Unconscious

   1) How the Idea and the Term "Unconscious Mind" Entered European Thought

   Prior to Descartes and his sharp definition of the dualism there was no cause to contemplate the possible existence of unconscious mentality as part of a separate realm of mind. Many religious and speculative thinkers had taken for granted factors lying outside but influencing immediate awareness. . . . Until an attempt had been made (with apparent success) to choose awareness as the defining characteristic of mind, there was no occasion to invent the idea of unconscious mind. . . . It is only after Descartes that we find, first the idea and then the term "unconscious mind" entering European thought. (Whyte, 1962, p. 25)

   2) Why Awareness Cannot Be Taken as the Criterion of Mentality

   If there are two realms, physical and mental, awareness cannot be taken as the criterion of mentality [because] the springs of human nature lie in the unconscious . . . as the realm which links the moments of human awareness with the background of organic processes within which they emerge. (Whyte, 1962, p. 63)

   3) The Unconscious Was Not Invented by Freud

   [T]he unconscious was no more invented by Freud than evolution was invented by Darwin, and has an equally impressive pedigree, reaching back to antiquity. . . . At the dawn of Christian Europe the dominant influence were the Neoplatonists; foremost among them Plotinus, who took it for granted that "feelings can be present without awareness of them," that "the absence of a conscious perception is no proof of the absence of mental activity," and who talked confidently of a "mirror" in the mind which, when correctly aimed, reflects the processes going on inside it, when aimed in another direction, fails to do so-but the process goes on all the same. Augustine marvelled at man's immense store of unconscious memories-"a spreading, limitless room within me-who can reach its limitless depth?"

   The knowledge of unconscious mentation had always been there, as can be shown by quotations from theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas, mystics like Jacob Boehme, physicians like Paracelsus, astronomers like Kepler, writers and poets as far apart as Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Montaigne. This in itself is in no way remarkable; what is remarkable is that this knowledge was lost during the scientific revolution, more particularly under the impact of its most influential philosopher, Rene Descartes. (Koestler, 1964, p. 148)

   4) The Constructive Nature of Automatic Cognitive Functioning Argues for the Existence of Unconscious Activity

   The constructive nature of the automatic functioning argues the existence of an activity analogous to consciousness though hidden from observation, and we have therefore termed it unconscious. The negative prefix suggests an opposition, but it is no more than verbal, not any sort of hostility or incompatibility being implied by it, but simply the absence of consciousness. Yet a real opposition between the conscious and the unconscious activity does subsist in the limitations which the former tends to impose on the latter. (Ghiselin, 1985, p. 7)