Unconscious mind

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In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind (or the unconscious) is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. [1] Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. [2] Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. [3] [4]

Contents

The emergence of the concept of the unconscious in psychology and general culture was mainly due to the work of Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious mind consists of ideas and drives that have been subject to the mechanism of repression: anxiety-producing impulses in childhood are barred from consciousness, but do not cease to exist, and exert a constant pressure in the direction of consciousness. However, the content of the unconscious is only knowable to consciousness through its representation in a disguised or distorted form, by way of dreams and neurotic symptoms, as well as in slips of the tongue and jokes. The psychoanalyst seeks to interpret these conscious manifestations in order to understand the nature of the repressed.

The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without any apparent cause), the repository of forgotten memories (that may still be accessible to consciousness at some later time), and the locus of implicit knowledge (the things that we have learned so well that we do them without thinking). Phenomena related to semi-consciousness include awakening, implicit memory, subliminal messages, trances, hypnagogia and hypnosis. While sleep, sleepwalking, dreaming, delirium and comas may signal the presence of unconscious processes, these processes are seen as symptoms rather than the unconscious mind itself.

Some critics have doubted the existence of the unconscious altogether. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Historical overview

German

The term "unconscious" (German : unbewusst) was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (in his System of Transcendental Idealism , ch. 6, § 3) and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in his Biographia Literaria ). [9] [10] Some rare earlier instances of the term "unconsciousness" (Unbewußtseyn) can be found in the work of the 18th-century German physician and philosopher Ernst Platner. [11] [12]

Vedas

Influences on thinking that originate from outside an individual's consciousness were reflected in the ancient ideas of temptation, divine inspiration, and the predominant role of the gods in affecting motives and actions. The idea of internalised unconscious processes in the mind was present in antiquity, and has been explored across a wide variety of cultures. Unconscious aspects of mentality were referred to between 2,500 and 600 BC in the Hindu texts known as the Vedas, found today in Ayurvedic medicine. [13] [14] [15]

Paracelsus

Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an unconscious aspect of cognition in his work Von den Krankheiten (translates as "About illnesses", 1567), and his clinical methodology created a cogent system that is regarded by some as the beginning of modern scientific psychology. [16]

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare explored the role of the unconscious [17] in many of his plays, without naming it as such. [18] [19] [20]

Philosophy

Western philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, [21] [22] Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, Carl Gustav Carus, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche [23] and Thomas Carlyle [24] used the word unconscious. [25]

In 1880 at the Sorbonne, Edmond Colsenet defended a philosophy thesis (PhD) on the unconscious. [26] Elie Rabier and Alfred Fouillee performed syntheses of the unconscious "at a time when Freud was not interested in the concept". [27]

Psychology

Nineteenth century

According to historian of psychology Mark Altschule, "It is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to find a nineteenth-century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance." [28] In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology ( The Principles of Psychology ), examined the way Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious.'" [29] German psychologists, Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt, had begun to use the term in their experimental psychology, in the context of manifold, jumbled sense data that the mind organizes at an unconscious level before revealing it as a cogent totality in conscious form." [30] Eduard von Hartmann published a book dedicated to the topic, Philosophy of the Unconscious, in 1869.

Freud

The iceberg metaphor proposed by G. T. Fechner is often used to provide a visual representation of Freud's theory that most of the human mind operates unconsciously. Structural-Iceberg.svg
The iceberg metaphor proposed by G. T. Fechner is often used to provide a visual representation of Freud's theory that most of the human mind operates unconsciously.

Sigmund Freud and his followers developed an account of the unconscious mind. He worked with the unconscious mind to develop an explanation for mental illness. [32] It plays an important role in psychoanalysis.

Freud divided the mind into the conscious mind (or the ego) and the unconscious mind. The latter was then further divided into the id (or instincts and drive) and the superego (or conscience). In this theory, the unconscious refers to the mental processes of which individuals are unaware. [33] Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the conscious mind, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind—each lying beneath the other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind. [34] Contents of the unconscious mind go through the preconscious mind before coming to conscious awareness. [35] He interpreted such events as having both symbolic and actual significance.

