They represent two sides of a single complex of the human psyche. These psychoanalytic concepts belong to the field of study of general psychology. Usually the conscious is contrasted with the unconscious, but from the point of view of psychoanalytic research, these concepts are considered as a single whole, but at different levels.
Consciousness (or consciousness) is one of the forms of reflection of objective reality on the human psyche. From the point of view of the cultural-historical approach to the problem of the unconscious and the conscious, the latter is characterized by the presence of an intermediate link between consciousness and the perception of objective reality. This intermediate link is the elements of historical and social practice, which allow us to build an objective picture of the world around us.
The unconscious (or subconscious, unconscious) refers to mental processes that are not reflected in the human consciousness and are not controlled by it. A characteristic feature of the unconscious is the absence of subjective control: this term can denote everything that is not an object of consciousness for a person.
In the theory of the conscious and unconscious, there are several types of manifestation of the unconscious:
- unconscious motivation (i.e., incentives to action), the true meaning of which is not realized due to its unacceptability from a social point of view or contradiction with other motives;
- behavioral stereotypes and atavisms, worked out to such a degree of automatism that their awareness in a familiar situation is unnecessary;
- subliminal perception, which defies awareness because it contains a large amount of information;
- supraconscious processes, which are intuition, inspiration, creative insight, etc.
Freud's theory of the unconscious
Famous Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist Sigmund Freud conscious and unconscious described based on the results of his experiments. Analytics of human behavior has shown that a large number of actions in which a person is not aware, as a rule, are of an unreasonable nature and cannot be explained from the point of view of consciousness. It has been found that various types of motivations manifest themselves in neurotic symptoms, dreams and creativity. As a doctor who also worked in neurology, Freud was confronted with the special influence of unconscious experiences and motives on people's lives. He found that these processes can not only significantly burden the lives of the subjects, but also cause neuropsychiatric diseases. The results of the experiments directed Freud to search for a means that could save a person from conflicts between the conscious and unconscious. It was the search for a compromise between what the consciousness dictates and hidden, unconscious motives that led to the emergence of the method of psychoanalysis.
Jung's theory of the unconscious
The problem of the unconscious and the conscious excited the minds of many psychologists. Based on the results of research by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of depth analytical psychology, a description was given of the “collective unconscious.” Jung believed that there is not only the unconscious of the individual, but also racial, tribal, national, family, i.e. collective unconscious. It represents the totality of information from the mental world of a certain community of people, while the individual unconscious reflects only information from the mental world of a specific individual.
Jung's analytical psychology defined the unconscious in the form of established stereotypes, behavioral patterns that require updating, but are in fact innate.
The unconscious in Jung's interpretation was divided into the following processes and mental states:
- latent (hidden);
- temporarily unconscious;
- repressed beyond the limits of consciousness (i.e. suppressed).
Lacan's theory of the unconscious
In addition to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, another researcher, the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Marie-Emile Lacan, studied the conscious and unconscious. He formulated the hypothesis that the structure of the unconscious is similar to that of language. From this point of view, psychoanalysis can be considered as working with the patient's speech. The famous psychoanalytic technique developed by Lacan was called the “clinic of the signifier.” It is based on working with words, the necessity and possibility of translation, the so-called rewriting within the psyche. All of these actions can be used in therapy associated with complex mental disorders. However, not all authors studying the problem of the unconscious and the conscious agree with Lacan’s theory that the unconscious is a language, and psychoanalysis is a language game between the psychoanalyst and the patient. The unconscious is similar to language, it functions according to a similar algorithm, but at the same time the laws of linguistics do not apply to it.
Modern research into the unconscious
Formulated by Sigmund Freud conscious and unconscious forms the basis for modern research. Psychophysiological evidence is obtained by analyzing sleep, hypnotic trance, and manifestations of automatism in sports and work activities. Theories are being developed about the possible use of cybernetic methods for modeling the unconscious.
Introduction. Psyche is a property of the brain. “Sensation, thought, consciousness is the highest product of matter organized in a special way.” The mental activity of the body is carried out through many special bodily devices. Some of them perceive influences, others convert them into signals, build a plan of behavior and control it, others give energy and swiftness to behavior, fourth set muscles in motion, etc. All this complex work ensures the body’s active orientation in the environment and the solution of life’s problems. “Conscious” and “unconscious” are correlative concepts that express the peculiarities of the work of the human psyche. A person thinks about situations and makes decisions. Such actions are called conscious. However, often a person acts thoughtlessly, and sometimes he himself cannot understand why he did this. Unconscious actions assume that a person acts on an internal impulse, but without any analysis of the situation, without clarifying the possible consequences. The words he uses to characterize this state are different: thoughtlessly, unconsciously, spontaneously, intuitively. All these words act in this case as synonyms for the word “unconscious,” although, of course, there is no complete synonymy here. The meaning of the word "unconscious" can expand or contract depending on its correlation with the word "conscious". Thus, when thinking about a perceived situation, a person deals not only with what appears to him. Past events that are somewhat similar to those observed pop up in his head, and he compares them. The facts, laws, and assessments that pop up in the mind come from somewhere. There is some order to them. The question arises: where does all this come from? Maybe from the unconscious, or maybe from the depths of the conscious. Understanding all this, we come to understand the volume of consciousness, the presence of its own mechanisms. This moves the unconscious even further and raises the question of the conventional boundary separating the conscious from the unconscious. The entire psyche should be included in the sphere of consciousness, since it is amenable to the control of the human “I”, and its products are realized. In cognitive terms, consciousness includes all cognitive processes and their products that are directly recognized by the human “I” at one time or another. Over the long evolution of the organic world - from amoeba to man - the physiological mechanisms of behavior have continuously become more complex and differentiated, thereby becoming more and more flexible and operational. A person goes through the natural path of development in a relatively short period of time, mainly during infancy, when, through the maturation of hereditarily given structures, in the process of their functioning and the construction of new systems, mechanisms of all forms of the psyche are formed in their elementary form. On this basis, in the future, throughout your life, you carry out the social development of the psyche, which is extremely diverse and complex. As a result, transformations of mental forms of natural development occur, and at the same time, the effects of social influence are created - mental new formations of different levels and complexity. 