What is conscious and unconscious. Conscious and unconscious in the human psyche

4. Unconscious and conscious

The problem of the unconscious and conscious in philosophical anthropology, reflecting the mental and biological aspects of human existence, is closely related to the issue of the biological and social.

For a long time, philosophy was dominated by the principle of anthropological rationalism; man, his motives of behavior and existence itself were considered only as a manifestation of conscious life. This view found its vivid embodiment in the famous Cartesian thesis “cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I exist”). In this regard, man acted only as a “reasonable man.” But, starting from modern times, the problem of the unconscious occupies an increasing place in philosophical anthropology. Authors such as Leibniz, Kant. Kierkegaard, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, with different sides and positions begin to analyze the role and significance of mental processes that are not consciously realized by a person.

The decisive influence on the development of this problem was exerted by Z. Freud, who opened a whole direction in philosophical anthropology and established the unconscious as the most important factor human dimension and existence. He represented the unconscious as a powerful force that opposes consciousness. According to his concept, the human psyche consists of three layers. This has already been discussed in previous sections of this teaching aid. Here we just recall that the lowest and most powerful layer – “It” (Id) is located outside of consciousness. In terms of volume, it is comparable to the underwater part of an iceberg. It concentrates various biological drives and passions, primarily of a sexual nature, and ideas repressed from consciousness. Then follows a relatively small layer of consciousness - this is the “I” (Ego) of a person. The upper layer of the human spirit – the “Super Ego” – is the ideals and norms of society, the sphere of obligation and moral censorship. According to Freud, the personality, the human “I” is forced to constantly be tormented and torn between Scylla and Charybdis - the unconscious condemned impulses of the “It” and the moral and cultural censorship of the “Super-Ego”. Thus, it turns out that a person’s own “I” – the consciousness of a person is not “the master in his own home" It is the sphere of “It”, entirely subordinate to the principle of pleasure and enjoyment, that, according to Freud, has a decisive influence on a person’s thoughts, feelings and actions. Man is, first of all, a being controlled and driven by sexual aspirations and sexual energy (libido).

The drama of human existence in Freud is enhanced by the fact that among the unconscious drives there is also an innate tendency towards destruction and aggression, which finds its ultimate expression in the “death instinct” opposed to the “life instinct”. The inner world of man, therefore, also turned out to be an arena of struggle between these two drives. In the end. Eros and Thanatos are considered by him as the two most powerful forces that determine human behavior.

Thus, Freudian man turned out to be woven from a whole series of contradictions between biological drives and conscious social norms, conscious and unconscious, the instinct of life and the instinct of death. But in the end, the biological unconscious principle turns out to be decisive for him. Man, according to Freud, is primarily an erotic being, controlled by unconscious instincts.

The problem of the unconscious was also of interest to the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung. However, he opposed the interpretation of man as an erotic being and tried to more deeply differentiate Freud's “It”. As already noted. Jung identified in it, in addition to the “personal unconscious” as a reflection of individual experience in the psyche, a deeper layer - the “collective unconscious”, which is a reflection of the experience of previous generations. The content of the collective unconscious, according to it, consists of universal human prototypes - archetypes (for example, the image of the motherland, folk hero, hero, etc.). The set of archetypes forms the experience of previous generations, which is inherited by new generations. Archetypes underlie myths, dreams, symbolism artistic creativity. The essential core of personality is the unity of the individual and collective unconscious, but the latter is still of primary importance. Man, therefore, is first of all an archetypal being.

The problem of the unconscious and conscious was also developed by other representatives of psychoanalysis - followers of Freud, who clarified and developed his teaching, making their own adjustments to it. Thus, A. Adler criticized Freud’s teachings, which exaggerate the biological and erotic determination of man. According to him, a person is not only a biological, but also a social being, whose life activity is connected with conscious interests, therefore “the unconscious does not contradict consciousness,” as is the case with Freud. Thus, Adler, to a certain extent, already sociologizes the unconscious and tries to remove the contradiction between the unconscious and consciousness in the consideration of man.

