The Unconscious: A Look at its History and its Current Challenges

Abstract

The various characterizations which the unconscious has been associated with, have forced the creation of an organizational scheme of the present discussions even before the birth of experimental psychology. We have distributed these debates in three areas of analysis, the first one corresponds to the positive-negative characterizations, the second one refers to the look of the unconscious as an active-passive and the third studies the problem of the subjectivity associated with the unconscious activity. The aim is to show how these first considerations regain strength in the current debates about the role of the unconscious in the study of the human mind and its relation to consciousness. In the final section, we point out some of the aspects that current research should take into account on the unconscious and potential challenges in this exciting task.