1. The concept of consciousness. Human consciousness arose and developed during the social period of its existence, and the history of the formation of consciousness probably does not go beyond the framework of those several tens of thousands of years that we attribute to the history of human society. The main condition for the emergence and development of human consciousness is the joint productive instrumental activity of people mediated by speech. This is an activity that requires cooperation, communication and interaction between people. It involves the creation of a product that is recognized by all participants in joint activities as the goal of their cooperation. The productive, creative nature of human activity is of particular importance for the development of human consciousness. Consciousness presupposes a person’s awareness not only of the external world, but also of himself, his sensations, images, ideas and feelings. The images, thoughts, ideas and feelings of people are materially embodied in the objects of their creative work and with the subsequent perception of these objects precisely as embodying the psychology of their creators they become conscious. Consciousness forms the highest level of the psyche characteristic of man. Consciousness is the highest integrating form of the psyche, the result of the socio-historical conditions of human formation in work, with constant communication (using language) with other people. In this sense, consciousness is a “social product”; consciousness is nothing more than conscious being. What is the structure of consciousness, its most important psychological characteristics? Its first characteristic is given already in its very name: consciousness, i.e. the body of knowledge about the world around us. The structure of consciousness thus includes the most important cognitive processes with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge. A disturbance, a disorder, not to mention the complete collapse of any of the mental cognitive processes, inevitably becomes a disorder of consciousness. The second characteristic of consciousness is the clear distinction between subject and object enshrined in it, i.e. of what belongs to a person’s “I” and his “not-I”. Man, who for the first time in the history of the organic world stood out from it and opposed himself to it, retains this opposition and difference in his consciousness. He is the only one among living beings capable of self-knowledge, i.e. turn mental activity to the study of oneself: a person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole. The separation of “I” from “not-I” - the path that every person goes through in childhood, is carried out in the process of forming a person’s self-awareness. The third characteristic of consciousness is ensuring the goal-setting activity of a person. When starting any activity, a person sets himself certain goals. At the same time, her motives are formed and weighed, strong-willed decisions are made, the progress of actions is taken into account and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc. The inability to carry out goal-setting activities, its coordination and direction as a result of illness or for some other reason is considered a violation of consciousness. Finally, the fourth characteristic of consciousness is the presence of emotional assessments in interpersonal relationships. And here, as in many other cases, pathology helps to better understand the essence of normal consciousness. In some mental illnesses, a violation of consciousness is characterized by a disorder specifically in the sphere of feelings and relationships: the patient hates his mother, whom he previously loved dearly, speaks with anger about loved ones, etc. As for the philosophical characteristics of consciousness, consciousness in the modern interpretation is the ability to direct one’s attention to objects in the external world and at the same time focus on those states of internal spiritual experience that accompany this attention; a special state of a person in which both the world and himself are simultaneously accessible to him. M.K. Mamardashvili, a Soviet philosopher, humanist, defined consciousness as a luminous point, some mysterious center of perspective, in which what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced, what I thought was instantly brought into connection, into correlation. In his work “How I Understand Philosophy” he writes: “Consciousness is, first of all, the consciousness of something else. But not in the sense that a person is alienated from the familiar, everyday world in which he finds himself. At this moment, a person looks at it as if through the eyes of another world, and it begins to seem unusual to him, not self-evident. This is consciousness as evidence. That is, I emphasize, firstly, that there is consciousness and, secondly, that the term “consciousness” in principle means some kind of connection or correlation of a person with another reality on top of or through the head of the surrounding reality.” However, philosophers have always sought the connection between consciousness and the cosmic ideal. They noticed that something was breaking into consciousness that lay somewhere in its depths or beyond. Many people have premonitions that are significantly ahead of their actual perceptions. Many people feel danger in conditions where nothing seems to remind them of it. A more complex example is related to the fact that a person often listens to an inner voice and acts in accordance with its advice, without knowing who this voice belongs to. Deeply religious people often identify it with the voice of God, Christ, and angels. Sometimes they doubt whose voice it is: God or the devil. Of course, at any moment of the work of consciousness there is something conscious and unconscious in it. It is impossible to be aware of everything at once. When focusing on one thing, many other things are missed from the field of internal attention. And the processes take place throughout the entire consciousness. Being an integrity, consciousness influences the conscious through those processes that are not conscious. And yet the unconscious exists in consciousness, and this is verified by changing attention. Those moments of consciousness that were not previously realized can be taken into the field of attention. So, the conscious and unconscious are constantly intertwined in consciousness, and the movement of thought is associated with the existence of this correlation. All this does not seem to take us beyond the thesis of those scientists who deny the connection of consciousness with the cosmos as some kind of mysticism. And yet, philosophers have noticed that the unconscious, to a certain extent inherent in consciousness itself, goes beyond consciousness. Thus, Plato testifies to his inner voice, which he recognized and trusted. He always listened to him and consulted with him. His inner voice can be classified as conscious. But the question arises: who does this voice belong to? When in everyday life we hear a voice behind the door and cannot determine who it belongs to, we open the door and see its owner. In the case of Plato’s voice, all attempts to change the situation lead to nothing. This means that there is something unconscious that cannot be translated into its opposite. Consciousness presupposes that the acts “I think”, “I experience”, “I see”, etc. , caused by the interaction of “I” and the external world, simultaneously give rise to the accompanying acts: “I think, what I think,” “I experience, what I experience,” “I see, what I see,” etc. These accompanying acts constitute the content of reflection and self-awareness. In consciousness, a person, for example, not only experiences, but is aware of what he is experiencing and gives meaning to the experience. Another example: the mental procedure “I think” is not identical to consciousness. For it to arise, it is necessary for a person to take his thinking about anything under the control of the thought itself, i.e. engaged in the procedure of understanding why he thinks about it, how he thinks, whether there is any purpose in his mental attention to this subject, etc. Consciousness provides a person with clarification of all the problems of meaning in life: why he lives, whether he lives with dignity, whether there is a purpose in his existence, etc. The focus on external objects is also inherent in the psyche of animals, but without acts of reflection and self-awareness, which presuppose the formation of the “I” as a state of separation of a person from nature, from the community of other people (other “I”). Without “I” there is no consciousness, therefore it is inherent only to people. Consciousness controls the most complex forms of behavior that require constant attention and conscious control, and is brought into action in the following cases: (a) when a person faces unexpected, intellectually complex problems that do not have an obvious solution, (b) when a person needs to overcome a physical or psychological resistance in the path of movement of thought or bodily organ, (c) when it is necessary to realize and find a way out of any conflict situation that cannot be resolved by itself without a volitional decision, (d) when a person unexpectedly finds himself in a situation containing a potential threat for him in case of failure to take immediate action. Thus, we can conclude that consciousness is a property of highly organized matter of the brain. Therefore, the basis of consciousness is the human brain, as well as his senses. Based on this, the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus stated: “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” Nowadays this has become a kind of proverb, but it is partly right, because... modern science proves that consciousness has a more significant impact