A rediscovery of Sigmund Freud

As part of his rediscovery of consciousness, Searle has recently provided an interpretation of Freud's account of consciousness, including the relation of consciousness to nonconscious mental occurrences [i.e., preconscious mental occurrences and unconscious (repressed) mental occurrences]. Regrettably, Searle's interpretation is based on a single paragraph from The Unconscious and serves to eliminate Freud's general view on these matters as being "incoherent." In the present article, I rediscover Freud's account and show that Searle has deeply misunderstood him, thus converting Freud into a "mental-eye" theorist of consciousness when Freud is actually an "intrinsic" theorist. I point out that Freud's and Searle's views on consciousness are actually similar, though Searle denies the existence of nonconscious mental occurrences. My discussion of Freud's account of consciousness addresses as well (a) Freud's understanding of emotions and feelings, including what he calls "misconstrued" emotions, and repression that works to suppress the development of affect, and (b) why Freud held that emotions and feelings never occur except consciously. I hope that my present contribution will be part of an intensive discussion that will proceed among psychologists of consciousness in a conscious and deliberate joint effort to develop the theory of consciousness.