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D.I.K1EIN
V
 Tpe Unconscious:
Invention or Discovery?
 xl^e Unconscious:
Invention or Discoveiy?
A Historico-Critical Inijuir^

D. B. Klein

If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must

become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own
foundations.
Alfred North Whitehead

The gift of professional maturity comes only to the psychologist who

knows the history of his science.
Edward G. Boring

Goodyear Pub[is(;m0 Compan^^ Inc.

Santa Monica^ California
 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Klein, David Ballin, 1897-

The unconscious—invention or discovery?
Includes index.
1. Subconsciousness. 2. Psychology-History.
I. Title.
BF315.K56 154.2 76-28872
ISBN 0-87620-922-3

Copyright © 1977 by Goodyear Publishing Company, Inc.

Santa Monica, Cahfornia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced in any form or by any means without
permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 0-87620-922-3
Y-9223-2

Interior design: Jacki Thibodeau

Permissions: Jane Hellesoe-Henon and Stacey Maxwell
Manuscript editor: David Dexter

Current printing (last digit):

10 987654321

Printed in the United States of America

 Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the following copyright holders for permission to use material:
Excerpt from G. W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rine¬
hart and Winston, Inc., 1961). Reprinted by permission.
Excerpts from Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed., © 1950,
pp. 38, 168, 309-10, 743. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey.
Excerpts from K. Biihler, “On Thought Connections,” in Organization and Pathology of
Thought: Selected Sources, Translation and Commentary by David Rapaport (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1951).
Excerpt from T. Dobzhansky, “Of Flies and Men,” American Psychologist 22 (1967):
41-48. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, © 1970 by Henri F. Ellenberger, Basic Books, Inc.,
Publishers, New York. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc., and Penguin Books
Ltd.
Portions of Letters 228 and 272 from The Letters of Sigmund Freud-1873-1939,
Selected and Edited by Ernst L. Freud, Translated by James and Tania Stern, © 1960
by Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd., London, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York,
and The Hogarth Press. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Excerpts from Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Authorized
English Translation of the Revised Edition, by Joan Riviere. Reprinted by permission of
Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1920, 1935 by Edward L. Bernays.
Copyright renewed 1948. British edition published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Excerpts from Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated from the
German and edited by James Strachey, published in the United States by Basic Books,
Inc., by arrangement with George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
vi • Acknowledgments

Excerpts from The Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, Volumes III, IV, and V, edited
by Ernest Jones, M.D. Authorized translation by Alix and James Strachey for Volume III;
authorized translations by Joan Riviere for Volume IV; edited by James Strachey for
Volume V: published by Basic Books, Inc., by arrangement with The Hogarth Press Ltd.
and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, and Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd. Re¬
printed by permission of Basic Books, Inc., and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
Excerpts from The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Volumes I, II, and III, by Ernest
Jones, M.D. © 1953 by Ernest Jones, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York and The
Hogarth Press, London. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Excerpt from E. R. Hilgard, Theories of Learning, 2nd ed., (New York; Appleton-
Century-Crofts, Inc., 1956). Reprinted by permission of Prentice-HaU, Inc., Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey.
Excerpt from H. S. Liddel, “Conditioning and Emotions,” Scientific American 190
(1954): 48-56. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Table from D. B. Lindsley, “Psychological Phenomena and the Electroencephalogram,”
Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 4 (1952); 443-456.
Excerpt from J. Marmor, Psychiatry in Transition (New York; Brunner/Mazel, 1974).
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from G. Murphy and R. O. Ballou, William James on Psychical Research (New
York; Viking Press, Inc., 1960). Reprinted by permission.
Portion of letter from Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1935). Reprinted by permission of Alexander R.
James, Literary Executor.

Portions of letters from R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James,
Vol. II (Boston; Little, Brown and Company, 1935). By permission of Alexander R.
James, Literary Executor.

Excerpt from R. Rabkin, “Is The Unconscious Necessary?” International Journal of

Psychiatry 8 (1969): 570-578. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from J. P. Seward, “The Structure of Functional Autonomy,” American Psy¬
chologist 18 (1963): 702-710. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from E. von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious-Speculative Results
According to the Inductive Method of Physical Science, translated by W. C. Coupland
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1931; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.).
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Excerpts from R. M. Warren and R. P. Waiten, Helmholtz on Perception: Its Physiology

and Development (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1968). Reprinted by permission
of the publisher.

Excerpts from Lancelot Law Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud, © 1960 by Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, New York.
 To Elizabeth Isaacs
and
To the Memory of M. Legis Isaacs
 Contents

Foreword / xiii

Preface / xv

1 Introductory Survey / 1
The Unconscious: Fact or Fiction? 2 j The Unconscious a Derivative of the
Conscious J / A Continuum from Consciousness to Coma 5 / Consciousness
and the Egocentric Predicament 8 j Concerning Judgment of Human and
Animal Consciousness 11 / The Psychology of Understanding 14 / The Nature
of Empathic Understanding 15 j Erom Mind as Conscious to Mind as Uncon¬
scious 18

2 Von Hartmann’s Pre-Freudian Unconscious / 22

Whyte’s Recognition of von Hartmann 23 / Biographical Sketch 24 / Three
Levels of the Unconscious 26 / Some Specific Examples 27 I On Departures
from the Inductive Method 28 / How the Book Was Judged by Hall 30 /
Negative Judgments by Ebbinghaus and by James 31 / Some Contemporary
Judgments 33 / Concerning the Determinants of Belief 35 j A Concluding
Comment 36

3 James on Mind as Unconscious / 38

Do Unconscious Mental States Exist? 38 / Petites Perceptions and the Uncon¬
scious 39 / Hypnosis and the Unconscious 40 / The Concept of Dissociation
42 / Determining Tendencies and Delayed Reactions 44 / Hidden Motives
X • Contents

and the Fallacy of Sensationalism 47 j Can the Same Idea Be both Conscious
and Unconscious? 49 / Concerning Herbart’s Apperceptive Mass 52 / Concern¬
ing Helmholtz and Unconscious Inference 53 / Induction as Implicit in Sense-
Perception 55 / Helmholtz Questions Unconscious Reasoning 57 j What
Helmholtz Meant by “Basic Process” 59 / Correction of an Error 61 / William
James and Psychical Research 64 / From the Paranormal to the Spiritual 66 /
On Belief in the Supernatural and Immortality 69 / From Psychological Re¬
search to Psychical Research 71 / F. W. H. Myers and His “Discovery” 73 /
The Concept of Subliminal Consciousness 75 / Answer to a Challenging
Question 79 / The Myers Discovery: Fact or Conjecture? 81 / Concerning the
Subliminal and the Unconscious 83 / Summary Review 87 j A Concluding
Comment 89

4 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious 91

Concerning Freud’s Clash with Academic Psychology 91 j A Neglected
Problem 93 / Maudsley on Mind as Different from Consciousness 94 / Con¬
cerning a Misinterpretation of Maudsley 99 / Concerning Freud’s Psychical
Reality 101 / Was Freud Influenced by Kant? 103 / Freud on the Primacy of
Intellect 105 / Herbart on the Dynamics of Thinking 106 j From Herbart to
James and from James to Freud 107 j James on Freud’s Work: Some Con¬
jectures 111

5 The Unconscious and Theories of Motivation / 115

A Historic Meeting 115 / Science versus Orthodoxy 117 j Jones on Essentials
of Psychoanalysis 120 / Concerning Hidden Motives 121 / Determinism and
Science 122 / Qn the Distinction between Motivation and Causation 124 /
Spinoza’s Distinction between Desires and Their Causes 125 j Spinoza’s
Theory of Emotion 126 / James on the ‘Why?’ of Instinctive Behavior 128 /
The Shift from Instincts to Drives 131 / Woodworth’s Theory of Motivation:
Introduction 134 / The Chief Point of Woodworth’s Theory 138 / Concern¬
ing Functional Autonomy 140 / Freud’s Theory of Motivation 142 / Can
Motives be Sublimated? 144 / Concerning Anxiety and Repression 147 j
More about Sublimation 150 / Concerning Regnant Motives 152 / Functional
Autonomy Re-Examined 153 / Endogenous versus Exogenous Motives 157 j
Exogenous Motives and Functional Autonomy 159 / Summary Review 162 /
The Chapter in Retrospect 163

6 The Unconscious: Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects / 170

Concerning the Meanings of the Word Unconscious 171 / On Seeing Freud
in Perspective 179 j On the Testing of Freud’s Hypotheses 181 / The Uncon¬
scious as a Scientific Concept 183 / Concerning Freud’s Understanding of the
Unconscious 186 j On Proof for “The Assumption of the Unconscious” 189 j
A Concluding Comment 190
 Contents • xi

7 The Unconscious as Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation / 193

Pre-Freudian Objections to the Unconscious 194 / An Important Distinc¬
tion 195 I Concerning the “Voice of the Intellect” 198 / The Paradox of
Unconscious Thought 199 / Freud’s View of Academic Psychology 201 /
Unconscious Thinking as Imageless Thinking 2021 Woodworth’s Concept of
Imageless Thought 203 / Biihler on “What is Thinking” 204 j Some Key
Observations 207 / Freud’s Psychology of Thinking 208 / Freud’s “Model
Dream 2091 An Apparent Contradiction and Its Implications 212 / What Non-
Sensory Ideation Implies 215 / On Making the Unconscious Conscious 217 /
Psychotherapy and the Unconscious 219 I Psychotherapy as Education 221 /
In Conclusion 224

Index / 233
 Foreword

It is an unfortunate truism, particularly in the study of human behavior,

that most of what has previously been written by eminent scientists and phi¬
losophers is forgotten or unknown to modern workers in the field. Indeed the
contemporary explosion of scientific periodicals and publications makes this
almost inevitable. Nevertheless, one of the consequences of this phenomenon
is that old truths are constantly being rediscovered and fallacies long dis-
proven continue to be put forth anew.
One of the extraordinary talents of Professor Klein, superbly demonstrated
in his monumental History of Scientific Psychology (Basic Books, 1970) and
again in the present volume, is that he has not only read extensively, but that
he remembers what he has read. More than anyone I have ever met, he
“knows the history of his science,” and thus is able to bring a rare and pre¬
cious perspective to bear on current concepts and percepts.
One such formulation that has gained widespread acceptance in Western
thought, because of the influence of Freud’s persuasive writings, is that of
“the unconscious” as a separate compartment of the human mind. As such it
is frequently and glibly referred to by literary authors, art critics, and psycho¬
historians no less than by psychoanalysts and other students of human be¬
havior. Professor Klein subjects this concept to a searching and scholarly
historical analysis and does so with uncommon perspicacity, logic, and
elegance.
One of the problems that one encounters in evaluating some of Freud’s
concepts is not only that he employed and expounded them in diverse ways
xiv • Foreword

as his ideas evolved over half a century, but also that he so often used them
loosely and without bothering to define his terms. Thus when subjected to the
kind of rigorous evaluative thinking that Professor Klein employs, they are
often found wanting.
Yet Dr. Klein would be the first to admit that there is a kernel of correct¬
ness in Freud’s views on the importance of what he called the unconscious
that cannot be ignored. Although many of Freud’s more conservative fol¬
lowers would probably reject the statement as too simplistic, Ernest Jones,
dean of British psychoanalysts and Freud’s official biographer, considered
“Freud’s own definition” of psychoanalysis to be “simply the study of mental
processes of which we are unaware, of what for the sake of brevity we call the
unconscious'’ (italics mine). The psychoanalytic method, then, to paraphrase
Professor Klein, is aimed at “making the unobserved observable, the implicit
explicit, the unknown known, the concealed exposed, and the latent manifest.”
What Dr. Klein objects to, however, is the reification of “the uncon¬
scious,” and the fragmentation of mind into two minds—a conscious one and
an unconscious one. He insists, quite properly, on the unity of mental life,
and in the end suggests an approach whereby the essential elements of what
Freud was describing are retained without breaching that essential unity. One
might wish only that Professor Klein had elaborated to a greater extent on
information theory and the concept of the brain as a processor and storer of
data.
What makes this volume particularly fascinating is the orderly, logical,
tightly reasoned process by which Professor Klein arrives at his final conclu¬
sions. He writes cogently and with rare lucidity, and illustrates his thesis
throughout with insightful and delightful examples. No one will come away
from reading this book without a vastly enriched historical, scientific, and
philosophic understanding of the complex elements that have gone into the
evolution of our current ideas about conscious and unconscious mental proc¬
esses in human beings.

Judd Marmor, m.d.

Franz Alexander Professor of Psychiatry

University of Southern California
and
Former President
American Psychiatric Association
 Preparation for writing this book encompasses more than forty years of
active identification with the fields of general, systematic, philosophical, and
historical psychology on the one hand and those of mental hygiene, psycho¬
pathology, and clinical psychology on the other. Predictably, the concept of
mental life as unconscious was found to play a more prominent role in the
latter than in the former fields. As a consequence, 1 kept being reminded of
a divergence in outlook between those who approached the study of mental
life from the standpoint of classical psychology as contrasted with those who
approached the study from the standpoint of psychodiagnosis and psycho¬
therapy. In other words, in the course of my reading, teaching, clinical con¬
sulting, and research supervision I was never altogether unmindful of an
implicit but persistent problem whose nature and implications I might one
day subject to explicit formulation and analysis.
All through the years, at least intermittently, I kept noting and often re¬
cording such evidence as chanced to be cited in support of belief in the
operation of unobservable or hidden processes presumed to be mental. This
evidence was rather heterogeneous. It included alleged unconscious instiga¬
tors of posthypnotic behavior, ad hoc psychoanalytic interpretations of case
histories, laboratory studies of verbal associations attributable to unconscious
determinants, and allusions to quasi-mystical unconscious forces to be found
in the older journals of psychical research as well as in the newer ones con¬
cerned with parapsychology.
xvi • Preface

It should thus be obvious that in undertaking to write this book I was not
starting from scratch; I had a welter of both clear and vague ideas along with
a collection of assorted notes when I started to write. Initially there was re¬
current concentration upon the implications of what I had come to regard as
the crucial question of the unconscious as fact or fiction. A few of these
implications are introduced in Chapter 1 in the course of an initial orienting
survey of the broad scope of the problem. As noted there, the many mean¬
ings of the word unconscious proved to be a stumbling block right from the
start—it was manifestly impossible to do justice to all these many and often
contradictory meanings in a single comprehensive definition. At the same
time I realized that just as getting to understand the meaning of words like
unloved, unemployed, and undemanding is contingent upon prior understand¬
ing of their antitheses, so understanding of the word unconscious presupposes
prior familiarity with the concept of consciousness. This made the uncon¬
scious a derivative of the conscious and called for a hasty review of some
topics directly related to the concept of consciousness, including the question
of consciousness in differing animal phyla, shifts in levels of consciousness
from alertness to drowsiness, and man’s capacity for empathic identification
with the consciousness of others.
As stressed in my opening chapter, William James had taken a dim view of
the concept of mind as unconscious, finding it incompatible with hir hopes
for a science of psychology. This dim view was also shared by other founding
fathers of scientific psychology, who with James had given expression to such
negative views prior to 1890, some years before the rise of psychoanalysis.
They were thus rejecting pre-Freudian versions of the unconscious. In particu¬
lar, as discussed in Chapter 2, they were concerned with nineteenth-century
views of the unconscious, especially those presented in the successive editions
of von VldLiimann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. Interest in this pre-Freudian
unconscious was persistent, since there were twelve editions of his book, with
the first appearing in 1868 and the twelfth in 1923. There was even a critical
monograph concerned with his views published as recently as 1967. Thus von
Hartmann’s endorsement of belief in mind as unconscious had lasted for close
to a century, which is a chief reason for devoting a whole chapter to his views.
It should be noted that von Hartmann had predecessors and contemporar¬
ies—men like Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, and Herbart—who shared many of his
views. In fact, by the 1880s belief in the existence of mental states as uncon¬
scious had become so widespread that, as considered in some detail in Chap¬
ter 3, William James deemed it necessary to subject this belief to a critical
examination in his Principles of 1890. As just mentioned, he was unable to
support this belief in mind as unconscious.
James was not the only pioneer scientific psychologist to repudiate belief
in the unconscious. By the 1890s he along with Wundt and Brentano had
voiced objections to the unconscious as an explanatory principle in their
respective psychological systems. Despite differing psychological standpoints
and even though working independently of one another, these three-James,
 Preface • xvii

Wundt, and Brentano—were as one in eliminating the unconscious from what

they envisaged as the foundations of a scientific psychology. The name of
Ebbinghaus is to be added to these three, for he had come to grips with this
issue in his doctoral dissertation which had been based upon a critical analysis
of von Hartmann’s defense of the unconscious. This was in 1873. Thus, in
general, by the time of Freud academic psychology had already examined and
evaluated the concept of unconscious mind and had found it unacceptable.
Some twenty years later, when Freud was writing his Interpretation of
Dreams during the 1890s, he was mindful of this rejection of the unconscious
by academic psychology. He referred to it as a conflict between academic and
medical psychology. It can also be regarded as a clash between the scientific
psychology of the laboratory and the psychoanalytic psychology of the con¬
sulting room. The nature and implications of this clash constitute the subject
matter of Chapter 4.
Upon reading and re-reading much of what Freud and others had written
in defense of the concept of mental states as unconscious, I was struck by
the frequency with which the defense centered upon references to hidden
motives, repressed wishes, and sublimated desires. Drives to action were thus
presumed to be buried in the unconscious, making psychoanalysis a motiva¬
tional psychology. At the same time and independently of Freud academic
psychology was also fostering a dynamic psychology in theories of motiva¬
tion sponsored by McDougall, Woodworth, and others. Under the circum¬
stances, the subject of unconscious motivation as related to the latter theories
called for a separate chapter. As developed in Chapter 5, the subject entails
discussion of evidence in support of the latter theories as well as in support
of such concepts as instinctive behavior, causation, repression, sublimation,
and functional autonomy. In particular, I deemed it important to elaborate
upon such distinctions as the one between motivation and causation, another
between desires and the causes of desire, and a third between endogenous and
exogenous motives.
It was also important to call attention to the many ways the word uncon¬
scious has come to be used in different psychological contexts. Some of these
ways are more factual whereas others are definitely more hypothetical. These
ambiguous and hypothetical aspects of the unconscious, as presented in
Chapter 6, have to do with the possible testing of some of Freud’s hypotheses
as well as with the more immediately pertinent issue of the unconscious as
a scientific concept.
In Chapter 7, the closing chapter, this issue of the status of the uncon¬
scious as a scientific concept is subjected to a retrospective survey against the
background of the earlier chapters. Accordingly, in terms of this background
I reverted to consideration of the conflict between those who, like James, view
the unconscious as fiction and those who, like Freud, acknowledge it as fact.
In doing so I hoped to resolve the conflict and thus bring about a rapproche¬
ment between academic psychology on the one hand and medical phychology
on the other. To accomplish this, as indicated by the title of this chapter, I
xviii • Preface

revived and elaborated upon a somewhat neglected distinction between sen¬

sory and non-sensory ideation. In terms of this distinction, so it seemed to
me, it is possible to provide for a scientific account of unconscious thinking
without having to invoke a deus ex machina in the form of a mythical entity
called The Unconscious.
In the course of working on these chapters I had often to deal with topics
of seeming relevance and importance, but whose precise bearing on the central
inquiry kept eluding me. On such occasions I found that talking over the dif¬
ficulty with my wife facilitated clarification. As I talked, hitherto unsuspected
implications of a given topic would be disclosed^ Often she would call my
attention to the obscure and repetitious; sometimes she supplied an apt and
illuminating commonsense illustration. In this kind of setting I would con¬
tinue my monologue until clarification was achieved. As a patient captive
audience of one, and far more than she ever suspected, she was of immeasur¬
able help. For this as well as for her constant encouragement I am profoundly
grateful.

March, 1976 D. B. K.
 Introductory
Survey

The concept of unconscious mental life has many implications often

overlooked in casual, everyday allusions. If taken to mean unconscious con¬
sciousness, it is either manifestly contradictory or mysteriously paradoxical.
On the other hand it may connote a separate psychic entity presumed to
function autonomously as if independent of control by the waking self. Many
other functions have been attributed to the unconscious by students of the
subject; the more significant ones will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
By way of preparation for these later chapters this chapter surveys those
aspects of the unconscious having a direct bearing on psychological theory in
general, as opposed to those aspects related to rival schools of medical psy¬
chology. In other words, this preliminary survey says nothing about an uncon¬
scious id, a racial unconscious, unconscious sibling rivalry, or kindred notions
belonging to the realm of dynamic psychiatry. It is more concerned with the
relevance of the unconscious for normal psychology, rather than abnormal
psychology.
In particular, this introductory survey wiU lead up to this question: Does
the concept of mind as unconscious promote human understanding and the
interests of psychology as science? This, of course, suggests that the concept
might militate against efforts to foster the scientific understanding of mind
and personality. William James (1842-1910) recognized this contingency and
warned against it in a famous statement to the effect that belief in states of
mind as unconscious can become “the sovereign means for believing what one
likes in psychology, and of turning what might become a science into a
2 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

tumbling-ground for whimsies” (James, 1890, Vol. I, p. 163). E. B. Titchener

(1867-1927) was equally emphatic in his recognition of such a threat to
scientific psychology. He wrote that “we voluntarily leave the sphere of fact
for the sphere of fiction” when we “invent an unconscious mind to give
coherence and continuity to the conscious” (Titchener, 1917, p. 40). This
statement has provocative implications which ought to be explored.

THE UNCONSCIOUS: FACT OR FICTION?

By referring to the unconscious mind as invented, Titchener was evidently

thinking of it as improvised rather than discovered. To ask whether an uncon¬
scious mind has been discovered or invented is akin to asking whether God
has been discovered or invented. Both queries involve such common antitheses
as fact versus fiction, the perceptual versus the conceptual, the real versus the
imaginary, and the actual versus the hypothetical. Furthermore, just as those
convinced of God’s existence differ among themselves about the nature of
God, so those persuaded of the reality of the unconscious differ among them¬
selves about the nature of the unconscious. In fact, it is impossible to formu¬
late a comprehensive definition broad enough to do justice to what the term
has come to mean for the many students of mental life convinced of the real
existence of an unconscous mind. There are too many meanings to render this
possible. In their psychological dictionary English and English (1958, p. 569),
after alluding to unconscious as “one of the most troublesome terms in the
psychological disciplines,” added this comment:

It is said that there are no less than 39 distinct meanings of unconscious;

it is certain that no author limits himself consistently to one. And near¬
ly all meanings are closely linked to debatable theories. Any user of the
term therefore risks suggesting agreement with theories he may deplore.

Debatable theories are also implicit in the numerous meanings of the word
God. They include naive, anthropomorphic beliefs; highly abstract, non-
anthropomorphic Hegelian Absolutes; trinitarian as contrasted with Unitarian
beliefs; deistic as opposed to theistic beliefs; parochial versus universal beliefs;
and, more recently, debates about God being dead or alive. As a consequence,
merely to know that several people confess to a belief in God is not to know
whether they share a common belief. Some of them may be harboring a con¬
viction of God’s readiness to promote their welfare and to protect them from
danger by magical intervention—the kind of conviction which prompts chap¬
lains of rival armies to invoke God’s blessings on their troops and, by implica¬
tion, His curses on the troops of the enerny. For those who identify God with
Aristotle’s unmoved mover or with Spinoza’s pantheistic concept, this kind of
conviction is childish nonsense. Their God is not to be confused with the
personal God of the military chaplains. Although both they and the chaplains
profess to believe in God, were they to elaborate upon what their respective
beliefs mean in detail, they would find it impossible to endorse one another’s
 Introductory Survey • 3

beliefs. Analogously, those who entertain convictions about an unconscious

mind might find themselves in sharp disagreement were they to dilate upon
just what these convictions mean to each of them. Without such clarifying
elaboration it is impossible to know what interpretation to place on allusions
to man’s unconscious mind. For example, in line with the analogy under con¬
sideration, one student of the unconscious, Lancelot Whyte (1960, pp. 9-10),
is evidently convinced of a relationship between religious faith and the
unconscious:

For today faith, if it bears any relation to the natural world, implies
faith in the unconscious. If there is a God, he must speak there; if there
is a healing power, it must operate there; if there is a principle of order¬
ing in the organic realm, its most powerful manifestation must be found
there. The unconscious mind is the expression of the organic in the
individual.

Since Whyte fails to supply evidence in support of what he thus attributes

to the unconscious, there is no way of evaluating the soundness of whatever
reasons prompted the foregoing conclusions. Just why a God, if He does
exist, must communicate via the unconscious is never explained. It may be
that other students of the unconscious also entertain notions of God’s near¬
ness to the unconscious. Maybe this accounts for the fact that some of them
have recourse to a capitalized designation for the concept—by writing the
f/nconscious.
Comparable allusions to conscious processes do not appear to have elicited
capitalized references to the conscious. Seemingly, conscious phenomena are
too diverse for such a unifying label. On the other hand, processes attributed
to the Unconscious seem to be regarded as less heterogeneous and thus amen¬
able to the unifying designation of the capital letter. Similar considerations in
the realm of religion are shown in the lower-case designation for the gods of
polytheism as contrasted with the upper-case designation for the God of
monotheism.

THE UNCONSCIOUS
A DERIVATIVE OF THE CONSCIOUS
Neither gods nor God are ever perceived in the course of everyday expe¬
rience in the way common objects like chairs, birds, and stones are perceived.
The existence of such common objects can be demonstrated by direct inspec¬
tion once they become objects of consciousness or awareness. Those who
entertain convictions regarding the existence of divine beings lack this kind of
demonstration. As invisible forces, benign powers, omniscient agencies, or
however else divine beings may be described, their existence cannot be con¬
firmed by direct inspection. Their invisibility renders them nonperceptible
and consequently incapable of becoming objects of consciousness like chairs,
birds, and stones. Whatever the believer attributes to them in the wty of
4 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

power, benevolence, interests, or other characteristics is abstracted or derived

from his consciousness of such characteristics. His belief or conviction is thus
a concept rather than a percept—something he has inferred from his expe¬
rience rather than something he has actually experienced.
In fact, virtually all statements regarding unconscious mental processes are
also inferences or conceptual derivatives from the realm of consciousness. To
ascribe some action to an unconscious wish implies knowledge of wishing as
a conscious process. This applies to the person interpreting the action and not
to the one indulging in the action. In a clinical setting, it applies to the thera¬
pist and not to his patient. Unless the therapist were aware of the nature of
wishing as it is ordinarily experienced he would not know enough to attribute
the operation of an unconscious wish to his patient. In doing so he is main¬
taining that the action was instigated by a wish even though the patient failed
to realize being influenced by a wish. This amounts to an as r/interpretation:
despite his lack of realization the patient acted as if he were wishing for
something.
By way of illustration, let it be assumed that the action in question con¬
cerns the patient’s troubles with his son. They clash over the son’s vocational
choice—the father urging a professional goal entailing a university education
and the son, bored by high school studies but fascinated by automobile
engines, wanting to enroll at a trade school in order to become a garage
mechanic. In discussing the conflict with the therapist the father presents
himself as having nothing but the son’s welfare at heart. As he sees it, the
boy’s poor grades at high school are due not to lack of ability but to laziness
and his wasting time tinkering with cars. Looking into the future, he foresees
the boy as a grown man feeling regret at being a garage mechanic, since many
of his current friends will have become lawyers, engineers, bankers, and men
of affairs. He sees himself as protecting the boy from such regret. However,
what the therapist sees is an unconscious desire for the enhancement of family
prestige rather than an unselfish interest in having the boy find a congenial
vocational niche for himself. Unwittingly, the father is subordinating the
boy’s welfare to his own interests. In his clinical notes the therapist might Hst
the father’s efforts to justify himself as rationaUzation, meaning that spurious
reasons have displaced the real reasons. As such it would be a self-deceptive
maneuver-obvious to the therapist, but of which the father is unaware, or
unconscious.
Does this mean that rationalization is always an unconscious process? If it
were, then nobody could ever have recognized it. Somebody had to be con¬
scious of it before it could be assumed to be operative as an unconscious
process. Emerson was conscious of it when, as Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
pointed out, he said, “That which we call sin in others is experiment for us,”
and other authors, as Allport noted, had also been aware of it under different
names, such as, fiction, myth, hypocrisy (Allport, 1961, pp. 158-159). Not
until 1908 did Ernest Jones (1879-1958) introduce the term rationalization
as a technical designation for the process. Once a process of this kind has
 Introductory Survey • 5

been called to our attention by being described and labeled, we can then
more readily be aware of it in ourselves.
This holds true for all the mechanisms or dynamisms frequently regarded
as unconscious mental processes—projection, introjection, reaction forma¬
tion, undoing, conversion, and so on. As quirks of the human mind their
occurrence has been noted long before technical terms had been coined for
them. For example, Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, seems to have been
aware of the mechanism of conversion when he asked, “Why, then, do you
walk as if you had swallowed a ramrod?” Shakespeare was an especially
acute observer. The mechanism of undoing is revealed by Lady Macbeth as
she rubs her hands and cries, “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” Recognition of
projection is clearly evident in this quotation from Henry VI: “Suspicion
always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.” In
Hamlet there is recognition of reaction formation when the Queen says, “The
lady doth protest too much, methinks.” There is no need to add more ex¬
amples. The ones cited suffice to show initial awareness of conscious
processes before equivalent processes can be assumed to be functioning uncon¬
sciously. In this sense the unconscious is a derivative of the conscious. Knowl¬
edge of the conscious is thus prior to what is attributed to the unconscious.
To stress what has already been mentioned: the attribution is inferred from
this prior knowledge. Consequently, unless the nature of the conscious proc¬
esses is understood, there can be no adequate understanding of the inferred
unconscious ones. In syllogistic terms this is tantamount to saying that
judgment of an inferred conclusion’s validity depends upon understanding of
the underlying premises.

A CONTINUUM FROM CONSCIOUSNESS TO COMA

In a general sense everybody may be presumed to know something about

the nature of consciousness. Even young children soon learn the difference
between being asleep and being awake. When a little older they learn the
difference between being wide awake and being drowsy, and they may still
be in their nursery years when they understand everyday expressions Uke “I
had a dream,” “This really happened,” and “Let’s pretend.” Later they come
to know the meaning of sentences like “He seemed dazed,” “The lady fainted,”
and “The boxer is still unconscious.” Of course this last sentence may leave
some of them uncertain as to whether the unconscious boxer is just asleep,
but the more sophisticated youngsters are likely to suspect that there must be
some difference between being knocked unconscious and lapsing into normal
sleep.
A very, very sophisticated prodigy may even be prepared to argue that,
aside from the word unconscious, there is little in common between an un¬
conscious boxer and an unconscious sleeper. As he sees it, the only reason
both are said to be unconscious is because neither one is awake, but lack of
wakefulness does not necessarily mean suspension of consciousness. A sleeper
6 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

is conscious of his dreams and, should he be receiving training as a psycho¬

analyst, will tell his analyst about them, since the analyst regards dreams as
revelatory of the sleeper’s unconscious. However, this is not to be confused
with the meaning of the word unconscious as employed with reference to the
victim of a knockout. Unlike the sleeper, the knockout victim may remain
unconscious for days and have to be hospitalized and fed intravenously. His
condition would call for the services of a neurologist rather than a psycho¬
analyst. Instead of regarding this condition as a form of sleep, the neurolo¬
gist would describe it as a coma.
Whoever first introduced the word coma as a medical term must have
viewed the comatose patient as being profoundly asleep, since the word
comes from the Greek koma, meaning “deep sleep.” Nevertheless, the condi¬
tion is to be distinguished from deep sleep.^ Although both coma and deep
sleep are characterized by no vestige of consciousness, electroencephalo-
graphic recordings indicate a difference in these states of unconsciousness.
In fact, such EEG or brain wave recordings have been used to differentiate
various levels of sleep from various levels of wakefulness. D. B. Lindsley, who
is both a psychologist and an EEG speciahst, has conceived of these levels as
a continuum ranging from the inertness of death at one extreme to the most
intense degree of consciousness at the other.
The accompanying table gives a clear summary of Lindsley’s discussion
of this continuum. The table is taken from his paper on psychological phe¬
nomena and the the EEG (Lindsley, 1952^) and shows how given levels of
the continuum are related to EEG changes, to degrees of consciousness, and
to control of behavior. It is to be noted that the most extreme level of con¬
sciousness or awareness is associated with violent emotional upheaval. Acute
anxiety, uncontrollable rage, and disorganized states of panic exemplify this
level. Under these conditions one is vividly aware of being aware, but there is
reduced capacity to think more clearly and to act efficiently. Emotional
excitement and cogent reasoning do not go together and one may be paralyzed
by terror and immobilized by rage.
To be left speechless when terrified or enraged is a well-known phenom¬
enon. The victim of stage fright may have trouble controlling his speech
muscles. At the time, he is intensely conscious of his distressing visceral com¬
motion and this consciousness of inner turmoil may render it difficult or
impossible for him to recall the lines of the speech he had memorized. In the
language of Lindsley’s table, he is too confused for effective management of
the “serial responses” he intended to make. To dissipate the confusion he

'Deep sleep need not be drugged or anesthetized sleep; for the deep sleep of exhaustion
is not indicative of brain pathology. Coma, on the other hand, presupposes such pathol¬
ogy. In addition to brain damage attributable to concussion, coma may also be due to
diabetes, liver disease, uremia, low blood sugar, and other disturbances of brain metabol¬
ism. An account of such disturbances is supplied by J. F. Fazekas and R. W. Alman in
their volume on Coma (1962).
^In a personal communication dated 1975 Professor Lindsley reported that he saw no
reason to introduce any changes in his 1952 table.
 Introductory Survey • 7

Psychological States and Their EEG, Conscious,

and Behavioral Correlates

Behavioral Electro- State of Behavioral

Continuum Encephalogram A wareness Efficiency

Strong, excited Desynchronized: Restricted aware¬ Poor (lack of

emotion (Fear) Low to moderate ness; divided control, freezing-up,
(Rage) (Anxiety) amplitude; fast, attention; diffuse, disorganized).
mixed frequencies. hazy; “Confusion.”
Alert Partially synchro¬ Selective attention Good (efficient,
attentiveness nized: Mainly fast, but may vary or selective, quick,
low amplitude waves. shift. “Concen¬ reactions). Orga¬
tration” anticipa¬ nized for serial
tion, “set.” responses.
Relaxed Synchronized: Opti¬ Attention wanders Good (routine
wakefulness mal alpha rhythm. —not forced. reactions & creative
Favors free thought).
association.

Drowsiness Reduced alpha & Borderline, partial Poor (uncoordi¬

occasional low awareness. nated, sporadic,
amplitude slow Imagery & reverie. lacking sequential
waves. “Dream-like timing).
states.”

Light sleep Spindle bursts & Markedly reduced Absent

slow waves (larger). consciousness (loss
Loss of alphas. of consciousness).
Dream state.

Deep sleep Large & very Complete loss of Absent

slow waves awareness (no
(synchrony but memory for
on slow time base). stimulation or for
Random, irregular dreams).
pattern.

Coma Isoelectric to Complete loss of Absent

irregular large consciousness,
slow waves. little or no re¬
sponse to stimu¬
lation; amnesia.

Death Isoelectric: Gradual Complete loss of Absent

and permanent awareness as
disappearance of all death ensues.
electrical activity.

would have to be less conscious of himself. This amounts to saying that by

attending to his inner turmoil his attention is diverted from the business at
hand; hence the confusion. With attention divided, and the concomitant dis¬
traction, he is overwhelmed by too many concurrent impressions. To be
8 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

overwhelmed by sensory impressions in this way is to be too conscious for

integrated control of the situation.
Panic behavior is disintegrated behavior. The victim of panic is over¬
whelmed by a superabundance of intense sensory impressions; hence his lack
of control. On the other hand drowsiness or apathy also militate against
effective control. These states are marked by diminished consciousness as
contrasted with the excess characteristic of the panic state. For optimal
efficiency an Aristotelian golden mean between excess and deficiency appears
to be a prerequisite. This is one conclusion to be drawn from consideration of
the continuum of awareness outlined in the third column of Lindsley’s table.
It illustrates one meaning of the concept of consciousness; namely, the
capacity to notice or be aware of the entire gamut of external and internal
sensations along with imagery based upon these sensations. In accordance
with this meaning people talk about being aware of sights, sounds, and other
external or exteroceptive sources of stimulation as well as being conscious of
hungers, thirsts, and other kinds of internal or interoceptive sources of
stimulation.
Another meaning of consciousness, also suggested by the table, refers to
the continuum from wakefulness, to sleep, to coma. In terms of this meaning
the rested, wide-awake person is said to be fully conscious and is regarded as
less conscious when weary and still less conscious when he falls asleep. Should
his sleep be the deep sleep of exhaustion, he may be judged to be uncon¬
scious. Although he fails to respond to the sound of the alarm clock or when
subjected to a mild push, he can be aroused by a loud call or vigorous prod¬
ding. In this respect his unconsciousness is different from the unconscious¬
ness of the comatose patient. Although still alive in terms of respiration and
heart action, the victim of coma is unresponsive even to forceful means of
arousal. He fails to react when his name is shouted or when jabbed by a pin or
drenched with ice water. Unlike the exhausted sleeper, he appears to be de¬
void of sensation and feeling and gives the impression of being a mindless,
vegetative organism-unless he can be aroused to wakefulness this impres¬
sion will persist. Thus it seems that to be mindful means to be awake and to
be awake means to be conscious. If this is so, then mind, wakefulness, and
consciousness may be synonymous concepts.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE

EGOCENTRIC PREDICAMENT

The concept of awareness can also be added to these three synonymous

concepts, for to be conscious means to be aware of something. It is in this
sense that the comatose patient is held to be unconscious, or lacking aware¬
ness. He ceases to be unconscious once he gives evidence of being sensitive to
sounds or sights or pains or any other provocative source of stimulation. If
this be so, then, as a minimal criterion, sensitivity becomes the sine qua non
of consciousness. However, although we can be directly and immediately
 Introductory Survey • 9

aware of our own sensitivity, this is not true of our recognition of the sensi¬
tivity of animals or of other persons. Their pains are not our pains in terms of
sensory immediacy. In the case of a wounded dog we infer its pain from its
behavior and in the case of a wounded man we also infer his pain even though
he, unhke the dog, is able to tell us about it.
Verbal report serves to increase our confidence in the validity of such an
inference, but this is not the same as the man’s awareness of pain. He has the
pain and we are now confident that he has it without having it ourselves.
Even though we sympathize with him or have an empathic identification v/ith
his suffering, nevertheless such sympathy or empathy still leaves us free of his
pain. Our conscious content continues to be different from his conscious con¬
tent. Under the circumstances, our verbal report of what we are experiencing
will not be a precise duplicate of his verbal report. He will report being in
pain and we will report knowing about his pain. His will be direct knowledge
of existing pain while ours will be inferred or indirect knowledge about his
pain.
The distinction in question is the familiar one William James referred to
as the difference between knowledge of acquaintance as contrasted with
knowledge-about. The difference, he noted, is reflected in some languages
other than English (1890, Vol. I, p. 221). In Latin the infinitive for “to
know” is either noscere or scire', in French the corresponding terms are
connaitre and savoir, and in German they are kennen and wissen. ^ By way of
clarification James declared that he knows the color blue when he sees it and
the flavor of a pear when he tastes it—this is knowledge of acquaintance.
However, he then added:
I cannot impart acquaintance with them to any one who has not al¬
ready made it himself. I cannot describe them, make a blind man guess
what blue is like, define to a child a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in
just what respect distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms
of relation. At most, I can say to my friends. Go to certain places and
act in certain ways, and these objects will probably come.
At the risk of mentioning the obvious it might be of some interest to ask
whether following James’s suggestions would have enabled any two of his
friends to have precisely identical knowledge of given color or taste expe¬
riences. Supposing each of them had savored fragments of the same pear,
would the resulting acquaintance with the pear’s “flavor” be the same for the
two friends? An affirmative answer has to be based upon inference and can¬
not be in terms of a reciprocal exchange of sensory impressions. There is no
way for them to invade one another’s gustatory or olfactory privacy. At best
they can compare notes by means of detailed verbal description of their
respective “flavors,” but this will merely serve to enhance confidence in the
validity of the inference. It will not transform the inference into direct ac-

^There is a suggestion of these German words in the differing connotation of the English
words knowledge and wisdom.
10 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

quaintance with the friend’s awareness of the pear’s taste. The impossibility
of effecting such transformation has long been recognized as an insoluble
predicament and is commonly referred to as the egocentric predicament.
For present purposes it suffices to think of the egocentric predicament as
having to do with the inherent privacy of one’s thoughts, feelings, perceptions,
images, memories, cravings, worries, and related phenomena of conscious¬
ness. Because of this privacy such phenomena can never be shared directly
with others. This holds true for our observations of surrounding events as
well as for our observations of events of our inner life—for the sunsets we
look at as well as the ambitions we cherish. It holds true for casual observa¬
tions of everyday affairs and for the deliberate, controlled observations of the
laboratory scientist. As the physicist P. W. Bridgman once noted, “simple
inspection of what one does in any scientific enterprise will show that the
most important part of science is private” (1945, p. 281).
When the scientist ventures to make his “private” observations and reason¬
ings public by giving lectures and writing technical articles, he still fails to
circumvent the egocentric predicament. His hearers and readers have to con¬
tent themselves with their private understanding of what he observed and
thought. Their understanding is a function of inferences drawn from what he
had to say. If he, as a chemist, describes a new compound as smelling like
rancid butter, they infer this to mean a smell akin to or identical with their
own experience of such a smell. Lacking such experience they would have to
locate some rancid butter and sniff it. Only then could they infer something
about the chemist’s olfactory experience; but being an inference this would
not be the equivalent of a direct personal awareness of the olfactory expe¬
rience as experienced by the chemist. Moreover, should one of them lack
sensitivity to odors there would be no way for him as the victim of anosmia
to obtain the experience upon which the inference is based. Consequently, he
would be deprived of adequate understanding of the chemist’s description.
Our understanding of the experiences of others is thus based upon our
own experiences. The more people are like us in the sense of belonging to
our social class and sharing our cultural heritage, the more easily we can
understand one another. Furthermore, the more highly specialized profes¬
sional classes become, the less easily can we as outsiders understand what
they have to report. Truisms of this sort account for the readiness with which
Annapolis graduates identify with naval traditions, the ease with which
veteran accountants peruse financial reports, and the facility with which
veteran detectives understand the argot of a criminal gang. To outsiders the
specialized vocabulary of such groups, being largely incomprehensible to
them, may be stigmatized as jargon. Technical words, the esoteric use of
familiar words, and the occasional interpolation of foreign words leave them
mystified and frustrated; hence their recourse to a derogatory term like
jargon.
Listening to jargon leaves the uninitiated outsider mystified. He is in the
position of a visitor to Madrid who, though ignorant of Spanish, is neverthe-
 Introductory Survey • 11

less trying to follow the conversation of some natives in the lobby of his
hotel. Although he hears their words, he cannot know what they are saying
nor what it is they seem to find so amusing. From their laughter he infers
the amusement, but he can infer nothing from their talk. In telling about
this upon his return home he might not employ the word infer in describing
the incident. Instead he might say, “I judged one of them had told a joke
because they were all laughing, but I couldn’t even guess what the joke was
about. It must have been some kind of Spanish joke.”
Thus our impressions of other people’s minds and personalities are matters
of judgment, guesswork, and belief—in contrast with affairs of direct, self¬
validating perception, illustrated by our immediate recognition of familiar
objects such as apples, dogs, telephones, and shoes. When other people refer
to the latter objects we assume or take it for granted or infer or judge that
their awareness of them resembles or may be precisely like our awareness.
However, the egocentric predicament renders it impossible to get at their
awareness by direct inspection. When they speak of being hungry or tired we
can only judge their experiences to be more or less the same as when we feel
famished or fatigued. Our judgment is influenced not only by their words,
but also by their actions and appearance. We can observe the tremors, retarded
gait, and sunken cheeks of the starving man just as we perceive the stooped
posture, shuffling walk, and drooping eyelids of the exhausted man. These are
all indications of conscious states symbolized by simple sentences like “I am
hungry” and “I am tired.” As indications they enable us to make judgments
of the man’s trouble.

CONCERNING JUDGMENT OF HUMAN

AND ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS

In dealing with his patient’s troubles the physician makes judgments in

terms of complaints made by the patient as well as in terms of what is evident
to him in the course of a routine physical examination. The final judgment or
diagnosis is the resultant of both sets of indications: the patient’s complaints
and the physician’s observations. A medical diagnosis in many instances thus
depends on the consciousness of the patient and the consciousness of the ex¬
amining physician. Complaints in the way of pains, blurred vision, loss of
appetite, and ringing in the ears pertain to the consciousness of the patient.
As such they are not open to the physician’s inspection. For him they are
symptoms of the illness, just as his findings are signs of the illness. Of course,
often there are indications of injury or illness which can be observed by both
patient and physician. They both can see the swollen joint or the dislocated
shoulder or the rash of which the patient complains. In these instances the
complaints may be classified as signs as well as symptoms, and the precise
term employed becomes a matter of descriptive preference.
A veterinarian does not consider such a preference. His animals have no
verbal complaints to make—no symptoms to reveal. All his diagnostic con-
12 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

elusions are the results of signs observable immediately or after having been
elicited by routine maneuvers and laboratory reports. This might suggest
that, unlike the physician, the veterinarian does his medical work without re¬
gard to the consciousness of his patients; but such is not the case. Before
undertaking surgery on a sick animal he renders it unconscious by means of
an anesthetic. He obviously acts as if his dog and cat patients can experience
pain. Moreover, since he sometimes decides that a particular animal is blind or
deaf, he is also acting as if his patient is no longer conscious of visual and
auditory sensations. Nor does he hesitate to endow his animals with organic
sensations in the way of hunger and thirst. Were he to be asked how he knows
that animals are conscious of sensations of pain, light, sound, hunger, and
thirst he would call attention to the ways their anatomic equipment resem¬
bles human anatomy and the ways their reactions to specific modes of stimu¬
lation are similar to human reactions. The closer the animal’s anatomy
resembles human anatomy the more confident he would be of what he
attributes to the animal’s consciousness. For this reason he would be less
hesitant to ascribe consciousness to a chimpanzee than to a frog, and more
uncertain about an oyster’s consciousness than a frog’s. He might even be
quite certain that paramecia and other protozoa are incapable of being con¬
scious of anything.
Actually this last issue is not likely to confront him in the course of his
practice as a veterinarian. Sick or injured paramecia are not apt to be listed
among his patients, so any convictions he might entertain about the con¬
sciousness of protozoa would not be founded on intensive and detailed
experience with such organisms. One man who did have such experience,
however, was the biologist H. S. Jennings (1868-1947), whose 1906 book
Behavior of the Lower Organisms is replete with experimental reports of their
behavior. Neither experiment nor observation, Jennings acknowledged, can
serve to confirm or refute any opinion regarding an animal’s consciousness.
Nevertheless he believed it is often useful to attribute consciousness to an
animal as we customarily do in dealing with the dog, since this gives us better
understanding and control of the dog’s actions. With reference to the ques¬
tion of the consciousness of an amoeba, a protozoan whose nature had
become as familiar to him as the nature of dogs becomes familiar to a vet¬
erinarian, he had this to say (1965, p. 481):

If Amoeba were so large as to come within our everyday ken, I believe

it beyond question that we should find similar attribution to it of cer¬
tain states of consciousness a practical assistance in foreseeing and
controlling its behavior. Amoeba is a beast of prey, and gives the im¬
pression of being controlled by the same elemental impulses as higher
beasts of prey. If it were as large as a whale, it is quite conceivable that
occasions might arise when the attribution to it of the elemental states
of consciousness might save the unsophisticated human being from the
destruction that would result from the lack of such attribution. In such
a case, then, the attribution of consciousness would be satisfactory and
 Introductory Survey • 13

useful. In a small way this is still true for the investigator who wishes
to appreciate and predict the behavior of Amoeba under his microscope.

In thus attributing “elemental states of consciousness” to protozoa Jen¬

nings was opposing those biologists who advocated purely mechanistic
interpretations of unicellular behavior. The leading proponent of such inter¬
pretations at the time was Jacques Loeb (1859-1924). According to his
tropistic theory the organism’s reactions are automatic, forced movements
toward or away from given sources of stimulation. Its movement toward a
source of light was called heliotropism and toward the ground geotropism.
The upward growth of the stem of a plant is indicative of a heliotropic
orientation, just as the downward growth of the roots reveals a geotropic
orientation. Similarly, thermotropisms were mentioned in connection with
movements induced by changes in temperature. An amoeba or paramecium
moving toward a warm object was governed by a positive thermotropism and
its retreat from a hot object was attributed to a negative thermotropism. As
Loeb regarded it, there was no need to assume any awareness of warmth and
cold in order to account for these reactions. They are forced movements
just as the movements of the pointer on a compass are forced movements.
It can point north without having to be conscious of north, or of north as
the opposite of south. This reductio ad absurdum may suffice to show the
implications of Loeb’s tropistic theory as applied to what he called the
mechanistic concept of life (Loeb, 1912).
Endorsement of this concept is tantamount to holding that principles of
physics and chemistry are enough to account for the activities of living crea¬
tures. Their chemical constitution and anatomic structure determine their
behavior. Consciousness as a supposititious concomitant of behavior is taken
to be a mere by-product or epiphenomenon devoid of causal efficacy—akin
to the smoke pouring from the furnace of a busy factory. W. K. Clifford
(1845-1879), the famous British mathematician and philosopher, introduced
a now oft-cited simile to explain this standpoint. He pointed out that, from
the standpoint of epiphenomenalism, attributing causal efficacy to con¬
sciousness is like arguing that the friendship between the locomotive engineer
and the conductor, rather than the metal coupling, accounts for the linkage
between the locomotive and the train it is pulling.
Loeb’s mechanistic concept, it should be evident, does not require any
judgment of a living creature’s consciousness. There is no need to ask whether
a heliotropism involves awareness of light. It is enough to note how the crea¬
ture reacts to light as a stimulus, just as it is enough for a student of photogra¬
phy to note that his film is affected by light without having to judge whether
or not the film “sees” the light. In terms of Loeb’s concept, scientific investi¬
gations in psychology can proceed without getting involved in debates about
the nature of consciousness or the possible existence of unconscious mental
influences. His concept is congruent with the outlook of those psychologists
14 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

whose behavioristic commitment entails disparagement of mentalistic inter¬

pretations. For them mentalism, as contrasted with mechanism, appears to
have an unscientific connotation. They prefer to conceive of psychological
issues in terms of the language of physics.
There are, however, innumerable psychological issues whose understand¬
ing would not be facilitated by exclusive dependence on the physicist’s
technical vocabulary. How, for example, would talk about cathode rays or
Ohm’s law enable one to, understand the despondency of a jobless man,
the terror of a lost child, or a philatelist’s interest in old postage stamps? Nor
would the language of physics be of much help when trying to understand a
monk’s asceticism, a sadist’s cruelty, a philanthropist’s generosity, or a profli¬
gate’s extravagance.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF UNDERSTANDING

The list of issues could be extended to include the entire gamut of human
interests, values, foibles, eccentricities, aspirations, and whatever else falls with¬
in the scope of the psychology of desire and motivation. Consequently, the
quest for this kind of understanding becomes a psychological one involving
appreciation of the feelings and emotions of other people. It calls for a knowl¬
edge of human nature such as that exhibited in the writings of Shakespeare,
Dickens, Dostoevski, and Ibsen. Their literary creations reflect an empathic
insight into the inner life of their characters. They understood man’s hopes,
lusts, ideals, frustrations, prejudices, loyalties, triumphs, conflicts, anxieties,
and similar emotional ups and downs incident to the pursuit of personal goals.
Viewed in the abstract, the psychology of understanding under considera¬
tion is manifestly more conscious than unconscious. Because it calls for self-
knowledge and empathy it is a prerequisite for insightful growth in our
knowledge of human nature. In fact, Margaret Mead, the anthropologist,
regards this as indispensable for understanding alien cultures. As she sees it,
“disciplined introspection and empathy are essential to the study of the
unique characteristics of human kind” (1976, p. 905). Moreover, this kind of
empathic understanding is not to be confused with understanding based upon
feelings of sympathy.
In the case of sympathy we identify with another person’s emotional expe¬
rience to the extent of at least minimal arousal of the same kind of emotion
we attribute to him. Thus his indignation becomes our anger, his terror our
fear, and his grief our sadness. By this process of emotional identification an
exciting scene on the stage induces excitement in the audience. There is actual
emotional arousal, as indicated by changes in breathing, heart action, posture,
and facial expression.
Empathy, on the other hand, need not involve such emotional identifica¬
tion. There is appreciation of another individual’s joys or sorrows without
sympathetic arousal of kindred emotional states. Thus we can understand or
appreciate the frustration of the golfer who has missed an important putt
 Introductory Survey • 15

even though we do not feel frustrated. A teacher can appreciate the elation
of the succesful student and the despondency of the unsuccessful one with¬
out having to experience corresponding feelings of triumph and defeat. This
makes empathy a more mature and sophisticated response than sympathy.
This is so in the sense that empathy is more cognitive than sympathy, calling
for greater insight into the nature of the provocative situation. Of course, fre¬
quently the empathic reaction also involves sympathy with another person’s
plight. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. However, as suggested
by the previous examples, they can occur independently of one another.
Furthermore, developmentally considered, it seems safe to say that sym¬
pathy comes before empathy. A crying baby in a hospital nursery often seems
to provoke crying in the other babies, just as the startled reaction of one
animal may initiate a stampede of the herd. Sometimes after an isolated cough
a series of coughs may come from an audience, yawns often precipitate other
yawns, and laughter engenders laughter. All such familiar reactions are
manifestations of sympathy on the part of the infants, animals, and adults—
they are different from empathic reactions. In fact, the difference is important
enough to merit more than incidental attention.

THE NATURE OF EMPATHIC UNDERSTANDING

Empathy, as already implied, is a distinctively human process. It calls for

a certain level of maturity—infants as well as animals are incapable of empathic
reactions—and as a reaction it is less spontaneous than behavior attributable
to arousal of sympathy. Unlike reactions of sympathy, empathic reactions are
initiated for the purpose of better understanding of others. This objective
makes empathy more cognitive and more deliberate than sympathy. To play a
dramatic role effectively the actor has to empathize rather than sympathize
with the character to be portrayed. To accomplish this he has to identify
with the kind of personality the role calls for in terms of the play’s action.
This means interpreting his lines as symbolic of the personality in question.
His facial expression, gestures, accent, and tone of voice must also be included
in his interpretation. Taken all together it is as if, while on the stage, he were
projecting himself into the inner life of another person. In doing so, it might
also be said that it is as if he were feeling himself into what he has come to
understand as the correct interpretation of the playwright’s intention. This
italicized phrase comes close to the original or root meaning of empathy as a
derivative of the German word Einfuhlung. A literal English translation of the
German would be “feeling into.” Titchener (1917, p. 417) made this clear by
stating that “Empathy ... is the name given to that process of humanising
objects, of reading or feeling ourselves into them.”
The “objects” in question were objects of aesthetic interest, since the con¬
cept of Einfuhlung was first employed to account for differences in aesthetic
appeal. According to Thomas Munro (1970, p. 222), the art historian, the
theory of Einfuhlung was introduced by F. T. Vischer (1807-1887) in a vol-
16 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ume on aesthetics. This was in 1846 so that, as a new German word, the term
is not very old. It is even younger as a psychological term, for it was not until
the psychologist Theodor Lipps (1851-1914) developed the psychological
implications of Vischer’s theory that the notion of empathy was given cur¬
rency in psychological circles. This was started around the year 1903 with the
publication of the first volume of a two-volume work by Lipps called Asthetik.
As indicated by the title, Lipps was primarily concerned with an analysis
of the nature of aesthetic judgments. For him these judgments involved
Einfuhlung, or empathy, which E. F. Carritt, the Oxford aesthetician and
student of the writings of Lipps, interpreted to mean that “Aesthetic pleasure
is an enjoyment of our own activity in an object” (1923, p. 273). As translated
by Carritt, Lipps gave his central doctrine this succinct formulation: “All
consciousness that there is a psychical existence outside me originates in
Einfuhlung, in the objectification of a feeling of my own aroused in me by
another’s expression of life” (1923, p. 277).
This amounts to saying that without empathy there can be no understand¬
ing or appreciation of the thoughts, feelings, and motives of others. However,
it seems that Lipps did not regard his theory of Einfuhlung as applicable to
the notion of an unconscious mind; for, according to James, Lipps had sub¬
jected “the notion of unconscious thought ... to the clearest and most
searching criticism which it has yet received” (1890, p. 175).
The “objectification of a feeling” to which Lipps referred indicates that
the empathic reaction is a form of projection. As applied to aesthetics, this
phase of the Lipps theory may be illustrated by the way people are affected
by disturbances of balance and proportion. The sight of a slanting picture
often impels us to straighten it. This common impulse, according to Lipps, is
due to our projection of the muscular imbalance induced by the sight of the
slant to the frame. Similarly, the sight of a very heavy frame suspended by a
fragile-looking cord may arouse feelings of uneasiness as the observer projects
muscular tensions into the frame as if the frame were getting set for a sudden
crash. To revert to what Lipps had said about aesthetic enjoyment: in these
instances the displeasure is al&o a consequence “of our own activity in an
object.” This is not to say that Lipps was attributing a feeling of tension to an
inanimate object. The feeling is recognized as “our own” and not the object’s
feeling, just as we can appreciate the potential energy of a coiled spring with¬
out endowing the spring with consciousness of energy.
However, should we find ourselves comparing the coiled spring to the
tensed muscles of a tiger about to jump and wondering whether the spring is
feeling the strain, then we would be on the verge of endowing the spring with
incipient consciousness, or what Lipps called “a psychical existence.” To
treat inanimate objects in this way is to be guilty of the pathetic fallacy of
attributing human characteristics to objects. Instances of the pathetic fallacy
are revealed by literary allusions to “angry clouds,” “challenging mountains,”
“inviting food,” “tired machines,” and the “cruel storm.” Whether descrip-
 Introductory Survey • 17

tive phrases like these are actually indicative of fallacious thinking is open to
question. Often they are intended as purely figurative expressions, as if to
say: this object reminds me of what it is like to be feeling like this. Only
when they are interpreted as literally endowing the inanimate object with
distinctively human attributes is the thinking to be stigmatized as fallacious.
The pathetic fallacy is a variant of anthropomorphic thinking in the sense
that like anthropomorphism it involves reading human nature into nonhuman
objects or events. As a mode of empathic understanding it thus serves as a
reminder of the need to guard against error in one’s quest for this kind of
understanding. We may be mistaken in our judgments of the feelings not
only of animals, but also of people. Since the word pathetic in the present
context has to do with the life of feeling and emotion, such mistaken judg¬
ments might also be considered instances of the pathetic fallacy. For example,
are we mistaken in attributing pride to the peacock and stubbornness to the
mule? If so, the erroneous judgments would serve as instances of the pathetic
fallacy. Actually we have no way of knowing what, if anything, like pride and
stubbornness these animals are capable of experiencing. We may be reading
more into the situation than the facts justify.
A clarifying example of this is supplied by interpretations that have been
made of the agitated behavior of cats deprived of their kittens before they
are weaned. The signs of distress are understandably judged to be indications
of maternal “grief’ for the lost kittens, especially since maternal “joy” re¬
turns if just a single lost kitten comes back to the mother. However, to
attribute grief to the animal would involve the pathetic or anthropomorphic
fallacy. As brought out by G. S. Gates many years ago (1928, pp. 174-177),
the cat’s distress is not the animal equivalent of human mourning. Instead, it
is occasioned by painful distention of the mammary glands and is eliminated
by the return of a single kitten. It would thus be possible to comfort the
‘grieving’ cat by means of a “mechanical kitten” in the form of a breast pump.
The feelings and intentions we attribute to people may be as mistaken as
those we ascribe to animals. Judgments of character are notoriously fallible
and it is not at all unusual for people to be disillusioned in one another.
Getting to know the minds of other people—to understand them as they
really are—is not easy. Even psychiatrists may require many days of observa¬
tion before being able to settle questions of the sanity of some of their
patients. This entire issue is a venerable one dating back to the early stages
of psychology’s history in the time of Aristotle (384-322). In fact, Aristotle
called attention to it on the very first page of his psychological treatise en¬
titled De Anima, meaning On the Soul. As employed by Aristotle the word
soul was not a designation for a ghostly apparition or disembodied specter.
Instead it came close to the ordinary connotation of the word mind; hence
Aristotle had reference to the problem of understanding mind when he wrote:
“To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult
things in the world.”
18 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

FROM MIND AS CONSCIOUS

TO MIND AS UNCONSCIOUS

The basic question embodied in the title of this book might justify the
following paraphrase of Aristotle’s dictum: to attain any assured knowledge
or understanding of the unconscious mind is one of the most difficult things
in the world. Furthermore, as noted early in this chapter, since the concept
of an unconscious mind is a derivative of the concept of a conscious mind,
there can be no understanding of the former concept without prior under¬
standing of the latter concept. This is so obvious as to be called a truism.
Paradoxically, however, as will be brought out in a later chapter, this was not
obvious to Freud; for he ventured to derive the conscious from the uncon¬
scious. There is no need to elaborate upon this now. By way of preparation
for later chapters the more immediate need is to consider some implications
of this truism.
In light of the truism it appears imperative to introduce an account of the
psychology of consciousness before saying anything about the psychology of
the unconscious. To supply a detailed account would caU for a separate vol¬
ume. As a matter of fact, years ago when psychology was defined as the
science of consciousness or experience all introductory textbooks were deal¬
ing with the psychology of consciousness. This was during a period following
the first official establishment of a psychological laboratory as an integral
part of university organization. The place was the University of Leipzig and
the year was 1879. Consequently, within the very near future psychology as a
self-conscious laboratory science will have been in existence for a hundred
years. In terms of historical perspective this is a short span of years; hence
the accomplishments of scientific psychology in the family of other science
should be judged accordingly. But this is an incidental issue.
A more important issue has to do with the fact that the early pioneer
laboratory studies were focused on phenomena of consciousness. The crux of
each study called for introspective reports of impressions perceived or judged
or discriminated and, if possible, subjected to some kind of measurement. In
thus launching psychology as a science the founding fathers by their use of
techniques of controlled introspection in reality were disregarding ^d
actually rejecting the etymologically literal meaning of psychology as the
science of the soul. In effect, for them psychology as science was the study of
mind as consciously experienced. This continued, in general, to be the out¬
look of most academic psychologists until the early decades of the present
century. By the 1920s, with the rise of behaviorism under the aegis ofJohnB.
Watson (1878-1958), a drastic change took place. Introspective observation
was stigmatized as unscientific and thus reports based upon it were held to
be suspect. In fact, as a behaviorist Watson was prepared to deny the exist¬
ence of mind and consciousness. He did this quite bluntly in the following
sentence during the course of an address delivered at a symposium concerned
with The Unconscious (1927, p. 96): “If the behaviorists are right in their
 Introductory Survey • 19

contention that there is no observable mind-body problem and no separate

entity called mind—then there can be no such thing as consciousness and its
subdivision.”
The preceding sequence of changes gave rise to a quasi-humorous comment
to the effect that psychology had first lost its soul, then it became mindless,
and finally lost consciousness and was left with unconscious or nonconscious
behavior. Of course, not all psychologists became followers of Watson, so
there was no complete cessation of interest in phenomena of consciousness;
but there was widespread distrust of introspection and increasing stress on the
importance of operational definitions. Textbooks no longer defined psychol¬
ogy as the study of consciousness. Instead it became the study of experience
as dependent on the experiencing person or the study of human and animal
nature or the science that studies the behavior of human beings and animals.
Most of them acknowledged the difficulty of providing a satisfactory defini¬
tion. Indeed this continues to bother writers of introductory textbooks. For
example, within the very recent past Brown and Herrnstein faced the dif¬
ficulty quite candidly by starting their introductory textbook with this open¬
ing sentence (1975, p. 3): “We may as well have the scandal out at once and
get it over with; ‘psychology’ cannot be defined.”
What makes psychology as science refractory to a simple clarifying defini¬
tion is its broad scope and the imprecision of some of its key terms. Its en¬
hanced scope has become evident in recent years by a revival of interest in
and study of conscious phenomena—reflected in a burgeoning literature‘s
dealing with such varied phases of consciousness as meditation, dreaming,
relaxed wakefulness, daydreaming, biofeedback, and awareness of visceral
and glandular changes. Were the founding fathers cognizant of this literature,
it seems safe to say, they would welcome the studies in question as elabora¬
tion of their pioneer studies of the nature of conscious content.
It is important to bear in mind that the founding fathers were engaged in
their studies of conscious content in order to safeguard the status of psychol¬
ogy as science. It was as if they were effecting its transformation from a
mental philosophy into a genuine science. At the time—during the last third
of the nineteenth century—there were some philosophers who had espoused
the doctrine of unconscious mental processes. This was years before Freud

‘^By this time the relevant bibliography would call for a list of hundreds of books and
articles. With reference to the phases just listed the following might be consulted: Orn-
stein on consciousness (1972), WaUace and Benson on meditation (1972), the Woods and
Greenhouse anthology on dreams and dreaming (1974), Foulkes and Fleisher on relaxed
wakefulness (1975), Singer on daydreaming (1975), Wickramaskera on biofeedback
(1974), and Miller on awareness of visceral and glandular changes (1969). A summary
review of some of these and related topics is to be found in a special section of the
Saturday Review of February 22, 1975, entitled “Mind and Supermind-Expanding the
Limits of Consciousness.” It introduces both factual and decidedly speculative data
pertaining to parapsychology, biofeedback, meditation, and mystical and quasi-religious
experiences. The section also provides a list of close to thirty organizations engaged in
what is described as consciousness research.
20 ’ The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

had come out in its support. In their view this doctrine with its advocacy of
belief in unconscious consciousness could not be endorsed. It constituted a
threat to psychology’s scientific aspirations and hence had to be rejected.
In other words, this nineteenth-century rejection of the unconscious was
not occasioned by the rise of psychoanalysis. Instead, as explained in the next
chapter, it was precipitated by and directed against pre-Freudian versions of
the unconscious, especially as reflected in a widely circulated book, Eduard
von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious.

REFERENCES

Allport, G. W. 1961. Pattern and Growth in Personality. New York: Holt,

Rinehart and Winston.
Bridgman, P. W. 1945. “Rejoinders and Second Thoughts.” Psychological
Review 52: 281-284.
Brown, R., and Herrnstein, R. J. 1975. Psychology. Boston: Little, Brown
and Company.
Carritt, E. F. 1923. The Theory of Beauty. London: Methuen & Co.
English, H. B., and English, A. C. 1958. A Comprehensive Dictionary of
Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms. New York: Longmans, Green
and Company.
Fazekas, J. F., and Alman, R. W. 1962. Coma-Biochemistry, Physiology,
and Therapeutic Principles. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas.
Foulkes, D., and Fleisher, S. 1975. “Mental Activity in Relaxed Wakeful¬
ness.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 84: 66-75.
Gates, G. S. 1928. The Modern Cat: Her Mind and Manners. New York:
The Macmillan Company.
James, W. 1890. Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Henry Holt and
Company.
Jennings, H. S. 1965. “On the Continuity of Psychological Processes.” A
Source Book in the History of Psychology, edited by R. J. Herrnstein and
E. G. Boring, pp. 472-481. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jones, E. 1908. “Rationalisation in Every-Day Life.” Journal of Abnormal
Psychology 3: 161-169.
Lindsley, D. B. 1952. “Psychological Phenomena and the Electroencephalo¬
gram.” Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 4: 443-456.
Loeb, J. 1912. The Mechanistic Concept of Life. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Mead, M. 1976. “Towards a Human Science.” Science 191: 903-909.
Miller, N. E. 1969. “Learning of Visceral and Glandular Responses.” Science
163: 434-445.
Munro, T. 1970. “Aesthetics.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 1, pp.
221-224.
Ornstein, R. E. 1972. The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco:
W. H. Freeman and Company.
Singer, J. L. 1975. “Navigating the Stream of Consciousness—Research in
Daydreaming and Related Inner Experience.” American Psychologist 30:
727-738.
 Introductory Survey • 21

Titchener, E. B. 1917. A Text-Book of Psychology. New York: The Mac¬

millan Company.
Wallace, R. K., and Benson, H. 1972. “The Physiology of Meditation.”
Scientific American 226: 84-90.
Watson, J. B. 1927. “The Unconscious of the Behaviorist.” In The Uncon-
scious-A Symposium, pp. 91-113. New York: A. H. Knopf.
Whyte, L. L. 1960. The Unconscious before Freud. New York: Basic Books,
Inc.
Wickramaskera, I. 1974. “Heart Rate Feedback and the Management of
CaxdiB.c'Henrosh.''’ Journal of Abnormal Psychology 83: 578-580.
Woods, R. L., and Greenhouse, H. B., eds. 1974. The New World of Dreams-
An Anthology. New York: Macmillan Pubhshing Co.
 2.

Von Hartmanns
Pre-Freudian
Unconscious

As noted at the close of the preceding chapter, the concept of mind as

unconscious had aroused opposition even before the rise of psychoanalysis.
The concept had already ceased to be a novelty by the 1870s, many years
before Freud had given it currency. In fact, in his survey of pre-Freudian
references to it Lancelot Whyte has written that “it cannot be disputed that
by 1870-1880 the general conception of the unconscious mind was a Euro¬
pean commonplace, and that many special applications of this general idea
had been vigorously discussed for several decades” (1960, pp. 169-170).
Moreover, as noted by Whyte, the latter vigorous discussion was the culmi¬
nation of allusions to the concept stemming from a few incidental ones in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the more frequent and increas¬
ingly deliberate ones of the nineteenth century. More than forty writers are
listed by Whyte as having preceded Freud in “the successive discovery of
the ... unconscious mind in post-Cartesian Europe.”
Whyte seems to have taken the existence of unconscious mental states for
granted. This is suggested by the fact that his post-Cartesian writers all con¬
tributed to the “discovery” of such states, just as post-medieval explorers
can be said to have contributed to the discovery of new lands across the
Atlantic. In terms of this analogy it is as if Whyte were thinking of the un¬
conscious mind not as a hypothetical construct, but as an inferred reality
indicative of hitherto unknown realms of mental existence. This was evident
from his opening chapter in which he gave italicized emphasis to being “con¬
cerned with the developing awareness ... of the need to infer from the facts
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 23

of immediate conscious experience the existence of unconscious mental

processes” and also to being concerned with the European tradition “that
first gave this inference clear conceptual formulation” (p. 11). He was not at
all “concerned” with writers who had entertained misgivings about such an
inference. At all events he failed to draw up a list of writers who had ques¬
tioned the conclusions reached by those mentioned in his list of those who
had contributed to the “discovery” of the unconscious mind. This failure is
understandable in view of his own unquestioned acceptance of the reality of
mind as unconscious.
In this connection it is especially interesting to note that Whyte failed to
consider the critical stand taken by James in the Principles of 1890. There is
just incidental reference to James in two places and neither one has to do
with the Principles. That a man of his erudition was unacquainted with this
classic is hard to believe, as is that in his survey of “the unconscious before
Freud” he had overlooked the stand taken by James. What makes such pos¬
sible oversight of particular interest is that James had anticipated Whyte with
reference to the importance of the 1870s for studies of the unconscious.
They both mention some of the same writings on the unconscious published
during this decade, in view of which James had asked, “Can states of mind be
unconscious?” In his answer, as mentioned in the introductory chapter,
James found belief in mental states as unconscious to be “the sovereign
means for believing what one likes in Psychology, and of turning what might
become a science into a tumbUng-ground for whimsies” (Vol. I, p. 163).
More than ten closely printed pages are devoted to a critical examination
of evidence that had been cited in support of a belief in unconscious mental
states. As is brought out in Chapter 3, James found this evidence uncon¬
vincing. Whyte’s failure to consider the negative evaluation of this evidence is
to be regretted; otherwise he might have been on the alert for the “whimsies”
James found in these writings of the 1870s.

WHYTE’S RECOGNITION OF VON HARTMANN

In particular he might have been more critical of one work in which James
found the concept of unconscious mental states to have been “most syste¬
matically urged” (Vol. I, p. 164). Whyte refers to this work at some length
and by way of implicit commendation writes, “its influence throughout
Europe has sometimes been underestimated” (1960, p. 163). This was Eduard
von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. James and Whyte reacted
differently to the evidence “urged” by von Hartmann in support of the un¬
conscious, with James questioning its cogency and Whyte seeing it as prepara¬
tion for later endorsement of Freudian teachings. It must be realized that
James read von Hartmann long before the emergence of the latter teachings,
so his was a pre-Freudian critique. On the other hand, Whyte before reading
von Hartmann had already been convinced of the cogency of Freud’s evidence
in support of belief in the unconscious. For this reason, as suggested by the
24 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

following quotation, although not unmindful of shortcomings in von Hart¬

mann’s work, he could nevertheless admire it as setting the stage for Freud’s
later handling of these shortcomings (1960, pp. 164-165):

His work is an extraordinary achievement in 1868, and it proves that

when Freud was twelve years of age, twenty-six aspects of unconscious
mental activity in man had already been considered in detail in a fam¬
ous work. But it is neither good philosophy nor good science. It does
not state what is known and what is not known; what are the real prob¬
lems; how they should be solved; or what effect their solution might
have on man.

