When the Unconscious Takes Over

An exploding volcano rains hellfire and wreaks havoc on villagers. An earthquake swallows an entire city. Insurance companies call them “acts of God,” but they are natural forces in a dynamic planet. Pressure builds; the earth explodes; tectonic plates slip. Islands are born. Continents form. What at first seems only destructive, yields new life. The planet itself has life. It is not a stagnant rock. All of life is dynamic. Even dead trees and mammals live on in the ecosystem. Stagnation is found only in dead souls.

Homo Sapiens inhabited Africa some 300,000 years ago. About 50,000 years ago, many of our ancestors migrated out of Africa, spreading to what is now Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Some sort of “explosion” precipitated their travels – perhaps famine, drought, competition for resources, or natural disasters.

Anthropologists and philosophers speculate as to what, if anything, distinguishes humans from other primates. Possibly the ability to reason, to observe and study ourselves, the ability to not only be conscious but to know we are conscious. Or maybe highly developed language distinguishes us. Perhaps we are unique in our ability to choose. Other animals clearly make choices, but do they have the capacity for reasoned freewill in a moral sense?

It seems likely that conscious humans can decide right from wrong – choosing to be honest, or not, in any given scenario, for example. At least we all live as if we have free moral agency. And if we do, it must be irrevocable because if freewill can be revoked by some divine being or outside force, then we are not free.

Proceeding under the reasonable assumption that we have free moral agency and that our choices are real choices with authentic consequences, we hold ourselves and others accountable for those choices, while making exceptions for mental illness and mitigating factors. Without that assumption, moral, ethical, and legal systems collapse.

From whence come those moral, ethical, and legal systems? Are they derived from the laws of physics and biology? An objection to gender fluidity, for example, assumes that it isn’t “natural” in nature. An answer to that objection is based on examples from nature where gender fluidity is the order of the day.

Maybe those moral, ethical, and legal systems are derived from the tribe – perhaps moral codes developed out of what is best for the clan. Or maybe they were handed down, dictated by a God or the gods. Yet even within religiophilosophical systems that claim a stagnant divine base or text, at least some ethical standards shift and evolve. A few generations ago, you wouldn’t catch a good Methodist playing cards.

We long for stability, for something immutable, unchanging. Enter the platonic view of the divine, which was folded into post-Constantinian Christianity by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, then magnified by John Calvin, the prominent lawyer of the Reformation.

The Hebrew, and therefore biblical, conception of God is not stagnant, not immutable. YHWH changes his mind, relents his decisions, and for the most part, allows creation to unfold. From a biblical perspective, freewill is an essential part of being human, and freedom is built into the evolution of nature. God is not a puppet-master.

The societal mess we find ourselves in, where lies, disinformation, prejudices, and conspiracy theories reign, is partially caused by an educational system that has neglected the teaching of literature, philosophy, and logic. “No Child Left Behind” only tests for knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, so teachers are forced to neglect the humanities. Occidental education has been reduced to vocational training. Whole generations don’t know how to think clearly.

We want an entirely rational society filled with people who make good choices based on sound logic that is derived from immutable laws, standards, and codes. If we are to survive as a species, we must agree that some things are wrong all the time, like destroying the planet to fill the coffers of greedy billionaires. And yet, here we are, apparently unable to agree on much of anything.

Making matters more complicated is the fact that we are not simply rational beings even if we have the best of educations. Dr. Spock is not the ideal. We possess both conscious and unconscious minds.

The unconscious stores all the data from all the sensory input that we can’t deal with at the moment. It stores that data in the form of symbols. That is very natural. We couldn’t function in our jobs and relationships if we were trying to process all that consciously.

So, much is hidden. Some of it is hidden simply because it’s not relevant to our current needs. Some is hidden because it is too painful to deal with. Our shadow side is not good or bad, it is simply hidden. To be a fully actualized human, our unconscious selves and our conscious selves need to be integrated into the Self. That’s the task of depth-psychology and spiritual direction. It’s a topic for another time.

Sometimes we cannot rationally make the choices that are best for us. We may be trapped in a toxic relationship, for example, and not able to admit it to ourselves because doing so would diminish our perception of ourselves in our own eyes and/or the eyes of others.

Sometimes, the unconscious takes over for our own good, and we do things that cause an explosion, an earthquake, an eruption in the relationship. We didn’t plan it. It does not appear to be the result of a rational choice, but it had to happen.

A personal example. For a number of years, I was an integral part of a religious group built around one very charismatic man. Like all of us, he had many good qualities and a few bad ones. When I started to become aware of negative things that were hurting others, I resigned and shared my frustrations with a friend who made my comments public. Word got back to the head man, and I was cut off, excommunicated, shunned, persona-non-grata. I lost a ton of friends as well as my entire social tribe. It hurt deeply. I tried to make amends to no avail.

For a long time, I’ve looked back on that with regret, guilt, and shame. If only I had handled things differently, left quietly, said nothing. I came to be grateful I was out, but sad about the way I was outed.

As I revisit this, I have come to realize that I had to get out. Had I not, I would have lost my authentic self; I would have betrayed my core being. Consciously, I couldn’t bring myself to make the break. I clung to the close relationship I had with the head man and to the tribe of his followers. He had been the father I never had and a grandfather to my kids. But I had to break away – he was a man of deep faith; he was also homophobic, racist, and intolerant of divergent views. Some of his theology was clearly unsupportable.

Because I couldn’t consciously face leaving, my unconscious self did it for me. I vented feelings, they got back to the head man, and it all blew up. The volcano erupted. An earthquake shook my life to its foundations. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

When our unconscious steps in and causes some sort of disruption, it does so for our benefit. After all, it is part of us. Are we then acting freely? Are we responsible for the explosion, inevitable as it was?

I don’t know. I do know that God created us to be whole, actualized (Abraham Maslow), fully differentiated (Murray Bowen), lovingly shaped into the image of Christ. I think our freewill has a lot to do with that. I also think that our unconscious selves contribute to the process apart from rational conscious thought.

Perhaps you have experienced unplanned, painful, explosions in your life. Perhaps in some of those instances, your unconscious self orchestrated the explosion for your own good. Yes, maybe another way might have been easier on everyone. When the volcano erupted, people got hurt. But look now – a new tropical island welcomes exotic life.

May 2025