Catholic Dictionary

Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

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UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION

Impulses for human activity not easily or at all traceable to conscious reasoning or willful deliberation. A person's motives for doing something, or abstaining from something else, for believing this or denying that, may be quite unknown. One may have only an unexplainable urge and feel the urge persisting in spite of conscious reasons to the contrary. One may be influenced by a person seen or a statement heard that shapes his own thought long before the age of reason and quite apart from rational reflection.