Background

In Chapter 7 of The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992a) Searle remarks on a curious reversal. Before psychology became a freestanding science, and in that science's early years, consciousness seemed unproblematic. Such early psychologists as Wundt (1912) and Titchener (1896) took it for granted that the business of psychology was to study the conscious mental processes. They did not deny that these processes were problematic in that the laws of consciousness had not yet been found. But, for them, it was unproblematic that consciousness was the subject matter of their science. This was so obvious that the expression conscious in conscious mental processes almost seemed redundant. Mental processes, at least the interesting ones governing our perceptions, thinking and emotions, were simply assumed to be conscious.

Freud helped change all that (1949; 1959; 1966). He did not deny the importance of consciousness but he did show that there is more to psychology than is on the surface. Beneath the surface, in the unconscious, there are powerful emotionally charged thoughts (e.g. loves and hates) and equally powerful mental processes (e.g. various defence mechanisms). As a result of his work, the question of the relationship between what is and is not on the surface had to be taken more seriously than before.

Behaviourism, a movement in psychology that started about the same time Freud was doing his work, did not initially concern itself with the unconscious. In contrast to Freud, this movement, led initially by John Watson (1913; 1919) and later by the likes of B. F. Skinner (1953), attacked the notion of consciousness.