American neo-Freudian social psychologist and sociologist E. Fromm opposed the biologization and erotization of the unconscious and criticized Freud's theory of the antagonism between the essence of man and culture. But at the same time, he rejected sociologizing interpretations of man. According to him own confession, his point of view is “neither biological nor social.” One of the most important factors in human development, according to Fromm, is the contradiction arising from the dual nature of man, who is part of nature and is subject to its laws, but at the same time he is also a subject endowed with reason, a social being. He calls this contradiction the “existential dichotomy.” It is connected with the fact that due to the lack of strong instincts that help animals in life, a person must make decisions guided by his consciousness. But it turns out that the results are not always productive, which gives rise to anxiety and worry. Therefore, “the price that a person pays for consciousness.” - this is his uncertainty.

Assessing the role of the unconscious in the concept of Freud and his followers, it should be said that the very formulation of the problem is the undoubted merit of Freud. The approach to man and his existence through the relationship between the unconscious and consciousness introduced new aspects into the philosophical understanding of this problem. However, at the same time, Freud clearly absolutizes the role of the unconscious. Having spoken out against the absolutization of the role of consciousness in human life, representatives of this trend went to the other extreme. Thus, for Freud, libido (sexual energy) turned out to be the quintessence of man.

However, the evolution of Freudianism indicates that representatives of psychoanalysis increasingly moved away from Freud’s orthodox concept, leaning towards greater recognition of the role of consciousness and influence social factor for personality development. So, according to Fromm, new era related to the functioning market relations in the conditions of developed capitalism,” gives birth to a “new type of person,” which he describes as a “market character.” “A person with a market character,” he writes, “perceives everything as a commodity. - not only things, but also the person himself, including her physical energy, skills, knowledge, opinions, feelings, even smiles... and his main goal is to make a profitable deal in any situation.” An alternative to the society of “possession”, which gives rise to the “market man,” must be a society in which the existence of man himself is put in first place. He associates a change in the way of human existence and his character precisely with a change in society itself, in which the main principle of human existence will be “to be” and not “to have.”

Thus, the development of the problem of the unconscious made a significant contribution to the study of the structure of individual and social consciousness, delimiting the area of ​​the human psyche into the sphere of the conscious and unconscious. In this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to such a now widespread concept as mentality (mentality) (from the Latin mens - mind, thinking, mental disposition). By this we mean the deep level of individual and collective consciousness, including the unconscious. It contains a set of attitudes and predispositions of an individual or social group act, think and perceive the world in a certain way. If we mean the mentality of an individual, then it is formed on the basis of traditions, culture and social environment people and, in turn, influences them.

The human mentality originates in the sociocultural traditions and value patterns of the historical past of the people. Hence its characteristic feature is inertia. It changes much more slowly than socio-political and economic conditions or the dominant forms of people's social consciousness. By its very nature, it offers, although little realized, quite strong resistance to a relatively rapidly changing social existence, including official ideology.

The concept of mentality is reflected in the works of many researchers. For example, the famous French philosopher and psychologist L. Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939), one of whose main works “Primitive Thinking” (“La mentalite primitive”), distinguishes in it two types of mentality – pre-logical and logical. He considers the first type of mentality in connection with the thinking of primitive people. It, Lévy-Bruhl believed, is fundamentally “pre-logical”, because it does not strive (like ours) to avoid contradictions, and mystical, because it contains collective ideas that are mystical in essence. For primitive man The most important are the mysterious forces and spirits. In contrast, our thinking has ceased to be pre-logical, because it strives to avoid contradictions. At the same time, it has ceased to be mystical, at least as far as most of the objects around us are concerned. E. Fromm’s concepts such as “ social character", "market character" and others, may also well serve as analogues of collective and individual mentality. But even before these authors, F. M. Dostoevsky, as noted earlier, essentially formulated its basic meaning and significance, although he did not use the term “mentality” itself.

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Conscious and unconscious

The division of the psyche into conscious and unconscious is the main premise of psychoanalysis, and only it gives it the opportunity to understand and introduce to science frequently observed and very important pathological processes in mental life. Psychoanalysis cannot transfer the essence of the psyche into consciousness, but must consider consciousness as a quality of the psyche, which may or may not be attached to its other qualities.

