Hidden Minds (25 page)

The most basic notion on which the unconscious depends is that the human mind can be partitioned. Clearly, split-brain patients show that an underlying physiology exists for several divisions, both horizontal and vertical. Not only can the intellectual upper storeys ofthe mind be separated from the emotional lower storeys, the vertical central sulcus which separates the two hemispheres shows a natural rift between two proto-identities. Thus, contemporary neuroscience invites comparison with ideas that pre-date Freud, and at first sight seem to be even more fanciful. The alter ego has wandered out of the late-nineteenth-century case book – the late-nineteenth-century novel – and found a new home in the modern laboratory.

Finally scanning studies have even supported the cognitive unconscious, with its emphasis on automation. The shrinking areas of illumination observed on repetition of the simplest tasks are an elegant demonstration of the brain’s propensity for heuristic tendencies.

One of the most potent criticisms of the unconscious has always been that it is not ‘provable’, not testable with instruments of science, in other words, not ‘real’. The unconscious can only ever be a kind of metaphor – little more than a literary device.

In fact, the unconscious has proved to be as much a part of the physical world as granite or the sun.

Amnesia is often associated with head injury and occurs in two forms:
retrograde amnesia,
in which the patient’s memory up until the head injury is erased, and
anterograde amnesia,
in which the brain loses the capacity to form new memories. With respect to the latter, intellectual functioning can remain relatively unaffected. Thus, the individual can remember everything he or she knew up to the time of the accident and will be just as intelligent.

Until recently it was assumed that patients with severe anterograde amnesia had lost the ability to learn completely; however, it has become increasingly apparent that learning does take place. Amnesic patients can learn new skills, new vocabulary, and new facts, but they cannot remember acquiring this information. Thus, their behaviour is influenced by knowledge which they claim they do not have. It is as though the unconscious is subtly and carefully guiding their choices and judgements while the patients themselves experience nothing more than guessing or following hunches. As such, amnesic patients provide a compelling example of the power of unconscious memories.

Although the influence of unconscious memories in the context of amnesia has only recently been the subject of careful scientific study, neurologists have always been aware that such phenomena occur. In 1911 the Swiss psychologist Edouard Claparède conducted a simple experiment on one of his amnesic patients which suggested she was making use of knowledge that she didn’t know she had. Claparède concealed a pin in his hand while shaking hands with her. The following day, the same patient was reluctant to shake hands but could not explain why, opting instead for some perplexed confabulation.

Perhaps the most celebrated case of unconscious learning in modern neurology is the patient known simply as David – a man exhaustively studied by the neurologist Antonio Damasio and his colleagues. David is ostensibly unable to learn any new information. He has extensive damage to both temporal lobes ofthe brain, and the structures therein that serve memory.

Damasio designed an intriguing study to test David’s implicit learning, which became known as ‘the good-guy/bad-guy experiment’. Essentially, David was engaged in three types of social situation. The first was pleasant and rewarding, the second neutral, and the third unpleasant. In the third or ‘bad-guy’ condition, the individual engaging David assumed a brusque manner and administered a battery of ‘psychological tests’ designed to be dull and boring. These different types of interaction took place over five consecutive days.

David was then shown some photographs of faces, including those who had played the role of ‘good’, ‘neutral’, and ‘bad’ guy in the experiment. David was asked: ‘Whom would you go to if you needed help?’ And for further clarification: ‘Who do you think is your friend from this group?’ David chose the ‘good guy’ 80 per cent of the time. He chose the ‘neutral guy’ at chance levels, but almost never chose the ‘bad guy’. Yet he claimed that he didn’t recognise any of the faces he was shown and that he knew nothing about them. Clearly, learning had taken place; however, that same learning was not accessible to consciousness. Damasio explains David’s behaviour by implicating unconscious emotions (i.e. subliminal feelings that are able to influence choices):

Although David’s unconscious learning is an intriguing phenomenon, it appears intriguing only because of its extremity. In actual fact, most people’s day-to-day social preferences are probably influenced by unconscious learning too. It is only because the effect is diluted that it appears less remarkable.

