Definition of the concept unconscious. Freud's theory of the unconscious. Consciousness and the collective unconscious

Unconscious or unconscious - the totality mental processes, for which there is no subjective control. Everything that does not become an object of awareness for the individual is considered unconscious. The term “unconscious” is widely used in philosophy, psychology and psychoanalysis, as well as in psychiatry, psychophysiology, legal sciences, and art criticism. In psychology, the unconscious is usually opposed to the conscious, but within the framework of psychoanalysis, the unconscious (Id) and the conscious are considered as concepts of different levels: not everything that does not belong to the unconscious (Id) is conscious.

Freud identified three levels of consciousness: consciousness, preconscious, and unconscious. At the conscious level there are sensations and experiences accessible to awareness in this moment. It can be figuratively compared to a spotlight beam: everything that the beam illuminates is accessible to awareness, while neighboring areas are immersed in twilight (preconscious), in complete darkness, or generally inaccessible to direct illumination (unconscious).

So, at the moment, in the zone of your awareness there are these lines printed on paper and the sensations from the contact of your body with clothing and any objects, and there may be a feeling of satiety or a growing appetite. In the preconscious, there is that knowledge, that experience that you can quite easily restore, for example, the number of the school where you studied in the first grade, the meeting of the last New Year. It is, as it were, a bridge between the conscious and unconscious content of the psyche. The unconscious is the deepest and most significant part of the human mind. It contains animalistic, primitive instincts, emotions and memories that are unacceptable to our morality and our self-concept. These could be unpleasant or traumatic childhood events, our aggressive feelings towards our parents, sexual desires, including homosexual ones.

The unconscious is illogical, timeless, chaotic, immoral. The contents of the unconscious, according to Freud, largely leave their mark on our everyday life. Many of our significant actions are determined and directed by unconscious impulses and drives. They are not realized by a person, but when they begin to be realized, this meets with strong resistance and rejection by the person. But repressed drives and memories appear in a disguised, symbolic form, just as unconscious instinctual drives find indirect satisfaction in dreams, fantasies, play and work.

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The experimental development of the concept of the unconscious was first carried out by Sigmund Freud, who showed that many actions, the implementation of which a person is not aware of, have a meaningful nature and cannot be explained through the action of drives. He looked at how this or that motivation manifests itself in dreams, neurotic symptoms and creativity. It is known that the main regulator of human behavior is the inclinations and desires of the subject. 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 directed him to search for means of ridding his analysands of conflicts between what their consciousness says and their hidden, blind, unconscious impulses. Thus was born the Freudian method of healing the soul, called psychoanalysis.

A person, being a conscious subject, is aware not only of his environment, but also of himself in the process of relationships with others, in particular with people. The highest form of manifestation of a person’s consciousness is his moral consciousness, which guides him in his personal and social activities. However, in addition to consciousness, we are also driven by unconscious impulses; along with the concept of conscious, there is also the opposite concept - unconscious.

As an adjective, the term "unconscious" refers to mental content not currently available to conscious awareness, as seen in the examples of erroneous actions, dreams, incoherent thoughts and inferences. The psyche is always active, it performs many functions both during wakefulness and during sleep, but only a small part of mental activity at any given moment is conscious.

As a noun, the term “unconscious” means one of the dynamic systems described by S. Freud, the founder of the doctrine of the unconscious.

In a broad sense, the unconscious is a set of mental processes, operations and states that are not represented in the consciousness of the subject, processes over which there is no control. Everything that does not become the subject of conscious actions for the individual is considered unconscious.

Z. Freud, and later K. Jung, laid the foundations for the doctrine of the unconscious, which remains relevant to this day. The foundations of these teachings, as well as the ideas that precede and follow them, will be discussed by us in this work.

The general idea of ​​the unconscious, going back to Plato’s ideas about cognition - memory, remained dominant until modern times. The ideas of Descartes, who affirmed the identity of the conscious and the mental, served as the source of the idea that beyond consciousness only purely physiological, but not mental, activity of the brain can take place. The concept of the unconscious and the evidence of its existence was first clearly formulated by Leibniz in 1720. In his opinion, the unconscious is the lowest form of mental activity, lying beyond the threshold of conscious ideas that rise above many dark perceptions. The first attempt at a materialistic explanation of the unconscious was made by Hartley, who connected the unconscious with activity nervous system. Kant connected the unconscious with the problem of intuition, the question of sensory knowledge(unconscious a priori synthesis).

