The best metaphor I have seen for the relationship between conscious and unconscious minds comes from Jonathan Haidt's excellent and very readable book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science’. He likens these two aspects of our selves to an elephant and its rider. The rider represents the 'controlled' processes of the mind, the planning and reasoning that takes place one step at a time in conscious awareness, while the elephant represents the hundreds of automatic operations we carry out every second outside of conscious awareness.

The elephant has been around a lot longer than the rider. It includes emotions, gut feelings, and visceral responses, and, like Pavlov's dog, responds to stimulus control, whether the stimulus-response pairings are innate (like the startle response) or learned (like the urge to answer the phone when it rings).

The rider, by contrast, has very little influence on behaviour. Although he can look into the future, imagine hypothetical scenarios, and make plans, he cannot order the elephant to do anything. Essentially, the rider is an adviser. Usually, though, we don't realise this: we think either that we are in charge of the elephant, or (perhaps more often) don't realise there is an elephant, and then are baffled or give ourselves a hard time when we don't stick to our resolutions and don't carry out the actions that we know we "should" be doing.

Problems occur when rider and elephant are not operating in harmony. Milton Erickson used to say that the reason his clients had problems was because their conscious and unconscious minds were out of rapport.

In a direct contest between the rider and the elephant, the elephant will win every time. It's a lot bigger and stronger, and, as Haidt points out, our automatic processes have been honed over millions of years of evolution to work pretty much perfectly. The controlled processes, by contrast, are a recent development - 'Rider 1.0' - and still have some bugs to be ironed out.

It is possible, though, for the rider to use his ingenuity to train the elephant in various subtle ways, to distract it from harmful stimuli, and to refocus its attention on more productive goals. Nor should the flow of information be just one way. The elephant is aware of much more of what is going on in the surrounding environment than is the rider, so listening to what the elephant can tell us (in the form of feelings, intuitions, dreams and even physical symptoms) can help us to make much better plans and decisions.

Haidt's book is about much more than this, by the way. Despite being easy to read, it's so rich in information, useful perspectives and research information that I expect I'll be integrating some of its implications and thinking about the many ways in which they can be useful for some time to come. Highly recommended!

So, has anyone else read it? Here’s the link: Amazon.co.uk: Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science: Books: Jonathan Haidt

Read this on your newsletter Andy - agree 'tis a cracker!

Formulated something similar a while back with the (sometimes skittish) horse being the unconcious - the rider being the concious mind and NLP/intervention techniques being the reins.

I was drunk at the time tho.

Elephants have larger scrotums than horses however - the males do at any rate.

Be in balance...


Al

Nice review, Andy, and I agree with you.

It's a wonderful book that links modern thought to traditional philosophy... since reading it, I've been recommending it via my website. One of the other gems is the concept of the internal storyteller as we all make sense of our lives as narrative. And optimists tell such different stories -- to themselves -- than pessimists during times of adversity.

Haidt is an academic psychologist (with a strong education in philosophy) who ethically approves of Prozac (while not using it because of practical considerations -- the side-effects) and CBT to change state and behaviours. Most of us will be mentally overwriting "CBT" with "NLP - the same but faster!" as we read... And he's an atheist who can tell you what's positive in religion, a liberal who can pick out the positive aspects of conservative political philosophy.

Lots of good stuff, including surprising shards of info like the danger of encouraginging self-esteem in isolation from useful behaviour -- violent criminals have massive self esteem! -- and the time-dependence of love.

Read it and smile.

Al - somewhere in the vast works of Joseph Campbell he discusses a passage in the Grail Quest myth where the hero (Parsifal? Tristan?) lets the reins fall on the horse's neck and allows it to take him as it will into the forest - he identifies this as the knight trusting his unconscious mind. Sorry I can't narrow down the reference any further.

John - I'm only half way through the book so a proper review will be some time!

Andy - wow - I'll look that up - and what a lovely sub metaphor that is!!

rock on buddy.

Most of us will be mentally overwriting "CBT" with "NLP - the same but faster!" as we read...

Roger that!

John, I've just had a look at your profile and discovered you're an SF novelist - one of the world's cooler jobs I think. I'm going to check out some of your books....

practicaleq wrote:

The best metaphor I have seen for the relationship between conscious and unconscious minds comes from Jonathan Haidt's excellent and very readable book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science’. He likens these two aspects of our selves to an elephant and its rider. The rider represents the 'controlled' processes of the mind, the planning and reasoning that takes place one step at a time in conscious awareness, while the elephant represents the hundreds of automatic operations we carry out every second outside of conscious awareness.

In Turtles All the Way Down; Prerequisites to personal genuis (1986) Grinder and DeZozier use a similar metaphor, that of the horse and rider. I agree these types of metaphor are very useful for thinking about the relationship between conscious and unconscious minds. By the way I prefer to use the description of conscious attention and unconscious processes rather than conscious and unconscious minds.

Chris

Chris, please adivse JG and JdL that I'm upset that they pinched *my* metaphor then travelled back in time just so they could call it their own.

Some people eh!

;-)
Ah well , I guess great minds.. *snigger*

Hear you met 'Our Jules'! He tells me shiny things about you guys...

Best ,

Al

silverback wrote:

Chris, please adivse JG and JdL that I'm upset that they pinched *my* metaphor then travelled back in time just so they could call it their own.

Some people eh!

;-)
Ah well , I guess great minds.. *snigger*

Hear you met 'Our Jules'! He tells me shiny things about you guys...

Best ,

Al

Yes I met "Your Jules", I'm married to my very own Jules (Jules Collingwood). That's very nice of Julian to say shiny things about us... I hope he is having a great time in OZ. We have been having some very hot weather here in Sydney. Brilliant blue skies.

Cheers Chris

Al, your beef may actually be with Plato who used the image of a chariot with two horses - one obedient (the 'virtuous' passions) and one unruly (the 'irrational' passions e.g. lust), with the charioteer of reason attempting to control them both.

"Plato they say
Could stick it away
Half a crate of whisky every day"
- Monty Python