Does the Unconscious Mind Exist? Exploring the Science
The concept of the unconscious mind is central to hypnotherapyfor many practitioners, but does it really exist or is it just a convenient metaphor? It’s a question that’s kept not justhypnotherapists but psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers busy debatingfor many years. And the answer could be important to how we work with clientsevery day. So, I decided to look at the evidence to see what I could find out.
Have you ever had a gut feeling about something withoutknowing why? Or found yourself reacting emotionally before you even have timeto think? Some people believe that this type of experience points to theexistence of an "unconscious mind" - a hidden part of us that shapes ourthoughts, emotions, and behaviours but is beyond our conscious awareness.
Sigmund Freud [1] was one of the first to talk about theunconscious mind, though he subdivided it into the ego (that deals with reality),the superego (the moral compass or conscience) and id (biological drives and self-gratification).He saw emotional issues as something that arose from conflict between thesedifferent elements.
Carl Jung [2] expanded on Freud’s work and also introducedthe idea of the collective unconscious - a genetically inherited store of knowledge,ideas, and archetypes common to all human beings, regardless of culture or background.
The Case Against the Unconscious Mind
Early psychologists like Watson and Skinner dismissed theunconscious mind as unscientific, because it lacked empirical evidence - somethingthat was expected more and more in research. [3]. In fact, both Behaviourismand Cognitivism arose from attempts to provide this sort of evidence and bring psychologymore in line with other sciences such as biology and chemistry.
Behaviourism teaches that we are all born as a ‘tabula rasa’– a clean slate – and that we learn all our behaviours through association andtrial and error as we experience more and more of the world. Behaviourists arenot interested in internal processes but focus on observable behaviours thatcan be measured and recorded.
As an example, an earthworm, after a couple of shocks, willavoid touching an electric plate placed in its vivarium. But saying that it ‘learns’or ‘remembers’ is a big step - it implies a kind of anthropomorphic consciousnessthat we can’t know that an earthworm has. Behavioural conditioning explainsthis perfectly adequately.
But there are limitations to the behavioural model. For onething, it fails to explain responses which seem to be inborn, or which involvecomplex learning, like language. And it doesn’t really reflect our subjectiveexperiences which are often influenced by thoughts, memories, and perceptions.
Cognitive psychology [4] allows for this by admitting internalprocesses as a valid part of research. They can’t be observed, but they can be reportedby the participant, measured on scales of one to ten and so on. Therefore, theycan be compared with different participants, over time etc. Statistics can be produced,and conclusions can be drawn. (Always supposing, of course, that we areconsciously aware enough of our internal processes to report them.)
There is another approach, Predictive Processing Theory [5].a This suggests that the brain continuously creates predictions about the worldbased on our experiences. These predictions come from a trial-and-errorprocess, and they constantly update based on new experiences. PredictiveProcessing suggests that what we think of as our unconscious is simplylow-level, automatic processing that happens without us having to pay it anyattention.
These are pretty reductionist explanations due to limitedspace, but you get the idea. And none allows for the existence of anunconscious mind.
Evidence for the Existence of the Unconscious Mind
Too late for Freud and Jung to say, ‘I told you so’, neuroscienceis starting to provide evidence that the unconscious mind is perhaps more of areality than some would think. Some of this is about memory and the way we useit.
Implicit memory refers to the sort of recollection that helpsus carry out familiar behaviours automatically: driving a car or writing ourname. Priming refers to how associative memory can shape our reactions. Forexample, read this word.
Pepper.
Did the word salt pop into your mind? For many of you itwill have done, because they are so often linked together. Both priming andimplicit memory experiences happen without us being consciously aware of them, implyingthat some sort of thinking or reaction is going on underneath consciousawareness. [6].
In addition, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) researchshows that, when we are making decisions, thoughts are happening in the brain upto 11 seconds before participants are consciously aware of them. [7]
Professor Joel Pearson says that we may have thoughts ‘onstandby’, often from previous experiences, in parts of the brain we areconsciously unaware of: he called them ‘unconscious hallucinations’ [8]. When wemake a decision, the executive parts of the brain (traditionally connected withthe conscious mind) tend to choose the strongest standby thought. For example,if you have a scary moment with a spider, then RUN AWAY may be the strongeststandby thought next time you come across one. As you’re not aware of thestandby thoughts, you’d be heading for the door before you consciously thoughtabout what to do.
It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that implicit memory,priming, and standby thoughts offer insight into unconscious processing.
The Unconscious Mind in Hypnotherapy
Does it really matter whether the unconscious mind exists ornot? Maybe, because whether you see the unconscious as a literal and influentialpart of the client’s mind or simply a metaphor, you are often working withthose parts of the mind the client is unaware of.
The concept of the unconscious mind can be useful to explainto clients why they might do things, like smoking, that they’re consciouslyaware are harmful. It also shows why willpower isn’t enough to overcome them.
However, not all clients will identify with the concept ofan unconscious mind. In these cases, the alternative explanations - ‘workingwith the automatic part of your mind’, ‘reshaping the predictions your brainmakes about the world’ or ‘tapping into the part of you that controls thethings you do automatically, like habits and reflexes’ - may be better.
The Role of Hypnosis and Unconscious Processes
Regardless of how we define it, hypnosis seems to engageparts of the brain responsible for automatic and emotional processing.Neuroimaging studies show that, during hypnosis, there are changes in activityin areas linked to self-awareness and executive control, such as the anteriorcingulate cortex and default mode network [9]. This supports the idea thathypnotherapy is capable of accessing mental processes that might otherwiseremain outside of conscious awareness.
While the idea of an unconscious mind in the sense thatFreud described is not exactly universally popular these days, the concept of ‘unconsciousprocessing’ is widely accepted and shows that there are thoughts, feelings andresponses that go on below our conscious awareness.
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References:
[1] Freud, S. (1915) ‘The Unconscious’, Collected Papers, Volume 4. London: Hogarth Press.
[2] Jung, C. G. (1921) Psychological Types. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[3] Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
[4] Baars, B. J. (1988) A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5] Friston, K. (2010) ‘The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), pp. 127-138.
[6] Schacter, D. L. (1987) ‘Implicit Memory: History and Current Status’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(3), pp. 501-518.
[7] Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H. J. and Haynes, J. D. (2008) ‘Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain’, Nature Neuroscience, 11(5), pp. 543-545.
[8] cited in Gilbert, L. (2019). Our brains reveal our choices before we’re even aware of them: study. [online] UNSW Sites. Available at: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news....
[9] Oakley, D. A. and Halligan, P. W. (2013) ‘Hypnotic suggestion and cognitive neuroscience’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(10), pp. 576-586.
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Author: Debbie Waller is an experienced hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy trainer. She is the author of Anxiety to Calm: a Practical Guide to a Laid-Back Life, The Hypnotherapist's Companion, Their Worlds, Your Words, and The Metaphor Toolbox, all available from Amazon or direct from the author. Find out more about Debbie's services on
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