This is part 1 of a 2 part blog looking at the conscious and the subconscious mind. This blog briefly looks at the conscious mind, for more information on the conscious and the subconscious please click on the link below.
Freud’s theory of personality is a psychoanalytic theory that describes the realm of our conscious mind. This part of our personality is associated with what we can term as ‘rational’ items – behaviors, feelings, memories, fantasies and the sensations we perceive are all part of the conscious mind which follows the rules of reasoning and logic. This basically means that from a simple mathematical problem to the moving of our limbs, it is our conscious mind that is taking care of these things.
The phenomenon of the conscious mind has always been under much experimentation and debate because no one knows how this consciousness works. While scientific research has so far come up with many theories to explain the small processes that work to make us sad and happy, there is no explanation about a number of other things related to the conscious mind. Religious and spiritual theories on the other hand have always referred to the conscious mind to be the human soul.
Science explains the conscious mind in terms of neurological basis. There are two divisions of consciousness in the human mind; the first is Phenomenal Consciousness and the other is Access Consciousness. Phenomenal Consciousness is the experience part of the consciousness like sounds, feelings, emotions and sensations. The Access Consciousness is what gives us our rationality and control behaviors.
From cognitive psychology to cognitive neuroscience there have been a number of theories regarding the conscious mind and some scientists are still contradicting one another over many parts of the conscious mind like language development and descriptions of phenomenal consciousness. Freud, Nietzsche and Marx all came up with a number of very unique theories pertaining to the conscious mind all of which attempt to explain its workings somehow.
