The Place of The Normative Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Psychoanalytic Psychology © 2014 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 31, No. 1, 100 –118 0736-9735/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0035372
THE PLACE OF THE NORMATIVE

UNCONSCIOUS IN PSYCHOANALYTIC
THEORY AND PRACTICE
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Valentina Stoycheva, PhD Joel Weinberger, PhD, and

Adelphi University and Kings Emily Singer, MA
County Hospital Center, Brooklyn, Adelphi University
New York
The study of unconscious processes has always been central to psychoanalyti-

cally oriented psychologists. Within the past 3 decades, social and cognitive
psychologists also have begun investigating unconscious processes. These in-
vestigators have focused on nonconflictual and unmotivated unconscious pro-
cesses, which they termed implicit and which we call the “normative” uncon-
scious. These processes play an important role in guiding individuals’ behavior
but have been somewhat underemphasized in psychoanalytic circles. In this
paper, we review 5 implicit processes—attribution, implicit memory, implicit
learning, affective salience, and automaticity, none of which are motivated by
conflict, defense, or deprivation. Nevertheless, these processes operate in both
patients and therapists, including in the treatment room. We describe the
operation of the normative unconscious, review some advances in the field, and
discuss the clinical implications of these processes.
Keywords: implicit processes, normative unconscious, causal attributions, af-

fective primacy, automaticity
Traditionally, psychoanalysis has been at the forefront of studying unconscious processes.

Fayek (2005), for example, contended that the foundation of psychoanalytic theory is the
unconscious. For some time, psychoanalysis was the only discipline within psychology
that gave central importance to the unconscious. That is no longer the case. There is now
a great deal of research outside of psychoanalysis aimed at illuminating various aspects of
the unconscious, much of it unfamiliar to psychoanalytically oriented readers. In 1999,
Valentina Stoycheva, PhD, Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi Univer-
sity and Kings County Hospital Center, Brooklyn, New York; Joel Weinberger, PhD, and Emily
Singer, MA, Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Weinberger, PhD, Adelphi
University, 1 South Avenue, Garden City, NY 11530. E-mail: researchberger@yahoo.com
100
THE NORMATIVE UNCONSCIOUS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 101
Westen reviewed a large number of controlled empirical investigations, supporting the

psychoanalytic notion that “much of mental life is unconscious, including cognitive,
affective, and motivational processes” (p. 1061). A few years later, Westen and Gabbard
(2002), examined the latest developments in clinical psychoanalysis and cognitive neu-
roscience and pointed out that different types of unconscious processes (dynamic and
drive dominated, prelinguistic, associative, nonconflictual) had been extensively studied
by these two disciplines. More important, they called for an integration of the scientific
knowledge gained in both, to further our understanding of how the mind works. In this
paper, we review some of the advances in studying the nondynamic unconscious that have
emerged from social and cognitive psychology. It is our belief that psychoanalysts and
psychoanalytically trained clinical psychologists can profit from knowing about this work,
which has both clinical and theoretical implications.
Before beginning, we explain the terminology we use in this paper. About a decade
ago, the neuroscientist LeDoux (2002) wrote, “That explicit and implicit aspects of the
self exist is not a novel idea. It is closely related to Freud’s partition of the mind as
conscious, preconscious . . . and unconscious . . . levels” (p. 28). Where analysts talk about
unconscious processes, nonpsychoanalytic branches of psychological science employ a
different label, implicit, in the belief that this term is more value neutral, scientific, and
empirical. Thus, the two terms (unconscious and implicit) are roughly equivalent and are
mostly differentiated by who is writing and for whom. They are functionally (as opposed
to theoretically) differentiated in that the work of nonanalytically oriented researchers and
theorists does not focus on the dynamic unconscious that has attracted the lion’s share of
attention in psychoanalytic circles, but rather on what we here term the normative
unconscious— unconscious processes not motivated by conflict, defenses, or deprivation
experiences. In this paper, we will use the terms implicit and normative unconscious to
refer to those unconscious processes that are not dynamically and conflictually driven.
This may parallel early developments within psychoanalysis. Fayek (2005) argued that
Freud’s original conception of the unconscious was of a system unconscious—
nonrepressed in its nature— but that the idea of the dynamic unconscious later became the
focus of psychoanalysis.
The linguists, anthropologists, literary people, and artists were less interested in what is
dynamically unconscious and found their way easily to understand the system Ucs [uncon-
scious] . . . The psychoanalysts, in contrast, leaned toward ridding themselves of it, and they
were content with only the dynamics of repression. (Fayek, 2005, p. 526)
The normative unconscious, on the other hand, is not unlike aspects of the structural
unconscious. It is closely akin to what analysts might think of as the unconscious features
of ego processes. As ego psychologists, beginning with Hartmann (1939/1958), have long
noted, the normal development of the ego involves the use of nonconflictual unconscious
processes aimed at facilitating the individual’s reality-based functioning in the world.
Empirical data collected in the past two or three decades have supported this view,
pointing to the importance of implicit/unconscious processes in people’s decision making,
affective responding, and interpersonal communication. Studies in social psychology and
cognitive neuroscience have been especially fruitful in illuminating normative processes
in what has come to be termed causal attributions, implicit memory, implicit learning,
affective primacy, and automaticity. Each of these domains has applications to clinical
work and to psychoanalytic theory. It is our belief that learning about them will benefit
clinicians in their therapy practices and help psychoanalysts to think more systematically
about unconscious processes. It is also our hope to foster a dialogue between the various
subcultures within the wider realm of psychology by showing the direct links and
102 STOYCHEVA, WEINBERGER, AND SINGER
complementary contributions between two seemingly different paradigms and language

systems (psychoanalysis and cognitive science). We begin by reviewing attribution
theory.
Attribution Theory
The foundations of attribution theory were laid by Fritz Heider (1958) in his seminal work
The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. Heider argued that people were constantly
trying (actually compelled) to understand their own actions and the actions of others.
Individuals, he said, continuously monitor behaviors and events, making causal inferences
about why they occur. These attributions are made in accordance with preexisting causal
beliefs (Weiner, 1986, 2000). The earliest attribution theorists (e.g., Thibaut & Riecken,
1955) believed that the connection between antecedents (beliefs, information, motivation)
and attributions was largely conscious. Later attribution theories, however, hold that,
although it can be made conscious, this process takes place largely within the realm of
implicit cognition (see, e.g., Weiner, 1986).
One major tenet of attribution theory is that people tend to understand behavior, their
own as well as that of others, as either dispositional or environmentally caused. The
application of this causal division of attributions to clinical work becomes apparent when
we consider a phenomenon sometimes termed the fundamental attribution error (Ross,
1977) or, as later articles less grandiosely refer to it, the correspondence bias (Gilbert &
Malone, 1995). Logically, when sufficient situational factors exist to explain the occur-
rence of an event, we should be able to conclude that the event is, in fact, a result of
environmental forces and not attributable to dispositional characteristics of the actor (cf.
Weinberger, Siefert, & Haggerty, 2010). If a patient unexpectedly misses a session, for
example, we should be as open to believing that she was trapped in a traffic jam and
unable to call us due to a poor signal, as we are to assume that she is engaging in an
enactment. Yet, research findings paint a more complex picture of how implicit processes
influence the way in which attributions are made.
In 1967, Jones and Harris (1967) published a study providing a new way of under-
standing how individuals make dispositional inferences. Participants in this study were
asked to read essays in support of or in opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro. One
group was told that the writer of the essay had been assigned a side in the argument by
a debate team coach whereas the other group was told that the author had been given the
choice to endorse either side of the issue. It is surprising that study participants attributed
pro- or anti-Castro attitudes to the essayists in both groups. Despite the conscious
knowledge that writers in the debate team condition were not necessarily expressing their
own opinion, the readers had formed an implicit inference that clearly prevailed over any
explicit knowledge about the writers’ attitudes. Jones and Harris named the phenomenon
observer bias and concluded that, when observing others’ behavior, people are generally
inclined to attribute actions to inferred personality characteristics (disposition) rather than
situational factors (environment; see also Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Ross, 1977).
On the other side of the attributional coin is the finding that people tend to make very
different inferences when judging the causes of their own behaviors. For the most part,
people tend to understand their own behaviors in terms of environmental contingencies:
They behaved as they did because it made the most sense given the environmental
conditions they faced. There is one exception to this rule, however. Personal success tends
to evoke stable and internal dispositional attributions whereas personal failure is more
likely to be blamed on environmental factors (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999; Sedikides,