To be conscious is primarily a purely descriptive term that relies on the most immediate and reliable perception. Experience shows that a mental element, for example an idea, usually does not remain conscious for a long time. It is characteristic that the state of consciousness quickly passes; a representation that is conscious at a given moment ceases to be so at the next moment, but can become conscious again under certain, easily achievable conditions. We know what it was like at the intermediate moment; one might say that it was latent, meaning that it was capable of becoming conscious at any moment. If we say that it was unconscious, then we also give the correct description. This unconscious in this case coincides with the latent or potentially conscious.

The unconscious can be understood as two different things: firstly, it is an action performed automatically, reflexively, when the reason for it has not yet reached consciousness, and also during a natural loss of consciousness (in a dream, during hypnosis, in a state of severe intoxication, during sleepwalking etc.), secondly, they are active mental processes, not directly involved in conscious attitude of the subject to reality, and therefore themselves at the moment are not conscious.

Scientists came to the term or concept of the unconscious in a different way, through the development of experience in which mental dynamics play a large role. They were forced to admit that there are very intense mental processes or ideas that can have the same consequences for mental life as all other ideas, by the way, and such consequences that can be recognized as ideas, although in reality they do not become conscious.

Starts here psychoanalytic theory, which argues that such representations do not become conscious because they are opposed known power that without this they could become conscious, and then we would see how little they differ from the rest of the generally recognized psychic elements. This theory turns out to be irrefutable due to the fact that psychoanalytic technique has found means by which the opposing force can be eliminated and the corresponding ideas can be brought to consciousness. The state in which they were before consciousness is called repression by scientists, and the force that led to repression and supported it is felt by psychologists during their psychoanalytic work as resistance.

Psychoanalysis – general theory and a method of treating nervous and mental diseases. Psychoanalysis arose at the beginning of the century as one of the areas of medical psychology, first through the efforts of S. Freud and then his followers, and gradually turned into a teaching that claims to be an original solution to almost all worldview problems. At the same time, it became part of the daily existence of millions of people in Western Europe and, especially, in the USA. Psychoanalysis is a philosophical study of man, social philosophy, thus belonging to factors of an ideological order.

Having understood that there is conscious and unconscious, we can highlight the following basic provisions, which will be more fully described below: the unconscious that dominates the psyche is delayed in the depths of the psyche by “censorship” - a mental authority formed under the influence of a system of social prohibitions - taboos. In special “conflict” cases, unconscious drives “deceive” the censor and appear before consciousness under the guise of dreams, slips of the tongue, typos, neurotic symptoms (manifestations of diseases), etc. Since the mental cannot be reduced to the somatic (physical), then it is necessary to study the psyche using special methods that were developed by S. Freud and his followers. These methods are designed to guess their true meaning behind the obvious meaning (or apparent meaninglessness) of the manifestations of the unconscious.

Along with conscious forms of reflection and activity, humans are also characterized by those that are, as it were, beyond the “threshold” of consciousness.

A person’s mental activity, his psyche function simultaneously in three interconnected levels: unconscious, subconscious And conscious.

Consciousness does not always control actions and feelings, or determine the direction of our thoughts. There is also the unconscious. Often it is precisely this driving force and determines a person’s behavior style.

Unconscious level mental activity is an innate instinctive-reflex activity. Behavioral acts at the unconscious level are regulated by unconscious biological mechanisms. They are aimed at satisfaction biological needs- preservation of the organism and species (procreation). However, the genetically determined program of human behavior is not autonomous; it is under the control of higher and later formed brain structures. And only in certain critical situations for the individual (for example, in a state of passion) can this sphere of the human psyche go into the mode of autonomous self-regulation. (3, p.37)

There is also unconscious memory- this is the memory that is associated with long-term and genetic memory. This is the memory that controls thinking, imagination, attention, determining the content of a person’s thoughts at a given moment in time, his images, objects to which attention is directed.

There are also unconscious motivation, influencing the direction and nature of actions, much more that is not realized by a person in mental processes, properties and states.

