They belong to the sphere of the unconscious. Unconscious and consciousness. Modern research into the unconscious

UNCONSCIOUS, in psychology - the entire totality of the content of mental life, which is inaccessible to direct awareness. This concept should not be confused with a lack of awareness due to the individual's reluctance to understand himself (i.e., engage in introspection). In addition, the unconscious (subconscious) differs from the preconscious (including, for example, memories), the content of which can be easily realized. Unconscious processes cannot be revealed by a simple effort of will; their disclosure requires the use of special techniques, such as free associations, dream interpretation, various methods of holistic personality study (including projective tests) and hypnosis.

For many centuries, thinkers who studied human nature believed that the concept of the unconscious was internally contradictory. However, some philosophers - Augustine, G. Leibniz, I. Herbart, as well as G. Fechner and G. Helmholtz, who were involved in experimental psychology, noted that psychological operations can be carried out without their awareness by the subject of the action.

The role of the unconscious in the development of mental disorders has been demonstrated in the works of psychologists and psychiatrists. Thus, J. Charcot showed that the symptoms of neurosis resulting from trauma are the result not of damage to the nervous tissue, but of unconscious memories of the trauma suffered. P. Janet applied the concept of “unconscious fixed ideas” to the analysis of hysteria and came to the conclusion that traumatic ideas, although separated from consciousness, manifest themselves in the form of a hysterical syndrome. Janet reported the cure of several patients with hysteria with the help of hypnosis, which he used to detect the initial trauma and the secondary experience of it by the patient. J. Breuer treated a patient with hysteria by putting her into a hypnotic state and then explaining the circumstances surrounding her difficulties. Once the trauma situation was revealed, the symptoms of hysteria disappeared.

Freud replaced hypnosis with special techniques of free association and dream interpretation. He argued that the contents of the unconscious not only disappear on their own, but are also “repressed”, i.e. are forcibly expelled from consciousness. Neurotic symptoms express a conflict between repressive forces and repressed material, and this conflict causes the resistance that the psychoanalyst encounters when he tries to uncover the repressed material. In addition to random mental trauma, the entire period of early childhood is repressed, including the Oedipus situation (unconscious attraction to a parent of the opposite sex). In a normal person, these events of early childhood influence thoughts, feelings and actions unnoticed by him; in the neurotic they determine a wide variety of symptoms, which the psychoanalyst tries to trace back to their unconscious sources. The patient’s irrational attitudes towards the psychoanalyst during psychoanalytic treatment are called “transfer” or “transfer”; they are a revival of old forgotten attitudes towards parents. The task of the psychoanalyst is to analyze, together with the patient, his resistance and “transference”, so that the patient can become fully aware of his unconscious motivation.

Jung believed that the unconscious is an independent part of the psyche, which has its own dynamics and complements its conscious part. He distinguished between the individual and collective unconscious, considering the latter to be the repository of “archetypes” - universal symbols charged with psychic energy. As a new way of exploring the unconscious, Jung proposed the word association test, both spontaneous and directed, and his own approach to dream interpretation. The goal of his therapeutic method was the reunification of consciousness and the unconscious, through which, as he believed, a person could achieve “individuation” - the full disclosure of his personality.

The thesis about the independence of the psyche from consciousness (examples: Helmholtz: unconscious conclusions; somnambulistic states, dreams, the role of the unconscious in the occurrence of painful symptoms (psychiatric practice: the existence of a special world)).

The psyche is not limited only to states of consciousness.

The subject of psychology is the unconscious– as a special world with certain laws of functioning and development.

The case of Anna O. is an assumption that the disease occurred because the affect that developed under pathogenic conditions was denied a normal outlet and that the essence of the disease was that these suppressed affects received abnormal use (after remembering in a hypnotic state, the patient received several hours of normal life) . If the patient, with an expression of affect in hypnosis, recalled for what reason and in what connection the known symptoms first appeared, then it was possible to completely eliminate the symptoms of the disease (cathartic method of treatment).

Hypnosis gave access to the area of ​​the unconscious in the psyche (but not everyone can be hypnotized, then you need to force them to remember). This method: producing the first thoughts that came across (Freud’s practice showed that just such thoughts contained information about what was sought. This confidence was based on the idea of ​​​​the strict determination of mental processes. There is nothing random in mental life, and even the most insignificant - or rather, seemingly insignificant - thought , according to Freud, is always connected with our unconscious experiences, albeit very indirectly.

Initial theses: independence of the psyche from consciousness (to substantiate its existence and explore). Consciousness is also a property of the psyche, but inherent in it only at certain moments. The second thesis is about the strict determination of mental life. The third thesis is that the unconscious can, in principle, be introduced into the area of ​​consciousness and thus neutralize its influence (cathartic treatment of infringed affects - affective experience).

Dictionary of Psychology: unconscious– unrealized drives, which, due to a conflict with the requirements of social norms, were not allowed into consciousness, were alienated through the mechanism of repression, revealing themselves in slips of the tongue, reservations, dreams, etc. The subject's awareness of the causal connection between unrealized drives and traumatic events does not lead to the disappearance of experiences. The effects of the unconscious are eliminated if the events that caused them are overcome by the individual together with another person (psychoanalyst) or other people (group psychotherapy).

Basic concepts and directions of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis examines mental life from three points of view:

dynamic,

topical (the doctrine of the structure of mental life)

economic.

From a topical point Freud distinguishes three spheres of the psyche - conscious, preconscious and unconscious. Conscious has the property of experiencing.

Preconscious– this is the hidden (latent) unconscious, potentially conscious: it can penetrate consciousness, i.e. has the ability of consciousness.

Unconscious- this is a repressed unconscious psyche, does not have the ability to penetrate consciousness: only a representative of the repressed unconscious psyche can do this.

Sources about the assumption of the unconscious: unconditional determinism and facts that are not amenable to conscious control have reasons and they must be explained (forgetfulness, typos, dreams, etc.). Objective manifestations - dreams, erroneous actions, mistakes, forgetfulness - are revealed to consciousness, but the reasons are not. They lie in the unconscious.

