The Nonexperiential Unconscious

The purpose of this paper is to argue that Freud's narrow concept of the unconscious, which is restricted to mental representations, should he replaced by a broader concept which includes all nonconscious mental entities and processes. Such a revision has the advantages of preserving Freud's concept of the dynamic unconscious and conforming to the way that the term unconscious is actually used by both psychoanalysts and cognitive psychologists. Much confusion over the concept of the unconscious has resulted from the unwitting use of this term to refer to what Sandler and Joffe (1969) call the “nonexperiential.” Although the concept of the nonexperiential, under the label “unconscious,” has had a long history in the field of psychology, analysts have not been aware that both the operation of defense, mechanisms as ivell as the “decision” to activate defense mechanisms are nonexperiential. I also argue that this confusion is manifested in Wakefield's (1990) very useful discussion of Freud's concept of instinctual drives. Rubinstein's (1980) concept of different levels of discourse is helpful in clarifying the relationship between physiology and unconscious mental processes.