Applications. New York: Guilford Press. Consciousness, Introspection, and the Adaptive Unconscious

Consciousness is like the Trinity; if it is explained so that you understand it, it hasn’t been explained correctly. (Joynt, 1981, p. 108) In the history of psychology, the view that a great deal of mental operations is carried out in an unconscious manner certainly has had its highs and lows. As early as the second half of the nineteenth century, British physicians and philosophers such as William Carpenter (1874) argued for the existence of nonconscious processes that carry out a large range of everyday mental operations from perception to behavior, a view also advocated by William James (1890). In contrast, Sigmund Freud (1915) presented a more narrow perspective on the unconscious, according to which irrational, unacceptable motives, drives, and feelings ar