Ways to identify unconscious causes– analysis of objective manifestations of the unconscious (method of freely emerging associations - requiring sincerity on the part of the patient in expressing his thoughts).

But these objective data must be subject to interpretation, because... under the influence of resistance, distortions arise in it and the repressed thought that we are looking for is masked by its substitute.

Method of dream interpretation - Freud distinguished between the obvious figurative content of a dream, its facade and the hidden meaning it masks. It represents desires that we do not want to admit to ourselves, because... they are unacceptable to us. In dreams, the unconscious uses certain symbolism, which is quite typical. Dreams are created in the same way as neurotic symptoms: they are a compromise between the demands of repressed impulses and the resistance of the censoring force (in dreams one can explore the normal mental life of a healthy person). Thus, psychoanalysis is no longer an auxiliary science in the field of psychopathology, it is also capable of understanding the norm.

Method for analyzing erroneous actions. Mistakes, slips of the tongue, loss of things, etc., are not accidental and express impulses and intentions that are detached and should be hidden from consciousness. With their help, a person reveals his secrets

Hidden Trends- these are desires with which our socialized consciousness cannot reconcile. The unconscious is the place where drives are concentrated, everything is repressed from consciousness as unacceptable by its nature. In the system of the unconscious there is no denial, doubt, or various degrees of certainty. Its processes are outside of time, they are subject to the principle of pleasure, for which the criterion of reality does not matter. There are no contradictions in it; it exists in the form of ideas, without being clothed in speech. The unconscious is called the primary mental process. It is the initial moment of mental life: the remnants of that stage of development in which they were the only form of mental experiences.

Economic point of view on the activity of the mental apparatus. An approach to mental life from the point of view of energy expenditure. Drives are charged with a certain amount of energy, which creates tension in the body, accompanied by displeasure and suffering. Under the influence of the biological tendency to reduce arousal, the body strives to free itself from suffering, reduce tension in order to achieve a decrease in arousal tone and experience a feeling of pleasure. Those. the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by the pleasure-suffering principle.

Dynamic point of view. If in the descriptive sense there is a double unconscious, then in the dynamic sense there is only one: that which is repressed and cannot be conscious. In the final version, the psychic sphere was divided into three formations: I, Super-I, It. The individual is represented as an unconscious id, which is superficially covered by the ego. All drives gather here. In the final version, sexual desires are distinguished - they are subject to the principle of pleasure; the instinct of self-preservation - the drive of the Self - is subject to the principle of reality. Both of them were united in a group of attractions to life. Another attraction is the attraction to death, to destruction.

It is the driving force of behavior, a source of energy, a powerful motivational principle.

I am the surface layer of the mental apparatus. Consciousness. It compares the activity of the It with the principle of reality.

The super-ego is directed against the id, expresses the system of demands of the ego. It has a double face: it includes a system of ideals and prohibitions. This is a critical authority, a mediator between the I and the Id. This supervisor, critic, continues in the individual the function that was performed by the parent and educator. This part of the personality structure belongs to the unconscious.

General line of human development. According to Freud, a child is born filled with drives. He is a purely organic being. When satisfied, they give him pleasure. Freud called these undifferentiated desires for organic pleasure, pleasure, sexual attraction, which is based on the energy of libido. The development of the organism occurs under the influence of drives and goes through a number of stages. The first one is autoerotism.

The original eros then tests the organization in two directions:

1. There is a subordination to the dominance of the genital zone and the emergence of desire itself;

2. The choice of object constitutes the other side of the transformation of libido. This second direction is of exceptional importance. The object of love among close adults. Freud develops the theory of an obligatory conflict situation associated with the duality of the child’s desires for his father and mother as objects of love. Formation of the complex. Repression – formation – Super-ego. The superego also has a phylogenetic heritage. Then the latent stage. At 13-14 years old - the period of final choice of object. The child takes his father and mother as a model and transfers them to another object. This is the successful development of libido. Unfavorable development is characterized by fixation at a certain stage and regression. These perversions were called infantilism.

As a result of development in ontogenesis, with the accumulation of life experience, the I takes shape, the instances of the Super-I and the repressed Id are formed.

A developed, correctly formed personality is a system of primary drives that has found ways to satisfy them: partly direct, but mostly circuitous, through sublimation. All human activity, culture and society are considered as a means of satisfying and symbolically expressing some internal desire, drive.

The relationship between the spheres in the structure of personality was considered as their dynamic collision and struggle, similar to the conflict between the conscious and unconscious, and the person was their product.

The conscious self, previously considered the true concentration of the individual, becomes only a herald of the unconscious, and rather ill-informed, since it knows nothing about the true content of the unconscious, conveying information only about what the censorship misses. Consciousness is not the essence of the psyche, but only such a quality of it that may or may not be attached to other qualities.

At the same time, the task is to transfer the unconscious material of the human psyche into the realm of consciousness. Where It was, there must be I.

Broad analogies to social development (cultural development and the abandonment of primitive experience).

The only criterion for the reliability of this theory is psychotherapeutic practice. Great arbitrariness in symbolic interpretations. Instead of strict deduction, analogies and metaphors are used. All this contradicts objectivity and science. In psychoanalysis, the biologization and naturalization of the human psyche occurs. The essence of man is the dark It.

Individual psychology of A. Adler.

Theoretical disagreements with Freud. Adler's denial of the sexual etiology of neuroses and other phenomena.

The central place in personality is feelings of inferiority and the need to compensate for the defect. The feeling of inferiority is caused by organic, morphological, functional defects of organs, anomalies of organs, their functions, subjective factors - a feeling of natural weakness, difficulties in social relationships, etc. The feeling of inferiority is a normal feeling. It is not a passive state, but is a stimulus for mental development. He strives to overcome inferiority: the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the stronger the desire to overcome it in the form of a desire for superiority, for power over the environment. Thus, the feeling of inferiority is balanced by the desire for perfection, even superiority. Together they lead to the formation of unconscious mechanisms of compensation and overcompensation of the defect.

