UNCONSCIOUSNESS: INTRO: Some of the activities of the body are certainly not conscious. The secretions of our glands, sweating and digestion etc … are activities that do not involve an element of consciousness, since they are physiological states. Such activities are usually classified as non-conscious .In fact; such was the conception of the unconscious in the philosophy of Descartes and Alain. And the great Greek Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle – if we identify what they classified as reason with consciousness. Some philosophers believe that man’s mind has different levels of consciousness; the unconscious being the level where consciousness it as its least degree. Others believe that there is a level in the human mind that is different from consciousness, it is the unconscious. Claiming the discovery of the unconscious as the level that escapes the control of human reason gave man an image that is very different from that of classical philosophy. In classical philosophy, man is a being with a super mind and has an immortal spirit; his mind is characterized by free and conscious thoughts; and he has been created in the image of God. The unconscious with respect to them, cannot be a part of the human mind – which is basically conscious and free. After the discovery of the unconscious, man changed into a being who is half animal and half saint; a very vulnerable being that only has the illusion of self-mastery. PROBLEMATIC: * What does the term unconscious mean? * Does it refer to a level of the mind where is least conscious, or is it a different level that has its own existence within our psychic life? * Does the unconscious really exist as a part of the human mind? * How can we prove the existence of what we cannot be aware of? * How can something be mental and concrete at the same time? CONFLICT: The Freudian understanding of unconsciousness: psychoanalysis assumes that unconscious processes are of two kinds: those that become conscious easily, and those that are subject to repression. The unconscious is the part of the mind in which mental processes are dynamically unconscious. The unconscious is a mental structure with specific characteristics; it is not the simple absence of consciousness. It is the seat of our instinctive impulses, repressed and forbidden inclinations, early childhood experiences, and very shocking traumatic events. (Check the textbook to see the proofs he gives for the existence of unconsciousness, like dreams, forgetting…) The most direct attack made against the notion of Freud’s unconscious was the proof given by the French Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre distinguished between unconscious being (being-in-itself) and conscious being (being-for-itself). Being-in-itself is the being of the object of consciousness; it is concrete, lacks the ability to change, and is unaware of itself; it exists in an independent and non-rational way. Being-for-itself is free and conscious of its own but is also incomplete. For Sartre this undefined or undetermined nature is what defines man. According to Sartre, consciousness has two forms: Objective and Reflective. The first is related to the awareness of the objects of the surrounding world. The second is related to the awareness of our awareness of the objects of the world. CONCLUSION: According to the Freudian conception of the term unconscious, it is characterized by the following: Contrary to the conscious, the unconscious ignores the categories of space and time. This characteristic is best observed in dreams where the notions of time and space are much distorted. Consciousness in intolerant of contradictions. It cannot accept the existence and nonexistence of something at the same time.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 08:18:03 +0000
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