The Disappearance of the Unconscious (Sorry, Siggie)


The original concept of the unconscious involved a part of the mind hidden from conscious or verbal awareness but which contained all the primitive, childish drives and wishes.  It was able to influence our behavior without our verbal awareness.  Our irrational and animalistic impulses remained comfortably apart from our image of our own character.  Over time the concept took on even more potency to run our lives.

Nowadays, as we watch television, read the papers and books, and watch movies, we see behavior that seems quite primitive even to us.  To the people of Freud's day, in the first half of the 20th century, it would seem animalistic, shocking and outrageous.  We watch it with some amusement and interest. They would have left the room and had bad dreams.

If we had an 'unconscious', what would we bother to bury in it?  We don't bury those impulses anymore.  We are not shamed by them. Actually, we seem to enjoy them at least vicariously. So what has happened?  The unconscious seems to have largely disappeared.
Yet it still appears in peculiar and unique circumstances.  People with rigid and limited self-images or self-concepts find themselves behaving in ways that surprise them (though not those who know them well).  People who are very naive, uneducated or "innocent" seem also to fall prey to "unconscious" impulses.  People from cultures who have a very narrow and limited range of acceptable behaviors or strong religious prohibitions also seem to have problems with their unconscious.

It seems that the "unconscious" is not so much universal as it is a function of denial and repression in certain personality types.   Those behaviors and impulses that are "forbidden" or have been shamed strongly are relegated to the non-verbal sections of the brain.  I imagine this process as being like that of a child shamed by a parent for displaying aggressive or sexual impulses, whose shame strikes at his very self-concept and sense of self-worth.  The child does not want to verbally acknowledge those impulses or admit to them in any way.  However, this does not mean that the impulses will not be acted upon.  It means that the child can express the primitive and instinctual behavior without having to acknowledge that they are a part of his actual self.

So we develop an "unconscious" in situations or circumstances in which an important and emotionally strong impulse is shamed and denied.  Since less and less seems to fall in this category, the unconscious seems to be relegated to those limited circumstance described previously.  No shame or denial equals no unconscious.  We may choose, however, to limit our awareness in order to preserve our "proper" sense of self.

Addiction as privilege

Technically, addiction is the result of your body becoming dependent on pleasure-producing substances to the degree that discontinuing the substance causes profound physiological disturbance.  We could stretch the definition beyond usability by attempting to shoe-horn substances like water or food.  What is meant is quite clear, however.

People attempt to widen the definition of addiction to include behaviors, such as gambling or sexual activity.  As a psychotherapist it is useful to ask the purpose of such a re-definition.  The answers seem clear. There is an implication of reduced power to control one's behavior due to some sort of physical dependency.  "Sex addicts", for example, don't simply enjoy sex, they "must" have it or some sort of withdrawal and physiological disturbance must result. Consequently they are not somehow as responsible for controlling their behavior as the rest of us non-addicts.  The same reasoning applies to "gambling addiction" or "food addiction".
Thus defining oneself as an addict of some kind implies a lesser responsibility and blame for the behaviors involved.  If one simply "can't" (not "won't) control their behavior, they can't be blamed.  They want to consider themselves "ill", not morally culpable.  They should get a free pass  for their behavior, no matter how damaging it may be to themselves or others.

Our innate responses to stimuli fall along a normal curve, with the majority in the mid-range, and with extremes at the tail end of the curve.  We respond to sudden noises with a wide range of reaction, from nearly placid disinterest to sudden leaps and shouts.  One has only to watch the reaction of new-born infants behind the viewing glass to flash photographs to observe this range, and it is clearly innate.  But just because our response lies toward one of the extremes does not imply an "illness" or disorder of some kind.  People who have relatively extreme reactions learn to moderate them.  We do not allow people to have a free pass to hurt someone just because they are more easily angry or frightened than others.  The law makes no exceptions, nor should it.