THE MIND

The mind is a set of cognitive faculties which is housed in the brain and nervous system. Cognitive faculties of neuro system include but not limited to:

–      Consciousness

–      Imaginations

–      Sensation

–      Perception

–      Thinking

–      Judging

–      Language

–      Communication

–      Memory

–      Decision making

The human mind is the most complex machine on the earth. There is no physical entity as mind, in other words we cannot see the mind. We cannot see a man is thinking but we can observe his or her emotions, feelings and behavior. Overt behavior of a person reflects his mind.

The Structure of Mind:

Sigmund Schlomo Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psycho analysis presented the structure of human mind to the world. He born in 1856 and died in 1939. According to Freud the human mind has three levels of awareness or a three part structure; the conscious, unconscious and preconscious.

Conscious mind:

The conscious consists of what someone is aware of any given moment. It is the present state of awareness which process sensation, thinking, logic and reasoning. You are answering a question, attending an examination or communicating with your friend though your conscious mind. Conscious mind has no memory storage capacity. It can hold only sensing memory for a few seconds.

 Preconscious mind (subconscious):

Preconscious mind lies just below the conscious which is the latent part of the mind which is readily available to the conscious mind. However it is not in use at the present moment. The thoughts and information are stored in the preconscious to certain extent which can be retrieved or called to the conscious mind easily. Preconscious mind execute the behavior as programmed and it obey the conscious mind. Say for example you want to write your address on an envelope; you are in fact consciously asking your preconscious for it and your conscious mind make you to write it down on the envelope. Now a day preconscious is known as subconscious.

Unconscious mind:

Unconscious mind is the bottom layer of the mind which is a store house of all memories. As a reservoir it contains.

–      Thoughts

–      Memories

–      Desires

–      Urges

–      Repressed emotions

–      Feelings

–      Interests

–      Motivations

Unconscious mind is the origin of all psychic energy or life energy or mental energy. The information and experiences in the unconscious mind are not readily available to the unconscious awareness. Freud’s theory says that most of the content of the unconscious mind are unacceptable and unpleasant to the consciousness. Say for example feelings such as pain, anxiety, conflict etc or memories such as childhood abuse, anger to somebody, severe relationship problems etc. might be repressed and stored in the unconscious mind.

 Freud used the analogy of an iceberg floats in the water to explain the three levels of mind. According to him conscious mind consists only 10% (approximately) of the total mind and the rest 90% constitute pre-conscious and unconscious mind.