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The unconscious I.
Left hand of darkness: what is the unconscious?
Ovid told stories of descent into an underworld.
Freud tracked unconscious structure as a cause of pathological behavior.
Jung conversed with an unconscious he found to be brimming with marvelous
images and stories. Buddhist philosophers name an unconditioned self more
truthful and capable than the illusory self of conscious ego. In Workshop
1 we will briefly consider the history of the idea of the unconscious, and
some of the many things that may be meant by the term.
We will go on to look at recent science
that illuminates questions such as these: What is different about conscious
function in a brain? What is the significance of right and left hemisphere
specialization for linguistic and spatial intelligence? How do we dream
and imagine? How do we recognize truths we could not have formulated ourselves?
What is intuition? Is there really a belly brain or hara?
- 1-0. Preamble
- 1-1. Conceptual clarification
- a. Rough definition
- b. Aspects of, how we notice it
- c. History of the notion
- d. Mythology of the uncon
- e. How does the uncon talk about itself
in dreams
- 1-2. Physiology: how to imagine the
uncon scientifically
- a. What is consciousness physiologically?
- b. What is the unconscious physiologically?
- i. 'silent' hemisphere
- ii. knowledge derived from subliminal senses ('the paranormal'),
e.g. Jacobson's organ
- iii. wider cortical network surrounding core network
- iv. activity in alternative plexes such as the 'belly brain'
- v. whole body in larger world
- c. Dreaming and imagining - how do
they happen?
- d. Language and the brain
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- 1. Conceptual clarification: intro to the
philosophy of the uncon. How to think about it.
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- a. Rough definition. What can we mean by 'the
unconscious?'
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- i. Intelligent function without awareness.
- ii. What we know that we don't know we know.
b. What's the evidence? What might the unconscious
explain? (found this list on the internet)
- most bodily processes are not consciously controlled
eg breathing, blood circulation, blinking
- creative ideas that do not appear to come from
conscious thinking
- the way thinking spontaneous moves from one idea
or recollection to another
- language creation, word search
- waking in the morning with an insight or solution
to a problem
- the fact that we can run downstairs without thinking
where we place each footfall
- the fact that we forget certain things but later
spontaneously recall them
- the way we learn certain skills so that they
become largely automatic eg driving a car, playing a sport
- instinctive motives such as self-preservation
and sex often operate without our noticing
- various observations of abnormal psychology:
multiple personality, hypnotism and Hilgard's 'hidden observer' split brain
results
- slips of the tongue, gestures that give away
hidden motives
- reflexes
- subliminal perception
- hypnotic and trance phenomena
- psychological processes such as denial, introjection
and projection
- intuitive knowing
- emotional response whose cause we don't know
- the fact that we can recall past events and thoughts
suggests they are 'there' but not conscious
c. Western patriarchal history of the idea
of the uncon. (From Tallis - see bibliog.)
Plato soul a chariot drawn by two horses, one
noble and one unrestrained. The charioteer must consider both.
Leibniz "insensible stimuli mingled with
the actions of objects and our bodily interiors"
Romantic movement in Germany countering Enlightenment
emphasis on the urban, social, rational. Schiller and Goethe creative faculties
liberated from reason, Schopenhauer irrational drives. Painter Friedrich
feeling for wild landscape vs Wren's architecture of natural materials
'disciplined by' mathematics. Wordsworth's Prelude, autobiography
of growth of creative self. Coleridge journals and public writings, acute
observation of perception, imagining, memory, feeling, creative psychology
schooled in opium. Swedenborg 1760, spiritualism, automatic writing
and drawing.
Mesmer 1775, healing crisis correcting deficiency
of soul fluid. Herbart 1824 notion of threshold or limen, notion
of repression or active inhibition. Fechner notion of absolute threshold.
Carus (also German) notion of mental 'levels' and laws, a nonconscious
structure constantly active.
Janet 1885 began with ideas about hypnotic suggestion
at a distance, went on to "psychological analysis," cure of hysterical
symptoms caused by "fixed subconscious ideas" by working to recovering
memory. Notion of splitting caused by trauma, that results in "narrowing
of consciousness." It takes energy to maintain this narrowing. Investigation
of dissociation by, for instance, writing while attending to something
else. Hysterical crisis a reinactment of some sort.