Whyte then presents several passages from von Hartmann’s “extraordinary

achievement” by way of showing “that von Hartmann could see far in 1868.”
To understand what Whyte believed von Hartmann “could see,” and what
James believed he had so “systematically urged,” it is necessary to become
more familiar with the concept of the unconscious as envisaged by von Hart¬
mann. His treatment was so detailed and complex that a full account of his
views is out of the question. Fortunately, though, for present purposes there
is no need for such full treatment; consideration of some of his key ideas will
suffice. But before turning to these key ideas a few facts about von Hart¬
mann’s life and work ought to be introduced.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Eduard von Hartmann was born in 1842 and died in 1906—his life spanned
the period marked by the emergence of the founders of modern psychology.
This means he was a contemporary of men like Wundt, Brentano, James,
Bain, Fechner, Helmholtz, Ribot, Galton, and others who had directly or in¬
directly given direction to the new psychology of the laboratory by the
decade of the 1890s. He was not actively associated with the experimental
investigations being prosecuted by its sponsors; instead his influence on the
developing psychology of the time was almost entirely a function of his ardent
advocacy of the unconscious. Whether this served to enhance psychology’s
efforts to become increasingly scientific is subject to debate. His advocacy
was enthusiastically welcomed by some and vehemently spumed by others.
Current historians of psychology do not list him among the founding
fathers of scientific psychology. However, one of his contemporaries, G. Stan¬
ley Hall (1844-1924), included von Hartmann as one of the six men selected
for his 1912 book entitled Founders of Modern Psychology. In short, he
seemed to regard von Hartmann as much a “founder” as Fechner, Helmholtz,
and Wundt. At least this is suggested by the title of the book; but it is hardly
supported by the chapter devoted to von Hartmann’s specific teachings and
many writings. Nevertheless, probably the most detailed account in English
of von Hartmann’s life and work is to be found in this chapter. It contains
some personal reminiscences of Hall’s visits with von Hartmann during his
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 25

student days in Germany, and at the close of the chapter there is a list of
more than forty of von Hartmann’s publications (1912, pp. 241-243).
His publications ranged over many fields and kept him occupied through¬
out his adult life. From the year 1867 when he obtained his doctorate at the
University of Rostock until many decades later there was a steady output of
publications, some of them appearing posthumously. He was not distracted
by any academic responsibilities since he never held a teaching post. In fact,
as a semi-invalid afflicted with a rheumatic impairment of his knees, he was
forced to lead a quiet, sheltered life free from the distractions of travel and
engagements away from home. But he compensated for these restrictions by
extensive and varied intellectual journeys as revealed by his bibliography.
Thus he wrote on metaphysics, on poUtics, on drama, on religion, on ethics,
on aesthetics, on Darwinism, on psychology, on Romeo and Juliet, and even
on spirituahsm. He even wrote a compendium or Grundriss of systems of
philosophy that required eight volumes for its completion.
This staggering productivity was in addition to his best known work, his
Philosophy of the Unconscious. Even this kept him busy revising successive
editions after the first one in 1868, ending with the posthumous appearance
of the twelfth in 1923. The first English translation was based on the ninth
German edition and was pubhshed in 1884 and reprinted in 1931 in New
York. In addition to this translation, Darnoi’s study is an excellent source of
information in EngHsh: The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann-A
Historico-Critical Monograph. The appearance of this study in 1967 indicates
that interest in von Hartmann’s unconscious of 1868 has persisted for almost
a century. What follows, unless otherwise noted, will be based upon Darnoi’s
study and the 1884 English translation of the original.
Von Hartmann’s book has this revealing subtitle: “Speculative Results
According to the Inductive Method of Physical Science.” This suggests the
prospect of conclusions based upon more or less plausible conjectures as
determined by inductive reasoning about relevant data. The relevant data and
the conjectures, it soon become evident, had to do with Hegel’s dialectics, for
early in Volume I von Hartmann declared, “It may be said ... that the theme
of the present book is mainly the elevation of Hegel’s unconscious philosophy
of the Unconscious into a conscious one” (1884, p. 22). Such endorsement
of Hegelianism, as might be expected, set the stage for adventurous ideational
exploration over vast areas.
The scope of these exploratory ventures does not lend itself to easy
description. Nevertheless, it can at least be hinted at by noting the general
organization of the book. The book actually consists of three books or vol¬
umes. In Volume I the reader is introduced to two long accounts dealing with
(a) “the manifestations of the unconscious in bodily life” and then (h) “the
unconscious in the human mind.” Volume II is devoted to the “metaphysics
of the unconscious” and Volume III is concerned with “the irrationahty of
volition and the misery of existence.” At the end of the latter volume “the
physiology of the nerve-centres” is treated in a concluding Appendix.

I
26 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

THREE LEVELS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

The three volumes reflect von Hartmann’s recognition of three layers or

levels of the unconscious and they also reflect his indebtedness to earlier
writers, particularly Hegel and Schopenhauer. In general, like Schopenhauer,
he is pessimistic in his philosophic outlook, as already suggested by his ref¬
erence to “the misery of existence.” The philosophic outlook of Hegel is
clearly suggested by the first of the three layers of the unconscious, which
von Hartmann called the absolute unconscious and regarded as the matrix or
spiritual foundation of the universe from which the other layers originate.
One of these, the physiological unconscious, was assumed to be the dynamic
source of evolutionary processes involved in the creation of all forms of hfe
from the simplest organism to man. The third layer was the psychological
unconscious, deemed to be the source of all experienced phenomena or of
every kind of awareness or state of consciousness. This made consciousness
dependent upon or a function of the psychological unconscious. From this
viewpoint von Hartmann was revealing the influence of Kant, to the extent
that the unconscious was identified with Kant’s noumenal world and the con¬
scious with Kant’s phenomenal world. Another way to put this is to equate
the unconscious with Kant’s Ding an sich, “thing-in-itself,” and the conscious
with the objectively experienced Kantian phenomenal world. Moreover, in
relating the unconscious to the “irrationality of volition” von Hartmann was
borrowing from Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant’s thing-in-itself, since
Schopenhauer had explicitly identified volition or will with the thing-in-itself. ‘
In addition to Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer there are many other
writers mentioned by von Hartmann as having influenced his thinking about
the unconscious. Among these are Leibnitz, Hume, Fichte, Herbart, Fechner,
Carus, and even Wundt. The more than a thousand pages of the book are thus
the outcome of the confluence of many streams of ideation stemming from a
diversity of philosophic origins. The result is a miscellany of fact and fancy,
of reahsm and idealism, of physics and psychophysics, of physiology and
psychology, of the abstract and the concrete, of induction and deduction, of
the a priori and the empirical, and—in general—of the known and unknown or
unknowable. To reduce such a miscellany to a comprehensive summary is out
of the question. However, a few examples from different parts of the book
may help to get a general impression of its variegated contents. Specifically,
these examples may accomplish two objectives: first, to reveal a few of the
vivid examples said to account for the popular success of the book, and
second, to reveal a few of the “whimsies” James associated with the hypoth¬
esis of unconscious mental life.

* Schopenhauer’s discussion of “the world as will” is characterized by repeated references

to this identification with the Kantian distinction. The following sentence illustrates
(Edman, p. 75): “The will as a thing-in-itself is quite different from its phenomenal
appearance, and entirely free from all the forms of the phenomenal, into which it first
passes when it manifests itself, and which therefore only concerns its objectivity, and are
foreign to the will itself.”
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious '27

SOME SPECIFIC EXAMPLES

By way of introduction to specific examples of von Hartmann’s specula¬

tions it may be of interest to note what he has to say about “consciousness
in plants.” After describing how the hinged blades of the leaves of the Venus
flytrap close in on the ensnared insect, he wrote that the leaf “/ee/s the
struggling of the insect.” In this connection he declared, “we have thus found
consciousness in the plant.”
Von Hartmann also found vohtion to be operative in the spinal segments^
of a headless frog. In his own words:

But now, if the ganglia of lower animals have their independent wills, if
the spinal cord of a decapitated frog has its will, why should not the so
much more highly organized ganglia and spinal cord of the higher
animals and man also have their will?

As a matter of fact von Hartmann was emphatic in giving the latter ques¬
tion an affirmative answer. In this glorification of will as an unconscious
process he was following Schopenhauer. Moreover, this process of willing was
conceived of as the goal-directed execution of an intention. The following
quotation will suffice as illustration: “The dog will not separate itself from
its master; it wills to save the child who has fallen into the water; the bird
will not let its young be injured ...” (italics added).
From the foregoing it appears that von Hartmann was ready to endow
animals with purposive action. Furthermore, as already suggested, he was
also ready to interpret reflex behavior as purposive. This extreme endorse¬
ment of teleology is clearly indicated in this sentence taken from Volume III
and thus a product of material cited in the first two volumes: “The most
certain proof of the inner psychical side of the reflex process is the teleologi¬
cal character of this reaction, which is expressed in the thoroughgoing
purposiveness of the physiological... reflexes.” As might be expected,
instincts as well as reflexes were interpreted teleologically, with the concept
of instinct being defined as “purposive action without consciousness of the
purpose.” Instinctive behavior was thus regarded as being regulated by un-

^Actually, von Hartmann was not the first to attribute volitional consciousness to spinal
reflexes. In a monograph of 1853 deaUng with “the sensory functions of the vertebrate
spinal cord” the physiologist Eduard Pfluger had already arrived at this conclusion.
Pfliiger’s stand was criticized by E. B. Holt in his 1914 volume on The Concept of Con¬
sciousness (p. 204), and years later Boring considered the issue in his History and sug¬
gested that the question of consciousness at the spinal level is a “pseudoproblem” and
“insoluble because the answer to it depends on the definition of consciousness.” By
way of explaining Pfluger’s stand Boring had this to say (1950, p. 38);
Pfluger argued that consciousness is a function of all nervous action, that you cannot
distinguish between the action of the brain and the cord, and that spinal reflexes
must therefore be regarded as conscious. He pointed out that these reflexes are pur¬
posive in the sense that they are specifically localized and useful to the organism. The
frog’s leg scratches the exact point where its skin has been irritated by the application
of acid.
28 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

conscious mental forces rather than by nonconscious bodily mechanisms.

Such a force, he held, accounts for the hexagonal precision of the honey¬
comb’s cell, since the “bee ... carries in itself the unconscious representa¬
tion of the hexagonal cell, accurate to half an angular minute.”^ A similar
force, he indicated, enables the herbivorous animal to be sensitive to the
presence of a carnivorous beast; as illustration he reported that horses become
terrified when first confronted with the sight or smell of carnivores.
To account for the horse’s terror von Hartmann had recourse to what
James would doubtless have classified as a striking “whimsey,” since the
horse’s reaction was attributed to “unconscious clairvoyance”'* or clairvoy¬
ant intuition. Nor was the magic of clairvoyance limited to horses, as indicated
by the following example:

. . . when pigeons and dogs, after having been turned around twenty
times in a sack and carried off to an unknown region, nevertheless
run home in a straight line, no one can say anything more than that
their instinct has guided them, i.e., the clairvoyance of the uncon¬
scious has enabled them to divine the right path.

The preceding quotation is taken from Volume I and was introduced as

one of “the manifestations of the unconscious in bodily Ufe.” However, it
exemplifies relatively restrained speculation when compared with this tribute
to God’s clairvoyance in Volume II and is thus revelatory of the “meta¬
physics of the unconscious” (p. 247):

Of this unconscious clairvoyant intelligence we have come to perceive

that in its infallible purposive activity, embracing out of time all ends
and means in one, and always including all necessary data within its
ken, it infinitely transcends the halting, stilted gait of the discursive
reflection of consciousness, ever limited to a single point, dependent
on sense-perception, memory, and inspirations of the Unconscious. We
shall thus be compelled to designate this intelligence, which is superior
to all consciousness, at once unconscious and ^wper-conscious.

ON DEPARTURES FROM
THE INDUCTIVE METHOD

The foregoing excursion into the “metaphysics of the unconscious” cul¬

minating in the paradox of a “super-conscious” unconsciousness illustrates
von Hartmaim’s speculative daring. By identifying the latter unconsciousness
with God’s intelligence he was evidently disregarding his announced intention

^Cited by Whyte (p. 165).

'’As pointed out by Darnoi (p. 33), this is a literal translation of the German word
Hellsehen employed by von Hartmann and meaning “to see by means of clairvoyance.”
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 29

of arriving at “speculative results according to the inductive method of

physical science.” Dogmatism had replaced the empiricism of induction.
Having conceived of the unconscious as the metaphysical equivalent of Kant’s
noumenal realm there was no way of either proving or disproving whatever
one’s fancy attributed to this realm; hence fancy might triumph over fact.
Incidentally, he had such confidence in the validity of the Kantian meta¬
physics that he did not hesitate to write as if Kant had already discovered the
unconscious. At aU events, even though von Hartmann wrote his philosophy
of the unconscious long before the rise of psychoanalysis, he introduced what
might be construed as a Kantian anticipation of a Freudian tenet when he
wrote, “Kant was the first who sought in the unconscious for the essence of
sexual love” (Vol. I, p. 22). Whether this meant a Kantian quest for sexual
love in the Kantian noumenal world or in the Kantian transcendental realm of
apperception® was not made clear.
What was made clear, though, by this confident appeal to a Kantian un¬
conscious so early in his very long book, was von Hartmann’s unquestioning
endorsement of the concept of mind as unconscious. Uncertainty or skepti¬
cism regarding the scientific justification for the concept was conspicuous by
its absence. It was almost as if his “inductive method” were not so much for
the purpose of bringing something hitherto unknown to light as for the pur¬
pose of winning support for an a priori conviction. Accordingly, from this
viewpoint his method may have been more deductive than inductive.
In reahty his method is difficult if not impossible to classify in terms of
this last dichotomy. For example, how shall findings attributed to “clairvoy¬
ant intuition” be classified? Is the attribution of “feelings” to plants a product
of inductive or deductive reasoning, or is it a consequence of empathic dog¬
matism or projection? As must be obvious, von Hartmann failed to limit
himself to “the inductive method of physical science” as announced in his
subtitle. It seems that he used a variety of approaches rather than a single
one and that some of them were too unsystematic to be called methods',
hence their designation approaches may be less misleading. In some respects
this is a minor issue reducible to the problem of finding appropriate descrip¬
tive vocabulary.
A more momentous and challenging issue involved evaluation of his work
as a whole. In other words, how did critics judge his work? One way to ap¬
proach this is to ask whether the successive editions of his book aroused a
preponderance of favorable or unfavorable critical comment.

®Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, among many other psychological distinctions, makes a
distinction between empirical apperception and transcendental apperception. The former
involves direct experience, but the latter eludes direct observation. Being transcendental,
it is unconscious in one of the meanings of unconsciousness. As a concept it was pre¬
sumed to account for the unity of consciousness; hence the famous Kantian phrase
“transcendental unity of apperception.” According to Kant, this kind of apperception,
although not perceptible, is nevertheless “thinkable” and given in “intuition” as “pure
a priori knowledge.”
30 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

HOW THE BOOK WAS JUDGED BY HALL

The fact that the book, as indicated by the twelve editions from 1868 to
1923, was a publishing success is of course not necessarily indicative of its
endorsement by the scientific community. This fact does indicate continuing
interest in von Hartmann’s speculations by different groups of readers over a
span of five or more decades, however. Some of these readers had occasion to
register their opinions of the book in various printed media. According to
Hall, such printed reactions to his book were noted and collected by von Hart¬
mann. These he published in a prospectus containing “scores of excerpts from
the daily and periodical press from Russia to California commenting upon his
system” and from which Hall culled some representative of dispraise
and others representative of acclaim as shown in these two paragraphs (pp.
189-190):

Professor Michelet . . . expressed “honest pity” for an author who

brings such “miserable nonsense” into the philosophical mart. J. C.
Fischer pronounced it a “pyramid of absurdity,” fit to excite “uni¬
versal laughter.” One writer averred that von Hartmann had “shame¬
fully duped the world”; another called his book a “snarl of idiotic
stupidity”; “reason run mad”; “the odor of death pervading the whole
volume”; “purely pathological”; “frivolity and pretense”; “the jugglery
of logic”; “a plea for moral bankruptcy”; “a philosophic Dunciad”;
“an apotheosis of ignorance and old Mother Night”; and similar ver¬
dicts almost by the score have been pronounced by adversaries. Dr.
Hausermann feared that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Uncon¬
scious would tend to the notion of a potential infallibility of the pope.
On the other hand. Dr. Lasson considered it one of the best expres¬
sions of the tendency of modern times, admirably calculated to recon¬
cile not only Hegel and Schopenhauer, but the classic works of German
philosophy with the methods and results of modem science. Prof. Kapp
called it the inauguration of a “new way of regarding the universe.”
Other writers too numerous to mention have acknowledged his system
to be “brilliant,” “genial,” of a “thoroughly pure and noble moral
tone,” “a remarkable bit of culture history which will survive the next
century,” “suggestive to an unparalleled degree,” etc., etc., and a writer
in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy even called it “encouraging,”
elevating and ennobling. It is probably not too much to say with Dr.
Kirchmann that its reception not only among scholars but throughout
the reading world was unprecedented in the previous history of philos¬
ophy, and that on the whole von Hartmann is treated with increasing
respect even by his enemies.

Hall failed to supply evidence for the “increasing respect” allegedly being
accorded von Hartmann by his enemies. In fact, after a page or two of rather
hyperbolic tribute to the effect that von Hartmann has “vindicated the ideal
against materialism” and has “erected a new altar to the unknown God,”
Hall seemed to register decreasing respect for von Hartmann by the follow¬
ing comment (p. 192):
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 31

On the other hand, that both in personal intercourse and in the tone of
most and especially the later of his writings he was often arrogant, arbi¬
trary, and dogmatic cannot be denied. His constructions were often
painfully forced, his analyses fanciful, and he was probably more than
suspected of the vanity of the neologist which inchned him to express
views and to form paradoxes whose strongest commendation to his own
mind was that no one before him had uttered or even seen them. He
was not seldom more ingenious in supporting or defending his positions
than philosophical in choosing them, but the event showed no reason
to beheve the predictions of some of his opponents that ... he would
end ... as an unmitigated quack and fanatic.

NEGATIVE JUDGMENTS
BY EBBINGHAUS AND BY JAMES

Had it occurred to Hall, he might have added that if the charge of quackery
had been widespread and valid, von Hartmann’s views would have been ig¬
nored in university circles—yet by the 1870s they had become a subject for
doctoral dissertations. In fact, it was in 1873 that a young man who was to
make his mark as one of the pioneer experimental psychologists was awarded
his doctor’s degree by the Bonn University after successful defense of a dis¬
sertation concerned with von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. ^
This was Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), whose name is likely to
remind psychologists of nonsense syllables, the saving method, curves of for¬
getting, and the completion test. All these are to be listed among his contri¬
butions to laboratory psychology and serve to establish him as one of the
founding fathers of scientific psychology.^ His interest in the methodology
of science as applied to psychology was already manifest in his reaction to
von Hartmann’s work on the unconscious, as Woodworth made clear in a
memorial tribute to Ebbinghaus. After noting that Ebbinghaus had treated
von Hartmarm’s work “in severely critical fashion,” Woodworth had this to
say about the dissertation’s implications for psychology as science (1909,
pp. 253-254):
... we have evidence that Ebbinghaus aheady had advanced ideas re¬
garding the proper scope of psychology—the evidence being contained
in two of the “theses” which he undertook to defend in his doctor’s
examination. These were that “psychology, in the widest sense, belongs
under philosophy in no more intimate way than natural philosophy
belongs there”; and that “existing psychology consists more of logical
abstractions and verbal classification than of knowledge of the real
elements of mind.”

^The German title of the dissertation, as cited by Boring, was Ueber die Hartmannsche
Philosophic des Unbewussten (1950, p. 431).
^For an older appreciative survey of these contributions see the section on Ebbinghaus
in Boring’s history (1950, pp. 386-392). A more recent survey along with an outline of
changes in the way of “sophisticated methodology” that have come to characterize
modern investigations of the experimental territory first explored by Ebbinghaus is to be
found in a 1968 article by Postman.
32 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Many years later David Shakow had occasion to examine the dissertation;
as had Woodworth, he too found it to be very critical of von Hartmann’s
array of arguments. He cites Ebbinghaus as having written, “Wherever the
structure is touched, it falls apart,” and, “What is true is alas not new; the
new is not true” (1930, p. 510).
There can thus be no question about how Ebbinghaus viewed the treat¬
ment of the philosophy of the unconscious at the time. This was at the
beginning of his career; however, there does not seem to have been any
change in his negative attitude later on in his career. His last book, the fam¬
ous® Abriss der Psychologie or Compendium of Psychology, was published in
1908, the year before his death. In it he has an introductory chapter dealing
with the history of psychology from the time of the Greeks to the early years
of the twentieth century, or from the time of Aristotle to the days of Titchener
and Thorndike. When he reaches the decade of the 1870s there is no mention
of von Hartmann either in the body of the chapter or in the fairly detailed
bibliography at the end (pp. 22-23). There is no reference to his doctoral
dissertation in any of the chapters. Although he alludes to the voluntarism of
Kant, Fichte, and Schopenhauer, he does not associate this with the concept
of the unconscious. In fact, any allusion to such a concept, in view of his
early interest in it, is conspicuous by its absence.^ What he had found unac¬
ceptable in 1873 was still unacceptable in 1908.
Independently of the Ebbinghaus dissertation, William James also found
von Hartmann’s pleas in behalf of the unconscious unacceptable. He was even
more devastating in his criticism of von Hartmann’s arguments. He refused to
give them serious consideration and dismissed them with this withering com¬
ment (Vol. I, p. 169):

Q
This is the book that contains this famous frequently quoted opening sentence;
“Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.” In the original German; “Die
Psychologie hat eine lange Vergangenheit, doch nur eine kurze Geschichte.”
^This finding may not apply to an earlier text by Ebbinghaus, namely, the 1905 publica¬
tion of his Grundziige der Psychologie. In this book, according to Brett, Ebbinghaus
“accepts the Unconscious as explanatory principle” (1921, p. 188) but suggests that
clarification of the use of the term Unconscious is to be found on a later page where
Brett seems to be equating this use of the term as the equivalent of a subliminal process.
At all events, this is what he has to say about it (p. 196);
Consciousness is equivalent to a certain “height” attained by a process; below that
level the process exists as unconscious sensation or idea. This, we are told, must not
be read as though there could be an unconscious consciousness; what is unconscious
is the process. The relation between the process and the consciousness is analogous
to the relation between heat and light; if the vibrations of the luminiferous ether
increase in rapidity, radiant heat passes into light. We cannot say the heat causes the
light; nor must we say the process causes the consciousness.
There does not appear to be a comparable reference to the unconscious in the Abriss',
hence it may be that he was no longer accepting it even as an “explanatory principle.”
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 33

Hartmann fairly boxes the compass of the universe with the principle
of unconscious thought. For him there is no namable thing that does
not exemplify it. But his logic is so lax and his failure to consider the
most obvious alternatives so complete that it would, on the whole, be
a waste of time to look at his arguments in detail.

SOME CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS

Despite such adverse judgments, von Hartmann’s book continued to find

readers. It was translated into English in 1931, some forty years after the
scathing indictment by James, and interest in the book continued weU into
the 1960s. For example, as previously noted, in 1960 Whyte called the book
“an extraordinary achievement” even though “it is neither good philosophy
nor good science.” Then, more recently, Darnoi published his critique of the
book in 1967. In general, he was just as severe as James in his indictment of
the book; but, unlike James, he did examine von Hartmarm’s arguments in
some detail.
In particular he pointed out that, contrary to the book’s subtitle, von
Hartmann’s “discovery” of the unconscious was not an exclusive product
of inductive reasoning. He felt that von Hartmann was already convinced of
the existence and preponderant influence of the unconscious when he em¬
barked upon his search for evidence. This made his mode of procedure more
deductive than inductive, or more a matter of finding proof for a precon¬
ceived conviction by being on the alert for supporting data and blind to
negative evidence.
Nor should von Hartmann’s excursion into Kantian metaphysics be over¬
looked in this connection. In fact, Darnoi called specific attention to this
affiliation with Kant’s philosophy by referring to von Hartmann’s mode of
procedure as being that of a “criticist,” or one whose thinking reflects the
orientation of the famous Kantian critiques. However, this did not suffice as
an adequate account of the methodology involved. Instead of being a single
mode of procedure it involved a heterogeneous assortment of procedures.
This was the conclusion arrived at by Darnoi upon completion of his critical
analysis of von Hartmann’s book (p. 168):

It is an amalgamate of empiricism, speculative inductivism, and prob-

abilism, and it is designed to bring forth von Hartmann’s preconceived
claim concerning the nature of his metaphysical noumenon. In the
description of von Hartmann’s criticistic method there is a deceivingly
insignificant and almost unnoticeable adjective, viz., “speculative”;
yet it is the key to the enigma of von Hartmann’s philosophy. To the
question as to how can von Hartmann expect to gain speculative results
from exclusively empirical data the answer is to be found in the “specu¬
lative” aspect of his criticistic method. The term in its actual usage and
employment means “clairvoyant intuition,” which in turn means that the
analysis of the phenomena is undertaken according to a predetermined
view in mind leading inevitably to the discovery of the unconscious.
34 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Von Hartmann is accorded more sympathetic treatment in Henri Ellen-

berger’s The Discovery of the Unconscious. This monumental survey of the
history and development of the subject is more recent than the study by
Darnoi and far more extensive in its coverage. It was published in 1970 and,
among other topics, devotes considerable space to the contributions of those
writers Lancelot Whyte had included among the pre-Freudian “discoverers”
of the unconscious. Among those listed by Ellenberger as having had a direct
influence on the philosophy of von Hartmarm are Cams, Schopenhauer, and
Nietzsche. He holds that “the closest approach to psychoanalysis is to be
found in the philosophies” of these four (p. 542). In particular he notes that
von Hartmann had preceded Freud by having regarded slips of pen and
tongue “as manifestations of the unconscious” (p. 495). He also sees him as
one of “Jung’s predecessors” (p. 729). In general, Ellenberger is more im¬
pressed by the nature and scope of von Hartmann’s illustrative material than
by his theorizing. In this connection he writes (p. 210):

The main interest of the Philosophy of the Unconscious lies not so

much in its philosophical theories as in its wealth of supporting mate¬
rial. Von Hartmann collected numerous and relevant facts concerning
perception, the association of ideas, wit, emotional hfe, instinct, per¬
sonality traits, individual destiny, as well as the role of the unconscious
in language, rehgion, history, and social life.

From this it is evident that Ellenberger judged von Hartmarm’s “facts” as

being “relevant” to individual and social psychology as well as to some of
the humanities. By implication this relevance was presumed to be “sup¬
porting” belief in the unconscious, not as a hypothetical constmct, but as
a genuine mental reality existing separate from or in independence of the
reality of consciousness as ordinarily experienced. Complete endorsement of
such a belief paves the way for discovery of the unconscious. It is equivalent
to what Darnoi recognized as “a predetermined view,” in light of which such
discovery is inevitable. It may be that being on guard against this kind of view
made Darnoi especially sensitive to von Hartmann’s “clairvoyant intuition”
and more skeptical than Ellenberger about the relevance of the wealth of
factual material cited by von Hartmann.
In fairness to Ellenberger it is important to note that his orientation with
reference to von Hartmann’s book is different from Darnoi’s orientation.
Darnoi was exclusively concerned with a critical analysis of von Hartmann’s
work from the viewpoint of scientific method. Ellenberger, on the other
hand, was concerned with von Hartmann in incidental rather than exclusive
fashion. His interest in the work was centered on its role in the “evolution of
dynamic psychiatry,” along with similar roles of many other writers; hence
von Hartmann’s shortcomings as a critical thinker were played down.
Actually, Ellenberger was not unmindful of the importance of critical
thinking for the accomplishment of his gigantic undertaking. He makes this
evident in the introduction to his book by declaring that it “is intended to be
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious • 35

a history of dynamic psychiatry based on a scientific methodology” in which

he plans never to take anything for granted” and also to maintain “a sharp
line of distinction between the facts and interpretation of facts” (p. v).
Apparently he had the latter distinction in mind when he subordinated von
Hartmann’s “philosophical theories” to the vast collection of “relevant facts.”
Nevertheless, in many instances, what struck him as factual seems to have
impressed Damoi as speculative. Moreover, to revert to an earlier point,
some of these facts must have struck William James as “whimsies.”

CONCERNING THE DETERMINANTS OF BELIEF

How are these differing interpretations or divergent perceptions to be ex¬

plained? In other words, for more than a century-from 1868 to 1970-through
successive editions and in successive generations, the same work has been
welcomed by some and rejected by others. As in any debate about a contro¬
versial topic the same group of relevant facts has eUcited contradictory
evaluations as evidence for or against a given conclusion, with those uphold¬
ing the affirmative set to interpret the facts in one way and proponents of the
negative set to interpret them differently.
The “set” is the equivalent of a predisposition or hope or desire to have
one side prevail. It entails the kind of wishful thinking incident to taking
sides in connection with any contest. When this happens, as in any com¬
petitive confrontation, strong feelings are aroused and calm, impersonal eval¬
uation of evidence is hardly to be expected. To a greater extent than is
commonly realized our beliefs and convictions tend to be fathered by our
feelings and desires with critical evaluation of the “relevant facts” being
relegated to a subordinate role in the process.
Many years ago this commonplace observation was subjected to experi¬
mental study by investigation of the relationship between belief and evidence
as contrasted with the relationship between belief and desire. With reference
to the latter the investigator, F. H. Lund, found the correlation to be .88, or
more than twice the correlation of .42 between belief and evidence.
In metaphoric language this suggests that the heart is more influential than
the brain in winning support for given beliefs. Wishful thinking may prevail
over logical thinking. When this occurs there often is a reluctance to con¬
sider evidence or opinions at variance with our convictions. In the present
context, for example, neither Whyte nor Ellenberger had anything to say
about the results of the Ebbinghaus analysis and rejection of von Hartmann’s
arguments in support of the unconscious. But this neglect may have been due
to the difficulty of locating this 1873 doctoral thesis. The same explanation
does not apply, however, to their failure to say anything about James’s nega¬
tive attitude toward the general drift of von Hartmann’s arguments. In fact,
there is no mention of the entire section of the Principles of 1890 (Vol. I,
pp. 164-176) in which James in addition to registering his rejection of von
36 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Hartmann’s arguments also presented and evaluated some ten arguments

advanced by others.

A CONCLUDING COMMENT

These ten arguments were treated by James in disregard of their possible

bearing on von Hartmann’s philosophy of the unconscious. In other words,
no attempt was made to relate any of them to von Hartmann’s three levels
of the unconscious or his notion of clairvoyant intuition or his belief that
plants have feelings. Instead, each one was presented as a separate line of
evidence to be evaluated in terms of arguments offered pro and con. This
made for ten more or less independent lines of evidence, whose nature and
cogency, as just impUed, are in general different from that introduced in the
present chapter. Consequently, further discussion is put off until the next
chapter.
The evidence introduced in the present chapter, it should now be realized,
had to do with arguments cited in support of belief in mind as unconscious
during the last century—in the 1870s, when Ebbinghaus was writing his doc¬
toral dissertation on von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. This
was at a time when thoughts about psychology as science were just begirming
to receive serious consideration. In this connection it is well to recall that
Ebbinghaus was a pioneer experimental psychologist and is thus to be listed
with the founding fathers of scientific psychology. This lends added signifi¬
cance to his critique of von Hartmann’s arguments in support of the dogma of
mind as unconscious. It indicates rejection of the unconscious by scientific
psychology. Moreover, this was in the very decade when the first psychologi¬
cal laboratory was being established. In large measure such rejection was the
chief focal point of the present chapter and, as will soon be evident, is alto¬
gether congruent with the central thesis of the next chapter.

REFERENCES

Boring, E. G. 1950. A History of Experimental Psychology. New York:

Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Brett, G. S. 1921. A History of Psychology, Vol. III. London: George Allen
& Unwin, Ltd.
Darnoi, D. N. E. 1967. The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann-A
Historico-Critical Monograph. The Hague: Martinus Nijkoff.
Ebbinghaus, H. 1909. Abriss der Psychologic, 2nd Edition. Leipzig: Veit &
Comp.
Edman, I., ed. 1928. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. New York: Random
House, The Modern Library.
Ellenberger, H. F. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious—The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Hall, G. S. 1912. Founders of Modern Psychology. New York: D. Appleton
and Company.
 Von Hartmann’s Unconscious '37

Hartmann, E. von. \93\. Philosophy of the Unconscious-Speculative Results

According to the Inductive Method of Physical Science. Translated by
W. C. Coupland. New York: Harcourt, Bruce and Company. (Translation
based upon the 9th German edition of 1884.)
Holt, E. E. 1914. The Concept of Consciousness. London: George Allen and
Company, Ltd.
James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Henry Holt
and Company.
Lund, F. H. 1925. “The Psychology of Behef.” Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology 20: 174-196.
Postman, L. 1968. “Hermann Ebbinghaus.” American Psychologist 23:
149-157.
Shakow, D. 1930. “Hermann Ebbinghaus.” American Journal of Psychology
42: 505-518.
Woodworth, R. S. 1909. “Hermann Ebbinghaus.” Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods 6: 253-256.
Whyte, L. L. 1960. The Unconscious before Freud. New York: Basic Books,
Inc.
 3

James
on Mind
as Unconscious

That James had misgivings about mind as unconscious was indicated at the
very beginning of Chapter 1 by the quoting of his famous warning that the
distinction between the conscious and the unconscious being of a mental
state “is the sovereign means for beheving what one Hkes in psychology, and
of turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for whimsies.”
He then added that the distinction “has numerous champions, and elaborate
reasons to give for itself.” This statement occurs in the early part of the
Principles (Vol. 1, p. 163) and, since the writing took twelve years, was prob¬
ably written in the late 1870s or early 1880s. In other words, long before
Freud the concept of mind as unconscious had numerous defenders. The cir¬
culation of the successive editions of von Hartmann’s book indicates per¬
sistent popular endorsement of the concept. Consequently, James held,
reasons advanced in its support ought to be subjected to critical analysis in
order to determine whether such endorsement is justified. As formulated by
James, the basic issue calls for consideration of this question;

DO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL STATES EXIST?

For expository purposes James treated this question as a proposition to

be debated between those prepared to answer in the affirmative and those
taking the negative. In his survey of the relevant literature he found ten argu¬
ments advanced by different champions and presented each of these in the
form of a Proof for the existence of unconscious mental states followed by a
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 39

Reply as it might have been advanced by an upholder of the negative. The

pages devoted to the resulting debate (Vol. I, pp. 164-176) contain ten
Proofs along with correlated replies. Taken as a whole they serve to summarize
the general drift of the controversy in the pre-Freudian decades. As might be
expected, after the lapse of so many years some of these arguments would
no longer be advanced by contemporary “discoverers” of the unconscious.
However, a few of them, sometimes slightly modified, are stUl current and
thus merit examination in terms of both their original consideration by James
and their later modifications.

PETITES PERCEPTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

In his review of evidence cited in support of a belief in the existence of

unconscious mental states James began with a famous argument first intro¬
duced by Leibnitz (1646-1716). This involved recognition of the difference
between readily perceptible sensory impressions and those too faint to be
perceived. In the terminology of Leibnitz the former would be apperceived
and the latter would be composed of petites perceptions. The roar of the
ocean waves, Leibnitz indicated, is apperceived and yet each separate wave
would not be heard were it to occur in isolation. Nevertheless, unless each
wave had some influence, the totality of waves constituting the roar could
never be heard. In the words of Leibnitz, if each little wave has zero in¬
fluence, “one would not hear 100,000 waves, for of 100,000 zeros one can
never make a quantity.”
Even though this argument had often been cited in support of the doctrine
of the unconscious,^ James questioned its cogency. As he saw it, there is a
fallacy in concluding that what is true of an organization of things must also
be true of its component parts. This, of course, is the fallacy of division and
can be illustrated by reference to the composition of carbon monoxide as a
poisonous gas. To conclude that its components carbon and oxygen as inde¬
pendent elements must also be poisonous to some degree would obviously be
contrary to fact. Similarly, it would be contrary to fact to argue that round
marbles cannot be arranged to form a triangle or a square or any other non-
spherical pattern. With specific reference to the petites perceptions it would
also be contrary to fact to argue that a minute fragment of a cause must to
some degree exercise the same effect as the entire causal agent. For example.

*For example, in the following passage Boring alludes to this argument in citing Leib¬
nitz as a sponsor of the unconscious (1950, p. 168):
Leibnitz also gave us a doctrine of degrees of consciousness and thus also of the
unconscious. The petite perception of the monad is unconscious. The sound of the
single falling drop of water may be regarded as an unconscious perception. This con¬
tinuum passes through perception to apperception. There are many echoes of this
view. The negative sensations of Fechner were petites perceptions. There is the
apperception of Herbart and Wundt. There is the whole doctrine of the uncon¬
scious .. . often related to apperception and the degrees of consciousness.
40 ” The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

a certain degree of force is needed to depress the key of a typewriter, but the
weight of a speck of dust falling on the key does not result in an infinitesi¬
mally small depression of the key. A minimum amount of force is needed to
move the key and any lesser amount does not move it at all. In this connec¬
tion James quoted John Stuart Mill’s formulation of the underlying principle:
“A certain quantity of the cause may be a necessary condition to the produc¬
tion of any of the effect.” This, James indicated, applies particularly when
the effect “is a mental state.”
Somewhat related to the petites perceptions of Leibnitz was an argument
to the effect that to experience the harmony of musical chords it is necessary
for the individual vibrations to be counted so as to reveal the simple ratios
involved. Since there is no direct awareness of such counting, it was argued
that the counting must take place unconsciously. In his reply James argued
that the effect of the chords on the brain may be such as to give rise to an
immediate and direct awareness of a pleasing sound. Consequently, there
would be no need to assume any antecedent counting either conscious or
unconscious. After all, one can detect the difference between a very high note
and a very low one without first having to count the individual vibrations.

HYPNOSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

In coimection with a different kind of Proof for the unconscious James

had occasion to refer to hypnosis in his Reply. Sponsors of the unconscious
had called attention to the fact that somnambulists may execute rather com¬
plex activities while asleep and be unable to recall any of their activities upon
awakening. Because of such amnesia, it was argued, the activities must have
been guided or controlled by unconscious mental operations. In his Reply
James wrote, “Consciousness is forgotten, as in the hypnotic trance.” He also
noted the similarity between the forgetting of dreams upon awakening^ and
the phenomenon of posthypnotic amnesia. As he saw it, neither somnambu¬
lism nor hypnosis involves the operation of unconscious mental forces.
Incidentally, he was familiar with hypnotic phenomena not only in terms of
published accounts, but also in terms of firsthand experience as a hypnotist.
This is evident from a letter he wrote to Professor Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
in 1886 in which, among other reports of his laboratory engagements, he had
this to report (Perry, Vol. II, p. 65): “I am hypnotizing, on a large scale, the
students, and have hit upon one or two rather pretty unpublished things of
which some day I hope I may send you an account.”
James’s appeal to hypnosis as a means of disproving the contention of
those who attributed somnambuUsm to uncoriscious mental control is particu¬
larly interesting when it is recalled that by the time of Freud the same appeal

^This topic, as might be expected, was not overlooked by Freud in his classic Interpreta¬
tion of Dreams. He discussed it in a section having this caption: “Why Dreams Are
Forgotten after Waking.’’
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 41

was introduced in support of belief in such control. Posthypnotic behavior

came to be mentioned as especially cogent evidence indicative of the uncon¬
scious at work. Freud cited it as evidence as early as 1900 in his Interpretation
of Dreams in connection with his analysis of the dream of one of his patients.
In the course of her associations to the dream she reported a peculiar remark
she had made to her husband. Upon being asked to account for the remark
she was unable to supply any plausible or satisfactory reasons for having
made it. This reminded Freud that when a person “carries out a posthypnotic
suggestion and is asked why he is acting in this way, instead of saying that he
has no idea, he feels compelled to invent some obviously unsatisfactory
reason” (1938, p. 285). He did not introduce a concrete instance of post¬
hypnotic behavior at the time, but limited his comment to being reminded of
“one of Bernheim’s hypnotized patients.” This was an allusion to Hippolyte
Bernheim (1837-1919), a physician at Nancy in France and a pioneer student
of hypnotic phenomena.
Freud was again reminded of one of Bernheim’s patients years later when
he was writing his paper “Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis.”
This was in 1938 just a year before his death—the paper was never finished.
It was intended for the “lay public” and consequently the “lessons” are unen¬
cumbered by technical terms. One of Freud’s chief objectives was to demon¬
strate that “mental acts which are unconscious do exist,” and he pointed out
the relevance of hypnotic experiments for such demonstration. In his own
words, any person “who has witnessed such an experiment will receive an
unforgettable impression and a conviction that can never be shaken.” He then
proceeded to supply an example of posthypnotic behavior. In a footnote he
explained, “I am describing experiments made by Bernheim at Nancy in 1889
at which I myself assisted” (1938, p. 285).
In Freud’s example Bernheim, having placed his umbrella in a corner of
the hospital ward, gave instructions to a hypnotized patient to the following
effect: I am going to leave the ward and when I return you will greet me by
placing the opened umbrella over my head. After arousing the patient Bern¬
heim departed. Upon his return the patient met him with the open umbrella
in compliance with the instructions. When questioned about the meaning of
his act the patient seemed embarrassed as he explained that he thought the
doctor would open his umbrella inside the room before going out into the
rain. This explanation, Freud noted, “is obviously quite inadequate and made
up on the spur of the moment to offer some sort of motive for his senseless
behaviour. It is clear to us spectators that he is in ignorance of his real
motive.” However, the spectators, having been present when the suggestions
were introduced, know what it is that “is at work” in the patient’s unconscious.
Just as Freud regarded this as convincing proof for the unconscious, so
have many others, who believe that a demonstration of posthypnotic sug¬
gestibility will make for “conviction that can never be shaken.” Furthermore,
this continues to be a contemporary belief. For example, as recently as 1972
a psychoanalyst, Michael Beldoch, in the course of a critique of behavioristic
42 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

neglect of man’s “feelings, dreams, art, and ideas” had this to say (p. 13): “As
for the unconscious {so easy to demonstrate with a simple ten-minute post¬
hypnotic suggestion), the behaviorists have nothing to say whatever, despite
the ample evidence that it plays a significant role in human affairs” (itahcs
added).
As a student of hypnosis James was, of course, very familiar with post¬
hypnotic suggestibility. He mentioned it in a brief passage concerned with
hysteria and automatic writing (Vol. I, pp. 208-209) and at greater length in
his chapter on hypnotism (Vol. II, ch. 28) in which the closing paragraphs
(pp. 613-615) are devoted to a detailed description of the phenomenon.
Moreover, even though he alluded to the “mystery” of delayed response to
the hypnotist’s command, he did not solve the mystery by reference to an
unconscious mind. Instead, as indicated by the following, he believed it to be
a function of consciousness as dissociated from the main current of experi¬
enced events (Vol. II, p. 614):

The mechanism by which the command is retained until the moment

for its execution arrives is a mystery which has given rise to much dis¬
cussion. The experiments of Gurney and the observations of M. Pierre
Janet and others on certain hysterical somnambulists seem to prove that
it is stored up in consciousness; not simply organically registered, but
that the consciousness which thus retains it is split off, dissociated from
the rest of the subject’s mind.

THE CONCEPT OF DISSOCIATION

James was thus accounting for posthypnotic or delayed suggestibility in

terms of the concept of dissociated as opposed to unconscious mental states.
Dissociation refers to the segregation of groups of experiences brought to¬
gether because of some unifying interest. The resulting groups sometimes
make for a compartmentalization of thought and outlook. A familiar instance
of this is the student who objects to having his grammar corrected by the
chemistry professor, as if the subject of grammar belongs to a different cog¬
nitive compartment from the subject of chemistry. Clergymen on occasion
are confronted with compartmentalized or dissociated thinking in parishioners
who protest if a sermon touches upon the ethics of rugged individualism, high
interest rates, or any exploitative business practice. Those who protest believe
sermons should deal with religious ritual and the abstractions of theology and
not with the domain of commerce and industry. For them it is as if there is
a mutually exclusive dichotomy between the appropriate affairs of the church
on the one hand and those of the counting house on the other. Moreover,
such dichotomous or dissociated thinking is not always ego-defensive as in the
preceding instances. Those of us who do our “scientific” thinking in terms of
atomic physics continue to harbor the commonsense view of matter in our
“nonscientific” pursuits. In reading the paper or biting into an apple we do
not think of ourselves as reacting to invisible patterns of whirling electrons.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 43

In brief, our scientific view of matter is dissociated from our commonsense

view of matter.
Compartmentalized or dissociated thinking is thus different from thinking
attributed to the dynamics of the unconscious. As already indicated, James
was mindful of this distinction when he referred to the “split off, dissociated”
consciousness of somnambuhsts and hypnotized subjects. In particular he
accounted for posthypnotic compliance with an ostensibly “forgotten” com¬
mand by its dissociated retention.
Until shortly after the turn of the century the concept of dissociation con¬
tinued to receive attention and acceptance in psychological discussions.^ In
later decades interest in the concept waned and often it was not even men¬
tioned in introductory textbooks. As a result it has ceased to have wide
currency. However, in connection with his many studies of hypnotic phenom¬
ena over a span of more than twenty years Hilgard, like James, has found the
concept useful and especially applicable to the phenomenon of posthypnotic
behavior. In his own words (1971, p. 576):

I am inclined to believe that the notion of dissociation ought to be

revived, and it may turn out to be more useful than the concept of
state or trance. The same applies to post-hypnotic behavior carried out
to a signal, after the subject feels himself “out of hypnosis.” It was
sometimes argued in the past that hypnosis was reinstated when the sig¬
nal for the post-hypnotic behavior was given; . . . this, however, seems
to force the notion that hypnotic responses occur only within a
hypnotic state, and there is little supporting evidence for this.

^As a concept it was often introduced in accounts of multiple personality, coconscious¬

ness, and automatic writing. William James, for example, considered these topics in his
chapter on the “consciousness of self’ (Vol. I, pp. 379-400). Coconsciousness as related
to multiple personality was stressed by Morton Prince (1854-1929) in his study of the
famous Beauchamp case as reported in his 1906 volume entitled The Dissociation of a
Personality. The subject of automatic writing was given separate consideration in a small
volume by Anita Miihl containing a bibliography of 273 references (1930, pp. 204-214).
James Miller discussed dissociation as related to the unconscious (1942, pp. 220-230).
As brought out by Gardner Murphy (1947, pp. 435-440), the concept of dissociation
was a key issue for Pierre Janet (1859-1947) in his studies of psychopathology.
Finally, dissociation may also have some relevance for contemporary studies of
neuropathology involving so-called split-brain surgery. These studies—especially those
developed by R. W. Sperry and his associates-have been concerned with modifications
of consciousness foUowing transection of the corpus callosum or the neural linkage
between right and left hemispheres. This results in dissociation or severance of right
brain awareness from left brain awareness and vice versa. As Sperry expressed it in one of
his papers (1969, p. 532): “In the surgically separated state, the two hemispheres appear
to be independently and often simultaneously conscious, each quite oblivious of the
mental experiences of the opposite hemisphere and also of the incompleteness of its
own awareness.”
This paper was directly concerned with the concept of consciousness. Relevant
bibliographic references are supplied at the end of this paper as well as in a later (1970)
paper dealing with an elaboration and clarification of issues raised in the earlier one.
44 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Even if the concept of dissociation be deemed worthy of revival especially

to account for compartmentalized thinking in general and posthypnotic be¬
havior in particular, it might nevertheless be argued that the concept fails to
account for the motivation of posthypnotic behavior. Freud, it will be re¬
called, found Bernheim’s patient to be ignorant of the “real motive” for his
posthypnotic maneuver with the umbrella. The patient made no mention of
Bernheim’s return to the ward as the occasion for the maneuver, as if he failed
to recognize the return as the cue or signal for the execution of the instruction
given him when hypnotized. Instead, upon being questioned, he justified the
maneuver by mentioning the rain outside. As frequently interpreted, such
justification would be classified as a rationalized or spurious motive, as con¬
trasted with the real motive, namely, the command given by the hypnotist.
In other words, the real motive is a function of this command—inability or
failure to recall the command, it has been argued, indicates its unconscious
activation.
Accordingly, as already indicated, the foregoing kind of interpretation has
come to make posthypnotic behavior virtually the equivalent of an objective
demonstration of unconscious motivation. To repeat Freud’s words: as a
demonstration it will make for “a conviction that can never be shaken.” How¬
ever, the conviction depends on acceptance of the interpretation as valid;
before endorsing its validity, the possibility of alternative interpretations ought
to be explored.

DETERMINING TENDENCIES
AND DELAYED REACTIONS

One alternative interpretation involves a reconsideration of the motiva¬

tional implications of the subject’s apparent inability to perceive any rela¬
tionship between his posthypnotic act and the experimenter’s command to
delay the act until he returns to the ward. Is it correct to regard the command
as a motive? After all, the command states what should take place and not
why it should take place. The “why” or motive for the act has to do with
factors antecedent to the command. This amounts to asking what prompts
the apparently blind obedience to the hypnotist’s instructions-even bizarre
or ridiculous ones. In turn, this is the equivalent of asking what motivates
people to participate as subjects in demonstrations of hypnosis whether in
hospitals, dental clinics, psychology laboratories, or in the privacy of home or
office. This, of course, will differ from subject to subject and even from setting
to setting. For one it might be curiosity concerning the experience, for
another it might be desire to please the experimenter, for a third it might be
fear of the dentist’s drill, while for the college student it might be the prospect
of special academic credit or even financial reward offered for serving as a
subject. Sometimes a combination of these and other motives might be
operative. Any combination or any single motive accounts for readiness to
listen to and comply with suggestions.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 45

It is also well to note that induction of hypnosis involves simple commands

to fixate a bright object, to relax particular muscle groups, to breathe slowly,
to observe sensations of strain around the fixated eyes, to listen carefully to
whatever is being said by the operator, and so on and on. Unless there is com¬
pliance with these simple suggestions hypnosis cannot be induced. In other
words, the ritual of induction in and of itself initiates a set to carry out what¬
ever is being suggested.
As a matter of fact, under given conditions, it is possible to induce people
to comply with instructions—even ridiculous and arbitrary ones—without
induction of hypnosis. This has sometimes been demonstrated by professors
of psychology as an introduction to later study of hypnosis as a separate
topic. Being accustomed to classroom demonstrations of psychological phe¬
nomena, the students do not find it unusual for the professor at one meeting
to tell them to get ready for a different kind of experiment. He then tells them
to open their notebooks to a blank page and write “Mary had a little lamb.”
Under these words they are then told to draw four squares, one triangle, and
to print their last names as speUed backwards. Now the notebooks are to
be closed and they are to sit with eyes closed, the right arm extended up¬
ward and the left arm extended horizontally. With the entire class exhibit¬
ing this rather bizarre posture the professor now says, “Why are you carrying
out all these suggestions?” This request for a report of the instigating motive
or motives leaves the students both startled and perplexed. Their compliance
with the instructions had taken place in the absence of deliberate analysis of
reasons for or against such compliance. In their failure to note this they might
be said to have been unconscious or ignorant of what prompted or motivated
their compliance; but this is different from saying the motives were buried
in some mysterious realm called the unconscious. Nor would it be correct to
call the professor’s instructions the motives for the sequence of acts, and
hence neither are the hypnotist’s instructions to be called motives. They
function as cues or signals for the acts in question and both the students and
the hypnotized subjects get set to respond to the signals.
This reference to the term set has to do with motor sets and with mental
sets or Aufgaben. They designate attitudes of preparation for intended reac¬
tions. For example, our taut muscles as we are driving on an icy highway
constitute a motor set or readiness to respond to the threat of a skid. Tech¬
nically, such readiness is called a determining tendency. Moreover, in the
traditional reaction-time experiment such a tendency was ascribed to the alert
subject set to respond to the anticipated signal. Similarly, in word associa¬
tion experiments the subjects prepare for the stimulus words in accordance
with instructions to respond with synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, or French
equivalents as the case may be. Each separate preparation for a given kind of
response exemplifies introduction of a distinctive mental set or Aufgabe. In
the course of reading these sentences we experience a medley of conscious
shifts in attitude depending on ease or difficulty of understanding, interest
or boredom in ideas aroused, focused or wandering attention, and other
46 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

concomitants of the thought process. As constituents of the thought process

such ideational shifts are called conscious attitudes.
As technical terms Aufgaben, determining tendencies, and conscious atti¬
tudes were introduced into psychology early in the present century by
investigators at the University of Wurzburg. Under the leadership of Oswald
Kiilpe (1862-1915) these investigators had been studying what came to be
called imageless thinking. A detailed account of the nature and scope of these
studies is not essential at this point but will be introduced in a more relevant
context to be developed in Chapter 7 in connection with a discussion of
imageless or non-sensory thinking. Here it will be sufficient to call attention
to the central teaching of the Wurzburg investigators, namely, that Aufgaben
and determining tendencies and conscious attitudes can function effectively
in the absence of any sensory or imaginal representation. For this reason
they were called imageless in the sense of being devoid of any characteristic
subject to observation or description. In referring to them as imageless they
were being designated as “unconscious” in the sense of lacking any specifiable
or describable sensory or imaginal impression. In other words, they lacked the
slightest vestige of any olfactory, visual, kinesthetic, cutaneous, or any other
possible sensory or imaginal characteristic. In metaphoric language, they were
naked cognitive activities. As activities, even though impalpable and invisible,
they controlled and regulated thought and action. Whether two numbers like
7 and 9 are to be added, multiplied, or squared will be determined by con¬
trols in the form of definite Aufgaben or mental sets. Analogously, whether
a track athlete is going to jog or sprint or hurdle or vault wiU be a function of
controls in the form of specific determining tendencies.
Both mental sets and determining tendencies, it is important to realize, are
introduced by way of preparation for a given undertaking. Thus, with refer¬
ence to arithmetic, even before the numbers are encountered the mental set
for dealing with them will have been introduced. SimUarly, the track athlete’s
determining tendency is brought into play before the contest starts. The
runner’s determining tendency to sprint is initiated while crouching at the
starting mark. As a postural attitude it prepares him for instant reaction to
the sound of the starter’s pistol. This, of course, is an automatic reaction as
contrasted with a volitional reaction.
As applied to the Wurzburg reaction-time experiments this example from
track athletics illustrates an important finding revealed by these experiments,
namely, that initiation of the determining tendency occurs in the fore-period
by way of preparation for instant reaction to the stimulus. In other words, as
a voluntary act or deliberate intention it precedes execution of the act. As
applied to Freud’s example of posthypnotic behavior, this means that the act
of opening the umbrella upon Bernheim’s return to the ward was automatic
rather than volitional. The volitional resolve took place upon hearing, under¬
standing, and accepting the instructions. Motivation for such acceptance, as
already indicated, is a function of factors antecedent to the instructions.
Consequently, the posthypnotic act is not a product of some underlying
 James on Mind as Unconscious ♦ 47

motive so much as it is a result of the determining tendency or volitional sf't

incident to acceptance of the instructions. Subsequent execution of the in
tended act is no more mysterious than any ordinary delayed execution of
some planned action, such as getting a book from the library on the way
home from work or attending a meeting next week. Securing the book or
attending the meeting are instances of what Hunter (1913) called delayed
reactions. He found that even animals are capable of delayed reaction to some
degree, with the duration of the tolerated delay being longer the more ad¬
vanced the animal. If posthypnotic responsiveness be recognized as a variant
of Hunter’s delayed reactions, it may cease to be viewed as a quasi-abnormal
phenomenon revelatory of hidden motives in operation.

HIDDEN MOTIVES
AND THE FALLACY OF SENSATIONALISM

The subject of hidden motives is directly related to the subject of mind as

unconscious. Indeed, for some psychologists the concept of mind as uncon¬
scious is virtually synonymous with the concept of unconscious motivation.
As they understand it, the unconscious will not reflect psychological phenom¬
ena unrelated to motivation as the central issue. Because of this emphasis on
motivation they may think of themselves as dynamic psychologists or dynamic
psychiatrists. As is well known, such descriptive self-characterizations are
largely post-Freudian or twentieth-century developments.
However, the question of unconscious motivation had already become a
subject of controversy in pre-Freudian nineteenth-century decades. In fact,
William James devoted several pages to the topic (Vol. I, pp. 170-176) along
with related topics attributed to unconscious mental states. With specific
reference to the topic of unconscious motivation as presented by its defenders
he had this to say about the kind of evidence they introduced as “proof’ for
their contention (pp. 170-171):

There is a great class of experiences in our mental Life which may be

described as discoveries that a subjective condition which we have been
having is really ^mething different from what we had supposed. We
suddenly find ourselves bored by a thing which we thought we were
enjoying well enough; or in love with a person whom we imagined we
only Mked. Or else we deliberately analyze our motives, and find that at
bottom they contain jealousies and cupidities which we little suspected
to be there. Our feelings towards people are perfect wells of motivation,
unconscious of itself, which introspection brings to light [italics added].
And our sensations likewise: we constantly discover new elements in
sensations which we have been in the habit of receiving all our days,
elements, too, which have been there from the first, since otherwise we
should have been unable to distinguish the sensations containing them
from others nearly allied. The elements must exist, for we use them to
discriminate by; but they must exist in an unconscious state, since we
so completely fail to single them out. . . . Consider, too, the difference
48 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

between a sensation which we simply have and one which we attend to.
Attention gives results that seem like fresh creations; and yet the feel¬
ings and elements of feeling which it reveals must have been already
there—in an unconscious state.

James found the reasoning leading to the foregoing kind of “prooF’ for
unconscious motivation to be a “tissue of confusion.” The confused thinking,
he indicated, is not limited to the analysis of motivation, but includes other
instances of psychological analysis. What he had in mind might be illustrated
by an argument to this effect: since words can be analyzed into syllables and
isolated letters, therefore a child acquires its mother tongue by first learning
to sound the single syllables and letters and later putting them together to
form words and sentences.
This sort of conclusion is obviously contrary to fact. As an argument it
resembles the outmoded basis for tracing the origins of mind to initial appre¬
hension of sensations in the abstract. Sensations were taken to be the building
blocks of mind and the psychological equivalent of the atoms of physics;
hence this kind of thinking about mind came to be characterized as “atom¬
istic analysis.James was most explicit in his expression of objections to
psychological atomism. On the first page of his famous chapter “The Stream
of Thought” (Vol. I, p. 224) he declared that nobody “ever had a simple
sensation by itself’ and that “what we call simple sensations are results of
discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree.” As a conse¬
quence he regarded it as making for “havoc” in psychology to assume that
sensations “are the first things to take up in psychology.” This Jamesian
criticism of atomistic analysis was echoed by Brett in this trenchant sentence
(1912, p. 85): “The fallacy of sensationalism lies in its persistent habit of
constructing the history of mind backward; it finds in sensation the last prod¬
uct of analysis, and then makes it the first element of construction.”
The “tissue of confusion” mentioned by James, it should now be evident,
was a product of this fallacy of sensationalism. As just suggested, it can be
exemplified in terms of the atomistic analysis involved in a theory to the
effect that speech development proceeds from initial mastery of the sensa-

^Atomistic analysis reduced conscious content to mental “elements” as units of sensa¬

tion. These units turned out to be artifacts. However, “elements” of sensation in terms
of colors, tones, and other modalities are not artifacts in this sense. This is made clear in
Charles Hartshorne’s Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, in which he supplies a
critical survey of the “immediate data of consciousness” experienced as “sensory quali¬
ties” and examined from these five viewpoints (p; 6):
1. Mathematical continuity
2. Aesthetic meaning or affective tone
3. The fundamentally social character of experience
4. Biological adaptiveness
5. Evolution from a common origin
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 49

tions aroused by isolated letters to their subsequent linkage into words and
then into phrases and sentences expressive of different thoughts. Actually,
of course, we may have different thoughts or ideas aroused by a given word
or combination of words.
Failure to discriminate among such different thoughts may serve to illus¬
trate another kind of fallacy, or what James called a fallacy. This, as he
pointed out, is the fallacy of believing “that two thoughts about one thing
are virtually the same thought, and that this same thought may in subsequent
reflections become more and more conscious of what it really was all along
from the first.” The meaning of a word constitutes one thought, its etymology
is another thought, its spelling a third thought, and its foreign language
equivalents still additional thoughts. To fuse all these thoughts into a single
thought is bound to result in “confusion.”
James was especially critical of those who found evidence for the reality
of unconscious mental states in such a fused thought. This happened when it
was assumed that the later “parts” of the fused thought had emerged from
some unconscious or implicit stratum of the earlier fragments. Consider the
word facetious. It is altogether likely to be a famUiar word to readers of this
chapter. In general, they may be presumed to know what the word means;
if not, any dictionary will supply its meaning. However, the dictionary will
not reveal an interesting fact about the sequence of vowels in the word,
namely, that they include all the vowels in their alphabetical sequence. Under
the circumstances, had James used this illustration, he would have called per¬
ception of aeiou in the word different from the earlier perception of its
meaning. Moreover, he would have been explicit in denying that the sequence
must have been buried in the unconscious upon initial exposure to the word.
The fallacy involved, as expressed in symbols, takes this form: If we first have
idea A about object X and later entertain idea B about object X, then B must
already have been rooted in A.

CAN THE SAME IDEA BE

BOTH CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS?

James gave less symbolic expression to the same fallacy when he attributed
it to failure to note the difference “between simply having an idea at the
moment of its presence and subsequently knowing all sorts of things about
it.” Existence of the idea in this sense of having it is thus restricted to the
instant of its actual occurrence. This is the same as saying that there is only
one way in which to have an idea and that is to be conscious of it; when re¬
placed by another idea the first idea qua idea ceases to exist. To believe other¬
wise by relegating it to some unconscious phase of existence struck James as
meaningless and absurd. In fact, after noting that it is “unintelligible and
fantastical” to allocate the same idea to conscious and unconscious phases
of existence, he added this clarifying comment (Vol. I, p. 173):
50 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

There is only one ‘phase’ in which an idea can be, and that is a fully
conscious condition. If it is not in that condition, then it is not at all.
Something else is, in its place. The something else may be a merely
physical brain-process,^ or it may be another conscious idea. Either of
these things may perform much the same function as the first idea,
refer to the same object, and roughly stand in the same relations to the
upshot of our thought.^ But that is no reason why we should throw
away the logical principle of identity in psychology, and say that, how¬
ever it may fare in the outer world, the mind at any rate is a place in
which a thing can be all kinds of other things without ceasing to be
itself as well."^

In order to reveal the need for attention to the principle of identity in its
bearing on unconscious motivation James reverted to the instance of ‘ sud¬
denly” finding ourselves “in love with a person whom we imagined we only
liked.” At the moment of discovery, James noted, we are giving the name of
“love” to a conscious state which as a feeling for another person had not
been named previously. But this earlier unnamed feeling had not been pre¬
cisely identical with the later one of being in love. It was a less “inflamed
feeling” than the later one, but this did not make it an “unconscious” feeling.
In fact, in the beginning, had we named our feeling it might have been called
a feeling of interest in or attraction for another person and now, in retro¬
spect, it may appear to have been “faint” in comparison with our current
love. In other words, according to James (p. 174);

A faint feeling may be looked back upon and classified and understood
in its relations to what went before or after it in the stream of thought.
But it, on the one hand, and the later state of mind which knows all

® According to Ernest Jones, Freud at one time came close to equating the unconscious
with a “physical” process. In the words of Jones (1953, Vol. I, p. 368):
[Freud’s] experience had taught him that the most complicated processes of thought
could go on without being accompanied by consciousness, and he habitually referred
to these as “unconscious mental processes.” Yet how far from dogmatism he was in
the matter may be seen from this quotation which follows a passage concerning the
displacement of affects: “Perhaps it might be more correct to say: these processes
are not of a psychical nature at all, but are physical processes the psychical conse¬
quences of which are represented as if what is expressed by the words ‘detachment of
the idea from its affect and false connection of the latter’ had really happened.”
Freud had reached this conviction concerning a physical basis for mental processes
by the turn of the century. He gave expression to it in the following sentence of the
opening chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams (pp. 41-42): “Even when investigation
shows that the primary exciting cause of a phenomenon is psychical, deeper research will
one day trace the path further and discover an organic basis for the mental event.”
^This sentence might be cited to show that James had been writing a functional psychol¬
ogy even before the school of functional psychology had come into existence.
n
More extensive discussion of the principle of identity was introduced by James on a
later page (Vol. I, pp. 459-460) concerned with the sense of sameness. In this connec¬
tion he developed the implications of this italicized text: ‘‘'the mind can always intend,
and knows when it intends, to think of the Same. ”
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 51

these things about it, on the other, are surely not two conditions, one
conscious and the other ‘unconscious,’ of the same identical psychic
fact. It is the destiny of thought that, on the whole, our early ideas are
superseded by later ones, giving fuller accounts of the same realities.
But none the less do the earlier and the later ideas preserve their own
several substantive identities as so many several successive states of
mind. To believe the contrary would make any definite science of psy¬
chology impossible. The only identity to be found among our succes¬
sive ideas is their similarity of cognitive or representative function as
deahng with the same objects.

To illustrate the “representative function” or “successive ideas” it might

prove revealing to dwell upon the concept of school as it develops in the
course of our dealings with the theme of school from early childhood to
maturity. Through the years there are innumerable ways in which we chance
to deal with, talk about, or think about school. Each of these ways when
experienced as an idea, although pointing to our “representative” of school as
a concept, is nevertheless qua idea different from all our other ideas of
school. In early childhood one of our ideas of school might have been elicited
or symbolized by the word Kelly, the name of the crossing guard who helped
us across a busy traffic intersection each morning. The name of the first-
grade teacher, the school janitor’s torn cap, the lame boy who sat next to us,
a fight on the playground, and a myriad other incidents might thus constitute
ways in which we experienced ideas of school. These early incidents are fol¬
lowed by many others as we advance through the academic hierarchy on up
to the upper levels of postgraduate studies. As a consequence our initial
childish ideas about school come to be succeeded by increasingly complex
and abstract notions pertaining to such topics as philosophy of education,
learning theory, teaching credentials, integration, student government, faculty
tenure, laboratory fees, black studies, and alumni support of college athletes.
All such notions deal with or are representative of some phase of the con¬
cept of school and, in the language of James, as “later ideas” they continue to
“preserve their own several successive states of mind.” For James their preser¬
vation during intervening periods, by implication, was a function not of a
hypothetical unconscious, but of the neurology of memory. This means that
when not being experienced as ideas they are nonexistent. Similarly, a pianist’s
glissandi are nonexistent when he is asleep or working in the garden, but they
can be reactivated when he is once again sitting at the keyboard. Obviously,
the ideas can also be reactivated when confronted with suitable reminders.
The underlying principle amounts to this: any product of learning may be
reinstated under appropriate conditions of stimulation.®

®Their reinstatement is a function of memory and memory, in the last analysis being a
function of cerebral cells, is more of a neurological than a psychological issue. This
means that facts learned and skills acquired are preserved not in an unconscious mind,
but in tissues of the brain. This truism has long been taken for granted in connection
with animal learning. Upon being returned to the home cage after mastery of a maze,
rats were not credited with an unconscious memory of the maze pattern. Their retention
52 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

CONCERNING HERBART’S APPERCEPTIVE MASS

The accumulation of different kinds of the “successive ideas” mentioned

by James becomes the basis for subsequent understanding and interpretation
of novel items as they chance to be experienced. Every new concept develops
around a core of accumulated ideas. To think of different concepts such as
religion, taxation, or poetry is to have groups of different categories of ideas
come to mind. At one time such a group or cluster of associated ideas was
called an apperceptive mass. This designation had been introduced by Johan
Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), Kant’s successor at Konigsberg and a pioneer
in the advocacy of an educational psychology, or what was also called a
“scientific pedagogy.” In accordance with Herbartian principles, teachers
were urged to be mindful of the importance of the apperceptive mass for
assimilation of new ideas. Lesson plans were to be organized in terms of prior
introduction of relevant background information before the introduction of
new material. The underlying principle continues to be reflected in university
catalogues in which elementary courses are listed as required foundations for
more advanced courses. In the language of Herbart, the prerequisite course is
presumed to equip the student with the requisite apperceptive mass for
coping with more advanced material.
Although the phrase apperceptive mass has long since been dropped from
the modern psychologist’s technical vocabulary, its original meaning may still
be retained in some current allusions to the unconscious. At least those who
identify the unconscious with the total background of experience in terms of
which given events are interpreted are treating such a background more or

of the maze habit, as K. S. Lashley (1890-1958) demonstrated, depends on the integrity

of brain tissue. In fact, at the end of a long series of experiments he came to the follow¬
ing conclusions, among others (pp. 175-176):
The capacity to form maze habits is reduced by destruction of cerebral tissue.
The reduction is roughly proportional to the amount of destruction.
The more complex the problem to be learned, the greater the retardation produced
by any given extent of lesion.
The capacity to retain is reduced, as is the capacity to learn.
A review of the literature on cerebral function in other mammals, including man, indi¬
cates that, in spite of the greater specialization of cerebral areas in the higher forms,
the problems of cerebral function are not greatly different from those raised by
experiments with the rat.
Incidentally, even though Lashley reached these conclusions about fifty years ago,
they are by no means altogether outmoded. In fact, a contemporary experimentalist,
Paul Pietsch, traces the origin of the latest neurological theory of memory, the holo¬
graphic theory, to “the 1920s when psychologist Karl Lashley began a lifelong search
through the brain for the vaults containing memory” (1972, p. 42). Needless to add,
despite the progress suggested by the holographic theory, the search is far from over.
At about the time when the article by Pietsch appeared another scientist, Victor
F. Weisskopf, writing in a different periodical, acknowledged that “we still know very
little . . . about the functioning of the nervous system, and we know practically nothing
about what goes on in the brain when we think or when we use the memory” (1972,
p. 144).
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 53

less as the equivalent of Herbart’s apperceptive mass. Furthermore, in a more

restricted sense the psychoanalytic concept of preconscious is even more
definitely such an equivalent, since the concept refers to ideas no longer
present in consciousness but which are readily reinstated when needed to
answer questions and to dispose of difficulties. Thus, being able to recall one’s
place of birth or mother’s maiden name or father’s business or profession
might serve as examples of reinstatement. Similarly, the schoolboy’s precon¬
scious supplies answers to questions having to do with his grade, his teacher’s
name, his school’s football record, and so forth. Incidentally, the concept of
preconscious has been subjected to varied interpretations by different psycho¬
analytic specialists in recent years,^ but consideration of these interpretations
would interfere with the central theme of the present chapter, namely, the
reaction of James to arguments advanced in support of the existence of un¬
conscious mental states.
One of these arguments has to do with what came to be called unconscious
inference. Originally it was advanced by Wundt and Helmholtz.However,
it has come to be associated more closely with the name of Helmholtz, so
that his treatment of the concept has been more influential than Wundt’s.
Accordingly, for present purposes there is no need to consider Wundt’s view.

