The present view, which associates protophenomena --
elementary units of consciousness -- with all synapses, would seem
to leave no room for the unconscious mind.
There are several possible resolutions.
(1) Unconscious processes may correspond to low-intensity, loosely-coupled protophenomena. By becoming coherent they come into consciousness (i.e. cohere into phenomena). That is, unconscious processes are incoherent patterns in protophenomenal intensity. Therefore, unconscious processes are not literally unconscious; they are present in consciousness as a kind of background noise until and unless they cohere into macroscopic phenomena.
An analogy may clarify this. Project a slide on a screen, and defocus the lens. All of the same information is being projected on the screen as before, but now it is incoherent and the pattern is not salient; this is analogous to unconscious patterns in the protophenomena: they are there but not manifest. Focusing the lens makes the image manifest, which is analogous to the emergence of the unconscious content into conscious experience.
(2) The split-brain operations suggest another solution: in many cases the right hemisphere is unable to respond verbally to problems, and so it cannot easily manifest its consciousness to observers. Further, since the consciousness of the right hemisphere is largely disjoint from that of the left, the right forms a kind of unconscious mind for the left. Of course, the right hemisphere is as conscious as the left, and can manifest its consciousness in other ways, but its experience is not part of the left hemisphere's experience (or vice versa). The analogy becomes more striking when we recall that in these patients the hemispheres are not completely disconnected, so the right hemisphere can inject ideas into the left via the brainstem or via external transactions. Indeed, split-brain patients experience these communications as inexplicable `hunches' -- just like those from the unconscious (Gregory, 1987, p. 743). In summary, what the perceiving-acting-speaking ego experiences as the `unconscious mind' may be an equally conscious but loosely coupled part of the phenomenal world, which manifests itself only through hunches, dreams, urges, etc. More precisely, my phenomenal world may comprise two (or more) loosely coupled populations of tightly coupled protophenomena. One of these subworlds, which includes the motor protophenomena, is identified with the conscious ego because it can manifest its consciousness in behavior. However, other populations may be just as conscious, but unable to declare or demonstrate their consciousness to observers.
(3) Finally, according to the hypothesis of Sherrington and
Pribram discussed earlier, consciousness is associated with graded
dendritic microprocesses but not with all-or-none impulses in the
axon. Therefore the unconscious mind may reside in the axons,
which would make it comprise the more reflexive or instinctive aspects
of the psyche.
In fact, such a model fits well with Jung's description of the
unconscious, for he stressed that the `archetypes of the collective
unconscious' are contentless behavioral patterns grounded in our shared
biological -- or even physical -- nature.
Thus they correspond to the axonal pathways, which are for the most part
genetically determined.
On the other hand, when an archetype emerges into consciousness, it does
so with some individual content, which determines its particular
appearance.
The conscious manifestation of the archetypes corresponds to the
dendritic microprocesses triggered by the axonal processes.
In fact, it is reasonable to suppose that all three of these explanations apply to the unconscious mind (which is primarily, it must be noted, a negative concept).