Thread: conscious vs. subconscious wakefulness

Hey there,

Psychologically speaking, "waking up your subconscious/unconscious mind" to make it directly accessible, as you call it, is exactly what consciousness is. In a way, what you describe is exactly what most psychoanalytical therapies are based on, bringing parts of the unconscious to the surface, effectively making you conscious about them

-Redrivertears-

I appreciate your response, though I'm looking at access as being more direct and persistent. I'm not looking to dredge up a specific point that causes a malady and confronting it. Even in psychoanalytical therapies, they are really just digging down to the problem, not waking the subconscious up. Bringing a memory to the surface in no way means that you've woken your subconscious. You've just accessed a specific piece of information. To use dreaming as an analogy, psychoanalytical therapy would be like bringing waking consciousness into the dream, but only remembering that you live with your abusive father on Fuller Street but nothing else. I want the whole enchilada, or something close, in the same manner that lucid dreaming brings the vast majority of waking consciousness into the dream state all at the same time. I hope this makes my original statement clearer.

And I'm afraid your first sentence makes no sense to me at all. Because waking up your subconscious is not at all what consciousness is. Consciousness and subconscious are not synonyms. Perhaps you are getting confused with becoming conscious in the morning as you wake from a night's sleep. I have no idea. Perhaps you would feel like clarifying.

Hey there,

I'm not trying to discuss with you. Just not sure what you're getting at. You seem to talk about consciousness and subconsciousness/unconsciousness as if they're two separate things. In most psychological theories, they're not. The consciousness is a (small) part of the unconsciousness. Those associations, drives and impulses that you become aware of are what makes the conscious part of your unconsciousness, or your consciousness, for short.

This link gives a pretty good summary. It's Freudian, but even today, most psyschological theories are based in some part on Freud's original model of the consciousness. The iceberg analogy is especially effective at explaining things, in my opinion:

Freud's Conscious and Unconscious Mind

Hope that clarifies what I was trying to say,

-Redrivertears-

Thanks for the above. When I say consciousness, it includes the subconscious and conscious minds. The subconscious is a subset of consciousness as is the conscious mind. You can mean consciousness as in i'm conscious and awake, but that merely points to a state of mind, a state of awareness, as in I am awake and conscious verses asleep and unconscious. Certainly you know that the term consciousness has more than one definition depending on context.

i suppose the bottom line for me is that you are choosing to use a restrictive definition of consciousness to have this discussion. Perhaps that definition is the only one you use. If such is the case, then we have nowhere to go with out conversation, as we are coming at it from completely different angles and will not find common ground.

Thank you again for your responses.

Sorry, I have to concur with redrivertears on this one. The idea of the subconscious as some sort of other entity doesn't work for me. I see consciousness as a spectrum, with fully conscious at one end and unconscious at the other. The difference is how much the higher brain function is active (frontal cortex). I can see that somehow getting your conscious mind to be more aware of the unconscious could be of some help, since this is a bit like mindfulness I think?
The idea of waking up the subconscious is absurd to me. The subconscious brain is always active.

^^That.

Unfortunately, Madmagus, the term for subconscious, as you describe it yourself above, was discarded by the psychological community decades ago. The only places the term is used are (inexplicably) on TV and on the internet... I guess it just sounds better than "unconscious." I had assumed that you were simply using the word, "subconscious," instead of "unconscious," but your last post indicated you are actually choosing the discarded 1950's post-Freudian psychoanalytic definition as well. As far as we know, there really is no subconscious subset of consciousness as you (and the psychological world of half a century ago, BTW) describe it. And even if there were, it would indeed be "woken up" whenever we are awake, so no need to awaken it.

So: If you had indeed intended to use "subconscious" as a replacement word for "unconscious" (which seems to happen more often than it doesn't these days), then cool; we have much to discuss. Awakening the unconscious -- or, rather, learning to dive with full self-awareness into its ocean of stored memories and information -- is one of my primary lucid goals, and well worth discussion. But I think you might be losing the people with whom you wish to converse if you stick to that long-abandoned definition of subconscious.

I also suggest that you check out the link that Redrivertears provided. It is a bit dated (sorry, Redrivertears!), but at least you might get the idea of what we're talking about, and also note that the word "subconscious" simply does not appear in the text (it was not replaced by "preconscious," BTW, because that is a much different thing than subconscious as you described above).

