The unconscious, mind and brain.

Good point, perception. It does seem to so often come down to this question, at bedrock.

Lola
Back on Abuzz when I was convinced you were psychiatrist with a deep understanding of the sub-conscious, I asked you a question about your anaylysis of the sub-conscious and whether or not you believed the sub-conscious could secretly categorize events, form conclusions about those events but keep them hidden until suddenly they were triggered in consciousness by some event.

According to cognitive scientific study, most learning occurs while we sleep. This being the case, it is even more important that we be able somehow to "tap" into the sub-conscious to find out what it has decided to make available to the conscious mind and what it has "decided" to keep hidden to maybe intimidate us with.

Help me out on this.

perception,

I'll post my response here, but I'm going to ask Jespah or fishin to split this topic off. It has taken on all the necessary qualifications of a thread unto itself. Be back right away.

perception,

First, have I done something to convince you that I'm not a mental health professional with a deep understanding of the un or sub conscious? I hope not. I have a lot of experience and study under my belt on this topic.

Your question about how we might be able to tap into the unconscious and use what is stored/defended and gratified there is an interesting one. And I must say right now that I'm going to give a short answer because I'm leaving L.A. for points East today and I have to leave for the airport. At LAX, if you arrive any time, and I mean, one minute later than thirty minutes before the flight time, they will not let you proceed toward the gate. In other words, you have missed your flight. So, I a few minutes, but not many. I'll add to my thoughts here later, but probably tomorrow.

It's true that the human brain/mind learns during sleep. And there is some research indicating that on those nights when we get less than 5 hours sleep, especially for those of us over 28 or so, we solve few problems. And sleep, or dreaming is a very important mechanism in consolidating experiences/thoughts/affects accumulated during the waking day. But psychoanalysis is another highly effective method of discovery......and I'll define that term here, to be as clear as possible. Psychoanalysis is a method of discovery and/or treatment designed to uncover the contents of the unconscious mind of the patient. The primary tool in this pursuit is free association (called by Freud, "the fundamental rule"). And free association is a lot like dreaming. The patient lies on the couch, the analyst sitting behind her/him. The patient tries to say what ever comes to mind, without editing. This is, one should be informed, an impossible task because as soon as the patient attempts this task, he is very soon faced with an unwelcome thought. Defenses kick in and that's when ground work for learning about the unconscious begins. One of the first areas of insight during an analysis is how, and later, why a person defends themselves against their unwelcome, or unpleasant thoughts. (This is according to the pleasure principle.) Much later, the insight involves what the unpleasant thought or wish is. But first of all, for the patient, it's about recognizing that defenses exist. In any case, in dreaming, (that is, thought while sleeping0 we are able to learn, in part because when we're sleeping we're not in danger of acting. So the defenses are less prominent and much less inhibiting. We can allow ourselves to think about thoughts and affects which conflict with each other. Psychoanalysis is a method (actually a process itself) which encourages this the same process as in dreaming. But the advantage of the psychoanalytic process is that it's done while awake. Introduction to the patient's unconscious, if done well, is done gradually and with care. I hope that's a good enough beginning answer to your question. I can also comment on the neuroscientific levels of explanation of this process, but that will have to wait until I get home.

Lola

So you are a health care professional-----I just couldn't comprehend how you could do that and this simultaneously.

Looking forward to your next response. You sure spend a lot of time in LA.

For a health care professional, you mean? If you notice, it's almost always for longish week ends. But, yes, lately I have been in LA a lot. And I don't even like it here. Later.....

Note: This thread was originally a part of the "Gotta Start Somewhere" thread and was split off into it's own thread per user request.

Back in the old days....... when we were determined to "transcend from an ego-centered-being to a free-being" (that was the terminology that we used back then), we tried doing a "theatre of self" exercise. We would try to maintain a deep-breathing meditative state, and then watch our reactions to the stimuli around us, as if we were watching an actor in a stage play in a theatre. After a time, we would know just a split second before the reaction, what the reaction would be. I remember the term, "fight or flight".

Would this exercise be similar to the psychoanalysis process of discovering the unconscious mind?

...for years and years and years, this subject has always fascinated me....

That's a very interesting question P&L and I don't know the answer. I'll leave that question to perception or Fresco, if he shows up here eventually. It may be a function of how the brain functions, synapses, neurotransmitters, etc.

