept of the ‘unconscious’. It has been the subject of learned dissertations as well as films, plays, and even a hit Broadway musical. But what is it, exactly? And how important is the unconscious in contemporary accounts of the human mind?

Although the unconscious has been approached from a variety of perspectives, the term unconscious is generally employed to refer to parts of the mind (or processes operating within the mind) that are either permanently or temporarily inaccessible to awareness; however, beyond this simple description, two contrasting ideas of the unconscious have repeatedly found (or lost) favour.

The first imbues the unconscious with many of the properties associated with consciousness: it can analyse information, make judgements, and sanction decisions. As such, it resembles a kind of bidden auxiliary intelligence. The second idea invests the unconscious with the properties of a machine. Information in the unconscious is simply processed by the neurological equivalent of a factory production line – disinterested, unreflecting, and automatic.

Artists and writers have always favoured the former view. There are numerous accounts of great works of art being produced without any conscious effort. Schiller, Goethe, Mozart, Coleridge, and Blake all produced masterpieces which seemed to enter awareness whole – completed and ready for transcription; however, creative artists are not the exclusive beneficiaries of a bountiful unconscious. Many scientists and mathematicians – for example Poincaré, Gauss, Kekule, Bohr, and Einstein – aiso arrived at the solution to complex problems while dozing or simply going about their usual everyday tasks. Revelatory experiences suggest the existence of a sophisticated unconscious, capable of undertaking complex mental operations. Clearly, such an unconscious is a valuable resource. But can the unconscious be exploited? Can it be encouraged to produce great works of art and solve problems? And if instructed, will it obey?

In the past, many methods have been employed to tap the unconscious and harness its powers. In the eighteenth century early hypnotists discovered that the unconscious could be ‘programmed’ to influence behaviour long after subjects were roused from their hypnotic sleep. In the nineteenth century poets and writers took opium in order to liberate the contents of the unconscious (and were rewarded with awe-inspiring visions and dreams). However, the most recent and scientifically supported method of communicating with the unconscious is subliminal stimulation. This technique conventionally involves the very short presentation (for five milliseconds or less) of messages or instructions. These presentations are so brief that they are not registered consciously but nevertheless seem to enter and bias the processing systems of the brain. Some studies suggest that subliminal messages influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviour more significantly than the same messages shown above the awareness threshold.

Subliminal stimulation studies suggest that the unconscious can be persuaded to influence the conscious mind. But to what extent does the unconscious influence us ordinarily? How important is activity in the unconscious? We have the subjective impression that the conscious mind is very much the dominant partner. Yet this impression might be inaccurate and misleading. This was certainly the belief of Sigmund Freud, the man whose name is now most frequently linked with the concept of the unconscious.

In his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, written between 1915 and 1917, Sigmund Freud claimed to have delivered ‘the third blow’ to narcissistic humanity, Copernicus, he said, had delivered the first – wrenching the earth away from the universe’s centre – and Darwin the second, showing man’s descent from ape-like ancestors. By emphasising the importance of unconscious processes in mental life, Freud believed that he had delivered the third and most wounding blow in the sequence. He suggested that our most valued characteristics – free will, rationality and a sense of self – are mere illusions, and that we are all the products of unconscious and uncontrollable forces in the mind. Naturally, Freud met with considerable resistance.

Many commentators dismissed Freud’s claim as grandiose and by the middle of the twentieth century Freud and his ideas were falling out of favour. Behaviourism (a theoretical framework which eschewed consideration of mental states altogether) held sway in academic psychology, while in the clinic advances in drug treatments threatened to make psychoanalysis redundant. In addition, the advent of the modern computer had provided psychology with a powerful new framework and vocabulary with which to understand and describe mental processes. Subsequently, the unconscious -the mainstay of Freud’s intellectual heritage – seemed less relevant. It seemed like an idea too strongly associated with the past to have much of a future.