Sorry to be so apparently negative, Madmagus. However, since negotiating the unconscious is such an important subject for LD'ers, I thought it might be nice to attempt to lend a bit of clarity to this conversation in the hopes that it can move past this impasse... I hope you don't mind!

thanks for the response Sageous. As I've stated in the past, many times terminology gets in the way of itself when trying to communicate an idea. If it helps conversation to use the term unconscious versus subconscious, then I have no issue with it. I am certainly not wedded to the term. It is simply one that has been used throughout my life in all previous discussions prior to this forum. But I am not one to hold fast to terminology that confuses those I wish to communicate with, despite believing that everyone knew what I was talking about, since the terminology was corrected by you. It's as if the idea behind my post was ignored in order to disapprove of the single term. Hopefully future discussions will not get caught up by simple semantic disapproval and will instead deal with the actual ideas brought forward. It would have been simplest to simply say directly that my use of the term subconscious was not part of DVs lexicon and that I should use unconscious to better communicate. But I certainly appreciate your input Sageous as a means of clarifying what the issue at hand actually was. Looking forward to clearer communication and potentially interesting discussions.

Goldenspark, You make two distinct statements here. You say that consciousness is a spectrum, which I actually agree with. But that doesn't mean that it is not partitioned, otherwise the conscious mind and the unconscious mind would be fully communicating already in a very active, obvious manner. That certainly is not the case, or we would be able to access dream consciousness at will, and all of our memories would be readily accessible (essentially we would all have eidetic memory function). But that is obviously not the case. Physical body regulation is conducted by some aspect of consciousness. It has always been prescribed as a function of the unconscious mind, since we do not consciously regulate such functions. So even that last is not within conscious awareness, though certainly could be considered awake, as it is functioning efficiently. I obviously should have been more precise in defining which part of the unconscious that i was identifying as needing to be awoken. I guess I didn't see the need, as I assumed everyone would understand that i obviously was not talking about that aspect of the unconscious (or whatever the aspect) that controls physical regulatory needs.

But you also state "getting your conscious mind to be more aware of the unconscious". This implies separation. If as you state they are one and the same, one does not need to become aware of the other. It must, by definition, already be aware of itself. Despite the obvious conflict with your statements, I actually agree with your point, as it was the entire idea behind my post. So thanks for that. Perhaps you simply object to my use of the term 'asleep'. If that is the case, choose one of your own. Perhaps 'not yet readily accessed portion' would be better suited. Either way, the situation is the same. We need to find a way to access that portion of our intelligence without hindrance while in our conscious, awake state. thanks for taking the time to respond.

Sageous, I actually, upon reflection, have to retract part of my above statement to you. I shouldn't acquiesce on a point that I disagree with just for the sake of congeniality. The terms subconscious and unconscious are not improperly used synonyms. They are not synonyms at all. They refer to different aspects of consciousness. And, for the record, I don't care if 'some' psychoanalysts strictly use the term unconscious due to their educational dogma.

When I use the term unconscious, I refer to mental functions such as regulating heart beat and instinctual drives. When I use the term subconscious, I refer to things such as long term memory, to things that are accessible upon reflection or through some other means; but something accessible. I don't see unconscious functions as being accessible, though I could be proven wrong at some point. And this certainly is not just a personal perspective but one held by other medical professionals as well. Not everyone agrees with Freud, even on this point. I don't post this to be argumentative but rather informative. I am quite open to having discussions with people who disagree with me on ideas. I would have happily listened to your disagreement with my word choice had you said that it was your opinion, that you preferred one over the other, rather than implying that your definition was the only acceptable version and that my preference was some archaic phrase used by the less informed. Just because it is used correctly and incorrectly in lay publications doesn't make it wrong or inappropriate. Happy dreaming.

^^ First, I was not correcting you on word usage. I'm pretty sure I wrote in my post that I wouldn't have cared if you were using the word "subconscious" instead of "unconscious;" I gave up waging that small usage battle a long time ago. Instead, I was responding to your description of the term, as partially stated here:

Originally Posted by madmagus

When I say consciousness, it includes the subconscious and conscious minds. The subconscious is a subset of consciousness as is the conscious mind. You can mean consciousness as in i'm conscious and awake, but that merely points to a state of mind, a state of awareness, as in I am awake and conscious verses asleep and unconscious.

