The Rational Unconscious:The Freudian Mind Reconsidered

摘要

As Matthews (2013) correctly observes, Freud himself held two views of the un-conscious, which may be characterized as 'cognitive' and the other as 'dynamic' The central question each of the commentaries address is to what extent can we attribute a specifically Freudian contribution to our understanding of thinking if we accept the first constellation of his thought (a cognitive unconscious) and reject (or better, ignore) the second (psychoanalytic repression). I maintain that one may remain agnostic about the specific truth claims of psychoanalytic repression theory and still appreciate that Freud provided insights about unconsciousness, which remain germane to contemporary philosophies of mind. More specifically, new findings concerning unconscious deliberative thinking, which follows a normative strategy (Sio and Ormerod 2009), suggest new appreciation of Freud's thought.