on human existence than the body. 2. Consciousness and unconsciousness. Consciousness is not the only level at which mental processes, properties and states of a person are represented, and not everything that is perceived and controls a person’s behavior is actually realized by him. In addition to consciousness, a person also has an unconscious mind. These are those phenomena, processes, properties and states that, in their effect on behavior, are similar to conscious mental ones; they are not actually reflected by a person, that is, they are not realized. According to the tradition associated with conscious processes, they are also called mental. The unconscious principle is one way or another represented in almost all mental processes, properties and states of a person. There are unconscious sensations, which include balance sensations and proprioceptive (muscle) sensations. There are unconscious visual and auditory sensations that cause involuntary reflexive reactions in the visual and auditory central systems. The unconscious manifests itself in consciousness in different ways, but it itself is connected with the cosmic, primarily through the biofield. A lot is said and written about the nature of the biofield. It is known that people, plants and animals have a biofield. Through it, their interaction occurs at a level that is not directly accessible to consciousness. Psychics have the strongest biofields among people. They are also capable of decoding hidden information stored in the biofield. Here is one of these messages: “On November 6, 1978, a 14-year-old Muscovite girl disappeared in Smolensk. On November 19, a friend of her family brought 4 photographs and a school uniform of the missing girl, which were shown to the psychic V.I. Safronov. He immediately said that all the objects indicated that the girl was dead. On a map of the appropriate scale, he immediately showed the approximate location of the body - 40 kilometers from Smolensk. He also noted that the girl had apparently been raped and that her chest and neck were injured. Approximately the same interpretation was given by another psychic who was absolutely not associated with Safronov. In the spring, during a flood near Smolensk, exactly 40 km away, the corpse of this girl was discovered in the ice, raped, with a cut chest and neck.” There are, of course, coincidences when it comes to the theory of large numbers. Yes, sometimes you can guess the answer when it comes to the case of “heads or tails”, when there are only two outcomes. But when a person gives the direction of the search and names a place 40 km away, when such details as areas of damage in a person are named, these are no longer coincidences, especially since this episode is far from the only one for Safronov. Numerous facts related to the biofield and the actions of the unconscious allow us to form an understanding that it is possible to connect consciousness through the unconscious with the cosmic. This understanding is based on many facts and theoretical developments carried out by 3. Freud and his followers. This is how a point of view on the unconscious was formed and the opinion began to be established that consciousness is connected with the cosmic through the unconscious. The sphere of the unconscious mental includes that part of the psyche whose cognitive images are directly unconscious. The human “I” cannot bring its images into the field of its attention. Their existence can only be judged indirectly, through the use of special methods and the high art of revealing the inner world. At the same time, the unconscious is not separated by an impenetrable wall of the conscious. But the possibilities of translation are very specific, difficult, and in many ways directly unattainable. Unconscious memory is that memory that is associated with long-term and genetic memory. This is the memory that controls thinking, imagination, attention, determining the content of a person’s thoughts at a given moment in time, his images, objects to which attention is directed. Unconscious thinking appears especially clearly in the process of solving creative problems by a person, and unconscious speech is inner speech. There is also unconscious motivation that influences the direction and nature of actions, and much more that is not realized by a person in mental processes, properties and states. The unconscious in a person’s personality is those qualities, interests, needs, etc. that a person is not aware of in himself, but which are inherent in him and manifest themselves in a variety of involuntary reactions, actions, and mental phenomena. One of these phenomena is erroneous actions, slips of the tongue, and clerical errors. Another group of unconscious phenomena is based on involuntary forgetting of names, promises, intentions, objects, events and other things, which are directly or indirectly associated for a person with unpleasant experiences. The third group of unconscious phenomena of a personal nature belongs to the category of ideas and is associated with perception, memory and imagination: dreams, reveries, daydreams. So, according to the last point of view, the unconscious is directly related to the cosmic ideal. It is formed under the influence of the cosmic information field and, in accordance with it, gives commands to the human body. Consciousness is associated with the public information field. It regulates the behavior of the human body in accordance with the requirements of society. It does not understand the language of the unconscious and its control of the body often runs counter to the demands of the unconscious. The discord between the conscious and unconscious leads to dramatic situations. A person experiences dissatisfaction with life, he is visited by depression, fear, and irritability increases. On the contrary, when they work in unison, a person achieves happiness in life. Hence the eternal desire of man to find this state, to capture its moment. Philosophical reflections on the conscious and unconscious are aimed at searching for this harmony. They speak of it as the unity of body and spirit, cosmic and human. The presence of conscious and unconscious in the psyche complicates the task of the individual. He needs to grasp both one and the other, to find harmony. This can only be achieved through self-knowledge. When delving deeper into yourself, it is important not to lose orientation in the search for the correlation between the conscious and the unconscious. Loss of orientation lies in the fact that the importance of one of the opposites is diminished. Let's consider one of the options for such loss, when the importance of the conscious is belittled and goes into the sphere of the unconscious. Such penetration into the unconscious does not transform it into the conscious. On the contrary, the unconscious gains strength and penetrates into that part of the psyche that belongs to the sphere of consciousness. The unconscious should not be understood as something amorphous, it has dynamism and the ability to be aggressive. In this regard, the question arises: can a person be at the mercy of the unconscious? I think so. Weakening of consciousness, lethargy and inertia lead to aggression of the unconscious. A person helps this aggression himself if he elevates the unconscious and through it wants to find out about everything. The words “know yourself and you will know the whole world” are interpreted in this case as an exclusive focus on the unconscious. Of course, this is achieved through communication, but usually with people prone to mysticism, endowed with the gift of extrasensory perception. Immersion in this world, the search for hidden forces, has its negative side when on this basis they begin to treat science, secular literature, and progressive phenomena of social life with contempt. This undermines consciousness and strengthens the collective unconscious. The third type of unconscious phenomena are those that 3. Freud talks about regarding the personal unconscious. These are desires, thoughts, intentions, needs, displaced from the sphere of human consciousness under the influence of censorship. Each type of unconscious phenomena is differently associated with human behavior and its conscious regulation. Each new historical era is uniquely reflected in the consciousness of its contemporaries, and with changes in the historical conditions of people’s existence, their consciousness changes. 