That quote clearly says that you see a subconscious existing as a subset of overall consciousness, and that is simply not true -- both in my opinion and the opinion of pretty much all of modern psychology. I was responding to a description and not a word.

Next:

Originally Posted by madmagus

Sageous, I actually, upon reflection, have to retract part of my above statement to you. I shouldn't acquiesce on a point that I disagree with just for the sake of congeniality. The terms subconscious and unconscious are not improperly used synonyms. They are not synonyms at all. They refer to different aspects of consciousness. And, for the record, I don't care if 'some' psychoanalysts strictly use the term unconscious due to their educational dogma.

No one asked you to acquiesce to anything, and I never look for congeniality (though I admit it is most welcome!). The Unconscious and subconscious, as you describe them above, are certainly not synonyms. But the key here is the "as you describe them above" bit: As the term "subconscious" is usually used on these forums (and pretty much everywhere else these days), it is almost universally synonymous with the term "unconscious." In fact, what you are describing as subconscious does seem to be the unconscious (more below), and you seem to have a curious take on the nature of the unconscious:

When I use the term unconscious, I refer to mental functions such as regulating heart beat and instinctual drives.

That, as written, seems way off the general understanding of unconscious activity as held by psychologists, physiologists, and anyone else who studies the workings of mind and body these days (their knowledge is based on decades of study, BTW, and not just opinions). What you refer to here sounds very much like autonomic and instinctual functions performed by the brain stem and cerebellum, and has little to do with the unconscious as we currently understand it. And yes, we do not have conscious access to those areas (at least not much), so that bit is spot on. However:

When I use the term subconscious, I refer to things such as long term memory, to things that are accessible upon reflection or through some other means; but something accessible.

That sounds very much like unconscious activity.

Unconscious activity is constantly working in concert with conscious activity, by providing your waking-life self by doing things like retrieving memories, establishing perceptions, finding words for your thoughts, setting your mood, installing daydreams, and any number of other very direct things that influence your conscious life. Your interaction with your unconscious is fluid and steady; as it should be, given that the unconscious is an integral part of your overall mind.

That we cannot access our unconscious reserves is in total is currently a given, though I wonder if that is more a bit of a genetic precaution than a separation of minds (the staggering weight of handling all of the unconscious' "database" at once might be too much for a person to handle; better to supply the info as needed, perhaps). However, we are always in some contact with our unconscious, almost as you just described the subconscious -- which is why in that case it would be fine to switch the words.


Some small things:

And this certainly is not just a personal perspective but one held by other medical professionals as well.

Really? Which ones?

Not everyone agrees with Freud, even on this point.

I don't think anyone agrees with the body of Freud's work these days, and I was by no means asking you to do so. In fact the only time I used his name was in mentioning that subconscious was a term popular with the long abandoned 1950's post-Freudian psychoanalytic schools; also Redrivertears seemed to include a disclaimer of sorts because that link he provided included talk of Freud, so he too may have been acknowledging that Freud is no longer the only source for psychological theory.

I would have happily listened to your disagreement with my word choice had you said that it was your opinion, that you preferred one over the other, rather than implying that your definition was the only acceptable version and that my preference was some archaic phrase used by the less informed.

Seriously? I need to list established psychological and physiological science as my opinion in order for you to listen to it? That doesn't seem quite right, in my opinion.

That "subconscious" is an archaic phrase in the scientific community was not an implication, but a given in established modern psychology; you can certainly have an opinion to the contrary, but I am not about to say I accept that opinion without at least trying to offer an exception.

Just because it is used correctly and incorrectly in lay publications doesn't make it wrong or inappropriate.

That is absolutely true... as long as you are talking about switching the word "subconscious" with the word "unconscious;" that is only annoying. It becomes inappropriate, I believe, when you use descriptions of the term that do not follow what we know about consciousness.

I don't think any of this is helping to forward your excellent OP, Madmagus. I was only trying to make a clarification based on what I know, and not on what I feel or believe. I'll stop trying now an hope the thread continues, as it should.

