Two Kinds of Association in Our Conscious and Subconscious Minds

In my 2008 book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism (86), I wrote:

Freud was the first to identify that humans possess a dynamic, integrating subconscious, the activities of which he called primary process; he called the activities of the conscious mind secondary process. The subconscious is the portion of the mind that we are not aware of, so when asleep all activity of the mind is subconscious; when awake whatever we are not currently focusing on is subconscious. “Dynamic” means continuously active in the sense that our minds are constantly making connections whether we are awake or asleep; if awake, the connections are being made whether we are aware of what is going on in our minds or not. In short, the subconscious can be thought of as a “connection-making machine” (with no concessions to mechanistic materialism intended).

Dreams are the prototype of the subconscious, observed Freud, but dreams are often distorted and illogical (or certainly less logical than the processes of the conscious mind). But, he continued, and insisted throughout his career, every action of our minds has a cause. What is the exact nature of these subconscious mental processes? And what causes the connections that are made?
 
Psychiatrist Eilhard von Domarus (cited in Independent Judgment and Introspection, 89n8), based on his work with schizophrenics, hypothesized that the subconscious, at least in part, and subsequently called the Von Domarus principle, is guided by the formal fallacy in logic called the undistributed middle term. For example, in the syllogism: all dogs are four-legged animals; all cows are four-legged animals; therefore, all dogs are cows, the middle term is the one that appears in each premise but not in the conclusion. Four-legged animals is the middle term that is not distributed, which means that because four-leggedness is in the predicate of both premises neither accounts for all four legged animals. That dogs and cows have four legs does not mean they are otherwise the same.
 
The fallacy is one of overgeneralization—assuming that because two things have one attribute in common, they are overall the same. Young children, until they learn better, make the dogs-and-cows mistake. Members of indigenous tribes (or other adults who are being careless) also make the mistake.
 
And schizophrenics have drawn conclusions like this: The Virgin Mary is a virgin; I am a virgin; therefore I am the Virgin Mary. The predicate term “virgin” is not distributed. Or, they have said: Switzerland loves freedom; I love freedom; therefore I am Switzerland.
 
Silvano Arieti (229-41), agreeing with von Domarus, called the logic of our subconscious primary process “paleologic” and the reasoning of our conscious secondary process “Aristotelian.” The former is paleo because it is old or archaic, predating our educated control of thoughts using Aristotle’s discoveries, especially his three laws of logic. Children have not yet learned the skill of competent reasoning and schizophrenics in their psychotic episodes are living “waking dreams,” having fled reality and being controlled entirely by their subconscious (“flight from the unsatisfying reality” in Freud’s words).
 
Arieti recognized that the errors of schizophrenics are errors of association and generalized them, in somewhat less technical terms than the fallacy of undistributed middle, as the identity of predicates. The schizophrenic, young child, and indigenous person assume that because the predicates in their thoughts are identical, their subjects must overall be the same.*
 
When we are fully conscious, our subconscious is still operating and can make seemingly random associations, but the associations are not totally random. For example, a friend at dinner complains that the food is not well cooked, so I might say, “By association, that reminds me of last week when I was served almost raw chicken,” the predicate being poorly cooked food. And we often experience similar kinds of associations.
 
What determines the selection of predicate, considering that there exists a nearly unlimited field of possible predicates? “Emotional factors,” says Arieti (236). These emotional factors are especially important in understanding schizophrenics, who frequently come up with enormously bizarre connections not unlike those made in dreams. In last month’s post I made passing reference to one’s “private meanings” in understanding the meaning of symbols in dreams. Neither Freud (that I have read so far) nor Arieti use these words, but private meaning is on the Freud Museum’s website. Knowing a person’s emotions and emotional generalizations helps explain seemingly arbitrary associations.**
 
What these associations of the subconscious mind are not are the associations—let me now call them connections—of concept formation, the secondary process of the reasoning mind.
 
We now are talking about two different kinds of association.
 
The conscious mind is able to both connect and keep separate two entities with the same characteristic. The dog has four legs and the cow has four legs, but a cow and a dog are not overall the same. When we form concepts we look for fundamental or essential similarities.
 
Ayn Rand (45-46) gives us the rule of fundamentality to enable us to dismiss four-leggedness as the most essential characteristic of dogs or opposable thumbs, for example, as the essential distinguishing characteristic of human beings. The rule also allows us to dismiss the fact that all humans are capable of building roads, which other animals cannot do, but “building roads” is not the essence of being human. The rule says that the essential distinguishing characteristic of a concept must cause and explain all or most of the other distinguishing characteristics. This gives us the fundamental characteristic(s) and only the capacity to reason meets the rule (and causes and explains the ability to build roads).
 
This process is the operation of Aristotelian logic at its best. The conscious secondary process gives us control, should we choose to exercise it, over the content and processes of our minds.
 
