Research Article - (2019) Volume 9, Issue 4 View PDF Download PDF

The Need for Developing a Fourth Level of Awareness in Human Consciousness: Unconsciousness, Preconsciousness, Consciousness and Postconsciousness

and Mustafa Ahmed Ramadhan Hashim Talib Hashim, College of Medicine, University of Baghdad, Iraq,009647800257310,

Author info »

Abstract Background: Consciousness is the state of being aware of any object or something within oneself, such as thoughts, feelings, memories, or sensations. The three levels of awareness in human consciousness which are divided by Freud: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Each of these levels interferes and overlaps with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego. The consciousness includes all the things we are aware of, such as the things we know about ourselves and our surroundings. The preconsciousness consists of things we can pay conscious attention to if we are much desired in ourselves, and it is where many memories are stored for easy retrieval when needed. And the last one is the unconsciousness that includes all the things that are outside of our conscious awareness, including many memories, thoughts, and impulses that we are not aware of. When someone do something wrong, his conscious tell him the truth and he is starting to blame himself, but to avoiding this confliction the brain will create an imaginary picture of needing to do the wrong thing but it will never occur again to overcome the conflicts inside the brain. Methodology: Our study which is cross sectional study conducted as an interview survey for one month, involved 167 participants from many countries who are almost students or from higher educational level (We used convenient sampling procedure in collecting them). We used self - structured questionnaire which was tested for validity and Reliability by presented the questions to three psychiatrists in Baghdad Medical college and Dhi Qar Medical College in Iraq after we have reviewed the literature related to this topic of consciousness, then we tested it for reliability with Pearson correlation coefficient (R=0.00). We found that these questions are the most describable for the consciousness level that we are looking for and studying. All the participants were well informed about the purpose of our study and what we are testing for before we gained their consent. The data was collected and analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science Program (SPSS) version 24.0 and we used student T test in testing the significant between variables. Aim: To determine the need for the presence of a fourth level of consciousness in human mind that explain the feelings that are not considered under the other three levels. Results: The mean of age is 21.4491 with standard deviation of 3.43907 40.1% of them are male (67) and 59.3% are females (99), only 0.6% prefer not to say. 62% feel that they need to do this work and they will not do it again, but 38% do not feel that, while 59.9% follow their feelings to do the wrong thing and convince themselves not to do it again but 40.1% do not. There is a significant difference between people who feel guilty on a work and the people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing and they will never do it again (P - Value=0.009). There is a significant difference too between people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing because they need it and the people who follow that feeling (P - Value=0). There are not significant differences between age or gender and other variables. Conclusion: The feeling of the need to do any work and it will not occur again is not under the control of the three levels of consciousness described by Sigmoid Freud, so the need to develop a new level of consciousness which I called it (Postconsciousness) is necessary to explain these feelings in human psychology, as we found that 62% of the sample feel that they need to do this work and they will not do it again and only 59.9% follow their feelings to do the wrong thing and convince themselves not to do it again. In addition to that, we found a significant difference between people who feel guilty on a work and the people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing and they will never do it again and there is a significant difference too between people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing because they need it and the people who follow that feeling as well. Keywords Unconsciousness; Preconsciousness; Consciousness; Postconsciousness; Freud; Awareness; Psychological breakdown; Ego; ID; Superego

Introduction

Consciousness as explained in psychology is the fineness or the state of being aware of any external object or something within the oneself, such as thoughts, feelings, memories, or sensations. It has also been defined as: the awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive-control system of the mind [1]. Consciousness is something that cannot be touched or felt, it controls our feelings, ourselves and our sensation in the way that it thinks it is suitable for each situation and the human cannot control his consciousness by doing what he wants to do, he has to obey it [2]. Freud's division of human consciousness as three levels of awareness: the consciousness, Preconsciousness, and unconsciousness. Each of them superimposes and interferes with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego as well [3].

He concludes that consciousness comes from the linkage of words and concepts in conceptual realms that yield specific content and meaning to what is experienced, whereas “preconscious” relates to a state in which presentations are without linguistic signs. On the other side, “unconscious” (in the dynamic sense) indicates representations falling within the field of concepts whose internal contents do not belong to them in terms of the individual's life history; such material may appear in consciousness with “Wrong” names [1].

