consciousness
PSYC 101 - - Chapter 4
Consciousness:
Awareness of Ourselves and the External World
What lies buried in the unconscious mind?
This photograph of an archaeological excavation at the site of the ancient city of Meggido in Israel is symbolic of the layers of the unconscious mind.
In this photo each layer of civilization has been exposed in this excavated hillside.
The level at the bottom of the picture represents the Canaanite civilization, approximately 1500 B.C.
Major Concepts
Conscious:The contents of awareness - those things that occupy the focus of one's current attention.
Unconscious:The totality of all Psychic phenomena that lack the quality of consciousness; the receptacle of all lost memories and of all contents that are still too weak to become conscious.
Personal Unconscious:Made up of contents which were once conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through being forgotten or repressed. Made up essentially of complexes.
Collective Unconscious:The contents have never been in consciousness, and therefore have not been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Made up essentially of Archetypes.
Archetypes:Inherited images in the collective unconscious that shape our perceptions of the external world.
Synchronicity:A meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected.
Links to Illustrations of these concepts