Have you ever heard of unconscious and subconscious? The division between conscious, unconscious And subconscious (or preconception) was proposed by Sigmund Freud To divide three components of our mind who, in his opinion, define and influence our behaviors. “The interpretation of dreams”published in 1899is a fundamental work of Freud, in which he develops his first theory on the structure of the mind, known as “first topical“, in which he describes the mind as a divided into the three systems. With this” topical “the psychoanalyst explained how unconscious forces, together with the conscious ones, shape the human behavioroften in complex and hidden ways. The conscious it concerns aware thoughts and perceptions, theunconscious the memories and repressed desires, while the subconscious It is an intermediate area between the other two. Subsequently, the cognitive psychology has helped to clarify that numerous processes, such as the processing of emotions and the Training of judgmentstake place automatically, without the intervention of the conscious mind. Despite the historical importance of the “three levels”, these terms are used today in a less rigid way.
Freud’s three levels of mind: what they are and what they mean
The term conscious refers to the part of the mind of which we are actively aware: here reside the thoughts, perceptions and processes that we use to interact with the world in real time. THE’unconscious Instead it represents a vast portion of the mental activity that escapes awareness: Freud highlighted how repressed or under the threshold of awareness could influence the behavior, even if not accessible to consciousness. The concept of subconscious it is less defined in the scientific field, even if it is commonly used to indicate a intermediate area Between the conscious and the unconscious, an area that would host memories and experiences that are not immediately accessible, but which can be recovered with little difficulty. Despite their historical importance, these terms are used today in a less rigid way.
The conscious mind, kingdom of awareness
The conscious mind includes all cognitive activities of which we are aware and that we can deliberately control. It includes the functions of working memory, the logical reasoning and the monitoring of sensory perceptions. Neuroscientific research has highlighted that areas such as the Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex They are crucial for these functions, that is, they activate intensely when we control our thoughts. Studies with cerebral imaging techniques have shown that during tasks that require conscious attention, Neural activity focuses in the areas behind our front (in the prefrontal cortex) confirming the close correlation between awareness and executive control.
The unconscious, place of repressed desires and memories
THE’unconscious It was historically defined by Freud as a warehouse in which the human being continually puts mental content that represses or tries to deny, a cauldron of drives, desires And painful memories or unacceptable for the conscious mind. Although the psychoanalytic model has undergone numerous Criticisms and reviewsnumerous studies of experimental psychology and neuroscience support the idea that much of cognitive elaboration takes place outside awareness. For example, the research on implicit memories highlighted that the brain is able to store and elaborate information Without these, they immediately become aware, thus influencing behavior and emotional reactions.
In addition, searches about the effects of stimuli below the awareness threshold (i.e. short -term stimuli) can activate specific associations e influence judgments and decisions significantly. These research has shown that, even when a subject is not aware of a stimulus, this is still tried in specific brain areas, suggesting a complex cognitive architecture in which the unconscious plays a fundamental role in our behavior.
The subconscious, an intermediate level not always clear to distinguish
The subconscious term is widely used in common language and in some psychological currents to indicate that part of the mind that acts as intermediary between conscious and unconscious. However, from a scientific point of view, the distinction is not always clear. Freud himself believed that the term was inaccurate, preferring the term preconceptionand many modern psychologists avoid this term, which risks creating confusion. If we were to give an example to better understand what mental content we could define subconscious, we think of an address or a moment forgotten momentarily, which can be recovered without particular difficulties. This information is part of this category, precisely because of their immediate possibility of becoming conscious.
Contemporary literature tends not to use the term subconscious, preferring to explicitly indicate i automatic or implicit processes of many cognitive activities halfway between a totally unconscious development and a conscious component, such as the Formation of habits or the coding of memories. Therefore, although the term “subconscious” can be useful in a popular context, it is advisable to use it with caution, specifying that it designates those mental processes not immediately accessible to consciousness, but which can still influence behavior and emotions.
Some therapeutic techniques work between Conscio and unconscious
Today the researchers are mmore cautious olto Compared to the first decades of the last century in trying to define the unconscious and subconscious processes, or even interpret them in a dreamlike key or in terms of sexual or emotional drives. On the psychological and psychotherapeutic front, the terms have become more fluid and less clear and techniques that work between the conscious and unconscious are used, such as thehypnosis ol ‘EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), to facilitate the passage of information operating at a non -conscious level towards awareness.
These techniques allow you to change the threshold with which a stimulus becomes “aware” or to work on body processes (as in the case of the EMDR) to remodel traumatic emotional responses and modify dysfunctional behavioral responses. Today, therefore, the panorama is more crowded, and lends particular attention to the bodyto his biology and his automatisms, by virtue of the growing awareness that cognitive sciences are acquiring on the role of the body on our thoughts and actions.
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