Freud Psychoanalysis. 1915 seven-part essay on
the unconscious. Das Unbewuste. "The unconscious is the larger
sphere, which includes within it the smaller sphere of the conscious."
Three-part division into conscious, preconscious, unconscious. Concept
of unconscious phantasy, and associated processes such as projection and
identification. Notion of defenses of ego: repression, reaction formation.
Notion of dream work, symbolisation. Techniques of free association, watching
slips, using transference, dream interpretion.
Jung 1912 Analytic psychology. 1912 A sense of
personal communication with the unconscious using unusual impulses, dreams,
fantasies, creation: "consciously submitted myself to the impulses
of the unconscious." 'The years when I was pursuing my inner images."
"Material that burst forth from the unconscious and at first swamped
me prima materia for a lifetime's work." Divisions into conscious,
personal uncon, racial uncon, collective uncon. Archetypes, a typology
of mythological motifs, "reservoirs of enthusiasm". Interest
in uniting or integrating conscious and unconscious mind.
Breton 1924 manifesto Le poisson. Artistic
techniques looking to blend everyday consciousness and material derived
from the uncon into a superreality. Creation by a process like dreamwork,
odd juxtapositions.
20th century psychology and neuroscience:
Neurosurgeon Penfield, 30s, 40s stimulating complex
trains of memory by running current into brain through electrodes.
Experiments on subliminal perception.
Sperry 1960s investigation of split brain patients.
Hemispheres seem to perceive separately. There still is connection through
emotional system, so isolated other hemisphere can respond to emotionally
significant presentations.
Throughout the century many investigations of
subliminal perception, 'preconscious processing,' memory.
First blindsight study 1970s.
Brain imaging studies. E.g., Recent scanning results
on hemisphere segregation, neglected or abused children show up to 40%
reduced corpus callosum joining cortical hemispheres. May be evidence of
segregated function, independent personalities.
d. Mythology of the unconscious
There are two interesting and different questions.
One is, what is the actual source of phenomena we take as evidence of the
uncon? Another is, what is the structure of our fantasies about the uncon?
How do we imagine the uncon? What do we want the uncon to be? Why?
The druids, magicians and witches of Europe, with
oral tradition going back to their own prehistory, had working knowledge
of evocation of states, and so of the uncon, but without adequate theory.
The surrealists, and the romantics and symbolistes behind them, and then
behind them the Germans who imported Eastern philosophies, were
working on theory in some sense, but they, and Freud too, did not have
a developed biology of mind. In its absence certain metaphors recur.
Common metaphors:
Underworld, otherworld.
Hidden space or spaces.
Basement. Secret room.
Storeroom or storehouse.
Language of putting something away and getting it back: e.g., "removed
them from thinking and planning of which the agent was aware," "continued
to exist in the unconscious." Another example: "Material is constantly
moving from the conscious mind to the unconscious and vice versa. The conscious
mind only holds a small amount of information at any given time. In many
cases information - especially easily accessible memories - can be called
into awareness at will."
Hidden person or persons.
Personifications such as id, ego, superego. Hilgard: hypnosis and the hidden
observer who isn't hypnotised.
Hidden self, dark self.
Unwanted motives and feeling. Knowledge of unwanted facts. Laing the divided
self. Competition, agony of jealousy, desire, betrayal - one is withdrawn
from these, withholds oneself from these. Starhawk said Talking Self, Larger
Self and Younger Self, Younger self being gateway to Larger Self.
God or gods.
Self or Atman, the Greek pantheon. Unexplained knowledge and powers. Is
there a metaself that keeps track of what ego doesn't want to know? Tracks
the relation of different specialized conscious states?
'A language'
of the unconscious. (Is someone speaking it?)
A computer.
d. How does the uncon talk about itself in
dreams?
"The unconscious likes what refers to itself."
- Water. Tsunamis, rivers, lakes.
- Counterpart selves or spaces or structures.
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- >a contrasexual figure
- >dark woman singing duets with me
- >discovering an unknown adjoining apartment.