Human beings are constantly forming positive or negative opinions of others, and often after minimal social contact. If challenged, opinions can be justified, but such justifications frequently take the form of post-hoc rationalisations. Some, of course, are laughably transparent. For example, ‘He had funny eyes’ or ‘She had big ears’.

Unlike David, we can remember many of our past encounters. But, like David, there are many we have forgotten, and a forgotten memory is not necessarily a dead memory.

Just as the romantic poets and Freud suggested – the unconscious never forgets. When we take an instant dislike to someone, perhaps we are simply exhuming the prejudices of an unconscious that nurses its grudges in perpetuity.

So wrote the young naturalist Alfred Russe! Wallace to his mother on learning of how warmly his recently formulated theory of evolution had been received by Charles Darwinand Darwin’s good friendsjoseph Hooker and Charles Lyell. Without doubt, Mrs Wallace must have been very proud of her talented son. To have attracted the attention {and patronage) of such eminent men was a substantial achievement. This august trinity-Darwin, Hooker, and Lyell – seemed keen to facilitate young Wallace’s ascent into the highest ranks of Victorian society. Or so it appeared. In fact, their behaviour was far from altruistic.

On 18 June 1858, Darwin’s post included a manuscript written by Wallace outlining a theory of evolution. This in itself would not have rattled Darwin, Evolutionary theories had been in circulation for a very long time. The ancient Greeks Anaximander and Empedocles, their Chinese contemporary Tson-Tse, Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet (better known as Lamarck), and Darwin’s contemporary Robert Chambers had alt proposed evolutionary theories; however, they were alt – to a greater or lesser extent – wrong. Wallace’s theory, on the other hand, was right and almost identical to Darwin’s.

Darwin had established the principle of evolution by natural selection many years before the arrival of Wallace’s manuscript, although he had not made his views public. Having discovered what is arguably the single most important idea in the history of science, Darwin decided not to publish but instead to devote himself to an exhaustive study of barnacles which ran to several volumes. Clearly, he was a man disinclined to rush things. Unfortunately, his leisurely approach to publication had created a very disagreeable situation. Darwin was suddenly faced with a terrible moral dilemma. What should he do with Wallace’s manuscript? It was self-contained, complete, and fit for publication.
The Origin of Species,
Darwin’s own major work on the subject of evolution, was, on the other hand, still unfinished. If Wallace’s manuscript was published,
The Origin of Species
would become nothing more than a very large addendum – a comprehensive and scholarly confirmation of Wallace’s theory.

What was he to do? Or, more importantly, what
should
he do?

Charles Darwin was renowned for his decency. He was honest, scrupulous, and insistent on fair play. He was a man whose sense of propriety had earned him the respect of his peers and the admiration of his acquaintances. Darwin decided that, given his position, he couldn’t possibly make a disinterested judgement concerning the fate of Wallace’s manuscript. It would be improper for him even to try. Subsequently he wrote to his good friend Lyell (the country’s most eminent geologist) and asked him to decide on an appropriate and equitable course of action; however, he also pointed out that -although he had been sitting on his own theory for over a decade – he was now just about ready to publish a ‘sketch’ of his own views on evolution.

Lyell consulted Hooker (a botanist later to be made director of the Royal Botanic Gardens), and it was decided that the work of both men, Wallace and Darwin, should be presented together at the next meeting of the Linnean Society. All were satisfied that the matter had been brought to a just and satisfactory conclusion. But in reality Darwin’s dilemma had been resolved very much in his favour.

At that time, Wallace was not only completely unknown but also absent. He was a young naturalist, without reputation, still engaged on an expedition to the Malayan archipelago. Darwin, however, was a celebrated natural historian and acquainted with some of the most influential men of his age. These disparities between Wallace and Darwin are not insignificant.

