The metrics of cognition and the rhythm of the unconscious

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Constant Tension ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Literary Pragmatics

This article rethinks the links drawn by cognitive poetics between thought-representation and language in relation to the category of rhythm and metre as symptoms, in Plato’s Republic and in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Lacan, and in particular in Nicolas Abraham’s Rhythms. Utilizing Abraham’s idea of rhythmizing consciousness as a non-linear psychic unfolding coeval with the Freudian unconscious, an unfolding in constant tension and interaction with cognitive consciousness’s periodicity, linearity, and tendency to produce semblants of verifiability, I argue that cognitive poetics’ focus on conscious cognition involves a repression of unconscious processes imperative to the thinking of thought-representation. But in Jacques Lacan’s terms, repression is not foreclosure (erasure from the unconscious), but the preservative and protective putting into operation of what Lacan theorizes as the bar. Cognitive poetics’ functioning as bar with regard to metrics symptomatizing unconscious states hence creates just the comdition for the preservation (in terms of Michele Monterlay’s theorizing of repression) and hence mediation and circulation of unconscious material whereof it refuses to speak. I hence propose a “metronymic analysis” of sound, rhythm, and metre, not sense, as a way of reading which might enrich literary pragmatics, alowing it to hear, beyond patronymics, echoes of the matronymic archaic.

“The Unconscious” in Current Psychology

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Norman
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Unconscious Processing ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Intermediate States ◽  
Definition Of

A series of vignette examples taken from psychological research on motivation, emotion, decision making, and attitudes illustrates how the influence of unconscious processes is often measured in a range of different behaviors. However, the selected studies share an apparent lack of explicit operational definition of what is meant by consciousness, and there seems to be substantial disagreement about the properties of conscious versus unconscious processing: Consciousness is sometimes equated with attention, sometimes with verbal report ability, and sometimes operationalized in terms of behavioral dissociations between different performance measures. Moreover, the examples all seem to share a dichotomous view of conscious and unconscious processes as being qualitatively different. It is suggested that cognitive research on consciousness can help resolve the apparent disagreement about how to define and measure unconscious processing, as is illustrated by a selection of operational definitions and empirical findings from modern cognitive psychology. These empirical findings also point to the existence of intermediate states of conscious awareness, not easily classifiable as either purely conscious or purely unconscious. Recent hypotheses from cognitive psychology, supplemented with models from social, developmental, and clinical psychology, are then presented all of which are compatible with the view of consciousness as a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. Such a view of consciousness would open up for explorations of intermediate states of awareness in addition to more purely conscious or purely unconscious states and thereby increase our understanding of the seemingly “unconscious” aspects of mental life.

Maybe it helps to be conscious, after all

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy F. Baumeister ◽  
Kathleen D. Vohs ◽  
E. J. Masicampo
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Conscious Processes

AbstractPsychologists debate whether consciousness or unconsciousness is most central to human behavior. Our goal, instead, is to figure out how they work together. Conscious processes are partly produced by unconscious processes, and much information processing occurs outside of awareness. Yet, consciousness has advantages that the unconscious does not. We discuss how consciousness causes behavior, drawing conclusions from large-scale literature reviews.

The effect of the cognitive demands of the distraction task on unconscious thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Waroquier ◽  
Marlène Abadie ◽  
Olivier Klein ◽  
Axel Cleeremans
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Unconscious Thought ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Distraction Task ◽  
Complex Decision Making ◽  
Complex Decision

AbstractThe unconscious-thought effect occurs when distraction improves complex decision making. Recent studies suggest that this effect is more likely to occur with low- than high-demanding distraction tasks. We discuss implications of these findings for Newell & Shanks' (N&S's) claim that evidence is lacking for the intervention of unconscious processes in complex decision making.

