The Unconscious Mind and the Realm of the Id

~Implications for the Future

Photo by Ina RH on Unsplash

Unconscious Mind

The scaffolding of the mind as described by Freud includes three separate structures. The id, ego, and superego.

The unconscious mind is the realm of the id. A child will be completely at the mercy of this id the first few years of their life. For the child to grow into a normal functioning adult the id must receive, process, and assimilate information from the ego and the superego. During this time any conflicts between these three structures that cause anxiety can cause the psyche to repress information into the unconscious mind.

It is important to remember that conflicts can occur within the child’s home, family, or the outside world. Historians tend to not notice that Freud’s way of uncovering the unconscious layers of the psyche was in fact a model of the mental structure. Summer (2006) Freud’s model leads to the belief that the unconscious, where the id is located, is the mind’s primary motivating force. When linking this information, it can be observed that the id, which is incomplete control as a child, remains in control to some extent throughout the individual’s lifetime.

Cultural Views of Unconscious

Certain aspects of psychoanalytic theory must be considered when examining the unconscious.

Psychoanalytic theory is a theory of man as a cultural being.

Cultural views of the unconscious must be taken into account to fully understand its role in the human psyche. In many cultures, the unconscious is seen as being phylogenetic or endowed with the experiences of ancestors that were passed down.

Research has shown that the unconscious thoughts of one individual can indeed communicate with the unconscious thoughts of another individual.

In Tibet, dreams are treated as waking experiences and it is thought that through the dream process life goes on all the time, awake or asleep. This could lend to the idea that dreams are an extension of the daytime unconscious into nighttime consciousness.

Perera (2013) examines aging as a return to the unconscious. This crossing between the conscious and unconscious allows…