Thread: Best fact based books on the Subconscious Mind?

That is exactly what I am looking for as well, and like you said, all I come across is new age metaphysical elaborations. Have you been able to find a book that's actually based and guided by neuroscience? Thanks!

'Power of Your Subconscious Mind' by Dr. Joseph Murphy

If you're interested in the real stuff, then you should know that in scientific circles the term subconscious isn't used... that's pretty much a new-age thing. You want to look for books on the unconscious (which after all is what Freud named it and what it's always been called in psychology ever since). Freud mapped it out and made numerous discoveries that created the cornerstone of psychotherapy as we know it today, though of course his ideas were riddled with fallacies due largely to his repressive Victorian upbringing. Carl Gustav Jung went next, corrected most of Freud's mistakes and dug deeper to uncover the Collective Unconscious - Freud had believed the Personal Unconscious (storehouse for repressed thoughts and memories) was all that existed.

Now the Collective Unconscious itself is also a very charged term. You have to be really careful when looking for books about it because even before Jung's death the term had already been usurped by New Agers (yes, they were around a century ago too... there's nothing new about the movement really) and misappropriated and misunderstood.

The Collective Unconscious that Jung had discovered is a part of the unconscious mind that all of us have (it's not some kind of hivemind construct that allows telepathy as the new-agers believe). Rather than containing repressed thoughts and memories like the Personal Unconscious does, it contains the Archetypes, which are essentially like instincts or what's been referred to as racial or cellular memories... like an animal's instincts they're present somehow at birth, carried in the DNA, and are the same for all of us, no matter the country, region, race etc. They're essentially the things that make us human (mentally).

The main archetypes are the Anima (in males) the Animus (in females) and the Shadow (repository for those things about ourselves that we fear to face). There are many more, but these are the best-known. You can read about them here: Anima and animus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'll tell you straight up front though - Jung is a difficult read. He has a tendency to use very complex sentences that somehow become vague and confusing, at least for me. I read a lot of his work, but it's frustrating to read it in his own words.

Offhand I don't know of any particular books to recommend, but here's Amazon's page for books on the unconscious: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss...ripbooks%2C215

It seems like I did find one particularly good one a while back, but I'd need to dig around a little to remember what it was. If I do I'll post here.

I second Carl Jung

Darkmatter, you've managed to get me very interested in Jung and archetype theory since I've met you.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Offhand I don't know of any particular books to recommend

The one I would recommend is:

'Experiment in Depth: A Study of the Work of Jung, Eliot and Toynbee' by Percival William Martin

Its an explosive book - Be warned the instructions, if practiced, can lead to very serious psychological problems.

Some popular science books that don't misrepresent the literature:

Timothy Wilson - Strangers to Ourselves
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink

Wilson and Kahneman are both well known experimental psychologists. Gladwell is a journalist but Blink is still pretty good (it's actually the only one of the three that I've read).

Originally Posted by IndieAnthias

Darkmatter, you've managed to get me very interested in Jung and archetype theory since I've met you.

Glad to hear it Indie - it really is fascinating stuff!

Originally Posted by mcwillis

The one I would recommend is:

'Experiment in Depth: A Study of the Work of Jung, Eliot and Toynbee' by Percival William Martin

Its an explosive book - Be warned the instructions, if practiced, can lead to very serious psychological problems.

Hah - a great recommendation!! I've found quite a few places where it's available online but tantalizingly nobody offers the slightest bit of info on just what's inside - no "read inside"onAmazon, nothing onGoogleBooks. Might have to buy it sight unseen.

Originally Posted by DuB

Some popular science books that don't misrepresent the literature:

Timothy Wilson - Strangers to Ourselves
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink

Wilson and Kahneman are both well known experimental psychologists. Gladwell is a journalist but Blink is still pretty good (it's actually the only one of the three that I've read).

Cool - more to explore. I'll definitely look into those.

I found the book I mentioned earlier - it was on my Kindle (I was digging through stacks of real books.. ). It's called Adventure in Archetype; Depth Psychology and the Humanities by Mark Greene Phd. It's not about the entire unconscious so much as specifically about the collective unconscious and the archetypes that are housed there - and really even more specifically about Archetypal Psychology, which is the branch of psychology founded on Jung's work. Some of the other books listed above might be better for a general overview on the entire unconscious, but this is a great one if you're interested particularly in the collective unconscious or archetypes. Strangely it seems to only be available as an eBook..

** EDIT

I've been looking around, and it looks like this is a fantastic book on the unconscious: http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Minds-U...mm_hrd_title_0

Think I'll get it and then report on it here.

Originally Posted by 3nigma

Is there any good fact-based.. book dealing with the subconscious mind?

Fact-based? There aren't any, good or bad. Plenty of theory, though. I had to plough through Jung and Krauss at University and I personally couldn't recommend either of them. Sounds good on your CV, though.

For me, the most interesting related subject was pareidolia, which has a big LDing connection.

Ok, fair enough. It's true something like the mind can't be objectively dissected and cataloged like a phyiscal thing can, but it's certainly been well explored.

