Bulb

Our minds are so complex and for many of us, we know little about the deeper workings of the mind and those unconscious parts of ourselves. The unconscious mind is still viewed by many psychological scientists as just a shadow of the real conscious mind. But, much more research into the field now shows substantial evidence that the unconscious is not identifiably less flexible, complex, controlling, deliberative or action-oriented than its counterpart, the conscious mind. For most of our human history, we had not a great deal of connection to anything other than conscious thought and we saw that everything was based on intentional behaviour. In the 1800s, two very different but very exciting developments were starting to emerge, hypnotism and evolutionary theory. Both pointed to the possibility of the unconscious, with its unintended causes of human behaviour and how these deeper levels of our mind influence us. But nearly two centuries later much of the psychological science remains firmly placed in a conscious-centric model of the higher mental processes. Our unconscious mind is still shrouded in mystery and intrigue, also I don’t think it has helped that our view of the powers of the unconscious mind has come largely from studies of subliminal information processing. We have just not shifted from the belief that the conscious mind holds all the cards, and this can be right for much of our consciousness, but after 27 years working in this field, I know that this is not the full truth. Much of the research looks purely at subliminal-strength stimulation from the environment, thus perpetuating the notion that conscious processes are primary ones.