Hello and welcome to PsychEd. This video is going to be the first video in a series of videos I'm going to be doing on Freud's psychoanalytic theory. How he kind of started developing his model of the mind and how he progressed throughout the years. This video is focusing on Freud's ideas of the unconscious mind. So in the early 1900s, 1900 to 1905, Freud developed a topographical model of the mind. where he described the features of the mind's structure and the function of the mind. So here you've got to be cautious to distinguish between the mind as a kind of abstract idea versus the brain as a biological structure. They are separate according to Freud's models. Famously, Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. So on this surface... which is only 10% of what the mind constitutes, is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are our focus of our attention at this moment. The first level of consciousness is known as the conscious state and refers to our immediate awareness. We make use of our conscious mind when we take an input from our senses, analyze the information, and then make decisions based on that information. For instance, you could be deciding now if it's worth continuing to watch this video based on what you've heard so far. And my hope as I'm recording this video is that, yeah, I hope you do stick around for the rest of it. The next level of consciousness is the subconscious or the pre-conscious. The pre-consciousness consists of all that can be retrieved from memory. We can consider it as the storehouse of all remembered experiences and impressions that are left on the mind by such experiences. As well as the tendencies that are awakened or reinforced by these impressions, the preconscious mind contains thoughts and feelings that a person is not currently aware of. But, we can easily bring those pre-conscious thoughts to consciousness. You can think of the pre-consciousness as a type of mental waiting room in which thoughts remain until they succeed in attracting the eye of the conscious, as Freud wrote in 1924. This is what we mean in our everyday usage of the word available memory. For example, you are not presently thinking about what you had for dinner last night. But now that it's mentioned, you are. you should be able to recall it with ease, unless you happen to suffer from retrograde amnesia. Additionally, mild emotional experiences may be stored in the preconsciousness, but sometimes more traumatic and powerful negative emotions are repressed and hence not available in the preconsciousness, so we can't easily bring them to mind. But that's because our mind is protecting us from the negative effects of those experiences. The third and most significant region, of the iceberg that is our mind is the unconscious. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part that we cannot see. This is made up of thoughts and memories and primitive and instinctual desires that are buried deep within ourselves, far below and often unretrievable from our conscious awareness. Even though we're not aware of their existence, Freud believed that these unconscious processes, these thoughts and memories and experiences, have a substantial and significant influence in our behavior. The unconscious mind acts as a repository or a cauldron of knowledge. primitive wishes and impulses, kept at bay and mediated by the preconscious area. For instance, Freud in 1915 found that some events and desires were often too frightening or too painful for his patients to acknowledge, and believed that such information was locked away in the unconscious mind. This can happen through a process of repression, which is a defense mechanism. Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind. And a primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behaviour to a greater degree than most people suspect. Indeed the ultimate goal of psychoanalysis is to bring forth the unconscious to the conscious, so these repressed, hurtful and trauma-ridden experiences can be dealt with in a conscious manner. According to Freud, the unconscious mind is the primary source of human behaviour. So what governs us, what is essentially, quintessentially us as individuals, are experiences that we can't even really bring to our conscious mind. That's it for this video. Let me know what you think, whether you agree with Freudian ideas of consciousness, preconsciousness and unconsciousness. As always, thanks for watching and I'll see you all next time.