Factual might be the wrong term - maybe credible is better?

I think the OP was looking for actual psychoanalytic literature as opposed to feel-good new-age 'wish-it-and-it-shall-come-to-pass' mumbo-jumbo.

I downloaded Hidden Minds, and so far I'm liking it quite a lot.

By "credible", I take it you mean "with academic gravitas" ? Yet, to me, the two don't necessarily go together. Lots of "academic" quackery out there.

Well no, by credible I mean "not feel-good new-age 'wish-it-and-it-shall-come-to-pass' mumbo-jumbo."

One thing I must admit I've never been able to find is a book that clearly lays out just what the unconscious is and how it works. That book hasn't been written, and probably never will be - but that's due to the nature of the unconscious itself - it has defenses against intrusion in the form of repressions and denials we use to avoid having to face the more frightful and depressing things that are stored in there (alongside the wonderful things that are also there). That's exactly why it's so little-understood and why the majority of people even deny its existence with a contemptuous snort and a laugh.

Did you ever notice when you look up in the sky at night there are clusters of tiny stars so faint that you can't see them when you look directly at them, but if you look off to the side you can just make them out? The contents of the unconscious are like that - plus some of the contents are things we'd rather not see (and the implications of its very existence are something a majority of people would rather not contemplate). It takes a certain kind of person to fearlessly explore that misty frightful nether-ream and to write about it in any meaningful way is difficult at best.

I'll get back to you on that one, as soon as I've translated your reply into english.

BTW Wouldn't this thread be better off in Extended Discussion somewhere?

Are you saying you don't care for Jung's convoluted writing style, or that you don't like his ideas about the unconscious? You haven't made that clear.

Are there any books you would recommend?

** EDIT

I'm almost halfway through Hidden Minds now, and so far it gets my highest recommendation. I said earlier I had never seen a book that just flat out explains what the unconscious is and how it works - well this one comes closer to that than any other book I've read on the subject. Excellent explanations of Freud and Jung's theories both, plus many earlier ideas concerning the unconscious that I was mostly unaware of. This is ground zero for a starting place - then if any particular line of inquiry interests you go on and read more about a particular author's ideas. But just reading this book alone will give you a very comprehensive idea of the unconscious and the various theories about it.

I've finished Hidden Minds, and I give it my highest recommendation!! Wish I had found this book long ago.

It relates the history of exploration and theories relating to the unconscious, and gives a very good brief overview of each of the major theories. I'm actually amazed at how clearly it explains the Freudian and Jungian theories in such little space! I was surprised to learn how much thought had been devoted to the unconscious well before Freud, and glad to finally know about it.

It then details the gradual erosion of support for the very idea of the unconscious that took place since about the 50's. This was a head-scratcher for me - I never understood how scientists were able to completely disregard one of the most important discoveries of the modern age. But I see now - it's not that anybody 'disproved' or even really discredited the existing theories, they just "went out of vogue" as the new brain sciences emerged and gave scientists a way to explore the physical workings of the brain. But then as that science continued, it began to once again suggest processes taking place beneath or beyond the level of conscious awareness, so the unconscious wells up once again.

Toward the end it takes a strange turn into determinism - the idea that since the majority of what takes place in the brain is unavailable to conscious awareness, it means we have no free will or control over anything.

I think this is completely baseless and ridiculous. I suspect the 'new model' of mind that grew from physical mapping of neuronal networks and brain activity is extremely cold and clinical and envisioned more as a machine than an organic process, but it also examines only physical activity and doesn't even begin to account for the organic structuring of thought itself.

My belief is that, while many of the brain's processes obviously take place unconsciously or automatically, conscious awareness still allows us a great deal of interpenetration and connectedness with the thoughts arising from them, in the same way a User Interface allows us to control what a computer does even though most of its processes are automatic and not available to our scrutiny.

I imagine a model of mind that's like a car. Most of what happens in the engine, drive train, electrical system etc is utterly automatic and unavailable to our scrutiny while we're driving, and yet because we have access to the steering wheel, brakes, gas pedal, turn signals etc, ultimately we control what the car does. As lucid dreamers, we know better than anybody that conscious awareness, when it wells up in a dream, allows us control. If it's possible to become aware in a nightmare and turn the nightmare into a transformative, amazing experience that leaves us feeling energized and elated for days afterwards and possibly even helps us to integrate unconscious elements, then what further level of decision-making would be necessary or even possible?

I offer this simply to bolster hope in anyone who gets depressed from the downbeat ending of this book. Or rather to interject some common sense and reality into what for some reason became a very depressing and unrealistic conclusion to an otherwise amazing and extremely informative book. Somehow today's brain scientists seem to have confused themselves into believing in determinism. I say that's foolish and defeatist. I don't believe in determinism. I know that I make choices consciously and that they affect me and determine the course of my life, sometimes in profound ways, sometimes in small ways depending on the nature of the choices. I KNOW this. Anyone who has investigated lucid dreaming knows it too.