The Subconscious Manifests in Thought and Behaviour

The subconscious is no mere accessory to the mind but hthe organism itself: the hard residue of evolutionary struggle, the ancient machinery of impulse and drive. Consciousness lays above it like a thin film, not as creator but as censor, selecting which urgencies to parade and which to conceal. What man calls his ‘self’ is thus but the monitor of a deeper being already at work.

That this deeper organism breaks through into thought and behaviour cannot be disputed. The censor is imperfect. Words escape the lips unbidden, desires rise uninvited, patterns repeat themselves despite solemn resolutions. A man is carried by forces he neither acknowledges nor understands (let alone controls!) yet their mark is everywhere upon him. Even his most calculated act bears the impress of impulses not of his choosing.

The truth is stark: man’s conscious self is no sovereign. Every decision, every belief, every gesture carries the sign of the chthonic creature he harbours. What we experience in thought and behaviour is not the product of conscious will alone but the outcome of a contest between the unconscious depths and the conscious veneer.