3. Unconscious. The study of the phenomenon of the unconscious goes back to ancient times; healers of the earliest civilizations recognized it in their practice. For Plato, the recognition of the existence of the unconscious served as the basis for the creation of a theory of knowledge, built on the reproduction of what is in the depths of the human psyche. The area of the unconscious includes mental phenomena that occur during sleep (dreams); responses that are caused by imperceptible, but actually affecting stimuli (“subsensory” or “subceptive” reactions); movements that were conscious in the past, but through repetition have become automated and therefore no longer conscious; some impulses to activity in which there is no consciousness of the goal, etc. Unconscious phenomena also include some pathological phenomena that arise in the psyche of a sick person: delusions, hallucinations, etc. It would be wrong on the grounds that the unconscious is the opposite consciousness, equating it with the animal psyche. The unconscious is as specifically a human mental manifestation as consciousness; it is determined by the social conditions of human existence, acting as a partial, insufficiently adequate reflection of the world in the human brain. The unconscious forms the lowest level of the psyche. The unconscious is a set of mental processes, acts and states caused by influences, the influence of which a person is not aware of. Being mental (since the concept of the psyche is broader than the concept of “consciousness”, “conscious”), the unconscious is a form of reflection of reality in which the completeness of orientation in time and place of action is lost, and speech regulation of behavior is disrupted. In the unconscious, unlike consciousness, purposeful control over the actions performed is impossible, and evaluation of their results is also impossible. The area of the unconscious includes mental phenomena that occur during sleep (dreams); responses that are caused by imperceptible, but actually affecting stimuli (“subsensory” or “subceptive” reactions); movements that were conscious in the past, but through repetition have become automated and therefore become unconscious; some motivations for activity in which there is no consciousness of the goal, etc. Unconscious phenomena include some pathological phenomena that arise in the psyche of a sick person: delusions, hallucinations, etc. Unconscious impulses were studied in situations of so-called post-hypnotic states. For experimental purposes, it was suggested to a hypnotized person that he must perform certain actions after emerging from hypnosis; for example, approach one of the employees and untie his tie. The subject, experiencing obvious awkwardness, followed the instructions, although he could not explain why it occurred to him to commit such a strange act. Attempts to justify his action by saying that the tie was poorly tied, not only for those around him, but also for himself, looked clearly unconvincing. However, due to the fact that everything that happened during the hypnotic session fell out of his memory, the urge functioned at the level of the unconscious, and he was confident that he had acted to some extent purposefully and correctly. The variety of forms and manifestations of the unconscious is extremely great. In some cases, we can talk not only about the unconscious, but also about the supraconscious in human behavior and activity. The assimilation of social experience, culture, spiritual values and the creation of these values by an artist or scientist, while being accomplished in reality, do not always become the subject of reflection and in fact turn out to be a combination of consciousness and the unconscious. In general, consciousness is a concept that has a very wide range of interpretation, starting from the automatic actions of a person (not reflected in his consciousness) and ending with a special sphere of mental reality, which mainly determines the lives and actions of people. The idea of the multi-layered human psyche existed in ancient Eastern philosophy. The concept of unconsciousness was first clearly formulated by Leibniz (“Monadology”, 1720), who interpreted unconsciousness as the lowest form of mental activity, lying beyond the threshold of conscious ideas, rising, like islands, above the ocean of dark perceptions (perceptions). In the European tradition, Kant also wrote about this; E. Hartmann and I. F. Herbart created their concept of the unconscious. In S. Freud's theory, the unconscious is presented as a powerful irrational force that determines human behavior. C. G. Jung introduced the concept of the “collective unconscious,” which is characteristic of every people and ethnic group and shapes its creative spirit, feelings and values. In modern depth psychology, this concept is widely used to interpret all mental forms of human life. In modern times, it is interpreted as a set of mental processes, states and patterns of behavior that are not clearly represented in people’s minds. The term “unconscious” is also used to characterize group behavior, the goals and consequences of which are not realized by the members and leaders of the group. The personal unconscious and the collective unconscious influence the life of the individual and the course of the historical process. 4. Dialectics of the conscious and unconscious. “The relationship between the conscious and the unconscious is the main premise of psychoanalysis, and only it gives it the opportunity to understand and introduce to science the frequently observed and very important pathological processes in mental life. In other words, psychoanalysis cannot transfer the essence of the psyche into consciousness, but must consider consciousness as a quality of the psyche, which may or may not be attached to its other qualities. It would be wrong, on the basis that the unconscious and consciousness are opposite concepts to each other, to equate the unconscious and conscious with the animal and human psyches, respectively. The unconscious is as specifically a human mental manifestation as consciousness; it is determined by the social conditions of human existence, acting as a partial, insufficiently adequate reflection of the world in the human brain. The phenomena of the unconscious receive different explanations from representatives of different scientific schools. Pioneer of the study of the unconscious 3. Freud understood the unconscious as human drives that he could not realize because they turned out to be contrary to social norms. This, according to Freud, led to their displacement into the sphere of the unconscious. These drives reveal their existence in slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, and dreams. To be conscious is primarily a purely descriptive term that relies on the most immediate and reliable perception. Experience further shows us that any mental element, for example an idea, usually does not remain conscious for a long time. On the contrary, it is characteristic that the state of consciousness quickly passes under the influence of some, sometimes insignificant, factors; a representation that is conscious at a given moment ceases to be so at the next moment, but can become conscious again under certain, easily achievable conditions. What it was like in the intervening period we do not know; we can say that it was hidden (latent), meaning that it was capable of becoming conscious at any moment. If we say that it was unconscious, we are also giving the correct description. This unconscious in this case coincides with the latent or potentially conscious. True, philosophers would object to us: no, the term “unconscious” cannot have application here; while the idea was in a latent state, it was not mental at all. But if at this point we began to object to them, we would start a completely fruitless dispute about words. We came to the term or concept of the unconscious in a different way, through the development of experience in which mental dynamics play a large role. We have seen, i.e. were forced to admit that there are very intense mental processes or ideas - here, first of all, we have to deal with some quantitative, i.e. economic, moment - which can have the same consequences for mental life as all other ideas, by the way, and such consequences that can again be realized as ideas, although in reality they do not become conscious. The state in which they were before awareness we call repression, and the force that led to repression and supported it is felt by us during our psychoanalytic work as resistance. We thus derive the concept of the unconscious from the doctrine of repression. We consider the repressed as a typical example of the unconscious. We see, however, that there is a double unconscious: hidden, but capable of becoming conscious, and repressed, which by itself and without further development cannot become conscious.”