The Unconscious Mind

It is Freud’s skillful application of resistance and censorship that grants further contemplation of why dreams are so soon to fade and be forgotten upon awakening. It is also this application that guides the reader into how these two processes may require one to use free association to interpret such dreams. Resistance and censorship are explained by Freud as a cognitive process that happens due to the separation of waking and sleeping states. He presents the idea that while one sleeps, the cognitive censorship used throughout waking hours is significantly reduced, making dreams possible. However, immediately present upon awakening is mental resistance, resulting in the “forgetting” or “fragmenting” of

The psychodynamic approach by Freud and Erickson focuses on the impact the un-conscious mind has on behaviour, bad childhood experiences and dealing with emotion. When someone does not want to accept that something bad has happened in their life they may dismiss this to their un-conscious mind or distorting the truth by telling them that it is not true, this is linked to the clinical ice berg.

As Sigmund Freud’s (1915) theory stated, the conscious mind includes sensations, perceptions, memories and feeling inside of people’s current awareness. According to Martin, N. (2008), he stated out that the unconscious mind has impact on people’s behaviors and habits. People will be driven by their unconscious mind instead

Also, his aim which is to give a complete theory of human nature is way over-ambitious. Yet, this can be argued that cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, like our memory (Tulving, 1972), processing information (Bargh &Chartrand, 1999), and social psychology has shown the significance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). These findings have confirmed unconscious processes in human behaviour.

Although, psychodynamic therapy seems legitimate when it states in depth that a person’s actions are based off his or her subconscious mind, a person’s free will or attitude towards change is always a factor. The psychodynamic therapy focuses on the patient’s past childhood experiences to discover the cause; yet, ultimately, the therapy will not discover the solution. Next, according to Scott M. Bea, PsyD, a Clinical associate, the biggest disadvantage of psychodynamic therapy is it “may be misapplied to patients whose symptoms are not based in unconscious conflict. It relies on hypothetical constructs that have not been evaluated empirically in systematic and controlled studies” (121). In addition, is it likely to even be able to scientifically and logically study conceptions such as the unconscious mind? As has been noted, Freud's theories are subjective and arbitrary; therefore, a clear disadvantage to psychodynamic therapy is the unscientific data and it’s impossible to test in the approach to human behavior through the unconscious mind. Clearly, in the midst of research, Freud grabbed hold of a genius idea which, in turn, created other therapies, but, unfortunately, lacked the diverse evidence for full proof.

There are many thoughts or factors that go into how we judge and treat others that we may not be aware of. The book breaks them down into two categories unconscious and conscious thoughts. Our unconscious brain is gathering information from a very small age and continues to constantly work to help you understand what is going on in the world around you. Our unconscious brain is programed to stereotype from birth. An example of this is how infants at three months can distinguish faces of different races from their own. They tend to prefer the faces of their own race over others which was determined by how long the infant looks at the different faces (p128). This was not taught by a parent or others which brings to our attention that some stereotyping

Freud created the Psychodynamic Approach to explain behaviour. Within it, he describes that there are 3 components of the human mind: The conscious, Pre-conscious and Unconscious. The conscious is the part of the mind which is in our awareness; it contains behaviours and desires which we are aware of. The pre-conscious is the part of the mind between the conscious and unconscious, it contains items such as memories and desires which we are not currently thinking about but can easily bring to conscious awareness. Lastly is the unconscious. This part of the mind is

Psychoanalysis is Sigmund Freud’s work, thought to be created between 1900 and 1939, which still is a very vibrant thread in history and psychology today. According to Sigmund Freud the unconscious mind is a reservoir of repressed impulses and desires in your mind, while you may be completely awake you are still unaware of the mental processes that are taking place. Though the repressed impulses control the way we think, act, and above all feel. Freud also talks about the conflict within each individual between the internalized ideals (your superego) and impulses (your id), also how your ego (your conscious self) tries to keep out the awareness of such using a defense mechanism to distort reality

There are many facts that are unknown about the mind. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand how it works. We have learned that the mind has a number of different levels of processing. Before Sigmund Freud “nearly all the previous research and theorizing of psychologists had dealt with conscious, such as perception, memory, judgment, and learning“ (Hunt185). Freud brought forth a number of theories that dealt with “the unconscious and its crucial role in human behavior”(Hunt 185). The unconscious is a storage area for information that is not being used. It is also the home of “powerful primitive drives and forbidden wishes that constantly generated pressure on the conscious mind”(Hunt

The unconscious is a group of thoughts, feelings, urges or memories that are suppressed beneath the conscious. We may think or feel something and not fully understand why that occurs, this can be considered the unconscious. These thoughts can enter the conscious by being distorted or disguised this is usually because they are kept out to stop fear anxiety. An example of this would be a slip of the tongue, where you say something because you were unconsciously thinking it.

