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How can we have a theory of the Unconscious without a theory of consciousness?

  How can we have a theory of “the unconscious” without a theory of consciousness? Can we talk with any confidence about a model of something that infers the existence of another thing that we struggle to define or explain?  Freud’s theory of the perceptual system rebounds - usually unacknowledged - in areas like computer science, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy when enquiries are made into the nature of consciousness. Yet Freud was not really interested in consciousness, turning his attention instead to the Unconscious. The Conscious System is acknowledged by Freud, but left unexplained  Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) proposed a theory of consciousness, distinct from sensory awareness and cognition, rooted in language and culture. In his theory of the “bicameral mind”, Jaynes posits the presence of a conscious - non-conscious duality.  Whereas Freud looked towards Sophocles’ Oedipus  to explain the cause and mechanisms of the Unconscious via the unexplained ill...
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Synthesis behavior therapies: an evidence base without a premise

   Dialectics, since before the time of Socrate s (1) refers to a method of enquiry between two people of opposing points of view. It ends with either a synthesis of the two ideas, or a refutation of a proposition which is consequently exposed as false. The dialectic method is distinguished from the didactic method, where one side teaches the other.  In his 2023 seminar on negativity, Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, David Ferraro, posed the rhetorical question, 'What is dialectical about dialectical behavior therapy?'  My rhetorical answer is that Marsha Linehan, psychologist and founder of dialectical behavior therapy, known as DBT, liked the idea of 'synthesis.' She describes her reasoning below:  'The overarching dialectical worldview... emphasizes the synthesis of opposites... The term dialectical is also meant to convey both the multiple tensions that co-occur in therapy with suicidal clients … as well as the emphasis in DBT of enhancing dialectical thinki...
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The psychotic structure and the importance of the referent in the location of the delusion: have we found objective reality?

  The  psychotic subject has no question: in place of the question that the neurotic subject might present with - "Am I a man or a woman?" Or, "Am I dead or alive?" - the psychotic subject is concerned not with questioning the world, but with holding the world together. Freud proposed that for the psychotic subject, the delusion is not the crisis, but rather, the delusion is the solution to a crisis. The analyst seeks to understand the correlates of the delusion, not in order to question the psychotic subject’s position in the world, but, rather to find ways to help the subject hold the world - or their delusion about the world - together.  However, if the psychotic subject does not present with a question, the psychotic subject nevertheless raises a question: if we know that the psychotic subject’s view of the world is deluded, how do we know that the analyst’s view of the world is not? In short, is there an objective reality? More specifically, is there such a thi...
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