The Cognitive Unconscious Seems Related to the Dynamic Unconscious—But It’s Not the Whole Story (original) (raw)

Neuropsychoanalysis, 2011

Abstract

Psychoanalytically minded thinkers can feel optimistic that our belief in a dynamic unconscious—motivational, emotional, and cognitive processes that happen outside of awareness, yet influence our conscious experience and behavior—is finding increasing support in cognitive psychology and the neurosciences. Heather Berlin ably summarizes a wealth of findings indicating that our feelings and actions are influenced by stimuli that are not perceived or attended to. Because these findings emerge from experimental work, in which conditions are controlled by the investigator, skeptics outside of psychodynamically friendly circles are now more likely to accept that unconscious processes must be taken into account. This is surely good for our field. However, because the nature of experimental work relies on external stimuli, presented under control of an investigator, we still have a long way to go toward understanding the neural nature of those aspects of the dynamic unconscious that arise from within the subject, including endogenous drive processes and an internal world of mental representations.

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