The paleologic of the subconscious mind cannot, and does not, follow the rule of fundamentality. It follows the rule of “identity of predicates.”
 
Having said this, we can to some extent still control our subconscious mind. If we focus and volitionally exercise our conscious Aristotelian logic over time, we can correct the errors of the subconscious.
 
We can also influence the subconscious in problem solving of the creative process. When working on a problem—say, writing an essay—we usually beforehand must do a certain amount of research and thinking about the issue, building up a substantial context for the problem. To sleep on it, a suggestion some of our teachers may have taught us, now allows our associational subconscious to go to work. Sometimes, not always, we may have a solution or part of a solution the next morning.
 
And, occasionally, when I’ve seen a particularly distressful movie, I have been able to tell my subconscious at bedtime, “I don’t want to dream about this,” and often it works.
 
The significance for Freud of primary process in its dream operations, and especially for purposes of psychotherapy, is that the process is essentially the same process operating in the formation of neurotic symptoms, namely condensation and displacement. What seem to be random associations are condensed and displaced emotions with the ideation, the ideas originally associated with the emotions, repressed. And, identity of predicates and overgeneralization are more specific operations in the formation of these symptoms, which will be discussed next month.
 
 
* A valid Aristotelian syllogism, for example, would be: all dogs are four-legged animals; Fido is a dog; therefore, Fido is a four-legged animal. “Dog” is the middle term and is distributed in the first, major premise, because it tells us all dogs are four-legged. Aristotelian logic focuses primarily on the classification of subjects, rejecting the identity of predicates. In this syllogism the subject Fido is a member of the category “dogs” and therefore has four-legs. Arieti (236) is mistaken when he writes, “In Aristotelian thinking only identical subjects are identified.” It is more complicated than that. In the above syllogism, the subject of the conclusion is identified as belonging to the predicate of the major premise.
 
** And by association, “private meanings” reminds me of Alfred Adler’s private logic “to indicate neurotic reasoning, [though his] followers, including [Rudolf] Dreikurs, broadened [the term] to cover thinking patterns of both normal and abnormal psychologies” (Independent Judgment, 65-66n26). Emotion is probably the guiding link in all associations that our conscious or subconscious minds make. (Cf. Freud on wish fulfillment in dreams as discussed in last month’s post.) Subconscious “emotional generalization” is what psychologist Edith Packer has called the effect of repeated, habitual emotional responses to similar persons, objects, or events, formed—by association—without explicit conceptual identification (1, chap. 3; 2).

Dreams and the Subconscious*

Aristotle said dreams, as paraphrased by Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, 36-37), are “mental activity of the sleeper in so far as he is asleep.” They are not supernatural messages from the gods.
 
Freud’s study of dreams said they are harmless hallucinations when asleep, unconscious urges expressed as a wish or urges from our “day’s residues” (waking life) expressed as a wish, or some combination.
 
He did not say that dreams are all about sex, as some critics have alleged! (And symbolism, sexual or otherwise must be related to the dreamers private meanings.)
 
Let us elaborate.
 
By analyzing an enormous number of dreams of both normal people and people with psychological problems, Freud provided a valuable contribution to psychology, the identification of primary and secondary processes of consciousness and a better understanding of the unhealthy processes.
 
For dreams in particular, he gave detailed descriptions of their nature, including a terminology to use for analysis and a three-part classification of them.**
 
“Manifest content” is the actual events of the dream that we experience, weird and distorted as they may be. “Latent content” is the underlying dream thoughts that evoked the dream. And “dreamwork” is the mental process that transforms the latent into the manifest. The work of dream analysis is to trace this transformation and identify the meaning of the dream.
 
Manifest dreams, Freud thought, are considerably condensed, versus the actual events of a memory, and exhibit a great deal of displacement, that is, the shifting or substitution of minor elements from reality to major ones in the dream or vice versa, or some mixture. As often occurs a single dream can have several elements, including contraries or contradictions side by side one another.
 
The simplest and most fundamental dream is the child’s direct wish fulfillment. For example, a little girl who was ill during the day and forbidden to eat strawberries experienced an elaborate dream of eating “strawbewwies and omblet” during the night. And a little boy whose hike to a nearby mountain was cut short for lack of time dreamed of his conquering the mountain.
 
Of course, adults can experience direct wish fulfillments, such as having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and dreaming of sitting beside a waterfall, or of being hungry and dreaming of a gourmet meal, or, yes, of dreaming about sex. But most of our dreams are distorted. Why?
 