Associated with a feeling of inferiority is the setting of a life goal, which leads the entire flow of mental activity in a certain direction. The goal is developed individually and sets that holistic individual personal structure, which Adler calls “lifestyle.” These important formations take shape by the age of 4-5. Life style is a product of an individual’s creativity and reflects his uniqueness and originality. Lifestyle is equated to the individual, to the Self. The formation of a lifestyle depends on the family situation and, first of all, on the mother, who first of all introduces the child into the world. The individual cannot be considered outside of society. Through social communication an individual becomes part of society. Social feeling or social interest expresses the connections between people in human society. It develops in three main areas of life: in professional activity, in social contacts with other people, in love and marriage. A person who does not have the ability to cooperate cannot solve these three most important problems for every person and receives a neurotic direction in his development that deviates from the norm, and can also develop along the path of criminal behavior or becoming a difficult child. A normal personality with a well-developed social interest is well compensated. The neurotic personality is characterized by an increasing sense of inferiority, undeveloped social interest and an exaggerated active goal to achieve superiority.

Three groups of conditions for the appearance of feelings of inferiority in childhood:

1) the presence of physical disabilities perceived as life obstacles. But it is possible to overcome them. To do this, it is necessary to change the attitude towards the defect (examples of musicians with poor hearing);

2) improper upbringing (the result is pampered children who lack a sense of self-worth and have great difficulty in establishing rapport with other people;

3) improper upbringing and, as a result, heartless children, in whom, due to their hostile attitude towards other people, the process of cooperation in society is also hampered.

These mistakes in upbringing give rise to a strong feeling of inferiority in the child.

The defect in itself does not fatally predetermine the future fate of the child and can be compensated for in the process of education.

Vygotsky: Adler does not see the difference in raising an abnormal and a normal child.

Personality appears as a fiction for Adler, vital forces increase their power on their own, they stand, as it were, behind the personality.

Analytical psychology by K. Jung.

Criticism of Freud: libido has different forms of its manifestation in different periods of human development, sexuality is only one of these forms.

Problems: the unconscious and the process of personality development.

Maintaining the division of the psyche into the conscious and unconscious, Jung develops the teaching of two systems of the unconscious - the personal and collective unconscious.

Personal unconscious– this is the surface layer of the psyche, including all contents associated with individual experience: forgotten memories, repressed impulses and desires, forgotten traumatic impressions. Depends on the individual's personal history. Its content can be awakened in dreams and fantasies.

Collective unconscious - it is a supra-personal unconscious psyche, including instincts, drives that represent the natural being in man, and archetypes in which the human spirit manifests itself. This is the most ancient psyche, a certain entity independent of the development of the individual, of his consciousness. It includes national, racial, universal beliefs, myths, prejudices, as well as some inheritance that man received from animals. Instinct and archetypes act as regulators of mental life: instinct determines the specific behavior of a person, and the archetype determines the specific formation of conscious mental contents.

Archetypes- some prototypes. They exist in the form of images and symbols and correspond to the deepest layers of the unconscious. The basis for the introduction of the collective unconscious was psychopathological experience (the general content in the fantasies of many patients; these images and fantasies were considered similar to images in the myths of different peoples).

The figures of the collective unconscious act as levels of personality, in which the entire past experience of humanity constitutes a hereditary given and manifests itself in the sequence of discovery of archetypes in the course of individual personality development.

The process of personality development– individualization. Its goal is becoming the Self and psychologically means unification, balance, coherence of the conscious and unconscious. Development is a process determined from within and aimed at revealing what is already present in a person initially, in his unconscious, at discovering the inner core of a personality, his Self.

Two basic installations– extroverted and introverted. The four functions of the psyche are thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition. The dominance of one or another attitude in combination with a certain mental function gives eight types of individuality.

Neo-Freudianism.

K.Horney. problem of social conditioning formation of human character and neuroses(the nature of neuroses in America and Europe is different). Horney replaces Freud's predominantly biologizing orientation with an evolutionary one. sociological approach(importance of cultural facts).

Rivalry, competition - permeate personal life, not just the economy (this is the driving force). All relationships are in the form of competition. Comparison with others, claims, real possibilities of failure of oneself and the success of others - difficult experiences - fear of possible failure, feelings of inferiority, envy and constant anxiety.

Anxiety- the source of claims and desires for love and affection from others. It is generated by the circumstances of an individual’s life and is rooted in childhood.

A person is driven by unconscious impulses (mostly innate, partly acquired): the desire for security and satisfaction. By accepting the Freudian principle that an individual's behavior is determined by unconscious motives, and by assuming that these unconscious motives are affective or emotional in nature. Horney preserves with this the whole essence of psychoanalysis. These two types of unconscious are incompatible. The conflict between them leads to the need to suppress one of them. Horney rejects the superego as an oppressive force; the conflict itself causes the suppression of one of the incompatible aspirations. Suppression is the pushing out of consciousness of an impulse or affect. After suppression, we are subjectively convinced that we do not have it. The suppressed impulse meets resistance from consciousness. In a modified form it can reach consciousness. These defense mechanisms are formed from childhood and become the unconscious basis on which ideas about oneself are built.

Culture: on the one hand, it stimulates our needs, and on the other, it imposes great restrictions, which suppress these same needs, therefore, strengthening the unconscious internal drama.

G. Sullivan. another form of socialized psychoanalysis. Thesis about the role of interpersonal relationships in the formation of personality and the process of its development. In this case, the task of education comes down to the social adaptation of a person. Personality as a relatively stable model of repeated interpersonal situations. Characterizing human life. A child enters into interpersonal relationships from the moment of birth under the influence of needs. In the course of these relationships, personification develops, i.e. image of a person (of himself and others). Personifications formed in early childhood subsequently determine all of a person’s relationships with other people. The source of activity is the energy inherent in the body initially. All mental processes, all acquired habits and forms of behavior are ways of transforming energy and are called “dynamisms”. Together they make up the self-system, which is formed in early childhood. The socialization of the child is facilitated by the mastery of language, with the help of which the formation of syntactic experience occurs, which opens up the possibility of mastering generally significant special experience.

