Unconscious: History of the Concept

Abstract

The history of the concept of the unconscious can be organized in three stages. First, from as early as the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century, the idea that mental phenomena can occur in human subjects who are unaware of them while they occur, and who may later be incapable of retrieving them introspectively was widely assumed, implicitly, as part of such metaphysical concepts as the rationalist doctrine of innate ideas, and, more broadly, of the idea of the microcosm, the traditional world-view according to which each mind contains the universe in miniature within itself. Second, when confronted by the Cartesian demand for perfectly clear and distinct ideas, the concept of the unconscious itself was, for the first time, forced into conscious awareness, in the sense that it then acquired the name it now has, and became for the first time an object of empirical inquiry, separate from the metaphysical ideas in which it had been embedded. Third, in the modern period, a vast range of psychological phenomena was widely assumed to require explanation by unconscious mental processes, from ordinary perception and habit-formation, hypnosis, dreaming, and neurotic symptom-formation, to language acquisition, ‘subliminal perception,’ ‘blindsight,’ and cognitive dissonance and self-perception attribution processes. All such explanations have been challenged by skeptics who doubt the coherence of the concept, as well as the need for it, since, e.g., in James's view, (a) brain-processes alone, (b) conscious states that are quickly gone, unattended to, forgotten, or (c) ‘split-off’ consciousness suffice to explain all such phenomena. The data from psychoanalysis needs separate consideration from the other phenomena, since unlike the other cases, there is no consensus as to what criterion Freud thought applied to testing the truth of his interpretive ‘constructions’ or what criterion ought to apply. On one view, the test Freud accepted, and was right to accept is the test of therapeutic success. Against this, others have held that the assent and self-ascription by the subject of the interpretations is the criterion Freud (rightly) accepted. The question remains unresolved.