Reimaging ‘the Self’ in Criminology: Transcendence, Unconscious States and the Limits of Narrative Criminology

2020 ◽  
pp. 136248062091910
Author(s):  
Ben Laws
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Future Action ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Desistance From Crime

Notions of ‘the self’ in criminology are rarely explored or defined, which is surprising given how pervasively the term is used. According to narrative criminology, the self is generated and moulded by the stories we tell; our identity emerges through narrative scripts and these stories motivate future action. But this understanding of selfhood is quite narrow. This article attempts to widen it by separating selfhood into three categories: ‘the reflexive self’ (the person we think we are); ‘the unconscious self’ (things we do not know that shape us); and ‘the experiencing self’ (the in-the-moment, living and breathing feeling of being alive). The article begins with a critical engagement with the field of narrative criminology which tends to address ‘the reflexive self’ somewhat in isolation. Then a number of findings in criminology, psychology and theology are presented which reveal alternative notions of selfhood. This includes engaging with theological accounts that can be described as transcendent or transpersonal. Second, psychoanalytic research notes how our behaviour is often motivated by unconscious processes that are hard to reconcile with traditional notions of selfhood. There is a call to bring these different ‘selves’ into dialogue and to draw cleaner distinctions between them. Increasing our understanding of selfhood helps us to think more clearly about key criminological debates, such as the causal mechanisms undergirding adaptation and desistance from crime.

Psychoanalytic Methods and Critical Cultural Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atilla Hallsby
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Public Address ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Speech Identification

Within communication studies, critical and cultural scholars will likely encounter psychoanalytic methods by way of rhetoric scholarship, which has made plentiful and recurring use of Freudian and Lacanian concepts. A survey of psychoanalytic methods “before” and “after” the linguistic turn is offered—juxtaposing key concepts with rhetorical scholarship that employs psychoanalytic terms of art. Psychoanalytic theory is foundationally the study of the unconscious. Before the linguistic turn, the Freudian theory of the unconscious informed Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification developed in A Rhetoric of Motives and numerous Jungian analyses of cinematic texts. In the linguistic turn’s aftermath, the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan contributed understandings of speech, identification, and rhetoric that transformed Freud’s original formulations and productively supplemented Burke’s. These contributions, captured in Lacan’s four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, registers of the unconscious, and The “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’” illustrate a variety of ways that critical and cultural scholars have enlisted psychoanalysis to describe instances of public address, social movements, political and legal discourse, and cinema/film. The unique feature of Lacan’s approach is that the unconscious is structured like a language, which means that the unconscious is received as a speech act. Moreover, contrary to the view that the subject uses the signifier, Lacan maintains that the signifier exercises an organizing role over the subject and its desire. Conceived within the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric, psychoanalytic theory offers conceptually rich insights tethered to the concepts of the unconscious, the signifier, and the drive (among others) that are enabling to the aims of critical and cultural studies.

Use and misuse of neuroscience in the philosophy of religion

Methodus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-108
Author(s):  
Dieter Birnbacher
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Anthropology Of Religion ◽  
Imaging Studies ◽  
Category Mistake ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Intentional Consciousness ◽  
Initial Hypothesis ◽  
Andrew Newberg

The article elucidates in what way neuroscience and in particular neuroimaging can contribute to the clarification and empirical underpinning of theories in the philosophy of mind and the anthropology of religion. Its initial hypothesis is that there are two principal ways in which neuroscientific data are relevant to philosophy, exhibiting the unconscious processes in the generation of phenomenal and intentional consciousness, and complementing semantic and phenomenological approaches in the analysis of complex mental phenomena. Whereas the first kind of relevance is widely recognised, contributions of neuroscientific data to the analysis of complex mental phenomena are often rejected as involving a kind of "category mistake." The article argues that imaging studies can in fact contribute to a better understanding of the nature of certain complex mental states and processes and exemplifies this by recent brain imaging studies on religious experience. Finally, theories like those of Andrew Newberg are taken to task for misrepresenting "neurotheology" as a new form of theology.

“The Devil Made Me Do It!” An Inquiry Into the Unconscious “Devils Within” of Rationalized Corruption

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremias J. De Klerk
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Devil

Individuals involved in corruption often offer rationalizations to convince themselves and others that they are not corrupt, and that their acts are justified and acceptable. However, to confine the dynamic process of mobilizing rationalizations to this purpose is too restrictive. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, it is argued that an unconscious urge for rationalizations develops from a need to find psychological restitution and atonement, achieved only through self-convincing beliefs of acquittal. Six unconscious motives are identified as explanations how offenders believe that rationalizations acquit them from guilt, indemnify them, or redeem the corruption. These motives represent metaphorical devils that can spawn corruption in otherwise law-abiding citizens with moral intentions. Conceptualizations bring the unconscious dynamics or rationalized corruption into consciousness, where it can be studied and worked with. This makes an important contribution toward enabling managers to be more in control of rationalized corruption, both in themselves and elsewhere in the organization.

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