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{{Short description|Part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness}}{{About|the concept subconscious as used in psychology, everyday speech and new-age literature|a related psychological concept |unconscious mind|the Samantha James album and song|Subconscious (album){{!}}Subconscious (album)|and|Subconscious (song)}}{{more citations needed|date=March 2010}}In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness.

Scholarly use of the term

The word subconscious represents an anglicized version of the French subconscient as coined byJohn Norris, in “An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. Design’d for Two Parts. The First Considering it Absolutely in It Self, and the Second in Relation to Human Understanding” (1708):“The immediate objects of Sense, are not the objects of Intellection, they being of a Subconscient [subconscious] nature.” A more recent use was in 1889 by the psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947), in his doctorate of letters thesis, Of Psychological Automatism (.BOOK, Janet, Pierre, 1899, De l’Automatisme Psychologique, Of Psychological Automatism,archive.org/details/lautomatismepsyc00jane, fr, 7 July 2020, Janet argued that underneath the layers of critical-thought functions of the conscious mind lay a powerful awareness that he called the subconscious mind.Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970)In the strict psychological sense, the adjective is defined as “operating or existing outside of consciousness”.Locke and Kristof write that there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one’s knowledge and prior experience is needed, which they label the subconscious.Locke, Edwin A.; Kristof, Amy L. (1996). “Volitional Choices in the Goal Achievement Process”. In Gollwitzer, Peter M.; Bargh, John A. (eds.). The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior. Guilford Press. p. 370. {{ISBN|9781572300323}}. Retrieved 2014-12-08. “By the ‘subconscious,’ we refer to that part of consciousness which is not at any given moment in focal awareness. At any given moment, very little (at most, only about seven disconnected objects) can be held in conscious, focal awareness. Everything else - all of one’s prior knowledge and experiences - resides in the subconscious.” Compare memory.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud used the term “subconscious” in 1893Freud, Sigmund (1893). « Quelques considérations pour une étude comparative des paralysies organiques et hystériques ». Archives de neurologie, citation in Psychanalyse (fondamental de psychanalyse freudienne), sous les directions d’Alain de Mijolla & Sophie de Mijolla Mellor. Paris, P.U.F, 1996, p. 50.BOOK, Jean, Laplanche, Jean-Bertrand, Pontalis, Jean Laplanche, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Subconscious (pp. 430-1),books.google.com/books?id=DCpokE8C2WgC&q=Subconscious, The Language of Psycho-analysis,books.google.com/books?id=DCpokE8C2WgC, Karnac Books, London, 1988, reprint, revised, 1973, 978-0-946-43949-2, to describe associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness.BOOK, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume I (1886-1899) Pre-Psychoanalytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts, Freud, Sigmund, Hogarth Press Limited, 1966, He later abandoned the term in favor of unconscious, noting the following: In 1896, in Letter 52, Freud introduced the stratification of mental processes, noting that memory-traces are occasionally re-arranged in accordance with new circumstances. In this theory, he differentiated between Wahrnehmungszeichen (“Indication of perception“), Unbewusstsein (“the unconscious“) and Vorbewusstsein (“the Preconscious“). From this point forward, Freud no longer used the term “subconscious” because, in his opinion, it failed to differentiate whether content and the processing occurred in the unconscious or preconscious mind.BOOK, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume II (1893 - 1895), Freud, Sigmund, The Hogarth Press, 1955, Charles Rycroft explains that the subconscious is a term “never used in psychoanalytic writings”.Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London, 2nd Ed, 1995), p. 175 Peter Gay says that the use of the term subconscious where unconscious is meant is “a common and telling mistake”;Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time (London 2006), p. 453 indeed, “when [the term] is employed to say something ‘Freudian’, it is proof that the writer has not read [their] Freud”.Peter Gay (ed.), A Freud Reader (London, 1995), p. 576