E.Fromm. Radical humanistic psychoanalysis. The idea of ​​social conditioning of human beings, including the unconscious psyche.

The peculiarities of human existence (freedom from the instinctive predetermination of action) contains an existential contradiction arising from the fact that the natural (instinct) connections of man with nature are severed, the primary harmony between man and nature is destroyed, hence the task of adapting to nature.

Since man is free from the primary connection with nature, yet remains connected with it, “freedom-from” leads to an increase in the feeling of loneliness, powerlessness, and insignificance.

Impulses arise - needs aimed at overcoming these difficult experiences. One productive path is voluntary connections with the world and nature, productive human activity (development of the individual self). Unproductive ways to satisfy human needs – escape mechanisms: authoritarianism, destructivism, conformism. They are unconscious and irrational.

They are the result of one basic need - to avoid one’s own weakness and isolation. They do not eliminate the causes of suffering and anxiety and cannot solve the problem of human existence, being only defense mechanisms.

Social character- the dependence of a person’s character on his lifestyle. Social character changes along with changes in society and culture.

in a broad sense - a totality of mental. processes, operations and states that are not represented in the consciousness of the subject. In a number of psychol. B.'s theories are a special sphere of the psyche or a system of processes that are qualitatively different from the phenomena of consciousness. The term "B." also used to characterize individual and group behavior, valid. the goals and consequences of which are not realized.

The concept of B. goes back to Plato’s teaching about “hidden knowledge.” In the philosophy and psychology of modern times, the ideas of R. Descartes, who affirmed the identity of the conscious and the mental, served as the source of the idea that only purely physiological can take place outside of consciousness. brain activity. The concept of B. was first clearly formulated by G. W. Leibniz (“Monadology”, 1720), who interpreted B. as the lowest form of mental activity, lying beyond the threshold of conscious ideas, rising, like islands, above the ocean of dark perceptions (perceptions). The first attempt at materialism. explanations of B. were undertaken by D. Hartley, who connected B. with the activity of the nervous system. I. Kant connected philosophy with the problem of intuition, the question of feelings, knowledge (unconscious, a priori synthesis).

In the 19th century psychology itself began, the study of B. Dynamic. B.'s characteristic was introduced by I. Herbart (1824), according to whom incompatible ideas can come into conflict with each other, and weaker ones are forced out of consciousness, but continue to influence it. A new stimulus in the study of B. was given by work in the field of psychopathology, where specific methods began to be used for therapy purposes. methods of influencing B. (initially - hypnosis). Research, especially French. psychiatrist schools (J. Charcot and others), made it possible to reveal a mental state that is different from the conscious one. activity of a pathogenic nature, not realized by the patient. A continuation of this line was the concept of Z. Freud, who began with the establishment of direct connections between neurotic. symptoms and unconsciousness. experiences of traumatic character. Having abandoned physiol. explanations, Freud presented B. in the form of a powerful irrational force, antagonistic to the activity of consciousness. Unconscious. drives, according to Freud, can be identified and brought under the control of consciousness using the technique of psychoanalysis. C. G. Jung, in addition to personal life, introduced the concept of collective life, identical among individuals of a certain group, a particular people, or all of humanity. Freud's teaching about B. became irrationalistic. interpretation in a number of philosophical and psychological 20th century concepts

D. N. Lyalikov.

B. is a form of mental. reflections, in which the image of reality and the subject’s relationship to this reality are presented as one undivided whole: in contrast to consciousness, in reality the reflected reality merges with the experiences of the subject. B.’s characteristics find their expression in the child’s forms of cognition of reality, in intuition, affects, panic, hypnosis, autism, dreams, involuntary perception, memorization, etc., as well as in aspirations, feelings and actions, the motivating reasons for which are not are recognized by the individual.

In general, psychology distinguishes 4 classes of manifestations of B. 1) Supra-individual supraconsciousness. phenomena (designated as “archetypes of collective B.” - by Jung, “collective ideas” - by E. Durkheim, etc.) - patterns of behavior typical for a given community, acquired by the subject as a member of a particular social group, the influence of which on his activity is not actually recognized by the subject and is not controlled by him. These patterns (eg, ethnic stereotypes) are learned through mechanisms such as imitation and identification.

2) Unconscious motivators of activity - motives and semantic attitudes of the individual. They were designated by P. Janet as “subconscious”, by Freud as “dynamic repressed consciousness”, covering unrealized drives, which, due to their conflict with social norms, are expelled (repressed) from consciousness, but continue to influence the worldview and human behavior and are manifested in indirect symbolic. forms (humor, dreams, slips of the tongue, etc.). Of great importance are such phenomena of B. in interpersonal relationships as empathy (direct feeling), emotional contagion (see Influence), primary identification (unconscious emotional identification with an attractive object, for example, a baby with a mother), projection (unconscious endowment other human properties). Characteristic for many directions of depth psychology exaggeration of the role of B. in the life of the individual and society in the fatherland. psychology is contrasted with the theory of attitude of D. N. Uznadze and the activity approach to the psyche.

3) Unconscious operational attitudes and stereotypes of automation. behavior. They arise in the process of solving various problems. tasks (perceptual, mnemonic, motor, mental) and are determined by an unconsciously anticipated image of events and methods of action, based on past experience - “unconscious. inferences" (G. Helmholtz), "properception" (W. James), "preconscious" (Freud), "hypothesis" (J. S. Bruner), "scheme" (F. C. Bartlett), "dynamic. stereotype” (I.P. Pavlov), etc. Influences that actualize operational attitudes and stereotypes can be realized if on the path of habitual automation. behavior encounters an unexpected obstacle (see Automatism).