Campbell, Reeder, & Elliot, 1998). This exception has been termed the self-serving bias.
These findings make phenomenological sense. People attribute causality to what is
most salient in their experiences. Consider the problem of interpreting another person’s
behavior. One cannot typically see environmental contingencies unless they are very
powerful. What is most salient is the behavior or action itself. The simplest and most
obvious explanation is that the behavior is a result of who the person is. Thus, a
dispositional attribution is made. A person is seen yelling; he or she is an angry person.
Now consider understanding one’s own behavior. The person is now well aware of how
the environment is impinging on her and what she is consciously trying to achieve. Her
disposition is not perceptually salient to her, however. Perhaps she is even defended
against acknowledging it. Her behavior seems to flow from the environment. She therefore
attributes her behavior to the environment. I am yelling because someone else or some
situation is absurdly unreasonable, and my efforts to work it out have been futile.
Attribution Theory—Clinical Implications

According to this model, a psychotherapist might see a successful therapeutic intervention
as indicative of her own competence, while assuming that the circumstances (or the
patient) are to be held responsible for an unsuccessful intervention. Existing evidence
suggests that even trained psychotherapists are not immune to committing these implicit
attributional errors. Hunsley, Aubry, Verstervelt, and Vito (1999) reported that therapists
are more likely to view early termination as the result of patient improvement or
environmental factors, but not of client dissatisfaction. Further, patients interviewed in the
study cited discomfort with the therapist or experience of therapy as detrimental signif-
icantly more often (between 16% and 34%) than the therapists did (3.1%). More recent,
Murdock, Edwards, and Murdock (2010) asked therapists to rate the likelihood that early
termination was a result of several possible causes, falling under three general domains:
client, therapist, and situation. The results revealed a clear pattern, indicating the presence
of a self-serving bias in the therapists’ causal attributions. Although premature termination
of one’s own client was more commonly attributed to client characteristics, situational and
therapist factors were more likely to be cited as reasons for early termination in another
therapist’s practice.
It is important to note that the therapists participating in the Murdock and colleagues’
(2010) study were explicitly aware of the presence of various factors that could have
triggered early termination. The inconsistencies in making causal attributions seem only
explicable as a result of the work of unconscious processes. We find it interesting that the
participants who identified themselves as psychoanalytically oriented displayed an even
stronger bias than therapists endorsing other orientations. This is surprising, because
psychoanalysts take pride in being the only clinicians who are specifically trained to
understand the workings of their own unconscious processes. Apparently, such knowledge
does not prevent them from falling prey to implicit, or normative unconscious, biases
themselves. Of course, it is not our goal to dismiss the presence of defensive operations
as well. When failure is experienced as a result of internal causes (therapist’s incompe-
tence), it can lead to intense negative affect, such as guilt or shame, which in turn, can lead
therapists to quickly assume that a patient is resistant to treatment. What the Murdock and
colleagues’ study demonstrated, we believe, is that attribution errors are such a funda-
mental part of the normative unconscious that even clinicians who have received extensive
training in examining transferential and countertransferential processes often attribute
negative outcomes to either situational or client factors, rather than to factors pertaining
to themselves. Further, Gilbert and Malone’s (1995) review of the literature revealed that
people in general find it extremely difficult and costly to modify previously made
inferences, even after they have been proven wrong. It appears that the implicit process
behind attributional biases is sufficiently powerful to override conscious knowledge.
Therapists are not only prone to self-serving bias in misattributing clients’ decisions
to terminating therapy prematurely. They may also unconsciously misconstrue client
behaviors within therapy. Campbell and Sedikides (1999) argued that the self-serving bias
was magnified under conditions of self-threat (operationalized as a threat to the self-
concept or “a condition which challenges, contradicts or mocks a valued self-conception,”

p. 26). In a meta-analytic review, these researchers found that higher self-threat levels
were related to larger displays of self-serving bias. It is not difficult to conceive how a
client’s premature termination may be experienced as a threat to the therapist’s self-
concept as a competent clinician, thus invoking implicit misattributions. It follows that
such misattributions may also be made inside the therapy room, especially if a situation
should arise that threatens the therapist’s self-concept. For example, failure on the part of
the client to make therapeutic progress may be blamed on the client’s pathology or
resistance. Indeed, at least one study suggested that therapists consistently rate patients’
psychological conditions as a reason for patients’ failure to benefit from therapy (Kendall,
Kipnis, & Otto-Salaj, 1992).
Finally, the normative nature of these attributional processes indicates that they can
occur in nonthreatening conditions as well. That is, therapists are prone to understand their
patients dispositionally, whereas patients are generally prone to understand their own
behaviors as situational. What these studies suggest is that it is common (and within the
natural order of things) for therapists to automatically attribute a patient’s behavior to a
stable personality trait, whereas the patient may explain it in terms of environmental
conditions. This is not necessarily an expression of resistance in the patient or a lack of
empathy on the part of the therapist. Instead, it is the work of normative implicit
attributions. Oftentimes, patients discuss events in their lives to which they responded
angrily, passively, or in a disorganized fashion. A clinician’s interpretation may not
necessarily include an examination of the particular circumstances that the patient is
responding to. Rather, a predisposition toward dispositional attributions may lead the
therapist to infer that her patient is generally angry, passive, or emotionally disorganized.
More important, these unconscious attributions are normative. The other side of the coin
is that the patient, despite evidencing the same kinds of behaviors in a variety of situations,
may interpret each of these behaviors as situationally caused rather than as a pattern
indicative of his personality functioning.
Familiarity with attributional theory can make therapists more alert to their own
attributional biases and their expression in therapy. This is important because inferring
patient dispositional characteristics may lead therapists to assume specific approaches in the
treatment or to make particular interpretations, thus impacting the overall course of treatment.
Although it is true that patients are often ambivalent or reluctant about treatment, therapists
should be cautious about making such an interpretation the default. The picture may be far
more complex. For example, it may not always be correct for the therapist to assume that
a patient is resisting or ambivalent toward therapy because of several incidences of
lateness. Analyzing the transference has traditionally been one of the major tools of
psychoanalysis (see Freud, 1912; Kernberg, 1991; Kernberg, Yeomans, Clarkin, & Levy,
2008; Winnicott, 1956; Zetzel, 1956), yet if a patient’s reasons for being late have to do
with difficulties finding child care, the patient may experience the therapist’s interpretation
as lacking empathy and understanding. By the same token, a patient insisting that all
examples of lateness were situationally caused may not be engaging in defensive resis-
tance but in the natural unconscious tendency to see his own behavior as due to
environmental contingencies. The therapist has to carefully consider these possibilities
before interpreting dynamically unconscious resistance.
Being mindful of patients’ attributional biases can also help catalyze therapeutic
progress. In a trivial example, the therapist, fearing that a patient is beginning to unravel
a very loaded and emotional theme at the end of a session, may cautiously check his
watch. Whether the patient will notice this occurrence and how she will interpret it may
demonstrate the patient’s attributional patterns and/or her transference issues. Both would
impact an understanding of the patient’s interpersonal relationships. Understanding what
the patient’s (mis)attributions are and whether they are viewed as a product of the
functions of the normative unconscious or are a result of resistance/dynamic conflict
would then guide the therapist’s intervention.
Implicit Memory and Implicit Learning
History of the Study of Implicit Memory