But what if Freud had been right? What if Freud did deliver the third blow? And what if the concept of the unconscious is every bit as important – and humbling – as the heliocentric universe or evolution? We are all familiar with the massive cultural impact of Copernicus and Darwin, but how would humanity respond to the final assault on its egocentricity? How would these new insights affect issues surrounding the exercise of choice and freewill? Issues surrounding the nature of identity? Selfhood? Morality?

Over the past fifty years the unconscious has made a comeback. Evolutionary theorists, neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and those working in the field of artificial intelligence have all been forced to reconsider the concept of the unconscious. Gradually, individuals working in different disciplines, on different problems, but linked by a common goal of wishing to elucidate the properties of the mind, have been giving more and more emphasis to unconscious mental processes. Indeed, in the past half century the fortunes of the unconscious have been completely reversed. It ís now almost impossible to construct a credible model of the mind without assuming that important functions will be performed outside of awareness.

One of the greatest misconceptions about Freud is that he ‘discovered’ the unconscious. He didn’t. In fact, most of Freud’s ideas about the unconscious had been delineated and discussed (largely by philosophers and physicians) for over a century before his first relevant publications. Nevertheless, Freud can be justly credited with recognising that the unconscious was a very significant idea, and then popularising it with almost fanatical enthusiasm. Unlike his predecessors, Freud understood that the existence of the unconscious necessitated a complete revision of how human beings saw themselves. He rescued the unconscious from the rarefied world of academic debate and made it an indispensable addition to the modern vocabulary. Although Freud wrote extensively on many aspects of mental life, he felt that his greatest achievement was recognising the importance of the unconscious – hence, his unmistakable pride in having delivered ‘the third blow’.

Important ideas take a long time to yield up all their implications. In the custody of each new generation, a further application is discovered – another overtone, another resonance. Moreover, important ideas propagate slowly. There is usually a substantial delay between the inception of an idea and its subsequent widespread appreciation (particularly among the general public).

Although Copernicus proposed the heliocentric (sun-centred) universe in the sixteenth century, it wasn’t until the seventeenth or even eighteenth century that the educated classes of Europe realised that his observations represented much more than an astronomical discovery. The human race had been demoted. The human race no longer occupied a pre-eminent position in the cosmos. After Copernicus, the old medieval certainties (including an assumed existence of God) seemed less robust.

Likewise, it took over a hundred years for Darwin’s theory of evolution to be fully appreciated. Although evolution was immediately perceived as a challenge to religious orthodoxy (human beings were not created, but shaped by natural selection), it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that the awesome explanatory power of Darwin’s idea was really understood. Evolution could account for everything from the behaviour of micro-organisms to human altruism, the dance of the honey bee to men in fast cars. Moreover, Darwin’s principles had applications well beyond the confines of natural history.

In the early years of the twentieth century Freud asserted that almost all of the processes which determine who we are, and what we do, occur below the awareness threshold. Following the pattern set by his illustrious predecessors Copernicus and Darwin, it has taken nearly a century for the full significance of Freud’s ideas about the unconscious to be recognised. In the academic scramble to discredit Freud – particularly some of his more outlandish ideas on sex and sexual development – this, his most fundamental and defining statement, was never given the proper consideration it deserved. It is only now that the deeper implications of Freud’s ‘third blow’ are being fully appreciated.

Until relatively recently neuroscientists were in the habit of postulating some sort of ‘central executive’ in the brain. A place where consciousness ‘happened’. This idea is not very different from one proposed by Descartes, who in the seventeenth century suggested that consciousness was synthesised in the pineal gland. New models of brain functioning have, however, completely abandoned this approach.

Brain activity is distributed among numerous specialised sub-systems (i.e. groups of cells that work together to perform a particular function); yet none of these sub-systems is conscious. Moreover, there is no special place in the brain where the products of these sub-systems (such as the objects of perception and emotions) are knitted together. No place where a conscious experience is constructed. This has led many neuroscientists to conclude that the sense of self that we all share is nothing more than an ‘illusion; that identity is to the brain what the shape of a wave is to sea water. Contemporary neuroscience seems to suggest that our most prized possession – the ego -barely exists. We (as we know ourselves) have only a feeble claim on existence.