During the period of romanticism, the irrationalist doctrine of the unconscious was put forward by Schopenhauer, which was continued by E. Hartmann, who elevated the unconscious to the rank of a universal principle, the basis of being and the cause of the world process.

In the 19th century, the actual psychological study of the unconscious began (I.F. Herbart, G.T. Fechner, W. Wundt, T. Lipps). It was found that incompatible ideas can come into conflict with each other, and the weaker ones are forced out of consciousness, but continue to influence it without losing their dynamic properties.

A new stimulus in the study of the unconscious was given by work in the field of psychopathology, where specific methods of influencing the unconscious (initially hypnosis) began to be used for therapeutic purposes. Research by the French psychiatric school (J. Charcot and others) made it possible to reveal mental activity of a pathogenic nature, different from conscious, and unconscious to the patient.

A continuation of this line was Freud's concept. His experimental development of the concept of the unconscious showed that many actions, the implementation of which a person is not aware of, have a meaningful nature and cannot be explained by action. He examined how this or that manifests itself in, and. It was previously 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.

Freud and his supporters were among the first to try to find the key to the recesses of consciousness and discovered behind it a world of “repressed” or simply “forgotten” by him and therefore already unconscious mental experiences. They were among the first to try to understand these phenomena, and through them the entire symbolic activity of consciousness. Having accepted the unconscious as the main characteristic of a person, Freud ultimately subordinated both consciousness and the personality as a whole to it, due to which his theory of personality became completely irrationalistic.

Freud – central figure, around which almost all theories of the unconscious are grouped, after they proposed a total system of analysis of the human psyche up to the analysis of its hidden formations - the unconscious psyche. Freud's teaching was a revolution he accomplished in the psychology of the 20th century.

Freudianism has been the subject of intense debate for many years. Major scientists - Pavlov, Bekhterev, Osipov, Anfimov, Gilyarovsky, Kraepelin, Bumke and others - opposed it. A number of its former supporters - Adler, Jung, Stekel and others - abandoned psychoanalysis, but developed their own concepts similar to it. His other followers - Bleuler, Schilder, Kahn, Hoffmann and others - developed his principles in various areas of psychiatry.

However, it is the postulates of the doctrine of the unconscious of Freud and Jung that form the basis modern knowledge about the subject.

In modern psychology, there are two types of unconscious - and individual. The collective unconscious carries information from the mental world of the entire society, while the individual unconscious carries information from the mental world of a particular person.

The unconscious is also divided into temporarily unconscious and suppressed processes and mental states that are pushed out of boundaries.

There are also several main classes of manifestations of the unconscious:

IN in general terms, the human psyche appears, according to Freud, to be split into two opposing spheres of the conscious and unconscious, which represent essential characteristics of the individual. Both of these spheres are not presented equally: the unconscious is considered the central component that makes up the essence of the human psyche, and the conscious is 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.”

Freud, like his great predecessors Leibniz and Kant, builds his system of analysis - psychoanalysis, as a whole on only one negative concept, the concept of the unconscious, understanding it as the psyche minus consciousness.

Freud's model of personality appears as a combination of three elements:

“It” (Id) 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;

“I” (Ego) is the sphere of consciousness, an intermediary between “It” and outside world, including natural and social institutions, which compares the activity of “It” with the “principle of reality”, expediency and externally imposed necessity;

“Super-Ego” (Super-Ego) is an intrapersonal conscience, a kind of censorship, a critical authority that arises as an intermediary between “It” and “I” due to the intractability of the conflict between them, the inability of the “I” to curb unconscious impulses and subjugate them requirements of the “reality principle”. The “super-ego” is 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 “Super-Ego” is called upon to carry out the sublimation of unconscious drives and in this sense stands in solidarity with the “I”. But in its content, the “Super-I” is closer to the “It” and even opposes the “I”, as the confidant of the inner world of the “It”, which can lead to conflict situation leading to disturbances in the human psyche. Thus, the Freudian “I” (roughly speaking, consciousness) appears as 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 “It” and and with the “Super-I” (i.e. with the unconscious).

