By Gregory Mitchell
In a little cited article by Jean Piaget entitled 'The affective unconscious and the cognitive unconscious (1973),' Piaget said, "I am persuaded that a day will come when the psychology of cognitive functions and psychoanalysis will have to fuse in a general theory which will improve both, through mutual correction." This process of combining the most workable of behavioral and cognitive psychologies and the various psychoanalytic theories is still continuing today. Understanding the personality often seems like solving a puzzle from which important pieces are missing, pieces which are impossible even to describe.
An analogy is the puzzle which asks you to make four equilateral triangles with six matches. At first, if you think of the matches as lying flat the problem appears and actually is quite insoluble. But as soon as you think of solving it in a three dimensional space, by forming a pyramid, you find the solution.
The solution to the puzzle of psychopathology and indeed of human behavior in everyday life appears if we free ourselves from thinking in the traditional two dimensions of a person's behavior in relation to his affective life, and instead think in three dimensions: behavior, affective mechanisms, and what has been so sorely overlooked, their relationship to cognitive mechanisms.
It's no wonder that so much has seemed confusing and unintelligible - without understanding the cognitive processes a whole dimension of awareness and responsiveness is missing. If a person's behavior so often seems opaque and inscrutable to observational analysis, this is not simply because of the presence or absence of a particular behavior, but because it derives from an unconscious process below and behind the overt behavior - not ordinarily seen on the surface at the level of the observed.
Cognitive processes need to be viewed in a new way, from a different perspective, the omission of which gives rise not only to incomplete understanding but to faulty conclusions concerning a person's behavior. Just as Sigmund Freud's momentous discovery consisted of revealing the subconscious and unconscious processes in a person's affective life, the affective unconscious, so now we must go below the surface and reveal the subconscious and unconscious processes in a person's cognitive life that are called the cognitive unconscious. Since the cognitive unconscious is just as allusive as the affective unconscious, its exploration opens up a new dimension both theoretically and from the point of view of psychotherapeutic technique, up to quite recently uncharted and all but ignored by psychoanalytic theory.
The notion that unconscious processes are important elements of mental life is commonly ascribed to Sigmund Freud, but in fact it was an old idea before Freud was even born. W. B. Carpenter ('Mental Physiology' 1862) first used the term "unconscious cerebration" to express the activity of the cortical neurons which are not associated with conscious changes. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the idea of a cognitive unconscious had all but been forgotten. After Freud, the focus moved entirely to the affective unconscious. Carpenter's initial discovery was revived in the 1970s due to the work of child psychologist Jean Piaget and clinical psychologist Melvin L. Weiner, who was versed in both cognitive and depth psychology. Both psychologists recognized and described the cognitive unconscious.
Over the past two decades, a new picture of the cognitive unconscious has emerged from a variety of disciplines that are broadly part of cognitive science. According to this picture, unconscious processes seem to be capable of doing many things that were thought to require intention, deliberation, and conscious awareness. Moreover, they accomplish these things without the conflict and drama of the psychoanalytic unconscious. These processes range from complex information processing, through goal pursuit and emotions, to cognitive control and self-regulation.
Contemporary research in cognitive psychology reveals the impact of nonconscious mental structures and processes on the individual's conscious experience, thought, and action. Research on perceptual-cognitive and motoric skills indicates that they are habituated through experience, and thus rendered automatic or unconscious. In addition, research on subliminal perception, implicit memory and hypnosis indicates that events can affect mental functions even though they cannot be consciously perceived or remembered. These findings suggest a tripartite division of the cognitive unconscious into truly Unconscious (inaccessible) mental processes operating on knowledge structures that may themselves be Preconscious (just below the surface of consciousness and therefore accessible) or Subconscious (accessible given an appropriate stimuli). These processes not only co-exist but also interact in complex ways. Conscious percepts, concepts, rules, knowledge, and so on emerge from unconscious processes, in a bottom-up fashion. It has been suggested that this is the essential way by which consciousness emerges.
In addition, further types of cognitive unconscious function have been described by eminent psychologists. Jung identified the Collective Unconscious (accessible in deep sleep) which connects the individual mind to the wider network of human unconscious thinking; and Assagioli identified the higher unconscious or Superconscious (accessible at moments of heightened clarity and insight) which supports our spiritual intelligence.
The psycholinguist Noam Chomsky argued that human language was mediated by 'deep' grammatical structures which are inaccessible to conscious introspection, and can be known only by inference. Clinical psychologist Nathaniel Branden talks of this in a different way: the subcognitive aspects of thinking. What happens in those few hundreds of milliseconds between a person asking a question and receiving an answer? This is a refractory period in which no apparent conscious thought is taking place, however much is going on, as can be revealed with special skin resistance meters, EEG equipment and brain scans. The thought that comes into a person's mind at the end of that period, a thought that is eventually communicated with a greater or lesser amount of editing, is a final product of a long chain of processes that are essentially unconscious.
One of the goals of Mind Development's structural approach is to bring the underlying affective and cognitive structures into awareness and disclose their mode of operation. When the cognitive and affective subconscious are made conscious, a person can develop new structures and fundamentally new ways of feeling, perceiving, thinking and behaving.
In summary, there is a deep Unconscious of primary experience that is non-experienced - it has not been consciously experienced; this may have elements connected to the human race, through DNA or other mysterious means, as Jung described. Overlying that is a cognitive Subconscious, which is left brained by and large, and an affective subconscious, which is by and large right brained - though there is evidence that the right brain is capable of some types of cognitive tasks with a spatial nature, and the left brain is capable of some emotions such as interest and certain aesthetic considerations. Over and above that there is the Preconscious, which includes our recallable memories and store of knowledge, and which provides a context for the subconscious cognitive and affective resources that emerge given the appropriate stimulation or reminder - a meaning, perception, or feeling that is associated with subconscious content. This enables us to shine the light of consciousness on the deeper mind and draw intuitive insights and creative inspiration, at which moments we are in touch with our Superconscious mind.
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Home-study course to improve the mind's capacity for perception and integration between left and right brain, boosting memory, creativity, natural eyesight and drawing ability.
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Learn how to read both quickly and in depth over a wide range of subjects, and then to be able to appreciate, analyze and apply what you have read with clear and incisive intelligence.
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This is the recommended sequence in which to do the courses, though if you have a special interest, each course can be done independently.
The following supplementary course will interest those who are active in sports...
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