That Was Then, This Is Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (Part 2)
Part 2 of 7: Unconscious Mental Life.
Index
This work is in seven parts. Here are links to each section.
Part 1: Roots of misunderstanding
Part 2: Unconscious mental life ◀
Part 3: The mind in conflict
Part 4: The past lives on in the present
Part 5: Transference
Part 6: Defense
Part 7: Psychological causation
Foundations
If psychoanalysis is not a theory about id, ego and superego, or about fixations, or about repressed memories, what is it about? The ideas I discuss here play a central role in the thinking of most psychoanalytic practitioners. These ideas are intertwined and overlapping; I present them separately only for didactic convenience.
Unconscious Mental Life
We do not fully know our own hearts and minds, and many important things take place outside awareness. This observation is no longer controversial to anyone, even the most hard-nosed empiricist. Research in cognitive science has shown repeatedly that much thinking and feeling goes on outside conscious awareness (e.g., Bargh & Barndollar, 1996; Kahneman, 2011; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Weinberger, 2019; Westen, 1998; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000).
Usually cognitive scientists do not use the word “unconscious” but refer instead to “implicit” mental processes, “procedural” memory, and so on. The terminology is not important. What matters is the concept—that crucial memory, perceptual, judgmental, affective, and motivational processes are not consciously accessible. Psychoanalytic discussions of unconscious mental life do, however, emphasize something that cognitive scientists tend not to emphasize: It is not just that we do not fully know our own minds, but there are things we seem not to want to know. There are things that are threatening or dissonant or make us feel vulnerable in some way, so we tend to look away.
I came across a poignant example early in my career. I was interviewing participants in a research project on personality development and my job was to learn as much as I could about each participant’s personal history. In general, these were easy interviews to conduct. Most people, with a little encouragement, enjoy talking about themselves to someone respectful, sympathetic, genuinely interested in what they have to say, and sworn to confidentiality. But one interview was puzzlingly tedious. Although the interviewee, whom I will call “Jill,” was attractive and intelligent, and although she seemed to answer all my questions cheerfully and cooperatively, I did not feel engaged at all. Slowly, I began to recognize that Jill’s answers to my questions amounted to a string of abstractions, clichés, and platitudes. I simply could not get a sense of Jill or the people important to her.
Our conversation went something like this:
