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The concepts of “free will” and the unconscious are core elements of a psychodynamic model of the mind. As psychoanalysts we believe that the content of the unconscious, whether intrapsychic conflict, affects, introjects, fantasies, or identifications, is a strong determinant of conscious experience, motivation for behavior, and the “choices” we make. Psychoanalysts also believe that through the analytic process, whether by interpretation of the transference, restructuring of a personal narrative, working through, or the transformative influence of the “real” relationship, patients attain new knowledge of their intrapsychic life. As this attenuates the unconscious determinants of their behavior and promotes “free will,” they can choose to act, feel, and think differently. The concept of free will is fundamental to our therapeutic process and is a cornerstone of the humanism on which psychoanalytic theory and techniques rest. Indeed, free will is at the root of our very notion of self.

Yet free will, the conscious experience of choice, may not be as “free” of the unconscious as we think. As Smith recounts, recent experiments have shown that although subjects may experience that they have made a choice at the instant it happens, unconscious neural activity can be demonstrated significantly before the experience of choice and can indeed predict the “free will” choice the subject will make. In one set of experiments, Bode et al. showed that a subject's choice between using the right or the