(Thus, the level of the unconscious, expressing its transition to conscious and vice versa, expresses human awareness previously unconscious thought. However, the thought realized in the present passes into the sphere of the unconscious. Self-detachment does lead to the creation of mysticism and religiosity, but it never contributed to the development of society and personality. In Nietzsche, his hero Zarathustra left the people for the mountains and lived there for a long time alone. Then, having thought through everything, he decided to return to the people and convert them to what he realized during the years of loneliness. People did not understand his speeches and laughed at him. So Zarathustra realized that he must first make disciples and spread his teaching through them. Zarathustra had a good understanding of life before going to the mountains, he thought everything over and, upon returning, discovered that only experience and reflection make it possible to act correctly. Without experience, mistakes and incorrect actions immediately occur. You cannot rely only on your unconscious and your intuition. You need to take other people into account, and this is only possible through experience and dialogue. Thus, going into the inner world does not mean a break with the outside world. On the contrary, within the boundaries of developing consciousness this connection is constant and stable. A person is aware of his inner world and distinguishes it from the outer world. Once a person opens it, he never loses it. At the same time, this world is a changeable quantity and depends on the efforts of the individual. Throughout life, a person can expand and deepen his world. Work in this direction means that a person creates his own consciousness. It turns out that consciousness is not a gift, but the result of work on self-knowledge. And this means the breadth and depth of consciousness depend on the person and the favorable social conditions that are created for this. Self-knowledge pushes a person, as it were, into three layers of consciousness: consciousness located outside him, with which he is not yet familiar; consciousness in himself, which he has not yet mastered; and finally, the consciousness that he already has. Hence, the expansion of the latter consciousness comes through familiarization with what is within itself and outside it. This is like the life of an individual in the sphere of spirit. Regarding each person, we can talk about how much he has mastered consciousness. You can probably say this about every generation. In this regard, the question of language is logical. It is generally accepted. that thought appears before its linguistic design. Many thinkers, based on their experience, have noticed that their thought, after its birth, seems to be looking for its linguistic design. Hence the widespread opinion that, at its origin, thought exists outside of language. This is indeed true if we identify the concept of “language” with that which arises as a result of human communication and forms part of its culture. But if we assume that there are different languages: animal languages, machine languages, and verbal language is only one of the languages, then we can quite agree that thought arises only through language and does not exist outside of it. First, a thought arises in the language of the brain, the language of the unconscious, and only later is translated into verbal language, the language of consciousness. Having made this assumption, we thereby see the significance of the unconscious in the creation of thought. If we recognize that the unconscious is directly connected with the cosmic, then we have to take into account the possibility of the influence of the cosmic on human thought. In any case, thanks to the cosmos, it can be realized. And by and large, the cosmic can influence the content of thought. There are many examples on which the unconscious can be depicted as a model. Assign it certain characteristics. Explore it. For example, awakening a person from sleep is nothing more than a confrontation of two mutually opposite sides. On the one hand, this is the consciousness of a person, striving to get into the world around him, and on the other hand, this is the instinct of sleep, forcing, drawing a person into its web. a sense of consciousness that has become embedded in a complex human system as a component. And since this element was dominant in the entire system, the result of the synthesis was the beginning of the spiritual rebirth of man. His victory over instinct with the further development of intelligence and scientific and technical thought. However, it was not possible to eradicate the unconscious and most likely never will be. With the same success, one can try to organize the reading of information from the human brain onto magnetic disks. It is impossible to either erase the unconscious from a person or overcome it consciously. However, among people there are only a few who were able to do this. Let's remember Lenin. After all, not so long ago, fantastic events took place in Russia. There was a man whose consciousness was many times greater than his instincts. I am often told that man is by nature a mentally weak creature. Looking through fragments of my life, I am more and more convinced of this. A person has an instinct to obey the stronger. He is not able to wage a mental struggle for primacy in society. Just like in a wolf pack there is only one leader. The one who managed to defeat the unconscious within himself. The measure of the unconscious is determined by the transition from an instinctive sense of reality to conscious perception, expressed in a person’s behavior in his specific actions. There is always a certain sensor inside a person that shows the space of the unconscious. An analogy can be drawn with a biological clock. For example, how to explain the fact that a rooster wakes up a farmer in the morning and he has never been late for the train. Likewise, there is always a measure within us - like a transition from one state to another. Consciously we can always evaluate it. For example, the measure of shame, which manifests itself in the redness of the skin of the face, is no worse than the ruler or compass that we are accustomed to using. In real life today we can give the following description: “The unconscious is what drags us into a web of troubles and failures.” How to explain this? The fact is that in a person’s life there are many moments when he thinks one thing, but actually does another. This is explained by the fact that the impulse of consciousness of the surrounding world turned out to be weaker than the subconscious. The two pulses overlap. The result turned out to be an insignificant source that came to us from the subconscious. Consequently, those actions and functions that are performed by the subject are unconscious. Hence the loss of control over the world around us, the inability to foresee and predict, etc. 5. Main directions in psychology (conscious and unconscious). 5.1. Freudianism Representatives: Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Subject of study. Unconscious mental processes. Basic theoretical principles. By the end of the 19th century, the basic concepts of unconscious memory, repression, the role of sexuality, the importance of dreams and childhood memories were defined. In fact, all those elements were discovered that were then included in the theory of 3. Freud. The merit of the latter was that he synthesized all these elements within the framework of one theory. Thus, they all appeared as something single, integral, which made it possible to comprehend them in a new light. But in the theory of psychoanalysis of Z. Freud, the particular, associated with the treatment of patients, is presented as general. As a result, in Z. Freud, the sexual and a number of related factors become the center of the theory of the unconscious. Based on the special role of the instinct of self-preservation, 3. Freud connects it with the instinct of procreation. This explains the colossal role of sexuality in people’s lives. 3. Freud put forward two schemes of the psyche. One scheme is structurally psychoanalytic - “It-ego” and “Super-ego” (characteristic of the knowledge of conflicts, aspirations and motives). It is important for understanding individual behavior. The second scheme - topographical (conscious - preconscious - unconscious) - is of greater importance for understanding the movement of ideas in the psyche, the transition from one level to another. In the scheme, the preconscious occupies an intermediate position. If the preconscious is attributed to consciousness, then the latter receives a wide space of the psyche. If the preconscious is attributed to the unconscious, then the sphere of consciousness sharply narrows. Apparently, 3. Freud understood the preconscious in such a way that it led to a significant narrowing of the space of consciousness in the psyche. He considered the mental as, first of all, the sphere of the omnipotent unconscious. Mental life consists of three levels: unconscious, preconscious and conscious. The unconscious level is saturated with sexual energy, i.e. libido, which breaks through the caesura of consciousness, is expressed in neutral forms, but having a symbolic plan (jokes, slips of the tongue, dreams, etc.) Concept of infantile sexuality: A child up to 5-6 years of age goes through phases: oral, anal and phallic. “Oedipus complex” is a specific motivational and affective formula of a child’s attitude towards his parents. Personality components: “id” (it) - the bearer of instincts, obeys the principle of pleasure; “ego” (I) - follows the principles of reality; “superego” (super-ego) is the bearer of moral standards. Due to their incompatibility, “defense mechanisms” appear: repression - the arbitrary elimination of feelings, thoughts and the desire for action from consciousness; regression - slipping to a more primitive level of behavior or thinking; sublimation is a mechanism by which sexual energy is discharged in the form of an activity acceptable to an individual or society (creativity, etc.) Practice. Experiments with hypnosis have shown that feelings and aspirations can direct the behavior of the subject, even when they are not conscious of them. The method of “free associations” i.e. an attempt to explain what associations correspond to not in the world of external objects, but in the internal world of the subject (their duality). Statement on the symbolic nature of dreams. According to Freud, in this symbolism the world of unconscious hidden drives allegorically conveys a message about itself. There are two categories of instincts: preservation of life (instinct of love - EROS) counteract life and strive to return it to an inorganic state (instinct of death - THANATOS) Contribution. The disadvantage of Freudianism is the exaggeration of the role of the sexual sphere in the life and psyche of a person; a person is understood mainly as a biological sexual being who is in a state of continuous secret war with society, which forces him to suppress sexual desires. 