- Deeper mental processes of which you are not aware.
- Stores repressed thoughts and feelings
- Occurs automatically
- Processes information faster than conscious processes
- Unconscious thoughts and feelings manifest every waking hour and also during unexpected situations, often caused by a trigger
- Evolved as a behavioral guidance system
- Unconscious processes are smart and adaptive throughout the living world
- Attention, perception and emotion can be both conscious and unconscious
- Unconscious processes play a major role in triggering mental illness
- Unconscious processes are often in conflict with one another and with other parts of the mind.
- Psychological symptoms are caused by these inner conflicts, and they often resolve through insight/interpretation – bringing unconscious conflicts into awareness
- The unconscious decides to act, we then become consciously aware of wanting to execute the action, and finally we act.
- The process of unconscious thoughts sometimes leads to a “Eureka” moment whereby the creative product enters consciousness
- We can be conscious of things that we hardly pay attention to (e.g., daydreaming), and we can be paying a lot of attention to something we are temporarily unaware of (such as keeping an issue “in the back of our head” to resolve it).
