Conscious and unconscious in the human psyche

We do not feel where our thoughts come from, we do not realize how and where experience accumulates. For the superficial mind, all mental phenomena arise as if from emptiness - they simply appear for free against the background of consciousness in a completed form, and just as elusively disappear - into “nowhere”. Some kind of paradoxical factory of fleeting dreams. One could stop here and accept that the mind is such a wizard that entertains itself with the instant creation of momentary thoughts and feelings. But psychologists who dared to place the psyche in a scientific framework were not satisfied with this approach. They did not believe in magic, and began to expose them - they say that he is not a magician, but simply a magician hiding his “rabbits” in his “sleeves”. To this day, science has not been able to see or touch the “sleeves,” and that is why they are called something that cannot be understood—that is, unconscious. “Sleight of hand and no fraud.”

More precisely, at first this unconscious capacity was called the subconscious, then, with the light hand of Freud, the term was replaced by “unconscious”. Simply put, the unconscious is unconscious mental processes. To be more specific, different psychologists interpret and describe the unconscious, each in their own way.

In this article I have the audacity to offer my own, completely unscientific, view. It was developed over a long period of time, from subjective observations, and therefore I do not advise taking it very seriously. Just a hypothesis.

"Second Consciousness"

I have said more than once that reality for an individual is his own psyche - a set of subjective perceptions. What we perceive with our eyes and ears has no value. Good or bad, ugly or beautiful, it all becomes in the head. The world acquires its qualities not somewhere outside, but exclusively in our subjective mind. If you want to understand your mind, look at life as you know it. Your life is you. In this context, there is no objective reality, but only a realistic, subjective concept of it.

I cannot know this for sure, but there is a lot that indicates that it is the unconscious that rules our entire life. And the will and choice of the superficial mind is such an “electric arc” that is created by the “substation” of the unconscious. The mind feels as if it is making a choice, but this very feeling of choice is “fabricated” by deep mental processes.

The role of the subconscious in human life.

The subconscious and its capabilities are the subject of heated scientific debate and debate. Some scientists classify the subconscious as a pseudoscience, while others try to see in it the deep foundations of the psyche. Be that as it may, the subconscious determines nature, the real “I”, free from “masks” and conventions.

More on the blog: The Wolf of Wall Street method: revelations from Jordan Belfort - the best salesman in the world

Since intuition manifests itself on a subconscious level , this alone confirms the great importance that the subconscious has in a person’s life. It is necessary for dialogue with people, especially when choosing a partner for life.

All previous life experience, multiplied by “natural instinct,” helps not to step on the same “rake,” although a person is capable of much. For example, trampling on this “agricultural tool” contrary to your intuition or common sense.

In addition to its benefits, the subconscious can play a destructive role . Since it manifests itself contrary to awareness, by influencing the subconscious, people can be manipulated. Many technologies are built on this principle, including NLP - neuro-linguistic programming, which is gaining popularity in the service or sales sector.

Influencing the subconscious can be beneficial, but if done with evil intentions, it can also cause harm. The vulnerability of people to manipulators makes us think about the need to understand our subconscious.

Projection and rationalization

To continue the story I will have to clarify some terms again. There is an old article on progressman.ru about neuroses, where I described protective mental mechanisms: projection and rationalization. I'll repeat myself a bit here.

A popular example of rationalization can be found in the fable of the fox, who, having failed in obtaining grapes, rationalized her retreat by the poor quality of the still green berry. That is, in order not to accept the limitations of its own capabilities, the fox outwitted itself with an imaginary lack of interest in the desired object. The real motive that hits the fox’s self-esteem remains in the unconscious. On the surface of consciousness it was replaced by false rationalization - a convenient explanatory justification for one’s actions. Rationalization in psychoanalysis is the unconscious “self-defense” of the ego, limiting perception and thinking to a form where one’s own behavior seems well controlled and justified.

