There Is No “Why” in the World#5
unconsciousness
Someone asks me a question.
Q: Why do you dislike fish?
A: When I was seven, I once got a fish bone stuck in my throat while eating. Since then, I’ve disliked fish.
Q: That’s interesting. The same thing happened to me when I was seven. But I kept eating fish and eventually got used to it. Why didn’t you keep trying?
A: My mother also told me, “Even if a bone gets stuck, if you keep eating you’ll get used to it.” So I tried to endure it. But my younger sibling saw me struggling and started laughing. I felt terrible when they laughed at me, so I stopped trying.
Q: What a coincidence. My sibling laughed at me too. But for me, that made me want to overcome my dislike of fish even faster. Why was your reaction the opposite?
A: I’m not sure. Ever since then, whenever I see fish, I hear my sibling’s laughter in my head.
Q: What might lie behind that laughter? Why was that mockery so painful to you? It’s fascinating. We went through the same experience, yet we made different choices.
This conversation could continue indefinitely. The surface explanation, the fish bone incident, is a conscious-level account. Beneath it may lie deeper layers of the unconscious.
Human beings seem unable to fully know the true causes of their own behavior. Instead, we construct plausible explanations and infer reasons after the fact, as in the fish example.
Conscious explanation:
“I dislike fish because of the bone.”
This is a rational and conscious reason.
Possible deeper causes:
Unconscious elements such as emotional memory (fear or shame), social humiliation (the shock of being laughed at), personal tendencies (avoidance versus challenge), differences in temperament (degree of vulnerability), or accidental reinforcement (mood or context that day).
In this sense, consciousness appears less like a decision-maker and more like a spokesperson.
There is a famous experiment often interpreted as supporting this idea.
Participants were asked to decide freely when to move a finger while their brain activity was recorded with EEG, along with the moment they reported becoming aware of their decision.
The result showed that the brain began preparing the movement about 300 to 500 milliseconds before participants reported the conscious decision.
The sequence looks like this:
Unconscious processes begin preparing the action.
Conscious awareness follows and experiences the moment as “I decided.”
In other words, the unconscious may move first, and consciousness then provides an explanation. Just as with fish aversion, unconscious fear might first produce avoidance, and consciousness later explains it as “because of the bone.”
The key point is that the question “why?” may itself be a product of consciousness that appears only after the process has already begun.
Why does the question “why?” seem to stop at the boundary of the unconscious?
The unconscious cannot be accessed directly. It reveals itself indirectly through behavior, emotions, dreams, and slips of the tongue. It is often compared to an iceberg. Consciousness is the small visible part above the surface, the reasons we can articulate. The unconscious lies beneath the water as a much larger hidden mass containing suppressed memories, desires, and unresolved experiences.
But this raises another question.
Does the unconscious truly exist in the way we describe it?
Patient: I love my father.
F: That is repressed hatred.
Patient: I hate my father.
F: That is repressed love.
It is an explanation that appears suspiciously elegant and complete. One begins to wonder whether the word “unconscious” has become a universal explanatory device that absorbs everything we fail to understand.