5.2. Analytical psychology. Representatives: Carl-Gustav Jung Subject of study. The doctrine of the collective unconscious (images of God, leader, mother - Archetypes). An archetype is a moment of life itself, holistically connected with a living individual through emotional connections. Basic theoretical principles. Mental life acts as an endless reflection within oneself of the hidden structures open to the unconscious. The soul is not a physical reality filled with energy that moves due to internal conflicts. Practice. A person, due to a number of social reasons, sees and develops in himself only one side of a single contradictory pair, while the other remains hidden and not accepted. Contribution. He hypothesized that the retina of the eye contains three types of fibers, each of which reacts to its own light beam. 5.3. Individual psychology. Representatives: A. Adler, Z. Freud. Subject of study. Realization of goals inherent in the depths of personality, the structure of which is laid down in early childhood in the form of a special “lifestyle” that predetermines future behavior. The study of individual personalities in order to identify individual signs of difference. Basic theoretical principles. As a concept, it is used in 3 senses: differential psychology, research aimed at a comprehensive, in-depth study of individual outstanding personalities - scientists, writers, composers, statesmen. one of the directions of philosophy that studies the individual and social behavior of a person, hidden behind the “surface” of consciousness, the innate tendencies initially inherent in it. Practice. The goal of psychotherapy is to help the neurotic. The work is to study the inferiority of the individual, his feelings, aspirations and personal power, superiority over others. Contribution: The first successful attempts to use mathematical methods in psychology - F. Galton. He also introduced the twin method to clarify the relationship between heredity and environment in the determination of individual psychological differences. 5.4. Transpersonal psychology. Representatives: K. Jung, R. Assagioli, A. Maslow, S. Groff. Subject of study. Paying great attention to the unconscious and its dynamics. Psyche is the interaction of conscious and unconscious components with continuous exchange between them. Transpersonal studies altered states of consciousness, the experiences of which can lead a person to a change in fundamental values, spiritual rebirth and the acquisition of integrity. Basic theoretical principles. Complexes are a set of mental elements (ideas, opinions, attitudes, beliefs) united around a thematic core and associated with certain feelings. Personality structure: consciousness individual unconscious collective unconscious Practical application. Psychological and physical traumas experienced by a person throughout life can be forgotten on a conscious level, but are stored in the unconscious sphere of the psyche and affect the development of emotional and psychosomatic disorders. Sensitive handling of the newborn, resumption of symbiotic interaction with the mother, sufficient time spent on establishing a connection - these are probably the key factors that can neutralize the harm of birth trauma. An important category of Trance experience with transcendence of time and space will be various phenomena of extrasensory perception - ZB. Experience of existence outside the body, telepathy. The human psyche is essentially proportional to the entire Universe and everything that exists. Contribution. The main distinguishing feature of the Trance Approach is a model of the human soul, which recognizes the “Significance of the spiritual and cosmic dimensions and possibilities for the evolution of consciousness.” Conclusion. In the history of philosophy there has always been a search for knowledge of the ideal-cosmic. Philosophers of the Aristotelian school believed that the cosmos was the creation of God, who used a special language in his work to create it that needed to be revealed. The Pythagoreans also discussed the issue of music and mathematics as languages of the cosmos. During the Renaissance, Galileo had no doubt that nature is a book written by God. And this book, in his opinion, is written in the language of mathematics. Thus, the task was to use mathematics to read this book, and through observation and experiment to check what was read. Consequently, philosophers approached consciousness from different positions than psychologists, logicians, and physicists. They noticed that consciousness contains not only knowledge about the world around us. in the form of displaying material connections, but there are also attempts to master the language of the cosmos and understand its information structures. So, consciousness has a connection with the cosmic ideal through the unconscious. This means that there is a hidden source of stimulation of consciousness. He guides the consciousness in its activities. In this, consciousness is, as it were, not free; it is subject to necessity, which appears in historical guise. Consciousness feels this lack of freedom through the recognition of divine providence, a historical pattern. However, consciousness is always associated with self-knowledge. This self-knowledge is, first of all, knowledge of the social conditions of one’s existence, one’s place in this existence. Feeling a historical necessity, consciousness tries to penetrate its origins not only at the level of the method of production, but also at the level of cosmic influences. This sharpens the interest of consciousness in the unconscious, in which the direct threads of connection between the human psyche and the cosmos are hidden. Through their knowledge they hope to discover the language of the cosmos and reach its level. Consciousness strives not only to reflect reality in knowledge, but also to realize the possibilities of its freedom and its creativity. The emergence and development of the human psyche is one of the most difficult problems ever faced by research seeking to understand the laws of nature. Scientists of the materialist school explain the emergence of the psyche by the long-term development of matter. Exploring the nature of matter, they study various forms of movement of matter, since movement is a way of existence of matter, its integral property, internal to it. Matter that is motionless, invariably remaining at absolute rest, does not exist at all. All matter in the universe, all inorganic and organic nature, is in a state of movement, change and development. All matter, starting from lifeless, inorganic, and ending with the highest and most complex matter - the human brain, has the universal quality of the material world - the quality of reflection, i.e. e. the ability to respond to influences. The forms of reflection depend on the forms of existence of matter: reflection manifests itself in the ability to respond to external influences in accordance with the nature of the influence and the form of existence of matter. In inanimate nature, movement can appear in the form of mechanical, physical or chemical interaction of bodies or substances. The simplest examples of movement in inorganic nature: a rock washed by the sea exerts a certain resistance to the influence of water - waves break against the rock, but the rock gradually collapses; sun ray reflected from the surface of water; ozone resulting from electrical charges. During the transition to living matter, the forms of its movement also change qualitatively. Living matter is characterized by biological forms of reflection, and at a certain stage of living matter the psyche appears as a qualitatively new form of reflection. The biological form of movement of matter - life - is a qualitatively new stage in the development of nature. Literature. Introduction to psychology / Ed. ed. prof. A.V.Petrovsky. – M.: Publishing Center “Academy”, 1996. Modern philosophy: Dictionary and reader. – Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix Publishing House, 1995. Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. editor: L.F. Ilyichev, P.N. Fedoseev. – M.: Sov. Encyclopedia, 1983. “Psychology of the unconscious” Sigmund Freud 1990. “The Interpretation of Dreams” Sigmund Freud 1991 “Psychoanalysis and Russian Thought” Sigmund Freud 1994 "Protagoras" Plato 1994 Human world. Ed. Malyshevsky A.F. – S.-Pb. 1992 (Freud 3. I and It// Selected. M., 1989. P. 370-373.