S. Freud made a great contribution to the development of the problems of the personal unconscious.

The unconscious in a person’s personality is those qualities, interests, needs, etc. that a person is not aware of in himself, but which are inherent in him and manifest themselves in a variety of involuntary reactions, actions, and mental phenomena. One of the groups- erroneous actions: slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, errors when writing or listening to words. At the core second group conscious phenomena, lies the involuntary forgetting of names, promises, intentions, objects, events and other things that are directly or indirectly associated for a person with unpleasant experiences. Third group unconscious phenomena of a personal nature, belongs to the category of ideas and is associated with perception, memory and imagination: dreams, reveries, daydreams.

Slips of the tongue are unconsciously determined articulatory speech acts associated with distortion of the sound basis and meaning of spoken words. Such distortions, especially their semantic nature, are not accidental. Z. Freud argued that they reveal motives, thoughts, and experiences hidden from the consciousness of the individual. Reservations arise from the collision of a person’s unconscious intentions, his other motives with a consciously set goal of behavior, which is in conflict with ulterior motive. When the subconscious overcomes the conscious, a reservation arises. This is the psychological mechanism underlying all erroneous actions: they “arise due to the interaction, or better yet, the opposition of two different intentions.” Which in turn also indicates the presence of dialectics: the unity and struggle of opposites.

Forgetting names is another example of the unconscious. It is associated with some unpleasant feelings of the forgetter towards the person who wears forgotten name, or to events associated with this name. Such forgetting usually occurs against the will of the speaker, and this situation is typical for most cases of forgetting names.

Dreams constitute a special category of the unconscious. The content of dreams, according to Freud, is associated with a person’s unconscious desires, feelings, intentions, and his unsatisfied or not fully satisfied important life needs.

At the same time, it should be recognized that in the light of available scientific data, the question of the relationship between conscious and other levels of mental regulation of behavior, in particular the unconscious, remains complex and is not resolved completely unambiguously. The main reason for this is the fact that there are different types of unconscious mental phenomena that relate differently to consciousness. There are unconscious psychic phenomena located on a subconscious level. (4, pp.139-142)

Subconscious level mental activity - generalized, automated in the experience of a given individual stereotypes of his behavior - ability, skills, habits, intuition. This is the behavioral core of an individual, formed in the early stages of his development. This also includes the impulsive-emotional sphere, i.e. unconscious aspirations of the individual, his drives, passions, attitudes. This is an involuntary sphere of personality, “a person’s second nature,” the “center” of individual behavioral patterns and behavior patterns.

The subconscious itself obviously has a multi-level structure: automatisms and their complexes at the lower level and intuition- at the highest level. Automatisms the subconscious level is a complex of stereotypically performed actions in typical situations, dynamic stereotypes are chain sequences of reactions in a familiar environment (habitual control of equipment, performance of habitual duties, manner of handling familiar objects, speech and facial clichés). These behavioral automatisms relieve consciousness for more qualified activities. Consciousness is freed from constant repeated solutions to standardized problems.

Various complexes- unfulfilled desires, suppressed aspirations, various fears and worries, ambitions and inflated claims (narcissism, inferiority, etc.). These complexes tend to overcompensate, drawing large energy potential in the sphere of the subconscious, they form a stable subconscious orientation of the individual’s behavior. Subconscious manifestations are always present in the processes of consciousness; they are responsible for processing subthreshold (unconscious) influences, form unconscious impulses, emotionally orient consciousness towards the most significant parties activities. The subconscious is the sphere of internal states and attitudes, including those of the higher, moral level. The subconscious is actively involved in all cases when the possibilities of conscious activity are exhausted (with affects, stress conditions, in situations of extreme mental stress).

The highest sphere of the subconscious - intuition (sometimes even called superconsciousness) is a process instant insights, comprehensive coverage problematic situation, the emergence of unexpected decisions, unconscious anticipation of the development of events based on a spontaneous generalization of previous experience. However, intuitive decisions do not arise only in the subconscious. Intuition satisfies the request of consciousness for a certain complex block previously received information.

The extraconscious sphere of the human psyche is the deepest sphere of his psyche, a conglomerate of archetypes, formed to a large extent in the process of human evolution.