I am coming to see our Lucid dreaming as quite magical with its ability to help uncover and show us our sub/unconscious ways and beliefs - it's sometimes terrifying whats thrown up in ones face and other times the most amazing experience ever! All within us I find it mind blowing and awesome and wish I could go to Lucid dreaming school everyday and night to learn more and more from experience 24/7

Thank you both for taking the time to respond.

i agree, Sageous, that the conversation was immediately derailed, and the point of the OP is lost. There is only one point that I would still like to make and that regards opinions. Anyone, you or a psychologist or anyone else, who makes a statement about non-physical reality, i.e. the mind, consciousness can only have opinions, theories. For something to be a fact, it must incorporate objectivity. And there are no objective facts about consciousness. There are only theories, opinions. It doesn't matter how many decades psychologists have studied the subject, they have no facts because we don't have the technology to record factual information about consciousness, thus anything they say is there opinion based on their research. You can lay a person on a table and record data while they are in sleep states, for instance, but you are only gather information on the physical body, not the mind. The mind/consciousness is non-corporeal. Any interpretation of mental activity that is not physically generated, such as the experience itself, can not be recorded and can not be called a fact. Your preferred terminology is just another example of an opinion. You can't call it fact, because someone just made up the word and the definition as a means to describe something they theorize about. Which is why not everyone agrees with the particular terms nor the theory behind them. Nothing describing consciousness can be called fact until we gain a far greater skill set that will allow us to record hard data. Thanks for your perspective.

^^ Believe it or not, I tend to agree with everything you just wrote, Madmagus.

In my defense, I never, not even once, presented something on this thread as objective fact, and was very careful about inserting the occasional "currently" or "as far as we know" into my posts to indicate that what we are discussing is all just theory. I understand that. (phrases like "accepted terms," "givens," or "what we know" were not meant to imply objective facts, BTW). I also understand, though, that if you are unwilling to work with the currently accepted terms and theories to discuss your new ideas, you will find people having great difficulty understanding what you are saying; which was sort of illustrated by this thread, I think.

There is still very much to be learned about consciousness, Madmagus; I understand that well. But for over a century now we have been developing tools for learning more about the mind, tools like accepted definitions of theoretical terms like "subconscious" or "unconscious." Yes, those tools are certainly based on theory and general consensus, and they change regularly, but they are still useful tools for communication. Using what is available often works much better than making your own tools and expecting everyone else to follow along, I think, if only for the sake of having your OP discussed, rather rather than the meaning of your personal tools. That is really all I was trying to point out.

I appreciate your response. And on this forum, if the consensus is to use unconscious, then I will do so for convenience of communication. But as i stated some where earlier in the thread, this is the only forum that I have ever posted on where the term confused someone. But I can live with that. I certainly don't require anyone to conform to my preferences. It doesn't mean that I have come to agree with your opinion, but that has never stopped me from having useful conversations. Hopefully it won't here either. I hope that any future differences of opinion can be kept to ideas presented rather than be drug through the semantics pit. Though I actually do think information was posted that was potentially helpful to readers on the site. So not a total loss.

Originally Posted by madmagus

i agree, Sageous, that the conversation was immediately derailed, and the point of the OP is lost.

I apologize for that. Although my interest in any discussion regarding the consciousness and unconsciousness/subconsciousness is genuine, my reply was poorly chosen and counterproductive, for which I'm sorry.

-Redrivertears-

Originally Posted by madmagus

I appreciate your response. And on this forum, if the consensus is to use unconscious, then I will do so for convenience of communication. But as i stated some where earlier in the thread, this is the only forum that I have ever posted on where the term confused someone. But I can live with that. I certainly don't require anyone to conform to my preferences. It doesn't mean that I have come to agree with your opinion, but that has never stopped me from having useful conversations. Hopefully it won't here either. I hope that any future differences of opinion can be kept to ideas presented rather than be drug through the semantics pit. Though I actually do think information was posted that was potentially helpful to readers on the site. So not a total loss.

For one last time, Madmagus, and respectfully: I was not talking about using the term "subconscious" instead of the term "unconscious;" I was talking about your descriptions of the terms.

This was not a conversation about semantics, at least from my perspective; it was about the concepts and definitions we were applying to the words we were using as a base for the overall conversation -- the consensus is about how we collectively perceive the unconscious/subconscious, not about the words themselves. As I've already said, I really don't care if you use the word "subconscious" if it is simply a replacement for "unconscious," and I doubt anyone else does.

I have no idea how many times I've repeated this, but don't worry; I won't do it again. Thanks for understanding.

From Oxford Dictionaries:
Semantics: the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.

..."I was not talking about using the term "subconscious" instead of the term "unconscious;" I was talking about your descriptions of the terms..."......semantics.

