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

Unconscious or unconscious - a set of mental processes in respect of which there is no subjective control. The unconscious is everything that does not become an object of awareness for the individual. 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 a different level: not everything that does not belong to the unconscious (Id) is conscious.

Freud distinguished three levels of consciousness: consciousness, preconsciousness, unconscious. At the conscious level, there are sensations and experiences available to awareness at the moment. Figuratively, it can be compared with a searchlight beam: everything that the beam highlights is accessible to awareness, while neighboring areas are immersed in twilight (preconsciousness), in complete darkness, or are 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 clothes and any objects, and there may be a feeling of satiety or an 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 contents of the psyche. The unconscious is the deepest and most significant part of the human mind. It contains animals, primitive instincts, emotions and memories that are unacceptable to our morality and our self-concept. These can be unpleasant or traumatic childhood events, our aggressive feelings towards 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 daily life. Many of our significant actions are determined and directed by unconscious impulses, drives. They are not realized by a person, but when they begin to be realized, it meets with strong resistance and rejection by a person. But repressed drives and memories appear in a disguised, symbolic form, just as unconscious instinctual drives indirectly find 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 in the implementation of which a person is not aware of have a meaningful nature and cannot be explained through the action of drives. He considered 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 inclination and desire 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 led him to seek means to rid his analysands of conflicts between what their consciousness says and hidden, blind, unconscious urges. 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 interacting with others, in particular with people. The highest form of manifestation of the personality's consciousness is its moral consciousness, by which it is guided in its personal and social activities. However, in addition to consciousness, we are also driven by unconscious impulses, along with the concept of consciousness, there is an opposite concept - the unconscious.

As an adjective, the term "unconscious" refers to mental content not currently available to awareness, as can be 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 an insignificant part of mental activity is conscious at any given moment.

As a noun, the term "unconscious" means one of the dynamic systems described by Z. 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 mind of the subject, processes in relation to which there is no control. The unconscious is everything that does not become for the individual the subject of actions of awareness.

Z. Freud, and later K. Jung, laid the foundations of the doctrine of the unconscious, which remain relevant to this day. The foundations of these teachings, as well as the ideas preceding and following them, will be considered by us in this work.

The general idea of ​​the unconscious, which goes back to Plato's ideas about cognition - recollection, remained dominant until modern times. The ideas of Descartes, who affirmed the identity of the conscious and mental, served as a source of ideas that outside of consciousness only purely physiological, but not mental activity of the brain can take place. The concept of the unconscious and the proof of its existence was first clearly formulated by Leibniz in 1720. According to him, the unconscious is the lowest form of mental activity, lying beyond the threshold of conscious representations, towering over many dark perceptions. The first attempt at a materialistic explanation of the unconscious was made by Hartley, who connected the unconscious with the activity of the 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, who was continued by E. Hartmann, who raised 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 (J.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 impetus in the study of the unconscious was given by work in the field of psychopathology, where specific methods of influencing the unconscious (originally hypnosis) began to be used for the purpose of therapy. The studies of the French psychiatric school (J. Charcot and others) made it possible to reveal the mental activity of a pathogenic nature, different from conscious, unconscious by the patient.

Freud's concept was a continuation of this line. The experimental development of the concept of the unconscious, carried out by him, showed that many actions in the implementation of which a person is not aware of have a meaningful character and cannot be explained through action. He considered how this or that manifests itself in, and. Previously, it was known that consciousness is the main regulator of human behavior. Freud discovered that behind the veil of consciousness there is a deep, “boiling” layer of powerful aspirations, desires, and desires that are not 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 led him to seek means to rid his patients of conflicts between what their mind says and hidden, blind, unconscious urges. 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 opened behind it the world of "repressed" or simply "forgotten" by him and therefore already unconscious mental experiences. They were among the first who tried to understand these phenomena, and through them, all the symbolic activity of consciousness. Taking the unconscious as the main characteristic of a person, Freud, in the end, subordinated to him both consciousness and the personality as a whole, due to which his theory of personality became completely irrational.

Freud is the central figure around whom almost all theories of the unconscious are grouped, after he proposed a total system for analyzing the human psyche up to the analysis of its underlying formations - the unconscious psyche. Freud's teaching was a revolution he made in the psychology of the 20th century.

Freudianism has been the subject of intense debate for many years. It was opposed by prominent scientists - Pavlov, Bekhterev, Osipov, Anfimov, Gilyarovsky, Kraepelin, Bumke and others. A number of his former supporters - Adler, Jung, Shtekel and others - retreated from 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.