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. Freud believed in the ability of awareness of the unconscious; 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.

The problem of “primary drives” turned out to be the stumbling block of all psychoanalysis, and it was at this point that a serious discrepancy was discovered between Freud and such adherents of Freudianism as C. Jung, A. Adler, W. Reich, K. Horney, E. Fromm. As the basis of "primary drives", driving force unconscious, Freud accepted sexual desires. In Freud's later works, the concept of “sexual desire” is replaced by the concept of “libido,” which already covers the entire sphere of human love, including the love of parents, friendship, universal love, and so on. Ultimately, human activity is determined by the presence of both biological and social “drives,” where the dominant role is played by the so-called “life instinct” (Eros) and “death instinct” (Thanatos).

One of the first critics of Freud's theoretical postulates was the Swiss psychiatrist K.G. Jung, for a long time shared the main ideas of his teacher. The essence of Jung's differences with Freud came down to understanding the nature of the unconscious. Jung believed that Freud wrongfully reduced all human activity to the biologically inherited sexual instinct, while human instincts are not biological, but entirely symbolic in nature. He proposed that symbolism is an integral part of the psyche itself and that the unconscious produces certain forms or ideas that are schematic in nature and form the basis of all human ideas. These forms do not have internal content, but are formal elements that can take shape in a specific representation only when they penetrate the conscious level of the psyche. Jung gives the special name “archetypes” to the identified formal elements of the psyche, which are inherent in everything to the human race.

“Archetypes” represent formal patterns of behavior or symbolic images, on the basis of which specific, content-filled images are formed that correspond in real life to stereotypes of conscious human activity.

Unlike Freud, who viewed the unconscious as the main element of the individual psyche, Jung made a clear differentiation between the “individual” and the “collective unconscious.”

The “individual unconscious” reflects the personal experience of an individual and consists of experiences that were once conscious, but have lost their conscious character due to oblivion or suppression.

The "collective unconscious" represents the hidden memory traces of the human past: racial and national history, as well as pre-human animal existence. This is a universal human experience, characteristic of all races and nationalities. It is the “collective unconscious” that is the reservoir where all “archetypes” are concentrated.

Yet Jung did not manage to get rid of the biological approach to the unconscious, which he opposed in his polemic with Freud. Both “archetypes” and the “collective unconscious” are ultimately internal products of the human psyche, hereditary forms and ideas of the entire human race. The difference between the theoretical constructs of Freud and Jung is that the hereditary, and therefore biological material for Freud was the instincts themselves, which predetermine the motives of human activity, and for Jung - forms, ideas, typical events of behavior. The mechanism of biological predestination and heredity is preserved in both cases, although it operates at different levels of the human psyche.

One of the elements of Jung’s “analytical psychology” is the theory of “complexes,” that is, the mental forces of the individual, which, being in an unconscious form, constantly make themselves known. The unconscious always contains “complexes” of memories of the individual past, primarily parental, childhood, “power complex” and others. They testify to the power of the unconscious over conscious processes.

Based on the theory of “complexes,” Jung tried to penetrate deeper into the mechanism of the unconscious, to identify the complex relationships between unconscious and conscious processes of the psyche, and the role of unconscious drives in the formation of human behavior. However, in essence, Jung's concept of “complexes” was not much different from the theory of repression of the unconscious developed by Freud.

As with Freud, so with Jung, the unconscious constitutes the inner and essential core that forms the human psychic world. True, unlike Freud, Jung makes a deeper differentiation of the levels of mental development and introduces a number of concepts that characterize a new vision of the total personality. Along with such instances as “I”, “individual unconscious” and “collective unconscious”, Jung distinguishes:

“Persona” is a mask that a person puts on in response to the demands of the social environment;

“Anima” is an abstract image representing the female “archetype” in a man. Through it, mutual understanding is achieved between both sexes;

“Animus” is an abstract image representing the male “archetype” in a woman. Through it also mutual understanding is achieved between both sexes;

“Shadow” is an “archetype” consisting of animal instincts and being the focus of the dark, base sides of the personality. The aggressive and antisocial aspirations of the “Shadow” may not manifest themselves in open form, since they are hidden under the mask of a “Persona” or are repressed into the “individual unconscious”;

“Self” is the central “archetype” of personality, around which all mental properties of a person are concentrated. The sphere of “Self” is something between the conscious and unconscious, the center of the total personality.

