Psychology · Ch 2 — Self and Personality
Levels of Consciousness
Levels of Consciousness
The Three Levels of Consciousness
Freud’s theory is fundamentally about emotional conflicts — where they come from, what consequences they have, and how people try to manage them. To explain this, Freud pictured the human mind as having three distinct levels of consciousness. These levels are not separate compartments but layers, with the deepest layer holding the most hidden material.
The conscious level is the surface. It contains everything a person is aware of at any given moment — thoughts, feelings, and actions that are in the present focus of attention. This is the smallest part of the mind.
The preconscious level lies just below the surface. It holds mental activity that is not currently in awareness but can be brought into consciousness easily if a person pays close attention. Memories you can recall when asked, or facts you know but are not thinking about right now, belong here.
The unconscious level is the deepest and largest part of the mind. It contains mental activity of which a person is completely unaware. According to Freud, the unconscious is a reservoir of instinctive or animal drives — raw, primitive urges that operate below awareness. It also stores all ideas and wishes that have been concealed from conscious awareness, often because acknowledging them would create psychological conflict.
Most of the material hidden in the unconscious arises from sexual desires that cannot be expressed openly in society. Because these desires are unacceptable, they are repressed — pushed down into the unconscious so the person does not have to face them.
The Struggle with Unconscious Impulses
People are constantly engaged in a struggle. On one side, unconscious impulses demand expression. On the other side, society and personal conscience demand that these impulses be kept hidden. The result is that people try to find socially acceptable ways to express unconscious drives — for example, channelling aggressive impulses into competitive sports or sexual energy into creative work. When that fails, they try to keep those impulses from being expressed at all.
When this struggle is unsuccessful — when the conflict between unconscious impulses and conscious controls is not resolved — the outcome is abnormal behaviour. Psychological disorders, in Freud’s view, are the result of failed attempts to manage these deep conflicts.
Accessing the Unconscious
The unconscious does not reveal itself directly, but it does leak out. Freud believed that certain everyday phenomena give us a way to approach the unconscious:
- Forgetting — especially forgetting things that are emotionally charged or embarrassing
- Mispronunciations — what are now called "Freudian slips," where a person accidentally says something that reveals a hidden thought
- Jokes — humour often expresses forbidden wishes in a disguised, socially acceptable form
- Dreams — Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious," because during sleep the mind’s defences are lowered and repressed material can surface in symbolic form