Nemov R.S. Psychology: In 3 books. Book 1. - M.: Vlados, 1999
Consciousness and unconsciousness.
The concept of the unconscious. Manifestations of the unconscious principle in mental processes, properties and states of a person. The unconscious in human personality. Dreams as a manifestation of the unconscious. The relationship between conscious and unconscious regulation of human behavior. Types of unconscious mental phenomena.
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS
Consciousness is not the only level at which mental processes, properties and states of a person are represented, and not everything that is perceived and controls a person’s behavior is actually realized by him. In addition to consciousness, a person also has an unconscious mind. These are those phenomena, processes, properties and states that, in their effect on behavior, are similar to conscious mental ones, but are not actually reflected by a person, i.e. are not realized. According to the tradition associated with conscious processes, they are also called mental.
The unconscious principle is one way or another represented in almost all mental processes, properties and states of a person. There are unconscious sensations, which include balance sensations and proprioceptive (muscle) sensations. There are unconscious visual and auditory sensations that cause involuntary reflexive reactions in the visual and auditory central systems.
Unconscious images of perception exist and manifest themselves in phenomena associated with the recognition of what was previously seen, in the feeling of familiarity that sometimes arises in a person when perceiving any object, subject, or situation.
Unconscious memory is that memory that is associated with long-term and genetic memory. This is the memory that controls thinking, imagination, attention, determining the content of a person’s thoughts at a given moment in time, his images, objects to which attention is directed. Unconscious thinking appears especially clearly in the process of solving creative problems by a person, and unconscious speech is inner speech.
There is also unconscious motivation that influences the direction and nature of actions, and much more that is not realized by a person in mental processes, properties and states. But the main interest for psychology is the so-called personal manifestations of the unconscious, in which, in addition to the desire, consciousness and will of a person, it manifests itself in its deepest features. S. Freud made a great contribution to the development of the problems of the personal unconscious.
The unconscious in a person’s personality is those qualities, interests, needs, etc. that a person is not aware of in himself, but which are inherent in him and manifest themselves in a variety of involuntary reactions, actions, and mental phenomena. One of the groups of such phenomena is wrong actions : slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, errors when writing or listening to words. The second group of unconscious phenomena is based on involuntary forgetting names, promises, intentions, objects, events and other things that are directly or indirectly associated for a person with unpleasant experiences. The third group of unconscious personal phenomena belongs to the category of ideas and is associated with perception, memory and imagination: dreams, reveries, dreams.
Reservations represent unconsciously determined articulatory speech actions associated with distortion of the sound basis and meaning of spoken words. Such distortions, especially their semantic nature, are not accidental. Z. Freud argued that they reveal motives, thoughts, and experiences hidden from the consciousness of the individual. Reservations arise from the collision of a person’s unconscious intentions, his other motives with a consciously set goal of behavior, which is in conflict with the ulterior motive. When the subconscious overcomes the conscious, a reservation arises . This is the psychological mechanism underlying all erroneous actions: they “arise due to the interaction, or better yet, the opposition of two different intentions”1. 1Freud 3. Introduction to psychoanalysis. Lectures. - M, 1991. - P. 25.
Forgetting names represents another example of the unconscious. It is associated with some unpleasant feelings of the forgetter towards the person who bears the forgotten name, or towards the events associated with this name. Such forgetting usually occurs against the will of the speaker, and this situation is typical for most cases of forgetting names.
A special category of the unconscious is made up of dreams. The content of dreams, according to Freud, is associated with a person’s unconscious desires, feelings, intentions, and his unsatisfied or not fully satisfied important life needs.
The explicit, conscious content of a dream does not always, with the exception of two cases, correspond to the hidden, unconscious intentions and goals of the person to whom the dream belongs. These two cases are children's dreams of preschoolers and infantile dreams of adults, which arose under the influence of emotional events of the past day immediately preceding sleep.
In their plot and thematic content, dreams are almost always associated with unsatisfied desires and are a symbolic way of eliminating impulses that disturb normal sleep and are generated by these desires. In a dream, unmet needs receive hallucinatory realization. If the corresponding motives of behavior are unacceptable for a person, then their obvious manifestation even in a dream is blocked by internalized moral norms, the so-called censorship. The action of censorship distorts and confuses the content of dreams, making them illogical, incomprehensible and strange. Thanks to the unconscious shifting of emphasis, substitution and rearrangement of elements, the manifest content of the dream, under the influence of censorship, becomes completely different from the hidden thoughts of the dream. Deciphering them requires a special interpretation called psychoanalysis.
Censorship itself is an unconscious mental mechanism and manifests itself in omissions, modifications, and regrouping of memory material, dreams, and ideas. Subconscious thoughts, according to Freud, turn into visual images in dreams, so that in them we are dealing with an example of unconscious figurative thinking.
Unconscious phenomena, together with preconscious ones, control behavior, although their functional roles are different. Consciousness controls the most complex forms of behavior that require constant attention and conscious control, and is brought into action in the following cases: (a) when a person faces unexpected, intellectually complex problems that do not have an obvious solution, (b) when a person needs to overcome a physical or psychological resistance in the path of movement of thought or bodily organ, (c) when it is necessary to realize and find a way out of any conflict situation that cannot be resolved by itself without a volitional decision, (d) when a person unexpectedly finds himself in a situation containing a potential threat for him in case of failure to take immediate action.
Situations of this kind arise in front of people almost continuously, therefore consciousness, as the highest level of mental regulation of behavior, is constantly present and functioning. Along with it, many behavioral acts are carried out at the level of pre- and unconscious regulation, so that in reality, many different levels of mental regulation are simultaneously involved in controlling behavior.
At the same time, it should be recognized that in the light of available scientific data, the question of the relationship between conscious and other levels of mental regulation of behavior, in particular the unconscious, remains complex and is not resolved completely unambiguously. The main reason for this is the fact that there are different types of unconscious mental phenomena that relate differently to consciousness. There are unconscious mental phenomena located in the area of preconsciousness, i.e. representing facts associated with a lower level of mental regulation of behavior than consciousness. These are unconscious sensations, perception, memory, thinking, attitudes.
Other unconscious phenomena are those that were previously conscious of a person, but over time went into the realm of the unconscious. These include, for example, motor abilities and skills, which at the beginning of their formation were consciously controlled actions (walking, speaking, writing, using various tools).
The third type of unconscious phenomena are those that S. Freud talks about in the above judgments regarding the personal unconscious. These are desires, thoughts, intentions, needs, displaced from the sphere of human consciousness under the influence of censorship.