In the sphere of the extraconscious lie the roots of such phenomena as faith, hope and love, as well as various parapsychological phenomena (clairvoyance, telepathy). Phobias, fears, hysterical fantasies, spontaneous anxiety and joyful anticipation - all this is also the sphere of the subconscious. An individual’s readiness to act in various situations in a certain way, without prior deliberation, impulsively also refers to manifestations of the extraconscious sphere of the psyche.

The sphere of the subconscious is very stable and motionless. Behavior on a subconscious level can be somewhat adjusted only by methods of psychotherapy and hypnosis.

Processes that begin in the unconscious sphere can continue in consciousness. And vice versa, the conscious can displace into the subconscious sphere.

S. Freud considered the sphere of the unconscious to be a source of motivational energy that is in conflict with consciousness.

Unlike S. Freud, another psychoanalyst, C. G. Jung, not only did not oppose consciousness and subconscious, but believed that consciousness is based on the deep layers of the collective unconscious, on archetypes - ideas formed among humanity in the distant past. Where it is not thought, not consciousness, but feeling, the subconscious that tells us what is good for us and what is bad.

Consciousness is armed with concepts, the subconscious - with emotions and feelings. At the subconscious level, an instant assessment of the perceived object or phenomenon and its compliance with the norms recorded in the subconscious occurs. (3, pp.37-40)

A person’s mental activity, his psyche functions simultaneously at three interconnected levels - unconscious, subconscious and conscious.

Unconscious level mental activity - innate instinctive-reflex activity. Behavioral acts at the unconscious level are regulated by unconscious biological mechanisms. They are aimed at satisfying biological needs - self-preservation of the organism and the species (procreation).

However, the biologically determined program of human behavior is not autonomous - it is under the control of higher and later formed brain structures. And only in certain critical situations for the individual (for example, in a state of passion) the sphere of the unconscious can move into the mode of autonomous self-regulation. Structurally, it is localized in the lower parts of the brain.

Subconscious level mental activity - generalized, automated in the experience of a given individual stereotypes of his behavior - skills, habits, intuition. This is the behavioral core of the individual, formed in the early stages of his development; involuntary sphere of personality, “second nature of a person”, “center” of individual behavioral patterns, unconscious behavior patterns this person. This also includes the impulsive-emotional sphere of the individual, structurally localized in the limbic (subcortical) system of the brain. Here the unconscious aspirations of the individual, his attractions, passions, and attitudes are formed.

The subconscious itself obviously has a multi-level structure - automatisms and their complexes at the lower level and intuition at the highest.

Automatisms subconscious level - complexes of stereotypically performed actions in typical situations, dynamic stereotypes - chain sequences of reactions in a familiar environment (habitual control of equipment, performance of habitual duties, manner of handling familiar objects, speech and facial features). All this forms a set of ready-made behavioral blocks that the individual uses when regulating his activities. Behavioral automatisms relieve consciousness for more qualified activities. Consciousness is freed from constant repeated solutions to standardized problems.

Various complexes- unfulfilled desires, suppressed aspirations, various fears and worries, ambitions and inflated claims (complexes of narcissism, inferiority, shyness, etc.). These complexes tend to overcompensate. Drawing great energy potential from the subconscious, they form a stable subconscious direction of the individual’s behavior.

The highest sphere of the subconscious - intuition(sometimes even called superconsciousness) is a process of instant insights, comprehensive coverage of a problem situation, the emergence of unexpected solutions, unconscious anticipation of the development of events based on a spontaneous generalization of previous experience. However, intuitive decisions do not arise only in the subconscious. Intuition is the satisfaction of the consciousness’s request for a certain complex block of previously received information.

The connection between consciousness and subconsciousness is manifested in the integrative mental quality - in the human intellect, the complex of its mental abilities, cognitive style of behavior, in involuntary memorization.

The extraconscious sphere of the human psyche is the deepest sphere of his psyche, a conglomerate of archetypes, formed, to a large extent, in the process of human evolution. Dreams, intuition, affect, panic, hypnosis - this is far from full list unconscious and subconscious phenomena.

The roots of such a human phenomenon as faith also lie in the sphere of the extraconscious. This also obviously includes hope and love, various parapsychic phenomena (clairvoyance, telepathy, extrasensory phenomena). Phobias, fears, hysterical fantasies, spontaneous anxiety and joyful anticipation - all this is also the sphere of the subconscious. An individual’s readiness to act in various situations in a certain way, without prior thinking, impulsively, is also a manifestation of the extraconscious sphere of the psyche.