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

In modern psychology, the unconscious is of two types - and individual. The collective unconscious carries information from the mental world of the whole 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 states of the psyche that have been forced out of the boundaries.

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

In general terms, according to Freud, the human psyche is split into two opposing spheres of the conscious and the unconscious, which are the essential characteristics of the personality. 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 instance that is built on top of the unconscious. The conscious, according to Freud, owes its origin to the unconscious and crystallizes out of it in the process of the development of the psyche. Therefore, according to Freud, the conscious is not the essence of the psyche, but only such a quality of it, which "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 such as the psyche minus consciousness.

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

"It" (Id) - a deep layer of unconscious drives, 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) - the sphere of consciousness, an intermediary between the "It" and the outside world, including natural and social institutions, commensurate the activity of "It" with the "principle of reality", expediency and external necessity;

"Super-I" (Super-Ego) - intrapersonal conscience, a kind of censorship, a critical instance that arises as an intermediary between "It" and "I" due to the insolubility of the conflict between them, the inability of "I" to curb unconscious impulses and subdue them requirements of the reality principle. "Super-I" is the highest being in a person, reflecting the commandments, social prohibitions, the power of parents and authorities. According to its position and functions in the human psyche, the "Super-I" is called upon to carry out the sublimation of unconscious drives and, in this sense, is in solidarity with the "I". But in terms of its content, the “Super-I” is closer to the “It” and even opposes the “I”, as an agent of the inner world of the “It”, which can lead to a conflict situation leading to disturbances in the human psyche. Thus, the Freudian “I” (roughly speaking, consciousness) appears as an “unfortunate creature”, which, like a locator, is forced to turn first in one direction, then in the other, in order to be in friendly agreement, both with the “It”, and and with the "Super-I" (i.e. with the unconscious).

The task of psychoanalysis, as formulated by Freud, 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 to realize the unconscious, all his analytical activity was aimed at ensuring that, as the nature of the unconscious is revealed, a person can master his passions and consciously control 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 divergence was found between Freud and such adherents of Freudianism as K. Jung, A. Adler, W. Reich, K. Horney, E. Fromm. As the basis of "primary drives", the driving force of the unconscious, Freud adopted sexual drives. In Freud's later works, the concept of "sexual drives" 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 so-called “life instinct” (Eros) and “death instinct” (Thanatos) play a dominant role.

One of the first critics of Freud's theoretical postulates was the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung, who for a long time shared the main ideas of his teacher. The essence of Jung's differences with Freud came down to an understanding of the nature of the unconscious. Jung believed that Freud wrongly reduced all human activity to a biologically inherited sexual instinct, while human instincts are not biological, but entirely symbolic in nature. He suggested 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 an 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 distinguished formal elements of the psyche a special name "archetypes", which are inherent in the entire 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 the stereotypes of a person's conscious activity.

Unlike Freud, who considered the unconscious as the main element of the psyche of an individual, Jung made a clear differentiation between the "individual" and "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 forgetfulness or suppression.

The "collective unconscious" presents the hidden traces of the memory 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 the "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 the "archetypes" and the "collective unconscious" are ultimately the inner products of the human psyche, the hereditary forms and ideas of the entire human race. The difference between the theoretical constructions of Freud and Jung lies in the fact that the hereditary, and therefore biological material for Freud were the instincts themselves, which predetermine the motives of human activity, and for Jung - forms, ideas, typical events of behavior. The mechanism of biological predetermination 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. In the unconscious there are always "complexes" of memories of the individual past, primarily parental, children's, "complex of power" and others. They testify to the power of 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 relationship between the unconscious and conscious processes of the psyche, the role of unconscious drives in shaping human behavior. However, in essence, Jung's concept of "complexes" was not much different from Freud's theory of the repression of the unconscious.

Like Freud and Jung, the unconscious is the inner and essential core that forms the human mental world. True, unlike Freud, Jung makes a deeper differentiation of the levels of development of the psyche 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 distinguished:

"Persona" - 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. By means of it, mutual understanding is also achieved between both sexes;

“Shadow” is an “archetype”, consisting of animal instincts and being the focus of the dark, low sides of the personality. Aggressive and antisocial aspirations of the "Shadow" may not manifest itself in an open form, since they are hidden under the mask of the "Person" or forced into the "individual unconscious";

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

Jung's personality structure thus differs from Freud's primarily in that Jung follows the path of further differentiation of Freud's "It". For Freud, "It" is entirely biological, natural data, while for Jung, the unconscious also includes social moments.