Darwin’s name was more memorable. Subsequently, it would be Darwin’s name, not Wallace’s, that interested parties would more readily associate with the new theory of evolution. Moreover, it was Darwin, not Wallace, who would shortly be in a position to follow the Linnean Society presentation with a magnum opus on the subject of evolution. Wallace had nothing like
The Origin of Species
languishing at the bottom of his cabin chest.

Had Alfred Wallace submitted his manuscript to a scientific journal, or indeed to any natural historian in the world other than Charles Darwin, we would now routinely employ the term Wallacism rather than Darwinism. But Wallace
did
send his manuscript to Darwin, and in doing so he lost his claim on posterity, for over a hundred years his name very rarely appeared in anything but footnotes and appendices.

Darwin’s despatch of Wallace was an act of virtuoso Machiavellianism. While appearing to be entirely fair – an attribute much valued by Victorian society – he succeeded in sabotaging Wallace’s career. Darwin had made no attempt to suppress Wallace’s work. On the contrary, it appeared that Darwin had played a key role in ensuring Wallace’s ideas were introduced to a large and distinguished audience. Of course, that’s what Wallace (and his mother) believed; and in a sense, it was what Darwin believed too.

Although Darwin’s treatment of Wallace was shabby, there is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that Darwin really was a very decent man. His correspondence written during the Wallace affair seems to show that he was determined to acquit himself honourably. So why did he sell Wallace short? One possibility is that – as far as he was concerned – he hadn’t. In his view, sending Wallace’s manuscript to Lyell had been an authentic, creditable act; however, given that Lyell would obviously make a decision favouring Darwin, it seems unbelievable that Darwin could have thought such a thing. Most people observing similar behaviour in everyday life would say of someone like Darwin: ‘Well, he must be deceiving himself.

Unfortunately, decency (even genuine decency) is not a straightforward matter. Decency can function as an extremely effective moral smokescreen; and the more genuine that decency appears, the easier it is to conceal a self-interested agenda. Being able to fool oneself has considerable advantages. If you can fool yourself, then you’ll certainly be in a better position to fool others.

Darwin’s real agenda was to dispose of Wallace. By sending Wallace’s manuscript to Lyell he ensured Wallace’s demise. But at the same time, he appeared to be selflessly promoting the interests of a would-be competitor. The fact that he accomplished this sleight-of-intention so brilliantly suggests that he must have been very convincing. And to convince others, he must have convinced himself. In other words, it served him well to be unconscious of his real agenda. It served him well to be ignorant of his own game plan.

In
The Moral Animal
(1994), the science writer Robert Wright has argued that during the Wallace affair Darwin dramatised two interesting implications of his own theory. Evolution endows human beings firstly with a powerful drive for self-advancement and secondly with an unconscious to help them practise the deceptions necessary to achieve self-advancement. The first point was well recognised by Darwin. Needless to say, the second point wasn’t.

It would take over a hundred years for the links between Darwinism, deceit, and the unconscious to be properly understood; however, once these links were established the scientific legitimacy of the unconscious would be beyond question. Although the concept of the unconscious was of little interest to Darwin (or, of course, the unfortunate Wallace), evolutionary theory would provide a very convincing rationale for its appearance in human psychology.

Until relatively recently the relationship between psychology and evolution had attracted little interest. This is surprising, because Darwin himself was fascinated by psychology. For example, in 1872 he published
The Expression of ihe Emotions in Man and Animals,
a work which – as the title suggests -examined the then much-neglected topic of emotional expression. Darwin’s thesis was that emotions could be understood in terms of their function or purpose. For example the posture, gait, and facial expression of an animal might communicate its intention to either submit or attack. This method of analysing behaviour is often described as functionalist. Within the context of an evolutionary framework, the functionalist approach suggests that, ultimately, any psychological phenomenon can be explained by identifying its survival value.