Explicit (conscious) memory is a type of memory that the individual consciously and
actively recalls (see Manns & Eichenbaum, 2006; Rovee-Collier, 1997; Schacter &
Badgaiyan, 2001; Squire, 1992). Implicit memory, on the other hand, operates outside of
conscious (explicit) awareness. Implicit memory is only evident when people’s behaviors
are influenced by experiences that they are unable to recall or report (see Aggleton &
Saunders, 1997; Mitchell, 2006; Scott & Dienes, 2010; Thomson, Milliken, & Smilek,
2010; Tulving, Schacter, & Stark, 1982). Many everyday skills and motor movements,
such as driving or typing, rely on implicit memory. At some point, a learning experience
took place. It may even have been conscious at the time (it often is) but, as time passes,
we cannot articulate precisely how we perform that behavior. More complex behaviors
such as styles of social interaction can also owe much of their form to implicit memory.
Indeed we are often unaware that we even display a given behavior or thought pattern
because memory of its operation is unconscious. The concept of this normative uncon-
scious process is not dissimilar from what Davis (2001) referred to as the nondeclarative
memory system, a memory system that is not accounted for in the psychoanalytic
taxonomy of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious memory. Nondeclarative memory,
as Davis described it, has a fundamental impact on our behavior, yet does “not represent
the past in terms of any symbolic or image content” (p. 450). As such, it is not part of the
dynamic unconscious, and can only be made conscious (cross over to declarative/explicit
memory) through focused attention (also see Kihlstrom, 1987).
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913/1964), who launched the empirical study of memory and
learning in the late 1800s, described a type of memory that is outside of conscious
recollection, akin to the more modern term implicit memory. He wrote, “Most of these
experiences remain concealed from consciousness and yet produce an effect which is
significant and which authenticates their previous experience” (p. 2). Ebbinghaus noted
that this type of memory was not accessible through traditional introspective methods. He
developed a method of measuring it, still used today, called the “savings method,” which
consists of having a participant learn new material while noting how long (or how many
trials) the learning process required. This procedure is repeated at a later time, and the
“savings” are operationalized by the difference between how long (or how many trials)
were needed the first versus the second time. The “savings,” Ebbinghaus stated, are the
measurement of what we would now call implicit memory, as the study participant
generally does not explicitly recall the initially learned information.
Current techniques for studying implicit memory often utilize priming, which refers to
the effect of previous exposure to a stimulus on shaping one’s subsequent behavior and
judgment without one’s awareness. Individuals’ performance on trials with previously
experienced stimuli is compared with their performance on trials with entirely new
stimuli. Because implicit memory is unconscious, individuals cannot report on it, but if
performance is better on trials of a task with primed (vs. novel) stimuli, it is inferred that
implicit memory is involved.

Studies over the past two decades have demonstrated the implicit effects of priming.
The first such study, conducted in 1982 by Tulving, Schacter, and Stark, assessed the
effects of priming on a word-fragment completion task and found that priming was
effective. In the Tulving et al. study, exposure to the stimulus was conscious: Participants
were able to perceive the stimulus, although they typically did not take note of it and,
subsequently, did not remember it. It is also possible to present a stimulus that is below
conscious recognition, for example, by presenting a stimulus too quickly for participants
to perceive, and/or by masking or altering the stimulus. This is termed subliminal priming,
and it also can be used to measure implicit memory. Draine and Greenwald (1998), for
example, showed that the subliminal presentation of words affected individuals’ recog-
nition of subsequent words. That is, even though the prime words were presented below
the participants’ levels of awareness, they had an impact on the participants’ speed of
judgment of a subsequent target word. If the word was semantically related, judgment was
enhanced; if it was not, there was no effect on judgment. Thus, implicit memory of the
subliminally presented words affected reactions to subsequent words.
Overview of Current Implicit Memory Research

A great deal has been learned about implicit memory from studying brain-damaged
patients with anterograde amnesia—the inability to remember events shortly after their
occurrence. In anterograde amnesia, information cannot be transferred from short-term to
long-term memory, most likely due to damage to the medial temporal and diencephalic
regions of the brain (Aggleton & Saunders, 1997). A well-known case of amnesic
syndrome was that of H.M., who suffered a temporal lobectomy. It was discovered that
H.M. (as well as other patients with amnesic syndrome) was able to learn and retain
certain new skills (language and motor abilities), without remembering having done so.
This led to the now well-documented finding that amnesic patients can form intact
long-term implicit memories, despite their inability to explicitly retain any new informa-
tion. Hirst (1982) cited an example of a patient who spent an afternoon practicing an
unfamiliar piano piece. The next day, when asked to play the piece, he had no memory of
ever learning how to play it; however, as soon as he heard the initial bars, he was able to
play the entire piece. Perhaps the oldest report of a patient with amnesic syndrome
retaining implicit memory is Claparede’s (1911) experiment with a patient with amnesic
syndrome due to Korsakoff’s syndrome, a neurological condition believed to result from
a shortage of vitamin B in the brain, caused by excessive drinking. To test the patient’s
memory, Claparede hid a pin in his hand and used it to prick his patient, who quickly
forgot what had happened. When he went to take her hand again, she would not let him,
but could not express why. Cohen and Squire (1981) wrote that in amnesiac patients, the
“know how” remains intact, but the “know that” ability is lost. Such case examples have
helped us learn more about the human memory system and have lent support to the theory
of implicit and explicit memory systems as separate structures. The study by Thomson and
colleagues (2010) was designed to test the longevity of conceptual implicit memory.
During a classroom lecture for a memory course, the name of a less-referenced U.S. state
was mentioned in a discussion on retrieval strategies. Four to 8 weeks later, students were
asked to recall as many state names as they could in 10 min. Participants were significantly
more likely to list the target state name when it had been verbally presented in a prior
lecture than when it had not. This study is important not only because it serves as evidence
for the long-term effects of conceptually based priming, but also because it suggests that
one-time “incidental exposure” to a stimulus can be enough for an implicit memory to

