ACADEMIA Letters

On the Conception of the Unconscious.

Wolfgang Detel, Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Traditional psychoanalysis, as is well known, has regarded repressed animalistic drive

desires as central components of the unconscious. From today’s point of view this conception
is too restrictive and too undifferentiated. First of all there is a realm of the non-mental, but for
the mental causally relevant unconscious. For all mental states and processes are controlled
by neurophysiological activities in the brain. Moreover, these neural activities are correlated
with algorithmic programs typically studied by the cognitive sciences. These algorithms are
largely innate. Embodied cognition theory has pointed out that there are motor processes that
are particularly tailored to cognitive processes and skills and are usually described as body
schemas (i.e., forms of cognitive embodiment). Body schemas are stored in non-declarative
memory, the content of which is often considered not only unconscious but also inaccessible
to consciousness in principle. Neurophysiological and algorithmic processes as well as body
schemata essentially constitute the non-mental unconscious.
The mental unconscious can be populated (as Freud already noted) by almost all kinds of
mental states found in the mind. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the motivational systems
are particularly significant. Some of these components are not repressed but permanently un-
conscious, for example, basic mechanisms that access other mental mechanisms (metamech-
anisms such as stimulus generalization and the repression), furthermore, the feelings present
from birth, understood as mechanisms whose operation is unconscious, while their evaluative
component is usually phenomenally conscious. For example, we experience fear consciously,
but not the fear mechanism, which usually runs in us at lightning speed. Some mechanisms are
also results of repression. Finally, principles of archaic rationality and an elementary sense of
ego in the form of kinesthetic self-perceptions also belong to the realm of the non-repressed,
permanent mental unconscious - permanent in the restricted sense, though, that these compo-
nents are permanently unconscious in all those people who are not familiar with the theory of

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Wolfgang Detel, wdetel@t-online.de

Citation: Detel, W. (2021). On the Conception of the Unconscious. Academia Letters, Article 1684.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1684.

1
the unconscious.
The realm of the repressed unconscious is of most interest to psychoanalysis and psy-
chotherapy. It is primarily the emotional mechanisms present from birth that are repressed
into the unconscious in the case of intolerable injury and dysfunctionality, but not perma-
nently in principle, for they can be made conscious through appropriate therapeutic measures,
among other things. If one understands repression in a broad sense, i.e. as the shifting of
conscious states and processes into the unconscious, then all those mental states that we store
in the memory store in order to be able to access them again in case of need also belong to
the unconscious. We can condense these considertions into the following schema:
The unconscious (the unconscious soul)
1. non-mental control elements of mental states and processes
1.1 Neuronal activities of the brain
1.2 Algorithmic programs realized in neural activities of the brain.
1.3 Body schemata.
2. the mental unconscious: general labeling and classification.
2.1 Components: Mental states, processes and mechanisms.
2.2 Forms: Mental states, processes, and mechanisms that lack phenomenal consciousness,
or monitor consciousness, or ego consciousness, or access consciousness.
2.3 Domains: The non-repressed unconscious, the repressed unconscious, and the retrievable
access unconscious.
3. the non-repressed, permanent mental unconscious
3.1 Metamechanisms operating above other mechanisms (present from birth): stimulus gen-
eralization, repression, production of replacement mechanisms.
3.2 Mechanisms whose process, structure, and function are unconscious, but whose evaluative
component is phenomenally conscious (present from birth): motivational systems (emotions).
3.3 Mechanisms and cognitive attitudes formed during early childhood learning history and
socialization: For example, social emotions, structures of object relations, worldviews, images
of self.
3.4 Archaic rationality and phenomenal ego-consciousness.
4. the permanently repressed mental unconscious
4.1 Emotional mechanisms whose dysfunctionality is intolerable, whose phenomenal con-
sciousness has therefore been eliminated and whose operational disposition has been shut
down.
4.2 Course unconscious substitute mechanisms, substituted for those mentioned in
4.3 Negative self-images, which would be consciously unbearable.
5. the retrievable access unconscious

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Wolfgang Detel, wdetel@t-online.de

Citation: Detel, W. (2021). On the Conception of the Unconscious. Academia Letters, Article 1684.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1684.