In psychoanalytic terms, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, but rather that which is actively repressed from conscious thought. In the psychoanalytic view, unconscious mental processes can only be recognized through analysis of their effects in consciousness. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but they are capable of partially evading the censorship mechanism of repression in a disguised form, manifesting, for example, as dream elements or neurotic symptoms. Such symptoms are supposed to be capable of being "interpreted" during psychoanalysis, with the help of methods such as free association, dream analysis, and analysis of verbal slips and other unintentional manifestations in conscious life.

Jung

Carl Gustav Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious is a determinant of personality, but he proposed that the unconscious be divided into two layers: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed, much like Freud's notion. The collective unconscious, however, is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the accumulation of inherited psychic structures and archetypal experiences. Archetypes are not memories but energy centers or psychological functions that are apparent in the culture's use of symbols. The collective unconscious is therefore said to be inherited and contain material of an entire species rather than of an individual. [36] The collective unconscious is, according to Jung, "[the] whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual". [37]

In addition to the structure of the unconscious, Jung differed from Freud in that he did not believe that sexuality was at the base of all unconscious thoughts. [38]

Dreams

Freud

The purpose of dreams, according to Freud, is to fulfill repressed wishes while simultaneously allowing the dreamer to remain asleep. The dream is a disguised fulfillment of the wish because the unconscious desire in its raw form would disturb the sleeper and can only avoid censorship by associating itself with elements that are not subject to repression. Thus Freud distinguished between the manifest content and latent content of the dream. The manifest content consists of the plot and elements of a dream as they appear to consciousness, particularly upon waking, as the dream is recalled. [39] The latent content refers to the hidden or disguised meaning of the events and elements of the dream. It represents the unconscious psychic realities of the dreamer's current issues and childhood conflicts, the nature of which the analyst is seeking to understand through interpretation of the manifest content. [40] [41] In Freud's theory, dreams are instigated by the events and thoughts of everyday life. In what he called the "dream-work", these events and thoughts, governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought, which is governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. The dream-work involves a process of disguising these unconscious desires in order to preserve sleep. This process occurs primarily by means of what Freud called condensation and displacement. [42] Condensation is the focusing of the energy of several ideas into one, and displacement is the surrender of one idea's energy to another more trivial representative. The manifest content is thus thought to be a highly significant simplification of the latent content, capable of being deciphered in the analytic process, potentially allowing conscious insight into unconscious mental activity.

Neurobiological theory of dreams

Allan Hobson and colleagues developed what they called the activation-synthesis hypothesis which proposes that dreams are simply the side effects of the neural activity in the brain that produces beta brain waves during REM sleep that are associated with wakefulness. According to this hypothesis, neurons fire periodically during sleep in the lower brain levels and thus send random signals to the cortex. The cortex then synthesizes a dream in reaction to these signals in order to try to make sense of why the brain is sending them. However, the hypothesis does not state that dreams are meaningless, it just downplays the role that emotional factors play in determining dreams. [41]

Contemporary cognitive psychology

Research

There is an extensive body of research in contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to mental activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness. Most of this research on unconscious processes has been done in the academic tradition of the information processing paradigm. The cognitive tradition of research into unconscious processes does not rely on the clinical observations and theoretical bases of the psychoanalytic tradition; instead it is mostly data driven. Cognitive research reveals that individuals automatically register and acquire more information than they are consciously aware of or can consciously remember and report. [43]

Much research has focused on the differences between conscious and unconscious perception. There is evidence that whether something is consciously perceived depends both on the incoming stimulus (bottom up strength) [44] and on top-down mechanisms like attention. [45] Recent research indicates that some unconsciously perceived information can become consciously accessible if there is cumulative evidence. [46] Similarly, content that would normally be conscious can become unconscious through inattention (e.g. in the attentional blink) or through distracting stimuli like visual masking.

