Motivational and Emotional Unconscious:

In the first post of “The Unconscious Mind,” I talked about the idea of the unconscious mind before Freud. The second post talked about the Freudian unconscious, and the third post was about the modern psychological view of the “cognitive unconscious.” Alongside the flourishing  idea of ” cognitive unconscious,” there are also many investigations about the motivational and emotional unconscious, which is the topic fo this post

It seems that apart from the cognitive unconscious ( composed of implicit memory, implicit perception, implicit learning and implicit thought) we can have both implicit motives (conative unconscious) and implicit emotions (affective unconscious) which are motives and feelings of which we are not mindful. However, this is the most challenging part of the unconscious mind to prove. After all, we always think of emotions as something that we feel. What is the idea of a feeling that is not felt! However, the idea doesn’t seem that weird to the science.

Can we really have motives of which we are not aware? It is challenging to prove the conative or motivational unconscious by psychological tests, but one evidence is coming from hypnosis. Post-hypnotic suggestions seem to be one proof that implicit motive exists. What is a post-hypnotic suggestion? Sometimes, the hypnotist makes suggestions to the subjects, during a hypnotic session, to do something after the session is over. The subjects do what they were told to do, but they don’t know why they did it. The subjects don’t remember the hypnotic suggestion and usually attribute their action or behaviour to something else. This is an example that it is possible to have a motive that is outside our conscious knowledge.

In the field of the affective unconscious or implicit emotions, there are some pieces of evidence, although not many, that suggest the presence of implicit emotions. “The implicit association test,” which is usually used by psychologists and involves sorting out pictures or words into groups is supposed to give evidence on implicit emotions. These test measures attitudes and could reveal evidence of some implicit emotions. For a description of the “implicit association test” see this link from Harvard.

Psychology, as a science, looks for tests that measure the objective elements. However, we should remember that mental phenomena, by nature, do not easily succumb to objectification. For this reason, it is difficult to find reliable tests to make sure of the presence of unconscious emotions and motivations. It nevertheless seems that modern psychology has at least started to give the idea of unconscious emotions some serious thought.

Where does Freudian unconscious stand today?

So far we can say that the theory of the unconscious mind does not belong solely to psychoanalysis and its offshoots. Cognitive psychology has come all the way to accept this idea. Freud’s belief that thoughts, ideas, motives and desires may be unconscious and can affect behaviour is compatible with modern psychological research. On the other hand, the theory of the conflicts between desires of id and concerns of the ego, and “repression” as a defence mechanism by the ego, has yet to be proved by the investigations of cognitive psychology. Sigmund Freud and mainstream psychology are getting a little bit closer to each other. The fact is we have one mind, so ultimately we need one psychology.