CONCERNING HELMHOLTZ
AND UNCONSCIOUS INFERENCE

Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894), although not a psychologist, neverthe¬

less came to have a great influence on the efforts to promote psychology as a
science. This, of course, was one of James’s primary efforts in writing the
Principles of 1890. Helmholtz’s influence is suggested by the fact that he is
mentioned in the Principles in connection with more than some fifteen dif¬
ferent topics. The magnitude of this influence on the development of psychol¬
ogy as science can be appreciated by the additional fact that years later in
Boring’s History of Experimental Psychology of 1950, Helmholtz is listed as
one of three founders of experimental psychology, the other two founders
being Fechner and Wundt. In addition, at the close of his History (p. 743)
Boring concluded “there are at least four very great men in psychology’s
history: Darwin, Helmholtz, James and Freud.’’ There can thus be no ques-

^The preconscious was once called the foreconscious and the two terms are synonymous
and interchangeable. In a section on “The Preconscious Unconscious” (1971, pp. 207-
210) Samuel Abrams has reviewed the history of the concept along with differing
interpretations suggested by various psychoanalysts in recent years. Some even suggested
equating the preconscious with the concept of ego. It is virtually impossible to bring all
the suggested interpretations into one comprehensive definition.
According to Boring (1950, p. 309) “the theory belongs more to Helmholtz” than to
Wundt, as Wundt himself granted. He also wrote that Helmholtz “had the theory first
and kept it” whereas Wundt “took up the theory later and presently abandoned it.”
There may be some question about this. As will be brought out shortly, in the words of
James both Helmholtz and Wundt had “modified their views” and “recanted.”
54 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

tion about Helmholtz’s eminence as a thinker and as a scientist. What he had

to teach was bound to command respectful attention. Any student reading
Boring’s chapter concerned with the achievements of Helmholtz (Ch. 15) is
also bound to be impressed.
Moreover, what is particularly pertinent in the present context is the fact
that many academic generations of university students upon reading Boring’s
chapter have come to associate the name of Helmholtz with the concept of
unconscious inference. This, of course, will he in addition to associating his
name with a theory of color vision, with the resonance theory of hearing,
with the invention of the ophthalmoscope, with the measurement of the
speed of a nerve impulse, and with some classic volumes on physiological
optics. Being introduced in this kind of setting, the phrase unconscious
inference is likely to he surrounded with a halo of scientific endorsement. In
the course of time. Boring’s critical comments with reference to the phrase
are likely to be forgotten and all that may be retained will be the impression
of unconscious reasoning as a doctrine introduced into psychology long before
Freud by the scientifically eminent Helmholtz.
What Helmholtz introduced into psychology was a theory of perception
according to which recognition of objects and judgment of distance are prod¬
ucts of experience rather than instinctive or intuitive reactions to sensory
impressions. This made him an empiricist in opposition to the nativists.
Accordingly, along with British empiricists he was sponsoring an associa-
tionistic theory of perception. To see sandpaper as rough involves an associa¬
tion between visual and cutaneous sensations. Similarly, it might be argued
that we learn to associate a gradual increase in the size of a visual impression
with nearness and its gradual decrease in size with remoteness. Having learned
this relationship, a child watching father walk away does not say, “Daddy
is getting smaller,’’ but “Daddy is going to work.” It is as if the child were
drawing a conclusion regarding the significance of a change in the magnitude
of visual impressions. There may be no explicit awareness of the actual
diminution of visual sensations, nor of the reasoning process leading to the
conclusion. This lack of awarefiess means that the conclusion was arrived at
unconsciously.
Had Helmholtz used this example, he would have said the child had in¬
dulged in an unbewusster Schluss, literally “unconscious conclusion.” This
literal meaning is not quite duplicated, but only approximated by the phrase
“unconscious inference,” now the generally accepted English translation of
the original. Actually, the difference in connotation is not momentous. Both
phrases serve to call attention to Helmholtz’s main contention, namely, that
perception is a cognitive as well as a sensory operation and that in familiar
or habitual perceptions there is no awareness of the cognitive aspect. As a
result, such effortless habitual perceptions are commonly regarded as being
exclusively sensory and noncognitive processes. However, according to Helm¬
holtz, genetically considered, the development of such habitual perceptions
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 55

is characterized by an implicit inductive process and induction is obviously

more cognitive than sensory.

INDUCTION AS IMPLICIT IN SENSE-PERCEPTION

The recognition of induction as implicit in the concept of unconscious

inference was already evident in Helmholtz’s initial presentation. This was as
early as 1866 in one of his volumes on optics. As cited by Herrnstein and Boring
in their 1965 collection of historically important source material, his presen¬
tation contains the following allusion to induction as related to persistence of
illusory perceptions in a variety of situations (Helmholtz, pp. 192-193):

Even when we have learned to understand the physiological origin and

connection of the senses, it is impossible to get rid of the illusion in
spite of our better knowledge. This is because inductive reasoning is
the result of an unconscious and involuntary activity of the mem¬
ory. . . . Every evening apparently before our eyes the sun goes down
behind the stationary horizon, although we are well aware that the sun
is fixed and the horizon moves. An actor who cleverly portrays an old
man is for us an old man there on the stage, so long as we let the
immediate impression sway us, and do not forcibly recall that the pro¬
gramme states that the person moving about there is the young actor
with whom we are acquainted. We consider him as being angry or in
pain according as he shows us one of the other mode of countenance
and demeanour. (Italics added.)

Furthermore, in an essay published in 1894 Helmholtz introduced the

word Inductionschluss meaning inductive conclusion as a designation for
what he had originally called an unbewusster Schluss, and he even interpreted
some instances of animal behavior as illustrative of such an inductive opera¬
tion. The essay as translated by Warren and Warren and included in their book
on Helmholtz was entitled “The Origin of the Correct Interpretation of our
Sensory Impressions” (1968, pp. 249-260). In it (p. 255) he wrote that an
Inductionschluss enables animals to “shy back from some object which looks
similar to another one on which they had burned themselves on an earlier
occasion.” In this interpretation he was reverting to the inductive factor he
had already detected in his reference to unconscious inference {unbewusster
Schluss) some thirty years before. In the intervening years, as will be brought
out shortly, he had come to entertain misgivings about this notion of uncon¬
scious inference. However, in the essay under consideration it seemed to him
that “within certain limits” there might be some justification for revival of
the older “name” oi unbewusster Schluss, or as he put it (pp. 255-256):

I find even now that this name is admissible within certain limits since
these associations of perceptions in the memory actually take place in
such a manner, that at the time of their origin one is not aware of it,
56 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

or is aware only in such a manner that one remembers to have observed

the same process frequently before (in other words, it is recognized as
something familiar). The memory of earher cases with the accompanying
circumstances can emerge more distinctly during the first repetitions of
rarer observations of this kind, so that the mental process here acquires
a greater analogy to conscious thought.

What Helmholtz was finding “admissible” in this essay of 1894 was his use
of the word unconscious in his Optics of the 1860s. As an empiricist he was
not using the word in the sense of mental factors that had originated inde¬
pendently of experience. Instead he was referring to our ignorance of some of
the factors involved in learning from experience. He made this clear by noting
that we learn to interpret facial expressions even though we may be unable
to specify precisely what cues enable us to decide on the difference between
an expression of worry and one of fatigue, or between rage and terror. We are
conscious of the total impression but unconscious or ignorant of all the
determinants of a given impression. Even the young child soon learns to
judge Mother’s mood by watching her face. He learns or comes to associate
the image of a smiling face with a different set of expectations from the
image of an unsmiling face. In the words of Helmholtz (p. 253): “. .. for the
human child, most important visual images must be learned by him, and are
not given by inherent organization without preceding experience.” From
smiling faces he learns to draw a different conclusion than from scowling
faces even though he may not be explicitly conscious of the influence of
these facial cues.
In terms of this example unconscious inference ceases to suggest elaborate
reasoning. Instead it becomes a questionable way of referring to perceptual
judgments based upon associative memory. To revert to another of Helm¬
holtz’s examples: association by similarity causes an animal to “shy back”
from an object which resembles a previously experienced injurious object.
The injury or bum was a cutaneous stimulus, but the object itself was a visual
stimulus. According to Helmholtz, the subsequent sight of the object arouses
“the memory of earlier cases” of having been injured and is thus “recognized
as something familiar.” It should be obvious that what Helmholtz attributed
to associative memory a later generation of learning theorists attributed to
conditioning. Had he been using the language of conditioning, he might have
stated that with the “first repetitions” of the combination of conditioned and
unconditioned stimuli the animal becomes “more distinctly” aware of the
relation between the sight of the object and the subsequent burn. At this
stage, to use his own words, “the mental process acquires a greater analogy
to conscious thought.” However, with the firm estabUshment of the con¬
ditioned reaction the animal will “shy back” from the conditioned stimulus
of the similar looking object with quasi-reflex automatism and virtually no
“conscious thought” of the memory of the burn. It might be said that at the
time of reaction the animal is unconscious of the earlier injury; whether this
should be called unconscious inference is open to question.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 57

In fact, Helmholtz himself had questioned it some years before writing the
essay in which, upon reconsideration, he had found endorsement of the phrase
“admissible within certain limits.” Aside from these restricted limits he had
ceased to endorse the doctrine of unconscious inference. He no longer believed
in the occurrence of unconscious reasoning or what some may have called
reasoning in the unconscious.

HELMHOLTZ QUESTIONS UNCONSCIOUS REASONING

As noted earlier, both Helmholtz and Wundt had written about the con¬
cept of unconscious inference. This was in the 1860s and they were both
attempting to account for certain aspects of perception. Then, as reported by
James, by the 1870s they had changed their views of the concept (Vol. I,
p. 169):

It is to be remarked that Wundt and Helmholtz, who in their earlier

writings did more than any one to give vogue to the notion that uncon¬
scious inference is a vital factor in sense-perception, have seen fit on
later occasions to modify their views and to admit that results like
those of reasoning may accrue without any actual reasoning process
unconsciously taking place.

This was not the only time James discussed the modified views of Wundt
and Helmholtz. He mentioned their views again in a later chapter in which
he asked, “Is Perception Unconscious Inference?” and by way of introduction
to the question he wrote as follows (Vol. II, pp. 111-112):

A widely-spread opinion (which has been held by such men as Schopen¬

hauer, Spencer, Hartmann, Wundt, Helmholtz, and lately ... by M. Binet)
will have it that perception should be called a sort of reasoning opera¬
tion, more or less unconsciously and automatically performed. The
question seems at first a verbal one, depending on how broadly the
term reasoning is to be taken. If every time a present sign suggests an
absent reality to our mind, we make an inference; and if every time we
make an inference we reason; then perception is indubitably reasoning.
Only one sees no room in it for any unconscious part. Both associates,
the present sign and the contiguous things which it suggests, are above¬
board, and no intermediary ideas are required.

In thus rejecting the notion of perception involving unconscious reasoning

James was once again expressing his doubts about any mental process being
unconscious. Moreover, in this final statement voicing his opposition, his
doubts came closer to being a conviction (p. 113):

So far, then, from perception being a species of reasoning properly

so called, both it and reasoning are co-ordinate varieties of that deeper
sort of process known psychologically as the association of ideas, and
physiologically as the law of habit in the brain. To call perception
58 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

unconscious reasoning is thus either a useless metaphor, or a positively

misleading confusion between two different things.

James was not presenting this italicized conclusion as an indictment of

the views of Wundt and Helmholtz, even though they had been among the
original supporters of the doctrine of unconscious inference. In a footnote
(p. Ill) he called attention to what he had written in the earlier chapter
concerning their modified stand and made this exphcit by noting that “Wundt
and Helmholtz have more recently ‘recanted'" (italics mine). This is worth
stressing because, as will be considered later, this recantation has been over¬
looked by writers who continue to list Wundt and Helmholtz among the
sponsors of beUef in mind as unconscious. Had they consulted James (Vol. I,
p. 169), from the bibliographic data supplied they would have learned that
Wundt had renounced the latter belief in an 1876 publication and that Helm¬
holtz had done so in an essay of 1879.
For present purposes there is little need to say more about Wundt’s recan¬
tation, but it is quite pertinent to say more about Helmholtz’s reasons for
recanting. The reasons are to be found in the 1879 article. This article had
been delivered as an address at the University of Berlin on August 3, 1878,
and a translation under the title of “The Facts of Perception” is to be found
in the volume by Warren and Warren (pp. 207-231). As shown in the follow¬
ing excerpt, Helmholtz had decided to avoid further reference to unconscious
inference because what he meant by the term might be misinterpreted with
what Schopenhauer and his followers had meant by the term (p. 220):

In my earlier works I named the conceptual connections occurring in

this process unconscious conclusions. Unconscious, in respect to the
major premise based upon a sequence of experiences, each of which had
long since disappeared from memory and entered consciousness only in
the form of sensory impressions, not necessarily as sentences framed in
words. New sensory impressions occurring in ongoing perception form
the minor premise to which we apply the rule stamped in our mind by
previous observations. Later I avoided that term, “unconscious con¬
clusions,” in order to escape from the entirely confused and unjustified
concept—at any rate so it seems to me—which Schopenhauer and his
disciples designate by the name. We are obviously concerned here with
a basic process which underlies all that truly can be called thinking,
although it lacks the critical sifting and completion of individual steps
found in the scientific formulation of concepts and ideas.

James was in agreement with Helmholtz in repudiating Schopenhauer’s

views of the unconscious. In fact, he equated them with the “mythology” he
had attributed to the views of Hartmann. To appreciate Helmholtz’s reasons
for wanting “to escape” from having his views confused with Schopenhauer’s,
it will suffice to read the following account of Schopenhauer’s “mythology”
as described by James (Vol. I, pp. 169-170):
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 59

The visual perception ... of an object in space results, according to

him, from the intellect performing the following operations, all uncon¬
scious. First, it apprehends the inverted retinal image and turns it right
side up, constructing flat space as a preliminary operation; then it com¬
putes from the angle of convergence of the eyeballs that the two retinal
images must be the projection of a single object', thirdly, it constructs
the third dimension and sees this object solid', fourthly, it assigns its
distance', and fifthly, in each and all of these operations it gets the
objective character of what it ‘constructs’ by unconsciously inferring it
as the only possible cause of some sensation which it unconsciously
feels. Comment on this seems hardly called for. It is, as I said, pure
mythology.

It should now be evident why Helmholtz had characterized Schopenhauer’s

interpretation of the concept of unconscious inference as “confused and un¬
justified.” Furthermore, in view of Helmholtz’s empiricism a clash with the
nativistic, intuitive voluntarism of Schopenhauer was to be expected. As an
empiricist he would be expected to be on guard against confusing the prod¬
ucts of learning and habit formation with those attributable to heredity. As
he saw it, unconscious inference was such a product of learning and habit for¬
mation. This was suggested by the fact that in his disavowal of Schopenhauer’s
standpoint he referred to a “basic process” involved in what had been called
unconscious inference, a process he regarded as underlying “all that truly
can be called thinking.” This calls for a word of explanation.

WHAT HELMHOLTZ MEANT BY “BASIC PROCESS ”

In identifying the basic process with “thinking” Helmholtz was not equat¬
ing it with critical reasoning. As he expressed the difference, the “thinking”
in question “lacks the critical sifting and completion of individual steps found
in the scientific formulation of concepts and ideas.” He was using the word
in the sense in which observation as a cognitive process characterizes per¬
ceptual learning. In learning the Greek alphabet, for example, a student might
say, “I think I can tell the difference between gamma and rho.” Similarly, if
asked about the weather, he might gaze out the window and reply, “I think it
might rain.” In the judgment of facial expression, to revert to one of Helm¬
holtz’s examples, the basic process might give rise to a sentence like, “I think
the man looks either perplexed or determined.”
Whenever perception is difficult, thinking of some sort takes place. Once
the difficulty is resolved perceptual recognition is immediate, spontaneous,
and, in a literal sense, thoughtless. For instance, for readers of this book
words like reaction, association, and brain would be recognized immediately.
On the other hand words like dinoflagellate, phthisical, and arrendamento
would probably prove to be refractory to such spontaneous perceptual recog¬
nition. Neither pronunciation nor meaning would be obvious and their
mastery would entail attention to the syllables and search through dictionaries
in the quest for understanding.
60 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

The perceptual challenge involved is akin to the challenge of learning a

foreign language. As students of Latin or French or some other language we
may recall that in the beginning as we were learning new vocabulary we kept
thinking of their English equivalents. In effect we were conscious of the fact
that Stella means star or penser means to think and lachen means to laugh. In
reading the foreign language text we would be translating each word into our
native tongue. However, once we advance to the stage of being able to think
in the new language the foreign text no longer seems “foreign” as we under¬
stand the words of the text without having to translate them into English
equivalents.
This means that we are now unconscious of these equivalents as we read or
converse in what had once been an alien tongue for us, as if we know the
English meaning without being conscious of the English words. This may
come close to what Helmholtz once meant by unconscious inference. More¬
over, what he later called a basic process is exemplified by this shift from
initial consciousness of the English equivalents to the later disappearance of
such consciousness once we have reached the stage of reading the new language
easily without dependence on dictionaries.
It ought to be evident that this example of the shift from initial reading
efforts to later effortless reading habits holds true for comparable shifts from
initial learning of any task to its later habitual execution. In other words,
Helmholtz’s basic process has to do with the shift from consciousness to the
automatism of habit. It is the same as the kind of shift given special promi¬
nence by sponsors of functional psychology.
Advocates of functional psychology were especially concerned with ac¬
counting for the function of mind or consciousness in the biological scheme
of things. They saw this as a problem-solving function as the organism is con¬
fronted with the novel, the threatening, or the perplexing. Once such a
problem situation had been handled successfully, the organism was prepared
to deal with any recurrence with greater dispatch as habitual control displaced
conscious control.
Helmholtz, with his recognition of the basic process as intrinsic to the con¬
cept of unconscious inference, was thus really anticipating a central teaching
of functional psychology. Like the functionalists he was arguing that with the
establishment of autonomous control of habit there is virtual elimination of
conscious control. In this sense well entrenched habitual actions may be said
to take place unconsciously. As ingrained habits they may function as
mechanically and as unconsciously as reflexes—no unconscious mind need be
posited to account for the automatism of reflexes or the automatism of habit.
This interpretation of what Helmholtz meant by unconscious inference as
related to the basic process is neither new nor original. As shown in the fol¬
lowing quotation, it is merely an elaboration of what Boring once wrote with
reference to the role of experience in the formation of unconscious inferences
(1950, p. 310):
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 61

These inferences, Helmholtz thought, are at first conscious . . . and

develop by association and repetition into unconscious inferences. . . ,
It is the commonplace of introspective psychology that a conscious
state, by repetition and under the law of habit, is telescoped and
reduced until the given process is largely or entirely unconscious, as far
as introspection can reveal, and as against what at first seemed to be the
logically necessary essentials. Helmholtz’s view is merely the principle
of conscious decay under habituation.

In the light of this last principle it should be obvious that the concept of
unconscious inference as understood by Helmholtz has to do with habit-
formation and not with reasoning in some unconscious realm. This has failed
to be noted by some modem writers who continue to include Helmholtz
among those who have endorsed the concept of mind as unconscious. As
previously mentioned, they evidently had overlooked James’s 1890 statement
to the effect that by the 1870s both Wundt and Helmholtz had “recanted”
with reference to the stand taken in the 1860s. Now in the 1970s it is time to
set the record straight by more explicit attention to this oversight. Helm¬
holtz and Wundt may continue to be listed as “discoverers” of the uncon¬
scious if this error is not corrected.

CORRECTION OF AN ERROR

Among recent books dealing with the “discovery” of the unconscious in

which the concept of unconscious inference is listed as part of the supporting
evidence there are the 1960 volume by Lancelot Whyte and the 1970 volume
by Henri EUenberger. It so happens that the former merely lists Helmholtz as
having endorsed the concept and then quotes from Wundt at greater length.
However, in EUenberger’s book the treatment is different: only Helmholtz is
quoted and Wundt is not even mentioned in this connection.
In the case of Whyte, Helmholtz is disposed of in a single sentence (p. 158)
reading, “I shall not . . . quote from H. Helmholtz (1821-1894), though he is
important for his emphasis on unconscious inference.'’'’ However, he did
quote from Wundt, whom he described not as a psychologist but as a “German
physiologist” who had held that “Our proper activity is unconscious” and
who had once written (p. 160):

Our mind is so fortunately equipped, that it brings us the most impor¬

tant bases for our thoughts without our having the least knowledge of
this work of elaboration. Only the results of it become conscious. This
unconscious mind is for us like an unknown being who creates and pro¬
duces for us, and finally throws the ripe fruits in our lap.

Whyte failed to cite the precise source of the latter quotation. However,
at the end of the book he did supply a single bibliographic reference to Wundt.
This one concerned an early publication in which Wundt had discussed “con-
62 • The Unconsciom: Invention or Discovery?

tributions to the theory of sensory perception.”*^ At the time—during the

1860s—Wundt was working at Heidelberg as a physiologist; since Whyte had
called Wundt a physiologist, it seems likely that the quotation came from this
early publication. Moreover, as noted by Boring (1950, pp. 318-319), the
book “contains a brief discussion of unconscious inference {unbewusster
Schluss: the phrase is used) as the mechanism of perception.”
Whether the theory of unconscious inference was original with Wundt may
be questioned. As also noted by Boring (1950, p. 309), Helmholtz had devel¬
oped the essentials of the theory around 1855, a few years before Wundt
wrote on the subject. In fact, in the words of Boring, “Wundt admitted that
... the theory belongs more to Helmholtz.” Furthermore, as applied to
physiological optics, Helmholtz certainly did very much more with the theory.
In some respects this question of priority with regard to unconscious
inference is not momentous in view of the fact that by 1880*^ both Helm¬
holtz and Wundt had ceased to endorse the concept. Consequently, Whyte
should not have listed Wundt and Helmholtz among those who endorsed a
belief in “the unconscious before Freud.” It will be recalled that James had
called attention to their “recantation” in his Principles of 1890. Wundt him¬
self was very definite in his rejection of the unconscious, as shown in this
passage wherein he concluded that belief in the unconscious is metaphysically
untenable (1897, p. 196):

We can know nothing of the unconscious or, what amounts to the same
thing for psychology, a material process which is not immediately per¬
ceived but merely assumed hypothetically on the basis of metaphysical
presuppositions. Such metaphysical assumptions are merely devices to
cover up an incomplete or entirely wanting psychological observation.

This serves as a reminder of the important psychological observation made

by Helmholtz when he came to reaUze that what he had once attributed to
unconscious reasoning was more definitely related to the automatism of habit.
It was this changed interpretation of the concept of unconscious reasoning
James had called a “recantation.” Ellenberger failed to take this changed
interpretation into account. Instead, in allusion to what Helmholtz had stated
in the 1859 edition of the Physiological Optics, he declared (1970, p. 313):

Helmholtz discovered the phenomenon of “unconscious inference”: we

perceive the objects not as they impress our sense organs, but “as they

* * The book’s title in German was virtually the same, namely, Beitrdge zur Theorie der
Sinneswahrnehmung. Although the book as a whole has not been translated, the intro¬
duction concerned with the “methods in Psychology” has been translated and is now
available in Shipley’s Classics in Psychology (1961).
*^Helmholtz in his essay of 1879 explained why he had decided to cease employing
the phrase “unconscious inference.” Moreover, as noted by Titchener (1929, p. 6),
Wundt had already rejected “the unconscious as a principle of psychological explana¬
tion” as early as 1874.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 63

should be. Perception is a kind of instantaneous and unconscious

reconstruction of what our past experience taught us about the object.

From the context it appears that for Ellenberger this discovery of uncon¬
scious inference was congruent with influences leading to the emergence of
belief in mind as unconscious, especially as such belief came to be reflected
in post-Freudian psychiatry. At all events, the chapter in which Helmholtz’s
discovery is introduced covers the period from 1880 to 1900 and is entitled
“On the Threshold of a New Dynamic Psychiatry.” It is a long chapter of
some seventy-five pages and close to two hundred and fifty bibliographic
notes; but the name of James is missing from these notes. As in Whyte there
was no mention of Helmholtz’s “recantation” as James had reported in his
Principles. In the case of Whyte this is understandable, since there is no
mention of the Principles in his survey of The Unconscious before Freud. In
the case of Ellenberger however, as shown in the following quotation, there
was very expHcit recognition of the Principles (pp. 762-763):

In the field of psychology the important event was the publication of

WilHam James’s Principles of Psychology. The weU-known Harvard
psychologist had been working for twelve years on the book, which was
the first major work of its kind to appear in the United States, and had
an immediate and lasting success on both sides of the Atlantic. This
textbook treated not only various aspects of experimental psychology
but problems of hypnosis, dual personahty, and psychical research as
well.

It is to be noted that Ellenberger had nothing to say about the way the
“textbook” treated problems of the unconscious in general and unconscious
inference in particular. Although there are numerous references to Hartmann
and to Schopenhauer as nineteenth-century “discoverers” of the unconscious,
there is no reference to James as a critic of their views. Nor is there any refer¬
ence to James’s systematic presentation of the ten arguments advanced in
support of belief in mental states as unconscious along with his replies to these
arguments. There is no mention of the fact that with specific reference to the
question of perception as unconscious inference James had also rendered a
negative verdict. In short, neither Ellenberger nor Whyte devotes any space
to the negative stand taken by James on this or on any other question per¬
taining to mind as unconscious. No reader of their volumes would ever suspect
that James had once indicated belief in mental states as unconscious as “the
sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology, and of turning
what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for whimsies.”
Actually, in neither of these books are any of James’s teachings given
more than incidental attention. Moreover, and this is important, even when
mentioned they are so presented as to suggest that James is to be included
among those listed as “discoverers” of the unconscious. Whyte (p. 168), for
example, includes the name of James among those who, along with Charcot,
64 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Janet, and Breuer, “made contributions before 1899 when Freud’s Interpre¬
tation of Dreams was published.” Furthermore, Ellenberger interpreted
James’s interest in automatic writing as implicit endorsement of belief in
mind as unconscious. He made this quite definite by writing that “Frederic
Myers and WUliam James understood that automatic writing provided a
means of access to the unconscious” (p. 121).
Both Myers and James were interested in automatic writing, particularly
as it might have a bearing on so-called psychic phenomena. As will be brought
out in a later section, Myers was closely identified with the investigation of
such phenomena and was one of the founders of the Society for Psychical
Research in England, just as James was instrumental in establishing a similar
society in America. Furthermore, both James and Myers endeavored to have
psychical research conform to the canons of scientific research. Whether
interest in this research also implied tacit endorsement of the unconscious is
to be questioned. Otherwise it would mean that for James the unconscious
had ceased to be a “tumbling-ground for whimsies” and that he had become
more accepting of views he had once rejected—views of Leibnitz, Hartmann,
and Schopenhauer. Just what it did mean for James calls for separate
consideration.

WILLIAM JAMES AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

There can be no question about James’s active support of investigations of

so-called psychical phenomena.*^ This is evident from his discussion of
“mediumships” in the Principles (Vol. 1, pp. 393-400), in the course of which
he dealt with automatic writing, the trance states of the mediums, and re¬
ports of departed spirits or alien agencies being in “control” of the medium.
In this general context he wrote (p. 396):

I am myself persuaded by abundant acquaintance with the trances of

one medium that the ‘control’ may be altogether different from any
possible waking self of the person. ... 1 record my bare opinion here
unsupported by the evidence, not, of course, in order to convert any¬
one to my view, but because I am persuaded that a serious study of
these trance-phenomena is one of the greatest needs of psychology,
and think that my personal confession may possibly draw a reader or
two into a field which the soi-disant ‘scientist’usually refuses to explore.

It is important to note that James did not venture to describe the exact
nature of the “control” operative during the trance. In this one instance he
appeared to be convinced of the existence of a genuine if perplexing phe¬
nomenon. By implication he was ruling out the possibility of fraud, deception,

13
An excellent introductory survey of the nature and scope of James’s support of these
investigations is to be found in the work by Perry (1935, Vol. II, pp. 154-172). For a
later and more comprehensive account of James’s affiliation with psyehical research see
the 1960 volume by Murphy and Ballou.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 65

or trickery of any kind. As a phenomenon it was to be taken seriously as

worthy of scientific investigation and called for critical examination by psy¬
chologists since it belonged to “trance-phenomena” whose study constituted
“one of the greatest needs of psychology.”
Now, in the opinion of James, his willingness to have “psychic” phenomena
studied as bona fide psychological issues has been misunderstood or mis¬
interpreted as indicative of a belief in spirits or ghosts. At all events, when he
was called a “spiritist” he resented and denied it. According to Perry (Vol. II,
pp. 348-349), James Leuba had published an article on “Professor WUliam
James’ Interpretation of Religious Experience” in which, among other state¬
ments, he reported that in his book concerned with this kind of experience
James had introduced the “imaginary shadows of spirit agents” and that the
reader of the book finds that “ghosts pop out of the very places he had just
shown you to be empty.” In a letter written on April 17, 1904, James took
issue with such statements in this blunt fashion:

Dear Leuba,
I have read your article with great interest, admiring its clearness of
statement, and rejoicing in the way in which you go to the heart of my
contentions, straight and without floundering. Only of your characteri¬
zation of my thesis as that of “spirit-intervention” do I complain. No
reader . . . could possibly guess that the only spirit that I contend for is
“God.” LFnless he knows my book he will suppose that I am a “spiritist”
out and out, which I am not. This is unfair.

Unfortunately, this disclaimer continues to be overlooked or ignored. For

instance, even Ellenberger (1970, p. 837) refers to James as one of the
“spiritists.” It may be that some justification for calling James a spiritist has
to do with his belief in God as a spirit; but this belief is subject to misinter¬
pretation unless qualified by reference to the following explanation James
included in the same letter to Leuba (Perry, Vol. II, pp. 350-351):

My personal position is simple. 1 have no living sense of commerce with

a God. I envy those who have, for I know that the addition of such a
sense would help me greatly. The Divine, for my active life, is limited
to impersonal and abstract concepts which, as ideals, interest and
determine me, but do so faintly in comparison with what a feeling of
God might effect, if I had one. This, to be sure, is largely a matter of
intensity, but a shade of intensity may make one’s whole centre of
moral energy shift. Now, although I am so devoid of Gottesbewusstsein
in the directer and stronger sense, yet there is something in me which
makes response when I hear utterances from that quarter made by
others. I recognize the deeper voice. Something tells me: “thither lies
truth”-and I am sure it is not old theistic prejudices of infancy. Those
in my case were Christian, but I have grown so out of Christianity that
entanglement therewith on the part of mystical utterance has to be
abstracted from and overcome, before I can listen. Call this, if you like,
my mystical germ. It is a very common germ. It creates the rank and
66 ■ The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

file of believers. As it withstands in my case, so it will withstand in

most cases, all purely atheistic criticism, but interpretative criticism
(not of the mere “hysteria” and “nerves” order) it can energetically
combine with.

The foregoing explanation of James’s analysis of the concept of God was

intended to answer Leuba’s attack directed against James’s analysis of the
psychology of religion as presented in the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh in
1901-1902 and pubhshed under the title of The Varieties of Religious Expe¬
rience-A Study of Human Nature. This was the book in which Leuba thought
James had been taking “spirit agents” and “ghosts” seriously. As James
insisted, it was contrary to fact and “unfair” for Leuba to make such a state¬
ment. Even his recognition of God as a spirit, James was saying, was not the
same as making God a ghost or shadowy apparition. He even denied having
“a feehng of God”; his notion of God or the Divine was both “impersonal
and abstract.” Being impersonal his God had to be nonanthropomorphic and
being abstract his God had to be nonmaterial in the sense that any abstraction
such as justice or circularity or infinity has to be nonmaterial. Possibly it
was in this sense that James was thinking of God as a spirit.If so, he failed
to make this explicit in the Varieties.
Incidentally, Ellenberger was familiar with the Varieties and alludes to it
as supplying “evidence of the Divine” in a restricted sense. This was intro¬
duced at the close of a discussion concerned with Janet’s “deep preoccupation
with religion” and his interest not only in the psychological analysis of
religious belief but also in spiritism as an “attempt to converse .. . with disem¬
bodied spirits” (pp. 394-400). Since James was also professionally identified
with religious experience and with psychical research, it is easy to understand
why Ellenberger thought of James as a spiritist. Furthermore, even though
James denied being one, some of his basic attitudes toward psychical research
and religion are hard to reconcile with this denial. In reacting to the para¬
normal, the mystical, and the supernatural, he was more inclined to side with
the claims of the spiritualists than vvath those of skeptics. At least there was
no a priori conviction of the spiritualist’s claims as utter nonsense.

FROM THE PARANORMAL TO THE SPIRITUAL

That James took psychical research seriously was evident in his comments
in the Principles. In fact, he was identified with the movement while engaged
in writing his psychology during the decade of the 1880s. This was the decade

^“^With reference to the way James thought of God, Perry introduced this clarifying
comment (Vol. II, pp. 358-359):
He insisted upon retaining not only the ideality but also the actuaUty of God-as a
conscious power beyond, with which one may come into beneficent contact; he
believed in the triumph, through this same power, of the cause of righteousness to
which his moral will was pledged; and he entertained a hopeful half-belief in personal
immortality.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 67

when both the British and American movements were established, the British
Society for Psychical Research founded in 1882 and the American one in
1884. James was a member of the American society from 1884 until his death
in 1910, and, as noted by Perry, served as vice-president for eighteen years
and as president for two years. Two different letters James wrote around
1884-1885 and from which Perry cited the following excerpts reflect James’s
purpose in supporting investigation of the paranormal (Vol. II, p. 160):

We are founding here a “Society for Psychical Research,” under which

innocent sounding name ghosts, second sight, spiritualism and all sorts
of hobgoblins are going to be “investigated” by the most high-toned
and “cultured” members of the community.
I take it the urgent thing ... is to ascertain in a manner so thorough as
to constitute evidence that will be accepted by outsiders, just what the
phenomenal conditions of certain phenomenal occurrences are. Not till
that is done, can spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic theories be even
mooted. I’m sure that the more we can steer clear of theories at first,
the better. . . . “Facts” are what are wanted.

It is important to emphasize that James was on the alert for the possible
discovery of such paranormal “facts” while he was writing the Principles. This
is so because, as will be brought out shortly, James has sometimes been listed
as having endorsed the hypothesis of unconscious mental processes on the
basis of findings reported in the literature of psychical research. Since he had
such findings in mind while engaged in writing Volume I of the Principles, it
is hard to believe that he interpreted any or all of them as justifying endorse¬
ment of this hypothesis. Otherwise what he wrote about “mediumships” in
Chapter 10 (pp. 393-400) should have induced him to revise or retract what
he had written in Chapter 6 (pp. 162-176) about the existence of unconscious
mental states.
In the course of time, however, James appeared to favor “spiritualistic”
interpretations not only with respect to the “facts” reported by psychical
researchers, but also with respect to religious experiences reported by the
devout. In 1904, the very year in which he had assured Leuba that he was not
an out and out spiritist, he had occasion to indicate in what sense one might
believe in a “spiritual reality.” This took place when he consented to reply to
a questionnaire dealing with religious belief. The way he disposed of two of
the questions will shed light on the issue under consideration. As excerpted
from the questionnaire by Murphy and Ballou, the first one reads (1960,
pp. 272-273):

Question: Is God an attitude of the Universe toward yowl Answer: Yes,

but more conscious. “God,” to me, is not the only spiritual reality to
believe in. Religion means primarily a universe of spiritual relations
surrounding the earthly practical ones, not merely relations of “value,”
but agencies and their activities. I suppose that the chief premise for
my hospitality towards the religious testimony of others is my con-
68 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

viction that “normal” or “sane” consciousness is so small a part of

actual experience. Whate’er be true, it is not true exclusively, as philis¬
tine scientific opinion assumes. The other kinds of consciousness bear
witness to a much wider universe of experiences, from which our beUef
selects and emphasizes such parts as best satisfy our needs.

And the second one reads (p. 274):

Question: Do you believe in personal immortahty? Answer: Never

keenly, but more strongly as I grow older.

In his answer to the first question James introduced a distinction between

two kinds of consciousness: {a) ordinary or “normal” consciousness con¬
cerned with a narrow segment of “actual experience,” and {b) the kind
concerned with a “wider” realm of experiences indicative of “a universe of
spiritual relations.” Just what is implied by this latter realm will be con¬
sidered later. For the time being it is enough to note that the distinction in
question was described in terms of an antithesis between “earthly” relations
on the one hand and “spiritual” relations on the other. It is also well to note
that the answer to the second question, with its acknowledgment of agrowing
belief in personal immortahty, is also suggestive of belief in the existence of a
separate spiritual realm.
Actually James was doing no more than defending belief in a spiritual
world and in personal immortality. He was not ready to transform his belief
about such matters into dogmatic convictions. This was clear from his review
of F. W. H. Myers’ Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. As
one of the pioneer participants in psychical research Myers had been per¬
suaded of the spiritistic implications of many paranormal phenomena. In the
volume under review his object had been to demonstrate what they signified
for the survival hypothesis. It was a long review and there is no need to con¬
sider it in detail. For present purposes it will suffice to introduce an early
introductory paragraph and a later concluding one. The early one serves as a
reminder of what James took to be the correct attitude with which to investi¬
gate and evaluate paranormal reports. As quoted by Murphy and Ballou, this
paragraph reads as follows (1960, p. 227):

Anyone with a healthy sense for evidence, a sense not methodically

blunted by the sectarianism of “science,” ought now, it seems to me, to
feel that exalted sensibilities and memories, veridical phantasms,
haunted houses, trances with super-normal faculty, and even experi¬
mental thought-transference, are natural kinds of phenomena which
ought, just like other natural events, to be followed up with scientific
curiosity.

The later, concluding paragraph (p. 236) serves to indicate that James had
reservations regarding the truth of what Myers had to say about a spiritual
world in general and about immortahty in particular:
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 69

As regards the truth of his theory, as contradistinguished from its formal

merits as a constructive effort, it is certainly too early for anyone to
pass dogmatic judgment. Most readers, even those who admire the
scheme as a whole, will doubtless shrink from yielding credence to it
unreservedly. It will seem hke skating over ice too thin for any intel¬
lect less nimble than Myers’ to place its feet on boldly.

ON BELIEF IN THE
SUPERNATURAL AND IMMORTALITY

James was thus unable to give his unqualified endorsement to the Myers
theory. In finding it “too early for anyone to pass dogmatic judgment” he'
was urging postponement of a final verdict until coercive evidence—either
positive or negative—made it possible to render a verdict. By urging suspen¬
sion of judgment he was evidently going on record as opposed to those who
seem to dismiss any spiritistic theory in the name of “science,” although he
was not unmindful of the fact that belief in spiritualism might suggest a con¬
comitant belief in the supernatural and thus be at variance with the concept
of natural law as understood by the world of science. Nevertheless, in a
“Postscript” to his book on The Varieties of Religious Experience he faced
this issue and concluded with endorsement of a qualified supernaturalism in
these words (1902, p. 523):
In spite of its being so shocking to reigning intellectual tastes, I believe
that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism and a com¬
plete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to be the
hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements are
met. That, of course, would be a program for other books than this;
what I now say sufficiently indicates to the philosophic reader the
place where I belong.

As a matter of fact, James had paved the way for possible endorsement of
this hypothesis some years before writing his “Postscript to the Varieties,
in 1898 when he delivered the “Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man”
at Harvard. The lecture was pubUshed under the title of Human Immortality:
Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. As suggested by the title, the
lecture was not so much concerned with the truth or validity of the doctrine
as with theoretical justification for possible belief in the doctrine. In particu¬
lar, he was concerned with the argument that belief in human immortality
is hard or impossible to justify since mind or personality is obviously a func¬
tion of the brain and consequently would cease to exist with the death of
the brain.
This argument, James pointed out, assumes mental events to be func¬
tionally dependent upon brain tissue in the sense of being a product of brain
metabolism, just as books can be said to be a product of the printing press.
But James refused to accept this argument as an irrefutable objection. Func¬
tional dependence, he also pointed out, may be conceived of in such a way
as to have the brain function as a transmissive mechanism rather than just as
70 - The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

a productive mechanism. Instead of producing thoughts its brain tracts might

be receiving them from the “outside” in a manner comparable to the way in
which telegraphic wires receive and transmit messages coming from “outside”
the wires. Apart from its bearing on the subject of immortality, Murphy
once called attention to the broader implications of this Jamesian suggestion
by interpreting it as follows (1949, p. 207):

Another solution for the mind-body problem was offered by James in

the form of a new variety of dualism. . . . The brain, he suggested, may
be not the basis for mental life, but merely the agency which transmits
psychic realities into the terms which organisms use in their relations
to their environment. . . .He felt that something of immense value could
be learned from phenomena which appeared to him to indicate that the
organism comes into contact with superbiological forces. The relation
of man to reality seemed to include much that was not to be found in
the biological structure of personality.

According to Perry, James took this transmission theory of brain action

seriously. It was not introduced as an ad hoc theory when preparing the
Ingersoll lecture, but rather, as explained by Perry (Vol. II, pp. 132-133):

This idea that the brain, instead of creating mind, merely strains and
canalizes it was an idea that James had long entertained, and an idea
which seemed to him entirely congruent with the alleged phenomena of
psychical research. It was here formulated in dualistic terms, as though
body and mind were different stuffs or substances. He was stiU holding
in reserve that “phenomenism” in which this dualism was to be over¬
come. But the transmission theory was clearly an anticipation of the
hypothesis developed in his later metaphysics and philosophy of
religion, in which the mystical and similar experiences were interpreted
as an overflow of superhuman mentality through a lowering of the
normal threshold.

What Perry called “superhuman mentality” is the same as what Murphy

called “superbiological forces.” Both phrases suggest the extraordinary, the
mystical, or the supernatural. Although James did not employ these phrases,
he did entertain a bold hypothesis to which they are applicable as descriptively
appropriate. This hypothesis assumed the existence of a kind of vast reservoir
of consciousness or mind capable of acting on the brain from the “outside.”
In a chapter on mysticism in the Varieties James alluded to such a reservoir
as the “cosmic consciousness.” This term, James reported, was first introduced
by Dr. R. M. Bucke, a Canadian psychiatrist, who had experienced this kind
of consciousness in his own person and who then studied it in others. As a
mystical experience it was difficult to describe, but Bucke tried to say some¬
thing about it in the following passage quoted by James from Bucke’s book
on the subject (1902, p. 398):

The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of

the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe. Along with
the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs an intellectual enlighten-
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 71

merit which alone would place the individual on a new plane of exist¬
ence—would make him almost a member of a new species. To this is
added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation,
elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral senses, which is
fully as striking and more important than is the enhanced intellectual
power. With these come what may be called a sense of immortality,
a consciousness of eternal Ufe, not a conviction that he shall have this,
but the consciousness that he has it already.

In his Ingersoll lecture James had not employed the term cosmic con¬
sciousness,^^ but he had anticipated the concept when he wrote about a
“mother-sea” of consciousness in the universe. This notion was intended to
provide for a possible independent spiritual realm as called for by the trans¬
mission theory. Belief in the existence of such a realm was implicit in a belief
in immortality. Under the circumstances James found Bucke’s cosmic con¬
sciousness with its suggestion of a “sense of immortality” a welcome alterna¬
tive to his mother-sea of consciousness. Both terms are obviously congruent
with the “spiritistic” presuppositions of ardent devotees of psychical research.
In this connection Perry called attention to the fact that James changed the
meaning of the concept of a mother-sea in the second edition of Human
Immortality. In the first edition it was presented as a vast, generalized sea of
consciousness in which the identity of individual souls was not assured. How¬
ever, in the second edition, James “revised his hypothesis, making the mother-
sea consist of a collection of individual spirits, each existing there in complete
and truer form than in what filters through to this phenomenal life” (Vol. II,
p. 137).
It ought to be obvious that this revised hypothesis reflects the climate of
belief sometimes engendered at a seance, in which the medium while in a
trance purportedly is receiving information from a departed spirit. In accord¬
ance with the transmission theory the information, as Perry put it, would be
filtering through to the medium from the communicating spirit. In formu¬
lating this hypothesis, James was not doing anything more than disposing of
a supposed “scientific” argument advanced by those opposed to belief in
immortality; he did not regard the hypothesis as confirmed. From this view¬
point, as previously noted, he did not regard himself as a “spiritist.” Further¬
more, his Ingersoll lecture had nothing to do with proof (ox the existence of
immortal spirits, it merely ventured to safeguard the right to believe in an
immortal soul for those who felt so disposed.

FROM PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

TO PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

In safeguarding the right to believe in a soul James was echoing a senti¬

ment he had already voiced in the Principles. In explaining why he was not

*®The lecture was delivered in 1898 and Bucke’s book Cosmic Consciousness was not
published until 1901.
72 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

basing his psychology on the theory of a soul he first noted that ’’‘‘the IMMEDI¬
ATELY KNOWN thing which on the mental side is in apposition with the
entire brain-process is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself” and
that the “wisest course” for psychology to follow would be one “which con¬
tents itself with verifiable laws, and seeks only to be clear, and to avoid unsafe
hypotheses.” And then he added (Vol. I, p. 182):

By keeping to it, our psychology will remain positivistic and non-meta¬

physical; and although this is only a provisional halting-place, and things
must some day be more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there
in this book, and ... we shall take no account of the soul. The spiritual¬
ist reader may nevertheless believe in the soul if he will', whilst the
positivistic one who wishes to give a tinge of mystery to the expression
of his positivism can continue to say that nature in her unfathomable
designs has mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two
things hang indubitably together and determine each other’s being, but
how or why, no mortal may ever know. (Italics added.)

From the foregoing it is evident that James deemed it “wisest” for scien¬
tific psychology to play safe by dispensing with metaphysical commitments
and also by restricting its research to problems capable of being settled by
means of relevant evidence. This, of course, was the same as urging restriction
to testable hypotheses. By implication James seemed to be contrasting “un¬
safe hypotheses” with those that are testable or verifiable. In deciding to
write a psychology without a soul he, in effect, was treating the soul-theory
as an unsafe hypothesis—there was no way of subjecting it to proof or dis¬
proof by known psychological techniques of investigation.
However, once he became familiar with the field of psychical research he
acted as if this field might accomplish what psychology could not. At all
events, as previously stressed, he was willing to support the quest for facts
psychical research might bring to light. He had little to say about this quest
in writing the Principles, but he definitely had it in mind in preparing his
Ingersoll lecture and when it came to preparing his lectures on religious
experience he continued to have psychical research in mind. For instance, in
connection with the subject of immortality he mentioned three prominent
leaders of psychical research in the final pages of the Varieties when, with
specific reference to “spirit-return,” he had this to say (1902, p. 524):

It seems to me that it is eminently a case for facts to testify. Facts,

I think, are yet lacking to prove ‘spirit-return,’ though I have the high¬
est respect for the patient labors of Messrs. Myers, Hodgson, and
Hyslop, and am somewhat impressed by their favorable conclusions.

The work of Myers impressed James particularly. In fact, at one point in

the Varieties in his lecture on conversion he had occasion to refer to and
approve of an important “discovery” made by Myers that in the opinion of
some writers has been taken to mean discovery of the unconscious. For ex-
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 73

ample, in his book Unconsciousness James G. Miller contrasted James’s

rejection of the concept in the Principles with his endorsement of it in the
Varieties (1942, p. 16). Actually, there was some mention of the work of
Myers in the Principles (Vol. I, p. 400) which, as will be made evident in the
next section, was directly related to the “discovery” in question. Had James
interpreted this as discovery of the unconscious, it seems that he not only
would have called attention to the reasons for his endorsement of what he
had rejected so vehemently in an earlier chapter but that he also would have
introduced an appropriate explanatory note in the earlier chapter. Since such
was not the case, James does not seem to have regarded Myers’ “discovery” as
identical with discovery of the unconscious—at least not the kind of uncon¬
scious he had rejected. Whether it was related to any other kind of concept
of the unconscious is a possibility calling for more discussion.

F. W. H. MYERS AND HIS “DISCOVERY”

Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) majored in the classics at

Cambridge University, taught Latin early in his career, and then served as a
school inspector for a short time. In other words, he had not started as a
student of psychical research, but by middle age he had become actively
identified with topics either directly or indirectly related to psychical research.
In fact, as mentioned earlier, he helped found the Society for Psychical
Research in 1882. Before long he was an active contributor to the society’s
publications as he reported on his investigations of mediumistic seances, on
double personality, on automatic writing, on what he called experimental
hypnotism, and on topics traditionally classified as occult phenomena. Had
the term been known in his day, his field of interest would have been called
parapsychology.
Nevertheless, even though Myers was not identified with the field of psy¬
chology, as distinguished from parapsychology, James paid tribute to him as
one who had advanced the cause of psychology. His tribute, as incorporated
in his lecture on religious conversion, took the following form (1902, p. 233):

I cannot but think that the most important step forward that has oc¬
curred in psychology since I have been a student of that science is the
discovery, first made in 1886, that, in certain subjects at least, there is
not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre
and margin, but an addition thereto in the shape of a set of memories,
thoughts, and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of the pri¬
mary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed as conscious
facts of some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs.
I call this the most important step forward because, unlike the other
advances which psychology has made, this discovery has revealed to us
an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature.
No other step forward which psychology has made can proffer any such
claim as this.
In particular this discovery of a consciousness existing beyond the
74 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

field, or subliminally as Mr. Myers terms it, casts light on many phe¬
nomena of religious biography.

Unfortunately, James failed to elaborate upon the exact nature of this

1886 discovery, as if he expected his audience to be somewhat familiar with
such “an important forward step.” Still, in retrospect it is difficult to think of
any development during 1886 that stands out as a unique contribution to
psychology’s progress. It may be that he was thinking of a discovery first
made around 1886. At all events, as previously noted, in the Principles he
referred to a “highly important series of articles” written by Myers and
“especially” one published in May 1885. It thus seems almost certain that the
key to the discovery is to be found in this series of articles. They all dealt
with automatic writing and what Myers suggested as the far-reaching possible
significance of the products of such writing. In what respect these suggestions
can be construed as revealing a momentous original discovery, as James indi¬
cated, is not immediately obvious from James’s account of it in the lecture
on conversion. He evidently thought of it as different from any preceding
psychological finding, since, in his words, “it was first made in 1886.”
Accordingly, to repeat, it could not have been discovery of the unconscious
because men like Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann had written about
the unconscious prior to 1886.
In this connection it is relevant to note another point in the lecture—that
the discovery does not apply to all, but only to “certain subjects.” No com¬
parable reservation is ordinarily apphed to the unconscious. At least Freudian
and other “dynamic” practitioners do not act as if only certain of their
patients possess an unconscious. It is not uncommon, however, to attribute
alleged “psychic powers” not to all human beings, but only to “certain sub¬
jects.” To discover the existence of such “powers” in some subjects would be
the equivalent of revealing what James described as “an entirely unsuspected
peculiarity in the constitution of human nature.” James thus seems to have
regarded the discovery as a product of psychical research.
In addition to its relevance for psychical research James also regarded the
Myers discovery as shedding light on certain phases of religious experience.
This accounts for the fact that James first called attention to it in his chapter
on religious conversion. He was thinking of conversion not as a matter of
ritualistic convenience but as a vitally important process oif inner change
having an effect on personal values and self-regard. In the words of James
(1902, p. 189):

To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience

religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the
process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and con¬
sciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously
right, superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon reli¬
gious realities. This at least is what conversion signifies in general terms.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 75

whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to

bring such a moral change about.

The conversion experience, as described by James, thus involves a trans¬

formation from being '’'consciously wrong” to being ‘‘'consciously right.” To
this extent there is no appeal to an unconscious process. In fact, in this same
chapter on conversion James had occasion to call one reference to such a
process a “misnomer.” This was in allusion to what had come to be called
“unconscious cerebration.” In the contexts to which the phrase had been
applied, James wrote (p. 207) that the word “unconscious” is “almost cer¬
tainly a misnomer” and ought to be “replaced by the vaguer term ‘subcon¬
scious’ or ‘subliminal.’ ” Apparently James preferred such “vaguer” terms as
synonyms for what he had also described as Myers’ discovery of an “extra¬
marginal” consciousness.
James failed to indicate why he regarded words like subliminal and extra¬
marginal as vaguer than the word unconscious, the word they were intended
to replace. Interestingly enough, as wiU soon be brought out, Myers himself
did not hesitate to employ the word unconscious from time to time; but
James eschewed the word. In fact, in his initial reference to Myers as a
student of automatic writing, he attributed the automatism in question to
dissociation and not to the unconscious (1890, Vol. I, p. 399). This consti¬
tutes another bit of evidence showing that for James the Myers discovery of
an extra-marginal consciousness was not the discovery of the unconscious.
Furthermore, it seems he was thinking of this extra-marginal or subliminal
consciousness as vague not so much in the sense of something being hazy and
obscure, but more in the sense of something so rich in its potential as to pre¬
clude prediction of its eventual progress or development. To appreciate the
nature of this potential for growth requires understanding of the concept of
subliminal consciousness as introduced by Myers, and interpreted by James.

THE CONCEPT OF SUBLIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS

It should be obvious that in the present context the word subliminal is not
to be equated with its laboratory use in psychophysical studies of subliminal
stimuli. That such stimuli may influence behavior was commonplace knowl¬
edge in psychological circles years before Myers had become interested in
psychical research. Stated differently, aside from the adjective subliminal,
his “discovery” had nothing to do with measurement of threshold values and
kindred psychophysical studies. Otherwise his “discovery” would not have
been a discovery.
In the course of reviewing Myers’ articles*^ on automatic writing and

Myers wrote three articles on the subject of automatic writing, all of which were pub¬
lished in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The first one was first
7(5 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

related topics it became evident that, unlike James, he had no misgivings

about referring to mind as unconscious. When James, as may be recalled, had
written about “this discovery of a consciousness existing beyond the field, or
subliminally as Mr. Myers terms it,” he neglected to show that Mr. Myers had
also termed it as existing unconsciously. In fact, although Myers seemed to
employ the words as synonymous, he made more frequent use of the word
unconscious. By way of illustration consider the following excerpts from one
of his papers on automatic writing, in which he was reporting on results of
various suggestions made to hypnotized subjects (1887, p. 238, p. 239, p.244,
p. 245, and pp. 256-257);

For the line was merely this,—that any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in
a brusque tone of command reached the unconscious self alone: any
other remark reached the subject—awake or somnambulic—in the ordi¬
nary way.

The command thus given had a persistent effect, and while the awak¬
ened Louise continued to chatter as usual with other persons, her
unconscious self wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet’s
questions.

... of what actions can we ever venture to assert that they are abso¬
lutely unconscious, absolutely unrememberable?

. . . but Adrienne, who had risen out of the Unconscious, had sunk into
the Unconscious again,—must I say?—for evermore.

We can no longer draw a broad line between the conscious and the
unconscious, and say that what a man is conscious of is part of his
true self, and that phenomena, however complex, which never enter
into his consciousness, must be considered as lying outside his true
identity. (All italics added.)

Whether the word subliminal can be substituted for the word unconscious
in each of the preceding excerpts is to be questioned, especially if subliminal
is taken to mean extra-marginal. The latter connotation is the one James
preferred and may be one reason he did not follow Myers in the use of the
term unconscious. Nevertheless, he was justified in assuming that for Myers
the unconscious was extra-marginal in the sense of being sensitive to external
influences. Such sensitivity is necessarily a prerequisite for James’s supposition
of brain mechanisms being transmissive. Myers provided for such transmissive
functions by attributing some products of automatic writing to telepathic
influences. As he put it, “we have seen cause not unfrequently to associate
telepathic impulses—both in their inception and in their reception—with the

published under the title of “On a Telepathic Explanation of Some So-Called Spiritual¬
istic Phenomena” in 1884, II: 217-237. In referring to it later he changed the title to
read “Automatic Writing—I” because, as he realized, the first title was too “cumbrous.”
The second article, “Automatic Writing-II,” appeared in 1885, III: 1-63, and “Auto¬
matic Writing-Ill” appeared in 1887, III: 209-261.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 77

unconscious rather than conscious operations of the brain” (1887, p. 210).

He called attention to such external influences most explicitly by noting that
“in nine cases out of ten the automatist attributes his writing to some influence
external to himself.” He then had this to say about the problem involved as
treated in an earlier one of his papers (1887, p. 213);

With this, then, as the problem before us, I propose now to develop in
a fresh direction a suggestion made, and partly acted upon, in my last
paper. 1 there dwelt on my conviction that if we are to understand
supernormal phenomena—phenomena transcending, apparently, the
stage of evolution at which we have admittedly arrived, —we must first
compare them, as fully as possible, both with normal and with abnormal
phenomena; —meaning by abnormal phenomena those which, while
diverging from the ordinary standard, fall below or, at least, do not
transcend it. 1 insisted also that we must expect that supernormal
phenomena, if they occur at all, will show many points of resemblance
to abnormal-nay, to positively morbid-phenomena, without there¬
fore themselves necessarily deserving to be classed as morbid in any
degree. When unfamihar impulses arise in the organism—whether these
impulses be evolutive or dissolutive in character-their readiest paths
of externalisation are likely to be somewhat similar; —just as . . . the
same kind of ache in the gums may indicate to our sensation either the
formation of an abscess or the growth of a tooth.

Myers, as shown in the next paragraph, regarded the latter distinction as

never having been made before and was thus possibly revealing one respect in
which James was later to credit him with having been first:

I cannot find that this principle is set forth in an accredited textbook.

Yet I must believe that it will come to be recognized as a guiding prin¬
ciple in psycho-physiological inquiry; nay, that this view will be seen to
have been inevitable so soon as external signs of psychological facts
were grasped with a certain degree of precision. Thus far the cerebral-
psychical changes which go on after the frame has once been built up
have been watched by the psychologist mainly in their evolutive, by
the physiologist mainly in their dissolutive aspect.

One of the evolutive aspects that constituted an undercurrent of Myers’

investigations had to do with possible proof for the immortality of the uncon¬
scious or subliminal self, or what Myers also designated as a transcendental
self. In an article entitled “Human Personality in the Light of Hypnotic
Suggestion” he dealt with this issue quite bluntly and unambiguously. After
outlining the scope of conditions to be investigated by the method of “experi¬
mental psychology in its strictest sense”-a scope embracing supernormal,
spontaneous, and induced mental states*^—he had this to say about one of his
own convictions (1885, p. 2):

‘■^As explained by Myers, these three terms all designate abnormal conditions. He failed
to cite specific examples of the supernormal states, apparently assuming the meaning to
78 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

My own conviction is that we possess—and can nearly prove it—some

kind of soul, or spirit, or transcendental self, which even in this life
occasionally manifests powers beyond the powers of our physical
organism, and which very probably survives the grave. Thus much I am
bound in candour to say, lest in what follows I should seem to be mysti¬
fying the reader, or sailing under colours not my own.

Many years later, around 1900, Myers wrote a book for the purpose of
completely proving what, as just indicated, he could only “nearly prove” in
1885. During the intervening years his experiences with automatic writing
and with mediumistic seances had brought about this change from strong
belief to utter certainty regarding the supernormal powers of the tran¬
scendental self and its probable status as an immortal spirit. For him it
appeared certain that on occasion information supplied by a medium while in
a trance could not possibly be a product of her own mind. Moreover, as
mentioned earlier in this chapter, James himself in the Principles had once
stated that he was persuaded by his “abundant acquaintance with the trances
of one medium” that in her trance condition she had facts to report of which
she had been 100 percent ignorant in her normal waking self. He again gave
expression to belief in such possible “spiritual” influences coming from with¬
out in this statement in the Varieties (pp. 242-243):

The lower manifestations of the Subliminal,^* indeed, fall within the

resources of the personal subject: his ordinary sense-material, inatten¬
tively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will
account for all his usual automatisms. But just as our primary wide¬
awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things
material, so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher spiritual
agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their
doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone
should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might close
a door which in the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open.... If
there be higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us
only through the subliminal door.

From the foregoing it seems that James was not quite ready to share
Myers’ spiritistic convictions. At all events he appeared to have reservations
about some of Myers’ certainties, as shown by the italicized subjunctive
phrase in which James in effect wondered “if there be” spiritual powers. This
raises a question concerning the extent to which James was prepared to

be self-evident as applicable to “mental and physical conditions of all kinds.” Under

spontaneous states he included “sleep and dreams, somnambulism, trance, hysteria,
automatism, alternating consciousness, epilepsy, insanity, death and dissolution.” In
contrast to such spontaneous states he listed this series of induced states: “narcotism,
hypnotic catalepsy, hypnotic somnambulism, and the like, which afford ... an unequalled
insight into the mysteries of man.”
1R
Just why James wrote thus with a capital S was not explained. The use of the definite
pronoun in the phrase “the Subliminal” connotes a specific entity possibly in the form
of a “higher spiritual agency,” mentioned in this same paragraph as “logically conceivable.”
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 79

endorse the views expressed by Myers. In fact, this question was once put to
James very directly and he dealt with it with comparable directness.

ANSWER TO A CHALLENGING QUESTION

The question was put to James by James Ward (1843-1925) a distinguished

Cambridge University psychologist. He and James, as noted by Perry, “had
been acquainted since 1880, and had corresponded on psychological ques¬
tions.” When the Varieties was published James saw to it that Ward received
a copy. This resulted in an interchange of letters during July of 1902 in the
first one of which, among other comments. Ward had this to say about
James’s evident approval of the views of Myers (Perry, Vol. II, pp. 648-649):

I do not, of course, object to your taking the subconscious for granted,

but I feel you go too far in accepting Myers’ views as so much “gospel
truth.” So far as I can see the entire presentative content of subcon¬
sciousness is derivative; it consists, as you seem to admit, of memories
or suggestions. It would, I think, be substantially true to say: “There is
nothing in subconsciousness—in the way of idea, at least—that was not
first in consciousness.” Religious ideas, then, cannot have originated
there: the most that can be said is that they may be transfigured and
quickened by emotions that have emerged thence. Subconsciousness
may be the source of an illumination inexplicable enough to the subject
experiencing it, but it cannot, I think, be a source of revelation. . . .
On the one hand, all seems to turn on the extent to which the subcon¬
scious door is open or shut, and here the individual is helpless; but, on
the other, you still talk of the will to beUeve: “we and God,” you say,
“have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to his influence
our deepest destiny is fulfilled.” ... No doubt the relation of the human
and the divine wills is a hard, perhaps a hopeless problem, but without
some genuine “synergism” an admitted fact, I don’t see how anything
worth the name of rehgion is possible. Yet you seem to make it a matter
of enthusiasm in the bad sense, of “obsession” and the like: in fact you
seem to bring religion so much into hne with what is fundamentally
pathological, that if I did not know you better, I should be tempted to
regard your whole discourse as a practical joke!

In his reply to the letter James, after an introductory solicitous inquiry

about Ward’s health in the opening paragraph, continued with the next para¬
graph as follows (Vol. II, 649-650):

As for what you say of my results, I am moved to make a brief com¬

ment. I don’t accept all Myers’ opinions as “gospel truth,” quite the
reverse. But I think Myers’ problem, the “exploration of the subhminal,”
to be the most important definite investigation opened of late in psy¬
chology, and I think of Myers’ way of going at it on the whole admirable.
Who has brought together and simplified as much as he? Have you seen
an obituary article on his relation to psychology by me in the S.P.R.
Proceedings of last year?
80 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

As for the derivative nature of the subliminal, it certainly in my view

is not entire. The existence of supernormal memory ... and supernormal
cognitions . . . proves that there is a region for exploration, and that
Myers’ problem is genuinely important. The relation of it all to rehgion
is through mysticism. I can’t ignore the vital prominence of that sort of
experience in the religious life. 1 have fully admitted the necessary
cooperation of intellect in elaborating the results, and think you mis¬
apprehend me as saying “all feeling and no reason.”
But I feel sure that contemplative reason would produce no rehgion ...
unless there were in addition some of these other non-rational intuitive
processes to clinch persuasion.

Evidently James conceived of the subliminal as, at least to some degree, a

product of influences unique to the field of psychical research in contradis¬
tinction to the field of psychological research. This is indicated by his answer
to Ward’s contention regarding all subliminal content having been derived
from what had been the normal content of consciousness. In effect James
argued some content is of “supernormal” origin and, as related to religion,
has to do with “mysticism” and “intuitive processes.” Implicitly he credited
Myers with having shown the bearing of such supernormal findings on the
progress of psychology. That is why he called Ward’s attention to the obituary
article concerned with Myers’ relation to psychology. This article is important
because it supplies a convenient digest of James’s reasons for once having
written the Myers discovery to be “the most important step forward that has
occurred in psychology since I have been a student of that science.”
The high points of the James article were presented at a meeting in London
of the Society for Psychical Research on Friday, March 8, 1901. As reported
in the Society’s Journal,the meeting was “devoted to a memorial to
F. W. H. Myers,” with special prominence given to these minutes of the meet¬
ing (pp. 54-56);

Mr. J. G. Piddington then read extracts from a paper by Professor

William James on Frederic Myers’ services to Psychology. Mr. James
began by pointing out that the quest which Myers had put before him¬
self was that of immortality, and that his contributions to Psychology
were incidental to that quest. But the service which he rendered to Psy¬
chology was nevertheless of a very original and striking kind. It was
Myers who first definitely opened up the whole region of the subcon¬
scious mind, and devised methods for investigating its resources, by
crystal gazing, automatic writing, trance speaking, and the like. His
great achievement was to bring unity into an assemblage of heterogene¬
ous phenomena; to show the analogies and resemblances between things
seemingly so wide apart as hallucination, demonical possession, hysteria,
and the visions of genius; to weave them into a system.
Myers showed that the great region of mental activity, which he termed
the subliminal, contained matter of various kinds, various in its origins
and in its utility; some mere rubbish, lapsed fragments of memory;

Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1901-1902, X.

 James on Mind as Unconscious • 81

some the stuff of which day-dreams are made; but here and there we
come across indications of faculties and modes of perception superior
to those of common waking life.
The corner-stone of Myers’ system was the conception that the “con¬
sciousness” of the classic psychology is but a portion of a larger whole—
an organism in perpetual process of evolution. His evolutionary concep¬
tion of consciousness was, in the writer’s view, an hypothesis of first-rate
philosophic importance and might be destined to play a leading part in
the psychology of the future. Whether Myers’ hypotheses were, in fact,
justified or not, they were at any rate far more plausible than those of
the classic psychology. Nature was everywhere gothic not classic; and
Myers, in contrast to the clearly defined and nicely articulated con¬
sciousness of the old psychology, presented us with a vast aggregate of
half-shaped, half-systematized, and partly incoherent phenomena-a
veritable jungle such as nature herself is wont to show the explorer.
The writer then contrasted the official view of the consciousness
which survives death, an abstract mentality living on spiritual truth, and
communicating ideal wisdom—the academic platonizing Sunday-school
conception—with the view of human survival presented by Myers.
Whatever verdict might ultimately be passed upon his work, he
would, it was likely, be long remembered as the pioneer who staked out
and claimed for science a vast tract of mental wilderness.

Just as James’s letter to Ward reflected endorsement of the “supernormal,”

so do the preceding extracts from his memorial tribute to Myers. It is clearly
evident, for example, in his references to “indications of faculties and modes
of perception superior to those of common waking life” and “the conscious¬
ness which survives death.” However, as James indicated, Myers’ “contribu¬
tions to psychology” were not directly dependent upon this quest for proof
of immortality; they were incidental by-products of this quest. Moreover,
since they were described as being “of a very original and striking kind,”
they must embody the essence of Myers’ discovery. James also characterized
Myers as a “pioneer” whose “hypotheses” impressed him as being more
“plausible” than those of traditional psychology even if they should turn out
not to have been justified. This is a perplexing statement. Hypotheses are to
be judged by means of evidence confirming their validity and not by their
inherent plausibility. Does this mean that James was thinking of Myers’ dis¬
covery as a function of one or more of these plausible hypotheses? If so, it
may have been more of a conjecture than a genuine discovery.

THE MYERS DISCOVERY:

FACT OR CONJECTURE?

Whether the Myers “discovery” was as “original and striking” as James

believed is to be questioned. Had it really been dramatically revelatory of
something crucially important and hitherto unknown, Myers’ name would
be familiar to all serious students of psychology and most textbooks of
general psychology would be keeping his memory alive. In other words, his
discovery does not appear to have been as momentous as the discoveries made
82 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

by men like Newton, Darwin, Roentgen, Helmholtz, Mendel, and Pasteur.

Furthermore, equating the discovery with subliminal processes may not have
been as original as James indicated. The very term subliminal was an outgrowth
of Fechner’s efforts to measure barely perceptible or subconscious sensory
impressions, and some decades before Myers the existence of impressions
below the level of awareness had also been postulated by Herbart. Unlike
Myers’, their views of the subliminal were not derivatives of psychical research.
As James realized, this made Myers’ views of the extra-marginal or subliminal
consciousness uniquely different from any view advanced prior to 1886. It
was sui generis and thus, as James thought, could be hailed as a discovery and
an important forward step for psychology.
Even though Myers’ discovery was a derivative of psychical research, James
could welcome it as a contribution to the future of psychology; for he, unlike
the majority of his psychological contemporaries, took such research seriously.
He had personally participated in the critical examination of trance phe¬
nomena at mediumistic seances. Also, after due examination of the relevant
evidence he became persuaded of the reality of mental telepathy—he had
become convinced that it is possible for one mind to communicate with
another mind directly and independently of any known process of sense
• 9n
perception.
James had also become convinced of the existence of subliminal processes
that might render such telepathic communication possible. This is evident
from what he included in his review of Myers’ book Human Personality and
Its Survival of Bodily Death, quoted here from the review by Murphy and
Ballou (1960, p. 228):

There is a subliminal region of life which opens fitfully into a supra¬

liminal region. The only doubt is as to whether it be general in human
beings, or whether it be not limited to a few hypnotic and hysteric
subjects. . . .
The subliminal regions being thus established as an actuality, the next
question is as to its farther limits, where it exists. My subliminal, for
instance, has my ordinary consciousness for one of its environments,
but has it additional environments on the remoter side? Has it direct
relations of intercourse, for example, with the consciousness, subliminal
or supraliminal of other men?

By way of additional explanation James supplied the following account of

the subliminal seifs relation to the spiritual world as conceived by Myers
(1960, p. 230):

20
Telepathy is not quite the same as extrasensory perception or ESP. The latter term
refers to direct awareness of some condition or event without activation of any known
sensory process as is reported to occur when designs on ESP cards are “perceived” even
though the cards are hidden or placed face down. On the other hand, telepathy has to do
with “reading” another’s mind and not with non-sensory awareness of an impersonal
event.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 83

From its intercourse with this spiritual world the subliminal self of each
of us may draw strength and communicate it to the suprahminal life.
The “energizing of life” seems, in fact, to be one of its functions. The
reparativeness of sleep, the curative effects of self-suggestion, the “up-
rushing” inspirations of genius, the regenerative influences of prayer
and of religious self-surrender, the strength of belief which mystical
experiences give, are all ascribed by Myers to the “dynamogeny” of the
spiritual world, upon which we are enabled to make drafts of power by
virtue of our connection with our subliminal.

In these two quotations James appears to have summarized his reasons for
regarding Myers’ account of the subUminal as a genuine discovery. As a
description it is more detailed and clarifying than the account given in the
Varieties. It is now quite clear that the “discovery” is contingent upon belief
in the reality of a spiritual world and its impact on the life of man. Evidence
for the existence of such a world was almost entirely a product of psychical
research. Like modern reports coming from centers of parapsychology the
reports coming from centers of psychical research failed to dissipate the
latent skepticism of the psychological world as a whole. For the majority of
psychologists in James’s day neither mental telepathy nor the “dynamogeny
of the spiritual world” were judged to be discoveries of psychological reality.
At best they were deemed to be unconfirmed hypotheses or interesting con¬
jectures. Similarly, the claims of contemporary students of parapsychology
for the factual status of extrasensory perception continue to meet with objec¬
tions by many psychologists for whom the evidence upon which such claims
is based is not at all coercive. As they see it, ESP is not a fact in the sense in
which color blindness, dyslexia, and the blind spot are facts. Stated a little
differently, ESP has not yet been discovered as the latter three facts were
once discovered. In terms of this perspective, James to the contrary notwith¬
standing, the Myers account of the subliminal region was more conjecture
than discovery.

CONCERNING THE SUBLIMINAL

AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

Even as conjecture, Myers’ views of the subliminal are not to be construed

as foreshadowings of the Freudian unconscious nor as endorsement of any of
the views of the unconscious James had examined and rejected in the Prin¬
ciples. In fact, as may be recalled, even though Myers had repeatedly used the
word unconscious as a synonym for the word subliminal, James never did so.
At no time in writing about Myers’ discovery did he refer to it as discovery of
the unconscious. It was always discovery of the subliminal or extra-marginal.
This means that he was still giving a negative answer to the question raised at
the beginning of this chapter, “Do unconscious mental states exist?” Stated
differently, in connection with Myers’ discovery he was recognizing the exist¬
ence of subliminal or subconscious mental states and denying the existence of
unconscious mental states.
84 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Nevertheless, as already mentioned, it is precisely in connection with

Myers’ discovery as presented in the Varieties that some authors have listed
James as finally having come to endorse the concept of the unconscious
despite his earlier rejection of it in the Principles. In fairness to them it should
be reaUzed that there is one passage in the chapter on conversion which taken
by itself reads as if James may have had the Freudian unconscious in mind.
This is the passage (1902, pp. 234-235):

In the wonderful explorations by Binet, Janet, Breuer, Freud, Mason,

Prince, and others of the subliminal consciousness of patients with
hysteria, we have revealed to us whole systems of underground life, in
the shape of memories of a painful sort which lead a parasitic existence,
buried outside of the primary fields of consciousness, and making irrup¬
tions thereto with hallucinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling
and of motion, and the whole procession of symptoms of hysteric
disease of body and of mind. Alter or abolish by suggestion these sub¬
conscious memories, and the patient immediately gets well. His symp¬
toms were automatisms, in Mr. Myers’ sense of the word.