4) Unconscious subsensory perception: when studying the thresholds of sensation, the range of human sensitivity, facts were discovered affecting the behavior of such stimuli, about which he could not give an account (I. M. Sechenov, G. T. Fechner); to designate them, the concepts of “attention” (U. Naiser) were proposed, the processes of which are associated with the processing of information outside of voluntarily controlled activity, and the “subsensory area” (G. V. Gershuni) - a zone of stimuli that causes involuntary objective a registered reaction and capable of being realized when a signal meaning is given to them.

In Fatherland Psychology has studied such problems of biology as unconscious perception of speech in functional deafness and light signals in functional blindness; the dependence of dreams on the state of the body and external stimulation; the ability to perceive speech by a sleeping person due to problems of hypnopaedia; influences exerted on behavior by unrealized and no longer conscious intentions, etc.

Taking into account the phenomena of B. contributes to the optimization of ped. process. The study of the mechanisms of formation of skills and habits has shown a complex dynamic. the relationship between consciousness and reality in the process of activity. Release of the department components of activity, in particular mental, from operational control of consciousness increases its effectiveness. However, the lack of awareness of certain internal working methods often becomes an obstacle to further improvement in this type of activity. Transformation using special techniques of unconscious sensations into conscious ones serves as a means of creativity. personal growth.

Taking into account unconscious motives of behavior in everyday communication and pedagogy. process allows you to optimize interpersonal relationships, contributes to the resolution of emerging conflicts. It is possible to motivate behavior on the basis of unconscious needs and claims, which are hidden even from the subject himself and disguised by socially acceptable explanations. Disclosure of the true motives of behavior contributes to the growth of self-awareness, social responsibility, the formation of adequate self-esteem and level of aspirations.

Lit.: Chkhartishvili Sh. N., The problem of the unconscious in the Soviet Union. psychology, To., 1966; B a s i a F. V. The problem of the “unconscious”, M., 1968; Unconscious. Nature, functions, research methods. Ed. A. S. Prangishvili, A. E. Sherozii, F. V. Bassina, vol. 1-4, Tb., 1978-85; She-rosia A. E., Psyche. Consciousness. Unconscious, Tb., 1979; And with mol he A.G., Classification of unconscious phenomena and category of activity, VP, 1980, No. 3; Klein D. V., The-uncpnscious - invention or discovery? A historico-critical inquiry. Santa Jvlonica (Cal.), 1977. A. G. Asmolov.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Unconscious - These are mental processes that are not included in the sphere of human consciousness. The unconscious is predominantly studied by psychology, as well as psychoanalysis, whose founder was Sigmund Freud. Our goal is to skim the surface of this concept, collect all the content important for social science and try not to get bogged down in the jungle of Freudian psychoanalysis.

In classical psychology, a synonym for the unconscious is subconscious, as the opposite of consciousness. Now, with the advent of the theory of psychoanalysis, this term has become outdated, since Freud did not contrast the unconscious with the conscious. In his theory, he identified three concepts:

• I (Ego)- a person’s personality, which is recognized as “I”, one of the forms of consciousness;
• Super-I (Super-Ego)- moral and ethical principles of the individual;
• It (Id)- actually the unconscious.

In any case, in all theories, the unconscious lies beyond the conscious understanding of reality. Some psychologists highlight another concept - unconscious, essentially a type of unconsciousness that is characteristic only of reflex actions.

The main manifestations of the unconscious.

1. Behavioral automatic processes. They are also called stereotypes. They are so perfect that people don’t even notice them. An example of a stereotype is cheering when your team scores a goal. They should not be confused with social stereotypes - a generally accepted reaction to something (such as “blondes are stupider than brunettes”, etc.).
2. Unconscious processes. Incentive motives that are unconscious to a person because they contradict other motives or social norms. When you walk past a fountain in the heat, you want to plop down, but you don’t because you’ll be fined. The key is that you don't ask yourself, “Is it possible? “No!”, you think about something else, and this question and answer takes place on an unconscious level.
3. Subliminal perception. Conditioned reflexes to unconscious stimuli. For example, think of Pavlov's dogs.
4. Supraconscious processes. They are - super-individual mental processes: inspiration, insight, intuition.

The main difference between the unconscious and the conscious is that the unconscious is focused on physiological needs, receiving pleasure, and mental comfort. In an adequate person, consciousness keeps the unconscious within a social framework and does not allow it to take control of activity.

Sigmund Freud

Freud, Sigmund (1856 - 1939) - Viennese professor of psychiatry, famous scientist, author of a new psychological doctrine of the unconscious (psychoanalysis). Among psychologists of the 20th century, Dr. Sigmund Freud holds a special place. Freud's psychological and sociological views had a significant influence on art, sociology, ethnography, psychology and psychiatry in the first half of the twentieth century. Freud first spoke about psychoanalysis in 1896, and in 1897 he began to conduct systematic self-observations, which he recorded in diaries until the end of his life. In 1900, his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” appeared, in which he first published the most important provisions of his concept, supplemented in his subsequent books “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” (1901), “I and It” (1923), “Totem and Taboo” ( 1913), “Psychology of the masses and analysis of the human “I”” (1921). Gradually his ideas gained recognition; in 1910 he was invited to give lectures in America, where his theory gained particular popularity. His works are translated into many languages. A circle of his admirers and followers is gradually forming around Freud, which includes K. Jung, A. Adler, S. Ferenci, O. Rank, C. Abraham. After the organization of the psychoanalytic society in Vienna, its branches opened all over the world, the psychoanalytic movement expanded, gaining more and more supporters. At the same time, Freud becomes more and more orthodox and dogmatic in his views; he does not tolerate the slightest deviation from his concept, suppressing all attempts to independently develop and analyze certain provisions of psychotherapy or the structure of personality, its relationships with the environment, made by his students. This leads to the alienation, and then to a break with Freud, of his most talented followers - Adler, Jung, Rank. As Freud's fame grew, so did the number of critical works directed against his views. In 1933, the Nazis burned his books in Berlin. After the Germans captured Austria, Freud's position became dangerous and he was persecuted. Foreign psychoanalytic societies collect a significant amount of money and actually buy Freud from the Germans, who give him permission to leave for England. However, his illness progresses, no operations or medications help, and in 1939 he dies, leaving behind the world he created, already completely open to interpretation and criticism. Freud's teaching, which derived the most complex and valuable forms of mental life from unconscious instincts, mainly from sexual instincts, had great success in the circles of young scientists, but it caused a storm of indignation among the guardians of generally accepted bourgeois morality, who considered it obscene to highlight sexual desire and They hastened to declare Freudianism a teaching “ugly in an aesthetic sense and despicable and dangerous in a moral sense.”