Rejecting the biologism of Freud and Jung, A. Adler at the same time endows the personality with such motives, which, being social, are nevertheless innate. Biological unconscious instincts are replaced by social impulses, which also turn out to be innate. In this respect, Adler's concept of "social aspirations" is akin to Freud's ideas of "primary drives" and Jung's of "archetypes"

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

· "superficial layer" - a layer of "social cooperation", a false, feigned social layer, where the true face of a person is hidden under the mask of courtesy, politeness and courtesy;

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

· the deep layer, or "biological core", consists of "natural and social impulses", radiating 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 of the human personality, over which a layer of the conscious “I” was built, then in the Reich model of a person the deep layer is represented by “natural sociality”, which became unconscious only at an intermediate level, where the natural social instincts for work, love and knowledge were suppressed by ideological and cultural “sanction formations”.

The unconscious of the structuralists (Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Lacan) is subjected to division and rational ordering by identifying the mechanisms of the functioning of language. The unconscious, through which the authoritative representative of human culture is revealed - language, hides the structure, that is, the totality of regular dependencies, social relations embedded in the individual and translated into the language of messages. Unconscious relationships govern either social life or interpersonal relationships.

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

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

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

In Freud, the dispositions associated with instinctive drives stimulate the desires and motives of the "It", striving for conscious expression, which, however, is constantly opposed by other forces conceptualized as "I" and "Super-I". Freud's idea of ​​the conflict of these forces marked a dynamic approach to mental processes, which in many ways was 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, the different levels of which are identical in individuals of a certain group, people, all of humanity. Jung also conducted an in-depth structuring of the personality, supplementing the teachings of Freud, but in general, the unconscious also has a biological nature with elements of the social.

Followers and critics of Freudianism made additions to the doctrine of the unconscious, but in general, the general idea of ​​the place of the unconscious in the structure of the personality has survived to this day, the unconscious that dominates the psyche is detained in the depths of the psyche by "censorship" - a mental instance 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 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 unwillingness to understand himself (ie 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 brought to light by a simple act of will; their disclosure requires the use of special techniques, such as free association, dream interpretation, various methods of holistic study of personality (including projective tests) and hypnosis.

For many centuries, thinkers who have studied human nature have held that the concept of the unconscious is self-contradictory. However, some philosophers - Augustine, G. Leibniz, I. Herbart, as well as G. Fechner and G. Helmholtz, who were engaged in experimental psychology, noted that psychological operations can be performed 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 a neurosis that arose as a result of trauma are the result not of damage to the nervous tissue, but of unconscious memories of the trauma. P. Janet applied the concept of "unconscious fixed ideas" to the analysis of hysteria and came to the conclusion that traumatic representations, although separated from consciousness, manifest themselves in the form of a hysterical syndrome. Janet reported curing several patients with hysteria with the help of hypnosis, which he used to detect the initial trauma and the patient's secondary experience of it. J. Breuer treated a patient with hysteria by introducing her into a hypnotic state, followed by an explanation of the circumstances associated with her difficulties. As soon as the trauma situation was revealed, the symptoms of hysteria disappeared.

Freud replaced hypnosis with specific techniques of free association and dream interpretation. He argued that the contents of the unconscious not only go away on their own, but are also “repressed”, i.e. forcibly expelled from consciousness. Neurotic symptoms express a conflict between the repressive forces and the repressed material, and this conflict causes the resistance that the psychoanalyst encounters when he tries to uncover the repressed material. In addition to accidental psychic trauma, a whole period of early childhood is repressed, including the oedipal situation (unconscious attraction to a parent of the opposite sex). In a normal person, these events of early childhood, imperceptibly for him, affect thoughts, feelings and actions; in the neurotic they define 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 have been called "transference" or "transference"; they are the revival of old forgotten attitudes towards parents. The task of the psychoanalyst is to analyze 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 the collective unconscious, considering the latter to be the receptacle of "archetypes" - universal symbols charged with psychic energy. As a new way to explore the unconscious, Jung proposed a test of word associations, both spontaneous and directed, and his own approach to the interpretation of dreams. The goal of his therapeutic method was the reunification of consciousness and the unconscious, through which, as he believed, a person can achieve "individuation" - the full disclosure of his personality.

