From the time of Sigmund Freud, and probably much earlier, people have accepted that thought processes take place inside our brains that we're not aware of. Such processes have been attributed to "the unconscious mind", which seems reasonable enough: there's a mind in there, and we're not conscious of its thought processes as we are of our own.
However, this page is a pedantic objection to the term "the unconscious mind". I object to the "the", as it implies that there's only one mind in there that we're not conscious of.[1]
I believe that there are several entities inside my head, capable of thought and planning, whose mental processes I'm unaware of. I offer evidence below, in the form of anecdotes. Of course you have no reason to believe these anecdotes. But I expect a few readers will think "yes, that accords with my own experience".
This took place in my first year at college, when I was aged nineteen.
I made an appointment with the university dentist. When it was due, I forgot all about it. Later that day, I remembered, but I was an irresponsible teenager, and did nothing about it; if I'd been more responsible I'd have rung the dentist's practise to apologise.
That evening, I developed a toothache. I suspected it wasn't a "real" toothache, it was just there to make sure I went to the dentist soon. So I mentally proposed a deal to the toothache. I promised it that, if it moved to a different tooth, I would make a new appointment with the dentist first thing in the morning.
After a few minutes, the toothache moved to a different tooth. So I knew that it wasn't a real toothache, and expressed this to the toothache. Within another minute, it vanished.
I kept my promise, and made a new appointment at 09:00 next morning.
I thought at the time that I had tricked the toothache into moving, and thereby revealing that it wasn't real. I now find my idea that I was communicating with a toothache absurd. I was communicating with some entity inside my brain. And I hadn't tricked that entity. Once I made my promise, the toothache had served its purpose, and the entity had no more use for it.
I did have the sense to keep my promise. If there's an entity inside my head that has the power to cause me pain, and that acts in my interests, I want it to trust me. I wonder if there are people who would choose otherwise?
This happened in my early 20s. I was attending a training course. Each morning I would get up when my alarm rang, wash, shave, and dress, and set off for breakfast.
One morning, when I was woken by the alarm, I'd been dreaming, and had in my mind a very witty remark that someone in my dream had made. I thought about it as I dressed etc., and as I walked to breakfast I thought "I really must remember this remark, it's so witty. It's a pity I don't have time to stop and write it down." An entity in my head told me "I'll let you remember it, but you must translate it into French, and remember the French version." I translated it, with some difficulty, my French isn't great; and tried to fix the French version in my memory. But as I arrived at the breakfast room, I realised I'd completely forgotten the context of the witty remark, and my memory of it was now useless.
In the Dentist anecdote, I thought I'd outwitted the entity that I'd made a deal with; but I was wrong, it had got exactly what it wanted. In this anecdote, I was outwitted.
My general impression of dreams is that they're not really memories; they're created on the fly as I remember them. When I've kept paper and pencil beside my bed and tried to record a dream on waking, I've found that my writing is constantly interrupted by a flood of more memories, needing to be added as footnotes, that distract me from what I'm trying to write. At the age of 30, when I experienced this blackbird dream, I held the view that dreams are not meant to be remembered, they're part of a "garbage collection" process for the brain, and should be ignored.
But this dream was not like that. I remembered it clearly, with nothing in my head trying to augment the memory.
In the dream, I was lying in my bed, and a woman was lying at the far side of the bed, caressing me at arms' length. She said "now come over here". I thought "I'm enjoying this, and if I try to move I'll wake up and she'll vanish".
She changed into a blackbird, and tried to fly out of the window. But the window was shut: she hit the glass, and fluttered helplessly on top of a chest of drawers. I thought "poor thing. But I'm not getting out of my nice warm bed for an imaginary blackbird".
She changed into a crow, flew back to the bed, perched on my shoulder, and pecked at my face. I thought "this crow isn't real, but it's inflicting real pain. I'd better sit up and deal with it."
I found the act of sitting up very difficult. This was because my right arm was not working. Eventually I used my left arm to reach across my body, grab the edge of the matress, pull, and get myself sitting. By the time I'd managed this, the crow was gone.
As I sat there, my power to move my right arm slowly returned. Later I figured out what had happened. If one lies in an awkward position, with an arm twisted under one's body, it's possible to pinch a motor nerve in the arm and lose motor control of it. (Pinching a sensory nerve is less unusual: it's known as "pins and needles". The brain treats the lack of all input from a sensory nerve as an error condition, which we may experience as pain, or as a funny tingly feeling. But a motor nerve can't work like that: it doesn't send signals back to the brain.)
There's an agent in the brain whose task is to keep us turned over our sleep from time to time, so that we don't trap motor nerves or get bedsores. But this agent had failed, and once my arm stopped working, it found that it couldn't get me to move. I assume that it now called on a higher agent in my brain to get me moved. This higher agent seems to have had the power to create dreams, but no direct control over my limbs. It may have thought "sex is a great motivator", then "that didn't work, let's try 'kind to animals'", then "maybe I'm being too subtle, let's try direct pain".
Two friends and I were doing a cryptic crossword together, on-line. I was over 70, and my memory for words was deteriorating.
I told my friends "I can do that one. I just can't remember the word that is the answer. It's the word they used when a woman was accused of witchcraft, and put in a ducking stool to see if she'd float."