The contemporary psychodynamic theory focuses on the unconscious drives and forces within human functioning. The original psychodynamic theory was considered to be psychoanalysis which was created by Freud. However, now psychodynamic theory embodies ideas not only from Freud, but from many of his followers as well. Some of the assumptions that are made by the psychodynamic approach include that all behavior has a cause whether it is conscious or unconscious; adult behavior is rooted in childhood experiences; and that people are strongly shaped by unconscious motives. These assumptions are addressed in a therapeutic setting by utilizing dream analysis, free association, projective tests, and even hypnosis. The primary focus in the therapeutic process is helping the client to become more aware of the self as well as helping them to understand how their past experiences have influenced their existing behavior. The psychodynamic theory assumes that the personality is made up of three

The idea of the human mind being composed of both a conscious and unconscious has been around for quite some time. Not until Sigmund Freud elaborated on these structures though were the ideas so popular and accepted. Freud described our conscious mind as what we are aware of in any present situation including our thoughts, ideas and perceptions. Freud also introduced us to the idea of the preconscious mind, which is closely related to the conscious in that it holds thoughts and ideas that are easily available to be brought to the conscious. The most important aspect of the mind, as Freud would tell us, is that of the unconscious realm that holds information not readily

In this philosophical study, an analysis of the biases of the unconscious mind in relation to the mind of “others” will be analyzed in the context of a peer-reviewed article on the misuse of anti-depression drugs. The analogical argument of Bertrand Russell defines the example of unconscious associations part of the reason why individuals have a biased view of others, which reflects the problematic ways in which scientists are limited in their understanding of different behaviors. One problem is the inability of scientists to understand multiple unconscious motivations of drug use, which are examined in Weyandt et al’s (2016) in the misuse of anti-depressant medications in college students. In this manner, the a clinical study was done on college students, which sought to examine the motivations for the misuse of anti-depressants, which they found to have a negative impact on enhanced learning processes. Commonly, these drugs were thought to help stabilize the mind of the individual in the hope that it would help students improve academic performance,., however, they found many biases in their studies on the motivational use of these drugs:

The psychoanalytic perspective, is the outlook that behavior and personality are effected by the conflict between one’s inner dreams n and expectation of society. Most of this conflict occurs in unconscious, which is outside the knowledge of an individual. Renowned psychologist, Freud established the psychoanalytic theory as an explanation for perplexed phenomena such as the meaning behind dreams, slips of the tongue, and behavioral reflex reactions to stressful situations. The unconscious is a primary focus in psychoanalytic theory due to its typical development in childhood and the ways in which it influences nearly every detail of an individual’s life. The unconscious mind also holds unvented memories and unexpressed urges that make their process into the conscious mind through a variety of different means. However, topographical theory of the mind states that conscious, preconscious, and unconscious serve as motivating forces in human behavior. Corsin & Wedding (2011) define the conscious as mental activity which individuals are fully aware of, preconscious as thoughts and feelings that could be easily brought to mind and unconscious as thoughts, feelings, and desires of which one is unaware of.

It is Freud’s skillful application of resistance and censorship that grants further contemplation of why dreams are so soon to fade and be forgotten upon awakening. It is also this application that guides the reader into how these two processes may require one to use free association to interpret such dreams. Resistance and censorship are explained by Freud as a cognitive process that happens due to the separation of the waking and sleeping mental states. He presents the idea that while one sleeps, the cognitive censorship used throughout waking hours is significantly reduced, making dreams possible. However, immediately present upon awakening is mental resistance, resulting in the “forgetting” or “fragmenting” of dreams.