UNCONSCIOUS- 1. The totality of mental processes of acts and states caused by the phenomena of reality, in respect of which there is no subjective, conscious control, and in the influence of which the subject is not aware of. The unconscious is everything that does not become the subject of special actions for awareness. 2. A form of reflection of the mental, in which the image of reality and the attitude of the subject to it do not act as an object of special reflection and constitute an indivisible 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, arbitrary 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 empathy;

2) identification;

3) emotional infection;

4) combining various phenomena into one series through participation, and not through the identification of logical contradictions and differences between objects according to some essential features. Often in the unconscious 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, habitual actions, in subliminal perception (-> subsensory perception), in involuntary memorization, and so on; as well as in aspirations, feelings and actions, the causes of which are not recognized. There are four classes of manifestations of the unconscious:

1) supraconscious phenomena (‑> supraconscious);

2) unconscious stimuli of activity (-> unconscious stimulus) - unconscious motives and semantic attitudes, determined by a meaningful personal desired future.

3) unconscious regulators of the 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 a person.

Unconscious. Z. 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, in the implementation of which a person is not aware, have a meaningful character and cannot be explained by the action of instincts. He considered how a certain motivation manifests itself in dreams, neurotic symptoms, in creativity. Psychic processes in 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 regarded as the truly real psychic.

The main regulator of this system is the principle of pleasure (=> the process of mental unconscious). The contents of this area are not realized not 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 efficiency 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, inclinations, experiences in which a person cannot admit to himself and which, therefore, are either not allowed to consciousness or are forced out of it - as if forgotten, but still remain in mental life and strive for realization, prompting their own " master" to certain actions, manifesting itself in them in a distorted form - in dreams, creativity, fantasies, neurotic disorders, reservations, etc. Such a kind of censorship arises primarily because these forbidden desires and experiences do not correspond to the rules of prohibitions and ideals, which are developed under the influence of interaction with the environment, and in the first place - relationships with parents in childhood. These experiences are, as it were, immoral, although natural. Suppressed desires, the internal conflict of attraction and prohibition - the cause of psychological difficulties and suffering, reaching neurotic diseases. Striving for realization, the unconscious, as it were, finds ways to circumvent censorship. And dreams, reservations, etc. - 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. In the future, 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 - acting in a familiar situation, the awareness of which is unnecessary due to their maturity;

3) subthreshold perception - due to the large amount of information not realized.

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

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

2) repressed - in itself unable to become conscious.

UNCONSCIOUS RESISTANCE-> resistance of the unconscious.

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

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

UNCONSCIOUS PERSONAL- is formed in the development of a person's individual experience and is the content that it displaces - complexes.

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

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

UNCONSCIOUS MEAN- according to R. Assagioli - a semblance of Freud's preconscious - thoughts and feelings, which can be easily realized.

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

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

UNCONSCIOUS(English) unconscious) - a concept denoting a set of mental formations, processes and mechanisms, in the functioning and influence of which the subject is not aware. The development of ideas about B. in psychology was begun W.Freud, who first drew attention to the fact that many human actions, seemingly random at first glance, are due to deep motives And complexes, which the individual is not aware of. These motives also appear in dreams, neurotic symptoms, products creativity and others. In the future, various manifestations of B. were studied both in applied clinical psychology, so in experimental psychology. To date, there are 5 classes of manifestations of B.

1. Unconscious stimuli of activity (motives and semantic attitudes), which are not recognized because of their social unacceptability or mismatch 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 by means of psychotherapy, in the course of which the client comes to the realization of conflicting impulses and gets the opportunity to consciously control them.

2. Unconscious mechanisms (in particular, fixed set mechanisms) that ensure the unhindered performance of habitual behavioral automatisms and stereotypes, the use in the appropriate situation of the subject's skills And skills. underlying them operations initially realized; as they are worked out and automated, they cease to be realized.

3. Mechanisms and processes subthreshold perception objects. The 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 regulatory influence on the course of his activity.

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

5. Structures of public biosphere - unconscious linguistic, cultural, ideological and other schematisms, myths and social norms that determine the worldview of people belonging to a given culture(cm. Pralogical thinking).

The unconscious nature of the functioning of an essential 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 motives driving a person, intrapersonal conflicts and structures of social B. allows a person to rise to a higher level of control over his behavior. (D. A. Leontiev.)

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