Computing the unconscious

Abstract

This essay examines the unconscious as modeled by cognitive science and compares it to the psychoanalytic unconscious. In making this comparison, the author underscores the important but usually overlooked fact that computational psychology and psychoanalytic theory are both varieties of posthumanism. He argues that if posthumanism is to advance a vision for our future that is no longer fixated on a normative image of the human, then its own normative claims about the primacy of Darwinian functioning must be disrupted and undermined through a renewed emphasis on its Freudian heritage.