Hidden Minds (34 page)

Virtually every major advance in neuroscience since 1991 has added weight to this same conclusion. The answer to the problem of consciousness will be found below the limen rather than above it.

The unconscious and unconscious processes are now routinely invoked by contemporary philosophers and neuroscientists. In his 1999 work,
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
Antonio Damasio underscores the enormous amount of information that is stored and processed unconsciously in the human brain. In his exhaustive survey he includes all the fully formed images to which we do not attend; all the neural patterns that never become images; all the response dispositions that were acquired through experience, remain dormant, and might never become an explicit neural pattern; all the preconscious modification of such dispositions (that might never become explicitly known); and ‘all the hidden wisdom and know-how that nature embodied in innate, homeostatic dispositions’ (i.e. the self-regulatory systems in the brain).

For Damasio, the concept ofthe unconscious is entirely integrated into his model of the mind-body relationship. The unconscious has a biological taproot in the body itself. The body regulates its systems without awareness, but its choices are ‘intelligent’. Appropriate chemicals are automatically released to help us digest our food or run away from danger. The immune system learns to recognise invading organisms and can mobilise specialised cellular forces to deal with subsequent threats. The body Observes’, ‘learns’, and ‘understands’. But it does so in ignorance. It performs these miracles unknowingly.

In the 1960s and 1970s, ‘respectable’ brain scientists would have eschewed concepts such as unconscious emotions and unconscious selves. Yet, in Damasio’s most recent theoretical formulation, both unconscious emotions and the idea of an unconscious proto-self are fully embraced.

Of course, the unconscious of Damasio and his neuroscientist peer group is not the unconscious of Freud and Jung. It is an unconscious that has much more in common with Laycock’s ‘reflex function of the brain’, T. H. Huxley’s automatic processes, and Kihlstrom’s cognitive unconscious. It is an enabling unconscious. Even so, the emphasis that contemporary neuroscientists give to unconscious processes is fundamentally in accord with Freud, They, like him, are prepared to accept that events occurring outside of awareness are the principal determinants of human behaviour. In many respects, this basic consensus is far more significant than all the discrepancies that bring Freudian ideas into conflict with the contemporary model combined.

If the study of unconscious processes proves to be the key to consciousness, then the unrealised promise of the unconscious that dogged the concept throughout the twentieth century will be finally and decisively realised. Moreover, the realisation of that promise will send as many tremors through scientific and cultural institutions as have been generated by genetics and quantum mechanics.

The brain is a material system, obeying the same laws of physics that influence everything else in the universe. Newton’s apple could only take a single path of descent given the forces acting on it at the time; not least of which, of course, was the earth’s gravitational field. Similarly chemical reactions and processes in the brain must conform to a relatively predetermined sequence. If it were possible to take repeated ‘snapshots’ of the entire brain, then the position of every molecule in any one snapshot should be the logical consequence of molecular events in the preceding snapshot, and so on. If the mind is simply the product of underlying electrochemical activity, then these constraints seem to exclude any possibility of free will.

The seminal work of Benjamin Libet is certainly consistent with this view. His laboratory studies using evoked potential technology demonstrated a half-second delay between the unconscious, electrochemical determinants of behaviour, and the arrival of intentions to behave in awareness.

For some, the idea that human beings are merely sophisticated automata is so abhorrent they have made a valiant effort to rescue ‘free will’ with the help of quantum physics.

In the quantum realm, what we recognise as the ‘common sense’ rules that govern the world seem to break down. Things that could not happen with relatively large objects (like ceils or people) become possible. For example, electrons can appear to be located at two places at once, or be influenced by what they ‘might do’ in the future. Such flexibility clearly has explanatory potential with respect to a ‘physical’ basis of free will. In 1951 the physicist David Böhm wrote:

Since 1951 numerous commentators have speculated on the viability of a ‘quantum mind’; however, a powerful criticism of this work is that it is simply a reworking of the homunculus solution. Instead of speculating about a special area in the brain where consciousness is generated, scientists now speculate about a special quantum state. Unfortunately, as with the homunculus solution, there is as yet no more evidence linking quantum perturbations and consciousness than there is linking a special area of the brain and consciousness.

We instinctively baulk at the implications of contemporary neuroscience: our behaviour is determined by unconscious processes; the self is epiphenomenal – and a convenient fiction that provides us with post-hoc rationalisations to ‘explain’ our behaviour; and choice is something that is exercised in the absence of awareness. In reality, we can make nothing more of ourselves than we already are, and all our major decisions are made a good half-second before we
think
of them.

In the twenty-first century, Freud has finally landed his third blow. It is every bit as powerful as he claimed, and threatens to leave the human race in an ontological swoon; however, this need not be so. Why should the facts of our existence engender fear and suspicion rather than acceptance and wonder?

The idea that the self is an illusion only arouses consternation in those with a deep attachment to an idea of mind in which the conscious ego has a pivotal or central position. Attachment to this idea is by no means universal. It is a local phenomenon – associated only with western attitudes and values. In the east, the illusory nature of self has been recognised for millennia. Curiously, modern neuroscience has reached a virtually identical conclusion to that reached by Buddhists, who have understood and accepted that the self is unreal for two and a half thousand years.

Contemporary neuroscience and Buddhism are so close in this respect, it is possible to accept both paradigms without experiencing any conflict. In an article titled ‘Back to basics* published in 1997, Susan Blackmore – who is at the same time a psychologist, brain scientist, and practising Buddhist, wrote the following:

Blackmore then goes on to sound the registers shared by the scientific and Buddhist models of mind.