These are exciting times. With the advent of brain-scanning technology it is now possible to map the brain. Already the geography of the unconscious has been illuminated by the fallout of colliding sub-atomic particles. Many brain scan images – showing brightly lit areas of biological activity – are nothing less than snapshots of the unconscious at work. Preconscious processes, rapidly assembling the infrastructure of personality.

The unconscious, only recently rejected as a historical curiosity, has made its way back to the heart of neuroscience. It is now widely recognised that without a thorough understanding of unconscious processes in the brain we will never have a thorough understanding of ourselves. Once again, the unconscious is an idea with a future – but to appreciate that future, we must first consider its past.

1

Depths below depths

When the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz discovered John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he was greatly impressed. This work, published in 1690, was a meticulous analysis of how knowledge becomes consolidated in the mind. Although excited by Locke’s ‘essay’, Leibniz harboured some reservations and subsequently penned a brief critique. Unfortunately, Locke took a very dim view of Leibniz’s personal communication and chose to ignore it. Still convinced that his critique was sound, Leibniz wondered if Locke might have simply misunderstood what he had written. So, in the interests of clarity, he expanded his arguments to fill a book – New Essays on Human Understanding. But just as Leibniz completed it, Locke died. Disinclined to challenge an adversary who suffered from the considerable handicap of being dead, Leibniz sportingly decided not to publish; however, his New Essays did finally appear in 1765, almost fifty years after his own death.

New Essays is of major importance, not only because it contains a well-argued response to Locke but also because it contains the first significant entry into philosophical discussion of unconscious mental operations. Although others (such as St Augustine, Montaigne, and Descartes) had speculated about inaccessible memories or actions undertaken in the absence of awareness, never before had unconscious processes received such detailed consideration.

Leibniz’s new way of understanding the mind, as a marriage of conscious and unconscious parts, initiated a tradition that eventually influenced the entire development of German psychology (up to and including Freud); however, the significance of Leibniz’s work was not fully appreciated when New Essays was published. Indeed, proper recognition would be delayed for almost a century. This was because Leibniz’s book appeared when the Age of Enlightenment was approaching its zenith, and during the Enlightenment the power of reason had been given considerable emphasis in all accounts of mental life. Leibniz’s proposal, that there might be unconscious processes at work in the mind affecting the formation of ideas, judgement, and decision making, was in stark contradiction to the prevailing view. In an age that respected mastery and control, Leibniz’s ideas were both unwelcome and perhaps more than a little disconcerting. It was absurd, surely, to suggest that man (equipped with ‘god-like reason) should be influenced by mental events so insubstantial as to escape his ordinary notice. Or so it was thought.

Whether considering the motion of gases or the orbit of Mr Halley’s comet, reason was showing that all phenomena were lawful. Even the passage of time itself could be measured with greater accuracy. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries table clocks and long clocks began to appear in the drawing rooms of Europe. These clever devices, with their springs and bobs, click wheels and ratchets, provided the age with a guiding metaphor. The universe was like an enormous clock. The universe ran like clockwork. The idea that human society and the human mind itself might run on similar principles was welcomed as yet another pleasing symmetry.

Locke’s Essay with which Leibniz was to take posthumous issue contains all of the hallmarks of Enlightenment thinking: complex mental phenomena are broken down into more fundamental constituents and ‘opposition to reason’ is described as ‘a sort of madness’. Moreover, in the fourth edition Locke began to explore potential laws which might determine how certain ideas (e.g. size and shape) become associated. Locke believed that self-reflection could unravel the mind completely Although he recognised that ideas might exist outside of awareness – stored in memory – such ideas could easily be uncovered at will. There were no inaccessible recesses or shadowy corners. The machinery of mental life could be exposed through introspection, just as one might peer into the back of a table clock to examine its cogs and springs. This was the key difference between Locke and Leibniz. For Locke the mind was transparent, but for Leibniz the mind was semi-opaque.

