Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
Freeing the Inner Choice
To take a ‘choice’ that actually feels driven or foregone, trace it back to the unconscious determinant compelling it, make that determinant conscious, and so restore the possibility of a real choice rather than being lived by an unexamined impulse.
Freeing the inner choice in 5 lines: Find a decision that feels driven, compulsive, or already-settled. Admit the unconscious may be choosing for you. Trace the real determinant — the fear, loyalty, self-image, or inner figure behind it. Make it conscious and relate to it rather than obey or repress it. Now make a real choice and own its cost — and get a therapist’s help if the roots are trauma, addiction, or acute distress.
What it is
This is Frances Wickes’s central practical thesis from her final book, The Inner World of Choice (1963): much of what we call “choosing” is not free at all — we are at the mercy of unconscious impulses, living out determinants we never examined, so that the “decision” was foregone before we deliberated.
Wickes’s claim is that real choice only becomes possible once the unconscious determinant is made conscious; until then we have, in effect, no choice. The practice is therefore an inquiry: take a decision that feels strangely driven, compulsive, or already-settled, and trace it back to the inner figure, fear, loyalty, or self-image that is actually compelling it.
When that determinant is brought into the light and related to consciously (rather than obeyed or repressed), the grip loosens and a genuine choice — to follow it, refuse it, or find a third way — opens up.
This is an inquiry/shadow practice aimed specifically at the freedom of the will: distinct from active imagination (engaging images for their own meaning) and from belief-disputation methods, its target is the hidden determinant behind a present life decision.
It operationalises contact with a deeper Self (All Is One), liberating inner knowledge (All Is One), and the re-working of subconscious patterning (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
Faithfully drawn from Wickes’s argument and case material in The Inner World of Choice (described, not reproduced):
- Find the driven choice. Locate a decision that does not feel free — something you “have to” do, can’t not do, or have already decided without knowing why; or a recurring pattern where you keep “choosing” the same painful thing. Wickes’s diagnostic is the sense of compulsion, not deliberation.
- Admit you may not be choosing. Name the possibility honestly: this may be the unconscious choosing through you. Wickes holds that to be unconscious of the determinant is to have no real choice at all.
- Trace the determinant. Ask what is actually deciding: a fear, an old loyalty or debt, a self-image you must protect, an inner figure (e.g. a driving “inner critic,” an idealised or punishing parent-figure, the seductive mood or the rigid certainty Jung called anima/animus). Follow the feeling back to the figure or pattern behind it.
- Make it conscious and relate to it. Bring the determinant fully into awareness and face it as a distinct content — see what it wants, what it fears, what it is protecting. Wickes’s move is neither blind obedience nor repression, but a conscious relationship with the determinant, which is where freedom enters.
- Now choose — and own the cost. With the determinant conscious, a real choice exists: honor it, refuse it, or hold the tension between competing inner claims until a third, more integrated option emerges. Wickes ties choice to responsibility: an owned choice, including its cost, is the mark that the unconscious is no longer choosing for you.
- Re-examine over time. Determinants re-assert themselves; revisit the inquiry at each genuine crossroads so choice stays conscious rather than sliding back into compulsion. (Sourcing note: synthesised from Wickes’s thesis that real choice requires making the unconscious determinant conscious, and her case studies of lives lived “at the mercy of unconscious impulses”; faithfully described, not reproduced, with no extended quotation.)
Source & Lineage
Frances G. Wickes (1875–1967), American Jungian analyst and close associate of Jung, completed her “inner world” trilogy with The Inner World of Choice (Harper & Row, 1963), a study of how conscious choice emerges from unconscious material and how failing to integrate ego and unconscious (and the contrasexual anima/animus) leaves a person with no real choices, “at the mercy of unconscious impulses.” It applies Jung’s individuation and his account of autonomous complexes to the specific problem of the will.
The Traditions' versions
The shared aim — make the hidden driver conscious so action stops being automatic — recurs widely, but Wickes frames it specifically as the recovery of free choice from unconscious determination: - Working with the inner figures (Jung) — relating to the anima/animus and other figures so their energy is known rather than acted out.
- Inner separation / “this is not I” (Nicoll) — disidentifying from the mechanical reaction that is running you.
- Conscious re-choosing (Hess) — deliberately re-choosing where you had been driven.
- Parts work / IFS, empty chair — surfacing and negotiating with the part that holds the compulsion.,
- Examining/rewriting limiting beliefs — disputation methods that target the belief behind the act rather than the figure.
Common refinements
Mistaking rationalisation for the real determinant. The first reason you give is often a cover; trace the feeling of compulsion to what it protects.
- Obeying or repressing instead of relating. Both leave you unfree. Wickes’s freedom is in the conscious relationship with the determinant.
- Treating insight as the finish line. Seeing the driver is the precondition for choice, not the choice itself — you still have to choose and act.
- Refusing the cost. A “choice” with no owned cost is usually still the compulsion in disguise.
- Refinement: journal the crossroads — the driven choice, the determinant you traced, the choice you then made, and its cost — and revisit when the pattern recurs.