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The Interplay Between the Unconscious and Conscious – and Why It Matters
In order to grasp the nature of consciousness, the scope of exploration needs to include our experience of everyday reality and the material realm, as well as the realm of the unconscious and the dynamic forces that are hidden from—yet fundamental to—consciousness.
This essay explores various theories that explain the dynamics between the “outer” world, the “inner” realm and consciousness.
This exploration may serve to better understand ourselves and the influences that affect our perception and behaviour. Carl Jung, from a psychoanalytical starting point, and Wolfgang Pauli, from a background in quantum physics, demonstrated the ways in which these seemingly distinct paradigms in fact frame a spectrum of various models of the nature of reality and our understanding of consciousness (Main, 2014).
The Relationship Between the Unconscious and Consciousness
It is unfortunate that the term “unconscious” is likely to denote a less significant or unknowable form of consciousness. Whilst the contents of the unconscious may not be known directly, they may be revealed through analysing their effects on consciousness. The interpretation of reality is fundamentally influenced by schemas which are often part of the hermeneutic unconscious—the unconscious that allows for interpretation, giving meaning to our experiences and supporting self-reflection and understanding (Woody & Phillips, 1995).
The potentially therapeutic process of bringing these unconscious influences to conscious awareness allows them to be understood and modified, changing our perception of reality. For example, an individual experiencing self-sabotage often undermines their own development and fails to implement strategies that could support their healing. By exploring their patterns of behaviour, they may realize certain related unconscious schemas, including self-doubt, a sense of worthlessness and a fundamental distrust of others. These schemas can then consciously be modified in order to change the individual’s belief system, replacing their self-sabotaging behaviour with self-healing.
When addressing the relationship between mind and matter, it is pertinent to consider that according to quantum physics, physical entities are more similar to the mind than they are to matter (Stapp, 2009). The unconscious mind conducts complex mental processes that are not usually available for conscious consideration, and provides images and thoughts to the conscious mind, which then perceives what is considered everyday reality (Oschman & Pressman, 2014).
Whilst psychological barriers separate consciousness and the unconscious (Oschman & Pressman, 2014), it is important to realize that these barriers are fluid and dependent on our level of self-awareness and on the ability to recognize the impact of the unconscious in our conscious experiences. That the unconscious can affect the material realm is significantly demonstrated by conversion disorders (Freud, cited in Oschman & Pressman, 2014), in which repressed information manifests as physical symptoms, which in turn may bring this information into consciousness. Examples of conversion disorders may include suppressed anger that is stored in the unconscious mind, manifesting in the physical body as tight hamstrings or unaddressed psychological trauma manifesting as stuttering.
According to Jung, the collective unconscious gives rise to the personal unconscious and consciousness (Frentz, 2011). The collective unconscious is comprised of information that was never conscious and owes its existence to heredity (Ko, 2011). The personal unconscious contains the adaptive unconscious, which processes vast amounts of information necessary for daily functioning, as well as information that was once part of the person’s conscious and has since been forgotten or repressed (Oschman & Pressman, 2014; Frentz, 2011).
Jung regarded the contents of personal consciousness as limited in comparison to that of the collective unconscious (Ko, 2011). Whyte (1962) agrees that the unconscious is more general and inclusive. Athletes may engage with hypnosis, visualization and psychotherapy in order to perform at their optimum level whilst requiring minimal conscious effort. This peak experience is an example of conscious preparation that can trigger unconscious processing (Pressman, 1977, 1979, 1980a, 1980b).
Psychoid Archetypes
The unconscious includes archetypes—inherited instincts of the psyche which predispose individuals to perceive, think, feel and act in certain ways. Archetypes are common to all humans and support individuation—the process of optimizing one’s psychological state (Frentz, 2011). The etymology of the word “archetype” is revealing: “arche” refers to that which is “primal” or “dominant”, and “type” refers to “form” (Jacobi 1959, cited in Stevens 2015, p 52). The archetypes are psychoid—to use the term coined by Jung—in that they consist of and s…