The Third Unconscious - Bifo

“The unconscious is not a deposit, but a laboratory.”

3 phases of the unconscious:

1. Repression of instinctual drives that causes neurosis
   1. Which is why Freud wrote about repression of the unconscious desires that interfere with the conscious mind
2. Hyperstimulation/free production of meaning
   1. Up until currently, this has been the phase we’ve been in where people are hyperexpressive 
   2. this causes psychosis 
3. Third phase in the making
   1. the pandemic has shifted society not just in physical ways
      1. economic, mental and psychological ways
      2. Bifo explores the psycho-sphere and how it has changed due to this shift

Currently entering a phase in which money does not revive the economy that has already been collapsing 

• difference is that unlike 08, this time it is not a financial issue so cannot be fixed no matter how much money is thrown at the problem
• entering a phase in which there is a high possibility for a techno-totalitarian future where there is increased automation of society and hyperexploitation

Humans thought that nature could be dominated and controlled - via politics and science, but it has always failed. 

• “growth” in mainstream economics has been abstracted and reduced to the narrow sphere of production (GDP)
• there is no consideration for the welfare and needs of society
• current theories of economics has failed to model real life which explains the inability of economists to come up with effective strategies to deal with the current pandemic

This virus reprograms society in more than just the physical sense:

• also economic and psychological
• “homunculus” of capitalism
  • submission of the human to automation?
• covid simply intensified the already existing contradictions that has been plaguing society
• extinction is ever more imminent and our will to stop it will not necessarily be enough –> it is the most likely possibility given the current conditions

Psychotic cycle of capitalism removes reality and lets desires run wild in that second phase of hyperexpression

• psychodeflation: “do nothing” becomes the way to deal 
• instead of financialization and “growth”, economy should aim for usefulness 
• debt should be cancelled across the world because it is not useful to improve the economy in any way

Concept of freedom

• needs to be rethought
• the current conception of freedom is heavily focused on entitlement to act as individuals desire, which not the definition of freedom
• neoliberalism, for example
  • absolute rule of capital accumulation
  • massive slavery of labor
  • automation
  • which is supposedly “free” as implied by the name, but is massively unequal and unfree for the majority of the people in the process
• 3 ways to redefine
  • ontological: free will from “god”/divine determination
  • political: given free will, humans decide how they want to organize society, which is independent from established powers
    • BUT capitalism has rendered this notion null 
  • physical: what are the limitations of the body?

Some philosophical qs

1. Does matter evolve in a deterministic way? or not at all? or is it deterministic but not in a way that we are able to understand it?
2. What is the link between our physical brain and conscious mind?
3. If we can interpret the unconscious, is there a way to more possibilities and ultimately a way to true freedom?

distinction between autonomy vs. freedom

• individual vs restricted by environment
• the power we have vs broad and limited 

Psychology of the unconscious

• before Freud, German philosopher Friedrich Schelling used the word unconscious to establish a relational, but distinctive difference between conscious and unconscious
  • unconscious is passive intuition 
  • Freud wanted a distinction of the mind beyond neurology, so came up with the ideas of the conscious and unconscious
• signification: act of signifying some meaning
• But Freud thought of the unconscious as a deposit that comes to interrupt the conscious mind
• unconscious is also a space that resists rationality
• collective unconscious by Jung
  • aggregate uncon shaped over history and time
• but BIFO is interested in the present dynamics of the mind in relation to the environment
  • wants to map the possibilities that will emerge in terms of psychopathy
  • so he is focused more so on the psychology side of the unconscious