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Mysterious, powerful, disturbing – our unconscious cannot but arouse curiosity. Does it really exist? What does it serve us for? And can we contact him? Let’s try to deal with the myths and answer some questions.
The idea that each of us has an unconscious is hardly surprising today. We habitually note “Freudian slips” or, having forgotten the keys to the house twice in a row, we are looking for a hidden meaning in this. And when a friend fails over and over again in love, we profoundly notice that he, probably, unconsciously does not want to bind himself with obligations. We attribute a will to the unconscious, as if it were some kind of living in us, but a separate person … But do we know what it really is?
In Freud’s phrase, the unconscious is the “other stage” hidden from view on which our life is played out. Here those of our memories, desires, emotions and feelings that cause fear or shame in ourselves are forced out. Without realizing it, we may experience a vague sense of guilt that causes us to punish ourselves with illness, failure in love affairs or in career.
The unconscious confronts us with a disturbing fact: emotions, fantasies, thoughts that we do not know about or do not pay attention to, can determine our life to a greater extent than our will.
Today, in the era of the cult of free will and human capabilities, it is especially difficult to come to terms with this. Moreover, modern science is also willing to take seriously only that which can be weighed, measured and rationally explained. How to measure the unconscious?
As a result, his very concept is criticized. Thus, the philosopher Michel Onfray1 devoted hundreds of pages to a sharp attack on what he considers only an illusory idea, a consequence of Dr. Freud’s personal neurosis. The unconscious is also criticized by some psychotherapists, calling this concept obsolete and pointing out that many modern psychotherapeutic techniques do without it. Is the Age of the Unconscious Ending? Or is it objective and eternal, like physical laws?
An old problem?
Even in the III-IV centuries, the rabbis, the compilers of the Talmud, conjectured that our dreams speak of secret aspirations and desires. More than a thousand years later, European philosophers took up the unconscious. Benedict Spinoza noted in the XNUMXth century that the true reasons for our actions are almost always hidden from us.2.
The term “unconscious” itself appeared a century later. Friedrich Schelling believed that this is a vital impulse, uniting the depths of the spirit and nature3and Arthur Schopenhauer4 painted unconscious forces that rule both people and the world. However, philosophy is translated as “love of wisdom”, which is designed to idealize consciousness and achieve complete rationality. And the unconscious for philosophers remained rather than an object of study, but a source of unpleasant confusion that must be eliminated.
Freud’s guess?
At the end of the XNUMXth century, the unconscious was adopted by doctors who treated it with hypnosis. They believed that this invisible part of a person’s mental life is inherent only in mentally ill people. Dr. Sigmund Freud suggested that absolutely every one of us has an unconscious. Practicing hypnosis, he discovered that along with consciousness, there is also a subconscious.5. The unconscious is only a part of it (along with the preconscious), which is inhabited by forbidden desires (primarily sexual, aggressive), life and death instincts. He was the first to understand that the unconscious has its own internal laws and needs to be interpreted. In essence, Freud proposed a new, revolutionary vision of the human soul.
“If we had to designate the contribution of this or that thinker to the development of mankind in one word, then, for example, for Einstein it would be “the theory of relativity,” says psychoanalyst Igor Kadyrov. – And in connection with Freud, first of all, you need to say “unconscious”. Of course, other great thinkers, such as the German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann, speculated or talked about the unconscious even before Freud. However, in its originality, heuristic and depth, his concept is completely unprecedented.
Friend or foe?
The unconscious does not wish us either evil or good. We simply have it – because our “I” refuses to be aware of everything that can hurt us, scare us, create too bad an idea about ourselves or about those we love.
Suppose a dangerous person wants to get into our house. Of course, we will try to put him out of the door, and provide the door itself with more reliable bolts in order to be sure of our security. But the type that is unpleasant to us will not disappear from this. He will remain outside the threshold and will even try to remind you of his presence.
The same happens with thoughts and desires that are repressed into the unconscious. They are not forgotten and do not disappear. And from time to time they use a gap in consciousness – it can be a moment of fatigue or a dream – and remind themselves of themselves in the form of dreams, reservations or erroneous actions.
It happens at a time when we least expect it. And then, instead of sending a tender message to our spouse, we send it to our “ex”, whom we can’t manage to forget. Or we lose a piece of paper with the address of a business meeting on which our future well-being depends, because deep down the proposed job does not please us.