Careful attention to the details of this passage will show that it does not
constitute recognition and approval of Freud’s dynamic unconscious. As if
mindful of his former misgivings concerning mental states as unconscious,
James seems to have been deliberate in his avoidance of the word unconscious.
Instead the passage mentions “the subliminal consciousness’’ and “subcon¬
scious memories.” Subliminal and subconscious are, of course, synonymous
terms, but they are not terms of which Freud would have approved. In his
Interpretation of Dreams he explains that “subconscious” is to be avoided
because it tends to “stress the equivalence of what is psychical to what is con¬
scious” (p. 615). Accordingly, the subconscious for both James and Freud is
unrelated to the concept of mind as unconscious.
Furthermore, the entire passage is concerned with the subconscious of vic¬
tims of hysteria and their automatisms. By implication “the whole procession
of symptoms” ascribed to their subconscious is unique to them as patients
and is not to be ascribed to mankind as a whole. For Freud, on the other
hand, the unconscious was not unique to a given class of patients but -was
viewed as characteristic of everyone’s psychological endowment. In this con¬
nection it may be recalled that when it came to treating his patients Freud
used free association rather than the technique of suggestion mentioned by
James. According to James, once the memories buried in the subliminal are
dislodged by suggestion “the patient immediately gets well.” This kind of
brief psychotherapy is very different from the months or years of psycho¬
analytic probing required to dislodge memories buried in the unconscious.
Some of the other men listed by James as having contributed to the study
of hysteria were more directly concerned with the subconscious than was
Freud. Consider the names of Binet and Janet, since James had discussed
their contributions in one section of the Principles, a fairly long section
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 85

entitled “ ‘Unconsciousness’ in Hysterics” (Vol. I, pp. 202-214). The table of

contents gives this more explicit caption: “The ‘unconsciousness’ of hysterics
not genuine” (p. x). In general, James accounted for the symptomatology of
hysteria—the anomalies of sensation and motion—in terms of the concept of
dissociation, the kind of division of consciousness Binet had called “double
consciousness.”
Both Binet and Janet, as noted by James, attributed these anomalies to
dissociation. With specific reference to induced or suggested loss of cutaneous
sensibility James reported that they “have shown that during the times of
anesthesia, and co-existing with it, sensibility to the anaesthetic parts is also
there, in the form of a secondary consciousness entirely cut off from the
primary or normal one, but susceptible of being tapped and made to testify
to its existence in various odd ways” (p. 203). Automatic writing is one of
these odd ways, but many others were employed.
As James interpreted such findings, hysterical abnormalities are not indica¬
tive of mind as dissociated or split into one set of conscious processes and
another set of unconscious ones. For James, both of the dissociated or split
sets are conscious. Whether such splitting or dissociation may occur in the
mentally healthy or just in the hysterically predisposed was a problematic
issue, concerning which James wrote as follows (Vol. I, p. 210):

How far this splitting up of the mind into separate consciousnesses may
exist in each one of us is a problem. M. Janet holds that it is only pos¬
sible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect of
unifying co-ordinating power. An hysterical woman abandons part of
her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it together.
The abandoned part meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or sub¬
conscious self. In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand, what is
dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the next.

Notice that Janet is said to have referred to his patient’s “secondary or

sub-conscious self’ and not to her unconscious self. This appears to be a
distinction of which Janet would have approved. In his writings there are
repeated allusions to “subconscious fixed ideas” and no mention of uncon¬
scious fixed ideas. Irt fact, the concept of subconscious fixed ideas was origi¬
nal with Janet. There have been some who interpreted Janet’s analysis of
the nature and origin of these subconscious ideas as not too different from
the psychoanalytic teachings of Freud, giving rise to a rumor that Freud was
indebted to Janet for the essential conceptual foundation of psychoanalysis.
Needless to say, this sort of rumor was bitterly resented by Freud. As reported
by Ernest Jones (Vol. Ill, pp. 213-214), he even gave expression to this resent¬
ment late in life after he had been asked whether he would care to receive a
visit from Janet. In a letter written in April, 1937, to one of his close asso¬
ciates he explained why he “wUl not see Janet, in particular objecting to
“the libel” which French writers had spread concerning his having “stolen”
86 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Janet’s ideas.^* Janet could have cleared Freud’s name by denouncing the
libelous falsehood, but this never happened.
Janet was persona non grata to Freud for another reason, especially perti¬
nent in the present context since it has to do with what Freud took to be
Janet’s disparagement of the unconscious by his dismissing the concept of
mind as unconscious as “just a manner of speaking.” This provoked Freud to
disparage Janet’s scientific thinking; “You can get an idea of his scientific
level from his utterance that the unconscious is une faqon de parler. ” From
this it seems evident that Freud did not regard Janet as having contributed to
the discovery of the unconscious, as some writers have suggested. Whyte, for
example, definitely implies this by listing Janet’s name among those con¬
cerned with “the successive discovery. . .of the unconscious mind” (1960,
p. 196). And Ellenberger makes this very explicit in his long chapter devoted
to the life and influence of Janet (1970, pp. 331-417). On the very first page
of this chapter, contrary to Freud’s repudiation of his alleged indebtedness to
Janet, Ellenberger declares Janet’s “work” to have been “one of the main
sources for Freud.”
All things considered, it should now be evident that Freud would not have
welcomed the statement by James to the effect that he along with Janet had
engaged in the study of “the subliminal consciousness of patients with hys¬
teria.” As already indicated, Freud had misgivings about subliminal or sub¬
conscious processes, as well as about any influence of Janet’s investigation of
such processes on his own exploration of the unconscious. Under the circum¬
stances it should also be evident that the passage in which the foregoing
statement was made is just another allusion to James’s recognition of the

21
The use of the term “stolen” suggests that the French writers accused Freud of having
availed himself of Janet’s ideas without acknowledging the source. If so, then Freud’s
indignant protest is entirely justified, for there are several places in the different volumes
of Freud’s Collected Papers in which his indebtedness to or agreement with Janet is
acknowledged. In Volume I, for example, in connection with a discussion of the differ¬
ence between organic and hysterical'paralyses Freud wrote (p. 55), “On this point I must
agree completely with the views expressed by Janet in the latest numbers of the Archives
de Neurologic.” In “The Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis,” Janet is given credit for
having been the “first” to have advanced a certain theory concerned with posthypnotic
suggestibility. As expressed by Freud the credit took this form (1912, p. 261):
A post-hypnotic suggestion is a laboratory product, an artificial product. But if we
adopt the theory of hysterical phenomena first put forward by Pierre Janet and
elaborated by Breuer and myself, we shall not be at a loss for plenty of natural facts
showing the psychological character of the post-hypnotic suggestion even more clearly
and distinctly.
Finally, to cite one more example, in his paper “On the History of the Psycho-Analytic
Movement” Freud, as shown in the following quotation, after voicing dissatisfaction with
Janet ended with a word of commendation (1914, pp. 32-33):
In Paris itself, a conviction still seems to reign (to which Janet himself gave eloquent
expression at the Congress in London in 1913) that everything good in psycho¬
analysis is a repetition of Janet’s views with insignificant modifications, and that
everything else in it is bad... . Even though we deny his claims, however, we cannot
forget the value of his work on the psychology of the neuroses.
 James on Mind as Unconscious - 87

hopes for Myers’ discovery of the subUminal and is not in any way related to
Freud’s concept of the unconscious.
This should not be interpreted as meaning rejection of all Freudian insights
on the part of James. After all, the passage in question was written at the turn
of the century when Freud’s ideas were not yet widely known. Even his most
important book, The Interpretation of Dreams, which had been published in
1899, was obscure at the time James was writing the Varieties. As pointed
out by Strachey in his introduction to the English translation of Freud’s
book (p. xx), by 1905 only 351 copies of the book had been sold. It is not
hkely that James had come across one of these copies when writing his lec¬
tures on religious experience; at least there is no mention of the book in the
Varieties. Some years later, James did have occasion to consider Freud’s
dream theory, especially as it might be related to the kind of functional psy¬
chology James came to sponsor, but this was not tantamount to belated
endorsement of the Freudian or any other kind of unconscious.
There is no way of knowing how Freud would have dealt with James’s
critique of the unconscious. He may not have been familiar with it—in his
extensive bibliography in the different editions of the volume on dreams there
is no mention of the Principles. In fact, Jones indicates very definitely (Vol. I,
p. 373) that Freud had not read James’s classic at the time he was developing
his theory of mind as unconscious. Nor does Jones indicate that he ever read
it. If he had come across the sections concerned with the arguments critical
of the unconscious, it is conceivable that he would have been as unenthusi-
astic about James as he had been about Janet. Nevertheless, as will be brought
out in the next chapter, the time came when he welcomed what he took to
be James’s approval of and hopes for his psychoanalytic psychology.

SUMMARY REVIEW

In retrospect it can now be seen that virtually all the issues introduced in
this chapter are either direct or indirect outgrowths of James’s consistently
negative answer to this basic question; “Do unconscious mental states exist?
Dealing with this question involved consideration of the following topics:

1. The petites perceptions of Leibnitz and his argument to the effect

that inaudible sounds of a single wave must be heard unconsciously if
the roar of an ocean is to be apperceived. This argument, James noted,
involves the fallacy of division.
2. The behavior of neither sleepwalkers nor hypnotized subjects requires
an assumption of control exercised by unconscious mental processes.
3. Like difficulty in recalling dreams, so posthypnotic amnesia suggests
dissociation rather than repression by the unconscious.
4. The posthypnotic execution of an experimenter’s requests is a form of
delayed reaction explicable as the outcome of a determining tendency
rather than as the product of an unconscious motive.
88 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

5. James regarded the concept of unconscious motivation as questionable

because its advocates so often seem to assume that once we become
conscious of a hitherto unknown aspect of a given motive for a past
action, that aspect must have been resident in the unconscious all
along. This involves the fallacy of sensationalism or atomism.
6. The foregoing fallacy was also discussed in connection with intellec¬
tual confusion stemming from failure to recognize the difference
between entertaining an idea and subsequently coming to know many
more things about the given idea.
7. As James saw it, when ideas are not being thought and when acts of
skill are not being performed their potential reinstatement is a func¬
tion of the neurology of memory as contrasted with their supposi¬
titious preservation in a hypothetical unconscious.
8. Another aspect of the preceding issue was discussed in terms of Her-
bart’s concept of an apperceptive mass.
9. Attention was called to the fact that, as James noted, both Wundt and
Helmholtz changed from their early acceptance of the concept of
unconscious inference to their later “recantation.”
10. It follows from the above that, contrary to the opinion of some recent
writers, neither Wundt nor Helmholtz are to be listed as having
endorsed the concept of mind as unconscious.
11. The “basic process” stressed by Helmholtz referred to the transition
from preoccupation with details in the early stages of learning to the
automatism of habit in the final stages. No need, then, to posit a
transfer of the preoccupation to an unconscious mind.
12. Discussion of James’s interest in automatic writing, trance states, and
religious experience as related to questions of spiritism and the uncon¬
scious.
13. Consideration of James’s identification with psychical research and
his defense of belief in the supernatural and immortality involved dis¬
cussion of (a) the concept of natural law; (h) the distinction between
transmissive and productive brain mechanisms; and (c) the concept of
cosmic consciousness.
14. James regarded the goals of psychical research as different from the
goals of psychological research.
15. The discovery of the subliminal by Myers and its impUcations for
psychical research and some phases of religion as perceived by James.
16. Conclusions regarding the existence of a spiritistic realm when inferred
from the concept of subliminal consciousness are conjectures rather
than discoveries.
17. The subliminal or subconscious of Binet and Janet is not to be con¬
fused with the unconscious of Freud.
18. For Freud the subconscious was an untenable concept.
19. Janet was persona non grata to Freud.
20. Freud was ignorant of ike Principles.
 James on Mind as Unconscious • 89

A CONCLUDING COMMENT

In listing his objections to the concept of mind as unconscious in the Prin¬

ciples of 1890 and in the Varieties of 1902 James did not have the Freudian
unconscious in mind. Consequently, taken strictly, his rejection of the concept
as outlined in the present chapter is not to be construed as a rejection of the
Freudian unconscious. Neither is it to be interpreted as an endorsement of
Freud’s views, as some writers were led to beheve. What he thought about
these views in later years will be dealt with in the course of the next chapter.
What merits expUcit recognition at this point is the fact that by 1890
James, Wundt, and Helmholtz as founding fathers of psychology as science-
like Ebbinghaus some two decades earlier—were taking a dim view of the
concept of unconscious mental states. In other words, by the turn of the
century, with the advent of Freud, academic psychology had already given
due consideration to the unconscious and found it irreconcilable with hopes
for the development of a genuine science of psychology.

REFERENCES

Abrams, S. 1971. “The Psychoanalytic Unconscious.” In The Unconscious

Today, edited by M. Kanzer. New York: International Universities Press.
Beldoch, M. 1972. “Science as Fiction.” Psychotherapy and Social Science
Review 6: 12-18.
Boring, E. G. 1950. A History of Experimental Psychology. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Brett, G. S. 1912. >1 History of Psychology, Vol. I. London: George Allen &
Unwin, Ltd.
Ellenberger, E. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic
Books, Inc.
English, H. B., and English, A. C. 1958. >1 Comprehensive Dictionary of Psy¬
chological and Psychoanalytical Terms. New York: Longmans, Green
and Co.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New
York: Basic Books, Inc. (Original edition first published in 1899.)
-. 1938. “Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis.” In The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans¬
lated by James Strachey, Vol. XXIII, pp. 279-286. London: The Hogarth
Press.
Hartshorne, C 1968. The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation. Port
Washington, N.Y.: Kennikot Press, Inc. (First published in 1934.)
Helmholtz, H. 1965. “On Perception and the Unconscious Conclusion.” In
A Source Book in the History of Psychology, edited by R. J. Herrnstein
and E. G. Boring. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hilgard, E. R. 1971. “Hypnotic Phenomena: The Struggle for Scientific
Acceptance.” Scientist 59: 567-577.
Hunter, W. S. 1913. “Delayed Reaction in Animals and Children.” Behavior
Monographs 2, No. 6, p. 86.
90 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

James, W. 1890. Principles of Psychology, Vols. I and II. New York: Henry
Holt and Co.
-1898. Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine.
Boston; Houghton Mifflin Co.
-. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience—A Study in Human
Nature. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
Jones, E. 1953, 1957. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. I and
Vol. HI (respectively). New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Lashley, K. S. 1963. Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc. (First published in 1929.)
Miller, J. G. 1942. Unconsciousness. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Miihl, A. \93Q. Automatic Writing. Dresden: Theodor Steinkopff.
Murphy, G. 1947. Personality. New York: Harper & Bros.
-. 1949. Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Murphy, G., and Ballou, R. O. 1960. William James on Psychical Research.
New York: The Viking Press.
Myers, F. W. H. 1885. “Human Personality in the Light of Hypnotic Sugges¬
tion.” \n Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research III: 1-24.
-. 1887. “Automatic Writing—III.” In Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research HI: 290-261.
Perry, R. B. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James, Vols. I and
11. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
Pietsch, P. 1972. “Shuffle Bram.Harper’s Magazine 244: 41-46.
Prince, M. 1906. The Dissociation of a Personality. New York: Longmans,
Green and Co.
Shipley, T., ed. 1961. Classics in Psychology. New York: Philosophical
Library.
Sperry, R. W. 1969. “A Modified Concept of Consciousness.” Psychological
Review 76; 532-536.
-. 1970. “An Objective Approach to Subjective Experience; Further
Explanation of a Hypoih&sis.” Psychological Review 77: 585-590.
Titchener, E B. 1929. Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
Warren, R. M., and Warren, R. P. 1968. Helmholtz on Perception: Its Phys¬
iology and Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Weisskopf, V. F. 1972. “The Significance of Science.” Science 176: 138-146.
Whyte, L. L. 1960. The Unconscious before Freud. New York: Basic Books,
Inc.
Wundt, W. 1897. Outlines of Psychology. Translated with the cooperation of
the author by C. H. Judd. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
-. 1961. “Introduction: On the Methods in Psychology.” In Classics in
Psychology, edited by T. Shipley, pp. 51-78. New York; Philosophical
Library.
 4
Freuds
Ps^hkal
Unconscious

As noted from time to time on previous pages, James equated belief in

mind as unconscious with belief in a myth, or, at best, belief in a dubious
paradox. That is why he never equated the concept of subliminal processes
with the concept of unconscious mental processes. In his view, belief in mind
as unconscious was a hindrance to the promotion of a scientific psychology.
On the other hand, for Freud the unconscious was a scientific finding of the
first magnitude; in fact, he regarded it as a science in its own right. He once
wrote: “The future will probably attribute far greater importance to psycho¬
analysis as the science of the unconscious than as a therapeutic procedure”
(1929, p. 673).
When Freud was writing his Traumdeutung, or The Interpretation of
Dreams, he was mindful of academic opposition to his views. This is not to
say that he was mindful of what James had written in his criticisms of the
unconscious, for James is not mentioned in the long bibliography at the end
of the work. Furthermore, according to Jones (Vol. I, p. 373), Freud “was
not very given to reading books on psychology.” Thus one can be reasonably
confident that he had not read the Principles of James. Nevertheless, he must
have been familiar with some psychological texts because he contrasted his
views with those to be found in such works.

CONCERNING FREUD’S CLASH

WITH ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY
Actually, Freud did not mention any texts by name, but referred to them
in general. This is made evident in the following passage from the Tramdeu-
92 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

tung, in which Freud contrasts his “psychologizing” as a “physician” with

that of the “philosophers” or academic psychologists (pp. 611-612):

So far we have been psychologizing on our own account. It is time now

to consider the theoretical views which govern present-day psychology
and to examine their relation to our hypotheses. The problem of the
unconscious in psychology is . . . less a psychological problem than the
problem of psychology. So long as psychology dealt with this problem
by a verbal explanation to the effect that ‘psychical’ meant ‘conscious’
and that to speak of ‘unconscious psychical processes’ was palpable
nonsense, any psychological evaluation of the observations made by
physicians upon abnormal mental states was out of the question. The
physician and the philosopher can only come together if they both
recognize that the term ‘unconscious psychical processes’ is ‘the appro¬
priate and justified expression of a solidly established fact.’ The physi¬
cian can only shrug his shoulders when he is assured that ‘consciousness
is an indispensable characteristic of what is psychical,’ and perhaps, if
he still feels enough respect for the utterances of philosophers, he may
presume that they have not been dealing with the same thing or working
at the same science. For even a single understanding observation of a
neurotic’s mental life or a single analysis of a dream must leave him
with an unshakable conviction that the most complicated and most
rational thought-processes, which can surely not be denied the name of
psychical processes, can occur without exciting the subject’s conscious¬
ness. It is true that the physician cannot learn of these unconscious
processes until they have produced some effect upon consciousness
which can be communicated or observed. But this conscious effect may
exhibit a psychical character quite different from that of the uncon¬
scious process, so that internal perception cannot possibly regard the
one as a substitute for the other. The physician must feel at liberty to
proceed by inference from the conscious effect to the imconscious
psychical process. He thus learns that the conscious effect is only a
remote psychical result of the unconscious process and that the latter
has not become conscious as such; and moreover that the latter was
present and operative even without betraying its existence in any way
to consciousness.

This was Freud’s answer to those who had opposed behef in the uncon¬
scious, as James had. From their viewpoint it is “palpable nonsense” to believe
in unconscious consciousness. As philosopher-psychologists they lacked the
clinical experience of physicians with “abnormal mental states” and hence
relied exclusively on “a verbal explanation.” Had they been familiar with
these states they would not have been baffled by the paradox of unconscious
consciousness. Their confrontation with clinical cases of hysteria and other
kinds of mental abnormality would have exposed the inadequacy of their
verbal explanations. It would have made them realize, so Freud argued, that
a psychical process was not always the same as a conscious process and, pre¬
sumably, they would have been convinced of the real existence of an uncon¬
scious psychical process. Instead of being a myth, as James seemed to hold, it
was regarded as “a solidly established fact.” However, this “fact,” Freud indi-
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 93

cated, is concealed from the neurotic’s “internal perception” and, of course,

from the physician’s direct observation. As a result, the only way the existence
of such a “fact” can be established is by inference.

A NEGLECTED PROBLEM

Having made a distinction between the meaning of a conscious process as

contrasted with the meaning of a psychical process, Freud unfortunately
neglected to elaborate upon the distinction. He failed to specify just what
characteristics are to be attributed to the inferred psychical process. The one
characteristic mentioned refers to thinking; by observing the “neurotic’s
mental life” the physician “must” be convinced of the occurrence of
“thought-processes” even though his patient is ignorant of their occurrence.
Furthermore, since such processes are obviously “psychical” or mental, for
the neurotic to be oblivious of them established their unconscious existence.
So Freud seemed to argue, but in doing so he glossed over the problem of a
dependable criterion by means of which the psychical or mental status of an
event or process is to be determined.
This constituted a problem because he had objected to having the word
“psychical” mean the same as the word “conscious.” In other words, he would
have objected to this generalization: the unconscious is a derivative of the
conscious in the sense that, for example, actions attributed to an unconscious
wish presuppose knowledge of wishing as a conscious process. By extension,
the implication is that other comparable phrases such as unconscious thought
or unconscious protest involve acquaintance with thinking and protesting as
personal happenings for the phrases to be meaningful. Broadly speaking, this
is the equivalent of regarding consciousness as “an indispensable character¬
istic of what is psychical.” But this is precisely what Freud denied, though he
neglected to indicate what other characteristic is to be substituted if given
events are to be classified as psychical events. The word psychical in this con¬
text is a literal translation of the German adjective psychische which Freud
employed. In the given context it would be better to translate it as meaning
mental events, so as to avoid the connotation of the word psychical suggested
by reference to psychical research with its halo of the occult and as distin¬
guished from ordinary psychological research.
Accordingly, for Freud the unconscious was deemed to be a psychical
realm only in the sense of being a mental, but not a conscious realm. He was
at pains to emphasize this distinction. In a footnote (p. 612) he reports his
satisfaction at having come across an author who, in support of this distinc¬
tion, had quoted this sentence from Henry Maudsley’s 1867 volume entitled
The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind:^ “It is a truth which cannot be

*It may be that Freud was misled by having been supplied with a mistaken title for
Maudsley’s book, since in the Traumdeutung bibliography it is listed zs Psychology and
Pathology of the Mind (p. 644). Unless he also had come across the quotation in the
94 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

too distinctly borne in mind that consciousness is not co-extensive with

mind.” Incidentally, as will be explained later, this is only a portion of
Maudsley’s sentence, since the original ends with a qualifying clause. However,
for the time being, this may be disregarded and the formulation given in the
footnote be accepted as it stands.

MAUDSLEY ON MIND AS
DIFFERENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS

Contrary to what Freud seemed to believe, this sentence may have nothing
to do with the concept of an unconscious mind as he conceived it. Maudsley’s
whole approach to mental life reflected the outlook of a physiological psy¬
chologist rather than that of a psychoanalyst. This is evident from the way
historians have dealt with his work. Brett, for example, has classified him
with writers who attempt “to reduce psychology to a form of physiology”
(1921, p. 191). And Zilboorg, to cite another example, reflects a similar
physiological bias by declaring Maudsley to have been “purely materialistic”
since “to him mental diseases were brain diseases” (1941, p. 421).
As a matter of fact, from one viewpoint Maudsley’s statement about con¬
sciousness not being co-extensive with mind comes close to being a truism.
After all, at any instant of time one is conscious of but a minute segment of
the totality of knowledge, skills, feelings, interests, memories, and kindred
constituents implicit in the concept of mind. A man’s knowledge of language
is not co-extensive with the words of which he is momentarily conscious.
Should he possess an educated mind and have knowledge of Latin, French,
mathematics, history, literature, current events, architecture, and law, the
scope of his mind would obviously never be co-extensive with the scope of his
consciousness. Furthermore, his educated mind is a product of learning and
as such implies consciousness to the extent that all learning entails sensory
stimulation, a modicum of attention, perception, memory, understanding,
and similar components of man’s cognitive apparatus. From this empiristic
viewpoint mind would appear to be a derivative of consciousness and not a
derivative of a mysterious unconscious. This seems to be what Maudsley may
have meant by his sentence.^

book itself, he might have been justified in taking it for granted that Maudsley had been
primarily interested in the psychology rather than the physiology of mind. Incidentally,
the same error occurred in Boring’s history, for he too lists the title as Psychology and
not Physiology and Pathology of Mind (1950, p. 660).
^There is no assurance that Maudsley would have employed this precise way of clarifying
his distinction between mind and consciousness. In explaining why “mind and conscious¬
ness are not synonymous’’ he attributed mind to a state of “statical equilibrium” of the
brain and consciousness to its “manifested energy,” with the former involving much
vaster “mental organization” than the latter. This is the way he alluded to this distinc¬
tion (1893, p. 29):
Mental power exists in statical equilibrium as well as in manifested energy;... no
man can call to mind at any moment the thousandth part of his knowledge. How
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 95

The latter interpretation of Maudsley’s sentence is in line with James’s

approving references to Maudsley’s psychology. In his chapter on habit, for
example, by way of showing the transition from conscious acts to automatic
or habitual acts James quotes this passage from Maudsley’s book (Vol. I,
pp. 113-114):

If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful
direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on
each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might
be confined to one or two deeds—that no progress could take place in
development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and undress¬
ing himself; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and
energy; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be
as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial; and
he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by his exertions.
Think of the pains necessary to teach a child to stand, of the many
efforts which it must make, and of the ease with which it at last stands,
unconscious of any effort. For while secondarily automatic acts are
accomplished with comparatively Uttle weariness—in this regard ap¬
proaching the organic movements, or the original reflex movements—
the conscious effort of the will soon produces exhaustion. A spinal
cord without . . . memory would simply be an idiotic spinal cord. ... It
is impossible for an individual to realize how much he owes to its
automatic agency until disease has impaired its functions.

The stand taken by Maudsley was entirely in accord with the fundamentals
of a functionalist psychology and as such could be welcomed by James. From
the context it is evident that Maudsley was not thinking of a “psychical”
unconscious as conceived by Freud. Furthermore, his account of the nature
of “secondarily automatic acts” is reminiscent of Helmholtz’s basic process
as described in the previous chapter. Recall that Helmholtz accounted for the
automatism of habit without invoking the doctrine of unconscious inference.
This means that neither he nor Maudsley attributed retention or preservation
of such automatism to an unconscious mind—rather, as a product of repetition
and drill, and like any readily reactivated past event, it was to be attributed
to the neurology of memory. James expressed this very simply and directly
when, after letting n stand for a past event, he wrote (Vol. I, p. 655):

The retention of n ... is no mysterious storing up of an ‘idea’ in an

unconscious state. It is not a fact of the mental order at all. It is a
purely physical phenomenon, a morphological feature, the presence of
‘paths’ ... in the finest recesses of the brain’s tissue.

utterly helpless is consciousness to give any account of the statical condition of

mind! But as statical mind is in reality the statical condition of the nervous sub¬
strata which minister to its manifestations, it is plain that, if we ever are to know any¬
thing of mental organization, it is to the progress of physiology that we must look
fpr information.
96 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

It thus appears that both Helmholtz and Maudsley would have agreed with
this Jamesian interpretation of the nature of retention. Reduced to its essen¬
tials it might have struck them as a commonsense interpretation. In an every¬
day example, James was arguing that even though we have forgotten our high
school geometry it is not entirely obliterated, since it can be relearned in
significantly less time than was required for its initial mastery some thirty
years ago. What was retained, James held, was some kind of neural change in
the tissues of the brain and not some ghosts of mathematical ideas stored up
in an unconscious state.
It is entirely conceivable that at one time Freud might have agreed with
this explanation. At all events, there is a passage in his Interpretation of
Dreams suggestive of this possibility. The English version reads: “Even when
investigation shows that the primary exciting cause of a phenomenon is psy¬
chical, deeper research will one day trace the path further and discover an
organic basis for the mental event. But, if at the moment we cannot see
beyond the mental, that is no reason for denying its existence”^ (pp. 41-42).
As applied to Maudsley’s differentiation between mind and consciousness
this would mean that with respect to the instance of ordinary associative
memory, such as a request for specific information, hearing the request would
exemplify the “psychical” or “exciting cause” of the elicited response. To be
more specific: were a teacher to ask a pupil, “What is the capital of Alaska?”
the pupil would be conscious of the question and would have to search his
mind for the answer. In view of the vast number of geographic and other
items of retained information he has accumulated in previous years his mind
is manifestly more extensive than his momentary awareness of the question.
As retained items they are organic rather than psychical and also unconscious
until brought to mind in the quest for an answer to the question. The quest
will continue until there is recall of “Juneau” as the correct answer; but this
does not mean that prior to its recall the idea of Juneau qua idea had been
existing in some nonorganic state of unconscious consciousness.
Maudsley’s distinction between mind and consciousness, contrary to Freud’s
interpretation, thus has nothing to do with the concept of an unconscious
mind. Instead, it has to do with the psychical as currently experienced, in
contradistinction to the cumulative results of what has already been expe¬
rienced—the kind of distinction once made by Titchener when he defined
consciousness as “the sum-total of mental processes occurring «ovv’”as distin¬
guished from the definition of mind as “the sum-total of mental processes
occurring in the lifetime of an individual” (1917, p. 19). In this formulation

^This is my somewhat free and not literal translation. The original in the Traumdeutung
reads as foUows (1922, p. 30):
Selbst wo das Psychische sich bei der Erforschung als der primare Anlass eines
Phanomens erkennen lasst, wird ein tieferes Eindringen die Fortsetzung des Weges
bis zur organischen Begriindung des Seehschen einmal zu fmden wissen. Wo aber das
Psychische fiir unsere derzeitige Erkenntnis die Endstation bedeuten miisste, da
braucht es darum nicht geleugnet zu werden.
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious - 97

Titchener was not regarding mind as a free-floating realm of unconscious

consciousness freed from the influence of brain processes. He made this clear
in an alternative definition of mind as “the sum-total of human experience
considered as dependent upon a nervous system” (p. 16). Of course, he also
regarded consciousness as dependent upon a nervous system. In this respect
he described mind and consciousness as “almost identical.” In other respects
he found the chief difference to be the one to which Maudsley had called
attention: namely, that mind is more extensive in scope than consciousness.
Generally, he treated mind and consciousness as synonymous concepts.
Titchener was in substantial agreement with the opinion of John Hughlings
Jackson, one of Maudsley’s contemporaries^ and one of the founding fathers
of modern clinical neurology, for in an article concerned with the evolution
of the nervous system Jackson had this to say about a possible distinction
between mind and consciousness (Vol. II, p. 85):

I take consciousness and mind to be synonymous terms; if all conscious¬

ness is lost all mind is lost. Unconscious states of mind are sometimes
spoken of, which seems to me to involve a contradiction. That there
may be activities of lower nervous arrangements of the highest centres,
which have no attendant psychical states, and which yet lead to next
activities of the very highest nervous arrangements of those centres
whose activities have attendant psychical states, I can easily understand.
But these prior activities are states of the nervous system, not any sort
of states of mind.

As Jackson suggests here and as he brought out even more clearly in other
sections of the same article, not all nervous states are concomitants of mental
or conscious states, even though all mental or conscious states are con¬
comitants of nervous states. From this viewpoint he rejected the contention
of those who talked about “unconscious states of mind” as if undisturbed
by the contradiction implicit in talk about unconscious consciousness; he
was cognizant of the contradiction and reacted accordingly. This deserves
explicit mention. Recall that Freud had indicated that only “philosophers” as
contrasted with “physicians” would be troubled by the concept of “uncon¬
scious psychical processes,” yet Jackson was a physician and an active one.
Moreover, although not engaged in medical practice, both James and Wundt
had been trained as physicians and they too shared Jackson’s negative view of
the concept.
It is true, of course, that Freud was referring to physicians whose work
entailed experience with abnormalities of mental life. Still, both Jackson and
James had such experience, and even Wundt as a philosopher-psychologist
was familiar with such abnormalities through his wide reading. The same can
be said about Titchener, Wundt’s erudite disciple, who was also a wide reader.

indicated by the year of their birth, there can be no question about their status as
contemporaries: both men were born in 1835. Jackson died in 1911 and Maudsley in
1918.
98 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

As just pointed out, Titchener’s views of mind and consciousness were essen¬
tially in agreement with the distinction proposed by Maudsley. Indeed, with
reference to the bearing of this distinction on the mind-body problem in
general and on the problem of the unconscious in particular, Titchener came
close to expressing the views of Jackson, of Wundt, and of James. Each of
these men, it seems safe to say, would have been in substantial agreement
with the following Titchenerian views (1917, pp. 39-40):

The nervous system does not cause, but it does explain mind. It explains
mind as the map of a country explains the fragmentary glimpses of hills
and rivers and towns that we catch on our journey through it. In a
word, reference to the nervous system introduces into psychology just
that unity and coherence which a strictly descriptive psychology can¬
not achieve.
Mind lapses every night, and reforms every morning; but the bodily
processes go on, in sleep and in waking. An idea drops out of memory,
to recur, perhaps quite unexpectedly, many years later; but the bodily
processes have been going on without interruption. Reference to the
body does not add one iota to the data of psychology, to the sum of
introspections. It does furnish us with an explanatory principle for
psychology; it does enable us to systematise our introspective data.
Indeed, if we refuse to explain mind by body, we must accept the
one or the other of two, equally unsatisfactory alternatives: we must
either rest content with a simple description of mental experience, or
must invent an unconscious mind to give coherence and continuity to
the conscious. Both courses have been tried. But, if we take the first,
we never arrive at a science of psychology and if we take the second, we
voluntarily leave the sphere of fact for the sphere of fiction. (Italics
added.)

Before leaving this issue it is well to note that Maudsley, along with Jack-
son and James, might be said to have anticipated Titchener’s misgivings
concerning the unconscious. This is evident from a section of his Physiology
of Mind in which the question of unconscious ideas was under consideration.
Toward the end of this section Maudsley gave his answer to the question in
this forthright conclusion (1893, p. 71):

Another objection to the doctrine of unconscious ideas, is that we only

know ideas through consciousness, and consciousness through ideas;
the expression unconscious idea, is as absurd, therefore, as that of un¬
conscious consciousness. ... It is this which is the absurdity; for the
idea, hke the definite movement of muscle, is the function not the
structure, not the statical element, but the element in action; we might
as well speak of the movement of blowing the nose as being laid up
inactive in the muscles or their nerve-centres (which, after all, in a cer¬
tain sense it is, for the young child can’t blow its nose), as talk of
unconscious ideas stored up in the mind.

Had Freud read the preceding paragraph and others like it in Maudsley’s
book, he obviously would not have thought of Maudsley as a champion of the
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 99

doctrine of unconscious ideas. In fact, to revert to Freud’s contrast between

the psychologizing of physicians and philosophers, he might have been
troubled to find Maudsley, the physician, agreeing with philosophers that “to
speak of unconscious psychical processes” is “palpable nonsense,” or what
Maudsley had called an absurdity. It thus seems likely that Freud, in the
absence of immediate access to Maudsley’s writings, had been restricted to
the single sentence dealing with Maudsley’s contention regarding mind as
more extensive than consciousness. Furthermore, he had to depend on the
meaning of this sentence in the context of the thesis being expounded by the
writer who had quoted the sentence. Under the circumstances he was more
apt to be influenced by the writer’s objective than by Maudsley’s original
objective; hence his misinterpretation of Maudsley’s distinction between mind
and consciousness.

CONCERNING A MISINTERPRETATION
OF MAUDSLEY

Upon consulting the Traumdeutung it was found that the sentence attrib¬
uted to Maudsley was printed in German; consequently, Freud had not been
deahng with the English original. Nor did he mention Maudsley’s name in
connection with the sentence as is the case in the English translation. Evidently,
James Strachey, the translator, by consulting the text from which Freud had
been quoting, had succeeded in tracking down the name of the writer of the
sentence in question. Then, instead of translating the German version,® he
copied the words as they appeared in the English original. This means that
Strachey was quoting Maudsley and not translating the German sentence.
However, he did adhere to the latter to the extent of disregarding a portion
of Maudsley’s sentence that had not been included in the German. The full
sentence in the Physiology of Mind with the disregarded section indicated
by italics reads as follows (1893, p. 25): “It is a truth which cannot be too
distinctly borne in mind, that consciousness is not co-extensive with mind,
that it is not mind but an incidental accompaniment of mind.”
By way of explanation for such disparagement of the importance of con¬
sciousness, Maudsley wrote it seemed “conceivable” that “a man might be as
good a reasoning machine without as he is with consciousness” provided his
nervous system were being influenced by afferent impulses now associated
with consciousness and also provided one had technical devices by means of
which to observe “the results of the cerebral operations from without.” Had
Maudsley been writing in the modern era he could have given voice to the
same general explanation by comparing man as “a reasoning machine” with
the “reasoning” of computers. In terms of this comparison it is “conceivable”

®This is the German version (1922, p. 451): “Es ist eine Wahrheit, die man nicht aus-
driicklich genug hervorheben kann, dass Bewusstsein und Seele nicht Begriffe von
gleicher Ausdehnung sind.”
100 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

that he might have argued that just as computers are unconscious so mind as
“a reasoning machine” might also be unconscious. But this would not be the
equivalent of the dynamic unconscious Freud perceived in the dreams,
memory lapses, and phobias of his patients.
Under the circumstances, in the absence of the qualifying clause and with¬
out Maudsley’s explanation, Freud had to read his own meaning into the
statement about mind and consciousness not being co-extensive. Taken out of
context it is, manifestly, subject to a variety of interpretations. Apparently
Freud took it to mean that mind encompasses consciousness. In doing so he
seemed to equate mind with the unconscious in the sense of making it the
repository of unconscious ideas despite their connotation of unconscious
consciousness. Such an interpretation is obviously at variance with the drift
of Maudsley’s thinking. Moreover, by a perplexing tour de force, and again
contrary to Maudsley’s thinking, he made consciousness a derivative of the
unconscious. This is made clear in the following quotation taken from the
section containing Maudsley’s statement (pp. 612-613):

It is essential to abandon the overvaluation of the property of being

conscious before it becomes possible to form any correct view of the
origin of what is mental. . . . The unconscious is the larger sphere, which
includes within it the smaller sphere of the conscious. Everything con¬
scious has an unconscious preliminary stage; whereas what is uncon¬
scious may remain at that stage and nevertheless claim to be regarded
as having the full value of a psychical process. The unconscious is the
true psychical reality; in its innetmost nature it is as much unknown to
us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely pre¬
sented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the com¬
munications of our sense organs.

It is well to realize that Freud deemed the last statement concerned with
the unconscious as “the true psychical reality” so significant as to call for
italicized emphasis. He had reached the conclusion at the threshold of his
career, for the statement is taken from the last section of the Traumdeutung
and this had been published in 1899. It is also well to realize that Freud con¬
tinued to uphold the same conclusion at the close of his career. In an unfin¬
ished paper written in 1938, about a year before his death, he reverted to the
same theme. The paper-probably his very last manuscript-was called “Some
Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis” and the conclusion he had arrived
at some forty years earlier had survived all the intervening years as shown in
this one of the “elementary lessons” (1938, p. 283):

Everyone-or almost everyone-was agreed that what is mental really

has a common quality in which its essence is expressed: namely, the
quality of being conscious-unicpie, indescribable, but needing no
description. All that is conscious, they said, is mental, and conversely,
all that is mental is conscious: that is self-evident and to contradict it
is nonsense. It cannot be said that this decision threw much light upon
the nature of the mental; for consciousness is one of the fundamental
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 101

facts of our life and our researches come up against it like a blank wall
and can find no path beyond it. . . . If ever human thought found itself
in an impasse it was here.
Psycho-analysis escaped such difficulties ... by energetically denying
the equation between what is mental and what is conscious. No; being
conscious cannot be the essence of what is mental. It is only a quality
of what is mental, and an unstable quality at that—one that is far oftener
absent than present. The mental, whatever its nature may be, is in itself
unconscious and probably similar in kind to all the other natural pro¬
cesses of which we have obtained knowledge.

As may be recalled, this 1938 paper was mentioned in the previous chapter
in connection with the phenomenon of posthypnotic suggestibility; there will
be occasion to mention it again in the next chapter. Even though it failed to
be completed, it is obviously an important paper—highlighting some of the
issues which, in retrospect toward the final months of his life, Freud had
singled out for special comment because of their distinctive psychoanalytic
implications. Presumably they were intended to serve as means of facilitating
understanding and acceptance of these implications. In some ways, for Freud,
they were aU bound up with this central issue, namely, his contention that
being conscious is not the essence of mind because, as he had already main¬
tained so many years earlier, “the unconscious is the true psychical reality.”
He had even maintained that consciousness is a derivative of this unconscious
psychical reality. As previously noted, this is a perplexing conclusion the
meaning and validity of which cannot be determined without prior clarifica¬
tion of Freud’s concept of the “true psychical reality.”

CONCERNING FREUD’S PSYCHICAL REALITY

According to Freud, as we have seen, psychoanalysis might be defined as

the science of the unconscious. He even predicted the future will probably
reveal it to have been more important as this kind of a science than as a tech¬
nique for treating personality disorders. The concept of mind as unconscious
was thus made the foundation of psychoanalytic psychology. For obvious
reasons, Freud stood ready to safeguard the concept from adverse criticism.
In his view, to question its scientific status as James and others had done
was the equivalent of an attack on psychoanalysis itself. Adverse criticism
was a threat to it both as science and as therapeutic art.
A chief criticism of the unconscious had stressed the contradiction involved
in the notion of a consciousness which is also unconscious. Freud had this
criticism in mind when he took those “philosophers” to task who had rejected
the idea of “unconscious psychical processes” as “palpable nonsense.” As
philosopher-psychologists they had equated the psychical with the conscious.
Their stand had been given definite expression as far back as 1886 by John
Dewey when he wrote: “Consciousness is necessary for the definition of what
is in itself unconscious” (p. 2).
102 - The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

In short, for them the phenomenon of consciousness was made a sine qua
non for psychical reality. This meant that any process designated as a psy¬
chical or mental process was presumed to involve consciousness either directly
or indirectly. For example, with reference to the automatism of habit, as in
signing one’s name or drinking from a cup, conscious control may be said to
have been so reduced as to have transformed what had once been fully con¬
scious effortful maneuvers into quasi-reflex automatisms. As a functionalist
Dewey would have accounted for such “unconscious,” well entrenched
habitual acts in terms of their history as what had started out as fully con¬
scious acts.
This kind of explanation is in accord with a fundamental doctrine of
functional psychology concerning the guiding role of consciousness in the
acquisition of knowledge and skill. Progress in learning, according to the
doctrine, is characterized by a shift from the strain of conscious attention
to new problems to the free and easy or virtually “unconscious” disposition
of these problems once mastery has been achieved. The shift, in other words,
is from tire conscious to the unconscious or, at least, from the more con¬
scious to the less conscious. This kind of shift was implicit in the psychical
reality of functional psychology.
Although Freud, as far as known, had never familiarized himself with the
writings of Dewey and other functional psychologists, his disparagement of
the role of consciousness suffices to stamp him as opposed to their view of
psychical reality as marked by the shift from the conscious to the uncon¬
scious. Instead, he reversed this by making it a shift from the unconscious to
die conscious; hence, as he maintained, “the unconscious is the true psychical
reality.” This amounts to deriving consciousness from an unconscious con¬
sciousness. By means of this reversal Freud appears to have tried to circum¬
vent the objection of those who, in his words, had criticized the concept of
“unconscious psychical processes” as “palpable nonsense.”
On the surface, it is more of a dogmatic denial than a clarifying disposition
of the objection. Moreover, since Freud viewed the “nature” of the uncon¬
scious as unknown, it is hard to understand how it could serve as the basis for
an explanation of the “nature” of consciousness. After all, enlightenment
calls for the transition from the known to the unknown and not the other
way around. Freud appears to have disregarded this truism by seeming to
explain the light of consciousness by an appeal to the darkness of the uncon¬
scious. As a procedure it is reminiscent of this maxim as quoted by James in
the name of a contemporary philosopher (Vol. I, p. 347): “Whatever you are
totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else.”
In all fairness, the foregoing maxim is actually not applicable to Freud’s
view of the unconscious as being “the true psychical reality.” As he saw it,
the nature of the unconscious is not totally unknown to us. Reference to the
italicized sentence of the quotation dealing with the “overvaluation” of con¬
sciousness indicates that Freud was careful to restrict our ignorance of the
unconscious to “its innermost nature” and thus, by implication, not to all of
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 103

it. It will also be noticed that he regarded this kind of ignorance as comparable
to our ignorance of “the reality of the external world.” There was no addi¬
tional explanation of this allusion to the external world as unknown, as if
he expected it to be readily comprehensible without further comment. Another
way to put this would be to say that he seemed to expect his readers to be
sufficiently familiar with the metaphysics of Kant to understand the allusion
to be a reflection of Kant’s distinction between noumenal and phenomenal
worlds. This distinction, as noted in Chapter 2, had already been recognized
by von Hartmann in his philosophy of the unconscious; in fact, it may be
recalled that von Hartmann wrote as if Kant should be listed among dis¬
coverers of the unconscious. This raises a question about the possible bearing
of Kant’s philosophy on Freud’s psychology.

WAS FREUD INFLUENCED BY KANT?

Since, as just indicated, Freud appears to have made use of Kant’s concept
of a noumenal world, it is really unnecessary to ask whether he was influenced
by Kant—the question has already been answered in the affirmative. Never¬
theless, it is not an altogether superfluous question, because not all students
of Freud would agree with this answer. Wolman, for example, in his book
dealing with “the meaning of Freudian psychology,” declares that “Freud was
opposed to the idealistic German philosophy of Kant” (1968, p. 95). Wolman
failed to say more about this and also failed to supply a pertinent bibliographic
reference, so it is hard to know how this is to be interpreted. Does it mean
that Freud had expressed opposition to specific Kantian teachings, and if so
which ones? Or does it refer to total rejection of all things Kantian? It cer¬
tainly cannot refer to such extreme anti-Kantianism. As a matter of fact,
Freud once voiced his indebtedness to Kant with particular reference to the
notion of mental processes being unconscious. This was in his 1915 paper
“The Unconscious” and took this form (p. 171):

The psycho-analytic assumption of unconscious mental activity appears

to us, on the one hand, as a further expansion of the primitive animism
which caused us to see copies of our own consciousness all around us,
and, on the other hand, as an extension of the corrections undertaken
by Kant of our views on external perception. Just as Kant warned us
not to overlook the fact that our perceptions are subjectively condi¬
tioned and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived
though unknowable, so psycho-analysis warns us not to equate percep¬
tions by means of consciousness with the unconscious mental processes
which are their object.

Freud seems to have been familiar with many other Kantian concepts and
evidently expected his readers to share this familiarity. Thus, in The Interpre¬
tation of Dreams there is mention of Kant’s categorical imperative (p. 68) in
a matter-of-fact way without a word of explanation. On a later page (p. 503)
104 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

there is the same kind of casual reference to Kant’s view of the concept of
time. He again dealt with the latter concept in a letter written in 1938 some
months before his death. In it, after suggesting that “it might be that the idea
of time is_connected with the work of’ our perceptual consciousness, he
wrote, “Kant would then be in the right if we replace his old-fashioned ‘a
priori’ by our modern introspection of the psychical apparatus. It should be
the same with space, causality, etc.’’ (Jones, Vol. Ill, p. 466.)
In this reference to “space, causality, etc.” there is an obvious indication
of familiarity with the famous Kantian categories of understanding. They
have to do with ways in which, according to Kant, man’s intellect deals with
sensory phenomena as judgments are made with respect to causal relation¬
ships, differences in quantity and quality, contingent as contrasted with
inevitable changes, and other fundamental modes of organizing experience.
Kant regarded them as characteristic of the inherent structure of man’s rea¬
son. As such, although acting on the data of sensory experience they were
deemed to be independent of and not derivatives of sensory experience.
Freud seems to have had reference to these Kantian categories in writing
about what he called man’s “psychical apparatus.”
In connection with this reference to “psychical apparatus” recall that
Freud did not use psychical as a synonym for the word conscious. Instead,
he used it to present the “unconscious psychical process” as what he called
“a solidly established fact.” In doing so, however, he had failed to specify
precisely how a psychical process was to be recognized since, by hypothesis,
it was to be differentiated from any conscious process. He did indicate it to
be characteristic of “thought-processes” and hence by implication made the
act of thinking the differentiating criterion, so that any thoughtful act would
be a psychical act in contradistinction to any act of thoughtless awareness.
This makes for a distinction between thinking on the one hand and meaning¬
less sensory awareness on the other, or between insightful understanding as
contrasted with mere sentience in the abstract. It is the kind of distinction
Kant had once epitomized in this way; “The understanding cannot see. The
senses cannot think. Only by their union can knowledge be produced.”
In some ways this Kantian distinction amounts to a detailed elaboration
of the logic implicit in Aristotle’s distinction between the intellectual soul
and the sentient soul—the former being unique to man as the rational animal.
The distinction is also implicit in Locke’s recognition of the origin and devel¬
opment of our ideas as influenced by the conjoint operation of sensation and
reflection. His famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which
the nature and scope of this operation is subjected to careful analysis, might
thus be regarded as having foreshadowed the Kantian distinction. In general,
these and similar historical precedents converge on a central theme—the dis¬
tinctive role of active reason as the hallmark of mind. This theme is reflected
in Aristotle’s intellectual soul, in the Cartesian res cogitans, in the rationalism
of Spinoza, in Locke’s reflection, and in Kant’s pure reason. And it is also
reflected in what Freud had called the primacy of the intellect.
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 105

FREUD ON THE PRIMACY OF INTELLECT

In popularizations of Freudian psychology the imperiousness of the sex

drive and other instincts is likely to be stressed. Cravings, urges, and wishes
dominate talk about sublimation, the symbolism of dreams, and so-called
Freudian slips, as if in this popular view Freud had transformed Aristotle’s
concept of man as a rational animal into man as an instinctual animal driven
by aroused id impulses or the dynamism of repressed ideas. From this view¬
point Freud’s psychology appears to be an anti-intellectualistic psychology
and it is easy to find evidence seeming to support this interpretation. How¬
ever, there is also opposing evidence which ought not to be overlooked before
arriving at a final conclusion. For example, in his monograph The Future of
an Illusion Freud noted the bearing of rational considerations on factors
involved in coping with the phenomenon of repression in this statement
(1934, p. 77): “The time has probably come to replace the consequences of
repression by the results of rational mental effort” (italics added). Note that
there is no reference to a rationalizing mental effort. This merits special men¬
tion because the psychoanalytic recognition of rationalization as a fact has
sometimes been interpreted as a Freudian description of man as being a
rationalizing rather than a rational animal. That this constitutes a misinterpre¬
tation of Freud’s position is further indicated by his use of a phrase like
“primacy of the intellect” and not primacy of instinct. What he meant by the
intellect’s primacy is made clear in this famous passage (1934, p. 93):

We may insist as much as we like that the human intellect is weak in

comparison with human instincts and be right in doing so. But, never¬
theless, there is something pecuhar about this weakness. The voice of
the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hear¬
ing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds.

This tribute to the eventual triumph of the voice of the intellect may make
it easier to understand what Freud seems to have meant by his somewhat
enigmatic identification of the unconscious with the mental or the psychical
as distinguished from the conscious. Such identification was evident in state¬
ments to the effect that “the mental is itself unconscious,” that “being con¬
scious cannot be the essence of what is mental,” that the unconscious is “the
true psychical reahty,” and that “what is mental” is not the same as “what is
conscious.” Statements of this kind all reflect what seems to have been one
of Freud’s firm convictions as expressed in his Interpretation of Dreams of
1899 in these italicized words (p. 593): he most complicated achievements
of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness.” It was again
reflected close to thirty years later with his recognition of “the primacy of
the intellect” in the Future of an Illusion.
This recognition of a difference between thought or intellect on the one
hand and consciousness on the other made it possible for Freud to come to
terms with the paradox of unconscious consciousness. It was as if the pre-
106 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ceding statements could be rendered less enigmatic by being rephrased in the

light of the difference in question. Thus, he might have made thinking “the
true psychical reality.” Analogously, he might have written “being conscious
cannot be the essence of what is intellectual.” As already mentioned, in terms
of this differentiation between the intellectual and the sensory Freud can be
said to have been in accord with a venerable philosophic tradition-especially
Kant’s contribution to this tradition. The broader implications of this tradi¬
tion on Freud’s concept of the unconscious will be considered in a later
chapter.
Actually, Freud may have been even more influenced by the views of Her-
bart, Kant’s successor at the University of Konigsberg, than by Kant’s views.
Johann Friedrich Herbart was both philosopher and psychologist; in fact, he
was more directly concerned with laying the groundwork for a scientific
psychology than was Kant. In some respects he might also be said to have
laid the groundwork for that which emerged as psychoanalytic psychology,
since some of his teachings regarding the dynamics of thinking are striking
anticipations of some of Freud’s teachings.

HERBART ON THE DYNAMICS OF THINKING

A section of the previous chapter was devoted to an account of Herbart’s

concept of an apperceptive mass, with particular reference to its importance
for educational planning at the classroom level. It was pointed out that the
concept of apperceptive mass is closely related to Freud’s concept of the
preconscious. The latter concept refers to the totality of readily available
items of information at an individual’s disposal; hence the preconscious may
be thought of as a background or reservoir of such information. But this is
not the only respect in which a Herbartian concept appears to foreshadow a
later Freudian concept.
Other respects in which such resemblances between the two kinds of psy¬
chology have been detected inlcude Herbartian references to repressed ideas,
to ideational conflict, and to related aspects of the dynamics of thinking. In
his biography of Freud, Ernest Jones has devoted several pages to these
resemblances between Herbartian and Freudian teachings (Vol. I, pp. 371-
376). Although he was unable to demonstrate that Freud had ever come
across Herbart’s writings, he did find that in his last year of attendance at the
Gymnasium Freud was introduced to an exposition of Herbart’s psychology
in a textbook written by Gustaf Lindner. In this book, as noted by Jones,
the youthful Freud was confronted with this sentence: “A result of the
fusion of ideas proves that ideas which were once in consciousness and for
any reason have been repressed (yerdrdngt) out of it are not lost, but in cer¬
tain circumstances may return” (p. 374).
In his long chapter “Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis” Ellenberger also
called attention to Herbartian anticipation of some cardinal Freudian teach-
 Freud's Psychical Unconscious • 107

ings. By way of showing that Herbart’s psychology was “one of the main
sources of psychoanalysis” he wrote as follows (1970, p. 536):

Herbart taught the dynamic concept of a fluctuating threshold between

the conscious and the unconscious, of conflicts between representa¬
tions that struggle with each other to gain access to the conscious and
are repressed by stronger ones but strive to return, or else produce an
indirect effect in consciousness, and the notion of chains of associa¬
tions that cross each other at nodal points, but also of “free emerging
associations,” the idea that mental processes as a whole are ruled by a
striving for equilibrium. All this is to be found in psychoanalysis,
though sometimes in modified form. Whether Freud read Herbart is not
known, but it is sure that he had been introduced to Herbart’s psychol¬
ogy . . . through Lindner’s textbook.

It thus seems to be evident that Freud was indebted to Herbart for the
foundation of what developed into psychoanalytic psychology. In the course
of this development, however, Freud had occasion to introduce many con¬
cepts and interpretations of non-Herbartian lineage. To a large extent they
were original with Freud. After all, unlike Herbart, he was concentrating on
psychopathology and not on education. This may explain why, unlike Freud,
Herbart never entertained such notions as Oedipus complex, the id as a
caldron of seething impulsiveness, latent dream content, a tyrannical superego,
penis envy, anxiety neurosis, or the psychopathology of everyday life. In the
language of Herbart, such notions were original with and unique to Freud’s
apperceptive mass.

FROM HERBART TO JAMES

AND FROM JAMES TO FREUD

To the extent that psychoanalysis reflected Herbartian psychology it

might be expected that James would have entertained serious misgivings
about psychoanalytic psychology. At all events, there is no question about his
distrust of the soundness of Herbart’s views. He had reason to object to the
Herbartian dynamics of ideational association, since, as indicated in this fam¬
ous passage, he denied that ideas are ever associated (Vol. I, p. 554):

Association, so far as the word stands for an effect, is between THINGS

THOUGHT OF-it is THINGS, not ideas, which are associated in the
mind. We ought to talk of the association of objects, not of the associa¬
tion of ideas. And so far as association stands for a cause, it is between
processes in the brain-it is these which, by being associated in certain
ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought.

On a later page in the same chapter (p. 603) James referred to Herbart’s
“mythological supposition” to the effect that “each idea is a permanently
existing entity” able to gain entrance into “the theatre of consciousness”
108 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

only by usurping the place of “another idea previously there.” The displaced
idea was relegated to the unconscious by sinking below the threshold where
it continues to reside until it can once again rise above the threshold into the
realm of consciousness. In fact, James characterized talk about such sinking
and rising of ideas and their fusions and inhibitions as “glib Herbartian jargon”
which seemed to him to be “almost hideous.” Furthermore, James also ques¬
tioned Herbart’s use of the term apperception (Vol. II, pp. 107-111). In
general, he objected to the term because it had been subjected to varying
interpretations by different philosophers.^ More specifically, as applied to
Herbart’s notion of apperceptive mass James rendered this opinion (p. 107):
“We gain no insight into what really occurs either in the mind or in the brain
by calhng aU these things the ‘apperceiving mass,’ though, of course, this may
upon occasion be convenient.”^
All the foregoing objections to Herbart’s psychology, it is well to remem¬
ber, appeared in 1890. In view of their vehemence and definiteness one might
have anticipated that James would have objected to any future psychology
emerging out of such Herbartian presuppositions. As already indicated, psy¬
choanalysis proved to be such a future psychology. As a movement it was still
struggling for recognition in the early years of the present century. However,
in 1909 Freud appeared as an invited lecturer at Clark University® in Wor¬
cester, Massachusetts, in connection with the vicennial celebration of the
founding of the university. This was Freud’s first and only visit to the United
States. A small group of first generation psychoanalysts were also in attend¬
ance-including Ferenczi, Brill, Jung, and Jones. Distinguished first generation
American psychologists were there too—men such as James,^ Titchener, and

^Kant had used the word in the phrase “transcendental unity of apperception” by way
of accounting for mind as integrated rather than disintegrated. Before Kant the word
had been used in a different sense by Leibnitz. Furthermore, after both Kant and Her-
bart, Wundt employed the word with a still different meaning.
Many decades after James this possible convenience of the term continued to be recog¬
nized. For example, in their psychological dictionary EngUsh and English had this to say
about the apperceptive mass (pp. 37-38):
Though the term is now Uttle used, the doctrine that understanding and learning
depend upon discovering relationships between the facts presented and the learner’s
already existing experience is the basis of practically all educational theory, and of
much educational practice. Apperception is defined in terms of the outmoded psy¬
chology of mental content, but the facts referred to are important and deserve
restatement in terms of behavior and performance.
®Freud’s lectures and those of the other participants at the Clark University Celebration
were translated and published in The American Journal of Psychology, 1910, XXI: 181-
328. In 1973 the Arno Press reprinted these lectures in their series of Classics in Psychol¬
ogy in a volume entitled Lectures Delivered at The 20th Anniversary Celebration of
Clark University.
^Although this was the first and only time James met with Freud, he had heard of Freud
many years before this meeting. In fact he had alluded to Freud as early as 1894. This
was in connection with a review of the article by Breuer and Freud “On the Psychic
Mechanisms of Hysterical Phenomena.” After referring to it as an “important paper” he
had the following to say about it (1894, p. 199):
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious • 109

G. Stanley Hall. For Freud it was a momentous occasion. In fact, as reported

by Jones (Vol. II, p. 57), when Freud had an honorary doctorate conferred
upon him by the university “he was visibly moved” as he announced: “This
is the first official recognition of our endeavors.”
On the same page Jones indicates that Freud in writing about his Clark
University lectures recalled James as having “followed the lectures with great
interest” and then Freud added;

He was very friendly to us and I shall never forget his parting words,
said with his arm around my shoulder; “The future of psychology
belongs to your work”—a remarkable saying when one reflects on his
puritanical background.

In terms of his recall of the remark made by James concerning “the future
of psychology” Freud was justified in believing his account of psychoanalysis
had made a favorable impression on James. At all events the remark itself
supplies no evidence of any unfavorable impression. Nevertheless, in a letter
James had written shortly after his meeting with Freud one can note both
favorable and unfavorable impressions. The letter, as cited by Ralph Barton
Perry, mentions functional psychology and then continues with this passage
(Vol. II, p. 122):

Speaking of ‘functional’ psychology, Clark University . . . had a little

international congress the other day in honor of the twentieth year of
its existence. I went there for one day in order to see what Freud was
like, and met also Jung of Zurich, who . . . made a very pleasant impres¬
sion. I hope that Freud and his pupils will push their ideas to their
utmost limits, so that we may learn what they are. They can’t fail to
throw light on human nature; but I confess that he made on me per¬
sonally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make
nothing in my own case with his dream theories, and obviously ‘sym¬
bolism’ is a most dangerous methpd.

Despite his misgivings about symbolism as related to Freud’s dream-theory,

James did not despair of the theory’s possible value for psychology—especially
functional psychology. This is evident from a letter he wrote to Professor
Mary W. Calkins on September 19, 1909. Since Freud’s five lectures had been
delivered during the week starting with Monday, September 6th and ending
on Friday the 10th, James had not permitted many days to elapse before
writing to Miss Calkins as follows (Perry, p. 123);

The distinguished neurologists who sign it stumbled accidentally on cures which

enable them not only to give a general formula for the disease, but a general method
for its treatment. Hysteria for them starts always from a shock, and is a ‘disease of
the memory.’ Certain reminiscences of the shock fall into the subliminal conscious¬
ness, where they can only be discovered in ‘hypnoid’ states. .. . The cure is to draw
them out in hypnotism, let them produce all their emotional effects, however violent,
and work themselves off.
110 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

My day at Clark University was very enjoyable. ... I strongly suspect

Freud, with his dream-theory, of being a regular hallucine. But I hope
that he and his disciples will push it to its limits, as undoubtedly it
covers some facts, and will add to our understanding of “functional”
psychology, which is the real psychology.

Since James was present at Clark University for but a single day, he could
not have heard all five lectures. His judgment of “Freud and his pupils” must
have been based upon what he saw and heard on this single day. In view of
the fact that in both of the letters just cited the chief emphasis was on Freud’s
dream-theory, it seems likely that the lecture devoted to this theory was the
one James attended. This may have been the third lecture, for, according to
Jones (Vol. II, p. 212), the interpretation of dreams was discussed by Freud
in his third lecture as supplying “the most secure basis of psychoanalysis.”
This lecture was largely concerned with the technique of psychoanalysis
and its reliance on free association in dealing with dream material as well as
with Freudian interpretations of slips of the tongue and other parapraxes.
Evidently, James interpreted the content of this lecture as related to investi¬
gations that might come to be of value for the future of functional psychol¬
ogy. Of course, this was not an unqualified endorsement. He was troubled by
Freud’s “fixed ideas” and by his inability to “make” something of the dream-
theory with its reliance on the “dangerous method” of symbolism. However,
in both letters he hoped that the Freudian investigations would continue and
be pushed to their limits. In the first letter he granted that the investigations
“can’t fail to throw light on human nature” and in the letter to Miss Calkins
he granted that the dream-theory “undoubtedly ... covers some facts.”
It thus seems clear from both letters that James was giving qualified
endorsement to psychoanalytic investigations, especially as they might be
presumed to enhance understanding of functional psychology. This is particu¬
larly interesting because functional psychology as a school or system was
primarily concerned with the function of consciousness. Moreover, by 1909
functional psychology had become an established and well recognized move¬
ment. Consequently, it seems safe to regard James as having been referring
to this movement rather than to his anticipations of the movement in the
Principles of 1890.
Now the school of functional psychology stressed the function of con¬
sciousness as being instrumental in coping with difficulties and novel situations.
Success in disposing of such problems, especially in the case of recurrent
problems, made for a shift from conscious control to the autonomous control
of well entrenched habit. This, so the functionalists taught, left mind or
consciousness free to cope with new problems. Autonomous control whether
in the form of habit or instinct or reflex mechanism was not attributed to
vestigial consciousness as transformed into some mysterious unconscious
consciousness. Functional psychology was thus clearly at variance with the
Freudian unconscious. Under the circumstances, since James had equated
functional psychology with the “real psychology,” it is likely that when he
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious - 111

said to Freud, The future of psychology belongs to your work” he was not
giving tacit endorsement to the hypothesis of an unconscious mind. Never¬
theless, to revert to an earlier point, in other ways he expected Freud’s work
to “throw light on human nature”; butjust what phases of the work impressed
him must remain conjectural. Still, it is tempting to consider a few more or
less plausible conjectures.

JAMES ON FREUD’S WORK:

SOME CONJECTURES

One respect in which Freud’s “work” might conceivably have impressed

James as worthy of encouragement has to do with free association as the point
of departure for the psychoanalytic study of mind. As introduced and applied
by Freud this appears to have been the first systematic effort to obtain
reports from the common man of the way ideas of all kinds occur to him
when he is urged to give free rein to their spontaneous occurrence. James
might well have recognized this as a pioneering attempt to subject what he
had described as the stream of consciousness to systematic investigation. If
so, then it is readily understandable that he hoped Freud and his pupils would
“push” free association “to its limits.”
Another respect in which the technique of free association might have been
welcomed by James has to do with its bearing on what James had once called
the “causal efficacy” of consciousness or ideation. He mentioned this in
voicing his opposition to the theory of epiphenomenalism. The latter theory
regarded consciousness as a mere by-product of brain activity in the way in
which smoke from a factory’s chimney is a by-product of machinery at work.
According to this theory, consciousness does not do or cause anything any
more than smoke produces a manufactured product. It was in opposition to
this stand that James stressed the causal efficacy of ideas as they are expe¬
rienced. By implication, in his reliance upon free association Freud can also
be regarded as opposed to epiphenomenalism. Moreover, this is worth noting
because Freud had started his professional career as a student of brain activity,
as a neurologist. His interest in psychology in general and psychopathology
in particular was a later development. Broadly speaking, in fostering this
interest he was helping to promote the two medical specialties of neurology
and psychiatry, with the latter specialty giving explicit recognition to the
causal efficacy of mind. James might have-glimpsed this. Still, this is some¬
what more speculative than the preceding conjectures.
Precisely why James could “make nothing” out of Freud’s dream theory
must also be limited to speculative considerations. It may be that James had
trouble reconciling presuppositions of the dream theory \vith belief in the
causal efficacy of consciousness. According to the dream theory, the dream as
experienced is a product of unconscious forces. The latter forces account for
the dream’s meaning and, by hypothesis, this meaning is concealed in the
unconscious. Analysis of the manifest content or of the dream as experienced
112 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

is required in order to get at the latent content or the dream’s real meaning.
Stated differently, the unconscious latent content instigates or causes the
conscious manifest content. If this be so, then causal efficacy is being attrib¬
uted to the unconscious rather than to consciousness. It is as if consciousness
of the dream is made a by-product of unconscious psychical processes and
this would constitute a variant of the theory of epiphenomenalism to which
James, as just pointed out, had been opposed. Assuming that James had been
aware of this implication as he was listening to Freud’s lecture, it is not hard
to understand why he was troubled by the dream theory.
This brings up the important question of motivation in general and the
concept of unconscious motivation in particular. Of course, long before Freud
academic psychology had dealt with the subject of motivation as indicated
by chapters on instinct and emotion as spurs to behavior. However, these
chapters dealt with motivation from the perspective of normal psychology.
But now in the present context it is being considered from the perspective of
one of the founding fathers of medical psychology. Both Freud and those
influenced by his teachings came to regard this entire issue as the central
factor in what came to be called a dynamic psychiatry. Furthermore, those
whose professional thinking is governed by belief in and devotion to this
central factor are said to be analytically oriented.
As dynamic and analytically oriented practitioners they may be affiliated
with any one of a variety of schools of psychotherapy. Thus, there are classi¬
cal Freudian as well as neo-Freudian and non-Freudian schools. Despite
marked differences in doctrine among these rival schools, they do not differ
in their recognition of the reality and importance of unconscious motivation.
But this does not mean agreement with regard to what each school attributes
to the unconscious.
There are some provocative issues arising out of this clash between rival
analytic schools on the one hand and their differing views of the concept of
motivation on the other—especially the concept of unconscious motivation.
Furthermore, as will be brought out in the next chapter, some of these issues
may be construed as elaborations of or, in some instances, as deviations from
Freud’s psychical unconscious as discussed in the present chapter.

REFERENCES

Boring, E. G. 1950. A History of Experimental Psychology. New York:

Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Brett, G. S. 1921. A History of Psychology, Vol. III. London: George Allen &
Unwin, Ltd.
Dewey, J. 1893. Psychology, 3rd Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers.
(First published in 1886.)
Ellenberger, H. F. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious—The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
 Freud’s Psychical Unconscious ‘113

English, H. B., and English, A. C. 1958. A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psy¬

chological and Psychoanalytical Terms. New York; Longmans, Green
and Co.
Ereud, S. 1915. “The Unconscious.” In The Standard Edition of the Com¬
plete Psychological W or ks of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey,
Vol. XIV, pp. 159-215.
-. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New
York: Basic Books, Inc.
-. 1922. Die Traumdeutung. Leipzig and Wien; Franz Deuticke.
-. 1929. “Psychoanalysis.” In E'ncyc/opfledza Vol. 18, pp. 672-
674.
-. 1934. The Future of an Illusion. London; The Hogarth Press.
-. 1938. “Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis.” In The Standard
Edition of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XXIII, pp. 279-286.
Jackson, J. H. 1958. “Remarks on Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous
System.” In Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson, Vol. II, edited
by J. Taylor. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology, Vols. I and IT New York:
Henry Holt and Company.
_. 1894. Review of “Ueber den psychischen Mechanism us hysterischer
Phanomene,” by J. Breuer and S. Freud. Psychological Review 1: 199.
Jones, E. 1953, 1955, 1957. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. I,
Vol. H, and Vol. HI (respectively). New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Maudsley, H. 1893. The Physiology of Mind (“Being the First Part of a Third
Edition” of The Physiology and Pathology of Mind of 1867). New York:
D. Appleton and Company.
Perry, R. B. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. H.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Titchener, E. B. 1917. A Text-Book of Psychology. New York: The Mac¬
millan Company.
Wolman, B. B. 1968. The Unconscious Mind-The Meaning of Freudian Psy¬
chology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Zilboorg, G. 1941. ^ History of Medical Psychology. New York: W. W. Nor¬
ton & Company, Inc.
 5
T^e XJncmsaous
and Theories
of Motivation

During the early decades of the present century both psychology and psy¬
chiatry became increasingly dynamic. This is another way of noting that both
fields began to devote more attention to the subject of motivation. However,
in general, there was a difference in underlying attitude toward the subject;
psychiatrists were chiefly interested in the motivational dynamics of their
patients and psychologists were mainly concerned with the influence of moti¬
vation on human and animal behavior, especially as subject to experimental
control. As a result dynamic psychiatry was centered in clinical studies as
contrasted with the laboratory studies characteristic of dynamic psychology.
One consequence of this difference was that the concept of unconscious
motivation tended to dominate the clinical or psychiatric orientation while
no such emphasis governed the orientation of the experimental psychologists.
The difference in orientation was already recognized by Freud when he con¬
trasted the “physician’s” belief in and acceptance of unconscious mental
processes with the skepticism regarding the existence of such processes on the
part of “university professors”—a clash between medical psychology on the
one hand and academic psychology on the other. The implications of this clash
constitute the central themes of the present chapter and, in some respects,
the emergence of these themes might be said to have been foreshadowed
or symbolized by the differing psychological orientation of James and Freud
as touched upon in the last two chapters. What they stood for in the history
of psychology epitomized the nature of the clash in question and their one
personal meeting may be regarded as symbolic of that clash. This made it a
historic meeting.
 Theories of Motivation • 115

A HISTORIC MEETING

As noted in the last chapter, the only time William James and Sigmund
Freud ever met was on September 8, 1909. This was on the occasion of the
third of Freud’s five lectures at Clark University’s vicennial celebration. The
lecture James heard referred to the strict determinism of all mental processes
as reflected in blunders, jokes, hysterical symptoms, Jung’s association experi¬
ments, and especially in the formation of dreams. Freely translated, Freud
had this to say about the importance of dream interpretation for understand¬
ing of the unconscious (1910, p. 32):

In reality the interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of

the unconscious. It is the most certain foundation of psychoanalysis
and the realm in which every worker has to seek his own proof and his
own instruction. When I am asked, how can one become a psycho¬
analyst, then 1 answer, by the study of one’s own dreams.

