Psychology-Freud’s Description of the Unconscious

Psychology-Freud’s Description of the Unconscious

Compare and contrast the information in each article with Freud’s description of the unconscious.

According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious is a part of the human brain that stores thoughts, feelings, memories, and urges outside conscious awareness. Al Khoiriyah (2019) defines the unconscious as the part of the mind where all things that are not easily accessible to a person’s awareness are stored, including the things that arise from a person’s instincts, drives, emotions, and memories associated with trauma. Al Khoiriyah (2019) adds that most things stored in the unconscious mind are unpleasant or unacceptable, such as conflict, anxiety or pain. According to Bargh (2019), the unconscious is a part of the mind where a person’s memories and urges are stored. Banks (2022) argues that the unconscious is a part of the mind where the attention level is below the conscious awareness threshold but above a minimum threshold where no mental processing happens. The definitions of the unconscious in the three articles align with the definition provided by Sigmund Freud. They focus on expanding the definition to create a better understanding of the concepts of the unconscious mind and unconscious thought.

Discuss how the articles contribute to the evidence for or against Freud’s theories.

The three articles provide evidence for Freud’s theories about the mechanisms of unconscious thought and the link between the unconscious mind and fantasies. Freud argues that fantasies are part of the unconscious mind. According to Al Khoiriyah (2019), the unconscious includes fantasies and dreams and is associated with the realities that create ego and conflict brought into a person’s subconscious. Freud’s argument on the mechanisms of the unconscious is evident in the discussions about the factors that influence the unconscious mind. Freud argues that childhood experiences shape a person’s unconscious mind by controlling memories, feelings, urges, and thoughts. For example, a person who had traumatic experiences during childhood may experience traumatic thoughts, memories, and anxiety. Freud also argues that anxiety is vital in shaping a person’s personality, which is the center and foundation of the development of psychosis and neurosis behavior. Al Khoiriyah (2019) agrees that anxiety is part of the unconscious. The author argues that a person may experience moral anxiety whereby they are anxious about their conscience.

According to Bargh (2019), the main mechanisms of the unconscious are the past, future, and present in a person’s life. The past influences primary and deep motivations from a person’s evolutionary tradition, such as the motivations for safety, survival, social bonding, reproduction, and acquisition of resources. Bargh (2019) argues that a person’s past, such as childhood experiences that a person does not remember as an adult, also impacts the unconscious mind. These arguments agree with Freud’s views that a person’s past influences their unconscious mind. According to Banks (2022), the unconscious mind’s main mechanisms are a reward-based association, automaticity, and activation spread. The mechanisms are triggered by the cues in a person’s internal state and environment. The output of each mechanism can be affective responses or specific outputs.

Banks (2022) argues that the unconscious mind influences unconscious thought, which is not enough for problems or tasks that require the integration of different concepts in unfamiliar or novel ways. Unconscious thought is often used in understanding the unconscious mind, and the three mechanisms adapt well to situations frequently encountered by people in their daily lives (Banks, 2022). The author adds that the unconscious process may become conscious at some point. This argument adds to the evidence for Freud’s theories on the relationship between the conscious and unconscious. According to Freud, the conscious mind represses what an individual does not want in the unconscious mind. Therefore, if people develop an awareness of the things that have been repressed into the unconscious, they turn the unconscious process into the conscious process.

References

Al Khoiriyah, D. S. (2019). Unconscious mind and anxiety in the main character of Face in the Crowd, a movie script by Julian Magnad. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal, 3(1), 238-246. https://doi.org/10.31539/leea.v3i1.984

Banks, A. (2022). Mechanisms of Unconscious Thought: Capacities and Limits. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 42(3), 317-346.

Bargh, J. A. (2019). The modern unconscious. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 225-226. https://doi.org/10.1002/

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Instructions
Find and read three contemporary (within the past five years) peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles discussing the concept of the unconscious.

Psychology-Freud’s Description of the Unconscious

Based on your findings, create a 2–3 page report in a Microsoft Word document, addressing the following:

Compare and contrast the information in each article with Freud’s description of the unconscious.
Discuss how the articles contribute to the evidence for or against Freud’s theories.