Chapter 16 - The Unconscious

Socrates’ Historical View

• noticed that people often do things that they do not actually want to do

• lack of control

Plotinus Historical View

• “the absence of a conscious perception is no proof of the absence of mental activity

• somewhere behind the scenes, even if you don’t know what you are doing, there is activity in the brain that influences your actions and thoughts

Unconscious

term first used by German philosopher Ernst Platner

• noted that there is activity going on in the brain

Descartes View

• Dualism

  • a strict distinction between the body and the mind

  • all psychological processes are produced by the mind and are therefore “conscious”

cartesian catastrophe

• based on the ideas of dualism

  • it was logically impossible for unconscious processes to exist

Sigmund Freud

• trained as a neurologist (was not initially a psychologist or psychiatrist)

• early research involved searching for eel testicles

• as a physician, he initially looked for physiological causes of disorders

psychodynamic theory of personaility

• relates personality to the interplay of conflicting ‘energy dynamics’ within the individual

• involves both the conscious and unconscious

• created by sigmund freud

conscious mind

• your ego

• your currrent awareness, containing everything you are aware of right now

unconscious mind

• vast and powerful but inaccessible part of your consciousness

• operates without your conscious endorsement or will to influence and guide your behaviours

superego

• set of rules you believe in life

• your idea of right vs. wrong

• superego can become conscious

id

• urges (sexual, violent, glutinous)

• much psychosexual energy that drives these urges

• violent sex obsessed animal that pushes the boundaries of our conscious

• internalizes our urges in life that wouldn’t be tolerated by society

example of psychoanalysis

• freudian slips

  • ex. saying the first thing that comes to mind

    • when you think of the word cat, most people would say dog, except some people would say something else

    • what causes that?

• dream analysis

• case studies

• free associating

Are Freudian slips just errors?

• there are no errors

  • all words have some hidden meaning based on some unconscious thought

carl jung’s take on freud’s idea of the unconscious

• Carl jung was a devoted follower of freuds ideas

  • but eventually strayed away and created his own ideas of the unconscious in multiple parts

personal conscious

• personal experiences and patterns in person’s life

collective unconscious

• collective memories and mythologies of humankind, stretching deep into our ancestral past

jungian archetypes

• universal symbolic images that appear in myths, art, stories, and dreams

• represent the collective unconscious

• can be a figure found in fairy tales, legends, or popular stories

ex. The Hero, the Earth Mother, the Powerful Father, or the Wicked Witch

3 aspects of self archetypes

• Shadow - reflects bestial side of human nature

• Anima - feminine archetype in men

• Animus - masculine archetype in women

Falsifiability

• there has to be a way to prove something wrong

falsifiability and jungian

• the problem is that in jungian archetypes, there is no way to prove them wrong

  • which is why this type of psychology has died out

Hypnosis

• a procedure of inducing a heightened state of suggestibility

• is NOT a trance

• hypnotist simply suggests changes, and the subject is more likely to comply as a result of the hypnosis

• can give specific type of suggestions that can motivate behaviours

3 types of hypnosis suggestions

• ideomotor suggestions - related to specific actions that could be performed

• challenge suggestions - indicate actions that are not performed

• cognitive-perceptual suggestions - involve a subject remembering or forgetting specific info, or experiencing altered perceptions such as reduced pain sensations

two systems of hypnosis

Hypnosis is based on an interaction between two systems:

1. automatic (unconscious) thoughts and behaviours

2. a supervisory system

• AKA executive processing

dissociation theory

• hypnosis is a unique state in which consciousness is divided into two parts:

  • an observer (perceptual system)

  • hidden observer (executive processing)

• when hypnotized, individuals will produce less executive processing (move away from their conscious) and their unconscious will be controlled by the hypnotist’s voice

social-cognitive theory

• explains hypnosis by explaining that the effectiveness of the effects of hypnosis is based on how much people believe in it

  • the more you believe in hypnosis, the more effective its effects will apply

cognitive hypnotherapy

• hypnosis can be used in conjunction with other psychotherapies such as CBT

• most effective for treatment of acute pain (in the moment) by controlling the emotional side of pain

should hyposis be used as evidence in criminal investigation?

• no because when hypnotized, the unconscious is not 100% accurate and memories recovered through hypnosis can be influenced by suggestions from the hypnotists

mind wandering

• unintentional redirection of attention from one’s current task to an unrelated train of thought

• has a negative effect on attention, reading comprehension, and memory

what does research suggest about how often people undergo mind wandering

at least 30% of the time we perform any activity other than sex

default mode network

network of brain regions

• includes the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and medial lateral regions of the parietal lobe

• active when not responding to stimulus or performing a task

  • ex. daydreaming

benefits of mind-wandering

• often associated with thinking about the future

what region of the brain is associated with planning

frontoparietal network

Levinson’s anesthesia experiment and memory study

• doctors had patients go through a fake operation under anesthesia

  • 40% of patients could recall Levinson’s phrasing

  • 80% claimed they could recall some memory of the operation

• shows that there is some awareness when people are under certain types of anesthesia

other studies on anesthesia and memory

• memory was still good when tests occurred within 12 hours following surgery

• effects were will found up to 36 hours post-surgery

• indirect test (ex. stem completion) were more sensitive than direct tests (ex. “List the words”)

what are the effects that anesthesia has on the brain

• DMN and attention networks are suppressed

• sensory networks are relatively preserved

Mere Exposure Effect

• Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc (1980)

• found that rapidly (1msec) flashes of images increased participants’ affective preference for those items

  • participants did not consciously perceive the items, but they were still unconsciously influenced

subjective thresholds

• Marcel (1983) calculated threshold for consciousness of each individual

  • tested how fast can someone identify if it is a word or not

  • demonstrated subliminal semantic priming

    • failure to identify the exact word causes the unconscious mind to create a similar word

  • suggests that our unconscious is relatively smart

how do researchers study consciousness

• need to have conscious and unconscious perceptions lead to qualitatively different patterns of data

  • ex. exclusion task

Continuous flash suppression (CFS)

• dynamic flashing stimuli are presented to one eye through goggles

  • this changing stimulus will suppress the perception of a static image presented to the other eye

  • however fearful faces break through this suppression more quickly than neutral faces

  • unconscious system will alert the brain about more “important” stimuli or images, making these images more readably identifiable to the conscious system

binocular rivalry

• different stimuli presented to each eye can lead t different brain representations

• but we can only report one conscious percept

brain activity and the unconscious

• brain regions become more active even before stimulus appears

• its like our unconscious is getting ready to be stimulated to be conscious

• may predict subsequent physical responses and target selections

Eureka experience

moment when an idea enters conscious awareness during the creative process

distractor task

irrelevant tasks assigned to us in between learning info and recalling it

• gives us goals/motivation, which helps us ignore other irrelevant stimuli that would distract our attention