In the lecture James thus heard about the dynamics and distortion of wish-
fulfillment as dream-work transforms latent into manifest content. He also
heard about the way the unconscious has to make use of special symbolism
for the expression of “sexueller Komplexe.” And toward the end of the lec¬
ture (p. 39) there was renewed emphasis on the motivational implications of
the psychoanalyst’s “strict belief in the determination of mental life.” For
him there is nothing accidental or arbitrary in all that man thinks, feels, and
does; he is on the alert for detecting the manifold of motives operative in
mental life. In this respect he differs from those of us who seem to rest con¬
tent with reliance upon a single psychic cause (“einer einzigen psychischen
Ursache”) in place of the manifold of motives (“mehrfache Motivierung”).
In short, even in this single lecture James was exposed to the salient char¬
acteristics Freud attributed to the concept of a dynamic unconscious.
In retrospect, this meeting of James and Freud stands out as memorable
because it marked the coming together of a leading academic psychologist
and a leading medical psychologist—a leading critic of the unconscious was
face to face with a leading champion of the unconscious.
This is not to be interpreted as meaning that they were mindful of being
sponsors of divergent stands at the time of their brief meeting. Indeed, as
reported on an earlier page, Freud was especially moved by the fact that
James was not only “very friendly” but also by the fact that with his arm
around Freud’s shoulder he said, “The future of psychology belongs to your
work.” This word of encouragement along with the words he heard upon
being awarded an honorary doctorate made a deep impression upon Freud.
As he saw it, after a decade of neglect by the world of learning, psycho¬
analysis was at last being accorded the accolade of academic recognition. In
his own words it was, “The first official recognition of our endeavors.”
In all likelihood the meeting was far more momentous for Freud than for
James. It took place when James’s career was drawing to a close, for he
116 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

died less than a year later on August 26, 1910. In the case of Freud the meet¬
ing might be said to have come at the start of three decades of creative writing
and increasing influence. Under the circumstances it is conceivable that Freud
might have taken James’s remark about “the future of psychology” to have
been an implicit request to carry on the unfinished tasks of a colleague whose
days were numbered. It is tempting to read fulfillment of such a request in
the fact that, as previously noted, Freud had this to say about his hopes for
the probable outcome of his own unfinished labors: “The future wUl probably
attribute far greater importance to psycho-analysis as the science of the
unconscious than as a therapeutic procedure.” As a “science” this was envis¬
aged as more of a contribution to psychology than to psychiatry.
Obviously, there is no way of determining just how Freud interpreted the
remark made by James. It is virtually certain though that, since he had not
read James’s Principles, he was not likely to have thought of James as one
who might have entertained misgivings about the prospects of a “science
of the unconscious.” For this reason it may be that for him it was as if when
fully expressed James had predicted, “The future of psychology belongs to
your work as an investigator of the unconscious.”
Actually, as brought out in the letters James had written about his meeting
with Freud and as discussed in Chapter 4, there would have been no justifica¬
tion for the latter interpretation of what James may have meant to say. This
is so primarily because James among other reactions to Freud’s lecture
mentioned his hope that in the future Freud and his disciples would con¬
tribute to the progress of functional psychology. As may be recalled, he even
declared this to be “the real psychology.” It was “real” in the sense that
functional psychology was concerned with the phylogenetic and ontogenetic
importance of consciousness as manifested by problem-solving maneuvers
when faced with difficulties. In brief, for the functionalist consciousness
was endowed with causal efficacy and was not dismissed as an inert epiphe-
nomenon in the biological scheme of things. However, in terms of Freud’s
perspective, mind or conscious acts were subordinated to the unconscious*
and thus his “real” psychology was different from James’s functionalism.
Even though Freud was not familiar with what James had written about
belief in states of mind as unconscious becoming “the sovereign means for
believing what one likes in psychology,” he was familiar with what others had
written against endorsement of the latter belief. Thus in his monograph “The
Unconscious” (1915, p. 170) he stated: “Those who have resisted the assump¬
tion of an unconscious psychical are not likely to be ready to exchange it for
an unconscious consciousness."' Of course, as just noted, had he realized that
James belonged to “those” unable “to accept” the paradox of an unconscious

*Such subordination was mentioned by Freud in different contexts at various times. For
the present, by way of reminder, it is enough to note that in his paper entitled “A Note
on die Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis” (1912, p. 264) he had maintained that “every
psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on devel¬
oping into consciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not.”
 Theories of Motivation • 117

consciousness, he might have been perplexed about the meaning of James’s

encouraging observation concerning the future of psychoanalysis. However,
had he had access to the letters in which James had commented on his impres¬
sions of his day at the Clark University meeting, his perplexity might have
vanished. He would have realized that James, although critical of the dream
theory and uneasy about Freud’s “fixed ideas,’’ nevertheless saw factual data
emerging from the study of dreams and light being shed on the nature of
human nature as psychoanalysts proceed “to push their ideas to their utmost
limits.”
James was thus obviously ambivalent with reference to his judgment of
Freud’s teachings. He approved of some and disapproved of others. Such
ambivalence or discriminating selectivity involves an issue sometimes referred
to as the contrast or conflict between scientific as opposed to “orthodox”
viewpoints. Although this issue is not directly related to the question of un¬
conscious motivation, it does have some indirect bearing. Moreover, its
broader implications are too important to be ignored. Consequently, even
though it entails a digression from the main theme of the present chapter,
some of these implications will be outlined in the next section. It may even
come to be viewed as a meaningful and clarifying digression.

SCIENCE VERSUS ORTHODOXY

As applied to psychology in general James’s ambivalence with respect to

psychoanalysis can be reduced to this blunt question: Does identification
with a given school of psychology imply agreement with every single one of
its distinctive teachings or theories? James, as just pointed out, was unable
to agree with Freud’s theory of the unconscious or with his treatment of
dream symbolism. At best one might say James was sympathetic with the
promise of what psychoanalytic research might bring to light, but was not
thereby identifying with psychoanalysis in the spirit of one of Freud’s
disciples. Hence one might ask, were Freud’s acknowledged disciples con¬
strained to agree with all of his teachings? Stated a little differently, were
they to reject a few of his teachings, might they still call themselves psycho¬
analysts? Or to put this in a somewhat broader perspective: Does active
affiliation with a school of psychology entail consistent endorsement of
whatever the leaders of the school chance to espouse? If so, then the follower
of the school might be accused of inconsistency were he to be selective by
discriminating between personally acceptable and unacceptable teachings.
However, as should be obvious, such selectivity, from the viewpoint of
science, does not entail inconsistency. In this respect science differs from the
kind of party loyalty some regard as a political virtue. To question specific
teachings or doctrines in terms of relevant supporting evidence is deemed to
be a scientific virtue. In the absence of such questioning science tends to be
replaced by dogma, and this means orthodoxies to defend and heresies to
oppose.
118 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

Furthermore, with specific reference to psychoanalysis and its offshoots,

it has become rather common to hear talk about orthodox Freudians or
orthodox Jungians or Adlerians, Rankians, and others. As a consequence, it is
necessary to be mindful of denominational differences associated with names
like psychoanalysis, analytic psychology, individual psychology, and Rank’s
dynamic relationship psychology. As might be expected, followers of these
differing psychologies developed their own accounts of man’s unconscious
with the result, for example, that the Freudian unconscious is not to be con¬
fused with the Jungian unconscious.
This state of affairs has given rise to debates concerning minimum essentials
of belief in order to qualify as an adherent of any one of these psychologies.
As a matter of expository convenience, consideration of this issue will be
restricted to psychoanalytic psychology by asking whether those who call
themselves psychoanalysts must be prepared to endorse every teaching Freud
came to sponsor. To put this a little differently: What teachings may be
rejected without thereby losing one’s identity as a psychoanalyst? Put still
differently: Are there any distinctively Jungian or Adlerian teachings a
psychoanalyst may endorse without thereby depriving himself of the right to
call himself a psychoanalyst? Can he reject Freud’s death instinct, endorse
Jung’s racial unconscious and Adler’s masculine protest, and continue as a
member in good standing in one of the psychoanalytic institutes? Would he
jeopardize his standing if, like James, he had serious doubts about the con¬
cept of mind as unconscious?
Actually, this last question is not altogether rhetorical. Within the last few
years an analytically trained psychiatrist, Richard Rabkin, took it seriously
by writing an article entitled “Is the Unconscious Necessary?” The details
of his article will be considered in the next chapter, but in the present context
it will suffice to note that among other conclusions reached was this one
which, by implication, justified James and others in their doubts (1969,
p. 577): “The behavioral scientist or practitioner . . . who cannot ask the
question in the title of this paper, is limited in his capacity for inquiry.”
Needless to add, there is httle .likelihood of obtaining the same answer to
Rabkin’s question from different psychoanalysts, especially if they were
asked to elaborate upon their answers.
What one psychoanalyst stresses as an essential teaching may be dismissed
as nonessential by another. As once pointed out by Judd Marmor (1949), the
differences among psychoanalysts are such that “there is no close unity
among psychoanalysts. .. either in theory or practice.” There are some who
can no longer endorse Freud’s libido theory, others who regard it as both
valid and indispensable, and still others who have subjected it to drastic
reinterpretation. Indeed, as Ruth Munroe (1955, p. 16) has made very clear,
there are “non-libido schools” of psychoanalytic thought each of which has
replaced the libido theory with its own interpretation of motivational
dynamics. Similarly, not all who identify themselves as psychoanalysts neces¬
sarily agree with Freud’s teachings regarding a death instinct, the origin of
 Theories of Motivation '119

religious beliefs, mental telepathy, the possible significance of numerology,

and the unconscious wish as responsible for most of our blunders, memory
lapses, and errors of omission and commission.
In her book entitled Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought Munroe includes
accounts of the schools associated with the names of different leaders such as
Adler, Jung, Rank, Homey, Fromm, and Sullivan. Although, as individuals,
not all of these heads of schools would have described themselves as psycho¬
analysts, all would have regarded themselves as being analytically oriented. In
that sense, despite their disavowal of affiliation with the orthodox Freudian
school, they continued to reflect endorsement of and active interest in Freud’s
emphasis on the importance of the analysis of unconscious motives. This
explains why Munroe identified these differing schools with psychoanalytic
thought.
Even though members of psychoanalytic schools differ among themselves
in their evaluation of specific Freudian teachings, might there not be some
teachings upon which they would be in agreement? Another way to formu¬
late this question is to ask, are there any respects in which those who pride
themselves on being analytically oriented have anything in common aside
from giving themselves a common professional label? It is hard to find an
answer to this question by turning to Freud’s writings. In fact, Freud does
not seem to have regarded psychoanalysis as a finished system whose tenets
will never have to be modified or possibly rejected or replaced by other
teachings.
He was well aware of the difficulty of presenting psychoanalytic teachings
so as to overcome the resistance of critical thinkers who insist upon proof for
given conclusions. This is evident from a point he raised in his last paper—the
1938 paper concerned with elementary lessons in psychoanalysis and already
considered in the previous chapter. He had this to say about anticipated
difficulties in getting the “lay public” to agree with his conclusions (1938,
pp. 281, 283):

And there is then a danger that a critical hearer may shake his head and
say: ‘All this sounds most peculiar: where does the fellow get it from?’
. . . Psychoanalysis has little prospect of becoming popular. It is not
merely that much of what it has to say offends people’s feelings. Almost
as much difficulty is created by the fact that our science involves a num¬
ber of hypotheses-it is hard to say whether they should be regarded as
postulates or as products of our researches—w\i\ch are bound to seem
very strange to ordinary modes of thought and which fundamentally
contradict current views. (Italics added.)

The references to hypotheses and postulates suggest that in his retrospec¬

tive survey of the status of psychoanalysis Freud was no longer certain about
what he had established on the basis of clinical research and what he may
have taken for granted in terms of tacit assumption. Since he neglected to
120 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

supply specific instances of these areas of uncertainty, it is impossible to

know how he would have disposed of the question regarding the essentials or
central core of psychoanalytic teachings.
It is certain though that he wanted these teachings to be classified as con¬
tributions to psychology rather than medicine, for he was explicit in describing
psychoanalysis as “a part of the mental science of psychology” (p. 377). By
his use of the word part he was thus recognizing the restricted scope of
psychoanalysis as contrasted with the broader range of psychology as a whole.
Unfortunately, he failed to elaborate upon this either by showing what the
“part” includes or what it excludes. Had he done so, he might have supplied
his answer to the question of psychoanalytic essentials.

JONES ON ESSENTIALS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

One psychoanalyst who did venture to supply an answer to the question

was Ernest Jones. As a member of Freud’s inner circle and a lifetime student
of Freud’s writings his answer, conceivably, might approximate something
Freud might have said had the question been put to him. But this is entirely
speculative. What is not speculative is that Jones actually came to grips with
this problem of unity among practitioners who label themselves psycho¬
analysts. In a paper pubHshed in 1946 Jones concluded that “the impossibihty
of this ideal is being recognized and it is being replaced by the more prac¬
ticable . .. endeavor to distinguish between what constitute the essential
characteristics of psychoanalysis and what are superimposed and more varying
features.” As he saw it, these “essential characteristics” call for (1) “the study
of mental processes of which we are unaware” to get at the instigators of
behavior in accordance with the doctrine of psychic determinism; (2) the
employment of “the free association technique” for the purpose of exposing
such instigators or determinants; and (3) attention to the relevance and
importance of “the phenomena of transference and resistance.”
These three interrelated essential characteristics of psychoanalysis thus
made the psychoanalyst a student of motivation in general and of hidden
motives in particular. Jones was careful to point out that such hidden motives
even though the patient is ignorant or “unaware” of them are nevertheless to
be classified as mental processes. This, of course, reflects one meaning of the
word unconscious. Furthermore, the fact that such unconscious motives
could be brought to light by free association suggests that they were accessible
to waking ideation, especially if resistances could be overcome or circum¬
vented. This made the motive even when conceived of as inaccessible or hidden
as much a mental process as an explicitly conscious motive. In terms of this
perspective the Freudian unconscious becomes the repository of hidden
motives and psychoanalysis becomes a method for enticing or luring them
from their place of concealment despite resistance and transference. The
three essential psychoanalytic characteristics proposed by Jones can thus be
 Theories of Motivation • 121

compressed into a single sentence, with the proviso that the detailed teachings
of Freud and his followers are to be viewed either as elaborations of these
characteristics or as nonessential accretions.

CONCERNING HIDDEN MOTIVES

It must be recognized that in stressing hidden motivation as an essential

factor in the conceptual outlook of the psychoanalyst Jones was not making
Freud the discoverer of hidden motivation. As noted in Chapter 2, even before
Freud, in the words of James, there were those who had maintained that our
“feelings towards people are perfect wells of motivation, unconscious of itself,
which introspection brings to light.” Nor was James the first to have called
attention to the phenomenon, for Spinoza (1632-1677) appears to have
anticipated both James and Freud. This was brought out in connection with a
famous passage in which Spinoza had been discussing man’s impotence when
in “bondage” to emotion and impulse. The passage, broadly considered, had
to do with the causation of desire and reads as follows (J. Ratner, ed., 1927,
p. 253):
A final cause, as it is called, is nothing . . . but human desire, in so far
as this is considered as the principle or primary cause of anything. For
example, when we say that the having a house to live in was the final
cause of this or that house, we merely mean that a man, because he
imagined the advantages of a domestic life, desired to build a house.
Therefore, having a house to live in, in so far as it is considered as a
final cause, is merely this particular desire, which is really an efficient
cause, and is considered as primary, because men are usually ignorant
of the causes of their desires; for, as I have often said, wc are conscious
of our actions and desires, but ignorant of the causes by which we are
determined to desire anything. (Italics added.)

Neither James nor Freud introduced any reference to the foregoing passage;
hence there is no way of knowing whether they would have agreed with
Spinoza’s distinction between the consciousness of desire and ignorance of
the cause of desire. This distinction is, of course, not directly related to what
James had stigmatized as a “tissue of confusion” in connection with the quest
for allegedly hidden or unconscious motives. Nor does the distinction neces¬
sarily invalidate the importance Jones attributed to the unconscious as an
essential characteristic of Freudian psychology.
Furthermore, it has no direct bearing on the employment of free associa¬
tion as a means of exploring the unconscious. As a technique this was original
with Freud and, as previously noted, might also have impressed James as a
promising means of learning more about the stream of consciousness. In view
of what he had written in denial of mental states as unconscious he would
not have expected the “more” to be revelatory of hidden motives. Whether
this denial of unconscious motivation is to be construed as a denial of
Spinoza’s conclusions regarding the causation of desire is open to question.
122 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

The answer depends on the possibility of making a distinction between moti¬

vation and causation.
Neither James nor Freud considered this distinction and yet it is related
to their views of psychology as science, especially if science be viewed as con¬
tingent upon the determinism implicit in the causal relationship. Accordingly,
before dealing with the distinction directly it appears advisable to discuss
the determinism contingency in its bearing on the concept of unconscious
motivation.

DETERMINISM AND SCIENCE

Even though, as just indicated, neither James nor Freud had occasion to
quote Spinoza in connection with their respective views of unconscious moti¬
vation, it might nevertheless be argued that Freud’s views were more Spino-
zistic than those of James. Psychic determinism, as Jones made clear, is an
essential characteristic of psychoanalytic psychology, just as scientific deter¬
minism was an outstanding and fundamental tenet of Spinoza’s philosophy.
This, of course, means that the doctrine of free will was alien to the latter
philosophy as well as to the former psychology. James, on the other hand,
although granting the force of arguments advanced by sponsors of determin¬
ism, refused to consider these arguments as altogether “coercive.” This is
evident from a passage in the Principles in which he had this to say about the
possibility of eventually being able to establish the “truth” of free will or
indeterminism (Vol. II, pp. 573-574):

Doubt of this particular truth will probably be open to the end of time,
and the utmost that a believer in free-will can ever do will be to show
that the deterministic arguments are not coercive. That they are seduc¬
tive, I am the last to deny; nor do I deny that effort may be needed to
keep the faith in freedom, when they press upon it, upright in the mind.

Incidentally, James granted that his defense of free will was prompted by
“ethical rather than psychological” considerations.^ He seems to have equated
determinism with fatalism. Fatalistic determinism as a doctrine is the equiva¬
lent of Calvinistic predestination without any saving clause to allow for the

James appears to have equated the ethical considerations with “moral freedom.” He
was concerned with the free will problem long before publication of the Principles. In
fact, as cited by Murphy and Ballou (1960, p. 6), James made an entry in his diary on
April 30, 1870, in which, among other comments, he had this to say about the possibil¬
ity of belief in free will being illusory:
At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My
first act of free will shall be to believe in free will. For the remainder of the year, I
will abstain from the mere speculation and comtemplative Griibelei in which my
nature takes most delight, and voluntarily cultivate the feeling of moral freedom,
by reading books favorable to it, as well as by acting.
 Theories of Motivation • 123

miracle of divine grace. However, Spinoza’s determinism was not a fatalistic

one in the sense of holding the destiny of the remote future to have been
settled by the distant past. He did not believe some omniscient agency could
now foretell the scores of all future games, the number of dogs to be born in
the year 5000, and the geometry grades of all the Canadian students studying
geometry next semester. This sort of belief involves a teleological determinism
by believing all the happenings in the world to be moving toward some fixed
goal or predetermined end. In the words of Ratner (p. xxxvi) this is to “con¬
fuse a perverted determinism of ends with a scientific determinism of means.”
James had evidently overlooked this distinction, since his espousal of free will
is indicative of opposition to a determinism of ends along with failure to
consider the alternative of a determinism of means.
Had James given due consideration to the concept of a determinism of
means then, as Spinoza had, he would have rejected the free will doctrine.
In agreement with Spinoza he would have understood that determinism rather
than free will is in accord with the realization of man’s quest for moral excel¬
lence. In fact, Spinoza’s excursion into the field of psychology was occasioned
by his basic concern with this quest. That is why his psychology is to be found
in his Ethics. James, on the other hand, as already implied, found it difficult
to reconcile the free will doctrine with the science of psychology. He made
this explicit toward the end of the Principles (Vol. II, p. 573) when he wrote
that because the “grounds of his opinion” for favoring the alternative of
indeterminism are “ethical rather than psychological, he prefers to exclude
them from the present book.” This comes close to reserving indeterminism
for ethics and determinism for psychology. In effect James was arguing that
the doctrine of free will was difficult to reconcile with his efforts to establish
the foundations for a science of psychology; hence the decision “to exclude”
the doctrine from the Principles.
In other words, it was as if James recognized the world of science to be a
deterministic world as . reflected in the underlying dependability of causal
relations implicit in laws of physics and laws of chemistry. Without eventual
establishment of analogous laws of psychology there could be no science of
psychology. In this connection it is of interest to note that the deterministic
outlook of Spinoza, as a thoroughgoing naturalistic outlook, included recog¬
nition of what Spinoza designated as “sure mental laws” (Ratner, p. 47).
Moreover, Freud’s psychic determinism made psychoanalysis dependent upon
such “sure mental laws,” just as James had made psychology dependent on
such laws by excluding indeterminism from the realm of psychology as
science. Broadly considered, all three—Spinoza, James, and Freud—were thus
regarding human behavior as a product of causal laws falling within the scope
of a scientific determinism as expressed in causal laws whose discovery might,
at least in theory, render prediction and control of behavior possible. Whether
such causal laws are also laws of motivation is a separate issue to be disposed
of by a return to the previously mentioned distinction between motivation
and causation.
124 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

MOTIVATION AND CAUSATION

By way of introduction it may prove clarifying to say some ting more about
Freud’s neglect of this distinction. He and many of his followers have inter¬
preted psychic determinism so broadly as to render all human behavior
motivated behavior; so, by hypothesis, there is no unmotivated behavior. As
is common knowledge, Freud attributed slips of the tongue, the “forgetting”
of appointments, blunders and accidents, and other “chance” events to the
influence of motives concealed in the unconscious. Often, in recognition of
their origin, such motives were designated as Freudian wishes or Freudian
slips. Even seemingly innocent or casual remarks like “pleased to meet you”
or “regards to the family” came to be subjected to psychoanalytic probing
for their unconscious determinants. Some years ago this gave rise to an apoc¬
ryphal report about a man who chanced to meet his psychoanalyst on the
street and called, “Good morning!” only to be halted and confronted with a
challenging question, “What did you mean by that remark?” A variant of the
anecdote, as reflected in the language of gesture, is suggested by the words of
an old popular song to the effect that “every little movement has a meaning
all its own.” These two anecdotes point up the essence of psychic determin¬
ism, namely, that the real meaning of speech and action will turn out to be
a product of ungratified desire or some unfulfilled aspiration. Thus it will be
the outcome of motivational dynamics as influenced by conscious and uncon¬
scious determinants, but especially by the unconscious ones.
As previously noted, if all such determinants be classified as motives, there
can be no unmotivated behavior. Freud does not seem to have been particu¬
larly concerned with this issue. At least he never gave direct expression to a
generalization like, “There can be no unmotivated behavior.” Moreover, in
his investigation of what he called the psychopathology of everyday Ufe he
was not seeking instances of unmotivated behavior. Instead he appears to
have been primarily interested in calling attention to hitherto overlooked
motives operative in behavior commonly regarded as due to chance, accident,
carelessness, fatigue, weakness, distraction, clumsiness, or some other non-
motivational conventional explanation for man’s blunders, mishaps, failures,
or ineptitudes. His book dealing with the psychopathology in question is
replete with instances of the covert motives analysis had shown to be involved
in the foregoing array. The book fails to include a section supplying examples
of nonmotivated behavior, however. Lack of such a section may have induced
many readers to interpret Freud’s central thesis as meaning denial of the
occurrence of nonmotivated behavior. For them it was as if Freud had written,
“All behavior is instigated by one or more motives or one or more desires.”
In terms of this hypothetical sentence motives are made the equivalent of
desires; hence imperious motives are experienced as strong desires. When
starving we hunger for food, when choking we crave air, and when lonely we
yearn for companionship. All such hungers, cravings, and yearnings as expe-
 Theories of Motivation • 125

rienced desires are conscious experiences and ordinarily induce action of

some sort.
In this connection it is pertinent to revert to Spinoza’s distinction between
knowledge of desire and ignorance of the cause of desire. In the previously
cited passage Spinoza had declared “men are usually ignorant of the causes of
their desires” and that “we are conscious of our actions and desires, but
ignorant of the causes by which we are determined to desire anything.”

SPINOZA’S DISTINCTION BETWEEN

DESIRES AND THEIR CAUSES

To the modern reader it may seem obvious that Spinoza’s distinction

between desires and their causes constitutes an anticipation of the Freudian
concept of unconscious motivation. Support for this interpretation may be
suggested by equating Spinoza’s reference to ignorance with one meaning of
the word unconscious. If so, then he might just as well have written, “men
are usually unconscious of the causes of their desires.” However, to regard
this reformulation as the equivalent of what Freud meant by unconscious
motivation may not be justified.
It may well be that Spinoza would have found the notion of unconscious
motivation incomprehensible. He employed the word desire in a manner
reminiscent of the Greek orexis or, as Wolfson has explained (1934, Vol. II,
pp. 165-167), its Latin equivalent cupiditas as shown in a passage in the
Ethics in which the orectic or conative nature of “desire {cupiditas)" is sug¬
gested by defining it as the faculty “by which the mind seeks a thing or turns
away from it.” For Spinoza this made cupiditas a conscious process as
expressed in his statement about our being “conscious of our .. . desires.”
It would be in keeping with Spinoza’s thought to regard cupiditas as approxi¬
mating one of the modern meanings of motive. For example, in their dic¬
tionary English and English (1958, p. 331) define motive as “that which one
consciously assigns as the basis of his behavior” and then explained that when
first introduced '"motive strongly carried the meaning of a conscious factor,
something of which one was aware.”
Accordingly, this original connotation of words like desire or motive is
altogether at variance with the notion of unconscious desire or unconscious
motive. In other words, it is as if Spinoza had written, “We are conscious of
our motives, but ignorant or unconscious of their causes or determinants.”
Unfortunately, he did not supply any clarifying examples of the sense in which
he was differentiating motives from their causes. It may be that he was think¬
ing of rather familiar instances having to do with the arousal of interest as
illustrated by a question like, “What causes some children to be fascinated by
the study of algebra while others find the subject dull and forbidding?”
Analogously, some children appear to be spontaneously motivated to study
history or music or botany or Italian or carpentry, while others-the so-called
academic dropouts—may not be motivated to study anything. Thus, the
126 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ordinary student’s intrinsic interest in some one subject supplies a possible

interpretation of Spinoza’s meaning: the student may know what he desires
to study, but not know what causes him to desire it.^ This comes closer to
being unconscious causation as contrasted with unconscious motivation.
There is another possible interpretation of what Spinoza had in mind in
making his distinction between motivation and causation. This calls for recon¬
sideration of the concept of desire. His analysis of desire revealed it to be
more complex than indicated by the previously mentioned attractive and
aversive implications of the word cupiditas. As he saw it, the concept includes
the entire gamut of human longings or strivings. For him, as shown in the
following quotation, desire involves both emotional and conative features
and may give rise to what we moderns think of as mental conflict (Ratner,
p. 218):

By the word “desire,” therefore, I understand all the efforts, impulses,

appetites, and volitions of a man, which vary according to his changing
disposition, and not unfrequently and so opposed to one another that
he is drawn hither and thither, and knows not whither he ought to turn.

It is advisable to avoid thinking of the use of the phrase “volitions of man”

as meaning what popular psychology refers to as will power. Instead the
phrase is a derivative of the Latin volo meaning “I wish”; hence in his concept
of desire Spinoza might be said to have anticipated the dynamics of the wish
some two centuries before Freud. Furthermore, in this connection and at the
risk of a slight digression, it might also be said his concept of desire antici¬
pated the James-Lange theory of emotion by a similar time span. This calls
for a word of explanation.

SPINOZA’S THEORY OF EMOTION

Spinoza recognized three basic or primary emotions—joy, sorrow, and

desire. Moreover, in reflecting upon the nature of emotion per se he recog¬
nized its connection with widespread physiological changes. He made this
quite explicit when he defined emotion as “the modifications of the body,
by which the power of acting of the body itself is increased, diminished,
helped, or hindered, together with the ideas of these modifications” (Ratner,
p. 213).

^Incidental support for this interpretation of the educational scene came to light in a
news item some years ago. On July 18, 1972, the Wall Street Journal published an article
by Gary North of the Foundation for Economic Education concerned with a review
of recent books critical of American public schools. Mr. North was espcially impressed
with a book edited by Frederick Mosteller and Daniel Moynihan entitled On Equality of
Educational Opportunity (New York: Random House, 1972). In the present context
the following comment cited by Mr. North is particularly pertinent: “As of 1972, ‘we
are still ignorant of what makes education tick for chUdren and of why what works for
some doesn’t seem to for others’ (Gilbert & Mosteller).”
 Theories of Motivation • 127

Had James come across this definition and had he cited it in his chapter
on emotion, it is conceivable that what came to be called the James-Lange
theory of emotion might have been called the Spinoza-James theory. This is
so because there is a marked resemblance between what James wrote about
emotion in the 1880s and what Spinoza had written some decades before the
1680s. In both versions bodily commotion is stressed as a sine qua non for
any experience to be designated as emotional. In the following oft-quoted
passage James made this the “vital point” of his theory (1890, Vol. II, p. 451):

I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is this:
If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our
consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we
have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion
can be constituted*, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual
perception is all that remains.

It is also worth noting that Freud appears to have arrived at a similar con¬
clusion regarding feelings of visceral change as involved in affective experience.
This was not based upon direct reference to the writings of Spinoza or James.
In other words, independently of their views, Freud had this to say about the
subject in his 1915 paper “The Unconscious” (p. 179): “Affectivity manifests
itself essentially in motor (i.e., secretory and vasomotor) discharge resulting
in an (internal) alteration of the subject’s own body without reference to the
external world; motility, in actions designed to affect changes in the external
world.” Moreover, Freud introduced this observation in a section concerned
with “unconscious emotions” and in this connection it is of more than passing
interest to call attention to the fact that Freud had reason to deny that
emotions per se could be unconscious. He made this explicit in these two
sentences (1915, p. 177):

It is surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it,

i.e., that it should become known to consciousness. Thus the possibility
of the attribute of unconsciousness would be completely excluded as
far as emotions, feelings and affects are concerned. (Italics added.)

It is thus obvious that Freud recognized a relationship between a person’s

awareness of emotion and “alteration” of his “own body.” But he did not
identify this with the James-Lange theory. In fact, in a later book he wrote
that “the James-Lange theory. .. is utterly incomprehensible to us psycho¬
analysts” (1938, p. 344). Nevertheless, there was this recognition of bodily
“alteration” as associated with emotion. Similarly, Spinoza associated emotion
with “modifications” of the body and James with “bodily symptoms.” Con¬
sequently, with respect to recognition of this kind of association, all three
might be said to have been in agreement.
This agreement among the three with respect to emotion as related to
bodily change is really not so strange. It is suggestive of rather commonplace
knowledge. Most people know about circulatory, respiratory, muscular, and
128 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

visceral changes associated with man’s griefs, terrors, angers, loves, anxieties,
lusts, excitements, depressions, and whatever else comes to be subsumed
under the category of emotion. James included many rather detailed accounts
of specific bodily symptoms associated with emotional expression. On the
other hand Spinoza gave no series of specific examples illustrative of modifica¬
tions of the body characteristic of emotional arousal. It may be that he
deemed such a series unnecessary in view of the common man’s famiharity
with them. However, it may also be that in thinking about how these changes
come about he realized the difficulty of accounting for them, of explaining
how the pounding heart, labored breathing, and tense muscles of the enraged
man “cause” him to “desire” to attack the object of his rage. Similarly, it
might be asked how other patterns of bodily changes “cause” man to “desire”
to flee from enemies, to help friends, to protect infants, to solve puzzles, to
win games, to overcome rivals, and to plan for the future?
The foregoing question is based on the assumption that Spinoza, in regard¬
ing modifications of the body as essential concomitants of the life of emotion,
was endowing these modifications with causal efficacy.^ Furthermore, since
he classified desire with its appetitive and aversive strivings as a primary emo¬
tion, he may have regarded bodily expressions of these strivings as “causes”
of our “actions and desires.” In terms of this interpretation it is as if he had
written: “We are conscious of our actions and desires, but unconscious of the
causes by which we are determined to strive for anything.” Another way to
put this is to say we may be aware of what we are doing, but not why we are
doing it. Spinoza, as just mentioned, did not furnish many specific examples
of this kind of broad generalization. However James, again independently of
Spinoza, not only arrived at the same generalization but also clarified it by
reference to commonplace observations.
In fact, he gave it rather detailed treatment in his famous chapter on instinct
(Vol. II, Ch. 24). In some respects his treatment can be construed as descrip¬
tive of unconscious motivation not as Freud came to think of it but as
Spinoza seems to have thought of it. This serves as a reminder of the fact that
even in restricted contexts the unconscious is subject to more than one inter¬
pretation. However, in the present instance, to avoid misunderstanding it is
well to limit James’s treatment to the question of what instigates instinctive
or unlearned behavior.

JAMES ON THE ‘WHY?’

OF INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR

In his treatment of instinct James disowned those older writings in which

instinct was identified with “clairvoyant and prophetic power” enabling

‘^The “modifications” are those that came to be studied in terms of their adaptive signifi¬
cance for biological survival. Recall that Darwin had brought the issue to a sharp focus in
his book of 1872, The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals. Still more
detailed study occurred with discovery of endocrine modifications. An important and
 Theories of Motivation • 129

animals to safeguard their welfare as if under divine guidance. Instead James

stressed the relevance of neural mechanisms and anatomic structure. After
defining instincts as manifestations of “the faculty of acting in such a way
as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous
education in the performance,” he added that “they are the functional cor¬
relatives of structure.” This comes close to saying that birds fly not because
they have a flight instinct, but because they have wings, and man breathes not
because of a respiratory instinct, but because he has lungs. Paying attention
to the function of the nervous system in the regulation of behavior, James
noted, makes instinct “appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the
other facts of life.” He thus endeavored to limit his study of instinct to the
factual and nonmystical.
In the light of this factual approach he raised a series of questions about
man’s everyday behavior. Among others he asked about instinctive reactions
to cold, to sex, to food, and to other situations. To illustrate such reactions
he asked: Why do men get close to a warm stove on cold days? Why do young
men find young girls to be objects of fascinating interest? Why do men prefer
meat and milk to straw and ditchwater? A biologist in viewing such instances
of behavior might deem them to be useful in terms of survival value; but
considerations of utility do not account for the ‘why?’ of each individual
choice. Are the choices of the Lx)tharios and Don Juans of this world
prompted by an interest in species survival?^ In eating his dinner does the
average person pause to ask himself why he is doing so? As James observed
(Vol. II, pp. 386-387), such a person is not likely to be mindful of the need
for nourishment in terms of ontogenetic survival. Instead he eats because:

The food tastes good and makes him want more. If you ask him why
he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering
you as a philosopher he will probably laugh at you for a fool. ... It
takes, in short, what Berkeley calls a mind debauched by learning to
carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask
for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone
can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not
scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single
friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside-down?

familiar example of such study culminated with the 1929 publication of W. B. Cannon’s
book dealing with emotional changes as influenced by the hormone adrenaline. Cannon’s
work stimulated further studies of this and other hormones, such as D. H. Funkenstein’s
1955 article on the role of adrenaline and noradrenaline in fear and anger.
^This may seem so obvious as to strike many as self-evident. It is akin to pointing out
that biological utility does not account for sex indulgence, especially by those who intro¬
duce contraceptive measures or those who masturbate or classify themselves as homo¬
sexual. Nevertheless, obvious as this may seem, it appears to have been questioned by
B. F. Skinner. In a magazine article he had this to say about the “phylogenic” utility of
sexual behavior (1972, p. 19):
Until recently, the species could survive famine, pestilence, and other catastrophies
only if its members procreated at every opportunity, and under such contingencies
sexual contact became highly reinforcing. Sex is not reinforcing because it feels good;
it is reinforcing and feels good for a common phylogenic reason.
130 ’ The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

The common man can only say, “O/ course we smile, of course our
heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden,
that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly
made from all eternity to be loved!”

James was explicit in noting that instincts are subject to modification in

the course of experience. With repetition of instinctive behavior it ceases to
be blind impulsiveness with no foresight of ends to be expected. According to
James, such modification is to be expected when “memories, associations,
inferences, and expectations” cluster around instinctive impulses as a conse¬
quence of experience. It is well to recognize this because years later when the
concept of instinct came to be attacked as scientifically questionable one
reason for the attack had to do with the degree to which patterns of instinc¬
tive behavior are subject to change by learning. Some of those who introduced
this argument seem to have failed to realize that James, as a defender of the
concept, had already taken this argument into account in his analysis. As will
be brought out in the next section, this argument was one of several directed
against the concept in what came to be called the instinct controversy.
As just indicated, James made a distinction between instinct as exhibited
initially by virtue of inherent neural organization and instinct as transformed
or modified by the effects of experience. This marked recognition of the dif¬
ference between unlearned and learned behavior and explained James’s noting
that it is fatuous to ask about the ‘Why?’ of unlearned behavior. In general,
being impulsive, unlearned behavior is involuntary, spontaneous, unplanned,
and unintentional. Furthermore, if motivated behavior be deemed voluntary,
deliberate, planned, and intentional, then instinctive or unlearned behavior
when unmodified by experience is not motivated behavior. Thus, in effect,
James held that the young infant is impelled rather than motivated to fall
asleep when tired, to cry when in pain, to stare at bright moving objects, to
fill its lungs with air and its stomach with milk, to empty bladder and bowel,
and to perspire when hot and shiver when cold.
All such instinctive reactions have their causes, but the causes are not
motives. Only later when brought under voluntary control can they become
products of motivation. Within limits an older child can succeed in holding
his breath, in remaining awake though fatigued, in refusing to cry when hurt,
and in inhibiting eliminative urges until reaching the toilet. As controlled
behavior such behavior is motivated or intentional behavior; hence it would
not be fatuous to ask about the ‘Why?’ of such behavior. This is implicit in
what James had to say about instinctive behavior and its subsequent modi¬
fication.
Actually, he did not elaborate explicitly upon the concept of motivation.
Instead, man’s instinctive impulses were viewed as the matrix giving rise to
the springs of human action. James was thus attributing the driving forces of
human nature to the dynamics of instinct. This doubtless accounts for the
fact that his Principles contains no chapter on motivation and no section on
 Theories of Motivation • 131

what a later generation of psychologists listed as drives to animal and human

behavior. At this juncture it seems appropriate to consider this shift from
nineteenth-century interest in instinct to twentieth-century interest in drives.

THE SHIFT FROM INSTINCTS TO DRIVES

Until the time of World War I introductory textbooks of psychology con¬

tained no chapter on motivation, but they did devote space to the subject of
instinct. By the time of World War II this was reversed: the books had a
chapter on motivation, but no chapter on instinct. The reversal had been
prompted by attacks on the concept of instinct starting around the 1920s. In
large measure the attacks were directed at interpretations of human behavior
regarded as expressions of fixed or stereotyped instincts given rise to innately
determined patterns of reaction comparable to those characteristic of the
nest-building of birds and the web-spinning of spiders. Even the relevance of
the concept of heredity for psychology began to be questioned. The influence
of experience and social tradition was played up and that of instinctive urges
was played down. This so-called instinct controversy gave rise to a long list of
articles and books.^ For many engaged in the controversy the very word
instinct became suspect as an acceptable scientific term, and before long the
word drive began to be employed as an acceptable substitute"^ not only with
reference to human behavior but also with reference to animal behavior. In
fact, in the words of the ethologist W. H. Thorpe ,(pp. 17-18):
. . . soon we had a whole host of ‘drives’ sufficient in variety and num¬
ber to satisfy any nineteenth-century naturalist. And although there
were many attempts to keep the term ‘drive’ for the undifferentiated
activity and use the word ‘motivation’ for the directed activity, these
were swept aside and we soon got hunger drives, thirst drives,
homoeostatic drives, fear drives, self-preservatory drives, mating drives,
excretory drives, sex drives, locomotory drives, nest-building drives,
manipulation drives, migratory drives, anxiety drives, exploratory drives,
fighting drives, fleeing drives, escape drives, social drives, pain-avoiding
drives, respiratory drives, comfort drives, first-order drives and second-
order drives, all in glorious confusion.

^An informative introduction to the controversy is to be found in the book of readings

on the subject of instinct as selected and edited by R. C. Birney and R. C. Teevan. For
a critical review of the subject from the perspective of animal ethology consult the vol¬
ume Learning and Instinct in Animals by W. H. Thorpe. His Chapter 2, The Nature of
Drive and Its Place in the Theory of Instinct,” is particularly relevant in the present
context.
"^Whether the word drive has a different meaning or connotation from the word instinct
is subject to debate. The German word for drive is Trieb, so that Triebkraft stands for
motive power and Triebfeder stands for motive. Freud has repeatedly employed the term
Sexualtrieb and this has usually been translated as sexual instinct; however, it would be
just as correct to translate it as sexual drive. This would accord with Eidelberg’s defini¬
tion of Trieb as “a powerful, striving, imperative force within a living organism, deeply
rooted in its psychical nature and closely connected with the somatic sources from
which it springs” (1968, p. 197).
132 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

This resulting confusion would have been deplored by Woodworth, the

man who first gave currency to the word drive in psychological discussions.
He was particularly interested in the dynamics of mental hfe and in 1918 gave
formal expression to this interest with the publication of his Dynamic Psy¬
chology. He introduced the concept of drive in this direct fashion (p. 36):

Once the point of view of a dynamic psychology is gained, two general

problems come into sight, which may be named the problem of ‘mecha¬
nism’ and the problem of‘drive.’ One is the problem, how we do a thing,
and the other is the problem of what induces us to do it.

He was thus employing the concept of drive as a generic term to include

factors or influences regarded as spurs or incitements to behavioral change.
Woodworth did not introduce it as a replacement for the word instinct', at the
time the instinct controversy had not yet made its appearance. Furthermore,
as will be made evident in the next section, Woodworth’s concern with drives
and mechanisms was a result of his basic interest in the subject of motivation.
In fact, he was not at all adverse to endorsing the concept of instinct, as he
made clear in a chapter entitled “Native Equipment of Man.” For example,
he had this to say about a gregarious instinct (pp. 50-51):

Herding together and playing together are typical instances of reactions

to be classed under the gregarious instinct. When children, or adults,
are together, we see also a tendency to become the leader, if possible,
or to follow the leader when dominance has been established. These
tendencies are probably instinctive rather than derived wholly from
individual experience.

In the same chapter Woodworth also introduced tine following distinction

between instincts and native capacities (p. 60):

Native capacities differ from instincts in that they do not provide ready¬
made reactions to stimuli. We do not expect the musically gifted child
to break out in song at some special stimulus, and thus reveal his
musical gift. We expect him to show an interest in music, to learn it
readily, remember it well, and perhaps show some originality in the way
of making up pieces for himself. His native gift amounts to a specific
interest and an ability to learn specific things. The gifted individual is
not one who can do certain things without learning, but who can learn
those things very readily.

Some years after introducing his distinction between drives and mechan¬
isms along with his recognition of the difference between native capacities
and instincts, Woodworth registered his opposition to those who had ques¬
tioned the scientific status of the concept of instinct. This was in the middle
1920s at the height of the instinct controversy. He voiced his opposition in a
paper entitled “A Justification of the Concept of Instinct” and in doing so
 Theories of Motivation • 133

was possibly the first to call a halt to the concerted attack on the concept by
leading psychologists and sociologists of the period. At the time, urging the
elimination of the word instinct from the psychologist’s scientific vocabulary
was tantamount to being up-to-date and progressive. Consequently, Wood-
worth was not taking a popular stand. It was almost as if he had reason to
protest that those who were now using his notion of drive in place of the
traditional concept of instinct might be doing him an injustice, since he had
never urged such replacement.
In his defense, Woodworth ventured to refute the major arguments that
had been advanced against the concept. Thus there were some critics who had
urged that behavior ascribed to an instinct can be analyzed into simpler
component structures such as reflexes. As they saw it, it would be more in
accord with scientific procedure to deal with such components and not with
the more complex total performance. To this argument Woodworth replied
that in all consistency the critics ought also object to having chemists talk
about salts and acids and other compounds rather than talk about their con¬
stituent elements.

In addition, to those who had objected to instinct as a product of inherit¬

ance since in the final analysis what is inherited is some kind of structure, he
had this to say (1927, pp. 136-137):

It is urged that the notion of instinct, or inherited behavior, is super¬

fluous because all that is inherited reduces to structure. The boomerang
... is not thought of as having an instinct to return to the thrower,
but simply as having a structure that makes the return inevitable. This
objection ought to rule out reflex along with instinct—and habit as well,
since what is retained in habit reduces to structure. Certainly, behavior
can be inherited or retained only by way of structure (living structure,
to be sure); but if we are to speak of behavior at all, we need behavior
concepts. The fact that behavior depends on structure need not deter
us from using concepts based on the facts of behavior, rather than on
the often unknown facts of structure.

Years later, with advances in genetics, Woodworth’s conclusion regarding

such facts of structure received more detailed support of a kind that was not
yet available in the 1920s. As brought out by Thorpe (pp. 16-17), there is
good reason to assume the encoding of innate patterns of behavior in the
DNA of the gene. Of course, both Woodworth and Thorpe were mindful
of the need to discriminate between what might be attributed to such pat¬
terns as contrasted with changes in behavior due to learning, social tradition,
and kindred nongenetic influences. Furthermore, especially in the case of
animal behavior, it has been possible to control the effect of these influences
by rearing individual animals in isolation. For example, it has long been
known that songbirds even though brought up in solitude from the time of
hatching will nevertheless, when more mature, give voice to the song char¬
acteristic of the species. Or to cite another example supplied by Thorpe
134 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

(p. 22), the young of the flying squirrel when reared by hand from the time
of birth, if “given nuts, would go through all the motions of burying them in
the bottom of the wire cage and then go away contented, even though the
nuts were exposed to full view.”
It is thus a matter of indifference whether this be called an instinct or a
drive to bury nuts. In other words, reverting to an earlier point, in adding the
word drive to the psychologist’s professional vocabulary Woodworth was not
thereby denying the relevance and scientific respectability of the concept of
instinct. After all, as already suggested, his interest in the concepts of drives,
native capacities, mechanisms, and instincts reflected his underlying interest
in the development of a dynamic psychology. This called for inquiry into the
origin, nature, and variety of human motives or the springs of human action.
In broad perspective, just as Freud is often said to have given twentieth-
century psychiatry its dynamic orientation, so Woodworth may be said
to have given twentieth-century psychology its motivational or dynamic
orientation.

WOODWORTH’S THEORY OF
MOTIVATION: INTRODUCTION

As a student of James it is to be expected that Woodworth would have

been in sympathy with the psychology of functionalism and its interest in
finding a place for mind in the evolutionary process. This implies an interest
in struggle, adaptive effort, goal-directed behavior, and similar aspects of
motivation. That such an interest had gripped Woodworth early in his career
is indicated by the fact that, as he recalls in his “Autobiography,” back in his
days as a graduate student in the 1890s he had told a fellow-student of a plan
“to try and develop” what he called “motivology” (1932, p. 366). Later on
in the autobiography he had this to say regarding the importance he came to
attach to the subject of motivation, despite its more elusive nature when
compared with the objectivity of studies of performance;

Motivation always seemed to me a field worthy to be placed alongside

of performance. That is, we need to know not only what the individual
can do and how he does it, but also what induces him to do one thing
rather than another and to put so much energy into what he does. We
need a study of motivation in order to understand the selectivity of
behavior and its varying energy. In my books I have sought repeatedly
for a formula that should bring motives right down into the midst of
performance instead of leaving them to float in a transcendental sphere.

This quest for the right formula made Woodworth’s functionalism a

dynamic functionalism. As Hilgard once put it (1956, p. 337), in the work
of Woodworth one finds “the first functionalist to give a treatment of motiva¬
tion in modern form.” The point of departure for this treatment was focused
 Theories of Motivation • 135

on his distinction between drives and mechanisms. By means of this distinc¬

tion he ventured to account for the “selectivity of behavior” as well as for
“its varying energy.”
For Woodworth the phrase “selectivity of behavior” referred to the prob¬
lem of determining the facts responsible for specific choices in the way of
foods, vocations, mates, recreations, friends, neighborhoods, religions, schools,
clubs, clothes, careers, and any other manifestation of a significant preference
or aversion. In effect he was asking, “How does it come about that people
develop such a wide variety of interests?” Some people become devotees of
the stock market and others of the church or of mathematics. There are
people who are fascinated by baseball and others who are bored by it. Even
among the players themselves preferences are revealed in terms of the specific
positions selected. Not every player wants to be a pitcher or an outfielder.
Similarly, among musicians some prefer to be harpists while others choose to
play a wind instrument. In the field of medicine some physicians prefer
research to private practice while still others decide to become hospital admin¬
istrators, or medical missionaries or professors of medicine. There is no need
to extend this list of the almost endless instances of ways in which human
beings come to terms with opportunities for making particular choices. The
ones mentioned suffice to indicate the vast scope of Woodworth’s problem.
He was among the first investigators to consider this issue of the origin of
new interests, new motives, and new skills, along with the not infrequent
concomitant decline of old interests, old motives, and old skills.
Woodworth’s special attention to this issue had been sharpened by the
stand taken by William McDougall (1871-1938) with specific reference to
the energies of men or the springs of human behavior. In his influential
Introduction to Social Psychology of 1908 McDougall had argued that it is
especially important for progress in the social sciences for psychology to deal
with the basic question of the nature and source of man’s urges to action. As
an answer to this question McDougall called attention to instincts as furnish¬
ing the conceptual basis for understanding the life of impulse and motivation.
This is evident from the following two paragraphs from the Social Psychology
as quoted by Woodworth (1918, pp. 63-64):
We may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts are the prime
movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of
some instinct (or some habit derived from instinct), every train of
thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along
towards’ its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained.
The instinctive impulses determine the end of all activities and supply
the driving power by which all mental activities are sustained, and all
the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind
is but a means towards these ends, is but the instrument by which
these impulses seek their satisfactions, while pleasure and pain do but
serve to guide them in their choice of means.
Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses,
and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind;
136 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose

mainspring had been removed or a steam-engine whose fires had been
drawn.

In his account of the nature of these instincts or, as he later called them,
these propensities, McDougall noted their intrinsic association with emotional
dispositions. In fact, even before McDougall this had been noted by James
who stressed its importance by writing in italics (1890, Vol. II, p. 442):
“Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well. ” This sen¬
tence appears in the chapter on emotion and, as previously mentioned, for
James the concept of emotion connoted bodily commotion. This amounts
to saying that feelings and emotions involve the organism as a whole and lack
the specificity of localization characteristic of sensations and reflexes. We can
point to the spot that hurts and the examining physician can observe the
pupillary reflex but neither he nor we can point to or observe the location of
our hurt feelings, wounded pride, tender love, joyous triumph, burning
anger, or any other such affective experience. In ordinary language this diffuse
nature of affective experience is reflected in childlike statements like, “When
angry. I’m angry all over,” and, “When happy. I’m happy all over.” There can
thus be no question about the total organism being involved in emotional
arousal. There can also be no question about the impulsive or conative nature
of emotional arousal. In fear of fire there is an impulse to escape, just as in
love for a baby there is an impulse to protect and safeguard.
The combination of feeling and impulse constitutive of emotion was
stressed in McDougall’s discussion of instinct. He recognized twelve such com¬
binations of what he designated as “primary or simple instinctive tendencies.”
As he came to describe them they were illustrated in some detail, but for
present purposes it will be enough to list the affective and impulse^ charac¬
teristics of each instinctive tendency as follows:

1. Anger with the concomitant desire or impulse to attack, destroy,

punish, or discomfit the object of anger.
2. Fear with its impulse to get away from the fearsome situation or
person.
3. Curiosity along with the feeling of wonder and the impulse to explore
or investigate.
4. Disgust with the impulse to reject along with feelings of abhorrence.
5. The parental or mothering instinct characterized by tender emotion
and protective impulses.
6. The mating instinct with its feehngs of lust.
7. The nutritive instinct or the impulse to eat as experienced by feelings
of hunger.
8. The gregarious instinct or the impulse for human association with
feelings of loneliness when the instinct is aroused.
9. The acquisitive or collecting instinct with feelings of ownership or
pride of possession and when carried to extremes characterized by the
 Theories of Motivation • 137

impulse to hoard and the miser’s unwillingness to share or contribute.

10. The instinct of construction or the impulse to build or to achieve and
characterized by pride of workmanship and joy of accomplishment.
11. Self-assertion and feelings of mastery, control, and dominance.
12. Submission and feelings of self-abasement or subordination to the
guidance or leadership of others.

These twelve major propensities were supplemented by some minor ones

in McDougaU’s view. Thus he recognized such inborn tendencies as those that
prompt impulses to play, to walk, to imitate, to develop habits, and a few
others. He seemed to regard these as lacking the specificity of goal-directed-
ness characteristic of hunger, disgust, and the other major ones, but he did
attribute the driving force behind all human activities to this array of major
and minor instincts.
There was a period following dissemination of his views when it became a
rather popular and more or less accepted practice to try to account for the
conduct of human beings by showing it to be a product of one or more of
McDougall’s instincts. Thus for a business executive to invite members of his
staff to a luncheon meeting might upon analysis have been attributed to the
fusion of energies stemming from activated self-assertive, gregarious, nutritive,
and acquisitive instincts. This, of course, was a very different kind of motiva¬
tional analysis from one the executive’s psychoanalyst might have proposed
in terms of the libido theory, but that’s another story not to be elaborated
upon at this point. It is more relevant to continue with Woodworth’s critique
of McDougall.
In his review of McDougall’s hst of major and minor instincts Woodworth
noticed the omission of any reference to native capacities in the way of
special talents for achievement in given fields of endeavor such as in mathe¬
matics, music, poetry, languages, scientific thinking, and other fields of
creativity. In Woodworth’s opinion this was a serious omission. Without
recognition of such native capacities there is no way of explaining the unique
accomplishments of men like Newton, Mozart, Shakespeare, Helmholtz,
Faraday, Kant, and Euler. Men of such creative eminence are born rather than
made. The instincts recognized by McDougall are not enough to explain their
creativity. After all, such an array of instinctive equipment is common, but
such genius is rare.
Woodworth did not think of native capacities as rare endowments limited
to men of genius. Instead he recognized them as present in the general popu¬
lation in kinds and amounts varying from individual to individual. Thus, one
child might have marked capacity for mathematics and Uttle capacity for
musical composition, whereas another child might have a marked capacity for
literary composition or some other field of endeavor.® Without some such

®This allusion to a marked capacity is a matter of expository convenience. Woodworth

recognized the existence of lesser degrees of native capacities as well. In other words,
138 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

capacity, Woodworth maintained, it is hardly likely that a child will come to

experience a spontaneous and sustained interest in a particular kind of study
or activity by an “appeal to his self-feeling” (1918, pp. 67-68):

For example, a child may be induced ... to make a start in learning to

sing, but, unless he has a natural musical gift, he drops out soon, and
parries the appeal to his self-feeling by deriding singing and those chil¬
dren who excel him. He finds some way of making this exercise appear
unworthy of his effort, whereas the musical child, once started by the
appeal to his self-feeling, is carried along by zeal for music itself, and
puts forth great energy without requiring such extraneous stimuli to
be constantly apphed.

In addition, Woodworth called attention to the fact that once engaged in

activity for which the child has a special gift he becomes absorbed in the
pursuit of the activity. Such absorption requires no extrinsic sources of moti¬
vation. The activity furnishes its own drive and no outside motive is needed
to keep it going. The underlying principle applies to adults as well as children.
In other words, whatever we have learned to do well may become an inde¬
pendent source of motivation in the sense of being an absorbing interest in
its own right. In the course of such learning new motives—unrelated to
instinctive motives—may come into being. This generalization constitutes
what Woodworth regarded as “the chief point” in his book on dynamic
psychology.

THE CHIEF POINT OF WOODWORTH’S THEORY

As must be evident by this time, Woodworth never denied McDougall’s

contention regarding instincts as spurs or motives to activity. What he did
deny was having them made the sole source of motivational goads to all
human undertakings. Stated differently, he was objecting to having man’s
stock of motives or drives to action restricted to those of instinctive origin.
Moreover, since the concept of instinct connotes genetic endowment, the
latter kind of restriction would amount to arguing that all human motives are
inherited motives, as if McDougall’s instinct psychology had made no pro¬
vision for acquired motives. This, as already indicated, constituted Wood-

the fact that the vast majority of school children can be taught to cipher, to sing songs,
and to read and write is indicative of their possession of at least some level of the three
native capacities involved. Incidentally, the role of native capacities as a factor in learn¬
ing, especially the learning of language, continues to be a subject of controversy. In
connection with this controversy D. O. Hebb in collaboration with two other psycholo¬
gists said recently (1973, p. 56): “It is clear that man is born to talk; both capacity and
motivation are innate. There is almost a need to learn at least his native language. It is
difficult to separate what is innate from what is acquired in these circumstances” (italics
added).
 Theories of Motivation • 139

worth’s chief criticism of McDougall’s psychology. He was thus arguing for

the relevance and importance of acquired motives in order to do justice to
the full scope of a dynamic psychology.
It is well to realize that at the time—between 1910 and 1920—there were
three dynamic psychologies in the making. There was Freud’s libido psychol¬
ogy, McDougall’s instinct psychology, and Woodworth’s drive psychology. In
the case of Freud the pleasure-seeking impulsiveness of the infant’s libido was
regarded as the instinctual matrix out of which subsequent motivational
striving was to emerge. This made his psychology as much of an instinct
psychology as McDougall’s in the sense that both psychologies traced all
motivation, desire, and wishing to the dynamics of instinct.
This was so even though, unlike McDougall, Freud never drew up a list of
some ten or more specific instincts to account for distinctive modes of instinc¬
tive behavior. He had nothing to say about a gregarious instinct or about an
instinct to construct or to collect or to be self-abasing or self-assertive. Even
McDougall’s nutritive instinct was not given explicit mention in terms of
hunger, feeding, and the organism’s metabolic needs. At best the nutritive
instinct received implicit recognition in the libidinization of the alimentary
canal with the baby’s pleasure in orality at one end balanced by pleasure in
anality at the other. It may also be that some of McDougall’s other instincts
are reflected in such libidinization. For example, with reference to orality
the dependence Freud associated with longings for a return to the optimal
security of the nursing infant nestled in its mother’s arms is comparable to
the dependence associated with McDougall’s instinct of submission to the
guidance of any recognized superior protective power. Similarly, Freud’s anal-
retentive character might be said to resemble the pride of possession Mc¬
Dougall attributed to the collecting instinct.
In terms of these resemblances Woodworth had as much reason to object
to Freud’s instinct psychology as to McDougall’s. His own dynamic psychol¬
ogy is to be contrasted with their dynamic psychologies because of their
failure to come to grips with the problem of motivation as he envisaged it.
The central issue lends itself to convenient illustration by considering the
implications of what was just referred to as the collecting instinct. In Wood¬
worth’s opinion the mere existence of such an instinct taken by itself will not
account for individual differences in what people come to cherish as worth
collecting. As should be obvious, some are interested in collecting first
editions, others in collecting coins, or art, or stamps, or autographs, or old
violins, or even old jokes. Each such interest constitutes a separate desire or
motive to accumulate a given class of objects. The motive of a philatelist is
thus different from the motive of an art collector. Were the latter asked to
explain the reason for his particular interest he might not find a ready answer.
To the lover of art his interest in paiatings requires no justification in the way
of an appeal to reasons unrelated to aesthetics. Similarly, the avid philatelist
would not account for his persistent search for a rare stamp by an appeal to
an acquisitive instinct or any consideration unrelated to the world of philately.
140 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

In the language of Woodworth; the art lover has a drive to collect works of
art and the philatelist has a drive to collect stamps and these drives are sui
generis. Furthermore, as already mentioned, in his recognition of such specific
acquired drives or motives his dynamic psychology provided for a much more
extensive range of motives than the dynamic psychologies of either Freud or
McDougall. In doing so he was recognizing the significance of what later came
to be named the functional autonomy of motives.

CONCERNING FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

The new name helped to make more explicit the self-regulating or autono¬
mous character of acquired drives. Recall that Woodworth had made a
distinction between drives and mechanisms with the word drive standing for
any motive and the word mechanism standing for any act, or process by
means of which the motive could be gratified. If successful in bringing this
about, then the mechanism would be transformed into a new drive in its own
right and as a new drive would require different mechanisms to realize its
objectives. The new drive or new interest was thus deemed to be liberated
from its erstwhile dependence on some primal force in the way of hunger, sex,
or fear. Woodworth had recognized and stressed this in 1918, but it was close
to some twenty years later before Gordon Allport (1897-1967) gave it re¬
newed and special prominence by giving it the distinctive label of functional
autonomy of motives. By this phrase he was referring to the transition from
an original or primary motive to a derived or secondary one with the latter
becoming free from any dependence on the former. The derived or emergent
motive was thus regarded as freed from any functional linkage to the insti¬
gating motive.’ Allport clarified this in the following paragraphs concerned
with examples of the concept of functional autonomy (1961, pp. 227-228):
Workmanship is a good example. A good workman feels compelled to
do a clean-cut job even though his income no longer depends on main¬
taining high standards. In fact, in a day of jerry-building his workman¬
like standards may be to his economic disadvantage. Even so he cannot
do a slipshod job . . .
A businessman, long since secure economically, works himself into ill-
health, perhaps even back into poverty, for the sake of carrying on his
plans. Hard work, once a means to an end, becomes an end in itself . . .
The pursuit of literature, the development of good taste in clothes, the
use of cosmetics, strolls in the public park, or a winter in Miami may
first serve, let us say, the interests of sex. But every one of these “instru¬
mental” activities may become an interest in itself, held for a lifetime,
even after they no longer serve the erotic motive.
Some mothers bear their children unwillingly, dismayed at the thought
of drudgery in the future. The “parental instinct” is wholly lacking. The

’Allport gave this interpretation italicized formulation in this sentence (1961, p. 229):
“Functional autonomy.. . refers to any acquired system of motivation in which the
tensions involved are not of the same kind as the antecedent tensions from which the
acquired system developed. ”
 Theories of Motivation • 141

mother may be held to her child-tending by fear of what her critical

neighbors wUl say, or by fear of the law, or perhaps by a dim hope that
the child will provide security for her in her old age. Gross as these
motives may be, they hold her to her work until gradually, through the
practice of devotion, her burden becomes a joy. As her love for the
child develops, her earlier practical motives are lost. In later years not
one of these original motives may operate. The tenacity of the maternal
sentiment is proverbial, even when, as in this case, it can be shown to
be not an original but an acquired motive.

As is evident from these examples of functional autonomy, the principle

is concerned with changes in motivation in the course of experience as new
interests are cultivated, unwelcome habits broken, attitudes about people
and things modified, and personal values transformed. Thus, as suggested by
Allport, the value a conscientious workman places upon the ideal of a job
well done has to do with motivation and so does a mother’s devotion to her
child along with her interest in cosmetics. Additional instances of such speci¬
ficity of motivation are supplied by her husband’s desire to spend winters in
Miami, by his liking for detective stories, his conservative taste in clothes, his
disinterest in dancing, his worry about investments, and also by his resigned
attitude toward his mediocre golf.
All the foregoing italicized words are representative of the nuances of
meaning to be considered in dealing with the problem of the individuality of
human motives. They are descriptive of ways people differ from one another
in terms of beliefs, commitments, prejudices, ideals, preferences, hopes, and
intentions. They reflect ways personality traits are rooted in motivational
dispositions and as such are reminiscent of the descriptive vocabulary brought
into play when writing letters of reference. In brief, they reveal the broad
scope and challenge of the principle of functional autonomy.
In Allport’s view functional autonomy constituted a challenge to Freud’s
theory of motivation. On the one hand Freud appeared to trace all action
back to basic motives of sex and aggression. On the other hand, according to
functional autonomy, there is a multiplicity of acquired motives each one of
which is free from dependence upon Freud’s two basic motives. Taken
strictly, each acquired motive, if genuinely autonomous, would, in the words
of Woodworth, be furnishing its own drive and be divorced from any instinc¬
tive drive. Consequently, no acquired motive such as absorption in chamber
music or biochemistry was to be regarded as an indirect expression of some
underlying instinctive drive.
However, according to Allport, Freud would have regarded such interests
in chamber music or biochemistry as sublimated manifestations of instinct.
This made them disguised expressions of instinct. In other words, Freud made
no provision for functional autonomy; hence the clash between his theory of
motivation and Allport’s theory. In fact, Allport gave succinct expression to
his criticism of Freud’s theory by noting that “to declare without proof that
all adult interests are masquerades for what man really wants (chiefly sex and
142 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

aggression) is as improbable as gargoyles” (1961, p. 244). This criticism will

serve as a convenient point of departure for a brief examination of Freud s
theory.

FREUD’S THEORY OF MOTIVATION

Freud approached the study of neurotic and other abnormalities of behav¬

ior from not only a medical standpoint but also a biological standpoint. The
latter standpoint reflected the great interest in a Darwinian perspective so
prominent in scientific circles around the turn of the century. In terms of
such a perspective Freud was able to envisage man as being primarily impelled
by two sets of motives, namely, the sexual and the aggressive, with the former
promoting survival of his species and the latter his individual survival in com¬
petitive struggles. As interpreted by Freud, gratification of these two sets of
motives turns out to be “what man really wants” once the vagaries of his
behavior have been subjected to penetrating analysis. Penetrating analysis is
required because, in Allport’s phrase, alleged or apparent motives may be
“masquerades” for the real motives. The masquerading, as Freud came to
recognize it, was largely due to mechanisms like sublimation and rationaliza¬
tion. As a result of the operation of these mechanisms, so Freud taught, man
is kept in ignorance of his real motives. This is another way of saying that he
is unconscious of “what he really wants.” To understand how this comes
about calls for consideration of processes Freud ascribed to the unconscious—
especially the process of sublimation.
The word sublimation is derived from the Latin sublimare, meaning to
waft upward, as happened in the days of the alchemists when vapors streamed
upward from the alembic as some substance was being distilled or refined. As
a result sublimation came to suggest the notion of purifying, cleansing, or
refining. This evidently commended it to Freud^® as a satisfactory designation
for a psychological process by means of which a socially unacceptable instinc¬
tual expression is changed into a socially acceptable one. As interpreted by
Freud, this process takes place unconsciously and as such does not involve
a change from one instinctive urge to another or from one motive to another.
Only the instinct’s mode of expression, not the instinct itself, is subjected to
modification. Thus sublimation was not conceived of as a process resulting in
the acquisition of new motives; instead it was the old motive gratified in a
new way. This shift from the old to the new was a product of sublimation and
since sublimation was an unconscious process it was assumed that the analyst’s
patient was unaware of the shift. In other words, as Freud saw it, man may
often fail to recognize his real motives. In the idiom of psychoanalysis these
real motives were likely to be ego-dystonic urges associated with the vicis¬
situdes of the neurotic patient’s libido.

noted by Jones (Vol. I, p. 317), the term sublimation was suggested to Freud by
his friend and correspondent, the Berlin nose and throat specialist, Wilhelm Fliess (1858-
1928).
 Theories of Motivation • 143

In this connection it is well to call attention to a not uncommon misinter¬

pretation of Freud’s conclusion concerning such libidinal vicissitudes as causes
of neurotic disturbance. On occasion Freud has been alleged to have urged
sexual indulgence in order to ward off neurotic ills. Sometimes the same
thought has been expressed by statements to the effect that Freud has warned
against the hazards of sexual frustration. Expressed in this way one comes
closer to Freud’s thinking about the etiology of neuroses provided it is realized
that he also taught that sublimation can circumvent such dangers. He dealt
with this issue in a lecture concerned with this etiology and published in his
General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (22nd Lecture). In the course of this
lecture he made a special point of guarding against a possible misinterpreta¬
tion of what he had written about the cause of neuroses. He noted that
although libidinal frustration has been found to be a factor in all cases of
neurosis, this does not mean that neurotic disturbance is an inevitable conse¬
quence of such frustration. His note took this form (1938, p. 302):

In general, there are very many ways by which it is possible to endure

lack of libidinal satisfaction without falling ill. Above all we know of
people who are able to take such abstinence upon themselves without
injury; they are then not happy, they suffer from unsatisfied longing,
but they do not become ill. (Italics added.)

Freud then explained that failure to become ill despite sexual abstinence
is due to the ease with which “the component-instincts of sexuality” can
change from one means of gratification to another. In particular he noted
that one such process of change serving to ward off illness is important
because of its bearing on the development of culture. He described the nature
of this important process in these two sentences (p. 302):

It consists in the abandonment, on the part of the sexual impulse, of an

aim previously found either in the gratification of a component-impulse
or in the gratification incidental to reproduction, and the adoption of
a new aim-which new aim, though genetically related to the first, can
no longer be regarded as sexual, but must be called social in character.
We call this process SUBLIMATION, by which we subscribe to the gen¬
eral standard which estimates social aims above sexual (ultimately
selfish) aims.

In thus considering the sublimated aim to be genetically related to the

instigating sexual motive Freud was not regarding the changed aim as a new
motive. It was the old motive with a new aim. Still, this is not quite correct
since, as Freud indicated, the sublimated motive “can no longer be regarded
as sexual.” This amounts to describing it as a desexualized sexual motive,
and just how the motive continues to be sexual under the circumstances was
never explained. It may be that the so-called sublimated motive is really a
different one and not a disguised version of the sexual motive. If this be so,
then the concept of sublimated motives may have to be discarded or dras-
144 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

tically modified. In other words, the soundness of the concept itself is to be

questioned.

CAN MOTIVES BE SUBLIMATED?

In fairness to Freud this question ought to be restricted to the sublima¬

tion of the sexual impulse and not be extended to cover other impulses.
After all, Freud never suggested that the impulse to urinate could be sub¬
limated by taking a shower or that the need for food could be sublimated by
chewing gum. Nor did he ever refer to the sublimation of man’s need for air.
These physiologically grounded eliminative, gastric, and respiratory motives
are not to be gratified by any substitute aims. This must be self-evident espe¬
cially in view of their direct relationship to a distended bladder, an empty
stomach, and a congested lung.
However, what may not be self-evident is the question of substitute grati¬
fication of motives unrelated to a particular visceral organ. For example, can
curiosity be sublimated? To grasp the implication of this question it must be
realized that we are never curious in the abstract, but always curious about
definite issues. We are curious about the dentist’s bill, the home team’s base¬
ball score, the content of an unopened telegram and the meaning of a strange
word like tetragrammaton. As must be obvious, no one of these instances of
curiosity can be gratified by some vicarious bit of information. The baseball
score will not suffice as a substitute for the size of the dentist’s bill nor will
our uneasiness with reference to the telegram be dissipated by learning the
meaning of tetragrammaton. It thus seems that the motive of curiosity is not
subject to sublimation in the sense of substituting a different “aim” for the
original one. However, this assumes curiosity to be a separate or distinctive
motive and not a derivative of the libido.”
By way of exploring another facet of this issue it might prove clarifying
to ask whether an acquired motive like the desire for a cigarette can be sub¬
limated. Now that cigarettes are known to be associated with respiratory
disease more and more people are thinking of continued indulgence as wrong.
This renders the impulse to smoke, like illicit sex, a tabooed impulse and
since sublimation as a process has been regarded as especially applicable to
the tabooed sexual impulse so its applicability to another tabooed impulse
merits consideration. In other words, we are raising this direct question; Can

” Freud did regard it as a derivative of the libido. Curiosity with reference to sexual
matters gives rise to voyeurism. Scopophilia, as is well known, was regarded as one of the
Ubido s component-instincts. Sexual pleasure incident to looking, or Schaulust, was
often marked by a shift from interest in the genital region to bodily contours as such and
from the latter to lines and curves in artistic expression. Such a shift from the sexual to
the aesthetic constitutes an example of Freud’s view of sublimation. At one time this
psychoanalytic approach to artistic creativity aroused a great deal of interest. For details
see the long and rather technical 1940 paper “Free Creation in the Inventive Arts” by
H. B. Lee.
 Theories of Motivation • 145

the desire for a cigarette be eliminated by sublimation and, if so, how is this
to be accomplished?^^
From a psychoanalytic viewpoint curbing the impulse to smoke would
entail repression of the impulse. Precise accounts of how repression takes
place are not available. It is regarded as a process by means of which ideas,
wishes, worries and other mental phenomena are excluded from conscious¬
ness. The exclusion refers to expulsion from consciousness as well as to block¬
ing or preventing any of the foregoing phenomena from becoming conscious.
Moreover, the actual process of exclusion is said to occur unconsciously. This
means that it is not subject to direct observation; hence the absence of any
introspective accounts of repression as a process. Nevertheless, it is possible
to supply introspective accounts of some instances of exclusion. These would
be characterized by awareness and the process involved would be called
suppression. Thus our hypothetical smoker might curb the impulse to reach
for a cigarette by reaching for a stick of gum. In doing so he would be sup¬
pressing but not repressing the desire for a smoke. Incidentally, even though
both smoking and chewing gum can be classified as oral gratifications, this
does not make the latter a sublimation of the former. It is merely the substi¬
tution of a different act for the act of smoking. The same result could have
been attained by non-oral substitutions such as playing the piano, typing a
letter, shaving, or mowing the lawn.
As a conscious act suppression of the impulse to smoke by doing something
else would not eliminate the desire for a cigarette. The motive would still be
present as a craving even though response to the craving was being curbed.
Such curbing of a customary response is often referred to as inhibition. In
fact, in the present context suppression and inhibition may be regarded as
synonymous terms. As every one knows, with effort a cough can be sup¬
pressed or inhibited for a time, but this does not cause the impulse to vanish.
Similarly, for the smoker to turn from the cigarette case to the piano will not
result in the immediate extinction of the craving for a smoke. Not until he
succeeds in being absorbed in tlie musical score itself will he cease to be
aware of his craving.
In this example we are assuming the smoker to be a musician whose need
for a smoke is most acute right after a meal. In his effort to break the habit it
is further assumed that he has decided to end each meal by fingering the key¬
board instead of a cigarette. Should he find himself still conscious of the

‘^This question is being raised for the purpose of clarifying some of the implications of
the concept of sublimation and not for the purpose of suggesting a psychoanalytic
approach to the smoking problem. In fact, it is hardly Ukely that any responsible psycho¬
analyst would urge subhmation of the wish to smoke. As far as known, Freud himself
as an inveterate smoker of cigars did not venture to sublimate his wish to smoke despite
being a victim of cancer requiring oral surgery. Nor is there any reference to sublimation
in current behavioral research on smoking. (For details see the eight articles in the
Special Issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology 81 (1973): 107-198.)
146 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ungratified craving along with a concomitant inability to concentrate on the

music, he might be said to be inhibiting or suppressing his habitual response
to the craving. As long as the craving continues the habit is not yet broken.
However, should the time come when, following many days of such success¬
ful suppression, there is instant concentration on the musical- exercises with
all distracting urges in abeyance then the habit would be broken. Such an
outcome would be in accord with the functionalist principle of conscious
decay characterizing the shift from self-conscious preoccupation with the
complexity of a problem at the beginning of learning to the stage of routine
automatism once mastery has been achieved. As a principle, it will be recalled,
it is the same as Helmholtz’s basic process which also dealt with this shift
from effortful conscious control to effortless habitual control. It might also
be described as a shift from conscious to unconscious control. In this respect
one might regard it as a shift from suppression to repression in the sense that
the former is designated as a conscious and the latter as an unconscious proc¬
ess. Actually, as previously indicated, Freud referred to repression as an
unconscious process, but neglected to say anything about the way such a
process comes into being. Although he recognized the distinction between
suppression as conscious and repression as unconscious, he did not regard the
one as a prelude to the other. Repression as an unconscious affair was seem¬
ingly sui generis and unrelated to or independent of suppression. This left it
a mystery; but, as just suggested, by equating it with the automatism of
habitual control and as a derivative of suppression the mystery is brought into
accord with a familiar psychological principle. In fact, there is experimental
evidence in support of this interpretation of repression when treated as a
technique for the control of tabooed or ego-dystonic motives.
It should be noted that in thus deriving repression from antecedent sup¬
pression the unwelcome desire or motive becomes non-existent. There is no
question of transforming the desire for a cigarette into a sublimated interest
in music. It is just a matter of replacing one activity by another. In fact, on
occasion a smoker with no intention of becoming a nonsmoker may become
so absorbed in a given project as to be unaware of the unht cigarette in his
mouth and this means that the desire to smoke has vanished—at least for the
time being. The situation is exemplified by the report of the business execu¬
tive who when asked why he failed to eat supper answered, “I was so busy
negotiating these contracts that eating never entered my mind.” Under the
circumstances, in the light of the foregoing interpretation, this would involve
repression of the hunger motive by turning to an engrossing business venture.
Thus there would be no mysterious sublimation of one aim into another.
This account of repression is at variance with generally accepted psycho¬
analytic accounts. For one reason, as already pointed out, with repression
regarded as an unconscious process there is no way of observing just what is

relevant example of this sort of experimental evidence was supplied by D. V. Mc-

Granahan in his 1940 “Experimental Study of Repression.”
 Theories of Motivation • 147

taking place when an impulse is prevented from becoming conscious. Further¬

more, in general, no provision is made for the disappearance of repressed
impulses, since they are held to remain active even though concealed in the
realm of the unconscious.
At one time Freud taught that the dynamics of such repressed impulses
might precipitate neurotic anxiety, but later he arrived at a different conclu¬
sion. The issue is important; hence, it seems advisable to explain the nature
of this issue before saying anything more about the possibility of sublimating
motives.

