From: "Michael Staples" <michael-AT-intersubjectivestudies.com> Subject: RE: Zollikon: Unconscious Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 05:58:10 -0800 ME: Thanks for the stimulus. I don't think that the issue of images is a side track, because representational thinking is so natural for us as subjects. >>>OK. I don't want to let this slip away either. I also agree that it cannot be a matter of denying the phenomenon of 'unconscious activity', but rather, the issue is how to think it adequately, which includes how this phenomenon is to be named. >>>Yes. Good. Very clear. The violence done to the phenomena is not situated so much in the notion of unconscious act, but in the concept of the unconscious itself which posits a deeper-lying subject to which intentions, desires, etc. can be ascribed. >>>Again, very clear! The other aspect is the notion of 'unconscious' as a quality of acts, which is marked by a negation (un-). This negation needs to be translated into positive phenomenological language so that the phenomenon itself can come to light. Thus, for instance, the un- can be understood as being somewhere else, i.e. distracted. Or the un- can be elucidated as habit, in which the actions are and _must be_ carried out unconsciously. E.g. I can only drive a car because I am habitualized to do so, and if I tried to perform every action consciously, I would soon crash the car. Habit is a phenomenon closely associated with unconscious acts, but it has nothing to do with a postulated unconscious subject. >>>Very nice, Michael. There is a psychologist who caused a big stir in the world of Jungian psychology. His name is James Hillman. The more I have learned about the issues of phenomenology and Heidegger's thinking, the more I have come to feel that Hillman was struggling with all these issues...and comming up with creative attempts on his own to deal with them. I don't think he ever pulled it off. I think that he ultimately sank back into the terminology of the traditional metaphysics...but it does seem that his efforts revolved around these issues. Yet another aspect of 'unconscious activity' where the notion of 'activity' breaks down is when beings themselves withdraw from sight. E.g driving on a dark night I mistake the reflection of a car in a display window for a car about to cross my path and brake sharply. My mistake is not a parapraxis in Freud's sense, but an action adequate to the perceived situation which disclosed itself to me as potentially dangerous. In other words, 'unconscious activity' can also be understood as goings-on in the world which do not show themselves clearly and therefore deceive conscious awareness.. Unconscious activity has to be thought in another location, namely, that of presencing and absencing, and of the disclosure and hiding of beings in their self-showing. Only with this shift can the subject as the underlying instance for the being and truth of all beings be pushed off centre stage. >>>Thanx again, Michael. More later Michael S. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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