ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to articulate an account of unconscious mental processes as a basis for understanding Sigmund Freud's theory of repression. For Freud, unconscious mental processes were justified in the explanation of both normal and pathological behaviour. Freud's distinction between descriptively unconscious and preconscious processes is relevant, since some mental processes become known easily. The reductionist trend appears to follow from the growing trend in psychoanalysis to embrace "cognitive (neuro)science" as well as a tendency to equate the repressed with implicit, procedural, and non-declarative processes. For instance, memory acquired "implicitly" is, at times, described as being "non-conscious" and linked with Sandler and W. G. Joffe's "non-experiential" realm. If the notion of repressed mental acts is indefensible, then a radical reconceptualization of Freud's theory of repression would be required. However, the conclusion that unconscious mentality is incoherent follows from a lack of clarity with respect to the distinction between knowing and knowing that one knows.