The dominants of the subconscious modify the conscious activity of the individual, create psychological barriers that are unclear to him and difficult to overcome attractions. The sphere of the subconscious is very stable and motionless. Its mechanisms largely typify the behavior of an individual, which can be somewhat corrected only by the methods of psychotherapy and hypnosis.

Psychoanalysis, the theory of the subconscious created by Z. Freud, turned out to be so tenacious, despite its fierce criticism, not because of the impeccability of the constructions of the Viennese psychiatrist and psychologist, but because of the basic essence of the sphere of the human subconscious.

The criterion of the unconscious is its lack of accountability, involuntary, non-verbalization (verbal lack of formality).

Processes that begin in the unconscious sphere can continue in consciousness. Conversely, the conscious can be repressed into the subconscious sphere. The interaction of the conscious and extraconscious can be carried out in concert - synergistically or antagonistically, contradictorily, manifesting itself in a variety of incompatible human actions and intrapersonal conflict.

The extraconscious sphere of the psyche is not an object of reflection, self-reflection, or voluntary self-control. The sphere of the unconscious 3. Freud considered the source of motivational energy to be in conflict with consciousness. Prohibitions social sphere create, according to Freud, a “censorship” of consciousness, suppress the energy of subconscious drives that manifest themselves in neurotic breakdowns. In an effort to get rid of conflict states, the individual resorts to to defense mechanisms - repression, sublimation, replacement, rationalization and regression. 3. Freud exaggerated the role of the subconscious in the behavior of the individual, and in the sphere of the subconscious - the role of sexual desires, dark forces nature. However, his understanding of the subconscious as a powerful sphere of influence on consciousness is not without foundation. .

Unlike Z. Freud, another psychoanalyst is K.G. Jung not only did not oppose consciousness and subconsciousness, but believed that consciousness is based on deep layers collective unconscious, on archetypes- ideas formed in the distant past. The individual, according to Jung, strives for self-realization (individualization) on the basis of subconscious aspirations determined by the collective subconscious. It is not thought, not consciousness, but feeling, the subconscious that tells us what is good for us and what is bad. All our involuntary reactions are influenced by deep structures, innate programs, and universal patterns. A person faces the problem of adapting not only to the external, but also to his inner world.

Consciousness is armed with concepts, the subconscious - with emotions and feelings. At the subconscious level, what Helmholtz called “inference with the eye” occurs - an instant assessment of a perceived object or phenomenon, their compliance with the norms recorded in the subconscious.

Along with the subconscious 3. Freud also distinguishes superconsciousness (““) - the fundamental essential mechanisms of the human psyche, such as a person’s ability for social assistance and moral self-control. The entire spiritual sphere of man is the sphere of his superconsciousness, ideological sublimity, moral perfection, a sphere that opposes the limitations of the individual.

Sphere of Consciousness- sphere knowledge, cultural socialization personalities. It largely controls and inhibits the instinctive drives and habits of the individual. However, this control is limited. The voluntary activity of a person, the conscious programs of his behavior interact with other spheres of the psyche - with those genetically inherited and formed in the early stages of his ontogenetic (lifetime) formation. The selection of information for conscious self-regulation passes through subjective emotional filters.

Famous Georgian psychologist D.N. Uznadze (1886 - 1950) and his followers (A.S. Prangishvili, I.T. Bazhalava, V.G. Narakidze, Sh.A. Nadiroshvili) identified as an explanatory principle of psychology installation principle as a holistic modification of the subject, his readiness to perceive reality in a certain way. In an attitude, according to Uznadze, the conscious and extraconscious spheres of the psyche are united. Each behavioral situation causes the functioning of previously formed behavioral complexes.

Structure of consciousness. Consciousness and self-awareness.

In the moving variety of phenomena of consciousness, we can identify some resistant types, categories of phenomena and, having established their positions in relation to each other, determine general structure consciousness.