form.
Mitchell (2006) demonstrated that these effects can literally last for years. He asked
individuals to identify fragments from black-and-white line drawings, some of which they
had seen for 1 to 3 s in a lab 17 years earlier, and some of which were new. Rates of
identification were significantly higher for the previously seen than for the novel frag-
ments. This effect was present even in individuals who reported that they were not able
to recall anything from their experience in the lab 17 years before. Mitchell concluded that
the results were due to implicit memories from the priming 17 years earlier and argued
that implicit memory is “an invulnerable memory system functioning below conscious
awareness” (p. 1). So, implicit memory—like the dynamic unconscious—is “timeless.”
Implicit Learning
Closely related to implicit memory, implicit learning is defined as the process whereby a
complex, rule-governed knowledge base is acquired largely independently of awareness of
both the process and the product of the acquisition (Reber, 1989). In simple language,
implicit learning is learning that occurs outside of awareness but affects behavior. One can
begin to comprehend the phenomenon by looking at a universal example of implicit
learning: language acquisition. Young children learn the structure and grammar of
language implicitly; they are not able to explain how they have learned it—it seems to just
happen. Reber (1989) examined the process of implicit learning using “artificial gram-
mar”—a set of arbitrary grammatical rules that he had created. He found that after being
exposed to strings of letters governed by his artificial rules, participants were able to
correctly categorize similar but novel strings of letters (in essence, follow the “rules” of
his grammar) even though they could not explain why, nor knew that any rules applied.
Reber concluded that
implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the
structure of the environment. Such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of con-
scious efforts to learn, and can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate
decisions about novel circumstances. (p. 219)
In a more recent study, Scott and Dienes (2010) found that rules of artificial grammar
can be successfully transferred from one domain to another (e.g., letters, musical notes,
symbols). It appears, then, that implicit knowledge can be generalized and applied across
various modalities. Transfer of learning in this study occurred between different modal-
ities or within the same modality using different vocabularies. It is interesting that in
describing their decision-making process, participants who indicated that they used a
“random selection” strategy to perform the task had significantly higher success transfer-
ring knowledge across modalities than participants employing “conscious” strategies. This
finding suggests that the knowledge transfer occurred unconsciously, or implicitly. “The
unconscious can at times outperform the conscious,” Scott & Dienes (2010, p. 397)
concluded.
Implicit Memory and Implicit Learning—Clinical Implications

Perhaps more pertinent to clinical work, implicit learning also has been shown to be an
important factor in social learning. In 1986, Lewicki found that participants picked up on
experimentally manipulated social “rules” about people’s characteristics, and used them to
categorize other people without any awareness of doing so. Participants viewed slides of
women with either long or short hair while being read brief descriptions of their character
traits, which focused on either their kindness or their capability. The manipulated cova-
riation was that, in one condition, all of the longhaired stimulus faces were characterized
as kind, whereas all of the shorthaired stimulus faces were characterized as capable, and
vice versa in the other condition. Although they were not able to explicitly express why,
participants then judged novel target faces in accordance with what they had “learned”
about the particular relationship between trait and haircut. Lewicki argued that social
cognition is particularly vulnerable to implicit processes because social stimuli are
typically ambiguous. His work indicated that implicit learning is alogical and unrelated to
reality testing. That is, covariations in the environment will be implicitly learned, regard-
less of whether they are sensibly connected or not. This learning model can be applied to
biases, stereotypes, and other social phenomena. It also can be applied to the expectations,
views, and attitudes our patients unconsciously have about others, their environments, and
themselves. In fact, Davis (2001) referred to Stern et al.’s (1998, as cited in Davis, 2001)
concept of “implicit relational knowing”— one’s way of relating to others—as falling
under the category of nondeclarative memory, as described earlier. This unconscious
process, he recognized, is normative in that its function begins developing in infancy and
takes place in all human beings. It is, in that sense, similar to Fonagy’s (1999) description
of a content-free procedural memory, which “is involved in acquiring sequences of
actions, the how of behavior” (p. 215, emphasis added).
A recent experiment (Heerey & Velani, 2010) showed that relational/social
implicit learning can occur in all ages, not just infancy. These investigators had
participants engage in a computerized version of rock-paper-scissors, with an avatar
that they believed was another participant. On certain trials, the avatar engaged in a
predictive nonverbal social cue that could be used to anticipate his move (poker
players call this a “tell”). When the avatar expressed this cue, participants began to
win more over time. Although they were not explicitly aware of their own knowledge
of the predictive social cue, they were able to use it to predict the avatar’s behavior.
It is important to note that this social learning did not take place over multiple trials,
but within a single interaction. This finding has important implications for the learning
of and expectations about interpersonal interactions. It also suggests that we may, very
quickly and unconsciously, engage in relationship patterns based on cues from others
that we may not be able to identify.
Implicit processes begin when a child is very young, before he or she is capable of
learning from explicit instruction. Cortina and Liotti (2007) wrote, “Experiences coded
implicitly are not lost but have powerful adaptive and nonadaptive consequences for
development. These experiences are carried forward as a series of unconscious “proce-
dural” expectations” (p. 205). These authors cited the behaviors of 1-year-old babies in
Ainsworth’s strange situation as an example of how unconscious expectations are played
out in early childhood. Depending on the attachment history and the child’s implicit
learning of the attachment bond with its mother, the child’s expectations and behavior will
be secure, avoidant, or anxious. Cortina and Liotti also discussed the phenomenon of
childhood amnesia. Experiences and events that occur in the initial 3 to 4 years of a child’s
life cannot be consciously recalled due to inadequate brain and language development (not
due to repression), but they are stored implicitly. They wrote, “Early, implicit, preverbal
experience is important . . . It forms the basis for prototypes of models of interpersonal
relating” (p. 209). The clinical implication is that a patient may be approaching relation-
ships with a maladaptive model based on implicit memories and learning and not entirely
due to rational judgment or to conflicts, undeveloped emotions, and defenses. Implicit

memories and learning may also partly underlie transference and countertransference in
the therapeutic session.
Affective Salience and Unconscious Affect
According to William James (1890), we must somehow organize our environments or we

