Subconscious Mind
An aspect of the mind that operates outside of ordinary conscious awareness but which exerts tremendous influence on how we feel, think, perceive and behave. The subconscious mind is a hidden storehouse of memory, deep feeling, desires, motives, thought and other aspects of mind with which most people are not aware. It contains a catalogue of one’s life experiences, along with the thoughts and feelings associated with important events in the past, all of which are stored in the form of subtle impressions in the subconscious mind. When, in the course of day-to-day experience, specific conditions arise that “cue” the content of the subconscious, these subtle impressions can surface into conscious awareness. The subconscious comes to the fore any time a person is doing something by rote memory, like brushing their teeth or driving a car – things people do “without even thinking about them” (in which case, the subconscious mind is doing their thinking for them). In psychology, certain forms of psychotherapy (the psychoanalytic method in particular) and hypnosis are used to access the content of the subconscious mind, often for the purpose of releasing repressed emotional pain and distorted thought. Within the field of psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were early pioneers who developed models for understanding the subconscious mind (often referred to in the literature as “the unconscious”).