Concept of the unconscious

Superconsciousness, consciousness, instincts

The deepest and most significant area of ​​the human mind is the unconscious. The unconscious is the repository of primitive instinctual urges plus emotions and memories that are so threatening to consciousness that they have been repressed and relegated to the unconscious. Unconscious material largely determines our daily functioning.

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. Being familiar with the philosophical ideas of Plato, Freud undoubtedly drew from there some ideas about the unconscious. Thus, it is unlikely that Plato’s thoughts that were associated with the problem of a person’s unconscious knowledge did not fall into his field of vision.

The problem of the unconscious, dressed in the form of considering the possibility of the existence of unconscious ideas, is also reflected in the philosophy of Kant (1724-1804). Freud repeatedly refers to Kant in his works. Textual analysis shows that the founder of psychoanalysis was familiar not only with Kant’s “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”, but also with other works of the German philosopher. In many cases, Freud not only shares Kant's philosophical ideas, but also appeals to his authority when it comes to justifying his psychoanalytic concepts. This is especially true for the problem of the unconscious. Reflections on the problem of the unconscious occupied an important place in many philosophical works of the 19th century. During this period, a turn was planned and carried out from the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment and German classical philosophy to an irrationalistic understanding of human existence in the world. The formation of Freud's psychoanalytic teaching was influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Many ideas of these philosophers largely predetermined various psychoanalytic concepts, including Freudian ideas about the unconscious. Of course, there is no absolute identity between the psychoanalytic teachings of Freud and the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. For Schopenhauer, the unconscious is initially ontological: - “world will” is the root cause of all things. Nietzsche to a certain extent shares this point of view, but focuses more attention on considering the unconscious, how it functions in the depths of the human being. For Freud, the unconscious is first and foremost something mental that can only be understood in connection with a person. Unlike others, Freud made the anatomy of consciousness and the unconscious psyche a scientific fact. But he explained this fact on the basis of only a “negative” concept - the unconscious psyche, understood only by denying the attribute of consciousness behind it

It is known that the main regulator of human behavior is consciousness. Freud discovered that behind the veil of consciousness there is hidden a deep, “boiling” layer of powerful aspirations, drives, and desires that are not consciously realized by the individual. As an attending physician, he was faced with the fact that these unconscious experiences and motives can seriously burden life and even become the cause of neuropsychiatric diseases. This set him on a quest to find a means of relieving his patients of the conflicts between what their conscious minds were telling them and their hidden, blind, unconscious impulses. Thus was born the Freudian method of healing the soul, called psychoanalysis. The doctrine of the unconscious is the foundation on which the entire theory of psychoanalysis is based. Psychoanalysis (from the Greek psyche-soul and analysis-decision) is part of psychotherapy, a medical research method developed by S. Freud for diagnosing and treating hysteria. It was then reworked by Freud into a psychological doctrine aimed at studying the hidden connections and foundations of human mental life. The unconscious should not be understood as something abstract or some kind of hypothesis created for a philosophical system. The unconscious is those forms of mental life that, while possessing all the properties of the psyche, at the same time are not the property of consciousness. 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 motivations for activity in which there is no consciousness of purpose, and others. Unconscious phenomena also include some pathological phenomena that arise in the psyche of a sick person: delusions, hallucinations, etc. To be conscious is, first of all, a purely descriptive term that is based on the most direct and reliable perception. A mental element, for example, an idea, is usually not conscious for a long time. On the contrary, it is characteristic that the consciousness of awareness passes quickly; a representation that is conscious at a given moment ceases to be so at the next moment, but can again become conscious under certain, easily achievable conditions. An idea, or any other mental element, at a certain moment may be present in a person’s consciousness, and at a subsequent moment may disappear from there; after a certain period of time it can reappear completely unchanged in memory, without any previous new sensory perceptions. Taking into account this phenomenon, we can conclude that the idea remained in the human soul during this period of time, although it was hidden from consciousness. But in what form it was, remaining in mental life and remaining hidden from consciousness regarding this, is unknown. 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.

Freud proceeds from the fact that the assumption of the unconscious is necessary due to the existence of such acts, the explanation of which requires the recognition of the presence of other acts that are not conscious, because the data of consciousness have many gaps. Only in this case, as he believes, is mental continuity not broken and the essence of the cognitive process with its conscious acts becomes clear. Pre-Freudian psychology had a normal, physically and mentally healthy person as an object of study and investigated the phenomenon of consciousness, while Freud, as a psychopathologist, exploring the nature and causes of neuroses, came across that area of ​​the human psyche that had remained outside the field of view of previous psychology. He faced the need to study the nature of the psyche, the inner world of the “I” and those structures that did not fit into the actual “conscious” in man, and came to the conclusion that the human psyche is a kind of conglomerate, consisting of various components that, by their nature, are not only conscious, but also unconscious and preconscious. In general terms, the human psyche seems to Freud to be split into two opposing spheres of the conscious and unconscious, which represent essential characteristics of the individual. Freud calls conscious “that idea which exists in our consciousness and which we perceive as such, and we assert that this is the only meaning of the term “conscious.” But in Freud’s personality structure, both of these spheres are not represented equally: he considered the unconscious to be the central component constituting the essence of the human psyche, and the conscious to be only a special authority that builds on top of the unconscious. The conscious, according to Freud, owes its origin to the unconscious and “crystallizes” from it in the process of development of the psyche. Therefore, according to Freud, the conscious is not the essence of the psyche, but only such a quality of it that may or may not be attached to its other qualities.

