Memory and Our Unconscious Mind

From the old psychoanalytic view to the modern neuropsychological approach.

"Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives back life to those who no longer exist." Guy de Maupassant.

"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious." Carl Jung.

"I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at." Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Freud's Psychoanalytic Approach

Our subconscious is a bottomless and intricate part of our mental terrain. It runs beneath the surface of our conscious knowledge. It is the storehouse of thoughts, memories, and desires that are not readily available to us in our waking consciousness and affect our actions, emotions, and attitudes. Sigmund Freud popularized this idea in the psychoanalytical theory, which holds that much of our thinking occurs outside our conscious awareness.

The unconscious mind is like a storehouse of repressed memories and experiences, many dating back to early childhood. These memories were blocked from conscious attention because they were too disturbing or distressing for the mind to cope with. As the name suggests, these buried elements lie dormant but affect how we react to present situations and our feelings in general. For example, someone may inexplicably have an irrational fear or phobia. Still, it may stem from a repressed memory residing in their unconscious.

Our instincts and primal drives are also stowed up in our unconscious, which Freud categorized as the life instincts (Eros) and the death instincts (Thanatos). According to Freud, these drives are essential forces shaping our actions. Most will counter our normal societal programming and the whims of our conscious minds and brains, and as such, internal conflict and anguish are created with every step.

Our unconscious minds are revealed to us through our dreams. To Freud, dreams were a kind of wish fulfillment in which deeply repressed desires and thoughts are disguised and allowed safe expression. Freud believed we could learn more about the unconscious forces that influence our inner reality through dream analysis. Notionally, symbols and motifs in dreams are emblematic of a subtext of concealed thoughts and desires, often buried under multiple layers of metaphor that require interpretation to pull out the genuine emotions.

One of the other two important aspects of the unconscious is topographical defense mechanisms. These mechanisms use the unconscious mind to reduce anxiety. Some common defense mechanisms are repression, denial, displacement, and projection. Repression, for instance, consists of keeping unpleasant thoughts away from consciousness. By comparison, projection means assigning unacceptable impulses or thoughts to others.

Modern Neurological Psychology

Modern psychology has revised many of Freud's ideas with insights from cognitive science and neuroscience. Despite debates about the terms used and what consciousness brings to the table, the idea that most of our thoughts are automatic and processed outside our conscious awareness is widely accepted. They are implicit memory, automatic behaviors, and even subconscious bias, which is why our unconscious mind still plays a role in our daily lives even though we are unaware of its presence.

The condition of the unconscious mind can only provide a complete picture of human psychology. It is a poignant reminder that we may never be fully conscious of the heuristics that influence our thoughts and behaviors and that digging deep into the dark corners of our minds can lead to a better understanding of self and self-actualization.

We were following a neuropsychological route in understanding the unconscious mind into the deep complexities of the brain, focusing on the aspects of the psychological unconscious processes that greatly influence our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. A multicultural view of the Western take on consciousness offers insights from neuroscience and psychology but also emphasizes the bias to think of mental activities in terms of biology outside our conscious awareness. Significant improvements in brain imaging and cognitive science have further helped to uncover how these processes operate by unveiling the intricate dynamics between different regions in the brain and their contributions to the functionality of unconscious cognition.

A core tenet is that the brain functions in multiple modes, and many of those modes are subconscious and require no conscious effort. Such processes generally go unrecognized but are responsible for our ability to do routine activities, respond to environmental cues, and perform a wide range of complicated actions with little or no impact on our consciousness. For example, walking is something that, after enough attempts, shifts into a process your brain can convey to your body without ever needing to think.

Implicit memory is one of the key concepts neuropsychological research uses to investigate the unconscious. Even more interesting is the concept of implicit memory, the kind of memory that affects our language, behavior, and experiences even though we are not consciously aware of it. The formation of these memories, usually through repetition and practice, occurs in parts of the brain, including the basal ganglia and cerebellum. This memory is important for skill learning and developing procedural memories that enable us to do things without thinking consciously.

Here are examples of implicit memory

• Recalling the words to a song when someone sings the first few words

• Riding a bike

• Performing simple cooking tasks, such as boiling water for pasta

• Driving a car

• Taking a familiar route each day, such as commuting to work or the store where you frequently shop

• Buttoning a shirt

• Completing tasks that are a routine part of a familiar job, such as sanding for a carpenter or chopping onions for a chef

• Recalling the rules of a simple and familiar game, such as tag or solitaire

• Dialing a phone

• Brushing your teeth

• Typing on a keyboard

The second one is that emotions strongly connect to our subconscious mind. Indeed, neuropsychological studies have demonstrated that the amygdala, a relatively small, almond-shaped structure located deep within the brain, plays a key role in emotion processing, particularly involving fear and pleasure. The amygdala can respond to these emotional stimuli; in some cases, this activation can elicit physiological responses outside the individual's conscious awareness. It enables us to have unconscious gut reactions to things before thinking about them.

The other crucial aspect to study is the default mode network (DMN), a network of areas of the brain that come into play when the mind is at rest and not engaged with the outside world. The DMN is supposed to manage self-referential thoughts and daydreaming and remember past experiences and plans.

Human neuropsychological data support the idea that this network may integrate information in and outside our awareness, the process by which we can make sense of the world around us and the experience that helps us define ourselves.

Another prominent area of inquiry in neuropsychology is unconscious biases and how they affect decision-making. The brain most often uses heuristics and mental shortcuts in decision-making. Those heuristics are unconscious, affecting our judgments and behaviors behind the scenes. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that allow people to solve problems and make decisions quickly and efficiently. Studies have demonstrated the effects of these automatic processes on our perceptions and interactions, so it is vital to begin understanding and counteracting these processes.

The study of unconscious processes and mental health is also the subject of neuropsychological research. Maladaptive unconscious processes are frequently implicated in disorders like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For instance, people who have PTSD may harbor memories of traumatic events that are not fully accessible to consciousness yet, and that elicit an emotional and physiological reaction.