will experience “one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (p. 462). So what, if anything,
has pride of place in this endeavor? Around what do we organize our experiences? Current
research, in accord with decades of psychoanalytic thinking, indicates that the answer is
affect (LeDoux, 1989; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Niedenthal & Kitayama, 1994; Phelps,
2005; Weinberger et al., 2010). Affect seems to be the most salient feature of our
experiences, serving an organizing function from infancy on. Our brain and mind are
centrally affective, with cognition a literally later overlay on this core. Moreover, the
influence of affect becomes even more powerful when it operates outside of awareness, as
an implicit process.
In 1980, Zajonc posited the “affective primacy hypothesis,” which states that exposure
to a stimulus or trigger can cause emotional reactions without any cognitive processing
(see also, Zajonc, 1984). In 1993, Murphy and Zajonc tested this hypothesis as well as the
hypothesis that affective processing is prepotent over cognitive processing (primary vs.
secondary processing). Thus, not only can affective processing be independent of cogni-
tive processing, it is superordinate to it. In one study (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993), an
extremely brief or longer exposure to an affective prime consisting of an angry or a happy
face was shown before a target neutral face. Participants rated the target face as signifi-
cantly more likable after the happy face prime than after the angry face prime, but only
in the condition where exposure was so brief that the prime was not cognitively registered.
This finding suggests that affective stimuli are more powerful when they are presented
below the threshold of conscious perception.
Murphy and Zajonc (1993) also found that when primes of male and female faces
expressing happiness and anger were presented extremely quickly and participants
were subsequently shown two faces at optimal levels of recognition and asked to guess
which one may have been previously presented to them, they gave more correct
answers when they relied on matching or mismatching affect rather than gender. That
is, they could more easily match facial expression than gender of face. This suggests
that affective expression is more unconsciously salient than something as perceptually
salient as gender. Participants were not able to discriminate between unconsciously
presented faces that did not differ in terms of emotion, even when they were of
different genders. Another, more recent, study (Skandrani-Marzouki & Marzouki,
2010), involving a simulated hiring situation, provided further support for the influ-
ence of affective priming on our processing, judgment, and behavior. The subliminal
priming of either happy or angry faces influenced which of the emotionally neutral
target faces were chosen as the preferred hire. More target faces were chosen for
hypothetical hiring when a happy face (vs. an angry face) was primed before the
presentation of the target face.
Not only may affect be an unconsciously salient stimulus in the environment, but it
also may be used as a way of categorizing experiences. In 1999, Niedenthal, Halberstadt,
and Innes-Ker proposed the theory of “emotional response categorization,” defined as “the
mental grouping together of objects and events that elicit the same emotion, and the
treatment of those objects and events as ‘the same kind of thing’” (p. 338). They argued
that our experiences are affectively organized, and that stimuli are characterized and
categorized based on the perceiver’s emotional response to them (as opposed to the
objective features of the stimuli). Niedenthal et al. found that when participants were
asked to pair words, they were more likely to match them based on the emotion the words
elicited than on their taxonomic or associative similarities (e.g., joke was more likely to
be paired with sunbeam than with speech).
Moreover, Niedenthal et al. (1999) found that being in a particular state of emotional
arousal increased the use of emotional response categorization as a way of organizing
stimuli and experiences. Participants induced to feel happiness, sadness, or fear used
emotional response to categorize concepts significantly more than participants who were
not induced to be in an emotional state (neutral condition). In a second experiment,
Niedenthal et al. found that individuals who were clinically dysphoric conduct emotional
categorization in a biased fashion, based on their specific mood. These data are highly
clinically relevant, and suggests that the ability of individuals who were dysphoric to
process stimuli in their environment is strongly biased by their negative feelings—a
characteristic many clinicians have likely observed in such patients.
Research on the neuroanatomy of emotional processing has revealed that there are
reasons why affect may be processed so quickly and can be independent of conscious
experience. Until relatively recently, most theorists believed that the path for experience
begins when the sensory system registers a stimulus and sends a signal to the thalamus,
which then sends a signal to the neocortex where the stimulus is analyzed and interpreted.
However, LeDoux (1996) indicated that there is a faster, more direct pathway that goes
directly from the thalamus to the amygdala—a structure responsible for emotional
processing. The neocortex is not involved in this path. This is the pathway used in the
implicit processing of emotion—it makes it possible for us to categorize a stimulus as, for
example, likable or unlikable, without consciously registering it. LeDoux called the
pathway through the neocortex the “high road,” and the path through the amygdala, the
“low road.” (For a detailed discussion on the meaning and consequences of the existence
of the two roads, see also Phelps, 2005.)
Evolutionary theory (e.g., Öhman & Mineka, 2001) posits that this implicit processing
system exists because responding quickly to emotional stimuli is important for the
survival of the perceiver. In instances when there is not enough time to fully process a
particular stimulus, an immediate fear response can be highly adaptive and could lead to
survival. The function of an immediate emotional reaction is that it induces an evolution-
ary adaptive action, such as the fight or flight response. For example, having the ability to
run away before you realize that a movement is due to a deadly snake hiding in the grass
could potentially save your life (William James posited something very similar to this in
1890).
Affective Salience and Unconscious Affect—Clinical Implications

The theory of emotional response categorization has important clinical implications as it
suggests that patients may organize their experiences affectively rather than perceptually
or logically. Furthermore, this organization is likely unconscious and may be influenced
not only by emotional arousal but also by a particular emotional state. The clinician should
therefore pay attention to emotions that underlie how the patient organizes experiences
and focus on affective properties that may motivate particular behaviors. For example, a
particular person, a particular implicit memory, and a particular painting may be uncon-
sciously grouped together because they elicit the same affective reaction.
Kernberg’s (1987) description of the psychological phenomenon of splitting is rele-

vant here. Kernberg argued that infants categorize, or “split” their experiences, based on
affect, into either all good or all bad. For example, Kernberg believed (as did Klein, 1932)
that the infant splits the mother into two experiences: one of a good mother and one of a
bad mother. This is seen as a normal phase of childhood that we mature out of as we learn
to integrate our experiences. Failing to develop the ability to integrate the good and bad
aspects of a single perceptual object or experience has major clinical implications, as is
suggested by Kernberg’s (2004) work on the etiology and treatment of borderline
personality disorder. What the current research suggests is that the unconscious may
continue to categorize experiences based on affect throughout life. The categories may be
more nuanced than all good or all bad, but affective categorization appears to be a routine
part of how the normative unconscious operates and is not necessarily indicative of
psychopathology. It is also an important piece of information for the clinician to be aware
of.
Automaticity
Automaticity, the last implicit process we review in this paper, refers to the activation of
internal or behavioral processes without conscious thought or reflection, that is, automat-
ically. It not only evades self-reflection, but also lacks intentionality and controllability
(Bargh, 1994). In other words, automatic processes can be activated entirely outside of
awareness, without the intervention of conscious choice, and proceed to function implic-
itly, with no need for monitoring. Automaticity ranges from simple reflex-like behaviors,
such as driving a car or typing, to complex behavioral sequences, thought patterns, and
emotional schemas (Weinberger et al., 2010).
In 1890, William James wrote, “It is a general principle in Psychology that conscious-
ness deserts all processes where it can no longer be of use” (p. 496). Jastrow (1906) made
the similar assertion that, once they have been sufficiently rehearsed, mental processes
start operating autonomously, circumventing intentionality and awareness. More recent,
Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) and Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) provided experimental
evidence for this proposition. It is now central to social and cognitive psychology.
Thought and behavioral patterns that are repeated frequently will come to require less and
less attention, thus freeing mental capacities to attend to new and unfamiliar stimuli
(Bargh & Ferguson, 2000). Bargh (1994) referred to this quality of automatized processes
as efficiency (see also, Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). However, automatic behavioral and
thought patterns are also rigid and inflexible and therefore exceptionally difficult to alter
(cf. Weinberger et al., 2010).
Once they reach a level of automaticity, mental processes can be activated entirely
outside of consciousness, and on as little as the perception of a seemingly innocuous cue.
Beck (1976), in his discussion of emotional disorders from a cognitive perspective,

observed that, for people suffering from certain mental illnesses, even very complex
mental event sequences could be set in motion by stimuli that do not typically produce the
same reaction in healthy individuals. For example, he argued that depressed individuals
may exhibit an automatic selective bias toward seeking and perceiving stimuli that
maintain a negative self-concept (Beck, 1967). This has since been empirically supported
by a number of studies (Hogarth, 2011; Matthews & Wells, 2000; McCusker & Gettings,
1997). These studies suggested that automatic processes partly underlie various mental
disorders—a finding that provides a new means for understanding and treating patholog-
ical behavioral and thought patterns.

