FREEDOM TO CHOOSE…OR MAYBE NOT

Freedom to choose implies that one has a choice of behavior or thought, free from political, cultural, religious, economic, or interpersonal constraints. While this is more or less true at an observer level, at the functional level, for the person making these behavioral and thought choices, it isn’t as free as it seems.

Mostly our thoughts and behaviors are determined by a psychological dynamic -- the interplay between our conscious and unconscious. Our conscious choices are certainly the product of habit, learning, and preferences, and freely expressed, like what brand of peanut butter to buy or what music to listen to. For these we do have freedom to choose.

But for other choices, like how to react to something another person says, or how we feel about ourselves, the outward behavior is produced to a large extent by unconscious dynamics that are mostly outside of awareness. Things trigger us. We react automatically without much thought or agency. Base feelings are triggered and get filtered up to conscious thoughts and behaviors without awareness of causes. This duality between the unconscious and conscious is succinctly described by Daniel Kahneman as System 1 and System 2.

(See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirFrDVRBo4&t=29s)

The goal of dynamic psychotherapy is to help the person understand these unconscious motivations and processes, make them less automatic, and thereby gain conscious agency.