The structure of the mind.

The structure of the mind.

When I sit down to write this article it is the end of March 2020.

Today I will be talking about the structure of mind remaining in the psychoanalytical trend. You can listen to this post on my podcast.

According to the theory of the mind of Sigmund Freud, intellectual abilities arise from a mental mechanism that develops in grouping and within three objects; id, ego and superego. This gives rise to his theory called psychoanalysis. Freud believed that people could be relieved by passing on to their consciousness their own unconscious thoughts and inspirations, in other words, by making the individual aware of his own thoughts and motivations, we support the rational way of thinking of the individual. This thesis justifies human behaviour and gains insight into the construction of the human mind. As well as numerous techniques in psychotherapy, which liked the basics of psychoanalysis and knowledge about the mind, were used to build other psychotherapeutic techniques.

Seligman noted that the concept of Freud’s ternary called “id” as biological, “ego” as psychological and “superego”, which is a social component, is a kind of map that creates a human personality. Seligman goes on to comment that all the elements work together as internal forces that create our personality.

Sanders in his book:

“It seems that modern psychotherapy derives from Freud’s work, either directly or because his work enabled discussion and study of mind and behaviour because it made people think that behaviour could be logically linked to theoretical states of mind” .

To understand, the human mind is worth understanding the core of the psychoanalytic theory. Freud presented his model of the human mind in the essay “The unconscious” published in 1915. He believes that the subconscious takes around 55% of the whole mind while unconsciousness 30-40% and consciousness only 10% of our psyche. According to him, consciousness is not the most critical layer of the psyche, but it mainly concerns current events and knows that something can perceive the control of incoming stimuli. Information on why something is happening is included in the unconscious, in which most mechanisms that motivate behaviour take place. Thus, the role of consciousness can be defined as monitoring and control of behaviour, while the role of the unconscious is to induce and direct behaviour. Merely been consciously forgotten and no longer necessary to us, for example, automatic thoughts. It is from these memories and experiences that our beliefs, habits, and behaviours are formed.

The unconscious mind is allocated a layer deeper in mind with similar information. The unconscious mind is really like a hard disc in a computer with all your memories, habits, and behaviours. It is the storehouse of all our deep-seated emotions that have been programmed since birth. The concept of inner conflict is a prime example of psychodynamics work.

“The division of the psyche into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psychoanalysis”. (Freud, 1923)

Conscious, subconscious, and unconscious working together they create our reality. Freud believed that mental activity took place at three levels of consciousness: unconscious which is beyond our awareness and inaccessible, pre-conscious such as a regular activity and conscious as a full awareness. The id, ego and superego are the tripartite of a Freudian structure of the personality. The id is the thickest part of the unconscious, the ego is the conscious and reasoning aspect of the mind and the superego is that part concerned with self- criticism, self-observation and idealism. Sanders in his book note: Modern psychotherapy seems to spring from Freud’s work, either directly or because his work made possible the discussion and study of the mind and behaviour because it made people think that behaviour could be linked logically to theoretical states of mind.

“To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.” 

― Irvin D. Yalom,

Thank you for listening and see you soon. Your host Marcin Bogucki on Private Psychotherapy Practice with Remote Counselling.