Freud in his topographical model never looked at the mind to be built up of a number of systems, but rather these were terms used in a very special way, and it is a further puzzle as to what precisely Freud wanted them to signify [3]. Consciousness and unconsciousness are not inimical properties and they are not intrinsically antagonistic to each other. Conflict between them is not regarding their status but because of the particular character of the contents of unconsciousness and their consequent connection with repression [4].

Many questions remain unanswered, but it is fitting to conclude that consciousness and unconsciousness are both a set of states with representational content distinguished by special features which need not be regarded as propositional attitudes, characteristically endowed with phenomenology but attributed in a spirit of pure plain psychological realism [4].

The psychology has now become a three - fold system consisting of the Id, the unorganized reservoir of instinctual drives and the Ego and Superego, the organized systems through which these direct and by which they are controlled. The unconsciousness is no longer equaled with the suppressed, the existence of other ways of instinctual defense, remarkably introjection and projection, is recognized, and the economic canon of description, the idea of distribution of energy between systems that has been added to the topographic and dynamic. It is evident that we cannot longer study development in terms of a theory of impulses alone but must at every stage be prepared to take into account the type of ego - organization through which they direct and the mechanisms by which they are controlled, including the degrees of ego - differentiation and of reality - sense development that obtains. The theory of development in terms of libidinal stages has to be boarded into a theory of developmental phases of the all spirit [5].

The first effect of the new formulations was to promote research into the functions of the superego, especially the feeling of guilt and the need for penalty, both in pathogenesis and in 'applied' fields. Freud himself introduced his 'signal' concept of anxiety [6].

Freud's ideas of the Unconscious are rooted in the clinical - empirical observations of phenomena such as dreams, slips of the tongue and other neurotic symptoms, regressive - infantile types of behavior in adults, delusions in schizophrenia, etc... Based on this there are in Freud's work also meta psychological’’ observations that strive for a theoretical determination of the essence of the Unconsciousness in its relation to consciousness. These observations find their most pregnant expression in the theories of repression and the drive - representative [7].

The clarification of Husserl's changing conceptions of fictional consciousness (Phantasy) and memory, especially at the level of auto affective time - consciousness, suggests an interpretation of Freud's concept of the Unconsciousness. This phenomenological analysis of Freud's concept of the Unconsciousness leads to a partial critique of Freud's metapsychological definition of the Unconsciousness as a simple, internally unperceived representational consciousness. It also suggests a regard of how a reproductive inner consciousness can take the subject from the experience of anxiety by permitting for possibilities of self distanciation and symbolic self - representation that protect the subject from traumatic sentiment by and through its own instinctual commands [7].

An important features of mental life is that we are aware or consciousness of the results of many of our cognitive processes. Whether we are thinking, or perceiving, or listening, or remembering, our cognitive processes, as we realize them, lead to outcomes that are accompanied by phenomenal awareness. In opposite to the processes leading to phenomenal awareness, a matter which has fascinated psychologists, philosophers, and even neuroscientists, is whether cognitive processes which can be described as being unconscious, preconscious, or subconscious also lead to results which have an impact on mental life. In spite of the long history of the uniqueness between conscious and unconscious cognitive processes, there is still no agreement as to the role of unconscious or preconscious cognitive processes [8]. A reason for this slow progress in understanding the role of unconscious processes premises around cases regarding how to measure awareness or, in other words, how to recognize conscious from unconscious cognitive processes. These matters have been addressed most widely in the context of research's studies investigating perception without awareness, and the vast majority of these researches have involved visual perception [8].

When someone do something wrong, his conscious tell him the truth and he is starting to blame himself, but to avoiding this confliction the brain will create an imaginary picture of needing to do the wrong thing but it will never occur again to overcome the conflicts inside the brain. [9,10]

Research Methodology

Our Study is cross sectional study, is conducted as an interview survey for one month in July, 2019. It involved 167 participants from many countries (All the participants are included) who are almost students or from higher educational level because they have more awareness about the topic and can be helpful and to reduce the biases resulted from misunderstanding by illiterate people (We chose them by convenient sampling). We used self - structured questionnaire which was tested for validity (Face validity) by doing a literature review and choose the questions that describe and assess the consciousness level of human in our assessment and by reviewing the questions by three psychiatrists in Baghdad Medical college and Dhi Qar Medical College in Iraq after we have reviewed the literature related to this topic of consciousness. We also tested them for reliability (Two way mixed effect) in a pilot study of 30 participants by asking them the questions and after one week, we asked them again, the answers were exactly the same, we used Pearson correlation coefficient and it is significant at 0.01 (R=0.00).