P&L
It was very interesting that you used the term "fight or flight" after attempting to examine the "self" through meditation. To me the "Self" is interested only in comfort, satisfaction and Survival.
What you describe is the survival function of the Self but I can't explain how it happened during this type of exercise.

Through meditation you may be able to invoke a type of self hynosis that could reveal some of the sub-conscious but having never tried it, I certainly can't say-----I have often speculated to myself that this could be a way to tap into the sub-conscious but I think it must be a very time consuming exercise and would require a great deal of self discipline--both of which I am in short supply.

Hi....

If we substitute the phrase "false ego" for the word "self"..... and if we use Osho's definition of "false ego"..... (here's a link to that definition)....

http://www.deoxy.org/egofalse.htm

.....then, we would be watching how we react to what's happening around us, keeping in mind that our reactions are a part of our "false ego". And, eventually, we would anticipate the reaction.

Staying with this "false ego" definition...... and that the psychoanalysis process and Freud's 'fundamental rule' discovers the unconscious...... and that during the process a person defends themselves from unwelcome thoughts....... then, perhaps, the unconscious is separate from the "false ego", and we have created a wider gap, in which we can maneuver.

Now, hypnosis..... that's another subject that I find totally fascinating......

Greetings All!

My own experience of "the exercise" as described by P&L was in the context of a brief flirtation with "Practical Philosophy " which a cult-like movement loosely based on the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Within that context the exercise is indeed considered to be about "levels of consciousness" and is a precursor to transcending the mechanicalness of "ordinary man" who is a state of "waking sleep" but erroneously believes himself to be "in control". Within the system "real consciousness" is as different from "waking sleep" as "waking sleep" is to "dreaming".

The conclusion I drew from this was that I had perhaps experienced a degree of "higher consciousness" but that this state could be isolationist and socially problematic.

For further information try Gurdjieff or Ouspensky via Google.

Lola, if you have not come across Gurdjieff's system you may find it has many similarities with Freud. Its well worth a look provided you hold the weird Kabbalistic cosmology at arms length.

Fresco---

Let me be the first to welcome you to A2K

P&L
That was an excellent link you provided which I had not before seen. I'm still trying to absorb it.

P&L and Fresco
After studying your link here are my conclusions
1. That each of us does have an ego
2. That ego is created by society because there is a basic psychological need for each of us to fit into societies hierarchy.
3. If we want to progress beyond a certain point of understanding each of us must recognize that the ego exists but that it is very difficult for us to see and observe our own ego-----we can the egos of others but we cannot see our own
4 We must accept the fact that the ego is the cause of all human misery.
5. If one can be successful at seeing one's own ego then you must just observe and make no attempt to capture it, subdue it or manipulate it, just observe it. Then supposedly once you see it for what it is, the creator of all misery, then it will just disappear. You can then laugh about it

Now that is as far as I can go because I have not been able to observe my own ego sufficiently to get to the next stage...............

Suspiscions

If one can make the ego disappear then some sort inner peace will be achieved but I can see absolutely no link to the sub-conscious.

That the conscious mind is observing and recording all this activity.

That the sub-conscious mind is also observing and recording and deciding what if anything to reveal back to the conscious mind after this is all consolidated during sleep.

That the self is also observing and is only interested in what makes the self feel good---- if we could make a connection between the self and the ego then we could actually begin to understand ourselves.

Perhaps the connection is in the sub-conscious but how do we control it?

Perception

Your point No.5 makes sense to me but their remains the question of whether we have a single "ego" in the Freudian sense, perhaps modified by the "superego", or whether we have many "selves".. primative (id-ish)selfish (ego-tistic) and some altuistic (super-egotistic). These selves are bound together merely by our constant name and may share some, but not all memories. The writers cited above allow for myriads of these little selves each with its own agenda, and which may normally be unaware of each other (Freudian defence mechanisms ?). So the "unconscious" in this picture are the dormant "selves" at any time, and the place of "higher consciousness" is to achieve a vantage point which observes these quarrelsome multitudes.

Reminds me of a meditation technique someone told me about once -- though I couldn't try it out since I don't do it anyway. The idea, he said, was to answer every though that comes into the head with "Who though that?" I guess the idea is to ultimately just be thinking "who?who?who?who?who?"

Fresco

There you go again-----you really are the devil's advocate or maybe the "Devil" reincarnated....lafs)))))))))))

Seriously---I must believe that what you describe are merely emotions competing for attention----perhaps these "emotions" are uncontrolled in those poor souls who cannot come to "grips" with introspection and the awful picture I MIGHT reveal.