Matthews and Wells (2000), for example, proposed a stage model of processing
stimuli, which implicates automatic attentional biases in both anxiety and affective
disorders (see also, Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988). Further, automaticity
of cognitive biases has been shown to impact obsessive and addictive behaviors. Hogarth
(2011) disentangled the effects of impulsivity and automatic control over drug seeking and
drug taking in a sample of cigarette smokers. He found that automaticity plays a distinct
role in the etiology of substance dependence, independent of impulsivity and hypersen-
sitivity to smoking reinforcement. Likewise, McCusker and Gettings (1997) tested the
automaticity hypothesis with gamblers. They found that gamblers showed “automatic,
nonvolitional, attentional and memory biases” (p. 543) for information related to gam-
bling. McCusker and Gettings (1997) found that gamblers showed a pronounced selective
and automatic attentional focus for gambling-related words on a Stroop task. Simply put,
addicts process information related to their addictions in a different fashion from nonad-
dicts. For them, simple exposure to a stimulus related to their addiction is sufficient to
cause a behavioral reaction, bypassing conscious thought.
Bargh and Chartrand (1999) stated that, “automation itself is automatic” (p. 469). In
other words, the process of automatization of behavioral and thought patterns, as well as
accompanying emotional schemas, could itself take place outside of consciousness.
Unlike learning to drive, for example, which requires initial directed attention and effort,
some automatic processes acquire automaticity outside of the individual’s awareness.
Consider, for instance, Ainsworth’s strange situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall,
1978). Infants in her laboratory were separated from their caregiver for a period of time,
and then observed on reunion with the caregiver. Ainsworth et al. (1978) demonstrated
that infants’ behavior in response to the stress of separation, and then reunion, was directly
related to variations in the caregiver– child relationship. Because 18-month-old infants are
obviously not capable of articulating how their attachment and relational patterns with a
caregiver operate, let alone describe how they developed, one can conclude that they must
have been implicitly learned through repetition and have, at a very early age, uncon-
sciously reached a level of automaticity. Because these types of relational patterns are
carried out automatically, they are likely to persist, unless conscious effort is put into
altering them. And, a large body of literature has suggested that attachment patterns do
remain relatively stable across the life span (e.g., Cozolino, 2006; Fraley & Shaver, 2000).
Stereotyping is another automatically activated implicit sequence of mental events that
tends to persist unless conscious attention is paid to altering it. The data show that once
a stereotype becomes perceptually associated with a particular racial or societal group, it
is immediately activated on perception of a characteristic of the group, regardless of the
individual’s conscious attitude or judgment. Devine (1989) found that most people tend to
share the stereotyped knowledge prevalent in their culture, even when they do not
consciously endorse it. She also found that subliminal presentation of an African Amer-
ican racial stereotype led to a more hostile interpretation of the motives of a character in
an ambiguous story. Since then, a large body of research has accumulated that supports
Devine’s findings. Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996), for example, found that subliminal
priming with faces of young African American males caused study participants to express
more hostility on mild provocation. In a second study using the same priming paradigm,
Chen and Bargh (1997) found that participants not only manifested higher levels of
hostility themselves, but also perceived their partners in a game as more hostile. Although
this was an accurate perception, the partners’ hostility was a reaction to the participants’
own hostile behavior. That is, they created the hostility of their partners and then attributed
it to that person’s character (see earlier section on attribution theory). Debriefing revealed
that the primed participants had no knowledge of their role in creating a hostile environ-
ment.
Automaticity—Clinical Implications
Because biases, such as prejudices and stereotypes, can implicitly have great impact on
people’s attitudes and behaviors, we can confidently infer that the unconscious influence
of the types of automatized relational and thought patterns we see in therapy are at least
as powerful. Moreover, if prejudice takes years (if not generations) to uproot, it only
follows that to change automatic mental events and behaviors in an individual patient
might require longstanding and concentrated effort. As Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) and
Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) observed, it takes many trials and failed attempts to
extinguish an automatic behavior, even a simple one, acquired in a laboratory setting.
Moreover, under stress (a subcategory of what is termed cognitive load in the academic
literature), people tend to revert back to automatic means of responding (Wilson, Lindsey,
& Schooler, 2000). The amount of time it takes to change even simple automatic
behaviors, coupled with the finding that stress results in regression to prior automatic
responding, suggests that long-term therapy may be necessary for achieving lasting
change in automatically generated behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Even when the
person recognizes the problem and knows what needs to be done (e.g., discontinue certain
self-injurious or compulsive behaviors, modify interpersonal patterns), change is prob-
lematic and efforts to make changes introduce additional stress in the patient’s life. This
then further militates against change. We believe that the nature of automatic processes
may necessitate the kind of long-term treatment traditionally practiced by psychoanalysts
and most forms of psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Being mindful of recent findings in the area of automaticity can help clinicians better
understand the etiology of some of their patients’ disorders and provide more effective
treatment not only by analyzing conflictual themes, but also by recognizing that people are
not always— or at least not entirely—motivated to engage in maladaptive actions by
dynamic unconscious issues. It appears that making the unconscious conscious, or the ego
syntonic— ego dystonic, may not be sufficient to successfully treat patients engaging in
automatic behaviors. Corrective control processes, which require constant monitoring,
motivation, and effort, may have to be consciously practiced over and over again to
become automatic and override previously automatized maladaptive behavioral or thought
patterns (for a description of these processes, see Wegner, 1994). This may be one of the
underlying principles of working though, except that it is based in normative functioning
rather than further analysis of unconscious defenses. Working through may be necessary
because of the way automatic processes function. People may simply need to practice new
adaptive behaviors until they become automatic. Some nonanalytic theorists have come to
similar conclusions. For example, McNally (1995) asserted that anxious patients can
benefit by cultivating attentional biases typically found in healthy controls. Perhaps, then,
a psychoanalyst’s work can be expanded to also include the therapeutic goal of making the
conscious unconscious by making adaptive controlled processes automatic (cf. Newirth,
2003).
A Psychoanalytic Notion of the Normative Unconscious

How can we frame the normative unconscious in psychoanalytic terms? Psychoanalysis,

