Terminology:

Somewhat related to the unconscious are nonconscious psychic events. The term nonconscious seems to be used in various ways – some appear to use the term to avoid the somewhat value-laden term “unconscious” or “subconscious” (but basically for the same purpose); some use it to refer to events that can only be observed indirectly (e.g. certain acts of short-term memory); some use it to point to events such as brain activity controlled mostly by the autonomic nervous system (e.g. emotional reactions to certain smells). Not surprisingly, there are no sharply delineated conventions for distinguishing exactly between the nonconscious and the unconscious – partly because they interact with each other, and partly because, as is so often the case, psychologists are unable to agree on the definitions.

A distinction needs to be made between The Unconscious (or the unconscious mind, or the subconscious), which are concepts in psychoanalysis and related fields, and unconscious or nonconscious events in the mind, which are of great interest in cognition and perception. There are connections and similarities between the two but it would be quite wrong to use these two concepts interchangeably.

Unconscious mental processes:

The unconscious is arguably not the most intuitive idea, so why bother with it? What's the evidence? What might the unconscious explain?

1. The fact that most bodily processes are not consciously controlled eg breathing, blood circulation, blinking
2. The fact that something - not the conscious mind - creates the dreams that we wander around in at night
3. The mind spontaneously moving from one idea or recollection to another
4. Creative ideas that do not appear to come from conscious thinking
5. Waking up in the morning with an insight or solution to a problem
6. All memory is unconscious. The act of remembering something means bringing the information stored outside our conscious mind into awareness.
7. The fact that we forget certain things but later spontaneously recall them
8. Intuition
9. That we learn certain skills so that they become largely automatic eg driving a car, playing a sport
10. The fact that we can run downstairs without thinking where we place each footfall
11. The instincts, such as self-preservation and sex, originate on an unconscious level
12. The origin of all the bodily urges, such as hunger and thirst, lies outside the conscious mind
13. Physical reflexes
14. Subliminal perception. It is known that only a very tiny proportion of our bodily stimuli actually reach consciousness. Otherwise we would be swamped by billions of stimuli.
15. Perception - a baby is not born able to recognise shapes but has to build up what is called perceptual stability during the first six months of life.
16. The mental reaction of responding to a stimulus is not conscious but a pattern that is part of our conditioning eg our response to music
17. Hypnosis and trance (Note: the existence of hypnosis as an altered state is controversial; see the article for more).
18. Psychological processes such as denial, introjection and psychological projection
19. Our own motivation tends to be something we are not consciously aware of, a good example of which is: Falling in love
20. With perhaps a few exceptions, nearly all our emotions are caused without our being aware of why at the time, though we may analyse them later
21. We speak our native tongue without looking for words or consciously constructing grammatical phrases - this is done for us on an unconscious level
22. Since without memory both thinking and learning would be impossible, the importance of the unconscious is far greater than may appear.