Each type of unconscious phenomena is differently associated with human behavior and its conscious regulation. The first type of unconscious is simply a normal link in the general system of mental behavioral regulation and arises on the path of information moving from the senses or from memory storage to consciousness (cerebral cortex). The second type of unconscious can also be considered as a certain stage on this path, but when moving, as it were, in the opposite direction along it: from consciousness to the unconscious, in particular to memory. The third type of the unconscious relates to motivational processes and arises when there is a collision of multidirectional, morally conflicting motivational tendencies.
Conscious human activity does not exclude the presence in it unconscious. Consciousness and subconsciousness are in constant interaction with themselves. The human psyche has two level:
Highest, formed consciousness.
Inferior, formed unconscious(or subconscious).
THE UNCONSCIOUS is a set of mental processes, acts and states caused by phenomena of reality, the influence of which the subject is not aware of.
The unconscious differs from the conscious in that the reality it reflects merges with the experiences of the subject, therefore voluntary control is impossible in the unconscious actions carried out by the subject and evaluation of their results. The unconscious manifests itself in the following forms: dreams, emotional contagion, panic, intuition, affect, hypnosis, involuntary memorization (forgetting), erroneous actions(misprints, reservations), etc., as well as aspirations, feelings, actions, the reasons for which are not recognized by the individual.
Four stand out class manifestations unconscious:
1. Superconscious phenomena: creative intuition and other phenomena of individual scientific creativity.
2. Unconscious motivators of activity(unconscious motives and semantic attitudes).
3. Unconscious regulators of ways of performing activities(operational attitudes and stereotypes of automated behavior).
4. Manifestation of subsensory perception(superperception).
An Austrian psychiatrist made a great contribution to the development of the problem of the unconscious Sigmund Freud(1856–1939). According to him theories of the unconscious exist in the human psyche three spheres, or region: consciousness, preconscious And unconscious.
Preconscious- this is hidden, latent knowledge that a person has, but which is not present in his consciousness at the moment.
At one time, S. Freud compared the human consciousness with an iceberg that is 9/10 submerged in the sea of the unconscious. Unconscious in a person’s personality – these are those qualities, interests, needs, etc. that a person is not aware of in himself, but which are inherent in him and manifest themselves in a variety of involuntary reactions, actions, and mental phenomena. The unconscious has strong influence to our behavior,actions. They have difficulty gaining consciousness, thanks to mechanisms such as crowding out And resistance.
According to Z. Freud, a person’s mental life is determined by his drives, the main one of which is sexual attraction(libido). It already exists in the infant, although in childhood it passes through a number of stages and forms. Due to many social prohibitions, sexual experiences and associated ideas are repressed from consciousness and live in the realm of the unconscious. They have a large energy charge, but are not allowed into consciousness: consciousness resists them. However, they break into a person's conscious life, taking on a distorted or symbolic form.
Freud singled out three main forms manifestations of the unconscious: this dreams, mistakes(forgetting things, intentions, names; slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, etc.) and neurotic symptoms. Neurotic symptoms were the main manifestations with which Freud began to work. Here is one example from his medical practice.
A young girl fell ill with severe neurosis after, approaching the bed of her deceased sister, she thought for a moment about her brother-in-law (sister’s husband): “Now he is free and can marry me.” This thought was immediately repressed by her as completely inappropriate under the circumstances, and, falling ill, the girl completely forgot the whole scene at her sister’s bedside. However, during treatment, she remembered it with great difficulty and anxiety, after which recovery occurred.
According to the ideas of Z. Freud, neurotic symptoms are traces of repressed traumatic experiences, which form a highly charged focus in the sphere of the unconscious and from there produce destructive work. The source must be opened and discharged - and then the neurosis will lose its cause.
Symptoms are not always based on suppressed sexual desire. In everyday life, many unpleasant experiences arise that are not related to the sexual sphere, and yet they are suppressed or repressed by the subject. They also form affective foci that “break through” into erroneous actions.
Here are a few cases from 3. Freud's observations. The first relates to the analysis of the "failure" of his own memory. Freud once argued with an acquaintance about how many restaurants there were in a dacha area well known to both of them: two or three? An acquaintance claimed that it was three, and Freud said that it was two. He named these two and insisted that there was no third. However, this third restaurant still existed. It had the same name as the name of one of Freud's colleagues, with whom he had a strained relationship.
The following example relates to reservations. 3. Freud believed that reservations do not arise by chance: they reveal a person’s true (hidden) intentions and experiences. One day, the chairman of the meeting, who for some personal reasons did not want the meeting to take place, opened it and said: “Allow us to consider our meeting closed.”
Here is an example of an erroneous action. When Freud was a young practicing doctor and visited patients at home (rather than them visiting him), he noticed that in front of the doors of some apartments, instead of ringing the bell, he took out his own key. Having analyzed his experiences, he found that this happened at the doors of those patients where he felt “at home.”
In psychoanalysis, a number of methods have been developed for identifying unconscious affective complexes. The main ones are the method free associations and method dream analysis. Both methods involve the active work of the psychoanalyst, which consists in interpreting words continuously produced by the patient (method of free associations) or dreams. For the same purpose, the already partially familiar association experiment.
In an associative experiment, the subject or patient is asked to quickly respond to the words presented with any word that comes to mind. And it turns out that after several dozen trials, words related to his hidden experiences begin to appear in the test subject’s answers.
If you read K. Capek's story “The Experiment of Dr. Rous,” then you can get an idea of how this all happens. Brief summary of the story. An American psychologist professor of Czech origin comes to a Czech town. It is announced that he will demonstrate his professional skills. The public gathers - city leaders, journalists and other persons. A criminal is brought in who is suspected of murder. The professor dictates his words, asking him to answer with the first word that comes to mind. At first, the criminal does not want to deal with him at all. But then the word game captivates him, and he gets drawn into it. The professor first gives neutral words: beer, street, dog. But gradually he begins to include words related to the circumstances of the crime. The word “cafe” is suggested, the answer is “highway”, the word “stains” is given, the answer is “bag” (later it was found out that the blood stains were wiped with a bag); to the word “hide” - the answer is “bury”, “shovel” - “hole”, “hole” - “fence”, etc. In short, after the session, on the recommendation of the professor, the police go to a certain place near the fence, dig a hole and they find a hidden corpse.
Dreams constitute a special category of the unconscious. The content of dreams, according to Freud, is associated with a person’s unconscious desires, feelings, intentions, and his unsatisfied or not fully satisfied important life needs. In a dream, unmet needs receive hallucinatory realization. If the corresponding motives of behavior are unacceptable for a person, then their obvious manifestation even in a dream is blocked by the learned norms of morality, the so-called censorship. The action of censorship distorts and confuses the content of dreams, making them illogical, incomprehensible and even strange. To decipher them, a special interpretation is required, called psychoanalysis.