A striking example of projection can be seen in the famous joke, where Winnie the Pooh unreasonably imagines that Piglet, walking next to him, thinks various unpleasant things about him, for which he decides to hit his friend. That is, in order not to accept his own groundless anger, Winnie the Pooh projected it onto Piglet. Thus, the real motive of anger remained in the unconscious. And on the surface of consciousness it was replaced by a false projection - a profitable attribution of one’s own objectionable thoughts and feelings to someone else’s account. Projection in psychoanalysis is “self-defense of the ego,” which allows one’s own unacceptable feelings to be unconsciously attributed to others.

So, what is this all about? I personally consider Sigmund Freud's description of projection and rationalization to be a brilliant discovery. But at the same time I understand them in my own way. In my subjective and unscientific view, these defense mechanisms work continuously and affect the deepest layers of the personality. One could even say that the personality itself is based on the foundation of these defense mechanisms. All of our thinking is a non-stop rationalization of the inexplicable, chaotic reality here and now, which we know only through personal projections.

We continue to build unreasonably bold hypotheses.

I already said above that all movements of the personal sphere are controlled by the invisible “puppeteer” of the unconscious. The feeling of personal will is perhaps the most important rationalization of our real lack of will. The mind does everything to maintain the illusion of control.

The feeling of an external reality separate from us is probably only a projection of our internal split, where a small conscious part is separated from the vast unconscious. We imagine that we are separated from the outside world. In fact, this is separation from one’s own deep essence. The perceived external world in all its diversity is our own unconscious traits. There are no other ways for us to state reality.

Many members of society believe that thoughts and feelings are formed not from the inside, but “from the outside” - by external events. They say that it is not our person who is so touchy, but out there, they offend and make people angry. All the diversity of life is “out there somewhere.” This is how infantile irresponsibility for oneself is formed, coupled with a chronic sense of the injustice of life.

The childish approach is to believe in an external cause for one’s own thoughts and feelings. Mature - in personal. The next stage is erasing the boundaries between the external, separate and personal, internal. There is simply life, and all divisions are just realistic thoughts on which the foundation of the ego is formed.

In words, everything is conditional. God's will is, relatively speaking, the unconscious “will” of our unconscious. This divine puppeteer not only controls our mind, he also shapes our sense of the external environment. Yes, one can argue and say that it does not shape external reality, but only its perception. But for us there is no other reality other than that which appears in our perception.

I also firmly believe in an outside world separate from me. But I learned the “return” projection. That is, I can clearly feel that “this” living person next to me is just my perception, which can be reproduced again at any time. So far it works only with deliberate concentration. I don't see anything particularly difficult in this. I am sure that with proper training, almost anyone can master this “trick”.

If questions arise about what to do if “nothing seems to depend on our personality,” I refer you to the article on choice and spontaneity.

The words “unconscious, subconscious, superconscious” have firmly entered the everyday life of modern man. They express for us a certain capacious and broad concept, but for the majority it is still quite abstract - after all, the essence itself is not very clear.

Let's try to figure it out - what is it and why do we need “this”? Initially, the concept of the unconscious was used to refer to the “place” where repressed or forgotten information is stored. This information can be either personal in nature ( personal unconscious ), or based on a deeper layer, acquired NOT from personal experience ( collective unconscious) , but inherited from our ancestors, whose way of thinking was mythological and archaic in nature. That is, the collective unconscious is the same for all people - it is “superpersonal”.

The concept of the collective unconscious, introduced by K.G. Jung , makes it possible to present a picture of the inner world of the soul and its relationships with the external material world around us. When working with the personal unconscious, we most often encounter emotionally charged contents (complexes) of the mental life of an individual. The contents of the collective unconscious are common to all people. They are called "Archetypes" . The unconscious content of the Archetypes changes as soon as it becomes conscious and perceived. These changes occur under the influence of the individual consciousness in which they arise.

Fairy tales are a well-known representation of archetypes. We also encounter Archetypes (patterns of perception, thinking, actions, desires) in dreams and altered states of consciousness, because the Soul contains images from which myths, fairy tales, and legends originate. They contain initially hidden knowledge and immersing ourselves in them, we perceive the secrets of the soul with the help of majestic images. The more beautiful and grandiose this image is, the further it is from individual experience. These images are often erased by everyday use, and then all that remains of them is their external side and (as it seems to us) meaningless paradox.