As a rule, there are two main level of consciousness– sensory-emotional and abstractly discursive:

1. On h mental-emotional level a person comes into direct contact with the reality around him, which, influencing his senses, initiates the process of constructing subjective images in his consciousness specific items. A kind of first brick of sensory experience are individual sensations(visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory), which form the basis perception, building a holistic image of a particular object. Thanks to a person’s ability to recreate in the mind the image of a previously perceived but actually absent object, submissions. Characterizing sensory experience in general, we can say that it is always 1) specific and situational (knowledge about an object arises under the condition of direct contact with the senses); 2) reactive (the functioning of sensuality is not spontaneous and voluntary, but represents a kind of “response” to environmental influences).

“Mental” life is realized in such forms as affect, emotion and feeling. Affect is a mental state of high intensity, which usually occurs in stressful situations, weakens self-control and forces the individual to behave according to a certain stereotypical scenario. Emotions- Class mental states, which are expressed in the form of a direct biased attitude towards perceived phenomena, events, facts. It is believed that emotions are a product of long-term evolution and represent one of the means that allows one to assess the usefulness or harmfulness of environmental factors and build one or another line of behavior. A specific, characteristic only to man, mode of emotional life is feelings– stable relationships to circumstances, other people, oneself, which are practically independent of external conditions And internal state body. Without the constancy that characterizes feelings, it is impossible to achieve a goal, fulfill a duty, or maintain stable connections with other people.

2. Abstract-discursive level consciousness, as a rule, is concretized through a number of concepts that are quite close in meaning - thinking, reason, intelligence, intelligence, the difference between them in this context is not fundamental. In contrast to sensory experience, which is always focused on interaction with a specific – “this” – object, thinking reveals in objects what is essential, repeating and natural, that is, it has generalized character. The most important characteristics of thinking are also mediation(knowledge about an object can be obtained without contact with it, using logical inference procedures) and verbality (unbreakable bond with tongue).


It is important to point out that in everyday practice the identified levels are in close interaction - on the one hand, sensory perception bears the imprint of mental concepts and schemes and is conceptually loaded; on the other hand, the systems of concepts that we use to understand the reality around us are constantly adjusted by sensory experience. Situations in which a person uses either only the sensory or only the abstract-discursive level of his consciousness are very rare and specific.

When characterizing the structure of consciousness, as a rule, a number of abilities are identified that determine its functioning, both at the sensory and rational levels.

The most important component consciousness is will– the ability to choose a goal and mobilize the internal efforts necessary to achieve it. The specificity of volitional efforts is associated with the fact that the subject, as a rule, has to confront himself, more precisely, his impulsive reactions, desires, certain needs, etc. Very illustrative in relation to this case is the teaching of I. Kant about the “self-legislation of the will”: free will obeys only the highest moral law, V act of will a person rises above his own whims, lower aspirations, passions and becomes their master.

Plays a huge role in organizing the inner life of consciousness memory– the ability to preserve, accumulate and reproduce information. The exceptional importance of memory is due to the fact that, by connecting past states of consciousness with present ones, memory guarantees the coherence of experience and ensures the continuity of the existence of the human “I”. The essential features of human memory are determined by its 1) creative nature; 2) collective dimension.

1) A person’s memory is not a literal reproduction of what happened: previously seen, heard, experienced. Human memory is, in essence, a symbolic reconstruction of past events and states, which can be interpreted in completely different ways depending on the current life circumstances and the self-identification of the individual at one or another stage of his existence.

2) Unlike animals, a person can be a bearer of “collective memory”: belonging to a particular community, culture, which has its own history, largely determines the type of subjectivity.

In the structure of consciousness there is such a component as attention– the ability of an individual to focus at a certain moment in time on some real or ideal object. The main parameters of attention are selectivity, volume, stability, ability to distribute, switchability, etc. There are three types of attention: involuntary, voluntary, post-voluntary. Involuntary attention is the simplest and genetically original form. This type of attention is passive in nature, as it is caused by external factors not related to the goals and aspirations of a person. Thus, we involuntarily focus our consciousness on loud sound, bright color, flash of light, etc. Voluntary attention , on the contrary, is active in nature and presupposes a certain discipline of body and mind, developed by the individual in the process of solving the problems that society sets for him. IN in this case attention is directly related to the goals and life attitudes of the individual and is activated by force of will. Postvoluntary attention- a type of attention in which the focus on a consciously formulated and set goal is maintained, but the implementation of actions aimed at achieving it does not require special mental effort and significant energy costs. The predominance of a post-voluntary form of attention is typical for game situations, the work of professionals high level and, of course, creativity.

