A plea for a more dialectical relationship between personal and subpersonal levels of analysis

In our opinion article we deal with the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious as it has taken shape within contemporary cognitive sciences, with a focus on the problem of the relationship between the personal and subpersonal levels of analysis of the mind. We begin by comparing the cognitive unconscious with the Freudian one, rejecting the project of converting psychoanalysis into an anti-naturalistic form of hermeneutics. Then we turn our attention to the so-called problem of "the mark of cognitive", emphasizing the difficulties that it raises for the eliminative project of developing a subpersonal model of the mind totally disengaged from personal-level psychology. We conclude with a plea for a more dialectical relationship between personal and subpersonal levels of analysis.