You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Tom A. Williams. Prevalent Misunderstandings concerning the Unconscious Mind. Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, Vol. XIX, p. 77.
The writer denies the utility of all the various terms proposed for aspects of unconscious mentality and regards the conception itself as unnecessary.
He develops instead an intellectualistic hypothesis of forgetting and subsequent motivation according to which facts long forgotten and ceasing to act in themselves have led to a generalization which becomes a motivating force in our thinking, feeling, and doing.
Several generalizations of this kind may be utilized for a further conclusion and therefore pass into abeyance and be forgotten. He denies any important rôle to repression in forgetting and claims that under favourable conditions for concentration much more can be remembered than is generally supposed.
Where persons are unaware of their real motives this does not justify in his view the assumption of an unconscious. It is a mental laziness comparable