Thanks to the thousands of years of effort of the human spirit, these images are combined into an all-encompassing system of thoughts about the world order. Thus, with the help of symbols, emotional experiences are formulated. The life of the collective unconscious opens up in the inner world of the soul. Unconscious forms find expression in protective, healing, mentoring and other images and then, in turn, throughout the history of mankind, are carried into outer space beyond the soul.

Jung taught us to enter the realm of our soul with the feeling that we know nothing about it. And if you look closely at what we encounter in our inner world, it becomes clear that our observations exactly correspond to Jung's models. This is because the collective unconscious is not just a theory, it actually exists. People almost never question the meaning of archetypal images, that these images are full of meaning. And if they begin to think about them, they resort to the help of reason, which in reality is only the sum of their personal myopia and prejudices.

Consciousness, which seems to us a mandatory condition for human existence, is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the conscious mind lies a vast layer of forgotten (or repressed) personal memories, feelings and behavioral patterns, which Jung called the personal unconscious. And beneath it stretches the vast and ancient ocean of the collective unconscious. It is filled with images and patterns of behavior that have been repeated many times in the history of not only humanity, but also life itself.

K.G. Jung wrote : “...The deeper you dive, the wider the layer you discover.” We all contain myriads of ancient behavioral patterns and ideas. If you renounce everything personal in your soul, you can understand that there is still something left in it - common to all men and women of all times and cultures. But this “something” is literally unconscious, so we cannot directly sense or experience it.

Today, more than ever, it is worth turning to the wisdom of all times and all peoples in order to discover something truly valuable that has long been expressed by humanity in the most beautiful language - the language of images, symbols, mythology. He who goes to himself risks sooner or later meeting himself and then he has to look at himself from the outside. The mirror of reflection does not flatter, it highlights our true face, which we try our best not to show to the world around us. This is a kind of test of courage to go deeper, a test that is enough for most to stop, since meeting with oneself is one of the most exciting and impartial. Usually we project everything negative onto others, into the outside world.

However, if a person was able to see his own Shadow and endure this knowledge about it, the task, albeit to a small extent, can be considered solved: at least the personal unconscious is perceived. It is impossible to eliminate the Shadow painlessly. Evidence and explanations will lead nowhere. You need to approach living and experiencing the Shadow, which is extremely difficult. It is necessary to clearly realize: there are problems that cannot be solved by one’s own means... Now it’s time to pay attention to the unconscious (dreams, visions, premonitions) and carefully consider the events that begin to happen to us at this time.

If there is the right attitude, then the forces that lie dormant in the depths of human nature awaken, they intervene and come to the rescue. What does a person know about himself? Very few. It is necessary to know yourself in order to thereby know who you are. The correct formulation of the question means a half-solved problem. Today we have psychology and with its help we can study the unconscious. Tapping into the unconscious is a vital factor. But when working with the unconscious, we must constantly be aware of ourselves, remember who we are, that is, under no circumstances “part with” consciousness. Because if the emerging archetypal figures are freed from the control of consciousness, they acquire complete independence and can reproduce a variety of undesirable phenomena.

Integration of the unconscious into consciousness is necessary . Carl Gustav Jung called this process the “process of individuation ” (that is, the path of development of a particular individual throughout his life). The need for synthesis arises. And this is psychotherapy. The world inside and around us is continuous. In reality there are no boundaries, all boundaries are created by consciousness. The personal unconscious is very significant for the individual. It includes all the impressions of life, regardless of whether they were conscious (entered consciousness) or not. The collective unconscious contains information that is accessible to any person at any time. It has no limits in time and space. Everyone has access to information that was recorded in the memory of primitive people, or to information about events that have not yet taken place in our lives.

The psychology of the unconscious offers a way out of the impasse, opens many doors that were previously closed, and provides the opportunity to gain a new perspective on the world.

What is “personal life” and is there anyone who has never asked themselves this question? In Andrei Makarevich’s song there are the words: “Who is to blame, tell me brother, one is married, the other is rich, one is funny, the other is in love, one fool, your other enemy? Life is so diverse that a person will always be missing something. And sometimes for years he cannot break out of the ill-fated circle of bad luck and uncertainty. However, solutions to all your problems already exist. And they are located in the “labyrinths” of the brain - a mysterious, mysterious and magical assistant, always guarding your interests.