Leibniz was, without doubt, an extraordinary individual: uncommonly gifted and enjoying an embarrassment of intellectual riches. He is perhaps most famous for discovering the calculus – a systematic method of calculating areas, volumes, and other quantities very much superior to anything that existed before. Unfortunately, Newton was working on the same problem at exactly the same time, resulting in an acrimonious priority dispute. Nevertheless, it was Leibniz’s method of calculation that proved to be less cumbersome, giving continental mathematicians a significant advantage over their loyal but misguided English counterparts. In addition to discovering the calculus, Leibniz also devised binary arithmetic — a means of representing all values with only ones and zeros and better known today as the ‘language’ used by all digital computers. Indeed, it can be argued that Leibniz anticipated computer science itself by inventing a machine (the wooden prototype of which he demonstrated in London in 1673) capable of ‘reasoning’ by manipulating a symbolic language (over 150 years before Babbage’s Analytical Engine). As if this wasn’t enough, he designed a submarine, anticipated some features of Einstein’s theory of relativity, improved some basic engineering designs, promoted a public health system (which included a fire-fighting service and street lighting), assisted in negotiations that secured Georg Ludwig of Hanover’s succession to the British throne, and helped establish the German State Bank. He was no slacker.

Be that as it may, when John Locke read Leibniz’s preliminary critique of his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding he allegedly responded by saying:

Mr L’s great name had raised in me an expectation which the sight of his paper did not answer. This sort of fiddling makes me hardly avoid thinking that he is not the very great man as has been talked of him.

Although Leibniz was undeniably an inveterate ‘fiddler’, there can be no denying that his fiddling was of the highest quality. Moreover, when he finally decided to ‘fiddle’ with mental phenomena, it was inevitable that his mighty intellect would deliver a revolutionary and penetrating account of the mind.

Leibniz did not make a sharp distinction between awareness and its absence. He believed that even when the mind is ostensibly inactive, such as in dreamless sleep, at some level mental processes are still operating. In addition, he postulated a continuum of consciousness. At the top of this continuum, he placed apperceptions (that is, the occurrence of clear and distinct mental experiences). Below these were less well defined perceptions, and below these minute perceptions, which occur wholly outside of awareness because they are ‘either too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying’; however, minute perceptions do not always remain unconscious. They can rise into awareness, as when an individual focuses attention on a previously unnoticed sensation or noise.

Leibniz attributed a central role to minute perceptions with respect to the creation and maintenance of our sense of identity. According to Leibniz, the sense of having a single, continuous identity, extending from childhood through to old age, arises because of a sub-stratum of unconscious memories. Some of these memories enter awareness completely (allowing the individual to cross reference his or her past), while other memories merely hover at the fringes of awareness, providing a tenebrous context against which current mental events can take place. Leibniz also suggested something else that must have been particularly unpalatable to his peers; something which we today would call unconscious motivation. Again, minute perceptions played a key role. Leibniz suggested that minute perceptions might influence choices (and subsequent behaviour) without ever being detected in awareness. In other words, human beings were creatures with limited self-knowledge or insight. They might not be wholly aware why they choose to act in one way rather than another. Understandably, the concept of unconscious motivation never gained much currency in an age where introspection was thought to reveal the ordered workings of a wholly transparent and rational mind. The clear implication was that human beings were fundamentally irrational – a ridiculous idea. Unthinkable.

It is ironic that Leibniz employed a mechanical image to explain how minute perceptions influence behaviour, thus inadvertently subverting the most potent symbol of the Enlightenment. For Leibniz, minute perceptions resemble ‘so many little springs trying to unwind and driving our machine along’. He goes on to explain:

That is why we are never indifferent, even when we appear to be most so, as for instance whether to turn left or right at the end of a lane. For the choice that we make arises from these insensible stimuli, which, mingled with the actions of objects and our bodily interiors, make us find one direction of movement more comfortable than the other.

Leibniz’s response to Locke (with its emphasis on unconscious determinants of behaviour) was a controversial publication in the Age of Reason. In addition, Leibniz’s reputation may have suffered when the French writer and wit, François Marie Arouet, more famously known as Voltaire, ridiculed him as the absurd philosopher Dr Pangloss in Candide (1759). Subsequently, Leibniz’s revolutionary ideas about the workings of the mind were somewhat neglected.

Even so, as the well-oiled wheels of the table clocks turned, marking time with increasing precision, the world was edging forward to meet a new century; a new century in which mechanistic models of mind would be rejected and the concept of the unconscious fully embraced. ‘Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire’, wrote the poet William Blake, "tis all in vain!’ And he was right. The tectonic plates of art and philosophy suddenly shifted. Within a few decades the citadels of reason would be reduced to rubble.

The romantic movement began in Germany towards the end of the eighteenth century; however, the romantic sensibility continued to be influential to the end of the nineteenth, affecting cultural life worldwide. Although conventionally considered an artistic movement, the influence of romanticism spread well beyond the aits. Indeed, the representatives of romanticism offered a new model of man and, inevitably, a new model of mental life. Moreover, right from the very beginning, the existence of the unconscious was fully accepted and integrated into romantic psychology. The poet Friedrich Schiller suggested that his poetry had an unconscious origin and argued that the creative faculties were improved when liberated from reason; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have written his influential The Sorrows of the Young Werther (?774) while ‘practically unconscious’; and philosophers such as Artur Schopenhauer began to describe man as an irrational creature driven by unconscious forces. Why the sudden change?

Romanticism was very much a reaction against the central values of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the principal themes of romanticism were established in the wake of a philosophical backlash. The Enlightenment had arisen in the capitals of Europe, where man had been defined as a social and rational animal. Subsequently the romantics exchanged the city for the countryside, society for solitude, and reason for emotion.

The romantics venerated nature, and this is clearly evident in early eighteenth century romantic art – the most typical examples of which were produced by painters such as Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich (and his contemporaries) were preoccupied with nature’s power and majesty, and subsequently specialised in landscapes. Human beings occasionally appear, but they are usually depicted as insignificant – dwarfed by immense mountains and louring skies, huge cataracts or sheets of ice. Solitary figures look out over vast expanses of rolling mist, or huddle on beaches in moonlight. Many of the greatest triumphs of the Enlightenment were urban, architectural (Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral, for example). The raw materials of nature – slate, marble, granite – had been disciplined by mathematics and labour; however, it is difficult to imagine Friedrich’s proud rocks being shaped into Corinthian columns or decorative cornicing. For Friedrich and the romantic fraternity nature was wild and elemental. It represented something beyond the scope of reason, ratio and compasses.

The solitary artists, rejected lovers, and lonely wayfarers in romantic landscapes also reflect the special emphasis romanticism gave to the individual. Enlightenment thinkers had wrestled with political and economic issues -analysing social structures and planning social reforms. With the advent of romanticism, the individual became the focus of interest. Writers and artists demonstrated an increasing awareness of the complexity of mental life. The struggles between different elements of society were now of less concern than the struggles arising within the individual – the conflict between head and heart, body and soul, conscious and unconscious forces.

As romanticism gathered momentum, the faculty of reason was approached with less reverence, which permitted more serious consideration of the subjective, irrational, and visionary. Deep feelings, or passions, previously viewed with some suspicion (on account of being wrongly associated with mental illness) were increasingly perceived as desirable and enriching. Even mysticism (rejected by Enlightenment thinkers as superstitious nonsense) became more acceptable. Indeed, one of the pivotal beliefs of romanticism was that behind visible nature was a mysterious ‘fundament’ or Grund. Subsequently, the romantic movement’s professed love of nature concealed an ulterior motive: union with a kind of universal unconscious – the cosmic equivalent of the soul’s penetralia.

According to romantic philosophers, the universal unconscious contained its own memories. It was a storehouse of ancient lore, symbols, and leitmotif. Because the human unconscious resonated in sympathy with its deep, immemorial voice, certain themes and images were prone to recur in myth and folklore – all issuing from the same source. Needless to say, union with the universal unconscious was accomplished most successfully when the faculty of reason was suspended. Thus, powerful