A couple of weeks on from our very first lesson, I still find myself pondering upon the idea of the Law’s Unconscious. The fact that there is an undoubted connection between the conscious and unconscious, naturally leads to the fascinating prospect of the impact it has had on the law and the impact that it will continue to have.

 

In class, we discussed how the unconscious seems to manifest itself in our lives. The obvious first medium of course, is through dreams. Often, various forms of images, symbolism and stories appear in our sleep. While many attempts have been made in understanding the realm of dreams, many of its interpretations have fallen back onto conjecture. The second, would seem to be through “Freudian slips”, which tend to refer to an unintentional error (often through language) which seemingly reveal an individual’s subconscious feelings. This made me consider the common phenomena where there may be individuals in our personal lives who’s traits we detest for certain reasons, maybe a family member who has issues with managing their anger, and yet we, ironically, end up unconsciously mimicking their behaviour. This then creates a strange moment where we become what we have constantly aspired not to, or “catching ourselves” and wondering how that instance had even occurred.

 

Phenomena such as the above, could then conceivably bleed into various legal systems. How could these occurrences affect a judge’s assessment of a case? Or more pertinently, how a jury may assess a case in the respective jurisdictions. In her article, Felman raises the example of the Simpson trial and how despite how it was initially set out to deal with the private trauma and injury, it had become a leading and historical drama of the collective trauma of persecutions and abuses of African Americans. It is clear how the subconscious trauma of an individual in this circumstance may affect a ruling of a case, especially when you begin accounting for factors such as pressure from the media and public. Nonetheless, I did make a point of how while this may be more pertinent in the US or possibly more westernized countries, that same pressure is nowhere near the same magnitude here in Singapore.

 

Ultimately, the Law and all its facets is meant to be objective and free from factors such as the ones mentioned above. It poses an interesting dilemma then, of how the unconscious can be managed, especially when it is undoubtedly prevalent. This is a dilemma I do hope to explore more in this course.