As scientific research has shown, it is the brain that gives us the only correct and highly accurate answers. How can you learn to decipher its signals? Come and we will teach you how to use your personal “biological computer”, help you understand and analyze the deep mechanisms of the brain, on which our capabilities, plans and their implementation depend.

It turns out that it contains a huge number of programs that strictly regulate not only the state of a person’s health, but all vital events for him: the choice of a partner and profession, relationships with friends and relatives. These same programs determine the level of a person’s creative potential and success, as well as his abilities and capabilities. Each of these programs can proceed in three ways - correctly, distorted or blocked. It remains to be seen how they work for you.

And only a neuropsychologist will tell you how to properly use the resources of the brain and subconscious. How to activate a suddenly blocked program and restore the corrupted one. One has only to open the door to the mysterious world of the work of the brain and the human psyche and you will enter such a desired, long-awaited, new harmonious life.

Working with generic programs

The idea that the human brain can be likened to a computer, which contains a set of specific programs, is not new. Some of them are passed on to us by inheritance and therefore we call them ancestral. A clan is a multi-generational group of people connected by blood ties (that is, having a common ancestor), hereditary memory and stable behavioral stereotypes. Hereditary memory is the ability of a person to preserve, reproduce and transmit to his descendants a complex of properties and functions that arise as a result of the experience of his ancestors and his own. Stable behavioral stereotypes are inherited by several generations. They are transmitted genetically and manifest themselves dominantly across generations. Over the course of 4 generations they transform. A person, through consciousness, can influence changes in generic programs.

Man is part of an open biosocial system that unites past-present-future. Its function in this regard is to actively transmit information from ancestors to descendants. Realizing his responsibility to his descendants and his Kin, a person can consciously direct the Power (experience, knowledge, energy) of his Kin to the happy creative life of his descendants. To do this, the Rod endows a person with energy and informationally creates conditions for the effective satisfaction of the tribal need for reproduction. To the extent that the Power of the Family is manifested in each person, the Family will be harmonious and viable.

It should be noted that personal programs acquired by a particular person (self-programming, consequences of traumatic situations, suggestions, etc.) can also be passed on to the next generation, to the clan. And all of them will be reproduced, forcing their carrier to solve one or another generic problem, giving rise to a certain subjective encoding of events.

Most of the programs of the “human computer” remain unconscious . It is necessary to isolate these programs, test and “restart”. In general, any program, not just the generic one, can work correctly (harmoniously), distorted or be blocked. In this sense, we can say that each of us has our own destiny and it is reflected in our brain in the form of programs of the unconscious part of the psyche. Unconscious means not amenable to control and management by the person himself.

However, not everything is so sad . The arsenal of psychologists and psychotherapists specializing in this area has everything necessary to help in sometimes very confusing and complex everyday situations. It should only be added to this that it is not possible to explain something with the help of reason or, on the contrary, to silence this or that problem. It needs to be worked out. Not only to bring it into the light of God and understand, but also to “restart” partially also at the level of the unconscious part of the psyche, that is, where it lives.

Only then can you begin to realize YOUR own plans and live YOUR own life.

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"Taste" of reality

I won’t repeat myself about projections. This topic is my favorite. There are many texts dedicated to them on the site. To further describe rationalization in the article, I decided to take and rework several paragraphs from the novel (“Mechanical God,” chapter: “Rationalization of Chaos”).

Rationalization is the process by which our actions seem justified and our thoughts seem coherent and realistic. Life is a realistic dream of the mind. The higher the threshold of sensitivity, the harder the mind has to dodge so that we buy into its rationalization.

In dreams, perception is so cloudy and dull that it is easy to fall for the cheapest delusions of night delirium, mistaking them for reality. Therefore, the mind does not need to spend as much energy on rationalization during dreams as during the day. In a dream, the threshold of criticality is low, so the mind is “lazy” and creates low-grade, incoherent projections, which, with such dulled perception, are enough for it to accept them as reality.

