The “Dynamic Unconscious” May Be Experienced: Can We Discuss Unconscious Emotions When There Are no Adequate Measures of Affective Change?

Abstract

The brain has many deeply unconscious neural processes, but the realm of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) rather than “awareness” is the critical issue whether there is nothing relevant in mind while so-called “dynamically unconscious” processes are operating in the brain. Concepts such as “conscious awareness” are one step above phenomenal experiences and can easily lead to confusions about what is or is not experienced during dynamically “unconscious” emotional information processing. If one does not explicitly evaluate for the presence of affective phenomenal experiential shifts, with the most sensitive and relevant measures, one can fall into the trap of calling something unconscious when it is simply not being processed in higher order “awareness.” I provide examples of where the failure to monitor affective experiential shifts has too easily led investigators to place experienced aspects of mind into the unconscious, based more on their limited methodologies rather than on the absence of experiential affective shifts that pass through the mind experimentally unnoticed. Such lapses in experimental control may have had invidious, but currently unevaluated, effects on the very substantial review of available research and thinking on the “dynamic unconscious” that Heather Berlin superbly summarizes.