The Buddhist view is that identity (or consciousness) is to the brain what the shape of a wave is to a moving body of water. The wave exists, but oniy in a very limited sense. Contemporary neuroscience shares this view entirely: the unconscious activity of the total brain produces electrochemical ripples and the shape of those ripples is us. Yes, we exist. But only in a very special sense, and even then, only just.

If it is accepted that the conscious self and the conscious exercise of free will are both illusory, then this must have enormous implications for our moral and ethical codes. To what extent is it right to punish someone for transgressions which, ultimately, are the result of automatic and unconscious brain processes? In reality, a thief steals because he or she can’t do anything else. Likewise, a philanthropist is in the same position – giving, because he has to. Social institutions punish the former and reward the latter, assuming the existence of an agent self. But there is no agent self! In an absolute sense, our social institutions may serve much the same function as consciousness -glossing over inconsistencies, providing post-hoc rationalisations, and shoring up an entirely fallacious and misconceived sense of what is right and wrong. In truth, the new model of mind makes concepts such as right and wrong entirely redundant. They simply don’t apply.

What, then, is the alternative? Surely we must act as if people are making choices, even if we know the sorry reality?

This may well be true, but even so there would be considerable merit in reminding ourselves of what it really means to be human before expressing contempt or passing judgement. Again, contemporary neuroscience informs a moral sensibility that is oddly eastern. Buddhist and Taoist universes are impersonal. The polarities of yin and yang are reflected in a multiplicity of other dichotomies, among which can be found good and evil. They exist as complementary potentials in a universe that just is. People just are. There is as much point to becoming angry about the behaviour of a thief as there is to becoming angry about the position of a stone. Neither make choices. They occupy their places in the natural order of things.

The philosophical, moral, and scientific implications of recognising the importance of unconscious mental processes are extraordinary. It has taken humanity some time to come to terms with Copernicus and Darwin. Coming to terms with Freud may take even longer, because the third blow demands a complete revision of our understanding of what it means to be human.

Freud never received the Nobel Prize. But, in retrospect, perhaps his one great insight was worthy of such an exalted accolade.

One of the finest works to be written on the dynamic unconscious – as charEllenberger does not, however, offer us any further clues as to what this ‘higher synthesis’ might involve.

When Ellenberger wrote his conclusion, brain-scanning technology was in its infancy It was possible to do little more than X-ray the brain in order to reveal gross structural abnormalities. Today it is possible to track – and measure – the physical changes that accompany even the most subtle mental operations. Moreover, these mental operations include both conscious and unconscious processes. Already a number of neuroscientists have been bold enough to examine the results of brain-scanning studies, and speculate on where Freudian mechanisms (such as repression) might take place in the brain.

Advances in technology have begun to realise Ellenberger’s hope for a marriage between psychodynamic and experimental psychology. The dynamic unconscious and scientific measurement may not be irreconcilable after all.

Yet, however the unconscious is construed – be it hidden intelligence or network of insensible reflexes – one thing is certain: the unconscious has proved to be one of the most robust concepts in psychology. It has survived centuries of scepticism, criticism, and even the odd scandal, to become firmly established at the centre of contemporary neuroscience.

Virtually every aspect of mental life is connected in some way with mental events and processes that occur below the threshold of awareness, irrespective of the division that separates pre-war, and post-war understanding of the unconscious, the profound importance of unconscious procedures, memories, beliefs, perceptions, knowledge, and emotions is recognised universally. Moreover, for the first time in the history of psychology, scientists are equipped with technologies of sufficient power to undertake a thorough exploration of the unconscious: an exploration that will very probably transform the general conception of what it is to be human. Even basic assumptions about the nature of identity and our ability to make choices will be challenged.

The flame of consciousness, once proudly portrayed as a brilliant and illuminating torch by Enlightenment thinkers, will very likely appear increasingly insignificant as exploration of the unconscious continues. A guttering candle perhaps – or even less.

If the external universe is composed – as astronomers tell us – mostly of dark matter, then it would seem that the internal universe is much the same. We are creatures not of light, but of darkness. A prospect that is unsettling, but alive with extraordinary and exciting possibilities. acterised principally by nineteenth-century romantic philosophy and subsequently psychoanalysis – is
The Discovery ofthe Unconscious
(1970) by Henri Ellenberger. It is a work of great scholarship, providing the reader with an exhaustive survey of key figures and developments in psychodynamic psychiatry up until the Second World War. As we know, the war proved to be a watershed in the history of the unconscious. Thereafter, the disciplines of computer science, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and neurology all contributed ideas, experimental techniques, and technological advances that helped to establish a new model of the unconscious (albeit a model that revived ideas originally proposed by luminaries such as Huxley, Laycock, Carpenter, and Helmholtz) – the unconscious of automatic reflexes and preconscious processing.

In the final pages of Ellenberger’s masterpiece he rightly observes that the old psychodynamic unconscious is incompatible with contemporary science (particularly in the guise of experimental psychology). Clearly, it is impossible to measure libido or quantify the id. No one will ever produce a scaled map of a dreamscape. Subsequently, the dynamic unconscious can never be regarded as a subject suitable for proper scientific study. Indeed, the study of the dynamic unconscious has always been, and will always be, a form of pseudo-science.