# Unconscious

The unconscious consists of the processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection, and include thought processes, memory, affect, and motivation. Even though these processes exist well under the surface of conscious awareness they are theorized to exert an impact on behavior.

## Quotes

* The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.
** On Sigmund Freud's seventieth birthday (1926); as quoted in The Liberal Imagination (1950) by Lionel Trilling
* Under normal conditions, every conflict stimulates the mind to activity for the purpose of creating a satisfactory solution. Usually—i.e., in the West—the conscious standpoint arbitrarily decides against the unconscious, since anything coming from inside suffers from the prejudice of being regarded as inferior or somehow wrong.
** Carl Jung, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East (1958), p. 344
* The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.
** Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (1952)
* It is only through the psyche that can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We are unable to distinguish whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are borderline concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically... there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness which manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, and a tendency, independent of the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to this center. Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype produces a symbolism which has always characterized and expressed the Deity... The God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with a special content of it: namely the archetype of the self. It is this archetype from which we can no longer distinguish the God-image empirically.
** Carl Jung, Answer to Job (1952)
* The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."
** Carl Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364 (1953)
* Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.
** Lewis Mumford in Interpretations and Forecasts (1967)
* The idea of the unconscious mental processes was, in many of its aspects, conceivable around 1700, topical around 1800, and became effective around 1900, thanks to the imaginative efforts of a large number of individuals of varied interests in many lands.
** Lancelot Law Whyte, The Unconscious Before Freud (1967)
* Belief in a transcendental divinity arose from a misinterpretation of intimations from the less conscious levels of the mind. ...God is in the unconscious, is the unconscious, perhaps. ...Hinduism, recognizing the impersonality of the Divine Being, identified it with the deeper Self of man.
** Lancelot Law Whyte, The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)
* The unconscious mind is not blind, and its several levels sustain and nourish the intellect and the imagination. There exist interacting, cooperative levels of the healthy mind, still to be understood, toward which our first tentative approximations, "conscious" and "unconscious," only crudely point.
** Lancelot Law Whyte, The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

## See also

* Consciousness
* Ego