CONCERNING ANXIETY AND REPRESSION

In his pioneering studies of neurotic disturbance Freud came to recognize

the crucial part played by anxiety in the dynamics of such disturbance. In his
initial thinking about the problem it seemed to him that anxiety was caused
by repression. Reduced to a simple schema it is as if he had the following
sequence of steps in mind: (1) a tabooed impulse; (2) repression of the
impulse; (3) persistence of the impulse as an active force in the unconscious;
(4) anxiety or apprehension that the latter force may overcome the ego s
defensive maneuvers. According to this schema, without such antecedent
repression there would not have been any consequent anxiety. In this formu¬
lation Freud was regarding the libido as menacing to the ego. This was brought
out in his lecture on anxiety in his Vorlesungen of 1922 (originally published
in 1917) in which he described repression as the equivalent of the ego’s
attempt to flee from a libido that it senses to be a danger.'^ In other words,
according to this lecture, not until repression has taken place will anxiety
be experienced.
In a lecture delivered some years later Freud revised the 1917 formulation.
The revision was prompted by the need to account for the fact of repression
of a tabooed impulse or wish. Why should any wish or longing be denied
gratification? There must be some basis for such denial otherwise there would
be no repression. With this realization Freud felt obliged to change the early
schema by making repression or self-denial a consequence of anxiety and no
longer making anxiety a consequence of repression. As he put it in his 1933
Introductory Lectures (p. 120), “It is not the repression that creates the
anxiety, but the anxiety is there first and creates the repression!” Precisely
how anxiety “creates” this was not explained. Apparently Freud was more

^'^This serves to convey the meaning of what he said about repression in the Vorlesungen,
as may be noted in this sentence from the original: “Die Verdrangung entspricht einem
Fluchtversuch des Ichs vor der als Gefahr empfundenen Libido” (1922, p. 434). A literal
translation into idiomatic English would be difficult. To obviate the difficulty in her
translation Joan Riviere combined the quoted sentence with the following one into this
complex sentence; “Repression is an attempt at flight on the part of the ego horn the
Ubido which it feels to be dangerous; the phobia may be compared to a fortification
against the outer danger which now stands for the dreaded libido” (1938, p. 355).
148 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

concerned with indicating what he took to be the sequence from anxiety to

repression than he was with the mechanism of the sequence.*®
In this revised formulation Freud was evidently thinking of instances in
which a forbidden but alluring impulse gives rise to a wish-fulfilling daydream
along with thoughts of unwelcome consequences were the daydream to
become reality. Anticipation of such consequences results in anxiety and the
repression follows. What Freud had in mind can be illustrated by reference to
an erotic daydream.*^ Indulgence in such a daydream means that a sexual
wish becomes father to the thought of its own fantasied gratification. Should
the wish involve illicit or tabooed behavior, then the course of the daydream
might be diverted from anticipated dehghts to sobering thoughts of possible
disgrace, divorce, and other dire consequences incident to public exposure.
The shift from anticipated pleasure to potential dire consequences marks a
transition from delight to dread.
This dread or anxiety, as just mentioned, is the antecedent of repression.
Unlike the old schema, which had made repression the antecedent of anxiety,
this new schema reversed the sequence. Reduced to a formula this reversed
sequence presupposed these four steps; (1) illicit erotic wish; (2) fantasied
anticipation of what gratification might entail; (3) anxiety due to thoughts of
unpleasant possibilities; (4) consequent repression of erotic desire. In Freud’s
view this sequence of steps is contingent upon ability to dwell upon the pros
and cons of contemplated indulgence. As he made clear in his essay on
“Repression,” a certain level of mental development must be reached before
the defense mechanism of repression can take place. He gave this italicized
emphasis when he stated that it is not “present from the very beginning, and
that it cannot occur until a sharp distinction has been established between
what is conscious and what is unconscious: that the essence of repression lies
simply in turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the con¬
scious” (\9\ 5, p. 147).
Of course repression was not the only defense mechanism recognized by
Freud. Some of the other ways of curbing strong impulses such as denial or
reaction-formation, he indicated, did not require the same level of mental
organization as the mechanism of repression. Not all curbed impulses Were
thus relegated to survival in a dynamic unconscious. This merits explicit

*® This does not mean that Freud overlooked the question of the mechanism of repres¬
sion. He dealt with it in his essay “Repression” when he wrote that “the mechanism of
a repression becomes accessible to us only when we deduce it from its final results” and
furthermore that “the mechanisms of repression have at least this one thing in common:
a withdrawal of energic cathexis (oroflibido.whereweMedeahng with sexual instincts)”
(1915, pp. 154-155). However, Freud did not supply an account of a mechanism by
means of which the “withdrawal” Itself takes place.
*^The selection of an erotic rather than any other kind of daydream is deliberate. It is
one way of calling attention to the restricted connotation of the concept of repression
as understood by Freud; for, according to Jones, he restricted the concept to the prob¬
lem of coping with erotic impulses. As reported by Jones, on June 3,1908, Freud “had
told the Vienna Society that in his opinion repression affected only sexual impulses.
All other effects were secondary. He never retracted this” (Vol. II, p. 320).
 Theories of Motivation • 149

mention because, contrary to a common impression, Freud did not assume

that ungratified motives can never die; he did not provide for the persistence
of all of them in the guise of unconscious urges. On the contrary he acknowl¬
edged their mortality in the sense that they can just cease to exist. This point
was brought out in his 1927 book on Anxiety in which he recognized “the
distinction between the mere repression and the true disappearance of an old
desire or impulse” (p. 82).
By thus making a distinction between impulses that disappear and those
that have been repressed Freud was providing for two kinds of inhibited
impulses; the one kind was inhibited by the mechanism of repression, the
other kind was inhibited by some other mechanism. In terms of Freud’s dis¬
tinction the latter might vanish whereas the former or repressed impulses
would persist. Moreover, since, as indicated in Footnote 16, “repression
affected only sexual impulses,” disappearance had to be restricted to non-
sexual ones.
Both groups of inhibited impulses were consigned to the unconscious
so that, in Freud’s view, the unconscious was not just the repository for
inhibited sexuality. It contained more, as was made evident in the opening
paragraph of Freud’s famous paper on the “Unconscious” in these sentences
(1915, p. 166):

Everything that is repressed must remain unconscious, but let us state

at the very outset that the repressed does not cover everything that is
unconscious. The unconscious has a wider compass: the repressed is a
part of the unconscious.

This enlarged compass of the unconscious had long been part of Freud’s
thinking. In fact, Jones reports Freud to have conceived of the unconscious
in this way as early as 1896 when he was just laying the foundations of his
psychoanalytic psychology. This means, Jones held, that from the very
beginning Freud had provided for the broad scope of the unconscious as a
mental realm encompassing nonsexual as well as sexual ideas. It was in this
connection that Jones wrote (yol.II,p.322); “The belief that Freud’s uncon¬
scious contains only disreputable ideas that had to be repressed has not yet,
however, been shaken in the popular mind.”
It may also be that “the popular mind” com.pensated for this misinterpre¬
tation of Freud by assuming it to be possible for “disreputable ideas” to be
made reputable by sublimation. As products of repression, by hypothesis, the
ideas in question had to do with sexual desires and as such, again by Freud’s
hypothesis, were not subject to disappearance. They were presumed to per¬
sist until expressed in some mode of erotic behavior or until transposed into
some desexualized sublimated activity. The question of such transposition
was discussed in the previous section concerned with the possible sublimation
of motives, but the discussion was curtailed in order to explain the part
played by anxiety in the dynamics of repressed wishes. It is now pertinent to
resume this curtailed discussion.
150 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

MORE ABOUT SUBLIMATION

On theoretic grounds it has been argued that lust can be sublimated into
love for poetry, music, painting, architecture, or any other mode of creative
endeavor. The argument rests upon the questionable assumption of a creative
urge being common to sex and to art. According to this assumption, bio¬
logically considered, the purpose of the sex drive is to create offspring, and
thus keep the species alive. In reality, at least on the conscious level, the con¬
trary of such a purpose governs all extramarital mating behavior. Moreover,
this also applies to all such behavior within the institution of marriage when
the behavior is subject to contraceptive controls. To attribute biological
creativity to the sexually aroused individual under such circumstances is to
strain one’s credulity. Furthermore, there is no evidence that childless
couples-the kind who seek treatment at infertility clinics-secure vicarious
relief by engaging in some kind of artistic creativity. In the words of Clarence
Leuba, “There is no evidence whatsoever that creative art work—or creative
work of any sort for that matter—is particularly useful for sublimating sex’’
(1948, p. 76).
The theory of sublimation was subjected to direct empirical investigation
as reported in a monograph by W. S. Taylor in 1933. His investigation called
for the cooperation of a group of “forty superior single men.’’ They were
“superior” with reference to character, to general health, to intelligence, and
to aesthetic sensitivity. This made them ideal candidates for testing the sub¬
limation theory. Nevertheless, Taylor found no support for the theory in this
group of unmarried young men. Their sexual tensions gave rise to mastur-
batory behavior or to premarital heterosexual indulgence, but there was no
sublimated release of these tensions in nonsexual creativity. Nor does any
evidence indicative of such release appear to have been produced since Taylor
published his report some four decades ago.*^
Freud’s concept of sublimation, as previously noted, provided for the
transformation of a sexual motive into a desexualized motive. Thus sexual
love might come to be expressed in love of music or love of choreography or
love of country. This made the libido the matrix for the emergence of all
engrossing interests, devotions, loyalties, and personal attachments. This was
as if agape, conceived of as unselfish brotherly love or altruistic love for
humanity, was a derivative of Eros. In fact, according to the theory of sub¬
limation any genuinely absorbing personal value is to be construed as a desex¬
ualized derivative of Eros. Presumably a Mozart’s absorption in music would
be such a derivative and so would a Whitehead’s absorption in mathematics.
Actually Freud failed to discuss the application of sublimation theory to such
specific cases of creative work in music or mathematics. There was no mention

his recent review of the evidence cited in support of the concept of sublimation
V. W. Grant concludes that “the very reality” of sublimation “appears never to have
been demonstrated” (1973, p. 648).
 Theories of Motivation • 151

of the kind of evidence Woodworth had introduced when, as previously dis¬

cussed, the emergence of individuahzed motives was attributed to the influ¬
ence of native capacities. For Freud it seemed sufficient to attribute such
motives to the sex impulse or libido as the fountainhead of energy. In criticism
of this stand, Woodworth had this to say in his 1917 critique of Freudian
psychology;

The sex impulse is quite clearly a specialized motive, and not at all
suited to be taken as the type of all motives. The “sublimation” of
“libido,” by which it becomes the motive force for any activity what¬
ever, I beheve to be mostly a fiction. What happens when genuine libido
is aroused is either that it has its own way or, if not, that it acts as a
disturbance of any other activity that is attempted. In endeavoring to
distract himself from it or to resist it, indeed, the subject may get some
other motive powerfully aroused and so become very active in some¬
thing quite different from the natural outlet of libido. But this does not
mean that the motive force for this second activity is the libido drained
into another channel. . . any more than your intensified application to
your book when you hear distracting noises from the athletic field,
and your resulting complete absorption in the book, means that your
interest in European history is a derivative of your interest in football.
A plurality of motives exists within the individual, and there is no
known reason for regarding them all as “transformations of the libido.”

Of course a defender of the libido theory might argue that a “plurality of

motives exists within” the theory itself. His argument might include references
to the motivational implications of sex play, rivalry. Jealousy, submissiveness,
mastery, curiosity, tenderness, possessiveness, pain, longing, frustration,
acceptance, rejection, and similar vicissitudes of the drama of sex. Such
implications would be manifestations rather than “transformations of the
libido. The same would apply to extensions of the preceding argument by
references to sex and the sale of cosmetics and perfumes, to sex and dance
studios, to sex and divorce courts, to sex and literature, to sex and love songs,
to sex and medical practice, to sex and the clothing industry, to sex and
motion pictures, as well as to sex and the business interests of jewelers,
florists, druggists, beauticians, marriage counselors, and those who promote
beauty'pageants. There can thus be no question about the widespread ramifi¬
cations of sex as a motive. However, these ramifications are extensions and
elaborations of sex. They are not subhmations of sex. Nor are they to be
attributed to the vagaries of unconscious goads to behavior. Instead their
association with the sex motive is conscious in the sense of being readily
recognized. Often this association is as obvious as the ones introdiiced in
advertisements in which a bathing beauty is pictured standing next to an
automobile or using a given brand of tooth paste or just smiling at her dog
eating the “ideal” dog food.
Nevertheless, even though obvious, might not the very multiplicity of these
motivational associations with the sex drive give support to the defender of
the libido theory? In opposition to Woodworth’s stand, might he not be
152 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

justified in regarding such associations as being the libido’s expression of a

plurality of individualized motives? If so, then he would also be talcing a
stand in opposition to Allport’s concept of functional autonomy. The nature
of this opposition between functional autonomy and Freud’s libido theory
has been discussed in an earlier section, but there are a few additional con¬
siderations that were not included. Enough background material has now
been introduced to facilitate understanding of these considerations as sup¬
plementing the earlier discussion.

CONCERNING REGNANT MOTIVES

According to the principle of functional autonomy, as will be recalled,

acquired motives are individualized and furnish their own drives. They are
not mere derivatives of one or more instincts. As such the principle consti¬
tuted a challenge to Freud’s theory of motivation, for, as just outlined, his
theory made virtually all motives, even so-called acquired ones, derivatives of
the libido. Since sex was found to be associated with such a wide sample of
individual motives, these individual motives were interpreted as manifesta¬
tions of the libido’s ubiquity. Stated differently, the association was regarded
as a causal rather than a concomitant relationship. This was tantamount to
regarding the libido as the matrix out of which a plurality of individualized
motives emerges. As a theory of motivation such a view seemed to account
for the ubiquity of sex interests. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts have dis¬
covered, their patients tend to confirm the theory because over and over
again in the course of their free associations sexual themes emerge as key
factors in what had started as an unguided stream of associations. In the light
of such apparent confirmation there was no need for Freud’s theory to be
replaced by a theory of functional autonomy.
As might be anticipated, an advocate of functional autonomy would not
be impressed by the preceding line of argument. He would point out that
the ubiquity of sexual interests and their association with a multiplicity of
specific motives is coincidental and not causal. By a similar line of argument,
he would also point out, one might argue that all individual motives spring
from the matrix of man’s acquisitive or economic drive, since over and over
again in the course of everyday experience the issue of money obtrudes itself
as an important consideration. It even obtrudes itself in connection with
sexuality as indicated by references to prostitution, alimony, dowries, and the
expenses incident to marriage and parenthood. This line of argument obviously
reflects a Marxist theory of motivation, sifice Marxists subordinate all specific
motives to the regnant economic motive.
On the other hand, some sociologists might be disposed to argue in sup¬
port of the gregarious drive as man’s regnant motive. They would have little
trouble demonstrating the dependence of the motives of the individual on
interpersonal relations. This starts with the infant’s dependence on Mother
 Theories of Motivation • 153

for gratification of the baby’s needs and continues all through childhood and
adulthood. Directly or indirectly all of man’s desires come to involve others,
as evidenced by his desires for approval, security, companionship, sexual
gratification, housing, medical care, comfort, success, and recreation. As has
been noted by Karen Homey, throughout life man finds himself moving with,
toward, against, for, or away from others. In terms of this sociological per¬
spective individual motives might well appear to be emergents from the
matrix of gregariousness.
There is no need to add more examples. The ones just introduced suffice
to show why from the viewpoint of functional autonomy no one motive is
to be regarded as the fountainhead of all other motives. A given individual
motive such as curiosity, it should now be evident, may be associated with
sexuahty or acquisitiveness or gregariousness. For this reason, as already
pointed out, the association in question is coincidental rather than causal.
In other words, there is no basic instinct or regnant motive that gives rise to
subordinate motives and accounts for the impetus launching them as indi¬
vidualized drives. This conclusion is, of course, implicit in the principle of
functional autonomy; for, according to the principle, the instrumental means
of satisfying any motive—not just a single motive—may be transformed into
a motive in its own right. Whether all individualized motives are products
of the principle is a separate question involving important issues not yet con¬
sidered. They call for careful examination.

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY RE-EXAMINED

The concept of “functional autonomy of motives” was already known a

century ago,^® but the phrase itself was unknown until Allport introduced
it in a 1937 article. In succeeding years it became increasingly familiar to
students of motivation as its use in books and journals became commonplace.
In these writings the concept of functional autonomy was often subjected to
critical analysis by some who questioned its validity, by others who called
attention to its limitations, and by still others for whom it lacked usefulness.
To consider all of these criticisms in any detail is out of the question. Fortu¬
nately, for present purposes it will be enough to deal with a few of the more
thought-provoking ones.

^*One reference to the concept is to be found in the essay Utilitarianism by John

Stuart Mill (1806-1873). This was published in 1863 and in a section concerned with
the origin of specific desires such as “cases” of desires for wealth or power or fame
Mill had this to say (Lerner, p. 223):
In these cases the means have become a part of the end, a more important part of
it than any of the things which they are a means to. What was once desired as an
instrument for the attainment of happiness, has come to be desired for its own sake.
Another writer who anticipated the concept is mentioned by Allport (1961, p. 229).
This was Franz Brentano (1838-1917) who thought of the concept as a “well-known
psychological law,” stating that “what at first was desired merely as a means to some¬
thing else, comes at last from habit to be desired for its own sake.”
154 ’ The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

An especially provocative criticism of functional autonomy has been

directed at its neglect of broad categories of motivation in favor of a multi¬
plicity of highly individualized motives. Thus with reference to musicians one
becomes a harpist, another an organist, and a third is motivated to play the
oboe. Analogously, with reference to historians there is similar specificity of
motivation as one man speciaUzes in civil war battles, another in the history
of Finland, and a third in the history of witchcraft. To enumerate all of the
uniquely personal motives that come into existence would manifestly be an
endless task; there are far too many for anybody to count, remember, or
comprehend. Yet functional autonomy purports to account for their origin
and their individualized specificity. The result, of course, is an unpredictable
number of motives.
This result has given rise to one important criticism of functional auton¬
omy. In connection with an extensive discussion of motivation in general in
a book on personality, David McClelland (1951, pp. 383-525) had occasion
to question the usefulness of Allport’s principle for students of personality.
In his view, as “a particularistic conception of motivation” the principle
“does not promote a science of personality because one of the purposes of
science is to economize in the description of a given personality in its entire
richness and variety” (p. 404). In terms of this criticism, the bewildering
number of “particularistic” motives existing in the world renders it difficult
for the student of personality to know what to look for in his quest for under¬
standing of individual motivation. His difficulty would be obviated were he
to avail himself of a few regnant motives such as sex, security, achievement,
power, or economic motives. However, to limit himself to such regnant
motives would contravene a chief objective of functional autonomy as a
guiding principle. Still, as McClelland saw it, appUcation of the principle to
human and animal behavior would leave the student baffled even if he were
to stumble on some one “particularistic” motive. By hypothesis such a motive
would be unique to the individual being studied and might not be applicable
to any other individual. In other words, as a unique event it would be unre¬
lated to any other event and thus have no bearing on any uniformities of
behavior. Without such uniformities or laws there can be no science in the
sense in which estabUshed sciences like chemistry and astronomy have their
respective laws. This may explain why McClelland argued that functional
autonomy “does not promote a science of personality.”
In reply to McClelland it might first be noted that the foregoing interpre¬
tation of the unique event as being unrelated to any other is to be questioned.
In a literal sense the statement would be making the unique event an uncaused
one and this in itself would be substituting magic for science. But if the event
is caused, then it is related to something else as an antecedent. Second, as
long as the existence of unique events is acknowledged, then-as Allport con-
tended-it is a legitimate scientific inquiry to investigate their origin. In the
third place, some support for Allport’s contention was provided by the
geneticist T. Dobzhansky in an article that appeared in one of the psychologi-
 Theories of Motivation • 155

cal journals some years ago. It was almost as if he had had McClelland’s
objections to the “particularistic” in mind when he wrote the following
rejoinder (1967, p. 41);

One of the assertions which have gained acceptance by dint of frequent

repetition is that science is competent to deal only with what recurs,
returns, repeats itself. To study something scientifically, this something
must be made representative of a class, group, or assemblage. A single
Drosophila is of no interest whatsoever. A fly may merit some attention
only if it is taken as a representative of its species. An individual person
may, to be sure, merit attention. However, it is allegedly not in the
province of science, but of insight, empathy, art, and literature to
study and understand a person in his uniqueness.
I wish to challenge this view. Individuality, uniqueness, is not outside
the competence of science. It may, in fact it must, be understood
scientifically. In particular, the science of genetics investigates indi-
viduahty and its causes. The singularity of the human self becomes
comprehensible in the light of genetics. You may, of course, object that
what science comprehends is not really a singularity but a plurahty of
singularities. However, an artist, no less than a biologist, becomes aware
of the plurahty because he has observed some singularities.

That genetic considerations have a bearing on functional autonomy was

already indicated by Woodworth’s recognition of the importance of native
capacities for the emergence and development of acquired motives or drives.
In particular, by way of illustration, recall that Woodworth referred to the
vocal artist’s native capacity for singing. To account for the “singularity” of
other acquired drives he might have mentioned other native capacities in the
way of presumed special talents for musical composition, or literary composi¬
tion, or mathematical reasoning, or achievement in athletics, dancing, chess,
oratory, and other kinds of specialized endeavor.
Another objection to the Woodworth-Allport hypothesis was raised by
Harlow in connection with the fact that “most derived drives . .. rapidly
extinguish when the rewards which theoretically reduce the primary drives
are withheld.” For example, the hungry animal learns to press a bar in order
to have food appear. In this situation hunger constitutes the primary drive
and the derived drive of pressing the bar constitutes an instrumental act.
However, this acquired drive will soon extinguish if it ceases to be a means of
obtaining food. The principle involved is comparable to the moral of the fable
of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” In the fable, as will be recalled, the cry as the
instrumental act ceased to produce the rescuing farmers in the absence of a
real wolf. It thus appears that, in terms of such examples, the instrumental
acts as acquired drives can never become genuinely independent of the
primary drive. In view of these observations Harlow concluded that the
“hypothesis of functional autonomy of motives... is yet to be demonstrated
experimentally” (1953, p. 25).
What appears to have been an experimental demonstration of functional
autonomy was once reported by Howard Liddell. The demonstration was not
156 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

directly concerned with functional autonomy, for it came to light as an un¬

planned incidental observation in the course of an experiment having to do
with the maze learning of thyroidectomized sheep. This made the demonstra¬
tion an instance of serendipity. In the experiment Liddell employed two
groups of animals: normal sheep as controls, compared with the experimental
sheep whose thyroids had been removed. As motives Liddell employed
hunger as one motive and what might be called gregariousness or “loneliness”
as the other. The latter was related to the fact that sheep huddle together in
flocks. Accordingly, in some of the experiments the reward for successful
traversal of the maze was return to the flock, whereas in others the reward
was food. In the early stages of his experiment Liddell assumed the animals
were motivated either by loneliness or by hunger. However, as the experiment
progressed he “began to entertain grave suspicions about this.” This was
because he found his control animals, those whose thyroids were intact, acting
as if running the maze was intrinsically rewarding. It was a case of running the
maze for its own sake, as is evident from the following account (1954, p. 51):

In spite of their invariable mistakes, the normal sheep seemed eager to

run the maze day after day. The experimenter, on coming into the barn
to start the day’s work, would regularly find these animals clustered
about the screen door leading to the maze, as children congregate
around the ticket window for the Saturday afternoon movie. When
they reached the food box at the end of the maze, they often did not
tarry there. One mature ewe was always in a hurry for the next trial.
At the food box she rubbed her snout along the surface of the oats
perfunctorily, sometimes taking a small bite, and in one continuous
wheeling motion rushed off to the starting gate again. . . . Her maze
activity was completely absorbing.
This sheep obviously was not motivated to exercise her defective
skill in the alternating maze either for a longing for the reward of food
or by the promptings of a gregarious instinct. She ordinarily ate little
or nothing from the box of oats, and we found that shutting out the
sight of the flock by closing the wooden storm door to the barn did not
startle or disturb her. We may conclude that the running of the maze
was a self-rewarding activity which was also self-perpetuating.

As reported by Liddell, this appears to be a convincing demonstration of

functional autonomy: what had been a means to an end had now become an
end in itself. Stated differently, what had started as a visceral motive as hun¬
ger had now been transformed into a play or recreational motive in the form
of running the maze. This made running the maze for its own sake a derived
or acquired motive. Unfortunately, Liddell failed to determine the nature of
the animals’ behavior if placed in the maze before any experience with the
maze as a means of obtaining food. By so doing he could have made certain
whether or not he was dealing with an acquired motive. If sheep were to run
the maze as “a self-rewarding activity” right from the start, such running
would not be a derivative of a visceral or any other motive. Instead it would
be as much of a primary or underived motive as hunger or gregariousness.
 Theories of Motivation • 157

The issue is important not only with respect to the concept of functional
autonomy, but also with respect to motivation theory in general. Nor should
its bearing on Freud’s approach to motivation be overlooked. An excellent
account of the nature and implications of this issue is to be found in a 1963
article by Seward, “The Structure of Functional Autonomy.” In this article
Seward introduced an impressive review*^ of a great deal of evidence to the
effect that the “New Look” in motivation theory calls for a reinterpretation
of functional autonomy. In particular this involved recognition of a funda¬
mental distinction between internal and external drives or between endogenous
and exogenous motives.

ENDOGENOUS VERSUS EXOGENOUS MOTIVES

Endogenous or internal motives have to do with metabolic needs and

visceral tensions. The libido theory with its anchorage in the gonads and the
gut is thus an endogenous theory. It accounts for all human endeavor as a
direct or derived expression of visceral urges—hence oral and anal characters,
Oedipal strivings, and creativity as sublimated sex. There is no recognition of
the intrinsic appeal of external or exogenous stimuli in the way of games to
be played, sunsets to be admired, puzzles to be solved, mountains to be
climbed, pictures to paint, stories to read, skills to develop, friendships to
cultivate, dances to learn, stamps to collect, or hundreds of other challenges
to man’s nonvisceral interests. Moreover, as incentives to learning, the latter
kinds of stimuli may be more effective than endogenous or visceral tensions.
Harlow had this in mind when he wrote “that learning efficiency is far better
related to tensions in the brain than in the belly” (1953, p. 26).
According to the “New Look” in motivation theory, initiation of behavior
also reflects Harlow’s distinction between the two kinds of tensions in the
sense that, as noted by Seward, “it is easier to think of responses as directed
outward rather than merely pushed from within.” Thus baby monkeys clutch
terry cloth surfaces as if they provide comfort. Furthermore, the phenomenon
of imprinting also shows such responsiveness to the external milieu when
newly hatched birds tend to follow any moving object first brought within
their field of view. In addition, it has now been demonstrated that adult
chimpanzees will play with sticks and not, as in the case of Kohler’s ape,
manipulate them just as a means of obtaining food; given two sticks in the
course of play, 19 out of 20 animals joined them within fifteen minutes. In
other words, in addition to visceral drives behavior is instigated by sensory
drives and activity drives and the latter are just as fundamental as the former.
As Harlow put it, “there is no experimental literature to indicate that internal

*^His review comprised close to sixty references. In considering this evidence in the
next section with the exception of a few instances no bibliographic data will be included,
since these data are readily available in Seward’s article.
158 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

drives are ontogenetically more basic than exteroceptive motivating agencies”

(1953, p. 24).
It is also well to be reminded of the fact that both animals and men with¬
out special tutelage investigate their surroundings, react to novel objects
with curiosity not merely by visual inspection but by handling them in various
ways. Such handling makes for control of the environment. Dogs paw soft
earth and babies shake rattles. In the course of such exploration and manipu¬
lation of objects some perceptual experiences come to be preferred to others.
Even at the animal level such preferences are readily observable: cats prefer
to curl up on a yielding cushion to a stone floor and dogs prefer bones to
bricks. Along with such preferences animals may exhibit unlearned aversions
and even phobias. For example, chimpanzees become panic-stricken when
confronted with the clay model of an animal’s head and dogs become terrified
when confronted with a horse’s skin. This means that, contrary to a prevalent
teaching, not all phobias are products of conditioning. Nor need aU neurotic
fears be attributed to the libido’s vicissitudes.
The relevance and importance of exogenous stimulation has also been
amply demonstrated by studies of sensory deprivation.^® In these studies the
experimental subjects had all visceral needs provided for, but were subjected
to prolonged isolation in soundproof chambers with all modes of exterocep¬
tive and kinesthetic stimulation reduced to a minimum. Even though the
participants were financially rewarded for their participation in the experi¬
ments, the experience was decidedly unpleasant and some of the subjects
were unable to remain until the conclusion of the study. The boredom
incident to such extreme deprivation of things to do, see, hear, and touch
was most acute. This suggests a cognitive need to be stimulated—for the brain
to be active—and boredom may thus be listed as an unlearned motive. To
cope with it victims of sohtude have recourse to crossword puzzles, to
doodling, to solitaire, and to any other modes of exogenous stimulation their
restricted circumstances permit.
Of course, boredom is not just a consequence of stimulus deprivation. As
is well known, it is also experienced by factory workers engaged in monoto¬
nous repetitive jobs, by parishioners listening to dull sermons, by students
given unchallenging academic assignments, and by experts in any line of
competitive endeavor when competing against manifestly inferior opponents.
Under all such circumstances there is no joy of accomplishment. With nothing
to be mastered, no progress to be made, and no surprise in the offing bore¬
dom is inevitable; hence, escape from boredom calls for the challenge of
absorbing projects.
Man seems to require something in the way of a golden mean when it
comes to the excitement of such challenge. At one extreme there can be a

20
An enlightening account of these studies was presented at a symposium held at the
Harvard Medical School. See Sensory Deprivation (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1971), edited by Philip Solomon et al., 3rd printing.
 Theories of Motivation • 159

degree of panic or agitation too intense to tolerate and at the opposite

extreme there can be the zero challenge of intolerable boredom. The one
extreme calls for stimulus reduction and the other for stimulus enhance¬
ment. For smooth functioning, as noted by Seward, the organism must strike
a balance between intense exogenous stimulation resulting in emotional shock
and minimal exogenous stimulation resulting in boredom. The balance in
question, as a golden mean, has been described as an optimal level of excita¬
tion. Presumably it is the quest for this optimal level that induces people to
go to art galleries, hsten to symphonies, take noncredit courses, entertain
friends, play cards, listen to gossip, and read mystery stories. As an old adage
has it: man lives by habit for thrills.^*

EXOGENOUS MOTIVES AND

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

This old adage is actually calling attention to the importance of exogenous

motivation in the life of man. His “thrills” come as a result of finding interest¬
ing things to do, to explore, to learn, and to bring under his control. This calls
for ongoing transactions with his physical and social environment. In the proc¬
ess he comes to develop a general idea of schema or what has also been called
a cognitive map of the world as he has come to experience it. Formation of
such a schema or map renders it necessary for his brain to function as a clear¬
ing house for the myriads of bits of sensory data streaming into it as items of
information to be apprehended and related to earlier items. As noted by
Seward, exogenous motives are Ukely to emerge at critical junctures in the
course of such streaming as novel patterns of stimulation require a modifica¬
tion of the schema. The modifications of the schema when viewed as a
conspectus of his growing understanding of himself and his surroundings are
thus more a product of conscious events or of external data^^ than of uncon¬
scious changes.
Now a definite change in one’s schema or outlook may mean a difference
in expectation, in interest, or in likes and dislikes. For example, should a

^*The thrills may vary in intensity along a continuum from the incipiently pleasant to
the ecstasy of peak experiences. According to circumstances the optimal level of excita¬
tion will also vary along this continuum The greater and more absorbing one’s interest
in a project the higher the level of excitement. As must be obvious, absorbing interests
facihtate learning. In view of this fact the drive reduction theory of learning has been
rejected in favor of a drive enhancement theory. Harlow has given explicit expression to
this rejection in these words (1953, p. 24):
It is my belief that the theory which describes learning as dependent upon drive
reduction is false, that internal drive as such is a variable of little importance to
learning, and that this small importance steadily decreases as we ascend the phyletic
scale and as we investigate problems of progressive complexity.
^^Recognition of the importance of external data on the growing child’s schemata owes
a great deal to the work of Piaget. In one of his books he was particularly concerned
with consideration of the “progressive involvement of the assimilatory schemata” as
related to “the continuous elaboration of the external universe” (1954, p. xi).
160 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

child’s first grade teacher be strict, unsympathetic, and dull, the youngster’s
schema with reference to school will be characterized by an expectation of
unpleasant experiences. However, this schema may be modified if his second
grade teacher proves to be indulgent, understanding, solicitous, and able to
make the pursuit of knowledge an exciting adventure. Is this to be interpreted
as the transformation of an old interest or motive in accordance with Allport’s
principle of functional autonomy? The principle, it will be recalled, states
that what had been a means of gratifying a motive might become a motive in
its own right. In the present instance the child’s experience with the second
teacher is not a means of coping with the first teacher; hence the exogenous
motive of being eager to attend school is not a derivative of his earlier dread
of school. The eagerness would have been his had he had an understanding
teacher in the first place. Persistence of this eager positive attitude toward
school and learning would be the equivalent of a functionally autonomous
motive. This kind of persistence over long periods means resistance to extinc¬
tion. With this fact in mind, as brought out in the following paragraph,
Seward argued that the “properties Allport sought to embody in the concept
of functional autonomy” are already embodied in the concept of exogenous
motives (1963, p. 708):

Functionally autonomous motives, as their name imphes, were not

subject to extinction. In this respect exogenous motives are fully quali¬
fied to take their place. Play is intrinsically rewarding; so is finding a
bird’s nest or solving an equation. Trips to the candy jar will cease when
the jar is empty, but the desire for candy lives on. True, all the extrane¬
ous motives except boredom can be satiated to some extent as new
learning reduces whatever discrepancy aroused them. So it might seem
that we have merely exchanged one frailty for another. But the argu¬
ment would hold only if we had exhausted the possible varieties of
experience, an extremity seldom reached outside of concentration
camps and zoos. Most of the earth’s human inhabitants, cheerfully
ignoring the specter of overpopulation, do not face psychic satiation as
an immediate threat. Artists, composers, and advertisers continue to
explore their media for fresh combinations to titillate or appall us.
Scientists race one another into the imknown. Ordinary people find
that even the companion of a lifetime is never completely predictable.

In view of considerations such as these, Seward concluded that there is no

need for a theory of functional autonomy. He made this explicit and definite
in this sentence (p. 709): “In a literal sense exogenous motives are function¬
ally autonomous; since they began that way, a theory of functional autonomy
becomes superfluous.” He also realized how readily specific exogenous
motives such as curiosity, play, or constructiveness are reminiscent of the con¬
cept of instinct, but he did not find this alarming. Instead, as he saw it,
modern “instincts” in the form of exogenous motives might eventually help
to dispel “one mystery of mind: the persistence and individuality of motives.”
Although Seward found no need for a theory of functional autonomy, he
 Theories of Motivation • 161

did seem to need a theory of motivation. At all events, for him there was no
satisfactory explanation for the fact that motives persist and are individual¬
ized. Despite years of laboratory research, clinical study, psychoanalytic
probing, and philosophic theorizing this “one mystery of mind” had not yet
been solved.
In his survey of the literature he found many promising clues, but none
that served to dispose of the mystery. He was particularly concerned with the
Woodworth-Allport theory of functional autonomy of motives because it
purported to account for the individuality of motives. Incidentally, as men¬
tioned earlier, in broad outhne this theory had already been proposed about a
century ago by John Stuart Mill as well as by Franz Brentano. As a theory it
thus had eminent sponsorship. Furthermore, by means of some simple
examples concerned with the acquisition of new interests the theory was
made to appear clarifying and sound. Thus, it seemed to explain the work¬
man’s interest in doing a good job, a mother’s devotion to her child, a philate¬
list’s motive in searching for a rare stamp, and similar cases of “the persistence
and individuality of motives.”
Along with Seward we might ask why so eminent a theory has failed to
clear up this one mystery of mind. The crux of the theory centers on the
observation that often what had been desired and used as a means to achieve
some goal may come to be an independent and autonomous desire—some¬
thing desired for its own sake. Once again we may revert to one of Wood¬
worth’s examples: in a given school all students are required to participate in
choral work with the music teacher just as they are required to take courses
in algebra with the mathematics instructor. Obtaining academic credit for
work in music and mathematics is thus a means of securing a high school
diploma; for the vast majority of students the work has no other function.
However, on occasion the teachers come across a rare student for whom the
work is not just a means to an end, but an intrinsically absorbing interest.
These are students for whom music or mathematics may become a career-
something to be pursued for its own sake. Woodworth, it may be recalled, in
effect asked why only the occasional or rare student transformed what had
been a means or mechanism into a separate drive. His answer was based on
the assumption that only students possessing a native capacity for particular
subjects are the ones likely to find such subjects alluring. In the present
instance the student bom with a good voice may leave the music class with an
operatic career as his professional goal, just as for the student with an inborn
talent for mathematics high school algebra may launch him on his career as
professor of mathematics.
Under the circumstances, it seems safe to say, the classroom experience
awakened the student to his possession of a special talent, rather than caused
the talent; hence the experience was just an occasion for self-discovery. It is
thus entirely possible that independently of the classroom experience such
discovery may have taken place. The future vocahst may be complimented on
his voice by parents in preschool years and the future mathematician may
162 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

have been fascinated by numbers from early childhood. As Seward indicated,

their respective functionally autonomous interests in singing and in mathe¬
matics would consequently be of exogenous origin and not the exclusive
result of a classroom experience. The ubiquity of exogenous stimuli can
account for functional autonomy of motives without recourse to the Wood-
worth-Allport theory. As also indicated by Seward, this makes it a superfluous
theory. However, this does not dispose of the problem of motivation. Even if
native capacities be assumed to determine the persistence and direction of
abiding motives, there is still the mystery of the origin and nature of such
capacities. We still do not know why one child is born with a special aptitude
for aesthetic appreciation, another with capacity to become a great theoretic
physicist, a third with talent for medical research, and other children with no
special talents at all. To find answers to this mystery of mind psychologists
must turn to geneticists for help. Once some answers are placed at their dis¬
posal not only will their understanding of motivation be enhanced, but so will
their recognition of possible unconscious sources of motivation. However, the
nature and implications of such enhancement will be seen in clearer perspec¬
tive after a retrospective summary of the salient issues introduced in the
present chapter.

SUMMARY REVIEW

The present chapter took the historic meeting of James and Freud at Clark
University as its point of departure. In particular it was noted that the one
lecture James attended stressed the central themes of this chapter, namely,
the unconscious and the problem of motivation. It was also pointed out that
the lecture was being delivered by a leading champion of the unconscious in
the presence of a leading critic of the unconscious. At the time, Freud was
seemingly unfamiliar with James’s objections to the notion of unconscious
mental processes.This resulted in consideration of the following topics:

1. Freud’s interpretation of James’s encouraging remark.

At a later time, during the 1920s, Freud did have his attention caUed to James’s views.
This was in a book on the unconscious by an English author, Israel Levine, in which
among other incidental references to the views of James he included the following sum¬
mary statement (1923, p. 44);
Thus the concept of an Unconscious seems superfluous to James. The facts on which
Hartmann and the others rely only prove; for James, “either that conscious ideas
were present which the next instant were forgotten, or they prove that certain results,
similar to results of reasoning, may be wrought out by rapid brain-processes to which
no ideation seems attached.” They do not prove the existence of mental processes
which are unconscious.
Levine’s book with its explicit account of James’s rejection of the concept of an uncon¬
scious was known to Freud. In fact, the book was translated into German by Anna Freud
and published in 1926. The preceding quotation from Levine’s book is to be found on
pages 38-39 of the translation.
 Theories of Motivation • 163

2. James’s hopes for some phases of psychoanalytic work but misgivings

about others.
3. Acceptance of some psychoanalytic teachings and rejections of others
discussed in the light of the science-orthodoxy antithesis.
4. Ernest Jones and the three essential characteristics of psychoanalysis.
5. Hidden motives and Spinoza’s teaching concerning man’s ignorance of
the causes of his desires.
6. The distinction between a scientific determinism of means as con¬
trasted with an unscientific determinism of ends.
7. Freud’s failure to differentiate between motivation and causation.
8. Spinoza’s concept of desire incompatible with the concept of uncon¬
scious motivation.
9. Freud’s regarding it as impossible for emotions and feelings to be
unconscious.
10. How James conceived of instinct and the difference between impelled
and motivated behavior.
11. Woodworth’s distinction between (a) drives and mechanisms and (b)
native capacities and instincts.
12. Woodworth’s theory of motivation as related to his (a) defense of
instinct; (b) dynamic functionalism; (c) critique of McDougall; and
(d) views regarding the individuality of human motives.
13. Allport’s theory of the functional autonomy of motives.
14. The contrast between Allport’s theory of motivation and Freud’s
libido theory.
15. A critique of the concept of sublimation.
16. Anxiety as related to repression and the concept of desexualized
erotic motives.
17. No basic instinct or regnant motive generates individualized motives.
18. Can the study of individualized motives be made congruent with the
scientist’s quest for laws underlying uniformities of behavior?
19. The possible experimental demonstration of functional autonomy.
20. Seward’s critique of functional autonomy with specific reference to
(a) the distinction between endogenous and exogenous motives; (h)
responses pulled from without rather than pushed from within; (c) the
impact of sensory deprivation; (d) the question of a golden mean
between emotional shock on the one hand and boredom on the other;
and finally (e) no need for a theory of functional autonomy.

THE CHAPTER IN RETROSPECT

Functional autonomy was found to be a provocative but superflous theory.

It was provocative because it called attention to the problem of accounting
for the persistence and individuality of human motives. However, its suggested
disposition of the problem in terms of the Woodworth-Allport thesis proved
questionable and unnecessary. The latter thesis held that any means of achiev-
164 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

ing a goal may become a drive in its own right and thus come to function as
an autonomous individualized motive. By implication this made acquired or
individual motives derivatives of some antecedent goal-directed behavior, as
exemplified by Liddell’s sheep, whose joyous maze-running as an independent
quasi-avocational pursuit was interpreted as a product of the original serious
business of running the maze in order to be fed. This suggested that the seri¬
ous business was the cause of the emergence of the quasi-avocational pursuit.
There was no explanation for the fact that this alleged cause failed to influ¬
ence all the sheep in the same way. After all, running the maze for its own
sake was unique for the one ewe mentioned by Liddell; hence the antecedent
running for food could not have been the cause of the subsequent running for
fun. At best it might be regarded as the occasion for the discovery of the fun
in question. But this discovery might have been made had the sheep been con¬
fronted with a maze initially as a neutral object unassociated with any
extraneous reward. Of course, Liddell failed to provide for this kind of
arrangement. Had he done so and had the animal responded as if maze-running
were its own reward, then there would have been no need to invoke the
theory of functional autonomy. However, assuming that this response to the
maze had been unique to this one animal, then the response in question might
be attributed to a native capacity. The presence of a maze as an exogenous
stimulus plus the existence of such a native capacity would thus suffice to
account for this example of a nonvisceral drive.
According to the preceding example, native capacities combined with the
pull of exogenous stimuli can account for the individuality of motives. As
illustrated in terms of human behavior mention might be made of Mozart’s
spontaneous interest in music. He was drawn to the piano from early child¬
hood and was already composing minuets and other musical compositions by
the age of five. In this instance there can be no question about Mozart’s
possession of a native capacity for music; even as a child he took music seri¬
ously. In fact, his father once wrote that when stiU a child his son would be
so absorbed in music that “no one dared to have the slightest jest” with the
boy. There was no need to attribute Mozart’s musical creativity to sublimated
sex. For a Mozart, absorption in music is intrinsically wish-fulfilUng and not
an indirect expression of a visceral craving.
As brought out in this chapter, visceral cravings in the form of endogenous
motives may be thought of as internal goads to action. They contrast with
exogenous motives conceived of as external incentives to action. The descrip¬
tive vocabulary is new, but the underlying thought is of ancient vintage. It
goes back to Aristotle’s DeAnima and his discussion of appetite as “a kind of
movement” involving pushes and pulls, siilce “everything is moved by pushing
and pulling” (R. McKeon, ed., 1947, p. 230). Incidentally, the centrality of
the wish in Freud’s psychology may also have Aristotelian roots as shown in
this passage from the same discussion (pp. 228-229):

As it is, mind is never found producing movement without appetite (for

 Theories of Motivation • 165

wish is a form of appetite, and when movement is produced according

to calculation it is also according to wish), but appetite can originate
movement contrary to calculation, for desire is a form of appetite.
(Italics added.)

Desire as potential wish-fulfillment is also reflected in Aristotle’s definition

of desire as “just the appetition of what is pleasant.” In fact, this emphasis
upon desires and wishes is a recurrent theme in psychology’s history. Spinoza
recognized it in this sentence: “Desire is the very essence of man.” It is also
implicit in the intentionalism of Brentano in the sense that to desire some¬
thing is to purpose or intend its realization. Accordingly, for Brentano mental
events were presented as dynamic processes; hence his psychology was known
as act psychology. This is worth noting because in his student days Freud had
studied with Brentano and thus Brentano’s intentional act may have been a
forerurmer of the Freudian wish. It is also worth noting in the present con¬
text that both James and Wundt, more or less independently of one another,
had stressed the dynamics of mental life. In the case of James, by way of
reminder, it will suffice to quote the following from his famous chapter on
“Will” (Vol. II, p. 526):

The first point to start from in understanding voluntary action ... is

the fact that consciousness is in its very nature impulsive. We do not
have a sensation or a thought and then have to add something dynamic
to it to get movement.

Wundt’s basic interest in the dynamics of mental life is indicated by the

fact that, systematically considered, his psychology was a voluntaristic psy¬
chology. In his analysis of volitional acts he called attention to a distinction
between the impelling force of a given act and its moving reason. He clarified
this by writing (1897, pp. 185-186): “The reason for a criminal murder may
be theft, removal of an enemy, or some such idea, the impelling force the feel¬
ing of want, hate, revenge or envy.” The latter feelings reflect the murderer’s
desires or wishes or what he willed to do. In this connection it is relevant to
note that one of the root meanings of volition has to do with wishing since
it is derived from the Latin velle, meaning to wish, to want, to be willing;
hence the Latin volo may be translated “I wish.” However, this does not
mean that the Wundtian wish was a forerunner of the Freudian wish. But it
does mean that psychology’s interest in the problem of motivation is not a
derivative of Freud’s dynamic psychiatry. As just reviewed, academic psychol¬
ogy in its dynamic orientation may be traced back to Aristotle’s recognition
of the wish as a form of appetite, to Spinoza’s omnipotence of desire as a
basic conatus, to Brentano’s intentional acts, to James’s impulsive conscious¬
ness, and to Wundt’s voluntarism.
The foregoing psychologies of motivation differ from Freud’s in their
recognition of motives as experienced or conscious phenomena. In other
words, unlike Freud, not one of them endorsed the concept of mind as
166 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

unconscious. James, as has been amply demonstrated by this time, was defi¬
nitely critical of the concept. Furthermore, as once noted by Titchener in
writing about respects in which Brentano and Wundt were in agreement:
“They reject the unconscious as a principle of psychological explanation”
(1929, p. 6).
Finally, as pointed out earHer in the present chapter, Spinoza also provided
for the role of consciousness in our experience of motivated behavior. He
made this explicit when he wrote, “we are conscious of our actions and
desires, but ignorant of the causes by which we are determined to desire any¬
thing.” Thus, the exhausted man is conscious of his fatigue and his desire to
sleep, but unless he chances to be a physiologist he will be ignorant of the
chemistry of fatigue and the neurology of sleep. Similarly, the talented poet
is cognizant of his literary desires, but would be nonplussed were he to be
asked to account for the causation of his talent.
Moreover, most of us would be nonplussed were we to be asked to explain
just what causes us to prefer justice to injustice, beauty to ugliness, approval
to disapproval, kindness to viciousness, and success to failure. We tend to
take such preferences or desires so much for granted that very few of us feel
impelled to inquiry into their causation. Consequently, in Spinoza’s phrase,
most of us remain “ignorant of the causes by which we are determined to
desire anything.” Whether such ignorance is to be described as unconscious
causation or as unconscious motivation will depend on recognition of a dis¬
tinction between motives and causes. As brought out in an earher section, the
distinction involves a generalization to the effect that all motives are causes,
but not all causes are motives. By regarding all behavior as motivated Freud
may be said to have overlooked this distinction. He conceived of the uncon¬
scious as replete with concealed motives in the form of wishes and repressed
desires inaccessible to direct conscious recognition. In accordance with his
principle of psychic determinism as elaborated upon in his discussion of the
psychopathology of everyday life all behavior, even seemingly accidental or
unintentional behavior, is motivated behavior with the motives buried in
the unconscious.
Now, Spinoza’s view of mind was just as deterministic as Freud’s. How¬
ever, with specific reference to the concept of motivation he differed from
Freud not only with respect to his recognition of the distinction between
motives and their causes, but also with respect to his recognition of the dif¬
ference between endogenous and exogenous motives. Without going into
detail by considering what he had to say about “desire of sexual intercourse”
and “whether it be held within bounds or not,” for present purposes it is
enough to note his inclusion of both kinds of motives in this single sentence
(Ratner, p. 276):

It is the part of the wise man, I say, to refresh and invigorate himself
with moderate and pleasant eating and drinking, with sweet scents and
the beauty of green plants, with ornament, with music, with sports.
 Theories of Motivation • 167

with the theatre, and with all things of this kind which one man can
enjoy without hurting another.

With reference to man’s readiness to avail himself of this array of visceral

and nonvisceral sources of refreshment and invigoration Spinoza may be
interpreted to have arrived at this conclusion: man is conscious of his motives
but ignorant or unconscious of the causes of his motives. This use of the word
unconscious as applied to the causation of motives is obviously different from
Freud’s unconscious and constitutes one of the many ways in which the word
has been employed. In fact, as noted in the first chapter, the word has been
employed in so many different ways that it is virtually impossible to incorpo¬
rate their different meanings into one comprehensive definition.
The many meanings associated with the word unconscious and its conse¬
quent ambiguity have a direct bearing on the use of the word in the phrase
unconscious mind. Without suitable qualification the meaning of the phrase
will be vague and uncertain. As a result of this uncertainty the notion of mind
as unconscious may turn out to be unconfirmed hypothesis rather than estab¬
lished fact. Discussion of the nature and significance of these ambiguous and
hypothetical aspects of the unconscious are reserved for the next chapter.

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 6

T^e Unconscious:
Ambiguous
and Itypotbetkal
Aspects

The title of this chapter indicates that there are both ambiguous and hypo¬
thetical characteristics implicit in the concept of mind as unconscious. They
can be made explicit by first considering the ambiguity of the concept and
only later considering the question of its possible hypothetical status. In some
ways the latter is dependent upon or emerges from the former; hence the
need for prior consideration of the ambiguity.
As mentioned in the first chapter, the word unconscious has so many dif¬
ferent meanings that its connotation varies from context to context and from
writer to writer. Even when employed with the definite article by referring to
‘‘‘‘the unconscious,” as in the present chapter title, ambiguity has not been
eliminated. As a phrase “the unconscious” might be understood to stand for
the sum total of autonomous bodily processes functioning independently of
cognitive control; digestion, circulation, and respiration are unconscious in
this sense. On the other hand the phrase might be taken to stand for a system
of cognitive or mental processes regarded as not amenable to direct observa¬
tional inspection in the way sights, sounds, and other sensory impressions are
amenable to such observation. It is this notion of a system of unconscious
processes that is implicit in a phrase like unconscious mind. However, even
this usage is not free from ambiguity. Without suitable qualification there is
no way of knowing whether the reference is to an unconscious mind as under¬
stood by Freud or by Jung or by Stekel or by Homey or by some other pro¬
ponent of mind as unconscious.
Another possible source of ambiguity depends upon the way the concept
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 171

of an unconscious mind is to be interpreted. Descriptively, as a concept, it is

contrasted with the concept of a conscious mind. In terms of this contrast
does this mean that man is equipped with two minds, one conscious and the
other unconscious? If so, this interpretation would be in conflict with the
concept of the unity of mental life for one thing and with the concept of the
integrated action of the nervous system for another. It should thus be obvious
that both the word unconscious and the phrase unconscious mind have multi¬
ple meanings. Some of these ought to be surveyed before undertaking a rein¬
terpretation of the unconscious.

CONCERNING THE MEANINGS

OF THE WORD UNCONSCIOUS

Some of the meanings of the word unconscious have been noted inciden¬
tally from time to time in the preceding chapters. For purposes of the present
chapter it will prove helpful to subject certain of these multiple meanings to
less incidental and more systematic presentation. In each instance the mean¬
ing in question will be introduced by a single descriptive word or phrase to
suggest its relationship to the unconscious as a concept.

Ignorance
This factor was recognized by Spinoza when he wrote that we are con¬
scious of our desires but ignorant or unconscious of their cause or causes. In
terms of food preferences, for example, we may be aware of a desire for
something sweet or salty and be ignorant of metabolic reasons for the desire
in question. Similarly, after exertion we desire rest even though unconscious
of the biochemistry of fatigue. Furthermore, in a non-Spinozistic sense the
factor of ignorance explains why one might be said to be unconscious of
what has never been learned. In this sense most of us are unconscious of
Sanskrit, of topology, and of the history of Borneo.

Inattention
It is virtually a truism to equate being conscious with being attentive and
hence being inattentive with being unconscious. As Boring once noted, atten¬
tion is “the criterion of consciousness” so that consciousness and attention
are “almost” synonymous (1963, p. 231). When absorbed in an exciting game
the child fails to attend to or is unconscious of his mother’s call to dinner,
just as his father, a surgeon, is unconscious of outside traffic noises and his
own aching muscles when engaged in a difficult operation demanding intense
concentration. The broader implications of this state of affairs were well
summarized by James Miller in this statement (1942, p. 33):

When unconscious is used in the sense of unattended, one’s actions,

ideas, emotions, needs, drives, etc., are unconscious not because one
cannot think of them since they are kept from consciousness, as psycho-
172 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

analysts insist, but simply because one is thinking of something else.

This is an important theoretical difference.

Subliminal Unconscious
In some respects this is the obverse of the factor of inattention. As a factor
it has to do with subtle, unobtrusive modes of stimulation presumed to influ¬
ence behavior even though one is unconscious of the influence. In the area of
sales promotion these modes of stimulation have been regarded as “hidden
persuaders.” Whether they ought to be classified as subconscious rather than
unconscious influences is a moot point. As subthreshold modes of stimulation
they may be classified as subconscious, but as influences elu4ing awareness
they might be classified as being unconscious. Incidentally, in his essay “The
Unconscious” Freud rejected the concept of subconsciousness “as incorrect
and misleading” (p. 170).

Conditioning
To promote favorable attitudes toward given commercial products adver¬
tisers sometimes employ conditioning techniques. For example, a beverage
may be pictured in the hand of a ruggedly healthy, successful man of affairs.
The objective is to foster an association or a conditioned reaction between
the product and the admired man of distinction. Should there be no aware¬
ness of the formation of this association, the resulting conditioned reaction
might be regarded as an instance of unconscious conditioning. Obviously,
not all such instances need be unconscious in this sense, but in other instances
it appears to be possible to employ techniques of conditioning under labora¬
tory control for the purpose of investigating some phases of unconscious
processes.
An informative survey of such instances has been supplied by Gregory
Razran (1901-1973) in a long monograph concerned with “the observable
unconscious.” As one of the leading American students of the work of Soviet
psychologists, he surveyed the results of their work through the first six
decades of the present century. In fact, he estimated that there have been
about 5,000 experimental reports of investigations concerned with condition¬
ing in the Russian laboratories since the turn of the century. In his survey
Razran cited instances of such studies as involving different animal species
as well as human beings. His coverage is so detailed, technical, and compre¬
hensive in scope as to preclude adequate summary review. For present pur¬
poses it will suffice to explain the nature of the procedures involved in the
demonstration of the “observable unconscious” in the case of human subjects.
In one series of experiments patients afflicted with urinary disease volun¬
teered to serve as subjects. An abnormal opening or fistula made it possible
to introduce measured amounts of fluid into the bladder with the resulting
distention giving rise to an urge to urinate. Recording devices such as manom¬
eters “equipped with conspicuous dials” registered the degree of intravesical
pressure as the urge was being experienced. These dials were placed so that
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 173

the patients could observe changes in the readings as they occurred. In addition
to the manometers other recording devices registered respiratory and other
physiological changes as concomitants of the urinary urge. After the patients
had come to associate the urge with a given manometer reading the manom¬
eter was detached from the fistula, but the patient was kept in ignorance of
the detachment. Now the experimenter proceeded to control the dials of the
detached manometer to determine whether the urinary urge could be con¬
ditioned to these artificial or sham readings with the following results (p. 91):

Conditioning to the sham readings was effected readily in all cases. The
patients began reporting intense urinary urges, accompanied by all or
most of the. . . objective changes, when the manometer readings were
high . . . even though the inflows were minimal or totally omitted. On
the other hand, low or zero readings failed to produce the urge and its
accompaniments, even if the inflow was considerably above that which
normally produced it; much increased, sometimes double, inflows were
now needed to be fully effective. (Italics added.)

The sham readings thus resulted not only in urinary impulses, but also,
as indicated by the italicized phrases, in the normal physiological concomi¬
tants of such impulses. These concomitants in terms of blood pressure and
other metabolic changes are autonomic functions taking place spontaneously
just as breathing and digestion do under normal conditions. In this sense they
are unconscious processes. As described by Razran, in subjecting these con¬
comitants to instrumental observation the Russian experimenters were deal¬
ing with the observable unconscious. But this is very different from the
Freudian unconscious. In fact, Razran (p. 121) refers to “the fact of the
Russians’ wholesale rejection of the views ... of Freud” and also to the fact
that “while Soviet psychophysiologists and psychologists grant some status
and force to unconscious psychic mechanisms, they are by no means willing
to accord these mechanisms Freudian ubiquity and potency—and contents.”
The kind of conditioning experiments reviewed by Razran may be regarded
as forerunners of contemporary studies of instrumental autonomic condi¬
tioning frequently described as biofeedback studies. As noted by Schwartz,
there are more than 250 articles dealing with the use of biofeedback tech¬
niques “and four volumes reprinting much of this work are now available”
(1973, p. 666). To the extent that these techniques are successful they too,
in Razran’s phrase, would be revealing “the observable unconscious.”

Failure to Discriminate
Another phase of conditioning experiments has involved investigations of
the organism’s capacity to detect differences or to differentiate between one
and a closely related mode of stimulation. Thus, the experimental subject-
man or animal—might be conditioned to respond positively to the sight of
a circle and negatively to an ellipse. Once this discrimination has been estab¬
lished the experimenter then proceeds to make the ellipse increasingly circular
174 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

until there is failure to differentiate between the geometric figures. At this

stage the subject might be said to be unconscious of the difference. This also
means that in the preceding stages when discrimination was taking place there
was consciousness of the difference. In fact, capacity to make discriminations
has sometimes been regarded as one of the criteria of consciousness. For
example, Boring made this quite explicit; “Consciousness is discriminative, and
discrimination is the symptom of consciousness” (1963, p. 234). Accordingly,
failure to discriminate becomes one more meaning of the word unconscious.

Gender as a Factor
In some circles it is taught that gender identity is an important factor
among the attributes of the unconscious. Followers of Jung, for example,
regard man’s unconscious as characterized by the "“anima” or feminine factor.
Jung noted, “every man carries a woman within himself,” and then added
(1964, p. 31):

It is this female element in every male that I have called the “anima.”
This “feminine” aspect is essentially a certain inferior kind of related¬
ness to the surroundings and particularly to women, which is kept care¬
fully concealed from others as weU as from oneself. In other words,
though an individual’s visible personality may seem quite normal, he
may well be concealing from others—or even from himself—the deplor¬
able condition of “the woman within.”

As is well known, followers of Adler also recognize the importance of

gender, as reflected in the Adlerian concept of “the masculine protest” or
the tendency for many to interpret sexuality as a “protest” against feminine
submissiveness or alleged inferiority as well as against masculine domination
or alleged superiority. According to Adler, this need to dominate and be
superior is a compensatory reaction to feelings of inferiority—especially organ
inferiority. By way of illustration, in one of his case reports he mentioned
a patient’s statement to the effect that “I have imperfect genitalia.” In react¬
ing against this conviction he “reached the thought, I too wish to possess my
mother as my father and brother possess her.” The patient then proceeded to
test his mother’s devotion to him by various maneuvers such as having spells
of illness to see if she would nurse him as she had nursed his brother. Adler
recognized the patient’s behavior as a product of Oedipal strivings, but dif¬
fered from Freud in what he attributed to the patient’s “tests” of the mother’s
devotion by writing as follows (1916, p. 207);

These tests he carried out with a genuine neurotic instability, and thus
we see in this case that the Oedipus-complex is of the nature of an
especially arranged fiction, utilized as a means of expression for the
masculine protest against a feeling of uncertainty and inferiority, and
dependent upon the neurotic craving for security, the desire to possess
everything.
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 175

Seemingly, even with reference to their Oedipal strivings, the unconscious

of Adler’s patients had different goals from the unconscious of Freud’s
patients.

The Phylogenetic Unconscious

Carl Jung s analytic psychology has provided for an inherited predisposi¬
tion or Anlage of the unconscious in the form of archetypes or primordial
images. The latter stem from experiences of remote ancestors in coping with
recurrent situations of crucial biological significance. These would be expe¬
riences directly related to survival in the history of the human race and
thus have to do with themes of universal appeal. The resulting racial memory
or collective unconscious is presumed to render mankind sensitive to thoughts
of spirits, gods, storms, motherhood, birth, mother earth, monsters, sunshine
and whatever else may have impressed preliterate man as a force for good or
evil. Implicit in this concept of the collective unconscious was endorsement
of the now outmoded Lamarckian belief in the inheritance of acquired char¬
acteristics. At all events, Jung taught that the effect of experience on the
neurology of memory in one generation of men is somehow genetically trans¬
mitted to later generations. In his own formulation of this teaching he stated
that (1953, p. 61):

. . . although our inheritance consists in physiological paths, still it was

mental processes in our ancestors that created the paths. If these traces
come to consciousness again in the individual, they can do so only in
the form of mental processes; and if these processes can become con¬
scious only through individual experience and thus appear as individual
acquisitions, they are none the less pre-existing traces, which are merely
“filled out” by the individual experience. Every “impressive” expe¬
rience is such an impression, in an ancient but unconscious stream bed.

Jung made much of archetypes and primordial images in his interpretation

of the symbolism of dreams. In this respect the Jungian unconscious differed
from the Freudian unconscious, but this is not to say that Freud had also
differed from Jung with respect to belief in phylogenetic inheritance.* As a
matter of fact, he once mentioned his full agreement with Jung with respect
to this behef in the following passage from his “History of an Infantile Neuro¬
sis” (p. 97):

I should myself be glad to know whether the primal scene in my present

patient’s case was a phantasy or a real experience; but taking other
similar cases into account, I must admit that the answer to this question
is not in reality a matter of very great importance. The scenes of observ¬
ing parental intercourse in childhood and of being threatened with
castration are unquestionably an inherited endowment, a phylogenetic

*This belief implies endorsement of Lamarckianism and, as reported by Jones (Vol. I,

p. 347), “Freud early cherished the Lamarckian belief to which he adhered throughout
his life.”
176 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

inheritance, but they may just as easily be acquired by personal

experience. . . .
All that we find in the prehistory of neuroses is that a child catches
hold of this phylogenetic experience where his own experience fails
him. He fills in the gaps in individual truth with prehistoric truth; he
replaces occurrences in his own life by occurrences in the life of his
ancestors. I fully agree with Jung^ in recognizing the existence of this
phylogenetic inheritance; but I regard it as a methodological error to
seize upon a phylogenetic explanation before the ontogenetic possibili¬
ties have been exhausted. (Italics added.)

This subordination of phylogenetic to ontogenetic explanation is, as Freud

indicated, in accord with sound scientific procedure. It accords with the
scientific principle of parsimony, since the assumption of the inheritance of
racial experience entails more unconfirmed hypotheses than are involved in
belief in the results of individual experience. This is so obvious that it seems
safe to guess that Jung would have agreed with Freud had the issue been
presented to him. After all, it places a greater strain on one’s credulity to
account for a gymnast’s exquisite muscular control by the tree-swinging
practices of his remote biological ancestors than by the results of his own
years of practice in the gymnasium.
Still, there is a more important issue connected with this recognition of
phylogenetic inheritance by both Freud and Jung; namely, the attribution
of this inheritance to “physiological paths.” This places the racial uncon¬
scious in the nervous system or, more definitely, in the “paths” or fiber tracts
of the brain. If this holds true for the hypothetical racial unconscious, does it
not also hold true for the less hypothetical ontogenetic individual uncon¬
scious? If so, then the concept of unconscious mental processes has to do with
modifications of brain tissue^ rather than with a psychic being or concealed
thinker or ghost scheming schemes while we sleep. Of course, with the con¬
cept subject to so many meanings it is difficult to be confident of the precise
meaning of particular references to the unconscious as employed by different
writers. Very likely all those affiliated with medical schools or universities

is of more than passing interest to find this agreement with Jung mentioned in this
essay. At the time Freud was already at odds with both Jung and Adler, as is clear from
this footnote Freud introduced by way of introduction to the essay (1918, p. 7);
This case history was written down shortly after the termination of the treatment,
in the winter of 1914-1915. At that time 1 was still freshly under the impression of
the twisted re-interpretations which C. G. Jung and Alfred Adler were endeavouring
to give to the findings of psycho-analysis.
That Freud was prepared to think of unconscious mental processes as involving such
modifications is indicated, as pointed out by Jones (Vol. I, p. 368), by his having once
written:
Perhaps it might be more correct to say: these processes are not of a psychical nature
at all, but are physical processes the psychical consequences of which are repre¬
sented as if what is expressed by the words 'detachment of the idea from its affect
and false connection of the latter’ had really happened. (Italics added.)
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 177

would bristle at the suggestion of the unconscious being a ghost in the bodily
machine. But precisely how each of them, especially as affiliates of rival psy¬
choanalytic and related institutes, conceives of the intrinsic nature or mecha¬
nism of the unconscious is rarely if ever made clear.

A Numerical or Depth Factor

Another issue that is not made clear involves the possible existence of
more than one unconscious; it might be more accurate to speak of the uncon-
sciouses than of the unconscious. The plural suggests layers or levels of the
unconscious and is in accord with the concept of a depth psychology.^ By
implication this concept suggests that the unconscious is deeper than the con¬
scious. In one of his books Freud called attention to the crudity of such a
spatial metaphor when with reference to the relation between the conscious
“system” and that of the unconscious he wrote (1938, p. 260): “The crudest
conception of these systems is the one we shall find most convenient, a spatial
one.” He then suggested thinking of the unconscious as akin to “a large ante¬
room, in which the various mental excitations are crowding upon one another,”
while consciousness was to be thought of as residing in a smaller “reception-
room” next to the ante-room.
The notion of mental excitations belonging to the unconscious system
“crowding upon one another” is also implicit in one passage of Freud’s essay
on “The Unconscious,” in which he had this to say with reference to those
of his critics who had thought of the unconscious system as “a second con¬
sciousness” (p. 170):

We must be prepared ... to assume the existence in us not only of a

second consciousness, but of a third, fourth, perhaps of an unlimited
number of states of consciousness, all unknown to us and to one
another. In the third place ... we have to take into account that analytic
investigation reveals some of these latent processes as having character¬
istics and peculiarities which seem alien to us, or even incredible, and
which run directly counter to the attributes of consciousness with which
we are familiar. Thus we have grounds for modifying our inference
about ourselves and saying that what is proved is not the existence of a
second consciousness in us, but the existence of psychical acts which
lack consciousness.