Unconscious processing of information about frequency

An extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks [47] has demonstrated that individuals register information about the frequency of events automatically (outside conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources). Moreover, perceivers do this unintentionally, truly "automatically", regardless of the instructions they receive, and regardless of the information processing goals they have. The ability to unconsciously and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have little or no relation to the individual's age, [48] education, intelligence, or personality. Thus it may represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in general.

Criticism of the Freudian concept

The notion that the unconscious mind exists at all has been disputed. [49] [50] [51] [52]

Franz Brentano rejected the concept of the unconscious in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , although his rejection followed largely from his definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness. [53]

Jean-Paul Sartre offers a critique of Freud's theory of the unconscious in Being and Nothingness , based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. Philosopher Thomas Baldwin argues that Sartre's argument is based on a misunderstanding of Freud. [54]

Erich Fromm contends that "The term 'the unconscious' is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as the unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, of which we are unconscious. If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: 'the' unconscious." [55]

John Searle has offered a critique of the Freudian unconscious. He argues that the Freudian cases of shallow, consciously held mental states would be best characterized as 'repressed consciousness,' while the idea of more deeply unconscious mental states is more problematic. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts" that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are in principle never accessible to conscious awareness, is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not "nonconscious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it) is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it is being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the nonconscious processes of the brain. [56]

Other critics of the Freudian unconscious include David Stannard, [57] Richard Webster, [58] Ethan Watters, [59] Richard Ofshe, [59] and Eric Thomas Weber. [60]

Some scientific researchers proposed the existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a "cognitive unconscious" (John Kihlstrom), [61] [62] an "adaptive unconscious" (Timothy Wilson), [63] or a "dumb unconscious" (Loftus and Klinger), [64] which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed, and the "deep unconscious system" of Robert Langs.