2
5.1 Mental states that are temporarily phenomenally unconscious and monitor-unconscious
due to storage in memory, but are retrievable from memory as individual mental states when
needed.
5.2 Mental states that are temporarily phenomenally unconscious and monitor-unconscious
through storage in memory, but are retrievable from memory as premises to ground opinions,
intentions, or feelings when needed.
This theory of the unconscious thus assumes that the mental unconscious consists of rep-
resentational mental states and mechanisms as conceptualized in theory of mind, that is, brain
states that have functionality and semantic content. But these states are mostly monitor-
unconscious, ego-unconscious, and especially access-unconscious, often phenomenally un-
conscious.
As should already have become clear, the design of the mental unconscious is essentially
determined by the fact that unconscious representational states
(a) are functionally organized,
(b) have a non-linguistic form,
(c) are not predominantly rationally organized in the sense of modern standards of rationality,
(d) are no longer based on rationally structured semantic networks but on the functionality of
unconscious mental states, but at the same time
(e) involve forms of archaic rationality.
This picture of the unconscious clearly departs from traditional views of the unconscious.
For example, it abandons the still common way of talking about the operations of the ego,
superego, and id. There are no instances or even substances in the soul that “do” something
or “perform” a certain activity by their own power. Rather, functional mechanisms run on
the basis of certain triggers, but their functions are not always free of contradictions and can
come into conflict.
Furthermore, the mental unconscious mostly consists of motivational systems, which
themselves represent functional mechanisms. These mechanisms are neither repressed nor
incompatible with social demands. They are for the most part innate and do not first form in
object relations, and they are partly physiological and partly social in nature, thus have been
shaped partly by biological evolution and partly by cultural evolution, are partly animalistic
and partly human-specific, but can be more specifically expressed in the context of object
relations.
Another consequence is that the picture of the early infant drawn not only by Freud but
also in object relations theories is no longer tenable. Indeed, this picture still characterizes
the early infant as a being primarily driven by omnipotent and aggressive impulses (oriented
toward personal fitness and narcissism). In particular, aggressiveness is still thought of as

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Wolfgang Detel, wdetel@t-online.de

Citation: Detel, W. (2021). On the Conception of the Unconscious. Academia Letters, Article 1684.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1684.

3
pure destructiveness. However, pure destructiveness is already highly implausible from an
evolutionary theoretical point of view; rather, from a functionalist point of view, it always
serves a purpose, for example, coping with danger or revenge. Most importantly, human
infants manifest protosocial impulses such as empathy, helping, and striving for commonality
early on (up to about 18 months of age) - not by internalizing the good mother, but because
these positive impulses are part of hard-wired human motivational systems, as shown, for
example, in works by Michael Tomasello and Felix Warneken.
Moreover, the operations of these mental mechanisms, by which well-rehearsed functions
are fulfilled, do not individually and in themselves give rise to any mental disturbances; on the
contrary, their function is precisely to avoid physical and mental disturbances. They are mental
states and processes that occur or are processed quickly and automatically and at the same time
remain unconscious, without being pathological and needing to be repressed. Rather, it is the
dysfunctional non-fulfillment of these mechanisms that can lead to mental disorders under
certain further conditions. In some circumstances, however, the fulfillment of some of these
mechanisms may be incompatible with the fulfillment of other mechanisms, and this too may
be a cause of mental disturbance and distress.
Finally, the reptression mechanism must be viewed in a differentiated way. It would be
too simplistic to speak of repression of unbearable experiences as a shifting of conscious men-
tal states or processes into the unconscious - a still common way of speaking. It is true that
the phenomenally conscious experience of unbearable feelings plays a significant role in their
displacement, and in this sense there is indeed a displacement of a conscious state into an un-
conscious state. But phenomenal consciousness is usually only the conscious evaluative com-
ponent of a mechanism whose process and structure is already unconscious. An infant experi-
ences the mother’s permanent lack of attachment as intolerable in the phenomenal-conscious
sense, but at the same time an already unconscious dysfunctional attachment mechanism oper-
ates in the infant, the conscious component of which is the experienced frustration. Shutting
down the operation of this and other mechanisms and substituting them with operating re-
placement mechanisms is another fundamental component of repression. This replacement
is, a s whole, unconscious. Furthermore, an essential aspect of the displacement of conscious
mental states from the mind into the unconscious is that the mental states lose their rational
organization within the framework of the mind by passing into the unconscious and sink to a
merely functional organization enriched by principles of archaic rationality.

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Wolfgang Detel, wdetel@t-online.de

Citation: Detel, W. (2021). On the Conception of the Unconscious. Academia Letters, Article 1684.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1684.

4
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Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Wolfgang Detel, wdetel@t-online.de

Citation: Detel, W. (2021). On the Conception of the Unconscious. Academia Letters, Article 1684.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1684.