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Three periods of development of Freud's doctrine of the unconscious

Sigmund Freud

The human psyche is divided, according to Freud, into three areas: consciousness, unconscious and preconscious. These three areas or systems of the psyche are in a state of continuous interaction, and the first two are in a state of intense struggle among themselves. The mental life of a person comes down to this interaction and this struggle. Every mental act and every human act should be considered as the result of a competition and struggle between consciousness and the unconscious, as an indicator of the balance of forces of these continuously struggling parties achieved at a given moment in life. This concept of the unconscious was not immediately formed and defined by Freud and subsequently underwent significant changes. In the first period, Freud's concept of the unconscious was close to the teachings of the famous French psychiatrists and psychologists - Charcot, Liebeau, Janet, on whom it was directly genetically dependent. In the second, most prolific and most important period in the development of psychoanalysis, all the main and characteristic features of Freud's doctrine of the unconscious are determined. Now it is becoming completely original. The development of all issues occurs during this period exclusively in the plane of theoretical and applied psychology. In the third period, the concept of the unconscious undergoes a significant change and begins to converge with the metaphysical teachings of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. General issues of worldview begin to prevail over private, special problems. The unconscious becomes the embodiment of everything lower and everything higher in a person. Back in 1889, Freud was struck by the experience of the famous expert on hypnosis Bernheim: a hypnotized patient was given the order, some time after awakening, to open an umbrella standing in the corner of the room. Having awakened from a hypnotic sleep, the lady exactly carried out what was ordered at the appointed time - she walked into the corner and opened her umbrella. When asked about the motives for her action, she replied that she seemed to want to make sure whether it was her umbrella. This motive did not correspond at all to the actual reason for the act and, obviously, was invented, but it completely satisfied the patient’s consciousness: she was sincerely convinced that she opened the umbrella of her own free will. Further, Bernheim, through persistent questioning and inducing her thoughts, finally forced the patient to remember the real reason for the act, i.e. an order she received during hypnosis. From this experiment, Freud drew three general conclusions that determined the basis of his early concept of the unconscious: 1. The motivation of consciousness, with all its subjective sincerity, does not always correspond to the actual reasons for the action; 2. An action can sometimes be determined by forces acting in the psyche, but not reaching consciousness; 3. These psychic powers can be brought to consciousness with the help of well-known techniques. Based on these three principles, tested in his own psychiatric practice, Freud, together with his colleague Breuer, developed the so-called cathartic method of treating hysteria. The essence of this method is as follows: at the basis of hysteria and some other psychogenic nervous diseases lie mental formations that do not reach the patient’s consciousness: these are some kind of mental shocks, feelings or desires once experienced by the patient, but deliberately forgotten by him, since his consciousness , for some reason, is either afraid or ashamed of the very memory of them. Without penetrating into consciousness, these forgotten experiences cannot be normally experienced and responded to (discharged); They are what cause the painful symptoms of hysteria. These forgotten experiences that cause the symptoms of hysteria are the “unconscious”, as Freud understood it in the first period of the development of his teaching. The “unconscious” can be defined as some kind of foreign body that has penetrated the psyche. It is not connected by strong associative threads with other moments of consciousness and therefore breaks its unity. In normal life, close to it is dreaming, which is also more free than the experiences of real life from the close associative ties that permeate the human psyche. This is Freud's first concept of the unconscious. It is characterized by two features. First, Freud does not give any physiological theory of the unconscious and does not even try to do so. Secondly, the products of the unconscious can only be obtained in translation into the language of consciousness; There is no other direct approach to the unconscious other than the consciousness of the patient himself and there cannot be.

In the second, classical period of psychoanalysis, the concept of the unconscious is enriched with a number of new, highly significant aspects. In the second period, the unconscious becomes a necessary and extremely important component of the mental apparatus of every person. The struggle between consciousness and the unconscious is declared to be a constant and natural form of mental life. The unconscious becomes a productive source of psychic forces and energy for all areas of cultural creativity, especially for art. At the same time, if the fight against consciousness is unsuccessful, the unconscious can become the source of all nervous diseases. The process of formation of the unconscious, according to these new views of Freud, is of a natural nature and occurs throughout a person’s life from the very moment of his birth. This process is called "displacement". Repression is one of the most important concepts of all psychoanalytic teaching. Further, the content of the unconscious is typified: these are no longer random isolated experiences, but some typical, mostly common to all people, coherent groups of experiences (complexes) of a certain nature, mainly sexual. These complexes are repressed into the unconscious at strictly defined periods, repeating in the life history of each person. To understand the content of the unconscious, it is necessary to become familiar with Sigmund Freud's theory of drives. Attraction, according to Freud, does not mean a special movement, but an internal self-impression, in which it is impossible to escape from oneself, and insofar as this self-impression is effective, a state of heaviness and burden is inevitably created on our inner world.

Mental activity is set in motion by external and internal stimuli of the body. Internal irritations have a somatic (bodily) source, i.e. are born in the body. And so Freud calls the mental representations of these internal somatic stimuli drives. Freud divides all drives according to their purpose and according to their somatic source into two groups: 1) sexual drives, the purpose of which is procreation; 2) personal drives, or drives of the “I”, their goal is the self-preservation of the individual. Sexual attraction, or, as Freud calls it, libido, is inherent in a child from the very beginning of his life; it is born along with his body and leads a continuous, only sometimes weakening, but never completely extinguishing life in the body and psyche. The content of the unconscious can be expressed in the following summary formula: the world of the unconscious includes everything that an organism could do if it were left to the pure principle of pleasure, if it were not bound by the principle of reality and culture. This includes everything that he openly desired and vividly imagined in the early infantile period of life, when the pressure of reality and culture was still weak and when a person was freer to express his original, organic self-sufficiency.

