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.
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