Commentary on “On the Nature of Repressed Contents”

I am very glad to have the opportunity to provide a commentary of Vesa Talvitie and Juhani Ihanus's [T & I's] target paper, “On the Nature of Repressed Contents—A Working-through of John Searle's Critique.” Although, as will be made evident, I disagree with T & I and with Searle, T & I have brought to the fore the vital issue of unconscious (representational) contents. This commentary is divided into three parts. First, I discuss T & I's attempt to reconcile Searle's critique of unconscious content with psychoanalysis. Second, I address problems with Searle's account of the ontology of the mental and his consequent critique of the psychoanalytic view of unconscious mental contents. Third, I attempt a positive argument in favor of unconscious (representational) contents.

T & I quote Searle (1992) in The Rediscovery of the Mind1 claiming that “the psychoanalytic idea of repressed contents … [is] ‘incoherent’ (p. 151), ‘factually empty’ (p. 167), and ‘implying dualism’ (p. 170).” Yet T & I hold that because the debate on this issue has but “minor relevance for clinical data and psychoanalytic practice,” a working-through could be facilitated by substituting T & I's terms “meaning preservation” and “meaning manipulation” for repressed unconscious contents. I disagree with the authors here. Even if they were correct that the immediate clinical-practice implications of a psychoanalytic theory without the concepts of unconscious representational content were minor