The Unconscious


25 September 2026


Can you desire something and not know it?


It sounds like a contradiction. Surely if we want something, we're aware of wanting it.


But there's overwhelming evidence that we don't always know our own desires. Take the alcoholic who consciously wants a drink — and just as consciously wishes they could give it up. Calling this a battle between two conscious desires doesn't really explain much. The person feels the conflict acutely,

but describes it as something driving them, not a case of bad faith or muddled thinking.


This is the idea that separates psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy from most other models. Existential therapy asks whether an action is authentic, made in good faith — no unconscious required. CBT locates the problem in conscious but "wrong" thinking.


Psychodynamic work starts from a different premise: that the symptom itself might be solving a problem the person doesn't know they have.


On that view, the drink isn't just a habit to break. It's a solution — one whose costs the

person is all too aware of, but whose function is hidden from them. The therapeutic task becomes bringing that function into view.


I see the same structure in couples who come in with low desire. They've often solved the genuinely hard problem of keeping sex alive in a long-term, loving relationship — by quietly withdrawing from it. Not consciously. They'll say, with complete sincerity, "I still enjoy sex, I just don't feel that way about my partner anymore."


In both cases, the bug is a feature. You only see it that way, though, if you're willing to believe in the unconscious.

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