The higher the level of personal awareness, the better the rationalization of the mind, so that awareness does not expose its false “movie”. The better the rationalization of the mind, the smarter the mind becomes. The rationalization of a conscious person is the most realistic and advanced, so that this conscious person buys into his own advanced rationalization in the same way as a weak-minded person buys into his nonsense.

It may seem that smart people are closer to the “true” reality. In reality, they are simply fooling themselves using the most productive, sophisticated methods. Their understanding of life, although of high quality, is still the same “cinema” for the soul.

All our lives we chase high-grade illusions in order to catch a “taste” of reality from them. This pursuit is initially fruitless, because even the most advanced rationalization remains a waking dream and does not reflect pure reality.

In everyday life, there are inanimate objects, people and other phenomena that we project onto. During sleep, we are left with the darkness of closed eyelids and bodily sensations. Superficial dreams are the rationalization of precisely these residual data. All the fun begins in deep dreams, where bodily sensations are dull or completely absent. There the rationalization of our unconscious psyche occurs in its purest form.

At this point in the story, for added drama, you can imagine loud, terrifying laughter.

The mind receives information not from the physical world directly, but from the unconscious psyche, which adapts this world into a digestible form for the mind. Our daytime thinking is all the same dreams projected onto the “screen” of consciousness. Our thoughts seem to cling to the stability of the physical world, flow around it along well-worn, familiar trajectories, thus creating a special, familiar feeling of the realism of what is happening.

In a dream, where the usual dense world is absent, the rationalization of the unconscious psyche continues. The layer of the unconscious, which is voiced by dreams, can be imagined as a factory for processing mental experiences. We feel something in our dreams. The mind rationalizes these experiences in the form of dreams. It was not for nothing that Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.”

In a dream, we may see our usual daily life, because it is its images that are most understandable to us. Dreams are allegories with which the psyche expresses the unconscious.

Individual and collective unconscious

Not all processes occurring in the human psyche are conscious, since in addition to consciousness, a person also has the sphere of the unconscious.
The unconscious is presented in the form of the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious.

The individual unconscious is associated mainly with instincts, which are understood as innate ways of human behavior that arise under the influence of environmental conditions without prior training. So, the instincts of self-preservation, reproduction, territorial, etc. appeared because in the process of evolution the need for such forms of behavior arose constantly, contributing to survival. Instincts include such forms of the psyche that generally cannot be realized and rationally expressed.

The doctrine of the individual unconscious was created, as noted above, by the Austrian philosopher and psychologist Sigmund Freud.

The concept of the collective unconscious was developed by Freud's student and follower, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961), who argued that in the depths of the human soul lives the memory of the history of the entire human race, which is in man. In addition to the personal properties inherited from his parents, the properties of his distant ancestors also live on.

The collective unconscious, in contrast to the individual, personal unconscious, is identical in all people and forms the universal basis of the mental life of each person, the deepest level of the psyche. K. Jung figuratively compares the collective unconscious with the sea, which is, as it were, a prerequisite for each wave. The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is a prerequisite for each individual psyche. Processes of “psychic penetration” occur all the time between an individual and other people.

The collective unconscious is expressed in archetypes - the oldest mental prototypes, such as the images of father, mother, wise old man, etc. All the most powerful ideas and ideas of man can be reduced to archetypes.

The identification of levels in the structure of the psyche is associated with its complexity. The unconscious is a deeper level of the psyche compared to consciousness. However, in the psyche of a particular person, there are no strict boundaries between its different levels. The psyche functions as a single whole. Nevertheless, a special consideration of individual levels and forms of the psychosphere contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of the psyche as a whole.

Psychology

The subconscious is a giant repository of information!

Think of the subconscious as a repository for everything that is not currently in your conscious mind.
The subconscious mind stores all your past life experiences, your beliefs, your memories, your skills, all the situations you have been through and all the images you have ever seen.

The best way to understand the subconscious is to look at a person who wants to learn to drive a car. At first, he could not talk to anyone while driving as he would concentrate on the various movements involved. This is because he is still using his conscious mind to drive.

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