SUBCONSCIOUS. - A term brought into vogue in psychology by psychoanalysis (v.) and in theology by modernism (v.) to indicate the psychic sphere that is at present withdrawn from attention; it therefore embraces those latent contents which can nonetheless be evoked when consciousness (v.) — by itself or through the intervention of a third party — can direct attention (v.) to them. The distinction between the s. and the unconscious, which are often confused, is a matter of controversy, especially among German psychologists: according to De Sanctis, it is well to reserve the term "unconscious" to indicate the course of the bio-physiological phenomena that constitute the vital functions and accompany the activity of the peripheral and central nervous system, as well as the behavior of most elementary reflexes. In this sense the "complexes" and "deep structures" described by Freud belong properly to the s. and not to the unconscious.
The existence of the s. is attested, in normal psychology, by the spontaneous synthetic activity of the internal senses in the perception of the continuum of space and time (v. SENSAZIONE), by the functions of the imagination (v.) and of memory (v.), by the activity of dreams, by presentiments...; psychopathology shows the prevalence of the activity of the s. over consciousness (phobias, flight of ideas, automatisms, splitting of personality...). The existence of the s. presupposes that the contents that present themselves in the zone of attention of consciousness do not disappear entirely but are deposited in the deep self and continue in it their own dynamism. The very sudden intuitions of genius in the arts, in the sciences and in the life of thought presuppose a "psychic maturation" that is accomplished in the s., even if the precise nature and the manner of this accomplishment are not known. In normal psychology the s. may be said to be at one and the same time the condition and the effect of conscious activity, inasmuch as the s. embraces the complex of innate and acquired dispositions that make possible the actualization of consciousness itself and the structure of its
In ancient philosophy the s. was glimpsed by Plato with the theory of recollection (cf. Resp., 514 A ff.: myth of the cave) and by Aristotle in the doctrine of the imagination and of memory (De an., III, 3; De mem.). The Platonic recollection was taken up again by Leibniz's doctrine of monads "without doors and without windows"
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(v.), according to which one must admit that our spirit is endowed from the very beginning with all future forms and thoughts in such a way "that it already thinks confusedly of everything that it will later think distinctly" (Discours de métaph., § 26, ed. H. Lestienne, Paris 1929, p. 72: italics by L.). Herbart (v.) introduced the Leibnizian principle of the s. into modern psychology as the foundation of the association, dissociation and structural synthesis of the contents of consciousness. The "theory of the unconscious" of E. von Hartmann (v.) derives from the Schopenhauerian panvitalism that returns in the doctrine of L. Klages. In modernism (v.) the s. indicates the source of the "religious sense" that brings to the surface in the believer's consciousness the experience of the so-called "indigence of the divine," according to which, in opportune circumstances, the subject lives his religious emotion and expresses his own interpretation of the dogmas (cf. encycl. Pascendi: Denz-U, 2074).
One may recognize in the s. a notable part — often the principal one — from the functional point of view, in the founding of the "intentionality" (v.) of the processes of consciousness (Brentano, Husserl) and therefore in the constitution of the very sense of reality (Wirklichkeitssinn) and in the conduct of the person as such. In this way the dynamism of the s. directly concerns the very problem of the "presence" of being to consciousness, so that it belongs to the temporal structure of the human spirit and to its mystery.