3. How Unconscious Habits Rule Behavior—and What Therapy Must Do
Introduction: Most of What Drives You Is Out of Sight
Many people come to therapy asking, “Why do I keep doing this, even though I know better?” The answer lies in a fundamental truth: most of our behavior is governed by unconscious systems—automatic, deeply learned predictions that operate outside awareness.
The Problem with Insight Alone
While insight is important, it only operates in the brain's cortical “preconscious” memory systems. But the real drivers of behavior—especially the ones we call “stuck,” “irrational,” or “trauma-based”—live elsewhere.
These behaviors are governed by:
Procedural memory (how we do things—habits, routines)
Emotional memory (how we feel in specific contexts)
These memories are:
Non-representational: they don’t form images or thoughts
Not available to working memory: we can’t “think” them directly
Stored subcortically: mainly in the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and limbic circuits
This means that when a client says, “I don’t know why I’m like this,” they’re probably right. The information they need isn’t lost—it was never conscious to begin with.
How Unconscious Predictions Are Formed
Innate predictions (e.g., fear of loud noise) are automatic from birth
Early life patterns (e.g., emotional responses to caregivers) are formed before we can form conscious memories
Learned habits are consolidated over time when behaviors successfully reduce emotional discomfort
When a behavior “works,” it becomes automatized. The brain’s goal is efficiency—so it stores this behavior in non-declarative memory for future use. Over time, this leads to a vast library of unconscious behaviors—most of them helpful, some of them not.
The Therapy Challenge: Reaching What Can’t Be Thought
Solms makes a crucial distinction between:
Legitimate automatizations: deeply learned solutions that actually work
Illegitimate automatizations: premature habits formed in childhood that don’t work—but are stored as if they do
These faulty predictions become resistant to change because:
They are non-declarative: not accessible to thought
They bypass affect regulation: they don’t resolve the feelings they’re aimed at
They are immune to reconsolidation through cognition
This is why traditional talk therapy often fails when dealing with childhood trauma, compulsions, or chronic relational issues. Clients understand the pattern—but it doesn't change.
What Effective Therapy Must Do: A Neuroscientific Blueprint
Here’s what Solms’ theory—and decades of psychoanalytic experience—suggest must happen in psychotherapy:
1. Work With Affects, Not Just Thoughts
Clients rarely come in saying, “I’m unconscious of something.” They say, “I can’t stop feeling this way.”
Feelings point directly to unmet needs and prediction errors:
Panic = fear of loss
Rage = blocked goals
Shame = need for acceptance
By tracking these emotional “signals,” therapists can identify the hidden memory traces behind them—even if the client can't articulate them.
2. Interpret Patterns, Not Just Narratives
Because non-declarative memories can’t be recalled, they can only be observed in action.
That’s where transference becomes key:
The client reenacts past patterns in the therapeutic relationship
The therapist identifies the emotional logic behind the pattern
Interpretation brings this derivative into working memory, where new predictions can form
3. Enable Reconsolidation Through Repetition
Even after insight, new learning takes time:
Clients must experience new relational outcomes (e.g., setting boundaries, staying present)
Repetition allows this new experience to consolidate into procedural memory
Over time, these new habits become more efficient than the old ones—and the brain adopts them automatically
This process—called “working through”—is the cornerstone of psychoanalytic therapy. It explains why meaningful change is often slow but lasting.
4. Respect the Role of Resistance
Resistance isn’t willful defiance—it’s the brain’s effort to avoid surprise, pain, or identity disruption.
Changing unconscious habits requires revisiting early unsolvable problems, which the child’s mind had to “put away” prematurely. Therapy helps re-problematize these issues with the support of a regulated adult mind.
This is emotional re-learning, and it’s deeply neurobiological.
Why Therapy Must Be Long-Term and Relational
Because procedural and emotional memories are:
“Hard to learn, hard to forget”
Not accessible to logic or short-term interventions
Dependent on repeated, emotionally charged enactments
Therapists must provide:
Safety
Attunement
Repetition
And memory reconsolidation of previously unconscious patterns
Only through this process can new predictions—ones that more adaptive—replace the dysfunctional ones.
Citing the Science: Claim 3 by Mark Solms
This blog draws from Claim 3 of:
Solms, M. (2018). The Predictive Mind and the Felt Self. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 294. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00294