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At a simple and informal level, the notion of an unconscious mind
(or subconscious) would seem a usefully straightforward way of accounting
for aspects of the mind of which we are not directly conscious or
aware. Upon deeper examination, however, the topic reveals extraordinary
complexity.
So many different ideas and theories have been advanced through
the ages, and so widely have these various kinds of 'unconscious
mind' differed from each other, that one might easily sympathise
with behaviourism's decision to study merely patterns of 'stimulus
and response' without engaging in speculation about conscious and
unconscious mental states! At the present stage, there are still
fundamental disagreements within psychology about what the nature
of the 'unconscious mind' might be (if indeed it is considered to
exist at all) -- whereas outside formal psychology a whole world
of pop-psychological speculation has grown up in which the 'unconscious
mind' is held to have any number of properties and abilities from
the animalistic and infantile, through the innocent and child-like,
to the savant-like, all-perceiving, mystical and occult.
Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of
'unconscious mind' - and the one which most people will immediately
think of upon hearing the term - is that developed by Sigmund Freud
and his followers, and which lies at the heart of psychoanalysis.
(It should be stressed, incidentally, that the popular term 'subconscious'
is not a Freudian coinage and is never used in serious psychoanalytic
writings).
Freud's concept was a more subtle and complex psychological theory
than many. Consciousness, in Freud's topographical view (which was
his first of several psychological models of the mind) was a relatively
thin perceptual aspect of the mind, whereas the subconscious (frequently
misused and confused with the unconscious) was that merely autonomic
function of the brain. The unconscious was indeed considered by
Freud throughout the evolution of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient
force of will influenced by human drives and yet operating well
below the perceptual conscious mind. Hidden, like the man behind
the curtain in the "Wizard of Oz," the unconscious directs
the thoughts and feelings of everyone, according to Freud. This
unconscious mind is the primitive instinctual hangover we all suffer
from and which we must overcome in a healthy way in order to become
fully and normally developed, i.e., not neurotic or psychotic but
merely unhappy (See Frank Sulloway's "Freud, Biologist of the
Mind," Basic Books, 1983).
History:
The idea originated in antiquity, and its more modern history is
detailed in Henri F Ellenberger's Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic
Books, 1970).
Certain philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud such as Leibniz and
Schopenhauer developed ideas foreshadowing the subconscious. The
new medical science of psychoanalysis established by Freud and his
disciples popularized this and similar notions such as the role
of the libido (sex drive) and the self-destructive urge of thanatos
(death wish), and the famous Oedipus complex wherein a son seeks
to "kill" his father to make love to his own mother.
The term was popularized by Freud. He developed the idea that there
were layers to human consciousness: the conscious, preconscious,
and unconscious. He thought that certain psychic events take place
"below the surface", or in the unconscious mind. A good
example is dreaming, which Freud called the "royal road to
the unconscious".
In another of Freud's systematizations, the mind is divided into
the Conscious mind or Ego and two parts of the Unconscious: the
Id or instincts and the Superego. Freud used the idea of the unconscious
in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior (See psychoanalysis).
Carl Jung developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious
into two parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.
The first of these corresponds to Freud's idea of the subconscious,
though unlike his mentor, Jung believed that the personal unconscious
contained a valuable counter-balance to the conscious mind, as well
as childish urges. As for the collective unconscious, which consists
of archetypes, this is the common store of mental building blocks
that makes up the psyche of all humans. Evidence for its existence
is the universality of certain symbols that appear in the mythologies
of nearly all peoples.
There are other views. Jane Roberts (in the Seth books) presents
a rich portrait of consciousness in which the unconscious mind is
described as being clairvoyant and in communication with all other
minds. The self that each of us experiences day-to-day is described
as being but one facet of a richer and very complex multi-dimensional
entity.
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