Jung's personality structure, therefore, differs from Freud's primarily in that Jung follows the path of further differentiation of Freud's “Id.” For Freud, the “Id” is an entirely biological, natural given, while for Jung the unconscious also includes social aspects.

Rejecting the biologism of Freud and Jung, A. Adler at the same time endows the individual with such impulses that, being social, are still innate in nature. In place of biological unconscious instincts, social impulses are substituted, which also turn out to be innate. In this respect, Adler’s concept of “social aspirations” is akin to Freud’s ideas about “primary drives” and Jung’s about “archetypes.”

W. Reich proposed a new version of the interpretation of personality structure. The “biopsychic structure of character,” according to Reich, consists of three autonomously functioning layers:

· “superficial layer” – a layer of “social cooperation”, a false, feigned social layer, where a person’s true face is hidden under the mask of courtesy, politeness and courtesy;

· “intermediate layer” - the antisocial layer (Freudian unconscious) - represents the sum of “secondary impulses” - rude, sadistic, voluptuous impulses;

· the deep layer, or “biological core,” consists of “natural-social impulses”, emitting which, a person appears as an honest, hardworking being, capable of sincere love. But, passing through the secondary, intermediate layer, “natural-social impulses” are refracted and distorted.

The model of character structure proposed by Reich differs from the Freudian model in that here the Freudian “I” and “It” seem to have swapped places. If the Freudian unconscious was a deep layer human personality, above which a layer of the conscious “I” was built, then in Reich’s model of man the deep layer is represented by “natural sociality,” which became unconscious only at an intermediate level, where natural-social instincts for work, love and knowledge were suppressed by ideological and cultural “sanctions.”

The unconscious of the structuralists (Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan) is subject to division and rational ordering by identifying the mechanisms of the functioning of language. The unconscious, through which the authorized representative of human culture is revealed - language, hides within itself a structure, that is, a set of regular dependencies, public relations, embedded in the individual and translated into the language of messages. Unconscious relationships regulate either social life, or interpersonal relationships.

Many psychologists in subsequent periods discovered the dependence of consciousness on unconscious mental mechanisms. These discoveries showed that the subject of activity is eccentric in relation to consciousness, and his controllability by external forces was revealed. Hence the primacy of psychology, which studies the unconscious mechanisms of human activity as sources of positive knowledge about a person.

The unconscious is a set of mental processes that are opposed to conscious actions.

The foundations of the doctrine of the unconscious are laid in the theories of Freud and Jung.

In Freud, the dispositions associated with instinctual drives stimulate the desires and motives of the “id”, striving for conscious expression, which, however, are constantly counteracted by other forces, conceptualized as the “I” and “super-ego”. Freud's idea about the conflict of these forces outlined a dynamic approach to mental processes, which was in many ways ahead of the psychological views of his time and influenced the further formation and development of science.

Freud's student Jung, in addition to the personal unconscious, introduced the concept of the collective unconscious, different levels which are identical among individuals of a certain group, people, all of humanity. Jung also carried out an in-depth structuring of the personality, complementing the teachings of Freud, but in general the unconscious also has biological nature with elements of social.

Followers and critics of Freudianism made additions to the doctrine of the unconscious, but in general general idea about the place of the unconscious in the structure of personality has reached our days; the unconscious that dominates the psyche is delayed in the depths of the psyche by “censorship” - a mental authority formed under the influence of a system of social prohibitions.

1. Henri M. // Questions of Philosophy., 1992, No. 8.

2. Bassin F.V. The problem of the unconscious. – M., 1968.

UNCONSCIOUS, in psychology - the entire set of contents 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 use 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 development 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 accidental mental trauma, an entire period is repressed early childhood, including the oedipal situation (unconscious attraction to a parent of the opposite sex). U normal person these events of early childhood, unnoticed by him, influence his thoughts, feelings and actions; 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.

