It helps also to distinguish between two kinds of unconscious state. One of them I want to call preconscious, the other I want to call subconscious. A preconscious mental state is an unconscious mental state that can be brought up to consciousness if I try. So, for example, think about the name of one of your earlier teachers that you had an elementary school, for example, your third-grade teacher. Now, it might take a little while to draw that person's name up into awareness, but with some effort, you probably can do so. If not that particular person, think about a fourth or a fifth-grade teacher or someone else that you knew when you were a child. With some effort, you can bring that person's name up to conscious awareness. You might also wonder whether or not there are emotions that are preconscious in the sense that even if it's a little bit difficult to dredge them up, They can be dredged up with some effort, some painstaking, perhaps unpleasant, difficult realization, but nevertheless can be brought into conscious awareness with some work. Now, you're able to bring it up to conscious awareness suggesting that it had been in some sense inside of you before. That's not to let Socrates win the debate given what he said about his discussion with Meno's slave boy, suggesting that those ideas are innate inside of you, but there's something you acquired in the course of your lifetime became unconscious from the last time you thought about that teacher, for example, and just now when you brought that teacher's name up at a conscious awareness. If you want to ask what would it be to justify the attribution of preconscious states, it would, for example, come in the form of this dielectric that we just went through, tried to bring up into awareness something that you probably know somewhere that's probably submerged. Then once you have that, you'll notice that it's not as if you learn something new but rather you recollected. So, long-term memory would be an example of a repository for unconscious, more precisely preconscious mental states. But Freud wants to suggest that there may be, and more recent research on the unconscious suggests that there probably are subconscious states which are unconscious and not subject to being brought up to conscious awareness with some effort. So we�re going to see that some aspects of human behavior perhaps can be explained by the supposition that there are not just unconscious but subconscious phenomena that have a powerful effect on what we do, but that we can't know by introspecting. Freud is not always himself completely clear, but I suspect that for the most part, he'd be willing to say that unconscious phenomena are generally preconscious but near the cusp of subconsciousness. That is, they can always in principle brought up into conscious awareness, but that in some cases are very, very difficult to bring up to awareness and may take years of painstaking work. Freud also suggests, interestingly, that there are many aspects of current social experience that support his hypothesis, not just that they're unconscious phenomena, but that those unconscious phenomena are very much bound up with these desires in the direction of sexuality and violence. You can think of contemporary cultural works that suggest precisely the same thing. So, for example, the movie and book A Clockwork Orange, proposes a picture of society or at least groups within society that are as Freud would probably say, "The unconscious gone wild." In the sense that there are roving bands that wreak violence on everybody they come across, and that seemed to be cases in which people are giving vent to their unconscious desires and causing a lot of destruction in the process. Likewise more recent movie, The Purge, is going to be a case in which at least once a year everybody seems to be allowed to let those unconscious desires have free reign, and there's a whole lot of destruction that results from that. As you can imagine, Freud has a little bit of theorizing to do about how society works with largely based on the fact that or in light of the fact that according to him, we've got these urges towards sexuality and violence. He writes at one point, "Society does not wish to be reminded of this precarious portion of this foundation. That's why it will not tolerate this outcome of psychoanalytic research." What he means by that is the following. In the course of our development, each of us as we get socialized into society and socialized into our group in which we live through parents and teachers, workplaces and various other institutions, we're forced over time to as it were tamp down our desires in the direction of sexuality and violence. When he says at one point, "Civilization has forever been created anew," what I think he means by that is that each of us starts out as a barbarian. Each of us starts out as if they were a member of one of the roving bands in A Clockwork Orange or The Purge, and it's only by virtue of being forced to control those, push them down inside, keep them within us and act in a polite way that's acceptable to civilized society, it's only by virtue of doing that that we're able to pass in contemporary life. I think it also suggests in a spirit like that of Thomas Hobbes, that if we don't do that, the society will just break down and there will be nothing but violence, bloodshed, death, and destruction everywhere you turn so that we make a compromise in order to be members of society. We give up our desires. We give up our tendencies and impulses to act on our sexual and violent urges. What we get in turn is a certain amount of predictability and safety for ourselves. So, you can't always take everything you want, you can't always, for example, have sexual contact with every person that you find attractive, but what you get in return is you're not the object or victim of that when other people feel that desire towards you firstly, and there is a reasonable amount of expectation that what you count as personal property will consider to be your personal property into the future. But that's a precarious balance. Freud's idea is that even if we were to acknowledge this fact as large as the society at large, if everybody were to be aware of the fact that we have these desires towards sexuality and violence, he suggests, the bonds of social cohesion would begin to break. That is, once we become aware of the fact that we've got these desires within us, it would be very difficult to not act on them in some way or another. So, again, he says, "Society doesn't wish to be reminded of this precarious portion of this foundation." I think what he means by that is were his ideas to be broadcasts around society generally, people would begin to start acting on the desires that he's telling us we all have inside of us, and that would be dangerous. The result is that according to Freud, each of us has a vested interest in not believing what Freud says. Each of us has a vested interest in saying, "No, that's crazy." So, now look what happens dialectically as Freud defends his view. He says, "I've got this radical position, I've got this outlandish claim that each of us has in their unconscious minds this incredibly powerful set of desires towards sexuality and violence, firstly. Secondly, it's going to be in each of our interests to deny that claim because if we all accept it, then it's going to be much more likely that people will start acting on those desires that I'm claiming that we have. But notice that's a view that raises some questions about as it were epistemology, the way in which we can justify a decision. Because you can see how a similar kind of view can be generalized in lots of different directions. You can prove a lot of things or at least act as you're proving a lot of things by saying, "Here's my outlandish theory. By the way, my outlandish theory predicts that everybody will think that this outlandish theory is crazy." So that when you come to me and say "Hey, your theory is crazy." I will say, "That's what I predicted. More evidence for what I've got to say." So, there's something a little bit epistemically questionable or at least puzzling about Freud's approach. I suspect one of the reasons why defenders of psychoanalysis had a great deal of difficulty being able to settle down and figure out under what conditions can we find empirical support for it and much of that methodological challenge for the theory, comes from this dual aspect of its position. Not only that but also the psychoanalytic movement developed a large following of people who had a near-religious devotion to it. At the same time you might ask, "If that's your position, there's a danger of intellectual hubris." That is to say, there's a danger of being too confident in your opposition, and waving aside all potential challenges to it. So that, as I've suggested, you can prove or act as if you're proving a lot of different things if you adopt that methodology, it's in a sense too good to be true. We're going to come back in a moment and ask, "Well, what would be an appropriate challenge to a view of this kind?"
