Cameron asked:

Freud believes we have an unconscious that is a kind of repository of unconscious ideas and
thoughts that could be influencing us in our everyday lives. I can understand talk of unconscious
processes (such as those that occur in my body and brain that I am not aware of), but have trouble
understanding the notions of active, unconscious 'thoughts' and 'ideas'. Do such things make sense?

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Unconscious thoughts and ideas don't make much sense because we believe thought to be a
conscious process. It is memories or experiences which are repressed into the unconscious and
these are active in that they influence our behaviour and what we are inclined to think consciously.

The unconscious is not simply constituted by repressed memories and experiences which are too
painful for us to face. The unconscious contains information and memories which guide us throughout
our lives. Antonio Damasio points out that when children start to use the plural of words such as 'cat'
or 'dog' at the age of three they are not conscious of this knowledge of the plural but use it as a result
of non-conscious memory. The use of the plural cannot be described as a thought or an idea but
background linguistic processing. So really we are nearly completely influenced by the unconscious in
our everyday lives. This unconscious processing is also a physical processing by the brain that we
are not aware of. The problem is why this is called 'unconscious'. In the case of our everyday
non-conscious processing I can't see much use for the word 'unconscious' with its implications that
the processing is mental. The mental is widely thought to be that which is conscious.

But Freud's position was about the nature of the repressed rather than everyday processing.
Emotions and motivations we are not aware of cannot be described as mere brain processes. To be
driven by past experiences that have been repressed into the unconscious is to be driven by that
which was conscious or mental and can become so again. The instincts, drives and emotions that we
have may not be conscious to us but such states refer to mental states rather than purely physical
ones. As Freud would say, they are 'psychical'. Unconscious influences are part of the psychological
structure of mental states, but the part which is not known to us. A change in one's psychical
structure, which is supposedly brought about by psychoanalysis, would change a person's conscious
experiences so that he would actually feel different. So we assume influential unconscious mental
activity which is in some way part of our consciousness, or what it is like to be us, but this is not in the
form of thought or idea.

Rachel Browne

This is quite a good question, and there are differing points of view on it. There are many
philosophers (e.g., John Searle) who find the notion of an unconscious thought meaningless. He
thinks that such processes, which arguably dotake place, must be considered only as neural activity,
i.e., "brain processes". In other words, if we're not conscious of it, it's not mental. One of the major
examples cited by the opponents of that viewpoint is that of "blindsight", where people who are
consciously blind (as far as pretty thorough tests can tell) nonetheless are able to say something
about objects in what would be their visual field. Are these the result of "mental" and/or "neural"
processes? The jury is still out on these issues.

To put this another way, given any reasonable position these days about the mind, one must
acknowledge that thoughts are at the very least accompanied by neural events (I'm a materialist, so I
think that they are realizedby such events, but I'll argue more broadly here). Given that, what is the
status of a neural event which is nearly (it can't be completely, since the conscious aspect is not
duplicated) identical to that accompanying a conscious thought, but which is notconscious? Well.
You see the problem, right? If it's the same, with the same effects exceptthat it's not conscious, then
why not call it a "thought"? On the other hand, doesit really have the same effects?

When we really take a good look at Freud, he's not too impressive, any more, as far as his theories'
accuracy are concerned. He was brilliant, his theories were wonderful and useful for a long time, but
we've moved past them at this point. If you read the early Freud, you'll find that much of his work
(although he later repudiated this) is based on a hydraulic theory about the nervous system, where
something that might be termed an "energy pressure" fills it, and if it's dammed up in one place
("suppressed") it will pop out somewhere else, like water pressure in pipes. This is now known to be
incorrect (Speaking broadly. One could,I suppose, say something vaguely similar about blood and
tissue concentrations of some neurotransmitters... but that's another discussion.). But when I, at least,
read the later Freud, I see this idea in many of his writings about suppression, transformation, etc.,
etc. I don't think he was able to get entirely away from it.

But we're still left with blindsight and a variety of things like "repressed" anger and other emotions,
which seemto operate, even if you consider them merely "brain processes", nearly the same as if
they weren't"only" brain processes, i.e., as they'd operate if we were conscious of them. So, how to
deal with that? Well, as I say, the jury is out. But my feeling is, first, that we need more knowledge
about the neural correlates of consciousness, and second, that, on one level at least, this is really not
too important an issue, when you get down to it. What matters are the differences,neurally and
functionally, between conscious and unconscious processes, not what we callthe latter. And we find
that difference by performing well-designed experiments, not by speculating on whether someone's
best friend "really" felt "unconscious anger" at someone else.

Steven Ravett Brown