Dirty or clean. (Doris Lessing.)
- >twoness in general
- >mirroring movement
2. Physiology: another way to imagine the uncon
Cognitive science: multidisciplinary study of cognition,
drawing on evolutionary theory, neuroscience, experimental psychology, philosophy,
anthropology, linguistics, computer science.
a. What is consciousness physiologically?
Dualist stories: immaterial, supernatural, site
of volition, immortal.
Consciousness as sentience.
Consciousness as self-consciousness. Forebrain.
Why some of them think of 'consciousness' in a certain way.
Conscious function tracked with imaging devices.
Brain activity less in automatic function.
Edelman cortical networks. Recurrent synchronization,
subnet integraton and segregation, distributed but synchronized core
dynamic subnet, larger global mappings.
b. What is unconsciousness physiologically?
Different physical structures, which yet have
something in common?
i. silent hemisphere
Right hemisphere.
Silent hemisphere is not completely silent. Consciousness
and both hemispheres. Talking Self and Younger Self.
ii. knowledge derived from unlanguaged, unusually
developed or subliminal senses ('the paranormal')
Somatosense
Jacobson's organ, a pair of tiny pits in the nostril,
sensitive to trace quantities of chemicals. Separate from the olfactory
system. Called a vestigial organ, corresponds to the pits snakes use to
smell. Connects to the amygdala, an emotion-related structure in the midbrain.
Detects pheromones, chemicals used to signal information about gender,
reproductive status, dominance status, which are "more liable to be
perceived unconsciously."
Echolocation
Blindsight
Magnetic or electrical field sensing
Unusually developed smell
iii. wider cortical/subcortical network surrounding
core network
'The unconscious' as Edelman's global mappings.
Comprehensive network including sensory, somatic, action, self-monitoring
and multi-modal connective subnets.
Evolutionarily older areas in mid-brain, brain-stem,
etc.
Instinctive function operating nonconsciously
for social/cultural reasons.
Function that works better if not consciously
directed skills even linguistic skills.
Traumatic dissociation, damping. Goldstein The
organism. Gestalt psychology and completion of structure.
iv. activity in alternative plexes such as
the 'belly brain'
Autonomic nervous system
" keeps our heart beating, regulates our neuro-transmitters, hormones,
neurological bio-chemistry, governs our breathing, internal organs of digestion,
endocrine and immune systems, etc." Response to temperature, pressure,
oxygen, smells, gravity, the vestibular system, etc.
Belly brain.
A plexus of brain-like neurons in the digestive tract. The enteric nervous
system. Michael Gershon at Columbia. Around 100 billion nerve cells. May
be responsible for action that happens before cortical response.
v. whole body in larger world
Subliminal function of the whole brain, or whole
nervous system.
Living the larger self of the whole body
Jung, the conscious is like a cork floating on
the ocean of the unconscious.
Collective unconscious genetically transmitted
structure of the whole body.
Integrated whole body response to whole embodied
circumstance in the world.
c. Dreaming and imagining - how do they happen?
Perceptual response in the cortex.
Deliberate attention and attentional priming from
the forebrain
Damasio and backflow organization through convergence
zones. Deliberate imagining as perceptual simulation. Seeming to see, hear,
feel, speak, know.
Slow wave sleep: paralysis and cortical deactivation.
Dream sleep: metabolic activity may be greater than waking state. Body
isn't paralyzed. Eye movement, posture shifts.
Dream sleep: deactivation of frontal cortex and
activation of sensory cortex through emotion-related subcortical and cortical
structures at the center of the brain (limbic and paralimbic).
Hippocampus and parahippocampus: large and small
space knowledge and its relation to memory.
d. Language and the brain
Left hemisphere in people left-dominant for language
comes to be differently organized: smaller faster networks. Within-hemisphere
language network. Talking self.
Right hemisphere language is younger, simpler,
more connected to sensing and feeling. Younger self.
Convergence regions. Face recognition, object
identity, object action. Right and left hemisphere convergence regions
connected through the corpus callosum.
Gendlin and constellating a felt sense by focusing.
Writing or speaking from the structure one is.allowing networks to stabilize,
intensify, make further connections, restructure.
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