The Subconscious and Conscious Mind

What distinguishes the conscious-unconscious polarity is the degree of accessibility or awareness of behavior of ones own introspection, that is, the range with which we can refer exactly to our activity. Unconscious, in the term “unconscious mental processes” mean all mental processes except those discrete aspects of brief phase which enter awareness as they occur. The unconscious reminds us that human objectivity and freedom certain limitations. “Conscious” is a subjective term without, as yet,(i) interpretation in terms of physiological structure, or(ii) explanation of its function. Conscious, expresses the normal idea of awareness that the individual has of himself or of things as they are present. In short, consciousness involves a) monitoring ourselves and our environment so that percepts, memories, and thoughts are represented in awareness; and b) controlling ourselves and our environment so that we are able to terminate the behavioral and cognitive activities. And subconscious, comprises all that area of psychic experience which is not present t the actual consciousness of the individual and cannot be evoked at leisure.

            We spend about one-third of our lives in the altered state of consciousness called sleep. But first, what is sleep? Sleep is a state during which brain activity differs from that during the waking state. Sleep is an active mental process that does not involve a “turning off” of the brain as scientists once believed. Although sleep is a natural state, we knew little about sleep patterns until the sleep studies on the 1960s and 1970s. These studies revealed that we alternate between two different stages of sleep known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, during which most dreaming takes place. Each type of sleep exhibits different physiological features. There are at least four different stages of sleep have been identified, and each state is associated with characteristic brain waves. A fifth stage of sleep, the period during which dreaming takes place. The first stage of sleep is called the light sleep of the falling asleep stage- a very short stage, usually occurring a few minutes after bed time. The person is easy to wake and may not realize he has been asleep if awakened. Stage two of sleep is characterized by sudden bursts of fast wave activity from the front regions of the head (called sleep spindles). The third stage is somewhat similar to stage two and is also marked by large, slow changes in voltage. The sleeper is hard to wake and unresponsive to stimuli. Stage four is the deepest level of sleep, characterized by the largest, slowest waves (1-3 cycles per second), which are called delta waves. Delta sleep occurs in 15-or-20 minute segments (interspersed with lighter stages) during the first half of the night.

Introduction to Dreams

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A dream is not your creative vision for your life in the future.

You must break out your current comfort zone and become

comfortable with the unfamiliar and unknown.

-Denis Waitley-

            DREAMS are series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring to sleep; a resemblance or reality or event occurring to one asleep; condensed, elaborate, symbolized, or otherwise distorted images of memories of unconscious impulse experienced especially during the sleep but also during other lapses in attention the meaning of which is concealed from the ego; also: the verbal or written report of images or experiences (Merriam- Webster Dictionary).

            This study is mainly about why people dream, its importance and interpretation or guess of what our dream means. This study aims to help us answer some of our questions about dreams and help us to perform our tasks specifically to describe the subconscious mind versus conscious mind, to explain the reasons why we dream, and to know the importance of dreams and enable us to know or interpret what it means. The significances of the study are for us to explain how and why our subconscious minds especially dreams, influence conscious mind and vice versa; for us to know the reasons why we dream; help us in answering some of our questions and problems related to dreams; and to help us guessing or understanding what our dreams mean.

            According to Cecini, A.(1992.pp.39-52), Freud considered dreams as the royal road to the understanding of the unconscious, because the state of sleep weakens the internal censor. All of us dream four to five times every night, though we may not remember them. Dreams are the guardian of sleep. In fact, it is possible to find the testimonies of dreams in somatic modifications which occur during sleep. Through the analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG graph), four different phases of depths can be identified in sleep. In general, sleep is deeper in the beginning of the night and continues to diminish in depth. In certain cases there is a second phase of deep sleep in the second half of the night.

            Dreams can never be photographed. In fact, as the self centers the area of logical thought little by little, it introduces in its dream a logical state, and by narrating, fulfills a “secondary elaboration” that is an unconscious process of censure and selection. Repressed impulses are expressed through dreams, also tendencies or interests, in which the individual does not have a clear knowledge. Dreams offer us the possibility of expressing certain unconscious aspects of our own selves, not only those censured, as was maintained by Freud, but also the affective side of which we do not have full knowledge, as held by the cognitive theory of Jung who sees dreams as the expression of the desire to know. Then the dream would absolve the function of indicating what are the important themes for the development of the personality that still remain in the shadow.

            The conscious impulses are responsible for dreams and that the aim of the dream is the gratification of some drive. The real meaning of the dream (its latent content) is not expressed directly but appears in disguised form. What is remembered in this disguised form is the manifest content of the dream. Freud declares that dreams represented pent-up emotional stresses and the basic desires that we repress or deny. In sleep with the “social censor” off guard, these repressed forces thrust to the surface as dreams. We can see, then why psychoanalysis attached such great importance to the content of the dreams. According to the psychoanalysis theory, dreams are clues to a person’s personality.