As mentioned in the previous chapter, by “unconscious” I mean the whole person (that is, both his material and immaterial parts) minus his conscious part, that is, minus the conscious self.
This definition of mine coincides only slightly with the psychoanalytic definition, which defines the unconscious as a repository of information removed as conflicting with the subject’s moral principles.
In fact, Freud, in his first topic of the psyche, divides it into three zones: the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious, where the subconscious, unlike the unconscious, contains information that can without difficulty become conscious insofar as it has no morally reprehensible connotations.
I believe that the distinction between unconscious and subconscious is useless and misleading. Useless because it does not help us to make conscious what is unconscious, and misleading because it can lead us to look for connotations and moral aspects in problematic situations independent of ethical issues. In other words, I believe that the difficulty in becoming aware of certain facts is not necessarily attributable to ethical or moral aspects.
Consistent with Samuel Butler’s thought taken up by Titian Possamai in his essay “Unconscious and Repetition,” I make no distinction between subconscious and unconscious, and include in the concept of unconscious any mechanism, automatism, logic or algorithm present and acting in any part of a body, of which the subject is unaware for whatever reason, (ethical or not), even if the subject itself is influenced or governed by them.
For example, in the unconscious I include automatisms such as playing a musical instrument or driving a car. In fact, after a certain number of repetitions, certain sequences of gestures become automatic in the sense that they are performed by the subject without the need for the subject to remember the steps from which they are made up. In fact, it is enough for the subject to decide to implement a certain procedure, and it is performed as if another person or robot were doing it.
When I think, “I” (understood as the conscious self) do not choose the individual thoughts, i.e., individual concepts, individual words that follow one another in my consciousness, but to do so are unconscious automatisms activated by decisions, i.e., logic, of a higher level.
In fact, the behavior of a living being is structured in levels as in a human organizational pyramid, where, starting from the highest levels of command, directives are issued in increasingly detailed form going down the hierarchy.
Let us take another example. Let us imagine that, faced with danger, a person decides to flee. At the top of the “will” pyramid, an agent orders to “flee.” But the person issuing the command does not carry it out. At the next lower hierarchical level, “someone” or “something,” that is, a certain mental agent, in obeying the order, decides in which direction to flee and by which means (on foot or by means of a motor vehicle). At the hierarchical level below, if the decision is to flee on foot in a certain direction, “someone” orders to move the legs in such a way as to cause a move away from the place of danger; at the next lower hierarchical level “someone” orders when to make the leg muscles contract and when to release them in such a way as to achieve the desired effect. The entire chain of command is unconscious, except (perhaps) the highest hierarchical level, which is capable of doing nothing more than issuing orders to entities capable of executing them.
As for the “psychoanalytic” unconscious this is included in my general concept of the unconscious as a special case of unconscious automatisms. In fact, the drives of the es and the prescriptions of the superego are to be considered mental agents intervening in the “chain of command” mentioned above, in higher or lower hierarchical positions and with greater or lesser intensity and potentially in conflict with other agents. On the concept of “mental agent” see the chapter devoted to it.
Next chapter: Needs, desires, motivations