In addition to the direct wish fulfillment, Freud classifies dreams as either anxiety dreams or punishment dreams. In my case, if I may cite a recurring dream, I retired from teaching in 2015, but find myself since dreaming about being late for class and/or unprepared, which never happened in thirty-six years of teaching. And in some versions, the building I am belatedly trying to get into to teach a class is the junior high school I attended in my hometown! (Anxiety dreams can be experienced as nightmares, though I have not experienced these dreams that way.).
 
The underlying dream thoughts: I do have an anxiety about being late to any appointment and prefer to arrive five to ten minutes before the appointed hour. How is this a wish? Freud would say that when asleep my subconscious brings up the repressed anxiety and emotions of embarrassment and humiliation about being late, then distorts the wish of being on time, turning my latent dream thought into a distorted manifest dream, perhaps as a caution to be extra careful about appointments.
 
And the junior high school building? I think there is an element of direct wish fulfillment here, as I do have a fondness for the building. Both of my older brothers attended it when it was a senior high school and I attended many an enjoyable performance in the school’s auditorium, plus basketball games in the gymnasium and high school football games in the nearby stadium. But no, I never had a desire to teach in that building. One might say, “all school buildings look alike,” hence the displacement.
 
Punishment dreams often dredge up unpleasant events from the past that the dreamer experienced as embarrassing or humiliating, sometimes resulting in a sense of guilt. A well-known author in his younger years was a tailor, which he preferred not to think about, but repeatedly dreamed about those years. Similarly, Freud admits that he was not particularly competent when working as a young man at the Chemical Institute, yet in his successful older years continually dreamed about those humiliating days. How is this wish fulfillment?
 
Punishment dreams, says Freud, are not wishes of subconscious drives or memories, but of “a special critical and prohibiting agency” in the mind, the above-I, Über-ich in Freud’s German (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 34).*** Punishment dreams are a wish of punishment for the sense of guilt from earlier days.
 
At this point, Freud discusses the issue of traumatic dreams, especially those of war trauma or, in modern terms, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Trauma is experienced as the emotion of fright, which is terror deriving from an unpreparedness for and surprise at the severity of the threatening event. Freud concedes that it is difficult to call these dreams wish fulfillments and suggests that the dreamwork fails to transform the memories into a wish fulfillment.
 
Let me object, though, and suggest that, as Freud acknowledges, all psychological processes are continuums from normal to abnormal, thus the punishment and traumatic dreams may be variations on the anxiety dreams. We all differ in how we react to negative events in our lives, depending on the level of self-esteem we each have, other inner resources, and the severity of the trauma. And there are war veterans who do not suffer PTSD.
 
Sleepers who have traumatic dreams are often awakened feeling acute anxiety, because the dreams just as often are exact replicas of the traumatic event. The dream and anxiety indicate the amount of fright experienced during the initial event, along with the lack of preparedness for such a terror. Afterwards, an emotion of guilt that says, “why me?” can easily arise—that is, a guilt for having survived the terror when one’s comrades did not. Punishment dreams? Sounds like it.
 
Freud’s work on dreams, answering the critics in his time who regarded dreams as meaningless, considerably elaborated Aristotle’s identification of dreams as mental activity while asleep.
 
His work led him to make an important distinction between the actions of our subconscious mind and the conscious level of reason. He called the former “primary process,” because it arose in the evolutionary process before our human conscious mind, which he called “secondary process.” The higher animals exhibit a primary-process consciousness, and a modicum of choice, though not a true, self-aware volitional consciousness.
 
Primary process seems random, meaning no predictable pattern, but as Freud demonstrated dreams are not random. He recognized that the source of psychological problems, both neurotic and psychotic, this last called by many thinkers “waking dreams” (Interpretation, 115), can be found in our subconscious primary-process minds.
 
Which is why Freud wrote many times that the goal of psychotherapy is to “make the unconscious conscious.”
 
Later psychiatrists, Eilhard von Domarus and Silvano Arieti, based on their study of schizophrenics, offered additional explanations how our subconscious mental processes do have a logic to them, albeit a lesser logic than what our conscious minds are capable of generating.
 
(To be continued next month)
 
 
* See the appendix to Independent Judgment and Introspection, 177-80, for my reasons for considering the prefix “sub-” more correct than Freud’s “un-” when talking about consciousness.
 
** In addition to The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud discussed dreams in the shorter book On Dreams (1901) and in chapters or segments of later works: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (part II, 1915-17), New Introductory Lectures (lecture xxx, 1933), and in the highly concise but incomplete posthumous publication An Outline of Psychoanalysis (chap. v, written in 1938, published in 1940).
 
*** Freud wrote Über-ich, the above- or over- I. Latinized English translations make Freud “both more prolix and more genteel than he really was,” giving us such neologisms as superego. “Prolix and genteel” are the words of Freud biographer Peter Gay (quoted in Kaufmann, 23). They mean diffuse and verbose (prolix) and gentrified, scholarly, academic (genteel). More on the English translations in a later post.