In modern cognitive psychology, many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or "automatic" have been used. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior. [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] Active research traditions related to the unconscious include implicit memory (for example, priming), and Pawel Lewicki's nonconscious acquisition of knowledge.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Westen, Drew (1999). "The Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead?". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 47 (4): 1061–1106. doi:10.1177/000306519904700404. ISSN   0003-0651. PMID   10650551. S2CID   207080.
  2. ↑ Kahneman, Daniel (2013). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0374533557.
  3. ↑ Cantor, G. N. (1981). Bynum, W. F.; Browne, E. J.; Porter, Roy (eds.). "Dictionary of the History of Science". Medical History. 26 (2): 225–226. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-05549-4. PMC   1139175 .
  4. ↑ Murray, Christopher John (2004). Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. Taylor and Francis. pp. 1001–1002. ISBN   1-57958-422-5.
  5. ↑ Honderich, Ted, ed. (1995). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN   978-0-19-866132-0.
  6. ↑ "David E. Stannard. Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory. New York: Oxford University Press. 1980. Pp. xx, 187. $12.95". The American Historical Review. 1981. doi:10.1086/ahr/86.2.369. ISSN   1937-5239.
  7. ↑ Callender, J. S (1996-02-24). "Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis". BMJ. 312 (7029): 518. doi:10.1136/bmj.312.7029.518a. ISSN   0959-8138. S2CID   62293185.
  8. ↑ Karbelnig, Alan Michael (2020). "The theater of the unconscious mind". Psychoanalytic Psychology. 37 (4): 273–281. doi:10.1037/pap0000251. ISSN   1939-1331. S2CID   198760071.
  9. ↑ Bynum; Browne; Porter (1981). The Macmillan Dictionary of the History of Science. London. p. 292.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ↑ Christopher John Murray, Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850 (Taylor & Francis, 2004: ISBN   1-57958-422-5), pp. 1001–1002.
  11. ↑ Ernst Platner, Philosophische Aphorismen nebst einigen Anleitungen zur philosophischen Geschichte, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Schwickertscher Verlag, 1793 [1776]), p. 86.
  12. ↑ Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher, Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (2010), Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 9.
  13. ↑ Alexander, C. N. 1990. Growth of Higher Stages of Consciousness: Maharishi's Vedic Psychology of Human Development. C. N. Alexander and E.J. Langer (eds.). Higher Stages of Human Development. Perspectives on Human Growth. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  14. ↑ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, D. (1996). Consciousness and the Actor. A Reassessment of Western and Indian Approaches to the Actor's Emotional Involvement from the Perspective of Vedic Psychology. Peter Lang. ISBN   978-0-8204-3180-2.
  15. ↑ Haney, W.S. II. "Unity in Vedic aesthetics: the self-interac, the known, and the process of knowing". Analecta Husserliana and Western Psychology: A Comparison' 1934.
  16. ↑ Harms, Ernest., Origins of Modern Psychiatry, Thomas 1967 ASIN: B000NR852U, p. 20.
  17. ↑ The Design Within: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Shakespeare: Edited by M. D. Faber. New York: Science House. 1970 An anthology of 33 papers on Shakespearean plays by psychoanalysts and literary critics whose work has been influenced by psychoanalysis.
  18. ↑ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel "Hamlet's Procrastination: A Parallel to the Bhagavad-Gita, in Hamlet East West, edited by. Marta Gibinska and Jerzy Limon. Gdansk: Theatrum Gedanese Foundation, 1998e, pp. 187-195.
  19. ↑ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel 'Consciousness and the Actor: A Reassessment of Western and Indian Approaches to the Actor's Emotional Involvement from the Perspective of Vedic Psychology.' Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996a. (Series 30: Theatre, Film and Television, Vol. 67).
  20. ↑ Yarrow, Ralph (July–December 1997). "Identity and Consciousness East and West: the case of Russell Hoban". Journal of Literature & Aesthetics. 5 (2): 19–26.
  21. ↑ Ellenberger, H. (1970) The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry New York: Basic Books, p. 542.
  22. ↑ Young, Christopher and Brook, Andrew (1994) Schopenhauer and Freud quotation:
    Ellenberger, in his classic 1970 history of dynamic psychology. He remarks on Schopenhauer's psychological doctrines several times, crediting him for example with recognizing parapraxes, and urges that Schopenhauer "was definitely among the ancestors of modern dynamic psychiatry." (1970, p. 205). He also cites with approval Foerster's interesting claim that "no one should deal with psychoanalysis before having thoroughly studied Schopenhauer." (1970, p. 542). In general, he views Schopenhauer as the first and most important of the many nineteenth-century philosophers of the unconscious, and concludes that "there cannot be the slightest doubt that Freud's thought echoes theirs." (1970, p. 542).
  23. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface to the second edition of "The Gay Science" 1886.
  24. ↑ Fletcher, Jefferson B. (1905-05-01). "Newman and Carlyle: An Unrecognized Affinity". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  25. ↑ Staude, John Raphael (1976). "From Depth Psychology to Depth Sociology: Freud, Jung, and Lévi-Strauss". Theory and Society. 3 (3): 303–338. doi:10.1007/BF00159490. JSTOR   656968. S2CID   144353437 . Retrieved 2022-06-28. 'the theory of the unconscious' [...] was already available as an idea [seed] from the beginning of the nineteenth century [...] in the writings of the philosophers Schopenhauer, von Hartmann and Carus[.]