to a large degree, has remained focused on maladaptive and dynamically based uncon-
scious processes, paying relatively little attention to the normative unconscious (at least
for therapeutic purposes). But there are a few hints and efforts at identifying and
discussing the type of normative unconscious we have reviewed here. Freud (1915/2001)
hinted at the existence of another part of the unconscious—an unrepressible part, of which
he said: “But let us state at the very outset that the repressed does not cover everything that
is unconscious. The unconscious has the wider compass: the repressed is part of the
unconscious” (p. 166). The ego psychologists wrote of a conflict free sphere of the ego,
which was unconscious (e.g., Hartmann, 1939/1958). Perhaps closest to what we are
describing is contained in Atwood and Stolorow’s (1980, 1984) intersubjective approach.
Their model incorporates a concept they term the prereflective unconscious. According to
these theorists, experience is shaped by psychological structures that operate largely
outside of conscious awareness. These mental constructs— emotional schemas, organizing
principles, thought patterns, and systems of meaning— guide our everyday experiences,
judgments, impressions, and even decisions and behavior, without ordinarily becoming a
focus of self-reflection. Thus, they remain predominantly implicit. They are the uncon-
scious assumptions we hold about the world, others, and ourselves.
The prereflective unconscious is not a product of defensive processes and is not
inherently dynamic in nature. On the other hand, the simple act of concentrated attention
would not bring prereflective unconscious formations to the fore, as it would Freud’s
preconscious. The implicit processes we discuss in this paper are normal, nonpathological
processes—a universal aspect of our biology that can lead to adaptive functioning but also
to problematic beliefs and patterns of behavior. Take, for example, the case of “Little
Albert.” In this infamous study, Watson and Rayner (1920) presented a preverbal child,
Little Albert, with a white rat, and banged a loud gong whenever he reached for it. Little
Albert consequentially developed a phobia of white furry objects. It is likely that Little
Albert would have retained this phobia, but not have been able to consciously explain it.
This fear was the result of implicit learning—it was not a product of the dynamic
unconscious. Yet, consider how easily it could be misattributed in therapy if this origin
was not recognized or at least considered. And, in fact, Watson and Rayner used this study
to mock psychoanalytic interpretations based on unconscious dynamics of Little Albert’s
fear and lack of memory for this experience. Because Little Albert was so young, he was
not able to form an explicit memory of the event, but he did likely form an implicit
memory that would shape his future behavior.
The lesson here is that beliefs, phobias, maladaptive behavior patterns, and other
psychological occurrences are not always motivated or at least entirely motivated, though
they may be unconscious. The patient may have drawn unconscious conclusions about the
world that need to be explored, but explored through the framework of implicit processes.
The point we are trying to make is that much of the research conducted by social and
cognitive psychologists can (and should) be applied to the clinical setting. A major insight
provided by this literature is that implicit processes are ubiquitous and are an important
part of how the human mind—particularly the normative unconscious, or the unconscious
ego— operates. We are in no way trying to suggest that this model eliminates the need to
posit the dynamic unconscious, but rather that it be considered along with it, as explan-
atory concepts for making sense of human functioning and behavior. The normative
unconscious, like the dynamic unconscious, is irrational and emotionally driven, but,
unlike the dynamic unconscious, it is amotivated. This means that some beliefs and
behavior patterns are not compromises, efforts at affect regulation gone wrong, uninte-
grated affect and so on, but rather a natural result of how the unconscious ego operates.
Atwood and Stolorow (1980, 1984) argued that it is only with great effort that such
calcified and well-rehearsed unconscious structures can be made conscious. As they are
outlined in this paper, the implicit processes we have reviewed can be seen as parallel to,
perhaps a detailed rendering of, Stolorow and Atwood’s prereflective unconscious. What-
ever we choose to call it, familiarity with these processes would greatly help analytically
oriented clinicians to analyze the normative unconscious.
References
Aggleton, J. P., & Saunders, R. C. (1997). The relationship between temporal lobe and diencephalic
structures implicated in anterograde amnesia. Memory, 5, 49 –72. doi:10.1080/741941143
Ainsworth, M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Atwood, G. E., & Stolorow, R. D. (1980). Psychoanalytic concepts and the representational world.
Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 3, 267–290.
Atwood, G. E., & Stolorow, R. D. (1984). Structures of subjectivity: Explorations in psychoanalytic
phenomenology. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, efficiency, intention, and
control in social cognition. In R. S. Wyer, Jr., & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition
(2nd ed., pp. 1–40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bargh, J., & Chartrand, T. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54,
462–479. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.462
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait
construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71,
230 –244. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230
Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental
processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 925–945. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.126.6.925
Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression: Causes and treatment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New York, NY: International
Universities Press.
Campbell, K., & Sedikides, C. (1999). Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias: A meta-analytic
integration. Review of General Psychology, 3, 23–43. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.3.1.23
Chen, M., & Bargh, J. (1997). Nonconscious behavioral confirmation processes: The self-fulfilling
nature of automatically-activated stereotypes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33,
541–560. doi:10.1006/jesp.1997.1329
Claparede, E. (1911). Recognition and “me-ness.” In D. Rapaport (Ed. & Trans.), Organization and
pathology of thought (pp. 58 –75). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Cohen, N. J., & Squire, L. R. (1981). Retrograde amnesia and remote memory impairment.
Neuropsychologia, 19, 337–356. doi:10.1016/0028-3932(81)90064-6
Cortina, M., & Liotti, G. (2007). New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit
and explicit memory systems. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 16, 204 –212. doi:
10.1080/08037060701676326
Cozolino, L. (2006). The neuroscience of human relationships: Attachment and the developing
social brain. New York, NY: Norton.
Davis, J. (2001). Revising psychoanalytic interpretations of the past: An examination of declarative
and non-declarative process. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82, 449 –462.
Devine, P. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5
Draine, S. C., & Greenwald, A. G. (1998). Replicable unconscious semantic priming. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 286 –303. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.127.3.286

Ebbinghaus, H. (1964). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York: Dover.

(Original work published 1913)
Fayek, A. (2005). The centrality of the system Ucs in the theory of psychoanalysis: The nonre-
pressed unconscious. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 22, 524 –543.
Fonagy, P. (1999). Memory and therapeutic action. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 80,
215–233.
Fraley, C., & Shaver, P. (2000). Adult romantic attachment: Theoretical developments, emerging
controversies, and unanswered questions. Review of General Psychology, 4, 132–154. doi:
10.1037/1089-2680.4.2.132
Freud, S. (1912). The dynamics of transference. In The standard edition of the complete psycho-
logical works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 12 (1911–1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on
Technique and Other Works (pp. 97–108). London, England: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1915/2001). The unconscious. In The standard edition of the complete psychological
works of Sigmund Freud, Volume14 (pp. 159–205). London, England: Hogarth Press.
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21–38.
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21
Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation. (D. Rapaport, Trans.). New
York: International Universities Press. (Original work published 1939) doi:10.1037/13180-000
Heerey, E. A., & Velani, H. (2010). Implicit learning of social predictions. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 46, 577–581. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.01.003
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum. doi:10.1037/
10628-000
Hirst, W. (1982). The amnesic syndrome: Descriptions and explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 91,
435–460. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.91.3.435
Hogarth, L. (2011). The role of impulsivity in the aetiology of drug dependence: Reward sensitivity
versus automaticity. Psychopharmacology, 215, 567–580. doi:10.1007/s00213-011-2172-0
Hunsley, J., Aubry, T., Verstervelt, C., & Vito, D. (1999). Comparing therapist and client perspec-
tives on reasons for psychotherapy termination. Psychotherapy, 36, 380 –388. doi:10.1037/
h0087802
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Holt. doi:10.1037/11059-
000
Jastrow, J. (1906). The subconscious. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. doi:10.1037/10598-000
Jones, E., & Harris, V. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 3, 1–24. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(67)90034-0
Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1972). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of
behavior. In E. Jones, D. Kanouse, H. Kelley, R. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.),
Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79 –94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning
Press.
Kendall, P., Kipnis, D., & Otto-Salaj, L. (1992). When clients don’t progress: Influences on and
explanations for lack of therapeutic progress. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16, 269 –281.
doi:10.1007/BF01183281
Kernberg, O. F. (1987). The dynamic unconscious and the self. In R. Stern (Ed.), Theories of the
unconscious and theories of the self (pp. 3–25). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Kernberg, O. F. (1991). Transference regression and psychoanalytic technique with infantile

personalities. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 72, 189 –200.
Kernberg, O. F. (2004). Borderline personality disorder and borderline personality organization:
Psychopathology and psychotherapy. In J. J. Magnavita (Ed.), Handbook of personality disor-
ders: Theory and practice (pp. 92–119). New York, NY: Wiley.
Kernberg, O. F., Yeomans, F., Clarkin, J., & Levy, K. (2008). Transference focused psychotherapy:
Overview and update. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89, 601–620. doi:10.1111/
j.1745-8315.2008.00046.x
Kihlstrom, J. (1987). The cognitive unconscious. Science, 237, 766 –779.
Klein, M. (1932). The psycho-analysis of children. London: Hogarth Press.