UNCONSCIOUS- 1. A set of mental processes of acts and states caused by phenomena of reality, in relation to which there is no subjective, conscious control, and the influence of which the subject is not aware of. Everything that does not become the subject of special actions of awareness turns out to be unconscious. 2. A form of reflection of the psyche, in which the image of reality and the subject’s attitude towards it do not act as an object of special reflection and form an inseparable whole. It differs from consciousness in that the reality it reflects merges with the experiences of the subject, with his relationship to the world; therefore, in the unconscious, voluntary control of actions and evaluation of their results are impossible. In the unconscious, reality is experienced through such forms of assimilation and identification of oneself with other people and phenomena:

1) direct emotional feeling;

2) identification;

3) emotional infection;

4) combining various phenomena into one series through participation, and not through identifying logical contradictions and differences between objects according to some essential characteristics. Often in the unconscious, the past, present and future coexist, uniting in one mental act (for example, in a dream). The unconscious finds expression in the early forms of the child’s cognition of reality and in primitive thinking, in intuition, affects, panic, hypnosis, dreams, in habitual actions, in subliminal perception (‑> subsensory perception), in involuntary memorization, etc.; as well as in aspirations, feelings and actions, the reasons for which are not realized. There are four classes of manifestations of the unconscious:

1) supraconscious phenomena (‑> supraconscious);

2) unconscious motivators of activity (‑> unconscious motivator) - unconscious motives and semantic attitudes determined by a meaningful personal desired future.

3) unconscious regulators of ways of performing activities (‑> unconscious regulator);

4) manifestations of subsensory perception. The development of ideas about the nature of the unconscious, the specifics of its manifestations, mechanisms and functions in the regulation of behavior is a necessary condition for creating a holistic picture of the mental life of the individual.

Unconscious. S. Freud's term, meaning the most important, meaningful and extensive system of the psyche, including various, including opposite, unconscious “primary” drives, instincts, desires, impulses, thoughts, etc. It was Freud who began the experimental development of the concept of the unconscious. He showed that many actions, the implementation of which a person is not aware of, have a meaningful nature and cannot be explained by the action of instincts. He examined how a certain motivation manifests itself in dreams, neurotic symptoms, and creativity. Mental processes themselves are unconscious: only individual acts and aspects of mental life are conscious. The unconscious is an asocial, immoral and illogical instance of the psyche, where powerful impersonal forces of life and death operate; therefore it can be considered as a truly real psychic.

The main regulator of this system is the principle of pleasure (=> mental and unconscious process). The contents of this area are not realized because they are weak (as in the preconscious): they are strong, and their strength is manifested in the fact that they influence the actions and states of the subject. Their distinctive properties are the effectiveness and difficulty of transition into consciousness. This is explained by the work of two postulated mental mechanisms - repression and resistance. The unconscious includes those desires, drives, experiences that a person cannot admit to himself and which, therefore, are either not allowed into consciousness or are repressed from it - as if forgotten, but still remain in mental life and strive for realization, encouraging their “ owner” to certain actions, manifesting themselves in them in a distorted form - in dreams, creativity, fantasies, neurotic disorders, slips of the tongue, etc. This kind of censorship arises primarily because these forbidden desires and experiences do not correspond to the rules, prohibitions and ideals, which are developed under the influence of interaction with the environment, and first of all, relationships with parents in childhood. These experiences seem to be immoral, although natural. Suppressed desires internal conflict attraction and prohibition are the cause of psychological difficulties and suffering, leading to neurotic diseases. Striving for realization, the unconscious seems to find ways to bypass censorship. And dreams, slips of the tongue, etc. are a kind of symbolic language that can be deciphered. So, the three main forms of manifestation of the unconscious are dreams, erroneous actions and neurotic symptoms. Subsequently, the concept of the unconscious was significantly expanded. There are several main classes of manifestations of the unconscious:

1) unconscious motives - the true meaning of which is not realized due to their social unacceptability or contradiction with other motives;

2) behavioral automatisms and stereotypes - operating in a familiar situation, the awareness of which is unnecessary due to their development;

3) subliminal perception - due to the large amount of information, it is not realized.

Unconscious: type (two types of unconscious). According to S. Freud, in a dynamic sense there is only one type of unconscious, while in a descriptive sense there are two types:

1) latent - capable of becoming conscious (‑> preconscious);

2) repressed - which in itself cannot become conscious.