It is no coincidence that we are wary of the unconscious. Probably, this is how the anxiety of our “I” manifests itself, which is afraid to admit that it is unable to control everything.
Congenital or acquired?
One might get the impression that the unconscious is formed in parallel with the development of a person’s personality, as the most disturbing and frightening experiences are repressed. This is only partly true. Psychoanalysts clarify: it appears at the moment when the child masters speech.
“Freud believed that the unconscious includes not only what is repressed, but also what is initially not allowed into consciousness, that is, our “forbidden” fantasies and desires,” Igor Kadyrov clarifies. – The core of this part of our psyche is the earliest childhood primary (sexual) fantasies and the first repressed desires associated with the oedipal complex (feelings that a small child experiences in relation to his father and mother, wanting to “eliminate” the parent of his own sex and “possess” the parent of the opposite sex) that the child must give up in order to grow up.
Carl Gustav Jung – Freud’s student and later opponent – argued that we have the unconscious from birth6. And along with the individual unconscious, there is, in his opinion, the collective – connecting us with our ancestors. It is common to all people and is reflected in myths, cultural and religious attitudes. In the Jungian view, an apple in a dream refers to the myth of an earthly paradise. And when we dream, for example, of a plane in distress, we should remember the Greek myth of Icarus, who died because he disobeyed his father’s advice and flew too close to the sun. This approach assumes that the symbolism of the unconscious is the same for all people.
Invisible dialogue?
Our unconscious not only influences our words and actions. It is in active dialogue with the unconscious of other people. It happens in all emotionally meaningful relationships. Thus, a good mother often guesses the reasons for her child’s ailments, although he is still not able to tell her anything. And many psychoanalysts have described situations where an almost “telepathic” connection was established between them and their patients.
“One of my colleagues had to interrupt meetings with a patient in order to leave for the funeral,” says Igor Kadyrov. “And when he returned, the patient told him his dream. In it, he saw an analyst at a funeral mourning the loss of a loved one, although my colleague did not tell the patient anything about the reasons for the break in the sessions. Obviously, at the level of the unconscious, the exchange of this information took place.
Of course, this invisible dialogue plays a special role in love relationships. “When we fail to let go of our first love with our parents, we experience real difficulties in love,” says psychoanalyst Yves Depelsenaire.
For the same reason, we often, without realizing it, choose partners who are similar to our mother or father. It is the interaction of the unconscious of two people that determines the success or failure of their love relationship. “The decisive role is played by the echo generated by our own symptoms,” continues Yves Depelsenaire, “our own inner exile, which we suddenly discover in another person. That “I don’t know what”, which suddenly enters into resonance with our unconscious.”
Imagination game?
The imaginary is a direct path to the unconscious. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the imaginary is neither illusory nor false. This word refers to everything that appears in our images: night dreams, daytime waking dreams, erotic fantasies, as well as myths.
For psychoanalysts, fiction has the value of truth: the stories we tell them, others, and ourselves, the vague thoughts that accompany us throughout the day, the scripts we build for ourselves, convey our unconscious desires. Methods of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis rely on the creative power of the image: hypnosis, lucid dreams, visualization, free associations, projective tests.
Incidents from the Life of Sigmund Freud
“I will turn to examples from my personal experience, not particularly frequent, however, with me.
a) In former years, when I visited the sick at home even more often than now, it often happened that, having come to the door at which I had to knock or ring, I took out of my pocket the key to my own apartment in order to hide it again him, almost with shame. Comparing which patients this happened to me, I had to admit that this erroneous action – to take out the key instead of ringing – meant a certain praise for the house where it happened. It was tantamount to the thought “here I feel at home”, for it happened only where I fell in love with the patient.
b) In one house, where I stand at the door of the second floor twice a day at a certain time for six years in a row, waiting for someone to open it, I happened to go up the floor twice in all this long time, “to climb too high”. For the first time, I experienced an ambitious “waking dream” at this time, dreaming that I was “ascending higher and higher.” On another occasion I went too far, also “immersed in thought”; when I caught myself, went back and tried to seize the fantasy that controlled me, I found that I was angry at the (imaginary) criticism of my writings, in which they reproached me for constantly “going too far”, a reproach that I could contact with a not particularly respectful expression: “too high.”
