Model of the Mind

Model of the mind

According to Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts:

1) The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious.

2) The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that lie outside our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behaviour and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.

To explain how the mind works, I will use a thought metaphor that I hope will make it easy to understand.

If we liken your mind to a computer, then just like a computer, your unconscious mind can only do what it is programmed to do. It does not have the analytical ability to judge whether what it is doing is correct.

If the computer is programmed so that it understands 5+5=11 it will always give this answer because that’s what it believes to be true.

So, for example, if the computer has to work out:

5+

5+

17

=­­­__

this should give us the answer 27 but with the wrong bit of programming, the unconscious mind would give us 28 because it believes 5+5=11

If we do this calculation again with a small change to the order in which the computer processes the information, then we get 5+17+5 = 27 (which is correct)

5+

17

5+

=­­­__

Because the computer has been programmed to believe 5+5 = 11, when the calculation is done in a different order, then the computer will give a different answer without an analytical judgement about whether it is right or wrong.

Another example is

5X

100

5+

=­­­__

This would give us an answer of 505, which is correct, but if we change the order

5+

5+

100X

=____

would be 11X100 which would give us the incorrect answer of 1100 not the correct answer, which is 10X 100= 1000. So you can begin to see how a small mistake can lead to a big problem if the programming of the computer is incorrect.

Hypnotherapy can help to find the wrong bit of information and then reprogramme it so that it does not affect you any more; just like a computer programmer who debugs computer code.

The mind can also be likened to a ship and a captain. The captain is the conscious mind and the ship and the crew are the unconscious mind.

It is the captain’s job to set the course and direction of the ship and be aware of the capabilities of the ship and crew. The crew are there to make sure the ship is moving at a speed set by the captain

If the captain starts to micro manage, he would spend too much time checking the crew is doing their job and being too hands-on with the engine.

The captain should be delegating and then leaving the job to the crew. If there was a problem, the crew would let the captain know so he does not have to get too hands-on. All the captain needs to do is set the course and make sure the ship stays on course.

If you look at the table below, you will see some of the functions of the conscious and unconscious mind.

Within the unconscious mind there are different depths. So, for example, your name and telephone number are close to the surface and easily retrievable, but we may find it harder to recall childhood experiences or information we learnt at school.