  26. ↑ "Un débat sur l'inconscient avant Freud: la réception de Eduard von Hartmann chez les psychologues et philosophes français". de Serge Nicolas et Laurent Fedi, L'Harmattan, 2008, p. 8.
  27. ↑ "Un débat sur l'inconscient avant Freud: la réception de Eduard von Hartmann chez les psychologues et philosophes français". de Serge Nicolas et Laurent Fedi, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2008, p. 8.
  28. ↑ Altschule, Mark. Origins of Concepts in Human Behavior. New York: Wiley, 1977, p.199
  29. ↑ Meyer, Catherine (edited by). Le livre noir de la psychanalyse: Vivre, penser et aller mieux sans Freud. Paris: Les Arènes, 2005, p.217
  30. ↑ Wozniak, Robert H. Mind and Body: Rene Déscartes to William James. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1992
  31. ↑ Green, Christopher D. (2019). "Where did Freud's iceberg metaphor of mind come from?". History of Psychology. 22 (4): 369–372. doi:10.1037/hop0000135_b. ISSN   1939-0610. PMID   31633371. S2CID   204815187.
  32. ↑ Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21, 27–84.
  33. ↑ Geraskov, Emil Asenov (November 1, 1994). "The internal contradiction and the unconscious sources of activity". Journal of Psychology. 128 (6): 625–634. doi:10.1080/00223980.1994.9921290. Archived from the original on April 25, 2013. This article is an attempt to give new meaning to well-known experimental studies, analysis of which may allow us to discover unconscious behavior that has so far remained unnoticed by researchers. Those studies confirm many of the statements by Freud, but they also reveal new aspects of the unconscious psychic. The first global psychological concept of the internal contradiction as an unconscious factor influencing human behavior was developed by Sigmund Freud. In his opinion, this contradiction is expressed in the struggle between biological instincts and the self.
  34. ↑ For example, dreaming: Freud called dream symbols the "royal road to the unconscious"
  35. ↑ Freud, S. (1955). The interpretation of dreams.
  36. ↑ "collective unconscious (psychology) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/125572/collective-unconscious>.
  37. ↑ Campbell, J. (1971). Hero with a thousand faces. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
  38. ↑ "Jung, Carl Gustav." The Columbia encyclopedia. 6th. ed. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000. 1490. Print.
  39. ↑ Nagera, Humberto, ed. (2014) [1969]. "Manifest content (pp. 52ff.)". Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN   978-1-31767047-6.
  40. ↑ Nagera, Humberto, ed. (2014) [1969]. "Latent dream-content (pp. 31ff.)". Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN   978-1-31767048-3.
  41. 1 2 Wayne Weiten (2011). Psychology: Themes and Variations . Cengage Learning. pp.  166–167. ISBN   978-0-495-81310-1.
  42. ↑ Mannoni, Octave, Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious, London: Verso 2015 [1971], pp. 55–58.
  43. ↑ Augusto, L.M. (2010). "Unconscious knowledge: A survey". Advances in Cognitive Psychology. 6: 116–141. doi:10.2478/v10053-008-0081-5. PMC   3101524 . PMID   21814538.
  44. ↑ Del Cul, Antoine; Baillet, Sylvain; Dehaene, Stanislas (2007). Posner, Michael (ed.). "Brain Dynamics Underlying the Nonlinear Threshold for Access to Consciousness". PLOS Biology. 5 (10): e260. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050260 . ISSN   1545-7885. PMC   1988856 . PMID   17896866.
  45. ↑ Dehaene, Stanislas; Changeux, Jean-Pierre; Naccache, Lionel; Sackur, Jérôme; Sergent, Claire (2006). "Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 10 (5): 204–211. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.007. PMID   16603406. S2CID   6053849.
  46. ↑ Pang, Damian K. F.; Elntib, Stamatis (2021). "Strongly masked content retained in memory made accessible through repetition". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 10284. Bibcode:2021NatSR..1110284P. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89512-w. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   8119432 . PMID   33986370.
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  48. ↑ Connolly, Deborah Ann (1993). A developmental evaluation of frequency information in lists, scripts, and stories (M.A. thesis) Wilfrid Laurier University
  49. ↑ Honderich, Ted, ed. (1995). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN   978-0-19-866132-0.
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  51. ↑ Callender, J. S (1996-02-24). "Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis". BMJ. 312 (7029): 518. doi:10.1136/bmj.312.7029.518a. ISSN   0959-8138. S2CID   62293185.
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  53. ↑ Vitz, Paul C. (1988). Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious . New York: The Guilford Press. pp.  59–62, 107ff. ISBN   978-0-89862-673-5.
  54. ↑ Thomas Baldwin (1995). Ted Honderich (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy . Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.  792. ISBN   978-0-19-866132-0.
  55. ↑ Fromm, Erich. Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx & Freud. London: Sphere Books, 1980, p. 93.
  56. ↑ Searle, John. The Rediscovery of the Mind. MIT Press, 1994, pp. 151-173.
  57. ↑ See "The Problem of Logic", Chapter 3 of Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory, published by Oxford University Press, 1980.
  58. ↑ See "Exploring the Unconscious: Self-Analysis and Oedipus", Chapter 11 of Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis, published by The Orwell Press, 2005.
  59. 1 2 See "A Profession in Crisis", Chapter 1 of Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried, published by Scribner, 1999.
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Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigmund Freud</span> Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939)

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dream interpretation</span> Assigning of meaning to dreams

Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams.

Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics.

In psychoanalysis, a Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that occurs due to the interference of an unconscious subdued wish or internal train of thought. Classical examples involve slips of the tongue, but psychoanalytic theory also embraces misreadings, mishearings, mistypings, temporary forgettings, and the mislaying and losing of objects.

In psychology, introjection is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts or personality traits of others. It occurs as a normal part of development, such as a child taking on parental values and attitudes. It can also be a defense mechanism in situations that arouse anxiety. It has been associated with both normal and pathological development.

In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness.

Hidden personality is the part of the personality that is determined by unconscious processes.

Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory, repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.

Depth psychology refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, as well as the patterns and dynamics of motivation and the mind. The theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler are all considered its foundations.

Dreamwork is the exploration of the images and emotions that a dream presents and evokes. It differs from classical dream interpretation in that it does not attempt to establish a unique meaning for the dream. In this way the dream remains "alive" whereas if it has been assigned a specific meaning, it is "finished". Dreamworkers take the position that a dream may have a variety of meanings depending on the levels that are being explored.

In psychoanalysis, preconscious is the loci preceding consciousness. Thoughts are preconscious when they are unconscious at a particular moment, but are not repressed. Therefore, preconscious thoughts are available for recall and easily 'capable of becoming conscious'—a phrase attributed by Sigmund Freud to Josef Breuer.

Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to the client's defence mechanisms that emerge from unconscious content coming to fruition through process. Resistance is the repression of unconscious drives from integration into conscious awareness.

Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is a subdivision of dream interpretation as well as a subdivision of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century. Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is the process of explaining the meaning of the way the unconscious thoughts and emotions are processed in the mind during sleep.

Metapsychology is that aspect of any psychological theory which refers to the structure of the theory itself rather than to the entity it describes. The psychology is about the psyche; the metapsychology is about the psychology. The term is used mostly in discourse about psychoanalysis, the psychology developed by Sigmund Freud, which was at its time regarded as a branch of science, or, more recently, as a hermeneutics of understanding. Interest on the possible scientific status of psychoanalysis has been renewed in the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, whose major exemplar is Mark Solms. The hermeneutic vision of psychoanalysis is the focus of influential works by Donna Orange.

Content in Freudian dream analysis refers to two closely connected aspects of the dream: the manifest content, and the latent content. Impulses and drives residing in the unconscious press toward consciousness during sleep, but are only able to evade the censorship mechanism of repression by associating themselves with words, ideas and images that are acceptable to consciousness. Thus the dream as consciously remembered upon waking is interpreted in psychoanalysis as a disguised or distorted representation of repressed desires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wish fulfillment</span> Psychological concept

Wish fulfillment is the satisfaction of a desire through an involuntary thought process. It can occur in dreams or in daydreams, in the symptoms of neurosis, or in the hallucinations of psychosis. This satisfaction is often indirect and requires interpretation to recognize.

Unconscious cognition is the processing of perception, memory, learning, thought, and language without being aware of it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freud's psychoanalytic theories</span> Look to unconscious drives to explain human behavior

Sigmund Freud is considered to be the founder of the psychodynamic approach to psychology, which looks to unconscious drives to explain human behavior. Freud believed that the mind is responsible for both conscious and unconscious decisions that it makes on the basis of psychological drives. The id, ego, and super-ego are three aspects of the mind Freud believed to comprise a person's personality. Freud believed people are "simply actors in the drama of [their] own minds, pushed by desire, pulled by coincidence. Underneath the surface, our personalities represent the power struggle going on deep within us".

Sebastian Angus Gardner is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy in the University College London. He is known for his expertise on Kant, German Idealism, Sartre and Freud, and for his philosophical interpretations and investigations in the subject of psychoanalytic theory.

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