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The unconscious mind should not be confused with "being unconscious" and unconsciousness which is loss of consciousness.
The idea originated in antiquity, and its more modern history is detailed in Henri F Ellenberger's Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic Books, 1970).
Certain philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud such as Leibniz and Schopenhauer developed ideas foreshadowing the subconscious. The new medical science of psychoanalysis established by Freud and his disciples popularized this and similar notions such as the role of the libido (sex drive) and the self-destructive urge of thanatos (death wish), and the famous Oedipus complex wherein a son seeks to "kill" his father to make love to his own mother.
The term was popularized by Freud. He developed the idea that there were layers to human consciousness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. He thought that certain psychic events take place "below the surface", or in the unconscious mind. A good example is dreaming, which Freud called the "royal road to the unconscious".
In another of Freud's systematizations, the mind is divided into the Conscious mind or Ego and two parts of the Unconscious: the Id or instinctsInstinct is the word used to describe inherent dispositions towards particular actions. Instincts are generally an inherited pattern of responses or reactions to certain kinds of situations. In humans, they are most easily observed in responses to emotion and the Superego. Freud used the idea of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior. (See psychoanalysis.)
Many modern philosophers and social scientists either dispute the concept of an unconscious, or argue that it is not an entity that can be scientifically investigated or discussed rationally. In the social sciences, this view was first brought forward by John WatsonJohn Broadus Watson ( January 9, 1878 September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He is famous for boasting, facetiously, that he could take any 20 human infants, and by applying behavioural te, considered to be the first American behaviouristSocial philosophy Behaviorism (or behaviourism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. Within that broad approach, there are different emphases. Some behaviorists argue simply t. Among philosophers, Karl PopperKarl Raimund Popper ( July 28, 1902 September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born, British philosopher of science. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philoso was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents. Popper claimed that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiableThis page discusses how a theory or assertion is "falsifiable" ("disprovable" opp: "verifiable"), rather than the non-philosophical use of " falsification", meaning "counterfeiting. The idea comes from the work of the philosophers Sir Karl Popper and Erne.
However, there is agreement among many, perhaps most, psychologists and cognitive scientists that much mental functioning takes place in a part of the mind inaccessible to consciousness.
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung ( July 26, 1875 June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the neopsychoanalytic school of psychology. At university, he was a student of Krafft-Ebing. For a time, Jung was Freud's heir-apparent in the psychoanalytic school. developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious into two parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconsciousCollective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, and was originally coined by Carl Jung. He distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, which is particular to each human being. The collective unconscious refers to tha. The first of these corresponds to Freud's idea of the subconscious, though unlike his mentor, Jung believed that the personal unconscious contained a valuable counter-balance to the conscious mind, as well as childish urges. As for the collective unconscious, which consists of archetypes, this is the common store of mental building blocks that makes up the psyche of all humans. Evidence for its existence is the universality of certain symbols that appear in the mythologies of nearly all peoples.There are other views. Jane Roberts (in the Seth books) presents a rich portrait of consciousness in which the unconscious mind is described as being clairvoyant and in communication with all other minds. The self that each of us experiences day-to-day is described as being but one facet of a richer and very complex multi-dimensional entity.