In two experiments subjects attempted to identify words presented below the objective threshold using two task strategies emphasizing either allowing a word to pop into their heads or looking carefully at the stimulus field . Words were selected to represent both meaningful and structural dimensions. We also asked subjects to indicate their strategy preference and to rate their motivation to perform well. In the absence of conscious perception, both strategy preference and word meaning interacted with strategy condition, mediating the accuracy (...) of subjects′ direct word identification judgments. Motivation also mediated performance. Word structure had no effect. Unconscious perception manifested only in the pop condition, underscoring the importance of task strategy in determining whether subliminal effects are observed. A follow-up control experiment using sham flashes demonstrated that strategy preference and motivation effects were not artifacts resulting from performance feedback cues. (shrink)

Our approach is based on a tri-partite method of integrating psychodynamic hypotheses, cognitive subliminal processes, and psychophysiological alpha power measures. We present ten social phobic subjects with three individually selected groups of words representing unconscious conflict, conscious symptom experience, and Osgood Semantic negative valence words used as a control word group. The unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words, presented subliminally and supraliminally, act as primes preceding the conscious symptom and control words presented as supraliminal targets. With alpha power as a (...) marker of inhibitory brain activity, we show that unconscious conflict primes, only when presented subliminally, have a unique inhibitory effect on conscious symptom targets. This effect is absent when the unconscious conflict primes are presented supraliminally, or when the target is the control words. Unconscious conflict prime effects were found to correlate with a measure of repressiveness in a similar previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). Conscious symptom primes have no inhibitory effect when presented subliminally. Inhibitory effects with conscious symptom primes are present, but only when the primes are supraliminal, and they did not correlate with repressiveness in a previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). We conclude that while the inhibition following supraliminal conscious symptom primes is due to conscious threat bias, the inhibition following subliminal unconscious conflict primes provides a neurological blueprint for dynamic repression: it is only activated subliminally by an individual's unconscious conflict and has an inhibitory effect specific only to the conscious symptom. These novel findings constitute neuroscientific evidence for the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and repression, while extending neuroscience theory and methods into the realm of personal, psychological meaning. (shrink)

The present study applies a new method for investigating dynamic unconscious processes. The method consists of selection of words from patient interview and test protocols that in the clinicians' judgments capture the patients' conscious symptom experience and the hypothetical unconscious conflict related to the symptom, subliminal and supraliminal presentation of these words, signal analysis of event-related potentials obtained to the word presentations. Eight phobics and three patients suffering from pathological grief reactions served as subjects. A time-frequency ERP analysis revealed that (...) subjects' ERPs classified the unconscious conflict words better subliminally than supraliminally, while the reverse was true for the conscious symptom words = 2.82, p = .011). The relationship between frequency and latency revealed a similar mirror image pattern for the unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words . This method demonstrated that objective, brain-based evidence for unconscious conflict can be obtained. (shrink)