The Unconscious, Self-Consciousness, and Responsibility

In this article I argue that (1) introspective self-consciousness is an activity of narrative re-appropriation of the products of the unconscious information-processing machinery; and (2) this activity has an essentially self-defensive character, being ruled by the primary and universal need to construct and protect a subjective identity whose solidity is the ground of the intrapsychic and interpersonal balances of human organism. Finally, in this cognitive-science framework, I reconsider John Locke’s link between responsibility and self-consciousness.