The Perils of Living Unconsciously

Freud believed we were often influenced by memories, traumas and instincts we had repressed, but they influenced our behaviors anyway. He got there by studying hypnosis, analyzing dreams and paying attention to those slips of the tongue that reveal what we try to keep hidden. 

"No mortal can keep a secret," Freud maintained. "If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." 

Poetic language that. And the idea has weaved its way into our modern psyche. All of us have used that excuse along the way. "Man, I was completely unconscious. What was I thinking?!"

The great Brazilian psychoanalyst, Norberto Keppe, has advanced Freud significantly with his concept of inconscientization. It's not that we're naturally full of hidden indecent desires and animal instincts. For Keppe, we banish from our consciousness what we don't want to admit. That means, we know what's going on, but we deny what we know. 

And that has serious consequences.

The Perils of Living Unconsciously, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Love, Consciousness and the Troubled World

There's an old Chinese phrase that goes, "It's better to be a dog in peaceful times than a man in a time of chaos." 

Wishful thinking, some may call that, for it's difficult to see peaceful times at any moment in human history. Most of us with a bit of life experience hearken back to when times were easier, and end up moralizing to any who will listen that our times back then were superior. And while that may be superficially true, it's not all that helpful. And complaining doesn't make the young fold feel any better.

In fact, your and old may just end up pointing fingers at each other as to who's to blame for the world as it is.

We'd like to dip our feet into those tumultuous waters in this podcast to suggest that all those lamentations and blame apportioning miss the fundamental point: we've been on an inverted path for millennia. We've reached the end of the road in a literal sense.

Can any sense be made of the correct way to go now?

Love, Consciousness and the Troubled World, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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