UNCONSCIOUS RESISTANCE‑> resistance of the unconscious.

UNCONSCIOUS SUPREME(superconsciousness) - According to R. Assagioli - higher feelings and abilities, intuition, inspiration.

UNCONSCIOUS COLLECTIVE- According to C. G. Jung - special shape the social existence of the unconscious as an accumulator, custodian and bearer of the genetically inherited experience of the phylogenetic development of humanity. A special class of mental phenomena, which, unlike the individual (personal) unconscious, are carriers of the experience of the phylogenetic development of humanity. The collective unconscious imprints the experience of humanity. Everyone is its carrier by virtue of belonging to the human race and culture, and it is this layer of the unconscious that is the deep, hidden thing that determines the characteristics of behavior, thinking and feeling. The content of the collective unconscious consists of archetypes - universal a priori patterns of behavior, which in the real life of a person are filled with specific content. It exists in mental life along with consciousness and the unconscious personal. The doctrine of the collective unconscious is the basis of Jung’s theory (‑> analytical psychology).

UNCONSCIOUS PERSONAL- is formed in the development of a person’s individual experience and represents the contents that are repressed by it - complexes.

UNCONSCIOUS LOWER- according to R. Assagioli - instinctive impulses, passions, primitive desires, etc.

UNCONSCIOUS SOCIAL- according to E. Fromm - the unconscious, characteristic of most people, - repressed elements, the content of which is what a given society cannot allow its members to bring to consciousness if it is going to continue to successfully act on the basis of its own contradictions (=> collective unconscious) .

UNCONSCIOUS MEAN- according to R. Assagioli - a similarity to Freud's preconscious - thoughts and feelings that can easily be realized.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS- one of the signs of the psyche, which, however, is not characterizing.

(Golovin S.Yu. Dictionary of practical psychologist - Minsk, 1998)

UNCONSCIOUS(English) unconscious) - concept denoting a collection mental formations, processes and mechanisms, the functioning and influence of which the subject is not aware of. The development of ideas about B. in psychology began Z.Freud, who was the first to draw attention to the fact that many human actions, seemingly random at first glance, are determined by deep motives And complexes, which the person himself is not aware of. These motives also appear in dreams, neurotic symptoms, products creativity and others. Subsequently, various manifestations of B. were studied both in applied clinical psychology, so in experimental psychology. Today there are 5 classes of manifestations of B.

1. Unconscious stimulants of activity (motives and semantic attitudes), which are not recognized because of their social unacceptability or discrepancy with other needs, motives and attitudes of the individual (see. Psychological protection). The influence of such motives and attitudes can lead to violations adaptation and mental health personality. Correction of these violations is carried out through psychotherapy, during which the client comes to awareness of conflicting impulses and gains the opportunity to consciously control them.

2. Unconscious mechanisms (in particular, fixed-set mechanisms) that ensure the unhindered execution of habitual behavioral automatisms and stereotypes, the application in the appropriate situation of the subject’s skills And skills. The underlying operations initially realized; as they are practiced and automated, they cease to be recognized.

3. Mechanisms and processes subliminal perception objects. Objects perceived at this level are not given in the form of an image and are not recognized by the subject, but they have a regulating influence on the course of his activity.

4. Superconscious phenomena (unconscious mechanisms of creative processes, the results of which are recognized as artistic images, scientific discoveries, manifestations intuition,inspiration, creative insight, etc.).

5. Structures of social B. - unconscious linguistic, cultural, ideological and other schematisms, myths and social norms, defining the worldview of people belonging to a given culture(cm. Prelogical thinking).

The unconscious nature of the functioning of a significant part of the human mental apparatus is an inevitable consequence of its structure. Unconscious processes do not require outside control consciousness, which allows you to unload it to perform other tasks. At the same time, the possibility of awareness (but not constant awareness) of the motives driving a person, intrapersonal conflicts and the structures of social life allows a person to rise to a higher level of managing his behavior. (D. A. Leontyev.)

(Zinchenko V.P., Meshcheryakov B.G. Bolshoi psychological dictionary- 3rd ed., 2002)