Analytical psychology

Carl Jung said that since there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one’s knowledge and prior experience is needed.BOOK, Man and his Symbols,archive.org/details/manhissymbols00jung, registration, Jung, Carl, 1964, Doubleday, 978-0-385-05221-4, 37, Approaching the unconscious, Such material has mostly become unconscious because — in a manner of speaking — there is no room for it in the conscious mind. Some of one’s thoughts lose their emotional energy and become subliminal (that is to say, they no longer receive so much of our conscious attention) because they have come to seem uninteresting or irrelevant, or because there is some reason why we wish to push them out of sight. It is, in fact, normal and necessary for us to “forget” in this fashion, in order to make room in our conscious minds for new impressions and ideas. If this did not happen, everything we experienced would remain above the threshold of consciousness and our minds would become impossibly cluttered., Carl Jung,

“New Age” and other modalities targeting the subconscious

{{more citations needed section|date=April 2013}}The idea of the subconscious as a powerful or potent agency has allowed the term to become prominent in New Age and self-help literature, in which investigating or controlling its supposed knowledge or power is seen as advantageous. In the New Age community, techniques such as autosuggestion and affirmations are believed to harness the power of the subconscious to influence a person’s life and real-world outcomes, even curing sickness. Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims.weblink {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090726183419www.csicop.org/specialarticles/secrets.html|date=July 26, 2009}} Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable and questioned the likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head.Whittaker, S. Secret attraction {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304090328www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=78fc94dd-c0b2-4ade-891d-98770bfae388&k=70777 |date=2016-03-04 }}, The Montreal Gazette, May 12, 2007. In addition, critics have asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports, as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias.JOURNAL, Kaptchuk, T., & Eisenberg, D., 1998, The Persuasive Appeal of Alternative Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, 129, 12, 9867762, 1061–5, 10.7326/0003-4819-129-12-199812150-00011, 10.1.1.694.4798, 24942410, Psychologists and psychiatrists use the term “unconscious” in traditional practices, where metaphysical and New Age literature, often use the term subconscious.In his (”New Thought“) work Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963), Joseph Murphy likens the workings of the subconscious mind to a syllogism. Murphy states (p. 43), “whatever major premise your conscious mind assumes to be true determines the conclusion your subconscious mind comes to in regard to any particular question or problem in your mind.” This means that if your major premise is true, then the conclusion that follows your premise must be true also. He shares the following formula.“Every virtue is laudable;Kindess is a virtue;Therefore, kindness is laudable.“Murphy argues that because your subconscious mind operates like a syllogism one can reap great benefits by utilizing a powerful and positive major premise. He also warns that the opposite could hold true: if one uses a negative, self-defeating major premise, one could reap horrible consequences. It should not, however, be inferred that the concept of the unconscious and the New Age concept of the subconscious are precisely equivalent, even though they both warrant consideration of mental processes of the brain. Psychologists and psychiatrists take a much more limited view of the capabilities of the unconscious than are represented by New Age depiction of the subconscious. There are a number of methods in use in the contemporary New Age and paranormal communities that affect the latter: Affirmations, Autosuggestion, Binaural beats, Hypnosis, Subliminal message.

See also

• Consciousness
• Collective unconscious
• History of hypnosis
• Non-rapid eye movement sleep
• Preconscious
• Rapid eye movement sleep
• Slow-wave sleep
• Subliminal stimuli
• Unconscious mind

Transdisciplinary topics

• List of thought processes
• Philosophy of mind

Notes and references

{{Reflist|2}}

External links

{{wiktionary}}

• A Reader’s Guide To Pierre Janet: A Neglected Intellectual Heritage
• Who’s Minding the Mind?
• WEB, The Unconscious: Frequently Asked Questions. What’s the difference between ‘unconscious’ and ‘subconscious’?,www.freud.org.uk/learn/discover-psychoanalysis/what-is-the-unconscious/the-unconscious-frequently-asked-questions/, Freud Museum, London,

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