Tom Safford's In Your Subconscious Mind?

To many, the unconscious is a section of our minds that is inconceivable and almost nonexistent. Like many things in life, what we cannot explain, we cannot accept. Sigmund Freud, mastermind of the field of psychology, began to theorize and explain the concept of the unconscious and its effects on our personal lives. Carl Gustav Jung was a young colleague of Sigmund Freud who made the “exploration of this “inner space” [the unconscious] his life’s work (Boeree 1). Jung was not only knowledgeable on the Freudian theory he was also knowledgeable in mythology, religion, philosophy and “traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism” (Boeree 1). Jung

Within the curiosity of the human mind lies a variety of occurrences that have plagued philosophers, scientists, and skeptics alike. What is the part, we as a society, play in the study of the material world? Although, many have theorized, experts are only just now scratching the surface of the mental and behavioral processes of the human mind. However, within the minute distance that examiners have travelled through the world of psychology, scientists have discovered and developed a plethora of concepts, approaches, ideas, and principles that have now become relevant to our growth. Within this context, the analysis will center on the progressive history of psychology, including some of psychology’s primary contributors and their concepts. Furthermore, the major psychological approaches, and how they pertain to, and influence, society as we view it today.

While Sigmund Freud’s psychological study of preconscious, unconscious and conscious process of a child, upon to the developmental stages of an adult; on the other hand, John B. Watson also tries to research the conscious behavior; except, between human and animals, through objective observations and experimentations. Freud study is easily understood and convincing in relation to human conscious and unconscious existence. Although we are not comparing Freud and Watson; however, this is about showing the importance of consciousness and the role it contributed to behaviors. Despite psychologist claim that human behaviors are no different from animals, Watson believe that is a false claim. Undoubtedly, the similarities are real, just not entirely.

OCD is “a phrase that gets to the existential core of worry, a clenched, demonic doubting that overrides evidence, empiricism, plain common sense” (Slater234). The meme theory states that a meme consists of “everything that is passed from person to person” (Blackmore 37). In “Strange Creatures” by Susan Blackmore and “Who Holds the Clicker?” by Lauren Slater both authors discuss the control humans have over their minds. In “Who Holds the Clicker” Lauren Slater discusses DBS (deep brain simulation), which is a type of psychosurgery in which electrical impulses are sent to certain portions of the brain to control and change the emotions one feels. She discusses both the positive and negatives of deep brain simulation through a specific patient named Mario and also presents the control DBS can have over one’s mind. Similarly, Blackmore in “Strange Creatures” discusses the meme theory, which consists of any idea that is passed down from person to person. Both authors provide information that allows people to draw conclusions relating to why people do not have control over their minds. Even though some people believe that humans do have control over their minds, Blackmore and Slater both successfully portray that in actuality humans do not have any control over their minds because human thoughts and ideas are unoriginal products of external forces, many human thoughts occur at deeper level of consciousness, and

The television series, Through the Wormhole had an episode that talked about the Subconscious of the human brain. The subconscious of the brain has long been thought of as the source of our primal fears and desires. Scientists have discovered how the subconscious makes snap decisions that protect us from harm, and that it can be trained to actually heal our bodies of disease. There was an example in the video where Morgan Freeman talked about when he was eight years old he had to memorize twelve line from a play but thought he would forget if he goes on stage in front of a big crowd. Once he got on stage, the nervousness of his body went away and recited every line in the play. This comes to show that the brain can memorize many things when it comes to reading or movement. Certain parts of the brain tend to turn off when we start on a task. Those regions of the brain become active

For many years the question of whether or not the unconscious mind really exists, and if it does then what does it consist of has baffled many theorist’s minds and has made many philosophers question themselves. There have been debates on whether the conscious mind is influenced by other parts of the mind. These parts are indented within the unconscious, which has processes such as personal habits, intuition and being oblivious to certain things in life. While we are completely aware of what is happening I the conscious mind, we have absolutely no idea of what information is stored in the unconscious mind. It is believed that the unconscious mind comprises various significant and disturbing material, which is required to be kept out of awareness as they may be too menacing to completely acknowledge and be mindful of. There are been some critics that have completely disbelieved the existence of the unconscious mind. Many psychological scientists today believe that the unconscious mind is the shadow of a “real” conscious mind. However, through extensive research, evidence has been found that the unconscious is not visibly complex, controlling, or action-orientated.

Author, Kevin Carley, discusses the evolution of the human brain and how the history affects the unconscious use of our brain when one makes decisions. This article emphasizes on Gestalts principals of awareness, senses, and the technique in which the human brain aligns with these principals. Correspondingly, Carley, expresses the links between Gestalts principals, evolutionary biology, and cultural psychology (Carley, 2014, p. 80).

understanding of the unconscious? And, conversely, how did what he calls "the hypothesis of the

David Eagleman- The power of the subconscious In this video David Eagleman starts off with the explanation that the most of what we do in our daily life is not determined by our conscious self but my our subconscious self. In particular parts of our brains that we do not have access to. He goes on to talk about how our there are many ways our choices can be influenced by little things.

The human mind, is separated into two categories, the conscious and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is what makes the human aware of what surrounds him in the awaken phase, and makes him respond to it with reasoning

First hypothesis - unconscious thought is outperforming conscious thought, and shows higher level of polarization in answer of participants in situation of complex decision making, when loads of information must be taken in account.

Furthermore, the results from personal surveys conducted in English 102 on Thursday November 19th and Tuesday November 24th labeled Appendices A and B respectively clearly show similar results as Berger disclosed in his article "Subconscious Decisions: Voting in Churches and Buying Designer Labels”, such as showing 7 out of 10 people to be very rudimentary in their expressed answer to the question number 1, Appendix B being slightly more informative since it added additional room to elaborate, unaware of how much the unconscious mind controls. These 7 individuals expressed the first subscious control that came to thought was

Joseph Murphy wrote in his book in 1962 about the power of the subconscious. Murphy indicates that the human being has one mind divided into two sides. The first side called conscious mind. The conscious mind is located by the cortex in the brain. The conscious mind use for thinking, talking, alerting.

It can be said that psychology owes its lineage to depth psychologists who pioneered the field with bold assertions of an enigmatic influence in human behavior. Contemporary thought knows this force as the unconscious, and by contemporary we mean to say that the word itself is relatively new; to assume one can approach the unconscious only from the point of view that its concept is as new as the word itself ignores evidence to the contrary. Instead one must speak of the unconscious from the context of the totality of the human species and not from the confines of modern thought.

Auto-suggestion is a term that psychologist around the globe use to describe a phenomenon in which our conscious thought interacts with our subconscious mind. When it comes to Finite Intelligence, our “auto-suggestion” reacts to our environment setting through our five senses. From here, our “dominating thoughts” from our subconscious mind – whether constructive or destructive – influences our decisions but only if we allow it to do so.