Death… It's A Living

Freud famously believed that the mind was mostly unconscious. That is to say, although people are conscious of their sense of self and some of their sense of morality, they remain forever unaware of most of their desires and motivations. Freud’s concept of the unconscious mind was very similar to his concept of the conscious mind; the difference was that the former was hidden from view. For Freud, because it was hidden, it must hold secrets; and because he was Freud, those secrets must be dark secrets. They must be taboo. All the things that people deny themselves because they are socially unavailable and inappropriate. As with many things Freudian, this theory tells us far more about the man himself and the times he lived in than actual psychology. How better to explain the assumption of universal hidden desires than to say the theorist himself hid his own?

The details of Freudian psychology have (justifiably!) fallen out of favor. However, if we retain the most basic, broad-stroke idea that the unconscious mind is the portion of our psychology to which we remain blithely unaware, then his ideas remain remarkably consistent with modern constructions of human cognition.

For example, most of the cognitions involved in maintaining mental homeostasis are not accessible to the conscious mind. The list of what the brain does (not that we have a full understanding of all the brain does just yet) is too long for any one individual to function should that individual be asked to keep track of it all (e.g., to consciously keep their heart beating, their blood pumping, their blood sugar regulated). When any of us recognizes a loved one, we don’t have to consciously compare their faces or mannerisms to other exemplars (something that likely does happen during all acts of memory retrieval)… we just know that we recognize.

We remain on auto-pilot all day long. When I put on my pants this morning, I was completely unaware of those pants touching my leg hairs. In fact, I was completely unaware of that feeling all day until this very moment. And I can write with some confidence that nearly all of my readers were unaware of the feeling of wearing pants (assuming you are wearing pants, no judgement!) until now. This is because your conscious mind does not provide access to the unconscious mind until that information becomes relevant. It is fun to imagine that we all have demons that we unconsciously repress all day long. But the truth of the unconscious mind is far more mundane and dull. Besides, if someone does have demons, they know it… that’s why they work so hard to hide them.

Aware of our Unawareness

It is, nevertheless, strange to think of the fact that we are unaware of a majority of our mental processes. Current research on the intersection of behavior and physiology suggests that the gut microbiome has a tremendous influence on human action, motivation, and desire. In fact, Freud’s concept of the unconscious mind might be a better description of the microscopic critters that inhabit our intestines. For example, a lack of microbiome diversity has not only been related to poor nutritional and digestive health but also to poor mental health. Depression and anxiety are aggravated if not caused by gut inflammation. Even more dramatically, there are specific microbes that have been linked with specific desires. The most fun example of this is Toxoplasma gondii, a simple organism that can only reproduce in the digestive tracts of cats. That is not to say that it can’t live in other species, but living in a rat or a pig or a human is a dead end for T. gondii. Therefore, it has developed a remarkable ability to direct its host’s behavior toward potential breeding sites, that is, cats. A human infected with T. gondii is more likely to actually like cats than one who is not. In fact, mice infected with this organism show a significantly reduced fear of cats and even occasional sexual interest in cats! Clearly, a mouse should not get the hots for its apex predator. Nor should humans, quite frankly, enjoy spending time with an animal that, while soft and cute, is incredibly emotionally distant and relaxes by rhythmically digging its claws into the flesh of the people who let it live with them. We should all be dog people. The fact that we aren’t underscores T. gondii’s ability to change who we think we are.

I was reminded of T. gondii while exploring Postojna Cave in western Slovenia while on my sabbatical. Slovenia is full of caves, thousands of them, carved out by the underground rivers in the karst rock. Most people have the good sense not to go venturing into caves, so we typically only see the outside. All the lush forest and meadows (Ireland has nothing on Slovenia, which has more trees than any other European country—despite its modest size—and is incredibly green). But if you do go into the cave, you find a massive, bizarre environment. Postojna in particular is over 24-km long. Although the public is only able to access roughly 5 km, those pathways loop around each other, creating the sensation that one is in a video-game dungeon.

Today, the cave is a tourist destination, one that allows people to see the parts of the world that remain hidden. It represents a fraction of the caves that are inaccessible and unseen by humans. There are no bats in cave, as (at 10°C) it is too cold for them. There is life in the form of a blind salamander simultaneously referred to as a “baby dragon” and the “human fish”. The latter because it is pink and has skin similar to that of a human, the former because it is roughly (European) dragon-shaped, and Slovene parents would warn their children that to explore deeper in the cave would be to stumble upon the mother dragon.

Despite the relative dearth of life, the cave itself is growing via geological processes. The Pivka River slowly continues to hollow out the cave by eroding the limestone, eon after eon. The mineral-rich water continues to elongate stalactites and stalagmites, creating cave columns where the twain shall meet. Perhaps that is the strangest aspect of the cave: it grows and grows while the outside world shrinks and shrinks as we lose arable land and shoreline due to the climate crisis. The cave continues, unaffected. It has seen one ice age already, what’s one more in the great scheme of things?

There aren’t really dragons in Postojna Cave. But there is a world that exists unseen. Another world exists unseen in all of us. That world plays a defining role in shaping who we are. The conscious version of me—the grassy green version of me—decided to marry my wife, take a job as a professor, and plans to make tacos for my boys tonight. I did those things because I chose or will choose to do those things. But they are the things I do, which is different than who I am. The unconscious version of me—the dark, cold, cave version of me—directed me to find funny petite brunettes attractive, caused me to be curious and enjoy learning, blessed me with a love of spicy food and need to provide for my children. I chose none of those things. That’s just who I am. I am the cave, even though I’ll never see it. I’ll never see the real me. But I’ll try to appreciate him, even as he makes me have one (or two) more tacos than I should.  

-The Plague Doctor