Your Secret Mind Getting to Know and Living With Your Unconscious.

251 Pages·2017·9.522 MB·English

by  Steiner Hans

YOUR SECRET MIND

YOUR SECRET MIND
Getting to Know and Living
with Your Unconscious
Hans Steiner
with Rebecca Hall
First published in 2017 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2017 by Hans Steiner
The right of Hans Steiner to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-495-4
Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
TO MY MENTORS
Two in spirit: Sigmund Freud, who taught me to follow my dreams;
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who taught me to be critical, especially
of Sigmund Freud.
Two in spirit and in body: Helfried Nolz, who taught me English,
Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and pragmatism; and Irvin Yalom, who
taught me to be my true self.
—Hans Steiner

CONTENTS
INTROducTION ix
cHapTER ONE
Why pay attention to the unconscious? Famous artists
as case studies: Rene Magritte, Artemisia Gentileschi,
Georgia O’Keeffe, Egon Schiele, and Vincent van Gogh 1
cHapTER TWO
Neuroscience of the mind 29
cHapTER THREE
The role of psychometrics in the study of the unconscious:
what are your personal preferences in resolving stress,
conflict, and ambiguity? 51
Screening your personality: the GHQ-30, FaY, WaI-84,
heart rate exercise, and REM-71
cHapTER FOuR
An easy start: memes, slips of the tongue and ear,
and parapraxes 77
vii
viii CONTENTS
cHapTER FIvE
Creativity and the unconscious: the objective correlative
and the presence/hermeneutic dialectic 99
How art preferences can reflect your unconscious mind
cHapTER SIx
Expressive writing and the motivational unconscious:
recreating and reconstructing the richness of your life 119
cHapTER SEvEN
The royal road to the unconscious: dream analysis 165
When do dreams tell you something about yourself?
EpILOGuE 185
appENdIx 187
REFERENcES 211
INdEx 217
INTRODUCTION
What is this book?
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross once said: “Should you shield the canyons from
the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carv-
ings” (Welch, Winters, & Ross, 2009). What she meant to convey is the
thought that all of us are affected by adversity, sooner or later. But as
we are affected by it, it also brings out the unexpected, perhaps hid-
den strengths in us, the hidden beauty. Adding to this thought, Victor
Hugo (1874) pointed out: “To put everything in balance is good, to put
everything in harmony is better.” So, even after we face our dark sides,
we still face the task of putting everything together, into a harmonic
whole. In this book, we will show how these two quotes are relevant to
all of us today. In order to grasp ourselves in our entirety, we need to go
deep. This book introduces the reader and student to the unconscious
mind, the hidden treasures and dangers it holds. The book is based on
a popular course that has been taught through Stanford University’s
Continuing Studies Program and to undergraduates in one form
or another for the past twenty-five years. Most students (and I hope
readers) will find this guided discovery of their own unconscious mind
fascinating and enlightening.
ix