The function of the unconscious  (Page 3/4)

So one person is ignoring things like ethical problems and interpreting everything that happens in his own biased way. The other person is moral, and takes ethical problems very seriously, this person probably doesn't bias his interpretation of events but instead feels bad when something bad happens. The significance of these two approaches is in how emotion is processed. If one person thinks everything that happens is tilted in their favor, they are less likely to experience the emotions they should be experiencing because they are biasing everything. They might not care about someone else or if something they don't like happens, they might not recognize it and might not feel anything from it. In order to feel emotion, you need to recognize events for what they are, not dismiss them because you fit them to fit your "subjective suppositions", but take events in life seriously with the full weight they deserve. For instance, if something bad happens to someone else this person might not care because they might twist the event in their mind to think nothing really bad happened to that person so it doesn't cause them to care or feel bad for that person themselves.

The moral man, on the other hand, for whom moral problems are "devastatingly real" cares deeply about things that occur that are bad, and therefore would probably really feel and connect, experiencing the world as it is and feeling as much as he can from it. These two approaches illustrate something very significant about the unconscious, that whatever it is you are thinking about something, your unconscious mind is going to feel very strongly and respond in a very strong way. Of course it probably is that the person that is ignoring bad things will not feel for them as strongly as the person who isn't ignoring them, but the point is that if something really bad happens to you, your unconscious mind is going to make you feel very strongly. You have ideas and biases of what happens, and these might influence how much you care, but unconsciously you care in an entirely different way - either type of person might feel various things from a bad event occurring. Your unconscious mind is a separate entity.

A rich mind may be gripped by an interpersonal problem - that means they consciously will be troubled by it, and "their unconscious will answer in the same style" - this means that your unconscious will cause you to feel and respond in the same way your conscious mind did. For the foolish man who biases events, and wouldn't be gripped" by an interpersonal problem, his unconscious might be gripped by it and cause him to feel a lot, but that wouldn't be in the same style as his conscious was thinking. The foolish man might ignore the evil in people because he is twisting things his way, but his unconscious wouldn't - his unconscious would say, "'Look closer! Each needs the other. The best, just because it is the best, holds the seed of evil...'"

In fact, saying "look closer" is a great description for the unconscious, no matter what you think occurred in an event, the unconscious mind is going to "know", probably much better, what occurred in that event and make you feel the appropriate things (no matter what you want to feel). Your unconscious mind takes a much "closer" look at what happens and is much more refined and complicated than your conscious one. You actually have a much deeper understanding of events than you would think, however this understanding is mostly unconscious. The point here is, no matter what you think happened or what your interpretation of events is, your unconscious mind is going to know, understand and respond by making you feel the appropriate things. You respond to situations largely from your unconscious, everything you feel isn't determined by your thought or your conscious mind - it is mostly determined by your unconscious.