The unconscious mind stores memories and experiences that shape one’s personality and actions, often without the individual’s awareness. Freud developed the theory to explain erratic behavior and created psychoanalytic methods to unlock repressed memories. The unconscious mind also helps individuals adapt to new environments and fit in with others.
The unconscious mind is part of a theory developed by Sigmund Freud regarding the storage of memories and experiences. Freud suggested that all memories exist in the unconscious mind, dormant and unremembered, but nonetheless help direct one’s actions and shape one’s personality. These unremembered experiences are often painful and troubling, and the unconscious mind acts as a safeguard in the individual’s mind.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the unconscious mind is that the individual is unaware of it. This is one thing that all theories seem to agree on; the degree to which waking actions are modeled is widely debated, but psychologists and scientists generally agree that much of the brain’s activity goes undetected by the individual. It is also generally thought to reside alongside other parts of the mind.
Freud developed the theory to explain why people seem to act erratically or do things they are unable to explain later. He argued that even though an individual might not be able to explain his actions to him, these actions were not arbitrary. Instead, Freud argued that they were governed by thoughts, memories, and experiences that the person could not remember but were still affected by.
When an individual is born, he absorbs information from his surroundings without remembering specific details. Some researchers believe that this allows the individual to adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in; in situations where a child is born in one country and moves to another, the unconscious mind acts as a filter that allows the individual to grow and mature with the basic information needed to understand the surrounding culture. Mimicking the ways of others allows an individual to fit into a group or culture, and part of the theory states that the unconscious mind drives behaviors to fit in with others.
However, the vision of the unconscious seen by psychologists such as Freud and Carl Jung is much more dramatic. In their interpretation, the conscious and unconscious mind were constantly fighting for control over the individual. Freud used examples of patients suffering from some form of anxiety or depression without knowing what caused these emotions. He stated that it must be the influence of another level of thinking and memory; from this theory, he developed classic psychoanalytic methods for individuals who wish to tap into the unconscious mind to find out what was troubling them and why, unlocking memories that had been repressed.
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