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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