How We Learned to Start Worrying and Forget the Unconscious

In times of anxiety, we reflexively reach for certainty. 

In our current anxious times we seek certainty by collecting and parsing data. -As if we could evade human biases, and unlock the code of human behavior with the right numbers. We say “data driven” and hope to assuage our audience’s anxiety.

Another recent trend in creating illusions of certainty is leaning on neuroscience to sell ideas. Neuroscience is often referenced to categorize people, and explain all kinds of human phenomena, to the same effect as a plot device in a science fiction piece. 

In Back to the Future, time travel is possible, and Marty and Doc can do it because of the flux capacitor. If we want to enjoy the story, we are wise not to ask too much about the flux capacitor. In our current cultural moment we are sold the idea that humans are easily understandable through neuroscience. Of course neuroscience is a valuable and vibrant field of study, my point is simply that neuroscience is often rhetorically used in this manner.

How fitting is it that the unconscious has seemed to slip out of cultural awareness?

Developing and popularizing our understanding of the unconscious was a major cultural contribution of Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries in the first decades of the 20th century. A basic understanding of unconscious motivations crossed over into mainstream culture in the following decades and informed how we think about relationships, dreams, individual behavior, and mistakes – such as Freudian slips.

An understanding of the unconscious remains fundamental to a sophisticated understanding of psychology, but in my experience, it has largely receded from popular culture. When I ask teachers whether they consider unconscious motivations when trying to understand their student’s behavior, I am generally met with blank confusion. I find it similarly absent in conversations with parents, and unconsidered within organizations. 

The vexing thing about the unconscious is that it is unknowable. It always remains a known unknown. We can agree that it is there, but we cannot be certain of what it contains. Any responsible and thorough effort to understand an individual or group must account for the unconscious, but we also must accept that we cannot verify our hypotheses. This is exactly the kind of paradox that is very unappealing, if not intolerable, in our times.

In keeping with the theme of unconscious factors, I would argue that as a culture we are largely fooling ourselves by pretending we can supplant healthy uncertainty with a false certainty offered by oversold data, or simplified “neuroscience”.  (In quotations here because I am referencing a rhetorical device, not the actual field of study.) And, I hypothesize that our awareness that we are fooling ourselves is repressed into our unconscious, and that the effects of this are manifested in growing generalized anxiety and rampant imposter phenomenon. 

Take a moment to reacquaint yourself with the unconscious – in yourself, in others, and in groups. I mean, slipping out of sight from the culture and stirring up our anxiety, resulting in surprising and neurotic thoughts and behaviors?  -Classic unconscious, am I right? While we can’t do an inventory of the unconscious, our awareness and consideration of it always make our understanding of self, others, and groups richer.