What are the evidence to suggest that people have an unconscious minds?

-- Shailendra Prasad (sprasad007@govnet.gov.fj), August 04, 2003

Answers

The issue is not one of an "unconscious mind" so much as there being unconscious mental processes. There can be no doubt that there are unconscious mental processes. Consider: what is the capitial of Russia? Now, think about how you retrieved that information. There is no conscious experience of the memory retreival process (expect, perhaps, for a vague sense of tension or expectation). The answer just "appears" in consciousness after a short pause. The process of retrieval itself is unconscious.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), August 05, 2003.

Hi Shailendra, In addition to the example of unconscious retrieval processes that Christopher Green mentioned, there are probably other totally unconscious, as well as partially unconscious processes that influence emotion, motivation, decision making, learning, and even our identity. Recent popular books by Joseph LeDoux (Emotional brain and Synaptic Self)and also a book by V.S. Ramachandran (Phantoms in the brain)discuss recent evidence for interesting unconcious proscesses. If it is hard for you to get some of the books I mentioned, you can look at free jacket summaries, sample pages, and reviews on Amazon.com. before deciding if you want to buy any of them. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@gasou.edu), August 15, 2003.