LeDoux, J. E. (1989). Cognitive-emotional interactions in the brain. Cognition and Emotion, 3,

267–289. doi:10.1080/02699938908412709
LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New
York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
LeDoux, J. (2002). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York, NY: Viking.
Lewicki, P. (1986). Processing information about covariations that cannot be articulated. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 12, 135–146.
Manns, J. R., & Eichenbaum, H. (2006). Evolution of declarative memory. Hippocampus, 16,
795–808. doi:10.1002/hipo.20205
Matthews, G., & Wells, A. (2000). Attention, automaticity, and affective disorder. Behavior
Modification, 24, 69 –93. doi:10.1177/0145445500241004
McCusker, C. G., & Gettings, G. (1997). Automaticity of cognitive biases in addictive behaviours:
Further evidence with gamblers. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 36, 543–554. doi:
10.1111/j.2044-8260.1997.tb01259.x
McNally, R. J. (1995). Automaticity and the anxiety disorders. Behaviour Research and Therapy,
33, 747–754. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(95)00015-P
Mitchell, D. B. (2006). Nonconscious priming after 17 years: Invulnerable implicit memory?
Psychological Science, 17, 925–929. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01805.x
Murdock, N. L., Edwards, C., & Murdock, T. (2010). Therapists’ attributions for client premature
termination: Are they self-serving? Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 47,
221–234. doi:10.1037/a0019786
Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with
optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64,
723–739. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.5.723
Newirth, J. (2003). Between emotion and cognition: The generative unconscious. New York, NY:
Other Press.
Niedenthal, P. M., Halberstadt, J. B., & Innes-Ker, A. H. (1999). Emotional response categorization.
Psychological Review, 106, 337–361. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.106.2.337
Niedenthal, P. M., & Kitayama, S. (1994). The heart’s eye: Emotional influences in perception and
attention. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of
fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108, 483–522. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.483
Phelps, E. A. (2005). The interaction of emption and cognition: The relation between the human
amygdala and cognitive awareness. In R. R. Hassin, J. S. Uleman, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The new
unconscious (pp. 61–76). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Reber, A. S. (1989). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 118, 219 –235. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.118.3.219
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortion in the attribution
process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp.
173–220). New York, NY: Academic Press. doi:10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60357-3
Rovee-Collier, C. (1997). Dissociations in infant memory: Rethinking the development of implicit
and explicit memory. Psychological Review, 104, 467–498. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.104.3.467
Schacter, D., & Badgaiyan, R. D. (2001). Neuroimaging of priming: New perspectives on implicit
and explicit memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 1–4. doi:10.1111/1467-
8721.00101
Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: I.
Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review, 84, 1–66. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.1.1
Scott, R. B., & Dienes, Z. (2010). Knowledge applied to new domains: The unconscious succeeds where the
conscious fails. Consciousness and Cognition, 19, 391–398. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2009.11.009
Sedikides, C., Campbell, K., Reeder, G., & Elliot, A. (1998). The self-serving bias in relational context.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 378–386. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.2.378
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing:
II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84,
127–190. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.127
Skandrani-Marzouki, I., & Marzouki, Y. (2010). Subliminal emotional priming and decision making
in a simulated hiring situation. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 69(4), 213–219. doi:10.1024/1421-
0185/a000025
Squire, L. R. (1992). Memory and the hippocampus: A synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys,
and humans. Psychological Review, 99, 195–231. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.99.2.195
Stern, D., Sander, L., Nahum, J., Harrison, A., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A., . . . Tronick, E. (1998).
Non-interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy: The “something more” than interpre-
tation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79, 903–921.
Thibaut, J., & Riecken, H. (1955). Some determinants and consequences of the perception of social
causality. Journal of Personality, 24, 113–133. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1955.tb01178.x
Thomson, D. R., Milliken, B., & Smilek, D. (2010). Long-term conceptual implicit memory: A
decade of evidence. Memory & Cognition, 38, 42–46. doi:10.3758/MC.38.1.42
Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L., & Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects in word-fragment completion
are independent of recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Mem-
ory, and Cognition, 8, 336 –342. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.8.4.336
Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 3, 1–14. doi:10.1037/h0069608
Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34 –52.
doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.1.34
Weinberger, J., Siefert, C., & Haggerty, G. (2010). Implicit processes in social and clinical
psychology. In J. Maddux & J. Tangney (Eds.), Social foundations of clinical psychology (pp.
461–475). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. New York, NY: Springer-
Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-4948-1
Weiner, B. (2000). Intrapersonal and interpersonal theories of motivation from an attributional
perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 12, 1–14. doi:10.1023/A:1009017532121
Westen, D. (1999). The scientific status of unconscious processes: Is Freud really dead? Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, 47, 1061–1106. doi:10.1177/000306519904700404
Westen, D., & Gabbard, G. O. (2002). Developments in cognitive neuroscience: I. Conflict,
compromise, and connectionism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50,
53–98. doi:10.1177/00030651020500011501
Williams, J., Watts, F., MacLeod, C., & Mathews, A. (1988). Cognitive psychology and emotional
disorders. Chichester, England: Wiley.
Wilson, T. D., Lindsey, S., & Schooler, T. (2000). A model of dual attitudes. Psychological Review,
107, 101–126. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.107.1.101
Winnicott, D. W. (1956). On transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 37, 386 –388.
Zajonc, R. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35,
151–175. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.35.2.151
Zajonc, R. (1984). On the primacy of affect. American Psychologist, 39, 117–123. doi:10.1037/
0003-066X.39.2.117
Zetzel, E. R. (1956). Current concepts of transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 37,
369 –375.

The Place of The Normative Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Place of The Normative Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Psychoanalytic Psychology © 2014 American Psychological Association

2014, Vol. 31, No. 1, 100 –118 0736-9735/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0035372

THE PLACE OF THE NORMATIVE

Valentina Stoycheva, PhD Joel Weinberger, PhD, and

The study of unconscious processes has always been central to psychoanalyti-

Keywords: implicit processes, normative unconscious, causal attributions, af-

Traditionally, psychoanalysis has been at the forefront of studying unconscious processes.

Westen reviewed a large number of controlled empirical investigations, supporting the

complementary contributions between two seemingly different paradigms and language

likely to be blamed on environmental factors (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999; Sedikides,

Attribution Theory—Clinical Implications

concept or “a condition which challenges, contradicts or mocks a valued self-conception,”

Implicit Memory and Implicit Learning

History of the Study of Implicit Memory

implicit memory is involved.

Overview of Current Implicit Memory Research

one-time “incidental exposure” to a stimulus can be enough for an implicit memory to

Implicit Memory and Implicit Learning—Clinical Implications

due to rational judgment or to conflicts, undeveloped emotions, and defenses. Implicit

Affective Salience and Unconscious Affect

According to William James (1890), we must somehow organize our environments or we

Affective Salience and Unconscious Affect—Clinical Implications

Kernberg’s (1987) description of the psychological phenomenon of splitting is rele-

Beck (1976), in his discussion of emotional disorders from a cognitive perspective,

ical behavioral and thought patterns.

A Psychoanalytic Notion of the Normative Unconscious

How can we frame the normative unconscious in psychoanalytic terms? Psychoanalysis,

Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 286 –303. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.127.3.286

Ebbinghaus, H. (1964). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York: Dover.

Kernberg, O. F. (1991). Transference regression and psychoanalytic technique with infantile

Klein, M. (1932). The psycho-analysis of children. London: Hogarth Press.

LeDoux, J. E. (1989). Cognitive-emotional interactions in the brain. Cognition and Emotion, 3,

You might also like