Z. Freud “Psychopathology of everyday life” (Azbuka, 2011).
Where is it hiding?
“Advances in neuroscience confirm the reality of the unconscious,” says neuropsychologist Boris Cyrulnik. “And analytical theories allow us to better understand what we observe.”
Many psychophysiologists try to confirm or refute Freud’s ideas. However, Freud himself spoke very clearly on this subject: “Our psychic topic has nothing to do with anatomy. It refers to areas of the mental apparatus, regardless of their location in the body, and not to anatomical localizations.7.
“Center of the unconscious” as such, obviously, does not exist. Three areas of the brain are involved in unconscious processes: limbic structures (the realm of emotions), associative areas of the cortex, where connections are formed between ideas, words and things, and sensory areas. Observations allow us to better understand why our internal mental conflicts are often expressed somatically (physical pains). It turns out that the brain processes words and physical sensations in the same way: for example, an insult is perceived as a slap in the face. This analogy explains why, after experiencing a shock, we can behave relatively calmly, without succumbing to despair or fear … but at the same time we suddenly have stomach pains or migraines.
An excuse for our passivity?
“I don’t believe in the existence of the unconscious,” says philosopher Robert Misrahi. We are always aware of ourselves. The unconscious is just the name we give to our omissions, conciliation, passivity and ignorance.”8. From the point of view of many thinkers, in particular Jean-Paul Sartre, the idea of the unconscious is just an excuse to evade the need to be a responsible person. This is a haven of dishonesty and cowardice: “I did not know what I was doing, it’s not me, it’s my unconscious.”
But Freud called precisely for the fact that as fully as possible to realize what we are trying to hide from ourselves. According to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we are responsible for it. But in order to respond, we must understand desires and fantasies that we cannot admit.
“I think that everyone who determines their attitude to the very idea of the unconscious faces a simple choice,” says Igor Kadyrov. – Either reject this idea as superfluous and loading the head, or accept it only nominally, quickly turning it into a set of clichés – but in fact, also rejecting it. Or take it seriously by starting to analyze yourself or turning to a psychoanalyst for help. This option requires strength and serious inner work. But the ideas of the same Sartre, for example, are also difficult to perceive.”
The memory of our body?
Research shows that the unconscious is not “located” only in the head. This is a complex system, covering both the psyche and the body.9. Since the late 1980s, the concept of the cognitive unconscious has been formed. As Boris Tsiryulnik explains, we are talking about purely bodily memory, without any secret desires or shameful thoughts. It is thanks to the cognitive unconscious that we perform all sorts of everyday actions: we brush our teeth, leave the house, take the subway, dial the intercom code, without even remembering the numbers, automatically, without thinking.
This “body” unconscious also explains why many abused children unwittingly grow up to be adults who also abuse children. They just internalized the violence in their own body…
Well, if we really want to understand our emotions, our true desires, get out of the vicious circle of failures and reach our potential, we cannot do without trying to listen to our unconscious and understand it.
About it
“Seminars. Book 5. Formations of the unconscious. 1957/1958″ Jacques Lacan
The French philosopher and analyst Jacques Lacan, developing Freud’s ideas, suggested that the unconscious is formed as a result of the influence of speech on us, and most importantly, has a structure similar to the structure of language.
Logos, 2002.
1. M. Onfray “Apostille au crepuscule” (Grasset, 2010).
2. B. Spinoza “Ethics” (World of Books, Literature, 2010).
3. F. Schelling “Ideas to the philosophy of nature as an introduction to the study of this science” (Nauka, 1998).
4. A. Schopenhauer “The World as Will and Representation” (Harvest, 2007).
5. Z. Freud “The Interpretation of Dreams” (AST, Astrel, 2011).
6. K. Jung “Essays on the Psychology of the Unconscious” (Cogito-Center, 2010).
7. Z. Freud “Basic psychological theories in psychoanalysis. Essay on the history of psychoanalysis” (Aletheia, 1999).
8. R. Misrahi “Savoir vivre, manual for the use of the desperate” (Encre marine, 2010).
9. B. Cyrulnik “Of flesh and soul” (Odile Jacob, 2008).