You objected to my descriptions of the terms, in other words their meanings, purely because of your personal bias, your opinion, and only your opinion; and you can throw in 1,000 PhD's opinions, but they are still just opinions. You can't add them all together to make them into a fact. For some reason, you can't get this through your head.

Thank you for your comment Redrivertears. Perhaps on a different thread we'll get into an interesting conversation about this topic or another.

Originally Posted by madmagus

You objected to my descriptions of the terms, in other words their meanings, purely because of your personal bias, your opinion, and only your opinion; and you can throw in 1,000 PhD's opinions, but they are still just opinions. You can't add them all together to make them into a fact. For some reason, you can't get this through your head.

You know, I've tried very hard to remain friendly and respectful with you, Madmagus, regardless of your completely incorrect judgments and baseless accusations about me, but I think I've had enough. Since I never once used the word "fact" or referred to a fact, yet you still insist that that is all I'm talking about, and since you seem more focused on attacking me than in developing your own thread, I'm beginning to sense a bit of trolling on your part.

Also, I understand the meaning of semantics quite well, thank you, though I'm a little surprised that you fail to see the difference between "linguistics and logic" and "descriptions and concepts" .... or are you just trolling more?

In any case, I've had enough. Enjoy your odd little victory, if you must, but maybe reread my posts sometime, if only to notice I said absolutely none of the things you accuse me of saying. Take care, Madmagus; I thought we were talking sincerely about something that matters to us both (even if our baseline opinions differed) but clearly you might just have been out for a little fun. I'll be careful to avoid you in the future.

You're right. If someone disagrees with you and doesn't come around, they must be trolling. You need to stop drinking your own cool aid. It's very very bad for you. My communication ends as well. Peace Out

I've been away from this for a while, and now sad to see this topic had descended into some acrimony!
I went back to the OP. I don't think that the subconscious (I prefer that word) mind needs to be awoken to better experience waking life, because I consider it to be always awake. I suggest that the conscious mind asserts more control when we wake, but that the things the conscious mind is doing are still going on in the background. It's just that our behavior is much more obviously governed by the conscious mind when awake, because when asleep the only behavior is base functions, REM, dreaming and little else.
On another point of order, I suggest that stating "subconscious mind " implies higher brain function, so not including simple brain -stem type function, but rather higher function such as dreaming.
It's all too easy to partition the consciousness into waking and sub, but I think they really are not separated. Modern brain scan techniques show that in slow -wave sleep, REM and waking, the whole brain is involved, so the differences are only the level and organizational activity of the higher function parts of the brain.

Originally Posted by madmagus

You're right. If someone disagrees with you and doesn't come around, they must be trolling. You need to stop drinking your own cool aid. It's very very bad for you. My communication ends as well. Peace Out

No. If someone lies about what the other is saying (in spite of the other's actual words being right over his post for all to see, which is sort of amusing), and then someone makes baseless personal attacks (like the one above) instead of rational arguments, then I do indeed get the feeling that this may be a person who would rather troll than discuss a subject intelligently. And yes, repeatedly insisting that I was stating things as objective fact even though I obviously never did is to me a lie.

I have been proven wrong many times, Madmagus, and do not have a problem with it. To have one would be useless: I have argued long and hard many times, and held my ground doggedly until finally admitting that my side was initially wrong -- thanks to strong argument from the other side, and not sophomoric browbeating. This is an excellent way to learn (throwing insults and accusations when someone challenges you is not).

Also, it's Kool-Aid, BTW, and I would much rather be drinking a Kool-Aid mixed with a century of research, thought, and input by people far smarter than either of us who are more interested in knowledge than the apparent power of their personal opinion than throw it all away to agree with someone whose opinion I not only believe to be wrong, but who uses insults and rudeness rather than rational argument to defend it, once I refused to settle for the "Because I said so" argument provided (which, I imagine, would be akin to drinking your Kool-Aid).

Sorry about this continued nonsense, Goldenspark, I know you were trying to get things going again. But I have a real problem with people who feel a need to continue their insults after I have said I was out... I sort of wish the DV moderators would as well, so I don't have to waste my time responding to this kind of behavior.

You must not be able to hear your own voice, sageous. Your responses have been quite derogatory, simply because I won't change my position that you keeping hammering me with. Or you are not capable of evaluating your own comments. Either way it doesn't matter. Oh, and thanks for keeping your word about keeping your distance. Something appears too good to be true it usually is.