In answer to his critics Freud appears to have recognized the existence

■^According to Jones (Vol. I, p. 269), Bleuler was the first to have called psychoanalysis
“depth psychology.” However, even before Bleuler had introduced the phrase, Jones
also noted, Freud had already begun to regard study of the neuroses as providing “access
to deep layers” of man’s mind. Incidentally, the spatial characteristics thus ascribed to
mental processes by these references to “depth” and “layers” may be regarded as part
of commonsense psychology. Long before Freud it was not unusual to hear about some
deep thinker as contrasted with some shallow thinker. The characterization in question
even goes back to Biblical times, for the Psalmist evidently thought of God as a deep
thinker when he wrote in Psalm 92:6, “How great are Thy works, O Lord! Thy thoughts
are very deep.”
178 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

“not only of a second” but also “of a third and fourth” and possibly “of an
infinite series” of “certain mental operations lacking in the quality of con¬
sciousness.” Each member of the series was presumed to be “unknown to us
and to one another,” hence making a plurality of segregated unconscious
mental operations. This changed the unconscious from a single unified system
into a multiplicity of autonomous systems. However, neither Freud nor his
followers ever made the term unconsciouses a constituent of the psycho¬
analytic everyday working vocabulary. Indirectly, of course, the concept of a
plurality of levels of unconsciousness became such a constituent, as references
to the spatial metaphor of depth psychology became increasingly common as
a synonym for psychoanalytic psychology. Just how this metaphor was to be
interpreted was not spelled out, that is, the figure of speech was never replaced
by a literal description. Thus, there was no way of deciding in what respect
psychoanalytic psychology was deeper than other psychologies or whether,
by implication and in what way, other psychologies were shallower than the
psychoanalytic ones. It serves as one more example of the differing meanings
and connotations that have come to be associated with the concept of uncon¬
scious mental life.
There is no need to introduce additional examples. The ones supplied
suffice as reminders and elaborations of the fact mentioned in the first chap¬
ter, that what is attributed to the unconscious by one writer may be very
different from and even in opposition to what is attributed to it by another
writer. Even those who identify themselves as psychoanalysts may not agree
in what they attribute to the Freudian unconscious. This lack of agreement
accounts in part for the existence of separate psychoanalytic institutes and
societies reflecting the cleavage between the orientation of so-called classical
Freudians on the one hand and the so-caUed neo-Freudians on the other. Of
course, the cleavage is not an absolute one in the sense of being indicative of
disagreement with respect to aU Freudian teachings.
Actually, they all share a common appreciation of Freud as the founder of
psychoanalysis. AU, including the most radical of the neo-Freudians, con¬
tinue to think of Freud as a genius. They all continue to endorse many of his
insights, suggestions, and beliefs, and all continue to avail themselve'S of
Freud’s distinctive psychoanalytic vocabulary. Whether any psychoanalyst
is so loyal to the memory and prestige of Freud as to be prepared to endorse
all that Freud taught is another issue. Such blind loyalty obviously would
presuppose abrogation of critical thinking and replacement of the scientist’s
outlook by the faith of a zealot. It is hard to believe that any devotee of
Freudian teacliings would claim such uncritical faith in the soundness or
validity of these teachings. Some of the irhplications of this issue were already
considered in the previous chapter in connection with a discussion of the
essentials of psychoanalysis, but there are a few additional implications which
ought to be brought out now in view of their bearing on the chief objectives
of the present chapter.
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 179

ON SEEING FREUD IN PERSPECTIVE

Freud’s writings covered a period of more than sixty years; he was 21 when
his first paper was published in 1877 and 82 when his last paper was pub-
hshed. The vast scope of his literary output is a product of study and reflection
through the intervening decades and its range is reflected in the fact that the
standard edition of his Collected Works comprises twenty-four volumes.
Under the circumstances one might raise this question: Is it likely that one
man who wrote so much over so many decades was either invariably right in
his reports and judgments or consistently in error? The obvious answer to
this rhetorical question means that recognition of Freud’s genius does not
justify automatic endorsement of whatever he chanced to espouse. Each
teaching or conclusion ought to be evaluated in terms of supporting evidence
rather than in terms of a Freudian ipse dixit.
To entertain the latter kind of confidence in Freud as an authority would
be to follow the example of scholars of old who settled questions of fact by
consulting Aristotle without considering the possibility of Aristotelian error.
Sometimes, of course, Aristotle had even been wrong about matters as mun¬
dane as counting ribs or teeth. For example, he taught that man has sixteen
ribs and that women have fewer teeth than men. This is not to suggest that
Freud was a poor observer of such obvious anatomic fact; but it is to suggest
that just as the genius of Aristotle was no guarantee against error neither does
the genius of Freud supply such a guarantee. By way of illustration it will
be enough to call attention to just a few of Freud’s errors.
Freud’s endorsement of Lamarckianism serves as one instance of acceptance
of an erroneous belief. Other instances are to be found in the chapter on
occultism in the Jones biography (Vol. Ill, Ch. 14). For example, Jones men¬
tions Freud’s “apotropaeic acts,” or acts carried out as quasi-magical maneuvers
to ward off trouble. Knocking on wood is a common example of an apotro¬
paeic act. Freud, according to Jones, has cited acts of this kind he himself
has “unconsciously carried out with the aim of averting disaster.” At one
time when his daughter was critically ill he smashed a small marble statue of
Venus, in the nature of “a sacrificial offering to preserve his child’s life.”
Jones also gives several instances of Freud’s belief in numerology as well as in
clairvoyance. In a different context Jones mentions another of Freud’s ques¬
tionable beliefs, one having to do with the laying on of hands. As reported
by Jones (Vol. I, p. 243), when a patient was blocked in her associations
“Freud would press her forehead with his hand” while assuring her that addi¬
tional memories would occur to her. Obviously, there is no basis for assuming
a relationship between activated recall and such pressure on the patient’s
forehead. However, this erroneous belief is not as manifestly wrong as the one
introduced in Freud’s report of one of his famous cases.
The case in question was reported under the title of “A Case of Paranoia
Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease.” Without
180 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

going into great detail it is enough to note just one episode in this case. This
had to do with a patient’s report of having heard “a noise like a click or beat”®
while indulging in an amorous embrace with her lover. At the time she was
unable to account for the noise, but later as she was leaving she saw two men
carrying what appeared to be a box resembling the shape of a camera. In
retrospect she then accounted for the noise as having been the click of the
camera as the men in obedience to orders from her lover had surreptitiously
taken a picture of the amorous scene. In Freud’s opinion there was no
external source of the noise at all. To quote him exactly (1957, p. 270): “I do
not believe .. . that there was any noise to be heard at all. The woman’s situa¬
tion justified a sensation of a knock or beat in her clitoris” (itahcs added).
Freud appears to have been convinced of the reality of this phenomenon
of an audible clitoris, for he mentioned it again in connection with another
of his patients who suffered from an obsession which, among other symptoms,
was marked by the need to remove all clocks and watches from the bedroom
before she could prepare for sleep. In commenting on this symptom Freud
wrote (1938, p. 236):

Now this patient’s special fear was that the ticking of the clocks would
disturb her during sleep. The ticking of a clock is comparable to the
throbbing of the clitoris in sexual excitation. This sensation, which was
distressing to her, had actually on several occasions wakened her from
sleep; and now her fear of an erection of the clitoris expressed itself
by the imposition of a rule to remove all going clocks and watches
far away from her during the night.

Unfortunately, Freud failed to cite any evidence in support of this gyneco¬

logical interpretation of the ticking and cUcking noises reported by these two
patients. There does not appear to be any such evidence in the relevant litera¬
ture.^ At best the interpretation is to be relegated to science fiction, for to
consider it as possibly factual is to place an intolerable strain on one’s credulity.
Once again it is well to mention the chief reason for thus calling attention
to Freud’s mistakes, namely, to avoid confusing what he merely claimed or
believed with what he had actually proved or demonstrated. This amounts to
a platitudinous reminder of the fact that scientific questions are to be settled

®To check on the accuracy of this translated phrase the original German was consulted
in the Gesammelte Werke and it was found that Freud had employed three rather than
just two kinds of noise. The original reads (1946, p. 241): “ein Gerausch wie ein Ticken,
Klopfen, Pochen” meaning “noise like a ticking, knocking, beating.” In the italicized
sentence in the next quoted excerpt from the case history Freud just referred to two
kinds of noise in this formulation (1946, p. 244): “Die Situation, in der sie sich befand,
rechtfertigte eine Empfindung von Pochen oder Klopfen an der Klitoris.”
^When Dr. W. H. Masters of the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation was asked
whether he knew of any factual basis for Freud’s interpretation he replied, “While we
have no concept of where the woman Freud counselled felt the knock or heard the clock
ticking, we can assure you it was not in the cUtoris.”
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 181

by appeals to evidence rather than by appeals to authority—even the authority

of a Freud. After aU, there is always the danger of being overawed by the
voice of authority.
However, this word of caution is not to be construed as blindness to or dis¬
paragement of Freud’s place in the history of psychology. As a seminal thinker
he belongs in psychology’s hall of fame along with James, Wundt, Helmholtz,
Fechner, Bain, Binet, and other stars of the first magnitude. As pioneer inves¬
tigator he explored phases of human behavior his psychological predecessors
had either avoided or ignored as taboo territory. The scope of his influence
can be glimpsed by a hasty review of salient theories and concepts he intro¬
duced for consideration as important psychological topics'.defense dynamisms
such as projection and reaction-formation, psychosexual development, oral
characters, penis envy, regression, repression, dream symbolism, latent con¬
tent, death instinct, wish-fulfillment, and kindred Freudian additions to the
psychologist’s professional vocabulary.
It is also well to realize that even when Freud’s conclusions met with
adverse criticism they were not necessarily devoid of scientific value, espe¬
cially if they stimulated new avenues of investigation. To stimulate this kind
of investigation is often to contribute to the progress of science. Accordingly,
if and when those whose thinking has diverged from Freud’s have thereby
enhanced understanding of man’s psychology then, as instigator of such
divergent thinking, Freud merits some credit for the resulting enhancement.
From this viewpoint the heads of rival schools of psychoanalytic thought
such as Adler, Jung, and Rank are indebted to Freud. This also applies to
those who have reinterpreted or even rejected some of Freud’s teachings, such
as Homey, Fromm, SuUivan, and others. In brief, had there been no Freud,
there never would have been classical Freudians, anti-Freudians, and neo-
Freudians.

ON THE TESTING OF FREUD’S HYPOTHESES

The emergence of these three different kinds of reactions to Freud’s

teachings is indicative of their provocative nature, and of the fact that many
of them are subject to more than one interpretation. Furthermore, the evi¬
dence cited in their support is not based upon laboratory observations, field
studies, or statistical data. Much of it, at b'est, is more conjectural than coer¬
cive. Under the circumstances neither wholesale endorsement nor wholesale
rejection of these teachings is justified. Instead, it might be preferable to be
governed by the following “word of warning” with which Ernest Hilgard once
concluded an appreciative chapter concerned with Freud’s psychodynamics
(1956, p. 324);

Psychoanalytic thinking is very complex and loosely formulated, so

that it is not easy to find out what is essential, what is dispensable, and
what internal contradictions there are in it. We need a careful, critical
182 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

systematization of what appears to be best substantiated through clini¬

cal experience and through other sources of scientific evidence, so that
irrelevancies and contradictions are either discarded or stated in form
for decisive testing. We need to locate the most pertinent issues, and
then do our best to get adequate evidence to resolve these issues. There
is much in Freud that nearly everyone will reject, such as the inheritance
of acquired characteristics, and some metaphorical statements about
localization of function in the brain. The problem is not to guess what
Freud “really” meant and then to defend or refute him. The problem is
to find out what is true, regardless of who said it. Freud uncovered
some interesting hypotheses. We need to state them as carefully as we
can, and then put them to the test.

Some attempts have been made to subject various Freudian hypotheses

to scientific test. Those undertaken by the 1940s were reviewed by Robert
R. Sears and, in general, he found the results discouraging. He concluded that
he doubted “whether the sheer testing of psychoanalytic theory is an appro¬
priate task for experimental psychology” (p. 329). In the 1950s J. R. Sewell
conducted a careful test of the validity of psychoanalytic teachings concern¬
ing experiences of early infancy on subsequent personality development. The
experiences had to do with nursing, weaning, toilet training, and sleeping
“alone during the first year of life” as contrasted with those babies who had
“slept with mother during the first year of hfe.” The findings failed to con¬
firm the hypotheses under investigation. Similarly, in his review of studies
concerned with the Freudian hypothesis of the forgetting or repression of
unpleasant experiences Charles E. Osgood also failed to obtain confirmation
of the hypothesis. Other psychoanalytic hypotheses have been subjected to
experimental check, many of which are reviewed in considerable detail in
Eysenck and Wilson’s The Experimental Study of Freudian Theories. After
critical examination of each of them they had this to say (p. 392):

What, then, is our main conclusion? We would say that the studies
looked at in this volume give little if any support to Freudian concepts
and theories; . . . that several of the studies dealing in particular with
treatment and with ‘single ease’ investigations give results powerfully
challenging Freudian hypotheses; and that the quality of the studies
allegedly supporting psychoanalytic views is so poor that very little of
interest can in fact be gathered from the results reported.

Whether the negative outcome of these experimental studies deprives

psychoanalysis of scientific status is a moot issue. According to one psycho¬
analyst, Harley C. Shands, if the methodology of science be identified with
the process of subjecting anticipated consequences of specific hypotheses to
experimental check, then “psychoanalysis is the antithesis of science” (p. 96).
This, as Sands indicates, reflects a principle sponsored by students of the
philosophy of science. Consequently, as he also indicates, if psychoanalysis
is to be classified as a science, it will be “necessary to change the traditional
definition of science” (p. 97). Furthermore, if it is not a science in this tra-
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 183

ditional sense of the concept, then there is still a need to check on the “relia¬
bility of its insights.”
By implication, such checking would call for examination of the evidence
cited in support of given insights. Even nonlaboratory fields of investigation
may be presumed to be guided by evidence in reaching “insights” or conclu¬
sions, and to the extent that such evidence is available it may be possible to
bring such fields within the orbit of science provided the conclusions reached
are justified by the evidence. In this sense nonlaboratory fields of study like
hnguistics, topology, economics, and comparative jurisprudence come to be
classified as sciences. The scientific or nonscientific status of any subject or
topic is thus to be judged in terms of this criterion, even a restricted topic like
the unconscious. This amounts to asking, “What is the scientific status of the
concept of mind as unconscious?”

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS
A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT

The criterion under consideration has been implicit in many of the discus¬
sions of the unconscious in previous chapters; however, it will facilitate critical
evaluation of the subject to render it explicit. This requires examination of
statements made about the nature of the unconscious in the light of a deliber¬
ate search for evidence cited in support of or as proof for the statements. In
other words, according to the criterion just mentioned, the scientific status
of the unconscious is contingent upon the existence of such evidence.
As a matter of fact, some few years ago, as alluded to in the previous chap¬
ter, the psychiatrist Richard Rabkin subjected the unconscious to this kind of
examination. He was unable to find the kind of evidence required by the
criterion, and as a consequence he had misgivings about the scientific status
of the unconscious. In this connection he wrote (1969, pp. 571-572):

It is therefore appropriate to treat the unconscious as nonscientific, as

a basic assumption that cannot be proved but must be accepted as a
given. In so doing I am following Freud himself; m his General Intro¬
duction, among other places, he says he must be given this assumption
or nothing satisfying can be made out of dreams and parapraxes. In a
similar, more general argument Jones quotes Freud; “What speaks
against the physiological conception is its unfruitfulness; for the psycho¬
analytic one it can be claimed that it has been able to make intelhgible
interpretation of thousands of dreams and has used them to achieve a
knowledge of intimate mental life.”
Thus Freud’s argument is not in the form of a scientific proof, his
point is that such an assumption is practical in its consequences. It is
also clear from this excerpt that Freud set his theory against organic
(“physiologic”) theory. In this formulation Freud argues not that
dream interpretation leads to the unconscious, but the reverse—that
the assumption of an unconscious leads to an interpretation of a dream.
In modern terminology, Freud’s argument runs that the concept of an
unconscious is a condition of the psychoanalytic game; if you are to
184 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

interpret a dream you must grant this hypothesis. As such it cannot be

tested but rather is a general program by which such activity is designed
to proceed—a map, or a topography.

From the context it is evident that Rabkin’s reference to “the concept of

an unconscious” is a reference to the Freudian unconscious. In designating
this concept as the hypothesis of an unconscious he was not really clashing
with Freud’s interpretation, as might appear at first impression. This is so
because in his last paper, “Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis,”
Freud had written “our science involves a number of hypotheses—it is hard to
say whether they should be regarded as postulates or as products of our
researches” (1938, p. 282). Furthermore, in his subsequent discussion of the
statement Freud Unked these hypotheses to mental functions he attributed
to the unconscious. It is well to note that at the close of his life Freud him¬
self in retrospect was seemingly unsure about the scientific status of the
unconscious. He found it hard to decide whether his researches had confirmed
the hypothesis of an unconscious mind or whether it was still an assumption
or postulate not yet supported by his researches.
It ought to be stressed that Rabkin was not denying the concept of a
Freudian unconscious. He recognized it as an assumption, but reported that
in his clinical work he found the concept to be unimportant. This, of course,
is not the same as denying the assumption. Nevertheless, one of his critics,
Benjamin Brody, writing in the same journal, charged him with having regis¬
tered a “denial of the unconscious” and he called such denial “a great leap
backward.”^ In his view the success of psychoanalysis “in effecting improve¬
ment or cure” of neuroses “has seemed a proof of the theory of unconscious
processes” (p. 593). The fact that Rabkin was also able to help his patients
was not regarded as being in conflict with the latter kind of proof. Instead,
Brody suggested that “Rabkin’s techniques work” because it is possible “that
Rabkin, by virtue of his special authority as a therapist, his power of sugges¬
tion, and his personality, is utiHzing the unconscious without knowing it”
(p. 595).

^A phrase like “a great leap backward” suggests consternation at the very thought of
questioning Freud. Brody is not alone in this. There are other contemporary writers who
view such questioning with equivalent or even more intense consternation. For example,
Irving Sarnoff has referred to those who “had the temerity to question and to depart
from the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory or therapy” as “rebels” and as “petty,
carping, and ungrateful heirs” of Freud’s “priceless legacy.” Moreover, “Freud himself
so regarded those who, like Jung and Adler, had the presumption to compare alternate
versions of the phenomena he had sought to illuminate” (1971, pp. 3-4).
The defections of Jung and Adler were also deplored by Reuben Fine, but in less
flamboyant language. In his view Freud’s original favorable judgment of these men was
to be attributed to Freud’s being a poor judge of character or Menschenkenner—his
deficient “insight into the petty grievances and mahces that make up so much of many
people’s lives.” Indeed, “his choice of Adler as president of the Vienna group . . . and of
Jung as president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, demonstrated the
high hopes he had placed in these men, their subsequent behavior how completely he
had misjudged them” (1973, p. 169).
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 185

In terms of the argument advanced by Brody it becomes impossible to

subject the hypothesis of an unconscious to the test of clinical success. By
implication, Brody attributes all psychotherapeutic success to utilization of
the unconscious whether or not therapists are cognizant of such utilization.
If this be so, then there is no way to provide for a test of the therapeutic
efficacy under consideration, since even those therapists who report finding
reliance upon the unconscious unnecessary would have their reports ques¬
tioned. It would be held that unwittingly they were relying upon the uncon¬
scious. This means inevitable confirmation of the hypothesis with all negative
evidence interpreted as unrecognized positive evidence. Such logic renders it
impossible to treat the hypothesis of unconscious mental life as a testable
hypothesis or as one theoretically capable of being confirmed in terms of
anticipated consequences.®
At one time it was argued that even though the factual status of the uncon¬
scious continued to elude confirmation its acceptance as a working hypothesis
might nevertheless be justified because of its value for dealing with phenom¬
ena of psychopathology. This argument was mentioned back in the 1920s by
G. C. Field in a paper he contributed to a British symposium concerned with
the concept of the unconscious. Actually, the symposium was restricted to
this question: “Is the Conception of the Unconscious of Value in Psychol¬
ogy?” Before dealing directly with this question Field alluded to the possibil¬
ity of belief in “unconscious mental processes” having “a certain value as a
provisional working hypothesis” for the limited field of psychotherapy.
However,he did not elaborate upon this since, as he explained, the symposium
was concerned with the value of the unconscious for psychology as contrasted
with its possible value for psychoanalysis. In fact, he contrasted his own
answer to the question with an answer supplied by Ernest Jones. In his view,
sponsors of the unconscious are really unable to supply a meaningful char¬
acterization of the concept. He added that the concept comes close to being
“a confession of ignorance” when it is alluded to in negative terms as some¬
thing neither physical nor conscious and hence as a mysterious X or “an
unknown cause” of dreams, conflicts, and behavior. After giving expression
to this opinion he elaborated upon it as follows (p. 414):
This, of course, would not be admitted by the advocates of the claims
of the Unconscious. And we find them, accordingly, continually speak¬
ing of the activities of the unconscious mind in exactly the same terms
as of the activities of the conscious mind, so that we hear of uncon¬
scious desires, emotions, wishes, fears, or of unconscious thoughts or

®It is well to note that, as Wesley Salmon has put it in a recent article, it is an “over¬
simplification” to describe the testing of hypotheses as a simple process of having them
confirmed or disconfirmed in the light of anticipated consequences. In fact, with particu¬
lar reference to the consequences derived from inductive anticipation of consequences,
as is common in empirical investigations, Salmon demonstrates the complexities involved.
Even the underlying logical processes are still subject to debate. For this reason Salmon
concludes, “There is more to scientific confirmation than merely finding trae conse¬
quences” (1973, p. 77).
186 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

memories. These unconscious mental processes as Dr. Ernest Jones tells

us “present all the attributes of mental ones, except that the subject is
not aware of them.” And consciousness thus becomes, he says, “merely
one attribute of mentality, and not an indispensable one.” I have
searched in vain for a clear statement of what the other attributes of
mentality are which these processes do possess. And when I reflect on
what 1 mean by a wish or an emotion or a feeling, I can only find that
I know and think of them simply as different forms of conscious¬
ness. . . . And to ask us to think of something which has all the char¬
acteristics of a wish or a feeling except that it is not conscious seems to
me like asking us to think of something that has all the attributes of red
or green except that it is not a colour.

Field and other participants in the symposium referred to “the New Psy¬
chology” in their discussions of the value of the concept of an unconscious
mind for scientific psychology. From the context it was obvious they were
identifying “the New Psychology” with Freud’s psychology. However,
there was no direct quotation from any of Freud’s writings in the published
accounts of the symposium. Instead, as in the cited excerpt from Field’s
account, Jones was quoted as a spokesman for Freud’s psychology. In terms
of the Jones quotation it was as if Freud had regarded man as equipped
with two minds—one conscious and the other unconscious—and the latter
mind was endowed with “all the attributes” of the former mind “except
that the subject is not aware of them.” This struck one of the symposium’s
speakers just as “preposterous” as if savages were to be described as being
“cannibals in aU respects except the act of devouring the flesh of the victims.”
Whether Freud’s understanding of the unconscious justified this kind of
reductio ad absurdum is to be questioned. At all events, the brief Jones quo¬
tation failed to include several beliefs about the unconscious to which Freud
had given expression from time to time. These beliefs rendered Freud’s con¬
ception of the unconscious more complex than could be compressed within
the succinct Jones formulation.
It is unfortunate that the symposium’s discussion neglected to deal with
Freud’s own formulation of the subject. Had this taken place there would
have been a more comprehensive analysis of the possible value for psychology
of the meaning of unconscious mental processes as understood by Freud him¬
self. What this issue entails is sufficiently important to merit separate con¬
sideration, apart from its possible retrospective bearing on this symposium of
long ago.

CONCERNING FREUD’S UNDERSTANDING

OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

In addition to his paper “The Unconscious” Freud had occasion to intro¬

duce incidental and less systematic references to the subject in his other papers
and books. To find and collate all these references would call for a separate
volume. Consequently, the present account will be much more modest in
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 187

scope, limited to consideration of some salient but often overlooked attributes

of the unconscious as described by Freud. Many of these were mentioned in
previous chapters in the form of verbatim citations from Freud’s writings.^
These, along with a few others, will now be reviewed in summary fashion in
preparation for their later reinterpretation.
As may be recalled, Freud was explicit in objecting to having the word
psychical employed as a synonym for the word conscious. As he contended,
because these two words have different meanings it is not “palpable nonsense”
for the psychoanalyst to talk about “unconscious psychical processes.” How¬
ever, in elaborating upon this contention Freud neglected to specify in what
precise respect or respects psychical differ from conscious processes. Stated
differently, he failed to show what made the psychical a mental process even
though, by hypothesis, it was divested of all attributes characteristic of con¬
scious processes. The one mental attribute he ascribed to the unconscious had
to do with thinking. He did this when he wrote that “a single analysis of a
dream” will suffice to demonstrate “that the most complicated and most
rational thought-processes, which can surety not be denied the name of
psychical processes, can occur without exciting the subject’s consciousness.”
Note that Freud was implicitly appealing to the reader’s knowledge of the
nature of thinking in thus equating “rational thought-processes” with psy¬
chical ones. In doing so he was assigning what had been learned as a con¬
scious experience as a characteristic of the unconscious. Similarly, a phrase
like unconscious wish presupposes knowledge of wishing as a conscious expe¬
rience. In other words, the descriptive vocabulary employed by Freud with
reference to the unconscious is a derivative of the vocabulary of conscious¬
ness. There is no independent, underived nonconscious descriptive vocabu¬
lary. A chief reason for calling attention to this rather obvious point is that
Freud would have objected to it, basing his objection on what he regarded as
the error of deriving the unconscious from the conscious. For him the uncon¬
scious constituted “the true psychical reality” conceived of as vast enough to
encompass the phenomena of consciousness. He deemed “everything con¬
scious” to be the outcome of “an unconscious preliminary stage.” In this
connection he introduced the following italicized sentence in his Interpretation
of Dreams (p. 613):

The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature it

is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is
as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external
world by the communications of our sense organs.

In thus venturing to derive the conscious from the unconscious Freud

appears to have disregarded the conventional maxim governing scientific ex-
planations-that the known may explain the unknown and not vice versa.

^The sections in Chapter 4 concerned with Freud’s interest in the unconscious contain
the more immediately relevant verbatim citations.
188 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

In other words, in saying that the unconscious is “unknown to us” but at

the same time making it the fountainhead of mind he was virtually account¬
ing for knowledge by appealing to ignorance. This is one possible interpreta¬
tion; but careful reading of the italicized sentence suggests a different one.
The distinction between “data of consciousness” and ignorance of the “reality
of the external world” suggests Kant’s metaphysics and the distinction
between phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Both in the Traumdeutung as
well as in his later writings Freud revealed familiarity with Kant’s philosophy.
Thus, in different contexts Freud mentioned such characteristic Kantian
concepts as the categorical imperative, the a priori, and the categories of
understanding.
In terms of this Kantian perspective Freud made the unconscious “the true
psychical reality” just as Kant had made the noumenal world or thing-in-itself
the true physical reality. Furthermore, just as Kant had acknowledged our
inability to get to know the noumenal world in its intrinsic nature so Freud
acknowledged the inaccessibihty of the “innermost nature” of the uncon¬
scious. The following sentence from “The Unconscious” (p. 171) will serve
as a reminder of this Kantian influence on Freud’s thinking:

Just as Kant warned us not to overlook the fact that our perceptions
are subjectively conditioned and must not be regarded as identical with
what is perceived though unknowable, so psycho-analysis warns us not
to equate perception by means of consciousness with the unconscious
mental processes which are their object. Like the physical, the psychical
is not necessarily in reality just what it appears to us to be.

Although, as just suggested, Freud seems to have had Kant’s concept of

phenomenal and noumenal realms in mind in his concept of a distinction to
be made between conscious and unconscious mental activity, he did not make
the unconscious the precise equivalent of the Kantian noumenon. The latter
realm, as treated by Kant, was merely assumed to exist as the inaccessible
antecedent of phenomenal events. Being inaccessible there was nothing more
to be said about it. However, in the case of Freud’s unconscious even though
it too was deemed to be inaccessible in its “irmermost nature” there was a
great deal that Freud was able to say about it. This made it analogous to the
noumenon only with respect to its “innermost nature” and not with reference
to its more peripheral nature.
At all events, in different sections of “The Unconscious” Freud called
attention to certain aspects or characteristics of the unconscious. For example,
he endowed the kernel of the unconscious with “wish-impulses” and thus
placed it under the sway of primary processes of instinct-gratification. It was
also described as being divorced from identity with notions of past or future,
so “timelessness” was another of its characteristics. Moreover, it was limited
in its mental processes by inability to entertain negative attitudes, feelings of
doubt, and gradations of personal conviction. As formulated by Freud, in
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 189

the unconscious system there is “no negation, no dubiety, no varying degree

of certainty.” Furthermore, in his conceptualization of the conscious as con¬
trasted with the unconscious system Freud refused to speculate about the
“anatomical locations” of these systems. He was not willing to localize con¬
sciousness “in the cortex and to localize the unconscious processes in the
subcortical parts of the brain.” In his view it was not “one of the tasks of
psychology” to settle such neurophysiological issues—his “mental topogra¬
phy” was not “concerned with anatomical locations, but with regions in the
mental apparatus, irrespective of their possible situation in the body.”

ON PROOF FOR “THE ASSUMPTION

OF THE UNCONSCIOUS”

Freud made the unconscious an essential constituent of man’s “mental

apparatus.” In doing so he recognized the need for proof or justification of
what he called “the assumption of the unconscious.” This was in his 1915
essay “The Unconscious”; years later, in his essay of 1938, he dealt with the
same issue by referring to the “hypothesis” of the unconscious. In the 1915
essay he supplied what he regarded as proof for this hypothesis or assumption
by writing as follows (p. 167):

When ... it turns out that the assumption of there being an unconscious
enables us to construct a successful procedure by which we can exert
an effective influence upon the course of conscious processes, this
success will have given us an incontrovertible proof of the existence of
what we have assumed. (Italics added.)

This is questionable proof. It is not the equivalent of confirmation of a

scientific hypothesis by means of relevant controls, the quest for negative
instances, and examination of alternative assumptions. In accordance with
such a “proof’ revivalists might claim “useful influence upon the course of
the conscious processes” of “sinners” following prayer to God, but such
influence would not constitute “incontrovertible proof of the existence” of
God. Nor was the existence of phlogiston or of the luminiferous aether estab¬
lished by “the useful influence” of these concepts on the “conscious proc¬
esses” of those who had entertained them as working hypotheses.
There is a possibility that Freud was not unmindful of the weakness of his
alleged proof. This may be so because, as will be recalled, in his 1938 essay he
found it “hard to say” whether the unconscious and a number of other
hypotheses “should be regarded as postulates or as products of our researches.”
Nevertheless, despite such uncertainty, he was never in doubt about the actual
existence of unconscious mental processes.
His conviction concerning the existence of the unconscious was already
evident in his Interpretation of Dreams. In it he attributed different functions
190 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

to conscious as contrasted with unconscious processes. In fact, he gave itali¬

cized expression to the difference. For example, on the one hand he noted
that ‘‘‘‘the most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the
assistance of consciousness" (p. 593). On the other hand, with reference to
the question of the part “to be played in our scheme by consciousness he
offered this reply: ""Only that of a sense-organ for the perception of psychical
qualities" (p. 615). These two italicized conclusions involve an important
distinction having important implications, some of which appear to have been
overlooked by Freud. At least he failed to mention them.
It may be that no mention was made of them because they are not directly
related to the subject of dream interpretation. Of course, the fact that Freud
employed italics is indicative of the importance he attached to these conclu¬
sions, but this had to do with his need to justify belief in mental processes as
unconscious. This is different from the importance of certain broad implica¬
tions of these conclusions when viewed from the standpoint of systematic
psychology. This is different also from the standpoint of psychoanalysis and
may thus account for Freud’s neglect of these implications. Furthermore, as
will be brought out in the next chapter, one possible outcome of these impli¬
cations is a rapprochement between what otherwise would be an irreconcilable
conflict between academic psychology and psychoanalytic psychology with
specific reference to the concept of unconscious thinking.

A CONCLUDING COMMENT

The present chapter was directly concerned with the many shifts in mean¬
ing of the word uneonscious. Many of these shifts have nothing to do with
the unconscious conceived of as an autonomous mental agency or uncon¬
scious mind in the sense of an independent entity over which its possessor
has no control. Thus, there is no question of an unconscious mind being
involved when a daydreaming schoolboy is unconscious of his teacher’s expla¬
nation of the difference between a participle and a gerund. Nor was there a
question of activation of an unconscious mind in Razran’s report of the
Russian studies of “the observable unconscious.” However, there was such a
question with respect to Freud’s “assumption of the unconscious.” In fact,
in his book of 1938 (p. 377) he had referred to this assumption as one among
several “hazardous hypotheses.” As indicated in the present chapter, this
hypothesis has not yet received experimental confirmation. It continues to be
a postulate in the sense in which Freud stated by writing that he had difficulty
deciding whether this and some other hypotheses “should be regarded as
postulates or as products of our researches.”
In reality, Freud does not appear to have entertained serious question
about the validity of this postulate. For him the lack of experimental confir¬
mation was not disturbing. He evidently found certain clinical observations
along with his dream interpretations sufficiently reassuring so that mind as
unconscious became more conviction than hypothesis. Thus for him the
unconscious mind was fact and not fiction. When it was conceived of as
 Ambiguous and Hypothetical Aspects • 191

hitherto unknown psychological territory, he came to be thought of as the

discoverer of the unconscious and his written reports came to be regarded as
a discoverer’s accounts of explorations of new territory. Moreover, in the
course of writing the Traumdeutung during the 1890s he was already writing
as this kind of discoverer. In other words, the postulate or conviction of mind
as unconscious was already his at the start of his professional career. This was
definitely reflected in the two italicized sentences toward the end of the
Traumdeutung as just quoted at the close of the previous section. Their
implications are important enough to be elaborated upon in the next chapter.

REFERENCES

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vidualistic Psychology and Psychotherapy. Translated by Bernard Glueck
and John E. Lind. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company.
Boring, E. G. 1963. The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness. New York:
Dover Publications, Inc. (First published in 1933.)
Brody, B. 1969. “The Denial of the Unconscious: A Great Leap Backward.”
International! ournal of Psychiatry 8: 590-595.
Eysenck, H. J., and Wilson, G. D. 1973. The Experimental Study of Freudian
Theories. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.
Field, G. C. 1922. “Is the Conception of the Unconscious of Value in Psy¬
chology?” Mind 31: 414-423.
Fine, R. 1973. The Development of Freud’s Thought. New York: Jason Aron¬
son, Inc.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New
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 7

T(>e Unconscious
as Implicit
Non-Sensory
ideation

As may be recalled, in the last section of The Interpretation of Dreams

(pp. 610-621) Freud wrote about the clash between academic and medical
psychology with specific reference to the concept of “unconscious psychical
processes.” He did this by contrasting the opposition to such a concept on
the part of “professors” with ready endorsement on the part of “physicians”
familiar with the nature of “abnormal mental states.” In his view a concept
dismissed as “palpable nonsense” by the professors was welcomed as “a
solidly established fact” by the physicians. Under the circumstances, Freud
added, “the physician can only shrug his shoulders” upon being reminded
that “consciousness is an indispensable characteristic of what is psychical.”
By implication, the physician in question was Freud himself, for in this con¬
nection he also added that analysis of a single dream suffices to show that
complicated thinking “can occur without exciting the subject’s consciousness.”
Since the Traumdeutung 'nils published in 1899, the foregoing final section
of the book must have been written late in that decade.* Accordingly, Freud’s
reference to “professors” as being antagonistic to the medical view of the
unconscious had to do with views expressed before the 1890s. Actually, he
failed to name any of the professors, nor did he name any of the endorsing
physicians. Furthermore, since the book had not yet been published, the pro¬
fessors could not have been objecting to Freud’s distinctive concept of the

* According to Jones (Vol. I, p. 351), Freud himself had once written; “The Interpreta¬
tion of Dreams . . . was finished in all essentials at the beginning of 1896 but was not
written down until the summer of 1899.”
194 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

unconscious as reflected in the light of dream interpretation. In other words,

Freud appears to have been dealing with anticipated objections to the uncon¬
scious by those who made consciousness an indispensable criterion of mind.
If so, then he was dealing with imaginary rather than actual professors; hence
his failure to list any of them by name. This is one possible interpretation.
An alternative interpretation would be that Freud had reference to writings
of professors who had registered opposition to belief in unconscious mental
processes. In terms of this alternative the opposition would have been directed
at the pre-Freudian unconscious. A third possibility might be that Freud was
thinking both of published objections to the doctrine of the unconscious
sponsored by his predecessors as well of anticipated objections to his own
version of the doctrine. There is no assured way of deciding among these
three possibilities. It is well to suspend judgment with respect to this issue
and to rest content with the assured fact of Freud’s role as ardent defender of
belief in mind as unconscious. In the idiom of psychoanalysis, professorial
questioning of that belief had aroused his resistance.

PRE-FREUDIAN OBJECTIONS
TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

It is important to note that such questioning had taken place in the pre-
Freudian era. The pros and cons of belief in mind as unconscious had been
debated by scholars long before Freud had become its champion; taken in
the abstract, evaluation of the belief as a technical scientific issue had thus
arisen independently of Freud. As already mentioned in Chapter 4, in the
generation before Freud there had been opposition to the belief by both
professors and physicians. By way of reminder, among professors it will be
enough to recall Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) of the University of Leipzig
and William James (1842-1910) of Harvard University. And among physicians
it will suffice to recall Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) who had called atten¬
tion to the contradiction involved in the concept of “unconscious states of
mind” and Henry Maudsley (1835-1918) who had voiced his objection to
the latter concept by writing about the physiology rather than the psychology
of mind.^ For Maudsley, mental diseases were conceived of as brain diseases.
Incidentally, both Jackson and Maudsley had dealt with “abnormal mental
states” in the course of their routine clinical experience as physicians. Quite
manifestly Freud was not thinking of them when he suggested that physicians
with such experience, unlike the professors, would have been ready to
endorse the concept of “unconscious psychical processes.”
2
This merits explicit mention because, as noted in Chapter 4, Freud had once been mis¬
led into regarding Maudsley as one who had recognized the importance of the uncon¬
scious. Similarly, Whyte also appears to have misunderstood Maudsley, for he lists him
among those who dealt with the influence of unconscious mental factors in pre-Freudian
days. He even quotes Maudsley as the author of this sentence: “The most important
part of mental action, the essential process on which thinking depends, is unconscious
mental activity” (Whyte, 1960, p. 162).
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 195

Thus it is evident that even before Freud had appeared on the scientific
scene both professors and physicians were to be found among critics of the
unconscious. Of course, this was the pre-Freudian unconscious. Whether they
would have been just as opposed to the Freudian unconscious is a separate
question, the answer to which might give rise to endless and possibly fruitless
speculation.
Instead of indulging in such speculation it will be more fruitful to revert
to consideration of the Freudian unconscious in terms of the two key sen¬
tences Freud had introduced toward the end of Interpretation of Dreams
and which are quoted at the close of the previous chapter. Their importance
for Freud is indicated by the fact that he had them printed in italics. It was
his way of calling attention to what he regarded as a chief difference between
consciousness on the one hand and the unconscious on the other. In the case
of the unconscious, as shown in the following passage, he noted that thoughts
incident to the occurrence of a dream need not have originated while the
dreamer was asleep (p. 393):

On the contrary, these thoughts may very well have originated from the
previous day, they may have proceeded unobserved by our conscious¬
ness from their start, and may already have been completed at the onset
of sleep. The most that we can conclude from this is that it proves that
the most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the
assistance of consciousness—a fact which we could not fail to learn in
any case from every psycho-analysis of a patient suffering from hysteria
or from obsessional ideas.

The italicized words thus reveal the unconscious to be an organ of thought.

Then, by way of contrast, on a later page Freud raised the question of the
function of consciousness in the psychoanalytic scheme of psychology. His
question and answer took this form (p. 615):

But what part is there left to be played in our scheme by consciousness,

which was once so omnipotent and hid all else from view? Only that of
a sense-organ for the perception of psychical qualities.

According to the two italicized passages, the unconscious stands revealed

as the organ of thought and consciousness stands revealed as the organ of
sensation and perception. The division of labor suggested by this differentia¬
tion or distinction has rather widespread systematic implications Freud either
failed to notice or disregarded; but they are too important to be overlooked.
Freud, either wittingly or unwittingly, had introduced an important distinction.

AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION

Actually, the distinction in question was already alluded to in Chapter 4

in connection with this Kantian maxim: “The understanding cannot see. The
senses cann,ot think. Only by their union can knowledge be produced.” As
196 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

a result, one might say that it was in accordance with this maxim that Freud
had allocated thinking to one division of mind and sensation to a second
division. Having attributed sensation and perception to the conscious division
he, in effect, then attributed thinking and reasoning to a nonconscious divi¬
sion; hence, the two Freudian mental realms of conscious and unconscious.
Recognition of a duality of mental functions was not unique either to
Kant or to Freud. It was already evident to Aristotle.^ Among man’s “psychic
powers” he mentioned the “sensory” and “the power of thinking” with the
former shared by man and animals and the latter as the “rational soul” being
unique to man. Incidentally, Freud’s distinction between perceiving and
thinking had already been made by Aristotle in the following passage from
the De Anima in which he had this to say about “opining” or thinking
(McKeon ed., p. 176):

We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems

to be a widely different kind of soul, ... it alone is capable of existence
in isolation from all the other psychic powers. All the other parts of the
soul . . . are . . . incapable of separate existence though, of course, dis¬
tinguishable by definition. If opining is distinct from perceiving, to be
capable of opining and to be capable of perceiving must be distinct.

Aristotle’s distinction between these two mental functions was known to

and elaborated upon by John Locke (1632-1704) in his famous Essay Con¬
cerning Human Understanding. His main purpose in writing the essay was to
account for the origin of our ideas and he defined idea (p. 16) as “whatever
is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.” Without defining
thinking he made it a constituent of the process of reflection as defined in the
course of presenting his basic thesis to the effect that all our ideas originate
from sensation or reflection. He first explained sensation to be the fountain
of “ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and
all those which we call sensible qualities.” Then, by way of explaining the
nature of reflection, he wrote (pp. 18-19):

Secondly, the other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the

understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our
own mind, within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which
operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish
the understanding with another set of ideas which could not be had
from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting,
believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of
our own minds, which we, being copscious of, and observing in our-

^Freud was not unfamiliar with Aristotle. He had occasion to be introduced to Aristotle’s
thought in his student days when enrolled in Brentano’s courses, since Brentano was
deeply immersed in Aristotle as brought out at the close of Chapter 5. As there indicated,
Aristotle had anticipated Freud in stressing the place of appetite and wishing in the
dynamics of mental life. Freud’s familiarity with Aristotle is also suggested by some
explicit references to Aristotle in the Traumdeutung.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation -197

selves, do from these receive into our understanding as distinct ideas,

as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every
man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense as having nothing
to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly be
called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this
reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by
reflecting on its own operations within itself.

Reduced to bare essentials, Locke made knowledge or human understand¬

ing a result of the conjoint operation of sensation and reflection. Kant’s later
formula also reduced the acquisition of knowledge to a conjoint operation of
a somewhat different sort with the difference having to do with the question
of the origin of man’s intellect or understanding. Locke appears to have based
his disposition of the question upon a sentence in Aristotle’s De Anima
reading (McKeon ed., p. 225): “No one can learn or understand anything
in the absence of sense.” This makes both knowledge and understanding a
function of sensation. The Latin equivalent of this formulation as known to
and endorsed by medieval scholars became this famous text: Nihil est in
intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu, meaning, “There is nothing in the
intellect that had not first involved the sensorium.” As understood by Locke
this made mind or understanding a product of sensory experience and made
Locke a champion of empiricism in the history of psychology. In opposition
to this stand, the philosopher Leibnitz (1646-1716) modified the Latin text
by appending the phrase nisi intellectus ipse so that the translation now reads,
“There is nothing in the intellect that had not first involved the sensorium,
except the intellect itself. ” This made Leibnitz a champion of rationalism in
the history of psychology.
It thus became evident that Locke’s empiricism was not altogether devoid
of rationalistic factors. His concept of reflection involving, in his words, “the
operations of our own minds” implied the prior existence of mind or intellect
to be affected by sensory experience. Intellect was affected by but not pro¬
duced by experience. This was made explicit in Kant’s maxim when modified
to read: “The understanding or intellect cannot see and the senses cannot
think.” Kant’s famous categories of understanding were not products of expe¬
rience but ways of dealing with experience. His rationalism was thus not alto¬
gether devoid of empiristic factors. In other words, the Lockean and Kantian
views regarding the acquisition of knowledge did not constitute radically anti¬
thetic or irreconcilable orientations. In broad perspective their views were
more alike than different.
In terms of this broad perspective Freud might appear to have been fol¬
lowing this philosophic precedent when he contrasted the effects of sensory
stimulation with the “achievements of thought.” As had Aristotle, Locke,
and Kant he was calling attention to a duality of cognitive functions, namely,
those having to do with sensation and those involved in thinking. However,
he differed from these three philosophic predecessors by making thinking an
unconscious function. Had they known about this difference, they might not
198 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

have known what to make of it; to relegate thinking and reasoning to an

unconscious realm was altogether alien to their conceptual outlook. In their
perplexity they might even have asked whether he was relegating intellect and
understanding to the unconscious.

CONCERNING THE “VOICE OF THE INTELLECT”

This brings up an issue already considered in Chapter 4 in connection with

discussion of Freud’s recognition of what he had called “the primacy of the
intellect.” In reply to those who had come to think of psychoanalytic psy¬
chology as an anti-intellectualistic instinct psychology he had this to say
(1934, p. 93):

We may insist as much as we like that the human intellect is weak in

comparison with human instincts and be right in doing so. But, never¬
theless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of
the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hear¬
ing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds.

Recall that this quotation was written some thirty years after Freud had
introduced his distinction between the contrasting functions of conscious and
unconscious processes. Consequently, he may have overlooked the need to
reconcile what he was writing in the 1930s with what he had written in the
1890s. At all events, when “the voice of the intellect” succeeds in gaining a
hearing the cognitive experience in question is not an unconscious happening,
but a conscious process.
Such a conscious process is experienced by the neurotic patient as insight
or recognition of irrational, maladaptive impulses and the need to bring them
under control by intelUgent planning. Resolution of his neurotic conflict is
thus contingent upon the acquisition of insight; hence the success of his psy¬
choanalysis depends upon this acquisition. To paraphrase Freud: with each
moment of insight there is concomitant arousal of intellect’s soft voice so
that eventually after many such moments its call will be heeded.
If viewed as the culmination of successful analysis, insight appears as the
equivalent of an “Aha” experience. This is the experience of sudden intel¬
lectual illumination taking place when, after persistent effortful thought,
there is sudden understanding of and resolution of a felt difficulty. It is the
kind of experience associated with Archimedes and his triumphant “Eureka!”
His cry of triumph meant that he had insight into his problem; as an “Aha”
experience he knew that he knew the solution. This made his moment of
insight a conscious experience. Accordingly, Freud’s notion of insight as
implicit in “the primacy of intellect” amounts to recognition of thinking as a
conscious process. This, as previously indicated, is at variance with his earlier
teaching to the effect that sensation is a conscious process whereas thinking
per se is a function of the unconscious.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 199

Freud does not seem to have noted any inconsistency in his two views of
thinking. When he was writing about the primacy of the intellect he could
view thinking as a conscious process and be unmindful of what he had written
some thirty years before about the role of consciousness as that of a sense
organ and about thinking as an unconscious process. Moreover, he had never
declared thinking to be an exclusively unconscious process. He had merely
contended that “the most complicated achievements of thought are possible
without the assistance of consciousness.” The inconsistency may be more
paradoxical than contradictory. This calls for examination of what might be
meant by the concept of unconscious thought.

THE PARADOX OF UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHT

In developing his concept of the unconscious, it will be recalled, Freud had

asked what justifies belief in the unconscious as being psychical. He found the
answer by attributing capacity to think to what he had come to call the
unconscious. This answer was worded in various ways in Freud’s different
writings. A particularly definite formulation was this previously quoted one
from the Traumdeutung: “The most complicated achievements of thought are
possible without the assistance of consciousness.” In effect, when it came to
thinking as a distinctive process, the unconscious was played up and con¬
sciousness was played down. Moreover, by limiting the function of conscious¬
ness to that of “a sense-organ for the perception of psychical qualities” this
contrast was made more drastic and definite. It amounted to making con¬
sciousness responsible for sensation and the unconscious responsible for
thought, and when expressed in this way it made for a rather striking
dichotomy.
By means of this dichotomy Freud hoped to dispose of those critics of
psychoanalysis among the “philosophers” who deemed the concept of uncon¬
scious mind to be absurd. According to them, consciousness is the sine qua
non of mind, so Freud’s concept became the equivalent of belief in uncon¬
scious consciousness. Such a belief, so they indicated, is as self-contradictory
and absurd as belief in illegible legibility or finite infinity. However, by
making thought and not consciousness the sine qua non of mind Freud tried
to meet the philosophers’ challenge. In terms of his dichotomy the concept of
mind as unconscious was no longer the same as the self-contradictory concept
of unconscious consciousness. At least so Freud seemed to argue.
Freud’s argument was a tour de force to justify belief in the reality of
unconscious thought. As previously quoted, this made the unconscious the
“true psychical reality.” Furthermore, since he had equated the psychical
with thought and not with consciousness, this meant that consciousness could
not be the “true psychical reality.” In arguing this way he wrote as if he
expected all readers to understand the meaning of the words thought and
consciousness. No formal definitions of the words or illustrative explanations
were introduced; their meaning was assumed to be self-evident and hence
200 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

conscious. Under the circumstances these meanings were not being regarded
as derivatives of the unconscious. They were conscious in their own right and
as such illustrated this previous observation: had Freud never been conscious
of thinking, he could never have entertained the notion of unconscious
thought, just as his idea of an unconscious wish was contingent upon prior
acquaintance with conscious wishes.
The priority of the conscious to whatever is ascribed to the unconscious
seems so obvious that it is hard to believe it had eluded Freud’s psychological
probing. Still the fact remains that he never called attention to it. This is
puzzling. In other words, how could he argue that conscious thinking is a
derivative of unconscious thinking even though in doing so he was obliged to
employ descriptive vocabulary stemming from conscious thinking? How is
this seeming oversight to be explained?
It may be that what, in retrospect, appears to have been an oversight was
not an oversight at all. Unless the question of the priority of consciousness
comes up for consideration, there would be little need to be concerned about
the source of descriptive vocabulary employed in discussing presumed psy¬
chological processes. To understand Freud’s neglect of this question it is
advisable to recall his interpretation of the concept of consciousness. By
restricting it to data ordinarily classified as sensations and perceptions he, in
effect, was excluding all psychological data not so classifiable. Having called
the sense-organ data conscious he then called all other data unconscious.
Taken literally the latter word was thus a designation for non-sensory events
deemed to be “psychic” or mental. However, the word unconscious is also
used to designate events of whose existence one is unaware. This makes them
unknown or unobservable events. In terms of the latter designation Freud
equated the non-sensory “psychic” events with concealed or unknowable
events. Moreover, as already mentioned, since for Freud the word psychic in
this context had to do with the process of thinking, the non-sensory events
were taken to be unconscious thoughts.
Actually, Freud did not employ the word non-sensory in his discussions of
the unconscious. We have introduced it for expository purposes in order to
highlight Freud’s contrast between conscious sensations and unconscious
thoughts. Although he recognized the former as sensory, he failed to describe
the latter as non-sensory. Instead he described them as unconscious as if they
were not amenable to direct observation. In brief, he treated them as unknow¬
able even though the concept of non-sensory data, considered in the abstract,
does not mean unknowable. This should be evident once it is realized that the
contrast between sensory and non-sensory data is another way of referring
to the venerable philosophical contrast between the data of sensation and
those of thinking. By way of reminder, this contrast was already implicit in
Aristotle’s distinction between sentience and “the power of thinking,” as
well as in Locke’s sensation-reflection antithesis and in Kant’s recognition of
a difference between the non-sensory “understanding” and the noncognitive
“senses.” As reflected in this philosophical tradition, terms pertaining to
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 201

thinking, to reflection, and to understanding had to do with Aristotle’s

“opining” as a knowable experience and not as an unobservable or uncon¬
scious process. This means that upholders of the tradition would have been
mystified by Freud’s notion of unconscious thought.
As a matter of fact, neither they nor Freud had studied the psychology of
thinking by obtaining reports of thought processes as experienced by different
thinkers under controlled laboratory conditions. As will be explained on a
later page, this was not done until the early decades of the present century
under the aegis of Oswald Kiilpe (1862-1915) of the University of Wurzburg.
As briefly noted in Chapter 3 when dealing with mental sets, he and his
students reported discovery of a difference between two kinds of thoughts;
(1) those characterized by conventional conscious content in the form of
sensations and images and (2) those devoid of such content and hence called
imageless thoughts. This raises a possible alternative to the paradox of uncon¬
scious thoughts. In other words, are unconscious thoughts the same as image¬
less thoughts? This is a provocative question. Viewed in historical perspective
it may shed light on Freud’s attitude toward academic psychology. Conse¬
quently, before dealing with it this attitude merits a few words by way of
introduction to the broader implications of the question.

FREUD’S VIEW OF ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY

If what Freud had called unconscious thoughts can be shown to be the

equivalent of what academic psychologists had called imageless thoughts and
had Freud realized this, it might have enabled him to glimpse a possible
rapprochement between psychoanalysis and psychology. Actually, this never
took place. As a matter of fact, even as early as the 1890s he viewed his
espousal of the unconscious to be a challenge to psychology’s espousal of the
conscious. Moreover, despite his warm reception at the 1909 Clark University
celebration, he continued to entertain this view. For example, as late as 1933
he dealt with this issue in a letter to the head of a university in connection
with the question of providing for instruction in psychoanalysis at the univer¬
sity. Evidently, the university head had believed such instruction should be
postponed until after provision had been made for the teaching of psychol¬
ogy. To this suggestion Freud had replied as follows (E. L. Freud ed., p. 414):

The view that it is premature to create a chair for psychoanalysis so

long as none for psychology exists invites a discussion of the relation¬
ship between the two sciences. My opinion is as follows: psychoanalysis
is also psychology in the sense that it is a science of the unconscious
psychic processes, whereas what is taught as academic psychology is
confined to dealing with conscious phenomena. There need be no
contradiction between the two; psychoanalysis could be presented as an
introduction to psychology; in reality, however, the contradiction is
produced by the fact that the academic circles don’t want to have any¬
thing to do with psychoanalysis.
202 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

It is to be noted that Freud referred to psychoanalysis as “a psychology”

and not as a branch of medicine. As a psychology, in contradistinction to
academic psychology, it was described as being concerned with unconscious
psychic processes. In this connection it is also to be noted that the word
psychic was not used with reference to the teachings of academic psychology.
These were described as being limited to phenomena of consciousness. Failure
to designate the latter phenomena as psychic or mental was probably not an
oversight. It reflected the same point he had raised more than thirty years
earlier in the Traumdeutung in his answer to those who had deemed it absurd
to believe in unconscious thought on the ground that it was the same as
believing in unconscious consciousness.
His answer, as previously explained, took the form of restricting conscious¬
ness to sensory processes and thus reserving the allegedly distinctive psychical
processes of thinking to the non-sensory unconscious. By imphcation, his
letter of 1933 showed his disappointment in what he regarded as academic
psychology’s neglect of or indifference to this kind of defense for his behef
in unconscious psychical processes. His disappointment might have been less
acute had his attention been called to the concept of imageless thinking as
developed by some psychologists in the preceding decades. At least he might
have regarded the concept as possibly giving promise of recognition by aca¬
demic psychology of his contention to the effect that thinking may be inde¬
pendent of sensory consciousness. Furthermore, he might also have been
heartened by learning that the concept included acknowledgment of the
existence of cognitive processes whose nature and influence may elude the
thinker’s observation. In terms of one meaning of the word unconscious these
would be unconscious cognitive processes. At all events, had Freud known
about them, he might have been less despairing of the promise of academic
psychology. As previously suggested, he might have perceived a relationship
between unconscious thinking and imageless thinking and thus between
psychoanalytic and academic psychology.

UNCONSCIOUS THINKING
AS IMAGELESS THINKING

Taken in the abstract the meaning of the psychoanalytic concept of

unconscious thinking is not immediately obvious. The same statement applies
to the psychological concept of imageless thinking. Consequently, before con¬
sidering their possible relationship to one another it will be necessary to
review and elaborate upon what has already been said about each of these
concepts on previous pages. As a matter of expository convenience the topic
of imageless thinking will be taken up first.
Although the concept of imageless thought was introduced shortly after
the turn of the century at Wurzburg in Germany, it soon won the endorse¬
ment of psychologists in other countries, including Binetin France and Wood-
worth in the United States. All those concerned with the concept were ready
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 203

to grant that thinking is often, if not usually, characterized by symbolic

expression in the forms of words, gestures, diagrams, and images belonging to
any sense modality. Thus, they were not questioning the occurrence and
relevance of such a direct relationship between thinking and conscious con¬
tent, but rather the need for activation of conscious content in all instances
of thinking. In figurative language, they were contending that not all thoughts
had to be dressed in the garb of mental images. Some could be experienced
as naked thoughts. In this sense they were imageless or devoid of any con¬
scious content; hence, they might conceivably be described as unconscious
thoughts. This would be consistent with one of the many meanings of the
word unconscious. The degree to which this interpretation approximates
Freud’s concept of unconscious thinking is a separate question to be con¬
sidered later.
To avoid misunderstanding it is advisable to realize that the term imageless
was not used in a restricted sense. It was not Hmited to visual images, but was
extended to include all modes of imagery so that in the context of the
Wurzburg teachings the word imageless meant absence of tactual, auditory,
olfactory, visual, thermal, and other kinds of images. As a matter of fact,
the German originators of these teachings never referred to imageless thinking.
Instead they referred to unanschauliches Denken, meaning thinking that does
not lend itself to direct observation or inspection. There is no precise English
equivalent for the adjective unanschaulich just as there is no precise German
equivalent for the English word imageless. The latter word came to be used as
the closest approximation to the meaning of the German original word.
Similarly, the French alluded to imageless thinking as pensee sans images.
Moreover, since the underlying meaning had to do with thinking that is inde¬
pendent of sensory content, Woodworth suggested non-sensory thinking as
a more accurate descriptive phrase. This was a clarifying suggestion. Accord¬
ingly, in reading works concerned \vith the Wurzburg doctrine of imageless
thought one would be well advised to regard the word imageless as meaning
non-sensory or non-sensuous. There is no reason to avoid using the term
imageless provided it is interpreted in accordance with Woodworth’s sugges¬
tion. In fact, Woodworth employed both terms in discussing the work of the
Wurzburg psychologists.

WOODWORTH’S CONCEPT OF IMAGELESS THOUGHT

Woodworth and other students of imageless thinking based their reports

on observations of their own thinking and also, and more commonly and
more systematically, on data supplied by observations of their experimental
subjects. These were either colleagues or graduate students with special train¬
ing in this kind of self-observation. Representative instances of such reports
of non-sensory thinking are to be found in the following excerpts from Wood-
worth’s article “Imageless Thought” (1939, pp. 75-76):
204 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

A few instances may be cited. First, one from a subject who usually ...
reports visual or verbal imagery at moments of effective thinking. To
the question, What substances are more costly than gold? she answered
promptly, ‘Diamonds,’ and reported as follows; ‘I had no visual image
of the diamond; the thought of diamonds was there before the sound of
the word.’
The following instances are from my own introspection. I introduce
them for two reasons; because of my meager imagery and because,
since becoming interested in the problem, I have sought to catch myself
at the moments of most effective thought, and have succeeded a num¬
ber of times, with always the same result—clear consciousness of a
particular thought, and no images.
I quote from my notes made at the time: ‘While reading, I heard some
one playing on the piano a piece which I felt at once to be familiar, but
which I did not at first identify. My first attempt at identification was
felt to be wrong, and immediately afterward I identified it properly
and with confidence. . . . Resting satisfied with my identification, I was
about to turn to other things, when it occurred to me to ask whether,
in identifying the piece, I had had its name present in the form of
verbal imagery, and I found that I certainly had not; in fact, it required
a moment’s further thought to recall the sound of the composer’s
name and the name of the piece. ... I regard the example as a good
one, since the thought was perfectly overt, conscious, and definite,
though it not only began but was completed without any image.’

Woodworth introduced other specific instances of such imageless thinking

and then arrived at this conclusion (p. 77):

It seems impossible to describe these facts without admitting the exist¬

ence of other than sensorial contents of consciousness. / would suggest
that in addition to sensorial elements, thought contains elements which
are wholly irreducible to sensory terms [itaUcs added]. Each such ele¬
ment is sui generis, being nothing else than the particular feeling of the
thought in question. Each is a quality, as red and sweet are qualities;
not syntheses of sensory qualities, but simply and purely the qualities
of particular thoughts. They are not to be elevated, as “activities,” into
another dimension of existence; they he in the plane of content. There
is a specific and unanalyzable conscious quale for every individual and
general notion, for every judgment and supposition.

BUHLER ON “WHAT IS THINKING?”

A year after pubUcation of the foregoing Woodworth article Karl Biihler

(1879-1963), an active member of the Wurzburg group, published the first
of a series of reports of his investigations of thinking as a psychological proc¬
ess. Fortunately, David Rapaport'^ has supphed a translation of a portion of

‘^Rapaport’s text entitled Organization and Pathology of Thought contains translations

and notes on the work of two members of the Wurzburg group, namely, Narciss Ach and
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 205

this first of BiihJer’s reports entitled “On Thought Connections.” As Wood-

worth had, so Biihler confronted his subjects with questions calculated to
provoke thought with the request that they be prepared to report on the way
answers to the questions came to them. The time required for arousal of each
answer was duly noted along with a verbatim account of the answer itself.
Biihler then followed this by questioning the subject concerning specific
details of the reported cognitive experience. Such detailed questioning of
introspective reports, as introduced by Buhler, came to be known as the
Ausfragemethode. As a question-answer type of probing it once reminded
Boring of the verbal interchange between psychoanalyst and patient (1950,
p. 406). For Buhler, the procedure was for the purpose of getting an answer
to this question: “What are the constituents of the experience of thinking?”
In fact, all those concerned with the Wurzburg studies were dealing with this
question or a variant of it. In essence, they were asking, “What takes place
when we have a thought?”^ In this connection Buhler noted (Rapaport, p. 39):

There is probably no other specific scientific question to which so

many different answers are given as. What is thinking? Thinking is con¬
necting; thinking is analyzing; thinking is judging; thinking is apperceiv-
ing; the essence of thinking is abstraction; thinking is relating; thinking
is activity—a voluntary process.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Roget’s Thesaurus lists more than thirty
designations for the verb to think. Furthermore, some psychologists have
described thinking in a way that fails to be included in any list. Watson, for
example, as may be recalled, described thinking as a laryngeal mechanism in
the form of subvocal speech. And H. L. Hollingworth (1880-1957), to cite
another example, identified thinking with the process of redintegration, in

Karl Buhler. The.se translations are the only English accounts of Ach’s studies of deter¬
mining tendencies as well as of non-sensory “awareness” (Ch. 1) and of Biihler’s studies
of thinking (Ch. 2).
^It is unfortunate that this basic question has so frequently been taken to mean that
they were solely interested in the possible occurrence of thoughts without images. Their
work is then dismissed as relatively inconsequential. Not many years ago, for example,
in the book The Psychology of Consciousness, in discussing the “limitations” of intro¬
spection the author introduced this disparaging comment (Ornstein, 1972, pp. 4-5):
This and other Umitations soon led to a sterility in the contents of psychology.
Controversies of only academic import (in the worst sense of the term) arose, due
to the limitations placed on inquiry. One, for instance, concerned whether “thoughts
without images” could or could not occur. The concerns of psychologists drifted
further and further away from the original ones.
A comment like this fails to indicate that the imageless thought question was subordi¬
nate to the broader question of the nature of the thought process as such. As a result
there is complete neglect of significant findings reported by the Wurzburg psychol¬
ogists, such as the directive influence of mental sets or Aufgaben, the control exercised
by determining tendencies, the phenomenon of the Aha experience, and the varied con¬
comitants of thinking in the form of Bewusstseinslagen or “conscious attitudes.” All
such findings, as manifest in the consciousness of the thinker, merit consideration in a
volume having to do with the psychology of consciousness.
206 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

which any part or fragment of a previous experience may substitute for or

symbolize the antecedent experience so that thoughts can be defined as
“events of any sort whatsoever that function for larger antecedent contexts”
(1926, p. 208).
Having recognized the large number of psychological factors subsumed
under the concept of thinking, Biihler did not venture to bring all of them
within the scope of a single comprehensive definition, as if he realized the dif¬
ficulty of reducing the complexity of the thought process and its concomi¬
tants to a formal definition. He was especially concerned with the concomi¬
tants of thinking both because of their importance and because their nature
had often been overlooked. These had been called Bewusstseinslagen or
conscious attitudes by some of his Wurzburg colleagues and what they meant
by these attitudes was brought out by Biihler in the following account of
their directive influence on thinking as a psychological and not just a logical
process (1951, pp. 39-40):

Besides thoughts, yet other knowledge is present in our thinking. For

instance, we know whether or not we are on the right track; whether
or not we are approaching our goal; whether the thought occurs to us
for the first time or derives from our memory; we may know even
where we have picked it up; we know how it is related to the one pre¬
ceding. This knowledge only rarely becomes an independent psychic
act; we do not specifically focus on its content. It lies, so to say, in
between thoughts. Subjects will actually report: ‘In the meanwhile I
was also aware of this and that.’

Non-sensory thinking as viewed by Biihler is illustrated by these verbatim

excerpts from his laboratory protocols (pp. 41,51,49):

1. (Do you understand?) “We depreciate everything that can be ex¬

plained.”—Yes (5 sec.)—“Immediately upon hearing it, I thought of a
fanatical realist. Then I thought of certain esthetics and immediately
said, ‘Yes.’ It would be difficult to reproduce the thought exactly. . . .
The connection of these thoughts to the task was clearly conscious. . . .
It is marvelous, how we can know something without actually thinking
it; I mean that there are in our knowledge conscious relationships which
have no objects of their own. ”
2. (Do you understand?) “Where is an ocean one still can drown
in?—that is the slogan of our times”—Yes (11 sec.)—“First, reverbera¬
tion of the words, then a pause. Then a thought emerged linked to the
internally spoken word ‘depth’; something, a great powerful idea to
which one can give one’s whole soul, and with that I understood it
(the words are explications of originally wordless thoughts.)”

3. (Do you understand?) “The most glowing colors in which the virtues
shine are the inventions of those who lack them.” Yes (21 sec.)—“First,
again helplessness; I was unable to bring the possession and lack of vir¬
tues into the required contrast. There was a search connected with this
(perceptually represented only by eye movements, as though shifting
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 207

back and forth on a surface), interrupted by occasional reverberations

of the words, now of the first, now of the second part of the sentence.
Then comprehension came suddenly with an affect like ‘Aha!’^ (not
spoken); the basis of comprehension was the farfetched analogy, or as
I would prefer to put it, a superordinate relationship: one prizes most
highly what one lacks. Comprehension was tied in with this, and I
said yes.”

SOME KEY OBSERVATIONS

For Biihler and other members of the Wurzburg group the foregoing kinds
of introspective reports’ obtained under controlled conditions constituted
experimental studies of thinking, just as Ach’s investigation of determining
tendencies constituted experimental studies of volition. This point or obser¬
vation was stressed by Biihler in a book he wrote during the 1920s on the
then contemporary status of psychology."^ In it he noted that around the turn
of the century “a group of younger psychologists associated with Kiilpe in
Wurzburg had broadened the scope of experimental research to include the
subjects of thought and voHtion” (1929, p. 12). He interpreted their activities
as marking an advance over efforts to account for thinking in terms of “classi¬
cal association theory.”
The process of thinking, he explained, is unique and is governed by its own
laws and not just the law of association. As he put it; “In well-regulated disci¬
plined thinking the thoughts are something more than images under the sway
of the law of association. Instead they are governed by the demands of the
objects to which the thoughts apply.” Thinking is characterized by “opera¬
tions” of definite form. Thus, Biihler, in obvious allusion to the Wurzburg dis-
coverery of Aufgaben, observed that dealing with numbers is not solely a
function of associations aroused by the digits as such, but more importantly
by the “operations” symbolized by signs calling for subtraction, multiplica¬
tion, extracting the square root, or some other arithmetic maneuver. Analo¬
gously, with reference to “thoughts” involved in reading it is obvious that

^As pointed out by Rapaport, this is very likely “the first mention of the often-quoted
aha-phenomenon” (p. 49). Aha as an interjection is of ancient vintage; but its use as a
designation for a distinctive cognitive phenomenon was due to this work by Biihler.
Recognition of this Aha experience may thus be included in any list of positive out¬
comes stemming from the imageless thought controversy.
^The book’s title, Die Krise der Psychologic, as Biihler explained in a foreword, was
chosen deliberately to give prominence to the concepts both of crisis and of critic. He
noted that in terms of the Greek verb krino, meaning “I separate,” the latter two con¬
cepts come together, since as a critic of the critical status of psychology at that time he
hoped to be able to effect a reconciliation between separate rival systems of psychology
responsible for the crisis. Among the systems he discussed there are those of classical
associationism, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, and act psychology.
It was broad in scope and encompassed the ideas of thinkers as different as Darwin,
Dilthey, Mach, Jennings, Spranger, Brentano, Husserl, and many others. Although now
almost fifty years old, Biihler’s presentation and critique of their ideas is still informa¬
tive and thought-provoking.
208 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

different “operations” determine the kind of thought emerging. The same

text may be read to check on the spelling of each word, to translate the sen¬
tences into French, to evaluate its stylistic excellence, or for some other pur¬
pose. The same manuscript will call for different operations in a lawyer, in a
book publisher, in an EngHsh teacher, in a lexicographer, in a translator, and
in the author’s mother. The resulting thoughts aroused in each of the readers
will be more a function of each distinctive operation or controlling
than of chance associations or images. This makes thinking an active process
and not the consequence of a passive associationism. As such it may be
viewed as one of Buhler’s key observations.
Another of Buhler’s observations centered on the difference between psy¬
chological and psychoanalytic research. In his words, “their methods are very
different.” In the case of psychology, as shown by investigations of the nature
of thinking, there is marked emphasis placed on the value of the laboratory
“protocols” and on “the careful establishment of an inventory of what is
experienced in the very process of thinking.” On the other hand in the case of
psychoanalysis,® Biihler pointed out, there is no such interest in laboratory
protocols. Instead the chief interest of the psychoanalyst is in his patient’s
unconscious wishes or libidinal urges. This results in reliance on Indizien-
beweise or “circumstantial evidence and on more or less astute detective
work.” In saying this Biihler was undoubtedly having reference to Freud’s
mode of procedure in tracking down latent dream thoughts from the evi¬
dence of manifest dream content and tracking down real thoughts and inten¬
tions from the evidence of lapses in speech and behavior. In contrast to
Buhler’s Ausfragemethode this was a very different approach to the psychol¬
ogy of thinking.

FREUD’S PSYCHOLOGY OF THINKING

Freud never wrote a separate chapter or treatise on the subject of thinking

as a psychological process. His comments on the subject are scattered through
his writings in incidental fashion. There are no “protocols” of the kind
Biihler had introduced to show what his subjects had described as the expe¬
rience of thinking. Instead there are accounts of experienced dreams and
Freud’s interpretation of the unconscious thoughts or wishes of which the
dreams were presumed to be a disguised expression. Furthermore, he was
emphatic in holding unconscious wishes in contradistinction to conscious
ones as the instigators of the dream thoughts. He gave the following italicized
expression to this conviction in the Traumdeutung (p. 553): “My supposition
is that a conscious wish can only become a dream-instigator if it succeeds in

®Buhler devoted the last section of his book (pp. 162-212) to a critique of psycho¬
analysis. In fact, of the sixteen chapters in the book three are concerned with this
critique.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 209

awakening an unconscious wish with the same tenor and in obtaining rein¬
forcement from it. ” As indicated by the word supposition, this conviction is
more assumption than established fact; but it serves as a reminder of the great
importance Freud attributed to what he regarded as the reality of uncon¬
scious mental life.
His entire theory of dreaming was contingent upon the actual occurrence
of unconscious thinking. This can be demonstrated by almost any one of the
many dreams cited in the Traumdeutung. For present purposes it will suffice
to illustrate this by a dream Freud had called a “model dream.” Incidentally,
it will also serve to illustrate what Biihler had described as Freud’s rehance
on circumstantial evidence. Freud evidently had regarded it as an important
dream because he referred to it some five times (pp. 590-511,533-534, 542,
550, 571) in various contexts.

FREUD’S “MODEL DREAM ”

The dream had been reported to Freud by a woman patient who had first
heard about it in a lecture on the subject of dreaming. The identity of the
original dreamer was never established, but the account of the dream had so
impressed the woman that, as Freud indicated, she was able to “re-dream”
it and thus “to repeat some of its elements in a dream of her own.” In the
subsequent description of the dream Freud did not make any distinction
between the lecturer’s version of the dream and the patient’s own dream as
instigated by the latter version. It was really impossible to find out the precise
nature of the original dream.
The original report constituted one version of the dream and the lecturer’s
account constituted a second version. The woman’s recollection of the lecture
gave rise to a third version and her own dream of the reported dream made
for a fourth version. Freud ignored consideration of possible changes in the
original dream incident to these four versions. Instead he presented what
must have been a composite or generalized outcome of the impression he
received from his patient’s story of the dream heard at the lecture and her
own “re-dreaming” of the dream. In place of a fifth version based upon a
paraphrase of Freud, to avoid misunderstanding, it will be preferable to intro¬
duce the following verbatim account of Freud’s version of the dream (p. 509):

The preliminaries to this model dream were as follows. A father had

been watching beside his child’s sickbed for days and nights on end.
After the child had died, he went into the next room to lie down, but
left the door open so that he could see from his bedroom into the room
in which his child’s body was laid out, with tall candles standing round
it. An old man had been engaged to keep watch over it, and sat beside
the body murmuring prayers. After a few hour’s sleep, the father had a
dream that his child was standing beside his bed, caught him by the arm
and whispered to him reproachfully: ‘Father, don’t you see I’m burn¬
ing?’ He woke up, noticed a bright glare of light from the next room,
hurried into it and found that the old watchman had dropped off to
210 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

sleep and that the wrappings and one of the arms of his beloved child’s
dead body had been burned by ahghted candle that had fallen on them.

