Good morning! 🌻
Since in the 9th edition, (click the button below to revisit)
I gave back a little bit of encouragement and love to you, this time I want to give you a tool to probe a little into your subconscious. ✨
One famous psychologist that I bet almost everybody has heard of is Sigmund Freud. And one of the most common comments that a psychology student has heard of is,
“Don’t psychoanalyze me!”
But what does Psychoanalysis really mean?
Sigmund Freud is considered the founding father of an important field of psychology, called Psychoanalysis.
He says that the mind, as a structure, has three parts to it- the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious.
The conscious is what we’re aware of. What we see, notice, think about and act on, like how you’re reading this right now and trying to understand it (I hope).
The subconscious is what we don’t notice right away, something that might affect how we think, feel and act, but also something we can easily bring into our awareness like maybe someone talking in the background, barking dogs, or passing cars that might be subtly distracting you from reading and understanding this.
The unconscious (different from being unconscious by fainting or passing out), is full of memories and experiences that we may not have been aware of or even forgotten.
Psychoanalysis studies this third part of the mind, with the assumption that all humans have needs and desires based on sexual drives and aggression which are all largely unconscious. Meaning, we don’t even realize that we have them.
The reason for these drives and needs and desires being unconscious is that they’re not socially acceptable. So people find a way to express these unconscious thoughts through socially acceptable ways. This, again, we do without being fully aware of doing it.
Have you heard of the Freudian slip? It’s also called parapraxis. It’s when you say something, think something, or do something that is an error or a mistake, but is actually linked to your unconscious as a subdued wish or an internal train of thought. Say, for example, someone at work asks you where you kept that file from the last meeting, and you end up saying ‘in the refrigerator’ because you might’ve been thinking about lunch break, or raiding the refrigerator since you’re bored or hungry.
Freud also said that when something makes us feel extremely threatened or anxious, we react to it defensively, and try to protect ourselves. He called these reactions 'Defense mechanisms’.
Take, for example, you have a nasty scolding from a boss. Naturally, due to the difference in power and position, you didn’t respond or talk back a lot, but ended up acting aggressively with someone else, like a family member. This is called displacement. It is a defense mechanism where the aggressive tendencies towards a person get displaced towards another person who does not threaten you all that much.
There’s another defense mechanism called sublimation where all the aggressive or sexual drives and desires get sublimated or are poured out through artistic forms like painting or dancing.
One more commonly known defense mechanism is repression, where we simply repress these uncomfortable anxiety-inducing emotions and allow them to pile up until we reach a breaking point. Freud adds that repression of intense negative emotions might even cause them to resurface in the form of physical illnesses.
Freud and his daughter suggested quite a few defense mechanisms which you can go ahead and read up on here.
Freud’s work, however, has been criticized highly because it is mostly based on sexual and aggressive drives. He formed his theories based on personal experiences and experiences of his clients- mostly women, who lived in the Victorian Era where women’s sexual needs were greatly suppressed and considered taboo.
Many psychologists disagree with his views, many agree, while many believe that along with unconscious experiences, other factors might also play a role in how we behave in or react to situations.
The reason for me trying to bring these defense mechanisms to your attention is so that you can try and reflect on your reactions to certain situations and see if you can catch yourself doing these things. If you do, try to understand what you might be reacting to, and how you can resolve those conflicts.
Let me know in the comment section if you can think of an incident where you used a defense mechanism or are able to catch yourself while you’re using one of the defense mechanisms! ✨
Thanks for the post. I may not be 100% with you on some points from this article.
1. I believe subconscious is super powerful and needs more light. It is this faculty great artists and visionaries use to achieve unbelievable accomplishments. This is where spiritual magical powers come to aid conscious thinking. How that happens? How to make it happen at will?
2. To survive, procreate, and express (in order to be recognized and accepted and then on to dominate) are basic human instincts (needs) and most of our brain is wired to fulfill these. But how one responds to situations is not necessarily a one standard reaction / approach that every human being follows the same very way. The reactions can differ based on accumulated past experiences, past memories, and ingrained or developed aspects like personalities, traits, as well as cosmic influences such as your nature, make up and surrounding (ever changing yet systemic) environment or forces at work.
If it makes sense, What might be the relationship between those different layers?
I'm not sure if I understand this right. So, what you are trying to say is, we should think about why exactly we reacted to something the way we did right? like stop from time to time and think is we are really doing things the way we want. Something like that?