What Is the Subconscious?
Majid Ali, M.D.
I do not know what the subconsciousness is. There is, however, something I know.
A Simple Observation
I know someone who prays for his parents, siblings, wife, children, and some others every day. He told me he does so by naming everyone of them in the morning and again in the late evening. I learned one wonderful thing from him. Whoever offends, insults, or otherwise hurts me, I make a special effort to utter some kind words about him or her. I do not think it is important for me to let that individual know about this. It is my sense that kind words spoken voicelessly are more effective.
The same hold when angry and hateful words uttered with high frequency create rage. Sounds familiar! Deaths in Oklahoma, Kabul, Paris, and san Bernardino!
Which Subconscious?
As for the subconscious, I really do not know what that is. Here is my first problem with it: since human sensitivities and sensibilities change daily, weekly, and monthly, which of these subconscious does not engage?
Suggested Viewing and Readings
- Dr. Ali’s Deep Healing Video Seminar Series
- Dr. Ali’s Healing Course
- Dr. Ali’s Anxiety Course
- Dr. Ali’s Depression Course
Dr. Ali’s Deep Healing Video Seminar Series
Below, I list links to the series of my FREE video seminars on deep healing.
* Sunbstance of the Soul
Seminar 1 Deep Healing Dimensions and the Beginning of Healing Journey
Seminar 2 Deep Healing Fear, Panic, and Anxiety – Control and Prevention
Seminar 3 My Breath Is My Own – I Breathe It Well
Seminar 4 Deep Healing of Sleep Disorders
Seminar 5 Deep Healing Disappointments of Life
Seminar 6 Deep Healing of Chronic Persistent Illness
Seminar 7 Deep Healing Depression
Serenity Among Elements
Wikipedia on the Subconscious
The word “subconscious” represents an anglicized version of the French subconscient as coined by the psychologist Pierre Janet (1859-1947), who argued that underneath the layers of critical-thought functions of the conscious mind lay a powerful awareness that he called the subconscious mind.[1]
In the strict psychological sense, the adjective is defined as “operating or existing outside of consciousness“.[2]
Locke and Kristof write that there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one’s knowledge and prior experience is needed, which they label the subconscious.[3]
The subconscious and psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud first used the term “subconscious” on 1893[4] and in the 1895 “Studies on Hysteria” and then denied, he argues on 1926:
If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious.”[5] —
In Freud’s opinion the unconscious mind has a will and purpose of its own that cannot be known to the conscious mind (hence the term “unconscious”) and is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression.