Freud and the Neurological Unconscious

Abstract

There is at present, in both philosophy and psychology, a resurgence of interest in the unconscious mind and a parallel interest in the work of Freud. Contemporary work on the unconscious tends, however, to focus on the cognitive unconscious rather than the dynamic unconscious and discussion concerns tacit knowledge, preconceptual content, automatised cognitive representations, and so on. In fact, those who devote thought to the problem of non-conscious representations are divided between thinkers who would view this as a cognitive phenomenon and those who would see only neurophysiology operating at the levels beneath consciousness. Freud was a neurologist before he was a psychiatrist and, as with any other neurologist of his time, he thought deeply about human being and the human brain as focal points of studies in biology, psychology and philosophy. He himself was deeply influenced by the rise of evolutionary thought, the burgeoning psychology of his time and increasingly sophisticated philosophical reflection on cognitive processes. The last was much more developed in continental Europe (following Kant) than in Britain (following the empiricists). These diverse influences played key roles in Freud’s development and refinement of psychoanalysis as a theoretical account of the function of the mind and its relation to the brain.