Editing Unconscious mind (section)

==Criticism of the Freudian concept==
The notion that the unconscious mind exists at all has been disputed.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Oxford companion to philosophy |date=1995 |publisher=Oxford Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-19-866132-0 |editor-last=Honderich |editor-first=Ted |location=Oxford}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |date=1981 |title=David E. Stannard. Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory. New York: Oxford University Press. 1980. Pp. xx, 187. $12.95 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr/86.2.369 |journal=The American Historical Review |doi=10.1086/ahr/86.2.369 |issn=1937-5239 |last1=Binion |first1=Rudolph |volume=86 |issue=2 |pages=369–370 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Callender |first=J. S |date=1996-02-24 |title=Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7029.518a |journal=BMJ |volume=312 |issue=7029 |pages=518 |doi=10.1136/bmj.312.7029.518a |s2cid=62293185 |issn=0959-8138}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Karbelnig |first=Alan Michael |date=2020 |title=The theater of the unconscious mind. |url=http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/pap0000251 |journal=Psychoanalytic Psychology |language=en |volume=37 |issue=4 |pages=273–281 |doi=10.1037/pap0000251 |s2cid=198760071 |issn=1939-1331}}</ref>

[[Franz Brentano]] rejected the concept of the unconscious in his 1874 book ''[[Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint]]'', although his rejection followed largely from his definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness.<ref name="Vitz">{{cite book |author=Vitz, Paul C. |title=Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious |url=https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudschr0000unse |url-access=limited |publisher=The Guilford Press |location=New York |year=1988 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudschr0000unse/page/59 59]–62;107ff |isbn=978-0-89862-673-5 }}</ref>

[[Jean-Paul Sartre]] offers a critique of Freud's theory of the unconscious in ''[[Being and Nothingness]]'', based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. Philosopher [[Thomas Baldwin (philosopher)|Thomas Baldwin]] argues that Sartre's argument is based on a misunderstanding of Freud.<ref name="Baldwin">{{cite book |author=Thomas Baldwin |editor=Ted Honderich |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=1995 |page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond/page/792 792] |isbn=978-0-19-866132-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond/page/792 }}</ref>

[[Erich Fromm]] contends that "The term 'the unconscious' is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as ''the'' unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, ''of which we are unconscious''. If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: 'the' unconscious."<ref>Fromm, Erich. ''Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx & Freud''. London: Sphere Books, 1980, p. 93.</ref>

[[John Searle]] has offered a critique of the Freudian unconscious. He argues that the Freudian cases of shallow, consciously held mental states would be best characterized as 'repressed consciousness,' while the idea of more deeply unconscious mental states is more problematic. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts" that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are ''in principle never accessible'' to conscious awareness, is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not "nonconscious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it) is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it is being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the nonconscious processes of the brain.<ref>Searle, John. ''The Rediscovery of the Mind''. MIT Press, 1994, pp. 151-173.</ref>

Other critics of the Freudian unconscious include [[David Stannard]],<ref name="Stannard">See "The Problem of Logic", Chapter 3 of ''Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory'', published by Oxford University Press, 1980.</ref> [[Richard Webster (British author)|Richard Webster]],<ref name="Webster">See "Exploring the Unconscious: Self-Analysis and Oedipus", Chapter 11 of ''Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis'', published by The Orwell Press, 2005.</ref> [[Ethan Watters]],<ref name="ReferenceA">See "A Profession in Crisis", Chapter 1 of ''Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried'', published by Scribner, 1999.</ref> [[Richard Ofshe]],<ref name="ReferenceA"/> and Eric Thomas Weber.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Weber ET | year = 2012 | title = James's Critiques of the Freudian Unconscious – 25 Years Earlier | url = http://williamjamesstudies.org/9.1/weber.pdf | journal = William James Studies | volume = 9 | pages = 94–119 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130928003719/http://williamjamesstudies.org/9.1/weber.pdf | archive-date = 2013-09-28 }}</ref>

Some scientific researchers proposed the existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a "cognitive unconscious" ([[John Kihlstrom]]),<ref>{{cite book |author=Kihlstrom, J.F. |chapter=The unconscious |editor=Ramachandran, V.S. |title=Encyclopedia of the Human Brain |publisher=Academic |location=San Diego CA |year=2002 |pages=635–646 |volume=4 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author1=Kihlstrom, J.F. |author2=Beer, J.S. |author3=Klein, S.B. |chapter=Self and identity as memory |editor1=Leary, M.R. |editor2=Tangney, J. |title=Handbook of self and identity |publisher=Guilford Press |location=New York |year=2002 |pages=68–90 }}</ref> an "[[adaptive unconscious]]" ([[Timothy Wilson]]),<ref>Wilson T. D. ''Strangers to Ourselves Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious''.</ref> or a "dumb unconscious" (Loftus and Klinger),<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Loftus EF, Klinger MR |title=Is the unconscious smart or dumb? |journal=Am Psychol |volume=47 |issue=6 |pages=761–5 |date=June 1992 |pmid=1616173 |url=http://content.apa.org/journals/amp/47/6/761 |doi=10.1037/0003-066X.47.6.761}}</ref> which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed, and the "deep unconscious system" of [[Robert Langs]].

In modern [[cognitive psychology]], many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or "automatic" have been used. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Greenwald AG, Draine SC, Abrams RL |title=Three cognitive markers of unconscious semantic activation |journal=Science |volume=273 |issue=5282 |pages=1699–702 |date=September 1996 |pmid=8781230 |doi=10.1126/science.273.5282.1699|bibcode=1996Sci...273.1699G |citeseerx=10.1.1.80.3946 |s2cid=14256639 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Gaillard R, Del Cul A, Naccache L, Vinckier F, Cohen L, Dehaene S |title=Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious access |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=103 |issue=19 |pages=7524–9 |date=May 2006 |pmid=16648261 |pmc=1464371 |doi=10.1073/pnas.0600584103 |bibcode=2006PNAS..103.7524G |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Kiefer M, Brendel D |title=Attentional modulation of unconscious "automatic" processes: evidence from event-related potentials in a masked priming paradigm |journal=J Cogn Neurosci |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=184–98 |date=February 2006 |pmid=16494680 |doi=10.1162/089892906775783688 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Naccache L, Gaillard R, Adam C, etal |title=A direct intracranial record of emotions evoked by subliminal words |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=102 |issue=21 |pages=7713–7 |date=May 2005 |pmid=15897465 |pmc=1140423 |doi=10.1073/pnas.0500542102 |bibcode=2005PNAS..102.7713N |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author1=Smith, E.R. |author2=DeCoster, J. |title=Dual-Process Models in Social and Cognitive Psychology: Conceptual Integration and Links to Underlying Memory Systems |journal=Personality and Social Psychology Review |volume=4 |pages=108–131 |doi=10.1207/S15327957PSPR0402_01 |year=2000 |issue=2 |s2cid=147930826 |url=https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/1f09a202-3c36-4c1b-898c-e7f42fbece4e }}</ref> Active research traditions related to the unconscious include implicit memory (for example, [[Priming (psychology)|priming]]), and [[Pawel Lewicki]]'s nonconscious acquisition of knowledge.