All the participants were well informed about the purpose of our study and what we are testing for before we gained their consent.

The data was collected and analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science Program (SPSS) version 24.0 and we used student T test in testing the significant between variables.

Results and Discussion

The mean of age is 21.4491 with standard deviation of 3.43907. 40.1% of them are male (67) and 59.3% are females (99), only 0.6% prefer not to say (1 person). They distributed on 21 countries and they have 14 different occupations (Tables 1-3). (Q3 - Q6) are describing the fourth level of consciousness which we want to define it and determine it. We found that 62% feel that they need to do this work and they will not do it again, but 38% do not feel that, while 59.9% follow their feelings to do the wrong thing and convince themselves not to do it again but 40.1% do not. There is a significant difference between people who feel guilty on a work and the people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing and they will never do it again (P-Value=0.009). There is also a significant difference between people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing because they need it and the people who follow that feeling (P-Value=0). There are not significant differences between age or gender and other variables.

Country Frequency Percent (%) Valid Percent (%) Cumulative Percent (%) Bangladesh 1 0.6 0.6 0.6 Canada 4 2.4 2.4 3 China 1 0.6 0.6 3.6 Egypt 26 15.6 15.6 19.2 Ghana 5 3 3 22.2 Iran 3 1.8 1.8 24 Iraq 59 35.3 35.3 59.3 Israel 2 1.2 1.2 60.5 Italy 1 0.6 0.6 61.1 Jordan 12 7.2 7.2 68.3 Lebanon 1 0.6 0.6 68.9 Nepal 1 0.6 0.6 69.5 Oman 5 3 3 72.5 Palestine 35 21 21 93.4 Peru 1 0.6 0.6 94 Portugal 1 0.6 0.6 94.6 Romania 4 2.4 2.4 97 Saudi Arabia 1 0.6 0.6 97.6 Sudan 1 0.6 0.6 98.2 Tunisia 1 0.6 0.6 98.8 Yemen 2 1.2 1.2 100 Total 167 100 100

Table 1: Countries distribution of participants.

Career Frequency Percent (%) Valid Percent (%) Cumulative Percent (%) Chef 1 0.6 0.6 0.6 Dentist 1 0.6 0.6 1.2 Doctor 2 1.2 1.2 2.4 Engineer 1 0.6 0.6 3 Housewife 1 0.6 0.6 3.6 Industry Engineer 1 0.6 0.6 4.2 Pharmacist 1 0.6 0.6 4.8 Professor 1 0.6 0.6 5.4 Researcher 1 0.6 0.6 6 Retail 2 1.2 1.2 7.2 Student 148 88.6 88.6 95.8 Teacher 1 0.6 0.6 96.4 Unemployed 3 1.8 1.8 98.2 Worker 3 1.8 1.8 100 Total 167 100 100

Table 2: Occupations of the participants.

Q1: Have you ever experienced a psychological problem, depression, anxiety or psychological breakdown? Frequency Percent (%) Valid Percent (%) Cumulative percent (%) Yes 99 59.30% 59.30% 59.30% No 27 16.20% 16.20% 75.40% Maybe 41 24.60% 24.50% 100% Q2: When you do a mistake or any work that you think it is wrong or unacceptable, do you feel that you are doing wrong and you have to stop it (Do you feel guilty?) Yes 185 94.60% 94.60% 94.60% No 9 5.40% 5.40% 100% Q3: Have you ever stopped a work because you felt it is wrong or unacceptable? Yes 145 86.80% 86.80% 86.80% No 22 13.20% 13.20% 100% Q4: Have you ever felt that you need to do this wrong or unacceptable work because you need to do it and you will never do it again? Yes 105 62.90% 62.90% 62.90% No 62 37.10% 37.10% 100% Q5: Have you ever followed your feelings that the wrong or unacceptable thing that you intend to do is necessary and you need to do it but it will never occur again? Yes 100 59.90% 59.90% 59.90% No 67 40.10% 40.10% 100% Q6: Have you ever experienced a depression, anxiety, psychological problems or breakdown because of the conflict between the feeling of guilty and the feeling of the need to do the wrong or unacceptable work? Yes 62 37.10% 37.10% 37.10% No 41 24.60% 24.60% 61.70% Maybe 64 38.30% 38.30% 100% Q7: What the thoughts that control your personality almost? Good Thoughts 131 78.40% 78.40% 78.40% Bad Thoughts 36 21.60% 21.60% 100%

Table 3: The percentages of answers.