The lecturer’s explanation of the dream, as reported by his patient, cen¬

tered on the fact that light from the candles in the next room must have been
shining on the sleeping father’s eyes and thus gave rise to the idea of some¬
thing burning. The latter conclusion, Freud noted, is one the father would
have arrived at under comparable circumstances had he been awake. In gen¬
eral, Freud regarded this as a correct explanation. He even added to its
plausibility by suggesting that the father prior to falling asleep might possibly
have been apprehensive about the old man’s reUability as a watchman. It also
seemed likely to Freud that words spoken by the child in the dream were
repetitions of remarks once actually made. The phrase “I’m burning, ” Freud
suggested by way of example, might have been spoken by the child during
a seige of fever. Of course, under the circumstances there was no way for
Freud to determine the factual basis for these suggestions. It was impossible
to find out what the father thought about the old man’s reliabihty or what
the boy said when he had a fever or even whether he ever had had a fever.
At best the suggestions are to be classified as supposititious circumstantial
evidence.
As might be expected, Freud did not rest content with the foregoing
explanation of the dream. In accordance with his central thesis there was
still need to establish the nature of the instigating wish responsible for the
dream. The Ughted candle as a stimulus explained causation but not motiva¬
tion, and for Freud interpretation of a dream was contingent upon discovery
of the motive of which the dream itself is an expression. In the present
instance, like a diligent detective, Freud proceeded to search for the under¬
lying motive in order to get at the meaning of the dream. In reality, Freud
observed, since the fallen candle was starting a fire, the father should have
rushed into the next room at once. The dream delayed emergency action;
hence the crucial question; Why the delay? To this Freud answered (p. 510):

And here we shall observe that this dream . . . contained fulfillment of

a wish. The dead child behaved in the dream like a living one: he him¬
self warned his father, came to his bed, and caught him by the arm, just
as he had probably done on the occasion from the memory of which
the first part of the child’s words in the dream were derived. For the
sake of the fulfillment of this wish the father prolonged his sleep by
one moment. The dream was preferred to a waking reflection because
it was able to show the child as once more alive. If the father had
woken up first and then made the inference that led him to go into the
next room, he would, as it were, have shortened the chld’s life by that
moment of time.

Some might object to this as a model Freudian dream because of the

absence of sexual content, but Freud himself disposed of this kind of objec¬
tion in a letter written in 1927 (E. L. Freud ed., p. 376):
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 211

So please allow me a correction which can easily be confirmed in my

various writings. I have never maintained that all dreams have a sexual
content, nor that sexual impulses are the mainspring of all dreams. On
the contrary, I have always forcefully contradicted this opinion when¬
ever it has been ascribed to me. So I have reason to be dissatisfied when
you too repeat this error.

For Freud the dream under consideration was a model dream because in
terms of the foregoing interpretation a ww/? had been revealed as the instigator
of the dream. However, he failed to demonstrate the wish in question to have
been an unconscious wish and, as previously quoted, he held that “a wish can
only become a dream-instigator if it succeeds in awakening an unconscious
wish.” In the present instance the wish attributed to the grieving father
amounted to a longing for the life of the child and concomitant undoing of
the death. A wish of this kind is a common experience following personal
tragedy and is altogether congruent with associated thoughts of survival of
bodily death. As a common experience it is conscious rather than unconscious
and thus there does not appear to be any reason for regarding the father’s
hypothesized wish as an unconscious wish. Consequently, in this respect the
father’s dream was not a flawless model of Freud’s dream theory. It might
also be said to have other shortcomings as a model,^ but their consideration
would constitute too much of a digression from consideration of Freud’s own
thought processes.
The episode of the father’s model dream was introduced primarily by way
of illustrating Freud’s own thinking. Notice that in his quest for the insti¬
gating wish he proceeded to marshall bits of evidence or thoughts pointing
to the possible existence of such a wish. These appear to have been conscious
thoughts just as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes did his successful detective
work by conscious evaluation of the significance of fragments of evidence.
This means that what Freud came to attribute to the unconscious had initially
been conscious. Nevertheless, as may be recalled, toward the end of the
Traumdeutung (pp. 612-613) he made “everything conscious” the outcome
of “an unconscious prehminary stage” so that “the unconscious is the true
psychical reality.” Moreover, on a later page (p. 615) in connection with the
question of the role of consciousness in psychoanalytic psychology, Freud
supplied this answer: Only that of a sense-organ for the perception of psychical
qualities. It is hard to reconcile this notion of consciousness as a sense organ
with the kind of thinking of which Freud himself seems to have been con¬
scious in connection with the analysis of the father’s dream. In fact, it is hard
to square the reasoning and subtle distinctions characteristic of all of Freud’s

^As a model the dream failed to illustrate the difference between manifest and latent
dream content. Consequently, the interpretation was not based upon the dreamer’s
associations to individual detaUs of the dream. Nor did it iUustrate secondary elabora¬
tion, the “fractional” method, condensation, displacement, and other characteristics
of dream-work.
212 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

writings with this notion of consciousness as an organ of sensation rather than

an organ of thought.
Whether Freud intended the latter distinction to be taken hterally is dif¬
ficult to determine. It appears to be contradicted by some statements he made
in other passages. For instance, in one (p. 550) he states that “daytime think¬
ing produces psychical acts of such various sorts—judgments, inferences,
denials, expectations, intentions, and so on” and in another (p. 613) he refers
to “the conscious character of intellectual and artistic production.” In a third
passage concerned with the nature of sleep he noted that when “our thought-
processes are able to become conscious in the normal way at night, we are
simply not asleep” (p. 555). Such passages appear to contradict the thesis in
terms of which the unconscious becomes the organ of thought and conscious¬
ness the organ of sensation. As a possible contradiction it has important
implications.

AN APPARENT CONTRADICTION
AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
To appreciate the nature of this seeming contradiction it is well to recall
the circumstances that prompted Freud’s disparagement of consciousness. As
he saw it, the “professors” had made consciousness the hallmark or indis¬
pensable criterion of mind or the psychical. For this reason they regarded the
notion of unconscious mind as absurd and made it the equivalent of belief in
the contradictory notion of unconscious consciousness. In defense of the
unconscious Freud challenged the latter belief by rejecting its underlying
premise. In fact, he mentioned such rejection once again in his very last paper
when he stated that “being conscious cannot be the essence of what is men¬
tal” (1938, p. 283). He evidently regarded the process of thinking as “the
essence of what is mental”; for, as previously mentioned, he never listed any
other process as justification for regarding the unconscious as mental or
psychical. This was evident in what he wrote about “the most complicated
achievements of thought” being “possible without the assistance of conscious¬
ness.” Since he had restricted the function of consciousness to “that of a
sense-organ,” he was not regarding sensation as a criterion of the psychical.
Having made thought the criterion of the psychical it seems that he was
regarding sensation either as less psychical than thought or possibly as more
nearly physical than thought.^®
There is no way of finding out just how Freud interpreted his distinction
between thought and sensation. He failed to elaborate upon the foregoing few

°One psychologist who did classify sensation as physical was Franz Brentano (1838-
1917). Incidentally, the only nonmedical courses taken by Freud were those taught by
Brentano, over a two-year period from 1874 to 1876. Since Brentano was steeped in
Aristotle’s philosophy, it is altogether likely that Freud was introduced to that philoso¬
phy as interpreted by Brentano. With reference to this question about the classification
of sensation it is well to note that, as reported by Titchener, for Brentano mental con-
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 213

key statements concerned with the distinction. There was no discussion of

thinking as a process, nor any detailed consideration of sensations as con¬
scious phenomena. No space was devoted to theories of color vision, to audi¬
tory theory, or to any specific receptor characteristics. Instead Freud rested
content with the implicit statement to the effect that sensations per se, even
though conscious, are not criteria of mind. There is nothing mental or psy¬
chical about sensations taken in the abstract. Freud wrote as if he expected
this to be readily understood without special explanation. After all, cows and
hogs are endowed with capacity for sensation, but this does not make them
thoughtful creatures. In the language of Aristotle they possess a sentient soul,
but not man’s rational soul. Reason is thus obviously more indicative of mind
than sensation. It should also be obvious as instanced by Helen Keller that
loss of sensation does not mean loss of reason. Conversely, despite unimpaired
sense organs there may nevertheless be loss of reason. These statements come
close to being truisms and when viewed as truisms they may explain why
Freud deemed it unnecessary to elaborate upon the difference between
thoughts and sensations.
What is not so easy to explain is Freud’s contradictory treatment of the
difference. In some contexts he made thought a function of the unconscious
and sensation a function of consciousness, but in other contexts he had
thought-processes becoming conscious. Actually he appears to have been
unaware of any contradiction involved^^ in such shifts of opinion from con¬
text to context. Something akin to compartmentalized thinking seems to
have been operative here. When opposing the “professors” who had ridiculed
the concept of unconscious thinking as the equivalent of unconscious con¬
sciousness he questioned their behef in consciousness as the criterion of mind.
As previously stated, by a tour de force he met their challenge by refusing to
regard consciousness as “the essence of what is mental” and also by declaring
that “the unconscious is the true psychical reahty.” This constituted disposi¬
tion of the problem as a defense of unconscious thinking. However, in other
situations unrelated to the need for such a defense, the problem of thinking
was disposed of in a different way. Thus when considering the outcome of

tent in the form of sensation is “physical” (1929, p. 245). The same point is made by a
direct quotation from Brentano's writing by RancureUo in his more recent study of
Brentano (1968, p. 33 and pp. 54-57). There is no way of knowing whether Freud
recalled this point twenty years later when he was writing about consciousness as a sense
organ. Nor is there any way of determining whether he had Brentano in mind when
referring to “professors” who reject the notion of unconscious mental processes; for, as
also reported by Titchener, Brentano belonged to those who “reject the unconscious as
a principle of psychological explanation” (1929, p. 6).
Another instance of his seeming indifference to or lack of awareness of a contradiction
is to be found toward the end of the Traumdeutung when discussing retentiveness in the
unconscious. Thus on one page (p. 577) Freud states: “In the unconscious nothing can
be brought to an end, nothing is past or forgotten.” But on the next page (p. 578) the
objective of psychotherapeutic intervention results in this statement: “Its task is to make
it possible for the unconscious processes to be dealt with finally and forgotten” (italics
added).
214 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

psychoanalytic treatment Freud did not attribute “insight” and the “primacy
of the intellect” to the workings of the unconscious. Instead these terms were
used as descriptive of the patient’s enlightenment. They had to do with the
patient’s ego and not with his id and as such would have been regarded as
conscious rather than unconscious.
With insight and intellect so regarded, consciousness was no longer just
“a sense-organ for the perception of psychical qualities.” The very concept
of intellect connotes active rather than passive mental processes and suggests
not just having sensory impressions but reacting to them. It is a complex
concept involving a tremendous number of factors.*^ To consider them in
detail would call for a separate volume. Nor did Freud have them in mind
when he wrote about the “primacy of the intellect,” for he was using the
word intellect as a popular rather than a technical term. He supplied no
formal definition or explanation of the word as if he expected an everyday
connotation to suffice. Such a connotation would be replete with reminders
of such conscious cognitive activities as finding the right word, trying to
understand a text, recalling the past in order to deal with the present, locating
the weakness in an argument, planning a trip, deciding on an investment,
judging a person’s character, and so on and on.
From this viewpoint it would seem that Freud, at least by implication,
was no longer restricting consciousness to awareness of sights, sounds, smells,
and other sensory impressions, but had expanded the scope of its influence
to include the active intellect. In effect he was now regarding both sensation
and thought as conscious. This amounted to recognition of two aspects of
mind: one pertaining to sensory and the other to cognitive processes. It was
recognition of a venerable tradition already mentioned in this and earlier
chapters, the tradition that included such dichotomies as Aristotle’s sentient
and rational souls, the res extensa and res cogitans of Descartes, Locke’s
sensation and reflection, Kant’s senses and understanding, Brentano’s sensory
and noetic consciousness, and then early in the present century the Wurzburg
sensory processes on the one hand and the imageless or nonsensory processes
on the other.
What made these non-sensory processes mental was not so much their
status as conscious happenings as their processing of information.'^ Possibly

'^As brought out by J. P. Guilford and his collaborators, there may be as many as 120
factors in “the structure of intellect.” The studies in question are based upon the results
of factor analysis. For details and references to these studies see Guilford’s 1956 article
“The Structure of the Intellect,” and the 1963 article by J. R. Royce. As studies of
intelligence these investigations had to do with logical thinking, creative thinking, sym¬
bolic thinking, thinking about people and social relations, and kindred dimensions of cog¬
nition. Although numerous hitherto overlooked or unknown factors were brought to light
in the course of these investigations, this did not make factor analysis a technique for
learning more about the Freudian unconscious. Instead, as a technique it made the “soft”
words of the “voice of intellect” more audible.
'^Such processing of information has important implications for systematic psychology,
as J. P. Guilford has brought out in his 1973 paper dealing with Operational-Informa¬
tional Psychology. Furthermore, in an earlier paper entitled “Executive Functions and a
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 215

Freud had reference to this when he objected to making consciousness rather

than thought the hallmark of mind. As already pointed out, he gave undue
emphasis to this objection by relegating thought to the unconscious as an
unobservable, esoteric, concealed, or nonconscious mental realm. Neverthe¬
less, as also pointed out previously, when discussing the primacy of the intel¬
lect all this was changed. Now the voice of intellect was given a hearing and
its culmination in the patient’s “insight’' made thinking a conscious process.
As a conscious process it was a non-sensory consciousness and thus different
from the paradox of unconscious thinking with its connotation of uncon¬
scious consciousness. This is tantamount to denial of The Unconscious as a
separate mental realm and its replacement by a less mysterious and more
readily verifiable non-sensory consciousness. Moreover, the latter phrase is
not to be construed as another name for the former realm. More than a shift
in descriptive vocabulary is involved. Actually, there is a drastic difference in
meaning with important implications.

WHAT NON-SENSORY IDEATION IMPLIES

The concept of non-sensory ideation as a synonym for reflection, thinking,

judging, and other cognitive processes suggests the unity of mental life. It
does away with the notion of man being endowed with two minds, namely
a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. It also dispenses with a not
uncommon tendency to personify or reify the unconscious into some sort of
spectral homunculus or psychic entity controlling the content of dreams,
initiating blunders of speech and action, and even solving problems while the
conscious mind is asleep. A tendency of this kind was not alien to Freud’s
view of the unconscious. In his 1915 paper “The Unconscious he endowed
the unconscious with fife by writing (p. 190): “It would certainly be wrong
to imagine” that the unconscious is like an inert “vestigial organ” since it
“is alive and capable of development” (italics added).
The concept of non-sensory ideation dispenses with belief in one mind
located within another mind. This eliminates a possible complication and
resulting mystification implicit in the concept of depth psychology. With
the unconscious mind patterned after what is known of the conscious mind
the latter is presumed to relegate ego-dystonic impulses into the former by

Model of Behavior” Guilford noted the following relationship between this concept of
information and the concept of consciousness as developed by the functional psycholo¬
gists (1972, p. 285):
An important feature of the model for behavior is the large amount of short-circuiting
that it recognizes. Following William James’ early treatment of habit formation
functional psychologists frequently held to the principle that in the early stages of
learning there is considerable conscious content, which progressively drops out as a
habit becomes more automatized. The model makes one important conceptual gain
by substituting “information” for “consciousness.” Information is a much more
specifiable and manageable concept, in step with much current thinking.
216 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

repression. There may then be a troubled unconscious mind having to get rid
of its unwelcome impulses by repressing them into a sub-unconscious mind.
With a whole series of successively deeper levels of the unconscious in the
offing the world of scientific fact would have to yield to the world of science
fiction. Furthermore, recognition of the non-sensory character of thinking as
a cognitive enterprise renders it unnecessary to entertain the fiction or para¬
dox of unconscious consciousness.
In some respects this concept of cognition might be reminiscent of Locke’s
concept of reflection. As noted early in the chapter, for Locke reflection has
to do with “operations of our own mind” including “thinking, doubting,
believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own
minds.” In the later idiom of William James, all these “actings” were brought
into the current of the stream of consciousness. This made reflection or the
streaming of man’s thought processes so complex as to render full knowledge
of the details of this complexity a never-ending quest. This is so because it
entails research into such diverse areas as mental retardation, creative thinking,
aesthetic sensitivity, mathematical aptitude, social intelHgence, dreaming,
paranoid thinking, intolerance of ambiguity, rationalization, ideational flexi¬
bility versus rigidity, and many additional components of intellect now being
subjected to factor-analytic investigations. In the light of the latter investi¬
gations aU that Locke subsumed under reflection is now revealed as far more
complex than he suspected. At the risk of begging the question it might be
said that he was unconscious of this complexity just as most of us are uncon¬
scious of the complexity of what is subsumed under the concept of intellect.
Employed in this way the word unconscious means being unaware, failing to
realize or notice, or faiUng to appreciate. In what follows the word will be
used in this sense.
It might also be said that until the Wurzburg investigations were under¬
taken most of us were unconscious of imageless or non-sensory thinking, of
conscious attitudes, of mental sets, of determining tendencies, and of the
“Aha” experience. However, the thinking, attitudes, tendencies, and expe¬
riences designated by these terms had existed as cognitive occurrences prior
to their Wurzburg discovery. Once noted, described, and given distinctive
names it became possible for such occurrences to be detected and observed
by others. Under the circumstances such detection and observation is the
equivalent of making the unconscious conscious. Another way to put this is
to say that it results in making the unobserved observable, the implicit
explicit, the unknown known, the concealed exposed, or—in general—making
the latent manifest.
All these ways of becoming increasingly aware of what lies within the
drift of one’s thinking faciUtate insight and self-discovery. As such they con¬
stitute discovery of unconscious attributes or components of one’s stream of
thinking. But this is not the same as discovery of a separate or segregated
mental realm in the form of an unconscious mind conceived of as divorced
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 217

from another mental realm in the form of a conscious mind. There is only
one mind or one intellect for each individual to explore and to get to know.
The know thyself of the Greek adage was an allusion to such exploration.
As an admonition it suggested that self-knowledge is contingent upon dis¬
covery of hitherto ignored or unknown phases of one’s being as a thinking
being. Moreover, with thinking equated with non-sensory consciousness the
increase in self-knowledge will be dependent upon discovery of such pre¬
viously overlooked constituent features of one’s thinking. As features these
are concomitants of thinking ignored by or unknown to the thinker and as
such may be described as non-sensory unconscious processes. Obviously, the
latter phrase does not refer to a segregated mental agency in the form of a
reified unconscious.
As a matter of fact, such unconscious processes are the same as the con¬
scious attitudes of the Wurzburg studies as previously mentioned in connec¬
tion with Biihler’s investigation of thinking. To Biihler’s brief examples of
such attitudes it will prove clarifying to introduce a famihar instance from
everyday life. Known to almost all students is the complex of changing
attitudes they are apt to entertain when taking examinations. They note the
ease or difficulty of the questions. As the answers are being written the
student may be doubtful of some, confident of others, and frustrated by still
others. There may be feelings of impending success or failure as the last ques¬
tion is being answered. All such processes or feelings of doubt, confidence,
frustration, success, or failure are concomitants of the thoughts aroused by
the questions. As comcomitants they surround or accompany the ideation
or reasoning concerned with the answers per se. This is what makes them
conscious attitudes. As such they do not constitute part of the answers even
though, psychologically considered, they are constituents of the totality of
thinking leading to the answers. Some of them may influence the direction of
the thinking. This would be the case when a given idea is rejected as too
irrelevant or as being in conflict with the examiner’s favorite theory. Still
other ideas may be rejected as too hard to explain or too weak as arguments.
Far more goes on in the student’s mind than gets to be recorded in his written
answers, and in some respects this means that conscious attitudes may be
regarded as surplus ideation from the viewpoint of the final outcome of suc¬
cessful thinking. This renders the problem solving of human beings different
from that of digital computers-which is obvious once it is called to our
attention.

ON MAKING THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS

In connection with human problem solving it is well to elaborate upon

what was previously referred to as making the unconscious conscious or the
latent manifest. As noted, psychologists had been unaware of conscious atti¬
tudes until the Wurzburg investigators had called attention to them by giving
218 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

them a distinctive name. After that their fellow psychologists were alerted
to the existence and variety of conscious attitudes. This is a reminder of the
fact that knowing what to look for often makes the difference between being
conscious or unconscious of something. A stock instance of this is supplied
by the case of the child who, upon being told how prose differs from poetry,
was excited to discover that he was talking prose.
Similarly, even in the case of adults, recognition of specific concomitants
of thinking may fail to occur until somebody calls attention to their existence
by giving them a definite label. For example, psychologists had overlooked
the nature of some fixed social attitudes until the early 1920s when Walter
Lippmann called attention to them in his book Public Opinion. His term
social stereotypes then became an accepted designation for the fixed and
biased attitudes implicit in references to the Scottish as penurious, to blondes
as fickle, to atheists as immoral, to politicians as crooked, and to Nordics as
superior. Before Lippmann’s term had been introduced, even though such
biased attitudes were commonplace, neither sociologists nor social psychol¬
ogists devoted space to them in their textbooks. However, once they and
journalists gave currency to the term more and more educated people came
to recognize social stereotypes in others and sometimes even in themselves.
They had now become an addition to their stock of Bewusstseinslagen or
conscious attitudes.
A variant and elaboration of such stereotypes came to be recognized a
generation later in the 1950s as a result of the studies by Adorno and associ¬
ates of antidemocratic, ethnocentric attitudes associated with the authori¬
tarian personahty. In these studies hundreds of subjects answered carefully
prepared questionnaires and many submitted to personal interviews. In the
course of such interviews some of the investigators introduced questions
related to the hbido theory. As one of them wrote (Adorno, p. 316): “An
attempt was also made to probe into pre-Oedipal fixations, that is, to pay
attention to the ‘orality’ and ‘anality’ of the subject and especially to the
defense mechanisms with which these and other instinctual problems had
been handled.” This sentence suggests that what came to be attributed to the
authoritarian personality had some roots in psychoanalytic theory and also
in the investigator’s chnical experience.
This suggestion is also reflected in the reference to defense mechanisms. In
other words, having learned about the concept of defense mechanisms the
examiner could probe for them and be on the watch for them during the
interviews. They were constituents of his conscious attitudes and influenced
his thinking accordingly. Being identified with conscious attitudes this made
the thinking non-sensory thinking, thinking about an array of defense
mechanisms such as denial, projection, and others. To the extent that the
examiner recognized any of these mechanisms in the person being examined
then he, as examiner, would be conscious of them while the examinee would
be unconscious of them. In other words, the examinee would un\vittingly be
projecting or rationalizing and thus be ignorant or unconscious of their
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 219

occurrence as defense mechanisms; they would then be constituents of his

non-sensory unconscious. However, were he to learn about them and then
recognize them in himself and in others, they would cease to be unconscious
and as conscious attitudes would become constituents of his non-sensory
consciousness.
This cognitive process holds true for all kinds of thinking. For example, if
one has never heard about ethnocentrism, there is little likelihood of spon¬
taneous recognition of the bias underlying one’s exaltation of the in-group
and corresponding disparagement of those belonging to out-groups. Analo¬
gously, the rationalizer will be oblivious of his rationalizing until his thinking
comes to include both the word and the concept of rationalization. Similarly,
neither therapists nor their patients were cognizant of their wishful thinking
until Freud had called attention to the process. The same statement can be
made about clinicians and their failure to note the nature and existence of
emotional complexes and introversive attitudes prior to Jung’s introduction
of the words complex and introversion as psychiatric terms. It is also true
that not until Bleuler supplied them with the term and description of autistic
thinking were they likely to detect such thinking in their patients. Nor
should their indebtedness to Adler for recognition of the mechanism of
overcompensation be overlooked in this connection.
The list could be extended to include paranoid attitudes, schizophrenic
apathy, somatic compliance, screen memories, glove anesthesia, and other
manifestations of psychopathology that had eluded the observation and think¬
ing of clinicians until the technical terms in question had first been invented.
Prior to becoming clinicians they can be said to have been unconscious of
such cHnical manifestations, but with completion of a psychiatric residency
such manifestations are noticed, named, and evaluated so that what had once
been unconscious is now conscious.
Another way to put this is to say that when he is examining a patient the
significance of such manifestations now falls within the scope of the clini¬
cian’s professional thinking. It is in accordance with such thinking and all it
connotes that he arrives at a diagnosis and decides upon appropriate treat¬
ment. Usually in the case of mental patients the treatment will center on
psychotherapy and this, of course, will entail changes in the patient’s thinking
or outlook. It might even occur to the clinician that in some respects the
cognitive changes he had undergone in the course of professional training will
resemble those to be experienced by his patient in the course of psycho¬
therapy. At all events, both kinds of changes have to do with making the
unconscious conscious. As cognitive changes they have to do with what
Freud had called the primacy of the intellect, which suggests the intellect’s
involvement in psychotherapy and the unconscious.

PSYCHOTHERAPY AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

In the interest of historical accuracy it is well to note that Freud did not
write about the primacy of the intellect in connection with the subject of
220 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

psychotherapy. Instead he introduced the phrase in his volume The Future of

an Illusion. This work was first published in 1927 and dealt with Freud’s
views of religion. As indicated by the title, he regarded religion as an illusion.
However, in doing so, as Ernest Jones has explained (1957, Vol. Ill, p. 356),
Freud was not contending “that religious beliefs are untrue, illusory in the
sense of their being non-existent.” Freud had written that^n illusion does not
necessarily refer to an error but that what constitutes an illusion is any behef
resulting from a wish to believe. As an instance of such wish-fulfillment Freud
cited the belief or illusion of the peasant girl who anticipates the arrival of a
rescuing prince. Obviously this is as unrealistic as belief in divine intervention
to save one from academic failure or bankruptcy. In Freud’s view reUgion
conceived of as an expression of such wish-fulfilling hopes is an illusion. It
was with reference to the possibility of dispensing with such an illusion that
he mentioned the primacy of the intellect. After months and months of futile
waiting for the rescuing prince the voice of the peasant girl’s intellect teUs
her the prince is an imaginary prince and, accordingly, her illusory wishful
thinking is replaced by realistic thinking. And such realistic thinking is con¬
scious and not unconscious thinking.
In large measure the goal of psychotherapy is also concerned with having
unrealistic thinking replaced by realistic thinking. This is so to the extent that
the thinking of psychiatric patients reflects mistaken, illusory ideas about
themselves and others. In the course of successful psychotherapy such warped
ideation is replaced by straight thinking. According to modern views, the
interaction between therapist and patient is a learning experience, as erroneous
beliefs are exposed, novel insights brought to light, anxiety reduced, self-
respect enhanced, and personal values restructured. This makes psychotherapy
an educational procedure with the therapist acting as teacher and his patient
in the role of student. The lessons can be taxing for both teacher and student.
Often what seems obvious to the therapist meets with the patient’s incredulity
or stubborn resistance, and sometimes the nature of a patient’s fixed behef
may perplex his therapist. As is evident in the following quotation from one
of Freud’s lectures, the task of overcoming such resistances and fixed beliefs
was described as being in “the nature of an education” (1938, p. 392):
Analytic treatment makes as great demands for efforts on the part of
the patient as on the physician, efforts to abolish the inner resistances.
The patient’s mental life is permanently changed by overcoming these
resistances, is hfted to a higher level of development, and remains proof
against fresh possibihties of illness. The labour of overcoming the resis¬
tances is the essential achievement of the analytic treatment; the
patient has to accomplish it and the physician makes it possible for him
to do this by suggestions which are in the nature of an education. It has
been truly said therefore, that psycho-analytic treatment is a kind of
re-education.

*^This passage occurs in the last lecture comprising the series in the General Introduction
to Psycho-Analysis. The concept of re-education does not seem to be in keeping with the
general drift of the thoughts developed in these lectures. Upon consulting the original
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 221

PSYCHOTHERAPY AS EDUCATION

This view of psychoanalytic treatment was also stressed in another of

Freud’s lectures, namely, his 1904 lecture to a group of physicians in Vienna—
the one entitled “On Psychotherapy.” In it he noted that suitability for psy¬
chotherapy depends upon various factors. Among others to be considered he
mentioned education under two sets of circumstances (p. 258). In one set
the therapist wonders “whether the patient is educable” and in the other he
wonders whether the patient is too old since “old people are no longer
educable.” A minimum level of intelhgence along with a certain degree of
intellectual flexibility were thus prerequisites for successful psychotherapy.
They made it possible for problems to be solved by taking thought or by
what Freud once called “rational mental effort.”^®
Since thought and rational mental effort presuppose activation of con¬
scious processes, the patient’s psychoanalytic “education” was more conscious
than unconscious. In effect Freud was saying that without such activation the
patient will not succeed in recognizing and coping with unconscious influences
responsible for his personality difficulties. Coming to grips with these influ¬
ences was envisaged as a function of conscious thought. Consequently, when
discussing psychoanalytic treatment as a form of education Freud was no
longer regarding “consciousness as a sense organ which perceives data that
arise elsewhere.” Instead, as should now be evident, in the context of psycho¬
therapy consciousness was regarded as an organ of thought sensitive to “the
voice of the intellect.” This made it an organ of reason, reflection, and what¬
ever else pertains to the structure of intellect.
Freud was the first to recognize intellect and psychoanalytic therapy as
related to educational procedures. However, he did not supply a detailed
account of the procedures to guide the educational therapist. In fact, few if
any of the early psychoanalysts and their immediate successors ever thought
of themselves as educational therapists in the special sense of being engaged
in promoting the education of their patients. Neither did they dwell upon
psychotherapy as related to various theories of learning. Not until very

German it was found that the sentence in question reads; “Man hat darum auch mit
Recht gesagt, die psychoanalytische Behandlung sei eine Art von Nacherziehung.” Now
the word Nacherziehung does not mean re-education, but rather supplementary educa¬
tion. The word for re-education would have to be Wiedererziehung. To illustrate the
difference in meaning between these two terms it may suffice to note that having to
repeat a course because of failure exemplifies re-education, whereas having to enroll for
an advanced course in order to round out one’s preparation for a given undertaking
exemplifies supplementary education.
^^This phrase occurs on page 77 of The Future of an Illusion in a section concerned with
control of impulses in which Freud wrote that “the time has probably come to replace
the consequence of repression by the results of rational mental effort.” It should be
recalled that in Freud’s view repression had to do with the sexual etiology of neuroses.
In fact, as mentioned in Chapter 5, according to Jones (Vol. II, p. 320), “Freud had told
the Vienna Society that in his opinion repression affected only sexual impulses. All
other effects were secondary. He never retracted this.”
222 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

recent decades did Freud’s original insight into the educational implications
of psychotherapy arouse the active interest of psychoanalysts.
A representative example of such active interest is to be found in two
chapters of a contemporary (1974) volumQ, Psychiatry in lYansition, by the
psychoanalyst Judd Marmor. This interest is revealed in the chapter titles, one
being “Psychoanalytic Therapy as an Educational Process” and the other
being “Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theories of Learning.” They reflect the
accumulation of more than fifty years of cHnical experience dating back to
Freud’s first reference to such aspects of psychotherapy. They also reflect
more than fifty years of laboratory studies of the learning process by experi¬
mental psychologists. The result is a sophisticated elaboration of Freud’s
pioneering insight far in excess of what Freud could have had in mind, the
nature of which is made especially clear in the following paragraph. Here
Marmor subjects the concept of insight itself to critical examination (pp.
198-199):

But what is insight? To a Freudian it means one thing, to a Jungian

another, and to a Rankian, a Horneyite, an Adlerian or a Sullivanian,
still another. Each school gives its own particular brand of insight.
Whose are the correct insights? The fact is that patients treated by
analysts of all these schools may not only respond favorably, but also
believe strongly in the insights which they have been given. . . . More¬
over, the problem is even more complicated than this; for, depending
upon the point of view of the analyst, the patients of each school seem
to bring up precisely the kind of phenomenological data which confirm
the theories and interpretations of their analysts! Thus each theory
tends to be self-validating. Freudians elicit material about the Oedipus
complex and castration anxiety, Adlerians about masculine strivings and
feehngs of inferiority, Homeyites about idealized images, SuUivanians
about disturbed interpersonal relationships, etc. The fact is that in so
complex a transaction as the psychoanalytic therapeutic process, the
impact of patient and therapist upon each other, and particularly of
the latter upon the former, is an unusually profound one. What the
analyst shows interest in, the kinds of questions he asks, the kind of
data he chooses to react to or ignore, and the interpretations he makes,
all exert a subtle but significant suggestive impact upon the patient
to bring forth certain kinds of data in preference to others. ... I should
like to suggest that what we call insight is essentially the conceptual
framework by means of which a therapist establishes, or attempts to
establish, a logical relationship between events, feelings, or experience
that seem unrelated in the mind of the patient.

This view of insight is limited to the therapist-patient interaction, and it is

different from the view of insight associated with animal experimentation.
By way of reminder, in the famous study of the chimpanzee insight was said
to have been revealed on the occasion when he fitted two sticks together in
order to retrieve a distant banana. In the same way a young child might be
said to have insight were it to fit the pieces of a formboard into place immedi-
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 223

ately on the first attempt and with no prior contact with formboards. In such
nonclinical settings the word insight is employed as meaning possession of
requisite understanding or knowing what to do to solve a problem. An expert
garage mechanic exhibits this kind of insight when confronted with a stalled
motor. This is different from Marmor’s use of insight as a clinical term.
An illuminating example of this clinical meaning of insight is supplied by
an incident involving Rank’s concept of the trauma of birth. Freud had ques¬
tioned the soundness of Rank’s theory, but Ferenczi had endorsed it. Never¬
theless, according to Jones (Vol. III,p. 68), Freud tried to test the theory over
a period of several weeks “by interpreting the associations whenever possible
in terms of birth, but he got no response from his patients, nor had the inter¬
pretations any other effect on them. Ferenczi, on the other hand, had had
wonderful results by applying the same method and could not do without it
in a single case.”
Incidentally, Freud and Ferenczi had another difference of opinion. This
had to do with astrology and the fact that despite Freud’s remonstrations
Ferenczi continued to take horoscopes seriously. Presumably Ferenczi had
some “insight” into his patient’s unconscious just by learning the date of his
birth. On the other hand, even though Freud disavowed astrology, he did
take telepathy seriously and, as brought out by Jones (Vol. Ill, p. 381), he
thought of it as opening “the door to endless possibilities,” one of which
might be mental processes operative “independent of the human body.” On a
more personal note, Jones reports, Freud “fancied” having received telepathic
messages from his son on military duty during the war. On another page
(p. xii) Jones referred to telepathy as one of many matters Freud “regarded
as fundamental” but upon which he and Jones differed. What Freud accepted
as fact Jones rejected as myth and in this respect their clinical interpretations
could not be in agreement. Moreover, another of Freud’s early associates,
Eduard Hitschmann, had a stiU different view of telepathy. In a paper titled
“Telepathy and Psychoanalysis” he denied “the reality of telepathy in the
occult sense,” but attributed alleged instances of telepathic communication
to projection of unconscious wishes, or as he put it (p. 117), telepathy is
“based not on mystical or unknown physical forces, but on the psychology of
the unconscious.” This means that with reference to just the restricted topic
of telepathy these three pioneer psychoanalysts, Freud, Jones, and Hitsch¬
mann, had three differing views of the unconscious.
Furthermore, with reference to other topics both they and their suc¬
cessors did not always see eye to eye. In other words, all who call themselves
psychoanalysts endorse the concept of mind as unconscious, but differ among
themselves in what they attribute to the unconscious. For some the death
instinct is fact, for others it is fiction. Nor do they agree on what is to be
ascribed to the infant’s unconscious or to that of the adult in terms of the
libido theory. In addition, as just shown, even with respect to the nature
of insight both they as well as the sponsors of other schools of psychotherapy
224 ' The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

disagree, with the patients of each school tending to reflect insights consistent
with its school’s distinctive tenets.
As a result, a Jungian’s unconscious differs from that of a Horneyite and
that of the latter from the unconscious of an Adlerian. It seems safe to say
that there are as many different kinds of unconscious as there are such dis¬
tinctive schools of psychotherapy. For this reason, to revert to a statement
made in Chapter 1, it is impossible to formulate a comprehensive definition
of the word unconscious broad enough to do justice to what the word has
come to mean to these rival schools, each member of which is persuaded of
the truth of what is revealed by his insight into what he takes to be the
unconscious. Thus, by way of example, the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm
prefaced an account of the unconscious from his viewpoint by disassociating
himself both from the Freudian and the Jungjan unconscious. He was careful
to point out that for him the unconscious “is neither Jung’s mythical realm
of racially inherited experience nor Freud’s seat of irrational libidinal forces”
(p.29).
Nevertheless, despite such differences in viewpoint and interpretation, it
may be possible to refer to unconscious ideas and impulses in a way that will
be acceptable to adherents of all schools and also to those who are not affili¬
ated with any school or not even concerned with psychotherapy. This will be
possible provided there is recognition of the unconscious factors impUcit in
the concept of non-sensory ideation.

IN CONCLUSION

By way of introduction to these concluding paragraphs it is pertinent to

recall the fact that although Freud made thinking the sole justification for
belief in the existence of unconscious psychical processes, he did not intro¬
duce an analysis of thinking per se. This was first undertaken by the Wurzburg
psychologists. Their discovery of conscious attitudes, determining tendencies,
and other imageless components of thinking was tantamount to discovery of
unconscious components. These components were unconscious in the sense
of having eluded prior observation and they were imageless because, as Wood-
worth put it, they contained elements “wholly irreducible to sensory terms”;
hence their non-sensory characterization. Additional evidence in support of
this distinction between thoughts and images or, as figuratively expressed,
between naked thoughts and their imaginal dress was supplied by Wurzburg
reaction time studies of meaning. In these studies, upon presentation of a

clarifying exposition of such adherence to the distinctive tenets of given therapeutic

schools is to be found in the recent (1975) volume edited by C. A. Loew and associates.
Entitled Three Psychotherapies, it has representatives of psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy,
and behavior therapy discuss their respective therapeutic approaches by confronting each
of them with the same set of clinical problems. For each case or problem they were
requested to analyze the patient’s difficulty, their particular therapeutic objective, and
their means of reaching this objective.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 225

word the subjects reacted as soon as they were aware of the word’s meaning
in one series of presentations and as soon as they were aware of the word’s
imaginal representation in another series. It was found that it takes longer for
arousal of associated imagery than for apprehension of meaning. In other
words, awareness of a word’s meaning precedes its imaginal representation.
This finding is related to studies of determining tendencies, when it was
found that initiation of a given determining tendency preceded execution of
specific acts or arousal of particular thoughts.
Now conscious attitudes and determining tendencies as psychological
processes were taking place long before the Wurzburg psychologists called
attention to their existence by giving them distinctive names. As occurrences
they failed to become objects of awareness and thus were unconscious con¬
comitants of ideation. This made them implicit non-sensory concomitants,
but once observed and described they were rendered conscious and explicit.
In this way they serve as a paradigm for equating the unconscious with
implicit non-sensory ideation.
The word unconscious in this paradigm does not refer to a separate autono¬
mous mental agency in the form of an unconscious mind—as if man is endowed
with two minds, one conscious and the other unconscious. In this respect it
differs from the way Freud employed the word unconscious when contrasting
the conscious with the unconscious. As explained in Chapter 4, Freud stressed
this conscious-unconscious dichotomy in the Traumdeutung (pp. 612-613)
by first identifying consciousness with sensory processes and then, by way of
contrast, identifying all other mental processes with the unconscious. It was
with reference to these other processes that he wrote, “the most rational
thought-processes .. . can occur without exciting the subject’s conscious¬
ness.” These thoughts were also presumed to occur without revealing their
“existence in any way to consciousness.” He declared the unconscious to be
“the true psychical reaUty” and that it “must be assumed to be the general
basis of psychical life.” Just why such an assumption is required was not
explained. Neither was any evidence introduced in support of the dogmatic
assertion describing the unconscious as “the larger sphere, which includes
within it the smaller sphere of the conscious.” In the same context the “inner¬
most nature” of this larger sphere was acknowledged to be “as much unknown
to us as the reality of the external world.” This came close to trying to
account for the known in terms of the unknown. Sensation was identified
with the conscious and intellect with the unconscious and the Freudian two-
minds paradigm came into being. The one-mind paradigm entails fewer
assumptions and tries to account for the unknown in terms of the known and
thus might be said to come closer to “the true psychical reahty.”
As already mentioned, this one-mind paradigm recognizes the occurrence
of unconscious mental processes and equates them with implicit non-sensory
ideation. An example of such unconscious ideation was introduced in an
earlier section in connection with the subject of social stereotypes. As there
pointed out, people are unconscious of the bias and misperception reflected
226 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

in their talk about the humorless British, immoral atheists, or effete intel¬
lectuals. Similarly, they may be unconscious of their superstitions as supersti¬
tions, of paranoid attitudes as paranoid, or of their arguments being evasive
or fallacious or unconvincing.
It would be easy to continue with a long list of ways in which the stream
of ordinary thinking is characterized by trends of which the thinker is uncon¬
scious. Thus most of us when engaged in casual reflection or in heated argu¬
ment may not know whether we are thinking inductively or deductively, con-
vergently or divergently, concretely or abstractly, subjectively or objectively,
critically or dogmatically, intelligently or stupidly, superficially or profoundly,
or flexibly or rigidly.
In fact, some of these alternatives are included in factor-analytic studies of
intellect. Since there may be a reservoir of 120 or more such factors from
which selection is made in the course of thinking, even the factor-analytic
specialist is very likely unconscious of the ones operative in specific instances
of his own thinking. Those of us who are not speciaUsts, even as psychologists,
may have trouble recalling more than a small number of these factors. To the
extent that they have a bearing on the course of our thinking and elude our
observation we are unconscious of them.
In their totality they constitute the structure of the intellect and when
groups of them function in the thinking of individuals they constitute con¬
scious attitudes. As long as the individual is ignorant or unconscious of
harboring such attitudes they constitute implicit non-sensory thoughts. To
repeat: from this viewpoint they are unconscious concomitants of the stream
of ideation and as concomitants they are events or happenings and not things
or entities. Not being things or entities they have no habitat. Consequently,
it would be fatuous and meaningless to say that these implicit non-sensory
thoughts are in the unconscious. The one-mind paradigm does not provide
for a separate mental realm called The Unconscious.
The foregoing denial of the existence of the unconscious when viewed in
historical perspective becomes the counterpart of denial of the existence of
consciousness as a distinct entity. Many decades ago William James raised
this issue in an essay in which he asked, “Does Consciousness Exist?” and
concluded that it does not exist. Anticipating the shock such a conclusion
might occasion he introduced the following shock-absorbing explanation very
early in the essay (pp. 3-4):

To deny plumply that ‘consciousness’ exists seems so absurd on the

face of it-for undeniably ‘thoughts’ do exist-that I fear some readers
will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I
mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist
most emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean,
no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which
material objects are made, out of which our thoughts are made; but
there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the
performance of which this quality of being is involved. That function
is knowing.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 227

The importance of the function of knowing was also recognized by Freud

when he described psychotherapy as being an educational experience for the
patient. As is common knowledge, a chief objective for Freud as therapist was
to help his patient gain insight and this means help in gaining more revealing
self-knowledge. After all, he did expect his patients to heed the voice of
intellect and thus learn to distinguish wishful thinking from realistic thinking,
the irrational from the rational, the infantile from the mature or the regressive
from the progressive.
In this connection it is well to recall that it was Freud who first called our
attention to such self-deceiving maneuvers as projection, displacement, denial,
and reaction formation. He perceived them as militating against honest think¬
ing and as tending to result in ego-defensive misperceptions of self and others.
Furthermore, viewed as hindrances to valid thinking, they constitute a psycho¬
analytic counterpart to the traditional fallacies listed in textbooks of logic;
hence, more than he realized, Freud had heightened the eminence of the
intellect’s primacy.
Those who have recourse to such ego-defensive maneuvers are usually not
aware of doing so. They are unconscious of projecting or rationalizing just as
the illogical thinker is unconscious of his reliance on the post hoc or some
other fallacy. As unnoticed concomitants of an ongoing pattern of thinking
these maneuvers exempUfy implicit non-sensory thoughts. Not until they are
rendered explicit can their misleading and distorting effects be corrected.
This involves more than just being told about them as impersonal ideas in
the way one may be told about the meaning of a new word. Instead, as Freud
saw, the patient must come to appreciate them as directly related to personal
difficulties. Acquisition of this kind of appreciation is not easy. Blinded by
long established ego defenses the patient fails to see himself as his therapist
sees him and being suppHed with a description of the nature of these defenses
will not bring about their recognition and elimination. In fact, as Freud found,
the patient is likely to resist the suggestion that self-deception is taking place.
Not until such resistance is overcome will there be appreciation of the dis¬
torting effects of given ego defenses. That of which he had been unconscious
he will now be conscious. To this extent he will have achieved insight and it is
in this regard that Freud came to think of psychotherapy as an educational
experience. As the therapist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann once put it: “The
patient needs an experience not an explanation.” Whether experience in the
form of psychotherapy is the only way for troubled people to be helped is
another question; but to consider it would lead us too far afield.*^

*'^This question is important for at least two reasons: {a) there are too few psychothera¬
pists in relation to the number needing help and {b) the cost of psychotherapy renders
it beyond the means of families of modest income. Consequently, it would be a decided
boon to the troubled were they able to find less costly help—especially help that is t
immediately available. In a contemporary (1973) article Leona A. Tyler has called atten¬
tion to the way some of the troubled are helping themselves. In fact, she describes this
development as a “shift. . . away from reUance on psychotherapy as the solution to
228 ° The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

A more immediately relevant question that might be raised concerns the

relation of dreams to implicit non-sensory ideation. For Freud dreams consti¬
tuted the royal road to the unconscious, and thus it might be asked, “Do
they also constitute the same kind of road to implicit non-sensory ideation?”
An affirmative answer is to be expected to the extent that the latter kind of
ideation is equated with the unconscious. At least it can be presumed to
hold true for dreams regarded as expressions of wish-fulfillment. This proviso
is necessary because not all wishes give rise to dreams nor are all dreams
instigated by wishes. A trivial wish like the wish for a good hand at bridge is
not as likely to find expression in a dream as is a serious wish like the wish
for the recovery of a very ill child. Freud’s “model dream” mentioned earUer
in this chapter comes to mind in this connection. In that dream, as interpreted
by Freud, the grieving father was wishing that his dead child were still alive.

human problems.” Among her observations concerning the nature of this shift the fol¬
lowing ones are of particular significance and interest (p. 1022):
For one thing, people who realize that they are in trouble and need help are increas¬
ingly turning to each other rather than to professional therapists for assistance.
Alcoholics Anonymous was perhaps the first herald of this change in the manner in
which psychological difficulties were to be dealt with. At first we did not sense how
profound a change in orientation it represented. But we are being forced to pay
attention to it now that the same process has repeated itself with many other kinds
of people—weight watchers, heroin addicts, former mental patients, paraplegics—the
list could be extended indefinitely. These people are convinced that they can get
more help from others who are able to understand them because they have expe¬
rienced the same difficulty than from professional “healers,” however competent.
To this it is well to add that people report being helped by Yoga, by Zen, and by
transcendental and other forms of meditation. Such presumed help is different from
psychoanalytic, Adlerian, Jungian, Rogerian, or eclectic modes of psychotherapy. A well
summarized description of each of these different meditational procedures is to be found
in Ornstein’s The Psychology of Consciousness (pp. 104-141). In addition, the latter
descriptions ought to be supplemented by recent laboratory studies of ideational changes
under conditions of relaxed wakefulness. For details and relevant references see the 1975
article by Foulkes and Fleisher.
Each of the preceding modes of psychotherapy and meditation has its coterie of sup¬
porters convinced of the effectiveness of a given mode and less convinced of the effec¬
tiveness of rival modes. However, these convictions are rarely if ever based upon care¬
fully designed controlled investigations of results obtained in terms of therapeutic
success or failure. Instead they tend to be based upon the therapist’s personal impres¬
sions along with the testimony of grateful patients or clients. Like evidence cited in
support of the efficacy of prayer, such evidence may be misleading.
Actually, subjecting any technique of psychotherapy to rigorous and valid determina¬
tion of its effectiveness is a relatively formidable undertaking. The few attempts that
have been made have failed to satisfy all critics-some of them are ready to argue that
effectiveness of psychotherapy has yet to be demonstrated. An informative account of
this issue is to be found in The Effects of Psychotherapy, a monograph by Hans J. Eye-
senck and some 17 discussants from this country and abroad and representative of the
fields of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychology. (The monograph is published by
The International Science Press, Inc., 27 East 62nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10021.) As
brought out by several of the discussants, the question involves so many variables as to
preclude a categorical answer about the effectiveness of psychotherapy taken in the
abstract. Recognizing and dealing with these variables, it was suggested, is a necessary
prelude to sound investigation of such effectiveness in concrete instances. Only then will
it be possible to dispose of the skepticism of those who have raised questions about
cures attributed to psychotherapy.
 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 229

This serves as a reminder of the fact that the Freudian wish has to do with
balked desires. Gratified desires do not occasion dreams—only the frustrated
ones do. Nor did Freud regard all dreams as products of frustrated instinctual
desires. In the dream of the grieving father, for example, repressed erotic
urges were not included in the interpretation. It would thus be well not to
restrict Freud’s dream theory to balked sexual desires.
Instead, as a theory it may be said to provide for any strong or persistent
desire. Furthermore, recall that such abiding desires give rise to determining
tendencies or perseverative trends. Once introduced they make us reaction
sensitive to whatever might be related to them. Thus the conscientious physi¬
cian worried about a patient suffering from a rare disease will be set to notice
any reference to this disease as he chances to glance through a medical journal.
Similarly, a determining tendency renders candidates for public office vigilant
with reference to the moods, interests, and prejudices of voters. Those
absorbed in scientific research—to cite another example—may find their
dreams influenced by their preoccupation with laboratory problems.
There is a striking instance of such a dream reported by the famous Ger¬
man chemist F. A. Kekule (1829-1896). As a result of his dream he was
able to suggest a solution to the problem of accounting for the structure of
the chemistry of carbon compounds. This made him one of the founding
fathers of organic chemistry. His famous theory of the benzene ring with its
chain of six carbon atoms came to him in a dream in 1865. At the time he was
writing one of his chemistry textbooks; hence it seems safe to say that he was
predisposed to think about chemical themes and, of course, such a predisposi¬
tion is but another way of referring to a determining tendency. At aU events,
from his own account of circumstances leading to the dream in question it
seems obvious that he was engrossed in something related to the subject of his
textbook, because after noting the trouble he was having with his writing he
had this to say (Hadfield, p. 113):

I turned the chair to the fireplace and sank into a half sleep. The atoms
flitted before my eyes . . . wriggling and turning like snakes. And see,
what was that? One of the snakes seized its own tail and the image
whirled scornfully before my eyes. As though from a flash of lightning
I awoke. I occupied the rest of the night in working out the consequence
of the hypothesis.

The meaning of the dream with its momentous implications for chemical
theory was immediately evident to Kekule. For him there was no need to be
concerned about the dream’s latent content or to treat the snakes in the
dream as phallic symbols. An active determining tendency had initiated a
train of ideas in line with his frustrated wish to solve the mystery of carbon
compounds. The resulting emergence of the picture of the benzene ring came
from a mind prepared. Another way to put this is to say it came from a con¬
stellation of related unconscious ideas or related implicit non-sensory ideas.
230 • The Unconscious: Invention or Discovery?

The Kekule dream is reminiscent of a dream once reported by a psycholo¬

gist who had been confronted with this question; “What in your opinion was
Freud’s most outstanding achievement?” For some days he had been preoccu¬
pied with the question without a satisfactory answer coming to mind. Seem¬
ingly, the preoccupation in itself was indicative of an activated determining
tendency, and for a few nights sleep was troubled by this vain quest for an
answer to what had become an important question. Then, on one of these
nights there was a vivid dream in which a picture of Freud appeared. In the
picture Freud was sitting in a comfortable chair gazing up at a bust of Lincoln
with admiring eyes and Lincoln was glancing down at Freud with affectionate
approval. At the bottom of the picture there was this title: Two Great
Emancipators.

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 Implicit Non-Sensory Ideation • 231

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 Index

Abrams, Samuel, 53n, ref. 89 Bucke, R. M., 70, 71

Ach, N., 205, 207 Biihler, Karl, 207, 217, ref. 230
Adler, A., 174, 176n, 219, ref. 191 “Aha” experience, 207n
Adorno, T. W., 218, ref. 230 critique of psychoanalytic
“Aha” experience, 198, 207, 207n methodology, 208
Allport, Gordon, 4, 140ff., ref. 20, nature of thinking, 204ff.
167
Alman, R. W., ref. 20 Cannon, W. B., ref. 167
amoeba, 12-13 Carritt, E. F., 16, ref. 20
anima, 174 categories of understanding, 104
animal consciousness, 11-13 Clark University lectures, 108-10,
anxiety, 147ff. 115
apotropaeic acts, 179 Clifford, W. K., 13
apperception, 39n, 52, 106ff., 108n cognitive map as schema, 159
archetypes, 175 coma, 6n
Aristotle, 17, 104, 164-65, 179, conditioning, 172-73
196-97, 200, 213 conscious attitudes, 46, 217-18,
atomistic analysis, 48 225-26
Aufgabe, 45-46, 207-8 consciousness
automatic writing, 64, 73ff., 85 of animals, 11-12
automatism of habit, 60, 95-96 and belief in immortality, 66-73
its causal efficacy, 111-12, 116
Ballou, R. 0.,ref. 90 existence questioned by James,
basic process, 59-60, 95 226
Beldoch, Michael, 41, ref. 89 having unconscious origin,
Benson, H., 19n, ref. 21 100-102, 116n
Bernheim, Hippolyte, 41 introspective studies of, 18-20
Binet, A., 84, 85 in plants, 27
biofeedback, 173 and psychotherapy, 221
Birney, R. C., ref. 167 as reflected in the contrast be¬
birth trauma, 223 tween sensation and thought,
boredom, 158-59 214
Boring, Edwin G., 27, 39n, 61, as related to primacy of intellect,
ref. 36, 191 105-6
brain, 69-71 rejected by Watson, 18-19
Brentano, Franz, 153n, 165, 207n, as subliminal, 75ff.
212n-213n, 214 in terms of Lindsley’s continuum,
Brett, G. S., ref. 36 6-8
Breuer, J., 108n cosmic consciousness, 70, 71
Bridgman, P. W., 10, ref. 20 cupiditas, 125-26
Brody, Benjamin, 184-85, ref. 191
Brown, Roger, 19, ref. 20 Darnoi, D. N. E., 25, 28n, 33, ref. 36

233
234 • Index

Darwin, C., 128n, 207n, ref. 167 anxiety and repression, 147-49
depth psychology, 177-78,215-16 Brentano’s influence, 165
Descartes, R., 214 the case of paranoia, 180
desires, 125 clash with Janet, 85-86
determining tendencies, 45-47, 207, the concept of sublimation,
225,229 143,150
determinism, 120, 122ff. criticized by Biihler, 208
Dewey, John, 101, 102, ref. 112 depth psychology, 177-78
discrimination, 173-74 on emotion, 127-28
dissociation, 42-44, 85 emotions and feelings have to
Dobzhansky, T., 154-55, ref. 167 be conscious, 127
dreams, 111-12, 115, 209ff., 228-30 examples of his apotropaeic
drive, 13Iff. See instinct; motivation acts, 179
vs. mechanism, 135-40 his psychology of thinking,
substitute for instinct, 131, 13In 208-9
dynamic psychiatry, 112 influenced by Herbart, 106-7
dynamic psychology, 134, 139 Kant’s philosophy, 103-4, 188
dynamic unconscious, 115 as Lamarckian, 175
meeting with James, 109, 115-17
Ebbinghaus, Hermann, 31-32, ref. 36 misinterpretation of Maudsley, 99-101
Edman, 1., ref. 36 the model dream, 209ff.
egocentric predicament, 9-11 motivational impact of libido, 139
Eidelberg, L., ref. 167 motivation not differentiated
Ellenberger, Henri, 34, 61-65, from causation, 124-25
ref. 36 neither content nor instigation of
Emerson, R. W., 4 all dreams attributable to sex,
emotion, 126-28 210
empathy, 14-1 6 posthypnotic proof for the
endogenous motivation, 157 unconscious, 41
English, A. C., ref. 20 primacy of intellect, 105ff.,
English, H. B.,ref. 20 198-99
epiphenomenalism, 111-12 psychoanalysis as supplementary
ESP,82n,83 education, 220n
ethnocentrism, 219 “psychopathology of everyday
exogenous motivation, 159-62, life,” 124
159n on Rank’s birth trauma, 223
Eyesenck, Hans J., 228n, ref. 191 on seeing him in perspective,
179-81
fallacy of sensationalism, 47-49 as seminal thinker, 178, 181
Fazekas, J. F., ref. 20 on sensory and cognitive aspects
Ferenczi, S. F., 223 of mind, 214
Field, G.C., 185-86, ref. 191 telepathy “regarded as funda¬
Fine, Reuben, 184n, ref. 191 mental,” 223
Fleisher, S., 19n, ref. 20 testing of psychoanalytic hy¬
foreconscious, 53n potheses, 181-83
Foulkes, D., 19n, ref. 20 the “twisted re-interpretations”
free association, 84, 111, 120, 152 of Jung and Adler, 176n
free will, 122-23 the unconscious as an organ of
Frenkel, E., ref. 230 thought, 195
Freud, E. L., 201,210, ref. 230 the unconscious and “physical
Freud, Sigmund, 14-20, 22, 50 processes,” 50n, 176n
on academic psychology, 201- the unconscious as “true psy¬
202,212 chical reality,” 101-103, 187
antagonism between medical as viewed by James, 109-10
and academic psychology, 92, view of religion, 220
97, 99, 114ff. Freudian slips, 124
 Index • 235

Fromm, Erich, 181,224, ref. 230 immortality, 71,72, 77

Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda, 227 imprinting, 157
functional autonomy, 140ff., 152ff Ingersoll lecture, 71
163 inhibition, 145-46
anticipated by Mill and Brentano, insight, 198, 214-16, 222-24, 227
153n instinct, 128ff., 13 Iff.
antithetic to concept of reg¬ concept defended by Woodworth
nant motives, 152-53 132-33
and exogenous motivation, as defined by James, 129
159-62 distinguished from native
as interpreted by Allport, 140-42 capacities, 132
Liddell’s maze-running sheep, James’s nonmystical approach,
155-56, 164 128-31
questioned by McClelland and McDougall’s list of twelve major
others, 153-56 and some minor emotional¬
related to native capacities, 155 ized impulsive propensities to
as reviewed by Seward, 157ff. action, 135ff.
functional psychology, 60, 95, replaced by the term drive,
102, 109-10, 116, 134, 215n 131-34
Funkenstein, D. H., 129n, ref. 168 as viewed by von Hartmann,
27-28
Gates, G. S., 17, ref. 20 intellect, 198, 214-15, 227
gender identity, 174 intentionalism, 165
Gifford lectures, 66 introversion, 219
Grant, V. W., 150, ref. 168
Grayson, H., ref. 231 Jackson, John Hughlings, 97,
Greenhouse, H. B., 19n, ref. 21 194, ref. 113
Guilford, J. P., 214n-215n, ref. 230 James, William, 15, 23, 32, 95, 194,
216, ref. 90, 113, 231
Hadfield, J. A., 229, ref. 231 on belief in the supernatural and
Hall, G. Stanley, 24, 30, ref. 36 immortality, 68-70
Harlow, H. F., 155, 157, 159, ref. consciousness as impulsive, 165
168 on the concept of God, 65-68
Hartshorne, Charles, 48n, ref. 89 cosmic consciousness as a con¬
Hebb, D. O., 138n, ref. 168 cept, 70-71
Hegel, G. W. F., 26 definition of emotion, 127
Helmholtz, Hermann, 95, 53-54, definition of instinct, 129
58-59, 61-62, ref. 89 “Does Consciousness Exist?”
Herbart, John Friedrich, 52, 106-7 226
Herrnstein, Richard J., 19, ref. 20 endorsement of psychical
hidden motives, 120. See uncon¬ research, 64-66
scious motivation exchange of letters with James
Spinoza, 121 Ward, 79-80
Hilgard, Ernest, 43, 181, ref. 89, Gifford Lectures on The
168 Varieties of Religious Expe¬
Hitschmann, Eduard, 223, ref. 231 rience-A Study of Human
Hollingworth, H. L., 205, ref. 231 Nature, 66
Holt, E. B., 27n, ref. 37 Ingersoll lecture on Human
Homey, Karen, 153, 181 Immortality, 71
Hunter, W. S., 47, ref. 89 knowledge-about contrasted
hypnosis, 40-42 with knowledge of acquain¬
hypotheses (Freudian), experi¬ tance, 9
mental testing, 181-83 negative view of Herbart’s
hysteria, 109n psychology, 107-8
no unconscious mental states,
imageless thought, 20Iff. 38-42
236 • Index

opposed to psychological Marxism, 152

atomism, 47-49 masculine protest, 174
perception devoid of uncon¬ Masters, W. H., 180n
scious reasoning, 57-58 Maudsley, Henry, 93ff., 194, ref. 113
petites perceptions and the McClelland, David, 154, ref. 168
unconscious, 39-40 McDougall, WilHam, 135ff.,ref. 168
principle of identity, 50 McGranahan, D. V., ref. 168
reaction to Freud, 108-10, 115 McKeon, R., ref. 169
reaction to Leuba’s attack, Mead, Margaret, 14, ref. 20
65-66 mental set, 45-46, 201,207-8
significance of “discovery” by Mill, John Stuart, 4f), 153n
F. W. H. Myers, 73-75, 79ff. Miller, James, 171-72, ref. 90
transmission theory of brain Miller, N. E., 19n, ref. 20
action, 69-71 mind, 21 Iff.
“tumbling ground for whimsies,” both sensory and cognitive,
1-2 196-97, 200, 214, 225
on the “Why?” of instinctive knowing minds of others, 17
behavior, 128-31 synonymous with reason, 213
Janet, P., 43n, 85-86 Titchener’s views, 96-98
Jennings, H. S., 12-13, ref. 20 as viewed by Maudsley, 94ff.
Jones, Ernest, 4, 50, 106, 120, Mosteller, F., ref. 126
185-86, ref. 20, 90, 168 motivation, 114ff.
Jung, C. G., 174, 175, 176n, Moynihan, D., ref. 126
ref. 191 Mozart, W. A., 150, 164
Miihl, A., ref. 90
Kant, Immanueal, 26, 29, 33, Munro, Thomas, 15, ref. 20
103-4, 188, 195-97, 200 Munroe, Ruth, 118-19, ref. 169
Kekule, F. A., 229-30 Murphy, G., ref. 90
knowledge, two kinds of, 9 Myers, F. W. H., 64, 68, 72-73, 76,
Kiilpe, Oswald, 46, 201, 207 80-82, ref. 90

Lamarckianism, 175, 179 native capacity, 151, 155, 161-62,

Lambert, W. E., ref. 168 164
Lashley, K. S., 52n, ref. 90 neurosis, 143, 147
Lee, H. B., ref. 168 non-sensory ideation, 215ff.
Leibnitz, G. W., 39, 197 North, G., ref. 126
Lerner, M., ref. 168 noumenal world, 103, 188
Leuba, C., ref. 168
Leuba, James, 65-66 observable unconscious, 172-73
Levenson, D. J., ref. 230 Ornstein, R. E., 19n, 205n, 228n,
Levine, Israel, 162n, ref. 168 ref. 20
libido, 1 18, 139, 150-51 Osgood, C. E., ref. 192
Liddell, Howard, 155-56, 164,
ref. 168 parapsychology, 73
Lindsley, D. B., 6-8, ref. 20 pathetic fallacy, 16-17
Lippmann, Walter, 218, ref. 231 perception, 54ff.
Lipps, Theodor, 16 Perry, R. B., 66n, 109, ref. 90
Locke, John, 104, 196-97, 200, Pfliiger, Eduard, 27
ref. 231 phenomenal world, 103, 188
Loeb, Jacques, 13-14, ref. 20 phylogenetic inheritance, 175-76
Loew, C. A., 224n, ref. 231 Piaget, J., ref. 169
Loew,G. H.,ref. 231 Pietsch, Paul, 52n, ref. 90
Lund, F. H., 35, ref. 37 Postman, L., ref. 37
preconscious, 106
Marmor, Judd, 118, 222-23, ref. Prince, M., ref. 90
168,231 principle of identity, 50
 Index • 237

psychical phenomena, 64-68 scientific psychology, 18, 24, 31,

psychical research, 64, 74ff., 76n, 53, 89
80, 82,93 Sears, Robert R., 182, ref. 192
psychoanalysis selectivity of behavior, 135
ambivalent evaluation by James, sensationalism, fallacy of, 47-49
109-12, 117 sensory deprivation, 158
Biihler on research methodology, set, 35,45-46,207-8
208 Seward, J. P., 157ff., 160, ref. 169
defined as “the science of the Sewell, J. R., 182, ref. 192
unconscious,” 101 sex, 129n, 143ff., 148
divergent schools, 117ff. Shakow, David, 32, ref. 37
its Herbartian roots, 107 Shands, Harley C., 182, ref. 192
Jones on three “essential char¬ Shipley, T., ref. 90
acteristics,” 120 Singer, J. L., 19n, ref. 20
official introduction to America Skinner, B. F., ref. 169
in 1909 at Clark University social stereotypes, 218
lectures, 109, 115 soul, 17, 18,72,78
regarded as “introduction to Solomon, P., ref. 158
psychology,” 201 Sperry, R. W., ref. 90
status as a science, 181 ff. Spinoza, B., 121, 125-26, 165,
Woodworth’s critique, 151 167,171
psychology, 14-15, 18-20, 114 Strachey, James, 99
psychotherapy stream of consciousness, 111
as education, 220, 22In, 22Iff., Stumpf, Carl, 40
227 subconsciousness, 79, 80
the question of insight, 222-23 sublimation, 142-47, 150-52
rival schools, 112 change of aim from sexual to
as supplementary rather than social, 143
re-education, 220n investigated by Taylor, 150
Tyler on alternatives to, 227n- not applicable to urinary
228n impulse or desire for a smoke,
144-46
origin of term, 142
Rabkin, Richard, 118, 183-84,
questioned by Woodworth, 151
ref. 169
as related to inhibition, suppres¬
Rancurello, A. C., 213n, ref. 231
sion, and repression, 145-46
Rapaport, David, 204n, 205,
subliminal consciousness, 75ff.
207n, ref. 231
as a concept in psychical
rationalization, 4, 105, 142 research, 78, 80-83
Ratner, J., ref. 169 differentiated from the uncon¬
Razran, Gregory, 172-73, ref. 192
scious, 83
reaction-time experiments, 46 interpreted as dissociation, 85
reason, 104, 213 Myers’ use of term, 75-77
redintegration, 205 supernormal phenomena, 77, 80
religion, 79, 80, 220 suppression, 145-46
religious conversion, 73, 74 symbolism, 109-10, 115
repression, 145-46, 147ff., 148n sympathy, 14-15
Riviere, Joan, 147n
Royce, J. R., 214n, ref. 231 Taylor, W. S., 150, ref. 169
Teevan, R. C., ref. 167
Salmon, Wesley, 185n, ref. 192 telepathy, 76, 82, 83, 223
Sanford, R. N., ref. 230 tensions, 157
Sarnoff, Irving, 184n, ref. 192 thinking, 198-99, 204ff.
schema, 159 Thorpe, W. H., 133-34, ref. 169
Schopenhauer, A., 26, 27 Titchener, E. B., 15, 96-97, 98,
Schwartz, G. E., 173, ref. 192 ref. 21,90
238 • Index

tropistic theory, 13 reviews of Philosophy, 30-31,

Tucker, G. R., ref. 168 33ff.
Tyler, Leona A., 227n-228n, and teleology, 27-28
ref. 231 three layers of the uncon¬
scious, 26
unanschauliches Denken (image¬ unconscious clairvoyance, 28
less thought), 203 volitional consciousness in
unbewusster Schluss (unconscious animals, 27-28
inference), 54, 62 voyeurism, 144n
unconscious. See von Hartmann;
Wallace, R. K., 19n, ref. 21
James
Ward, James, 79
accepted as reality by Whyte, 23
Warren, R. M., ref. 90
concept commonplace before
Warren, R. P., ref. 90
Freud, 22
Watson, John B., 18-19, ref. 21
described as fountainhead of
Weisskopf, Victor F., 52n, ref. 90
mind, 188
Whyte, Lancelot, 3, 22-24, 61-64,
Freud’s understanding of, 92,
ref. 21
186-88
Wickramaskera, L, 19n, ref. 21
functions independently of con¬
Wilson, G. D.,ref. 191
sciousness, 195
wish, 4, 210-11,228-29
influence on psychotherapy,
Wolfson, H. A., ref. 169
219-20
Wolman, B. B., ref. 113
multiple meanings of, 17Iff.
Woods, R. L., 19n, ref. 21
not a separate autonomous
Woodworth, R. S., 31, ref. 37,
agency, 225-26
169,231
its paradoxical implications,
critique of Freudian psychology,
199-200
151
pre-Freudian objections to,
defense of concept of instinct,
176n, 194ff.
132-33
as primary process having “no
negating, no dubiety, no instincts differentiated from
varying degree of certainty,” native capacities, 132
188-89 investigation of imageless thought
Razran’s “observable uncon¬ or what he was first to
scious,” 172-73 describe as non-sensory think¬
related to “physical processes,” ing, 203ff.
176n McDougall’s instinct psychology
and rival analytic schools, 223-24 criticized, 135-38
Spinoza’s view of, 121, 125 stressed difference between drives
the “true psychical reality,” 187 and mechanisms, 135
unconscious inference, 53ff. theory of motivation, 134-35,
unconscious motivation, 47, 112 138-40
Wundt, W., 53, 58-59, 61, 62, 165,
Vischer, F. T., 15 194, ref. 90
voluntarism, 165 Wurzburg School. See imageless
von Hartmann, Eduard, ref. 37 thought; Woodworth
biography, 24-25 Biihler’s experimental studies of
and earlier writers, 26 imageless thinking, 204-7
in evolution of psychology, 34 headed by Oswald Kiilpe, 46,201
inductive method, 25 ipiageless thought, 201, 203ff.
influenced by Hegel, 25 investigated nature of Aufgaben
Kantian metaphysics, 29 or mental sets, determining
methods, 29, 33 tendencies, conscious atti¬
Philosophy of the Unconscious, tudes, 45-46, 206
25 ff. reaction-time studies, 224-25
pre-Freudian unconscious, 20 Zilboorg, G., ref. 113
What makes The Unconscious particularly fascinating is the orderly,
logical, tightly reasoned process by which Professor Klein arrives at his
final conclusions. He writes cogently and with rare lucidity, and illustrates
his thesis throughout with insightful and delightful examples. No one will
come away from reading this book without a vastly enriched historical,
scientific and philosophic understanding of the complex elements that have
gone into the evolution of our current ideas about conscious and
unconscious mental processes in human beings. 99
Judd Marmor, M.D.
Franz Alexander Profes^sor of Psychiatry
University of Southern California

Klein's final synthesis is interesting and useful. Having derived a notion of

unconscious mind as that part of tacit knowledge of which we are not
consciously aware, he then proposes a model of therapy which is essentially
a matter of consciousness expansion: increasing self-awareness through
educationally increasing self-knowledge. This model of therapy is already
popular. What is nice is that Klein has provided an historical and
intellectual foundation for it. 99
Eric Wanner
Rockefeller University

D. B. KLEIN
Professor Emeritus of The University of Southern California

D. B. Klein has written a charming and well-researched book that reflects

his 50-odd years of experience in the field. The book’s historico-critical
approach elaborates such neglected concepts as psychotherapy as an
educational process and the difference between behavior as motivated
and behavior as caused. The Unconscious also reexamines such time-worn
fallacies as sublimated motives and the paradox of unconscious
consciousness.
Dr. Klein stresses the unity of mental life: man has one mind not two.
Moreover, he repeatedly calls our attention to the distinction-between
conclusions based upon sound research and those attributable to
unconfirmed hypotheses. In so doing he echoes Freud's observation, "Our
science involves a number of hypotheses—it is hard to say whether they
should be regarded as postulates or as products of our researches. ”

Goodyear Publishing Company, Inc., Santa Monica, CA 90401

Cover Design: Debra McQuiston

ISBN: 0-87620-922-3