Later, when one of us fully solved the clue, they realised that I had, in a sense, got the answer first.
I have this kind of experience with cryptic crosswords fairly often now. I "get" the answer to a clue, but don't get the word into a state such that I know what it is and can say or write it. This case was unusual in that I had witnesses.
So there's some entity in my brain that can solve crossword clues, but can't directly communicate the answer to me[2].
It was only after after I'd started writing this page that I realised this anecdote may be relevant.
This happened in my late 50s.
I was about to drive home, alone, a journey of around three hours. The person I'd been visiting pointed out that one of my car tyres was a bit flat, and I should get it pumped up at the first opportunity. I was doubtful: it didn't look that way to me, the ground was uneven and muddy, and it was hard to tell. But I trusted his competence, and resolved to take his advice.
I drove slowly and carefully, and looked out for a filling station. After 15 miles, I still hadn't seen one. I was about to join a dual carriageway, and was on a section of road two lanes wide, both lanes in the same direction. I was driving slowly, in the left (slow) lane. The road curved to the left.
But the car did not follow the road. It continued straight on, crossed the outside lane, bumped up over a kerb, crossed a patch of grass, and came to a stop between the posts of a big gantry supporting a road sign.
This was really alarming. If it had happened in the town I'd just driven through, I could have killed someone, despite my cautious speed. Fortunately there was no other traffic, no-one else had seen what happened, and no damage had been done.
I reversed out from under the gantry, drove slowly over the grass, bumped down over the kerb and across the fast lane of the road, and set off again driving really carefully. I joined the dual carriageway, and after a few miles, stopped at a service area and found an air pump. It showed that all four tyres were at the recommended pressure.
For over 20 years, this incident has puzzled me. Maybe there was a patch of oil where my car left the road. But I'd been driving more slowly than almost any other car that would have used that section of road, and I'd noticed no evidence of other mishaps.
I now wonder if an agent like the one that caused the toothache in the first anecdote could have been responsible. It might have reasoned "He still hasn't checked his tyre pressure. Driving on a major road with a flat tyre is dangerous. I'll give him a wake-up call where it can do no harm." When it noticed an ideal spot with no traffic in sight, it took control of my limbs, and of the car. Maybe it deliberately arranged to end with the car theatrically under the gantry.
I'm hoping to convince the reader that there are multiple entities in my brain (and maybe in the reader's brain), apart from us, and worthy of the term "mind".
In anecdote 1, we have an entity that is concerned with my well-being, has the power to inflict pain, and can bargain with me.
In anecdote 2, we have an entity that is concerned with suppression of dream-memories. Maybe that's an aspect of my well-being. It can bargain with me.
In anecdote 3, we have an entity whose job is to keep me turned over while I'm asleep. That's a primitive job in evolutionary terms, and not worthy of the term "mind". We also have another entity, which is concerned with my well-being, has the power to create dreams (though not of the usual kind), and can inflict pain.
In anecdote 4, we have an entity that can solve cryptic crossword clues. Sometimes it can solve a clue that I can't solve, so I'm tempted to regard it as intelligent – though maybe it's just making a subtle kind of database double-query into my memory, that I don't know how to make.
In anecdote 5 we may have an entity that is concerned with my well-being, and, alarmingly, has the power to take control of my limbs.
Maybe the entities of anecdotes 1, 2, 3 and 5 are all the same. Maybe they're all different. But I believe the entity of anecdote 4 is different from the others. I'm certainly not willing to accept that they are necessarily all the same.
I've been warned by a friend that I shouldn't say in public that I think there's more than one mind inside my brain. I assume his reason is that people may think I'm a lunatic. I don't think I'm a lunatic, and I don't much care if others disagree. I'm too old to be looking for a job for which lunacy would disqualify me.
I'm not aware of anyone else expressing views like those I've expressed here. Maybe I'm unusual. Maybe I'm more observant, or more open-minded, than most. But most likely, some others have had similar experiences, and kept quiet about them because they don't want to be taken for lunatics.
I'm not going to suggest any psychological texts on the workings of brains and minds, because I've never read any. But here are some suggestions for those who've read this far.
The Department of Certainty, S.C.Paterson, Stairwell Books, 2024
A very well written novel about the human-like beings, and corporate entities such as the Department of Certainty, that operate "Jessica", a regular human social worker dealing with other full-size humans and with a moral dilemma. Somewhat reminiscent of the next, but much more grown-up and subtle.
The Numskulls, a comic strip in the chlidren's comic Beano, about the exploits of Brainy, Blinky, Radar, Snitch, and Cruncher, who operate "Our Boy".
Massive modularity of the human mind, a subsection in Wikipedia's article on Peter Carruthers. This, its following subsections, and the article's lists of sources will give you somewhere to start, if you want to do some serious reading.
[1] I formerly also objected on the grounds that these other minds may themselves be conscious, while the phrase "the unconscious mind" implies that they aren't. I now realise that the phrase merely imples that we aren't conscious of their workings, not that they aren't themselves conscious. The word "conscious" is used in multiple ways, leading to confusion.
[2] When I use a first-person singular pronoun, "I", "me" or "my", in this page, I refer to the entity in my brain which is in charge of what I say and write (Freudian slips excepted).