In the third period, the theory of drives underwent significant changes. Instead of the previous division of drives into sexual and “I” drives, a new division appeared: 1) sexual drive, or eros; 2) death drive. The second group - the Death instincts - underlies all manifestations of aggressiveness, cruelty, murder and suicide. True, there is an opinion that Freud created a theory about these instincts under the influence of the death of his daughter and fear for his two sons, who were at the front at that time. This is probably why this is the most and least considered issue in modern psychology. The drive of the “I” and, above all, the instinct of self-preservation were relegated to sexual drives, the concepts of which were thus enormously expanded, covering both members of the former division. The instinct of self-preservation includes the following sub-instincts: nutrition, growth, breathing, movement, that is, those necessary vital functions that make any organism alive. Initially, these factors were very important, but due to the development of the human mind (I), these factors, as vital, lost their former importance. This happened because man developed adaptations for obtaining food; he began to use food not only to satisfy hunger, but also to satisfy the greed that is unique to man. Over time, food began to come to him more and more easily, and he began to spend less and less time on its production. Man began to build homes and other devices for himself and secured his life as much as possible. Thus, the instinct of self-preservation lost its significance, and the instinct of reproduction, or, as Freud calls it, libido, came first. By eros, Freud understands the attraction to organic life, to preserving and developing it at all costs - whether in the form of procreation or the preservation of the individual. The task of the death drive is to return all living organisms to the lifeless state of inorganic, dead matter, to strive away from the anxiety of life and eros. The second feature of the third period is the expansion of the composition of the unconscious, its enrichment with qualitatively new and original moments. The second period was characterized by a dynamic understanding of the unconscious as repressed. The repressed, consisting mainly of sexual desires, is hostile to the conscious “I”. In his book “The Ego and the Id,” Freud suggests calling this entire area of ​​the psyche that does not coincide with the “I” the “Id.” “It” is a deep layer of unconscious drives, the mental “self,” the basis of an active individual, which is guided only by the “principle of pleasure” regardless of social reality, and sometimes in spite of it. “It” is that inner dark element of lusts and drives, which a person sometimes feels so acutely and which opposes his reasonable arguments and good will.

“I” (Ego) is the sphere of consciousness, an intermediary between “It” and the external world, including natural and social institutions, measuring the activity of “It” with the “principle of reality”, expediency and external necessity. “It” is passions, “I” is reason and prudence. In the “It” the principle of pleasure reigns inseparably; “I” is the bearer of the principle of reality. Finally, “It” is unconscious. Until now, speaking about the unconscious, Freud dealt only with the “Id”: after all, the repressed drives belonged to it. Therefore, everything unconscious was represented as something lower, dark, immoral. Yet the highest, the moral, the rational coincided with consciousness. This view is incorrect. The unconscious is not only “It”. And in the “I”, and moreover in its highest sphere, there is a region of the unconscious. The process of repression emanating from the “I” is unconscious; the work of repression carried out in the interests of the “I” is unconscious. Thus, a significant area of ​​the “I” also turns out to be unconscious. Freud focused his attention on this area in the last period. It turns out to be much wider, deeper and more significant than it seemed at first. Freud calls the highest unconscious area in the “I” the “Ideal - I”. “Ideal - I” (Super - Ego) - intrapersonal conscience, a kind of censorship, a critical authority that arises as a mediator between “It” and “I” due to the insoluble conflict between them, the inability of the “I” to curb unconscious impulses and subjugate them requirements of the "reality principle". “The ideal – I” is, first of all, the censor whose orders are carried out by repression. Then he finds himself in a whole series of other, very important phenomena of personal and cultural life. It manifests itself in an unconscious feeling of guilt that weighs on the soul of some people. Consciousness does not recognize this guilt, it struggles with the feeling of guilt, but cannot overcome it. Further, the manifestations of the “Ideal - Self” include the so-called “sudden awakening of conscience”, cases of a person displaying extraordinary severity towards himself, self-contempt, melancholy, etc. In all these phenomena, the conscious “I” is forced to obey the force acting from the depths unconscious, but at the same time moral. Trying to penetrate the mechanisms of the human psyche, Freud proceeds from the fact that its deep, natural layer (“It”) functions according to an arbitrarily chosen program of obtaining the greatest pleasure. But since, in satisfying his passions, the individual encounters an external reality that opposes the “It,” the “I” stands out in him, striving to curb unconscious drives and channel them into socially approved behavior. “It” gradually but powerfully dictates its terms to the “I”. As an obedient servant of unconscious drives, the “I” tries to maintain its good agreement with the “It” and the outside world. He does not always succeed in this, so a new instance of “Ideal - Self” is formed in him, which reigns over the “I” as conscience or an unconscious feeling of guilt. “The ideal - I” is, as it were, the highest being in man, reflecting the commandments, social prohibitions, the power of parents and authorities. According to its position and functions in the human psyche, the “Ideal - I” is called upon to carry out the sublimation of unconscious drives and in this sense, as it were, stands in solidarity with the “I”. But in its content, “Ideal - I” is closer to “It” and even opposes “I”, as the confidant of the inner world of “It”, which can lead to a conflict situation leading to disturbances in the human psyche. Thus, the Freudian “I” appears in the form of a “miserable creature”, which, like a locator, is forced to turn first in one direction or the other in order to find itself in friendly agreement with both the “It” and the “Ideal - Ego.” . Although Freud recognized the “heredity” and “naturalness” of the unconscious, it is hardly correct to say that he absolutizes the power and power of the unconscious and proceeds entirely from the unbridled desires of man. The task of psychoanalysis, as Freud formulated it, is to transfer the unconscious material of the human psyche into the realm of consciousness and subordinate it to its goals. In this sense, Freud was an optimist, since he believed in the ability of awareness of the unconscious, which was most clearly expressed by him in the formula: “Where there was “It”, there should be “I”.” All his analytical work was aimed at ensuring that, as the nature of the unconscious was revealed, a person could master his passions and consciously manage them in real life. Freud defines the unconscious as non-verbal; it turns into the preconscious (from where it can always pass into consciousness) through connection with the corresponding verbal representations. Freud was aware of the difficulties that stood in the way of mastering the unconscious, and struggled for a long time to solve this problem, constantly making adjustments to the understanding of the nature of the unconscious and the so-called “primary drives” that constitute its core.