We hypothesized that there should be a fourth level of consciousness in human to explain the feelings that cannot be explained by the other three levels.

When you want to do something, your consciousness will be aware and supported for you to do this thing if it is within its range, if it is not, your thoughts will be detected by another level of consciousness which is deeper, the preconscious. This area is a transition area between the consciousness and unconsciousness and the thoughts that belong to this level can move to the consciousness and thus the human can do them (9,10). After this level is the unconsciousness which the deepest level of consciousness in human and the thoughts that belong to this area cannot be true or sensible but it is necessary to make a balance in human’s thinking [10,11]. There is a balance between consciousness and unconsciousness, but the stronger one is consciousness which control our feelings and what we do.

When one of them becomes stronger, the other become weaker and vice versa. When the unconsciousness controls the feelings and thoughts of anyone, he will be insensible and maybe schizophrenic [12,13].

When someone try to do something wrong, and he has good thoughts, his unconsciousness will agree and encourage him to do it but his consciousness will refuse that and there will be a conflict between these two levels, between the need to do the wrong work and the feeling of guilty. We cannot consider these feelings under the same titles of Freud's ideas of consciousness because it is different.

This conflict will be solved by a fourth region which we called it (Postconsciousness) that gives you the excuse to do the wrong things because you need it and you will never do it again, when we asked the participants if they had these thoughts, the majority answers yes and the other questions was if they follow this feeling, also the majority said yes and we find a significant difference between these two variables. The age and gender not related to the consciousness and its levels because we found no significant difference between them and other variables in our study.

Conclusion

The feeling of the need to do any work and it will not occur again is not under the control of the three levels of consciousness described by Sigmoid Freud, so the need to develop a new level of consciousness which I called it (Postconsciousness) is necessary to explain these feelings in human psychology, as we found that 62% of the sample feel that they need to do this work and they will not do it again and only 59.9% follow their feelings to do the wrong thing and convince themselves not to do it again. In addition to that, we found a significant difference between people who feel guilty on a work and the people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing and they will never do it again and there is a significant difference too between people who feel that they need to do the wrong thing because they need it and the people who follow that feeling as well. This level of consciousness is unreal level that convince you to do the work that you intend to do, only to overlap the conflict between the consciousness and unconsciousness that can lead to psychological problems (such as breakdown) if it is not controlled.

Acknowledgment

We want to thank the below mentioned people who helped us in collecting the sample from all the countries that participated in our study: Waed Yassir, Morad Mustafa, Mohammed Tariq, Essam Muner, Dr. Naseif Al-Hameri, Mustafa A. Mohsen, Ahmad Diya, Azzam F, Mojtaba Ziae, Abbas Aziz, Teeba Abdilrazaq and Intisar Jabbar.

References

Dietrich A. Introduction to consciousness. Macmillan International Higher Education, UK, 2007. Armstrong DM. What is consciousness?. The nature of mind. 1981:55-67. Freud S, Strachey J, Freud A, Strachey A, Tyson A. "The ego and the id." The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works. The Hogarth press: The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, UK. 1961:1-66. De Sousa A. Freudian theory and consciousness: A conceptual analysis. Mens Sana Monographs 2011: 9(1)210. Zepf S. The relations between language, consciousness, the preconscious, and the unconscious: Freud's approach conceptually updated. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review. 2011:34(1);50-61. Fenichel O. The psychoanalytic theory of neurosis. Routledge, UK. 2014. Bernet R. Unconscious consciousness in Husserl and Freud. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 2002: 1(3):327-351. Merikle P. Preconscious processing. In: M. Velmans & S. Schneider (Eds), The Blackwell companion to consciousness. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, UK. 2007:512-524. Ornstein RE. The psychology of consciousness. Penguin (Non-Classics), UK, 1972. Fireman GD, McVay T, Ted E, Flanagan OJ. Narrative and consciousness: Literature, psychology, and the brain. Oxford University Press on Demand, Oxford, UK. 2003. Althusser L. Freud and Lacan. New Left Review, London, UK. 1969:55(1);48. Bouveresse J. Wittgenstein reads Freud: The myth of the unconscious. Princeton University Press, USA. 1995. Schimek JG. A critical re-examination of Freud's concept of unconscious mental representation. Int J Psychoanal. 1975:2;171-187.