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Bash claims that the concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness as used by the romantic philosophers and the classical schools of depth psychology are not identical with the common usage of relative consciousness and unconsciousness. He understands the latter topologically as polarised areas without structure, with fluid boundaries and with intercommunication. In contrast to this, he says, Freud, Jung,
Bleuler and Goldstein had already conceived ways of thinking, of cognition, and of attitudes which are not contingent on being conscious or unconscious.
Bash describes in some detail recent investigations and results in neurophysiology, neuro-pathology and neuro-anatomy in connection with the working of the two cerebral hemispheres. Many readers of this journal will be familiar with this research (Rossi 2, LAMBERT 1). These investigations showed that the predominant capabilities of each hemisphere for perceiving and processing are independent of the degree of consciousness at any given moment. Therefore, Bash claims, the concepts of so-called ‘consciousness’ and ‘unconsciousness’ become superfluous. Hence the quotation marks in the title of the paper.
The author relates in an interesting way the neurophysiological findings to Goldstein's ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ thinking, to Freud's ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ process and to Bleuler's and Jung's ‘autistic’ and ‘logical’ thinking. He reminds us that by ‘autistic’ thinking Bleuler meant a manner of conscious or unconscious thinking that is independent of the rules of logic and is, instead, directed by affective needs. Bash shows that Jung, in a somewhat modified way, came to a similar conclusion that there were two kinds of thinking. Indeed, Jung wrote of ‘a highly developed intellectual activity of the unconscious’
After a scholarly discussion of the literature on these neuro-physiological researches (he gives no fewer than thirty references), the author draws the following conclusions:
There are unconscious cerebral a