It must be emphasized that the structure of consciousness does not represent a rigid frame, a “crystalline lattice,” since the fundamental characteristic of the life of consciousness remains mobility and variability. Its components are not strictly hierarchically ordered, but are constantly in living dynamic interaction.

Based on what was said earlier, we can highlight main characteristics of consciousness, which include:

* ideality– the ability to mentally reproduce a particular thing; images of consciousness cannot be attributed to the usual characteristics of material objects - mass, volume, spatio-temporal parameters;

* ideation– the ability to create and reproduce ideas;

* secondary and objectivity(the properties and relationships of objects are recorded in the images of consciousness);

* connection with language(consciousness is conceptual, generalized in nature, its content can be objectified in words);

* abstract logical thinking(ability to reproduce essential characteristics and connections of reality not given directly in perception).

In addition to the above, one can point to such a specific and important mode of existence of consciousness as self-awareness(the ability to isolate oneself from the external environment).

The main forms of self-awareness are: a) well-being, an elementary awareness of one’s body, its inclusion in the world of surrounding things; b) awareness of one’s belonging to a particular sociocultural community; c) the emergence of the “I” as a special formation associated with the ability to self-control, self-esteem, self-improvement, and responsibility in social action, self-criticism. The last form of self-awareness corresponds to mature personality, which is capable of playing many social roles, completely not coinciding and not dissolving in any of them.

Self-awareness develops in the process of formation of a person as an individual (the child does not yet distinguish himself as a special “I”, does not oppose himself to the outside world). It is a condition for personal self-identification and self-determination.

In everyday thinking, memory of oneself is identified with self-awareness. In psychology, self-awareness correlates with a person’s ability to analyze his inner world, experiences and feelings. In philosophy, the act of self-awareness is an act when consciousness can clarify its content and structure. Moreover, self-awareness is understood not simply as knowledge of the content of consciousness, but at the same time as knowledge that this content is connected with some events occurring outside. The turning of consciousness towards itself is called reflection.

So, consciousness is one of the basic concepts in philosophy, sociology, psychology, denoting the ability to ideally reproduce reality, as well as specific mechanisms and forms of such reproduction at its different levels.

However, consciousness controls only part of the psyche. The most complex system The life support of the body is carried out on the basis of unconscious processes. S. Freud believed that the unconscious includes various innate or repressed asocial drives, impulses, and attitudes (mainly of a sexual nature). In the unconscious, it is impossible for a person to purposefully control his actions or evaluate their effectiveness. In general, if consciousness is characterized as abstract-conceptual, formal-logical, verbal, rational, discrete, then the unconscious has opposite properties. It acts as figurative-visual, informal, non-verbal, irrational, intuitive, continual. Structurally, the energy of the unconscious is realized through the mechanism of sublimation, that is, through the process of switching unconscious drives to some reasonable goal, transforming the energy of instincts into morally acceptable activity. Through sublimation, religion, art, public institutions, and science are formed.

The dynamics of intrapsychic life are concretized in the concept of I. G. Yaroshevsky, who distinguishes three types of unconscious mental in the sphere of the unconscious: 1) preconscious - actions performed automatically, reflexively, when their reason has not yet reached consciousness, as well as some emotions, desires and instincts ; 2) subconscious - active mental processes that are not directly involved in the subject’s conscious attitude to reality, and therefore are themselves not conscious at the moment; this is a kind of “pantry” from which information and energy resources are extracted; 3) superconsciousness, or creative intuition, which, on the basis of previously acquired experience, ensures the formulation of hypotheses and human search activity. Intuition only “suggests” solutions to certain problems. The solution to the problem itself is carried out at the level of consciousness, i.e. the unconscious is translated into the conscious.

Although the differences between consciousness and the unconscious are fundamental, adequate perception and understanding of reality is possible only in the harmonious unity of these processes.



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