Please explain it with examples,What is the difference between preconscious and subconscious?
Subconscious is a very loose term. It is used in everyday life to encompass both the Freudian unconscious and preconscious.
The preconscious also corresponds to the Buddhist concept of store consciousness - those 'seeds' - beneficent and harmful - that are capable of flowering into consciousness if watered.
There is a very fine literature review on the unconscious in Kahler, E. (1957). The tower and the abyss: An inquiry into the transformation of the individual. New York: George Braziller.
Kahler’s summary in his chapter on "The Varieties of the Unconscious"(1960-1961/1967) includes the epistemological unconscious of Hermann Broch; the epistemological unconscious, creative unconscious, and half-consciousness of Descartes; the physiopsychological unconscious of David Hartley and C. Judson Herrick; the petites perceptions of Leibniz, and Kant’s distinction between "dark" and "clear" conceptions (pp. 142-143); the structural unconscious of Alfred Korzybski; the Urgrund of Romantic philosophers such as Goethe and Schiller; the Ur-trieb or proto-instinct of Fichte; Schopenhauer’s will as "the only thing-in-itself", Herbart’s will as a craving and as "the most inward thing in man," and Nietzsche’s "will to power" as "the innermost essence of being" (pp. 145-147); free association, as a stream of subconsciousness in which "inner experience abandons itself to abrupt, subliminally conditioned combinations" (p. 149); the reactive unconscious in which overburdening of consciousness throws us back into the unconscious, and the repressive unconscious of Karl Fortlage and Freud, "the set of drives morbidly distorted and displaced by repression, but also grown steadily under the impact of modern modes of organization and civilization" (p. 152); the primitive or absolute unconscious of Paul Gustav Carus which knows no pathology; Freud’s preconscious or latent consciousness; the magical or parapsychological unconscious of Jung’s synchronicity; the post-consciousness of automatic activity; and the existential unconscious, "a stratum in which abide the fear of death and life, the fear of death as fear of life" (p. 159). Kahler’s (1957) unique contribution to this discussion is his identification of a generic unconscious" (equivalent to Jung's collective unconscious) resulting from the action of archaic groups upon the individual "from within, through unconscious channels" (p. 8). They "influence the individual through archetypes, rituals, traditions, and constitutional habits or tastes" so that the groups "are embedded, indeed embodied, in the very individuality of the individual" (p. 8). Kahler distinguishes this generic unconscious from a true collective unconscious which acts from without, imposing standards and stereotypes invasively, often leading to the splitting off or alienation of consciousness. Here are stored the "residue of mass stereotypes, slogans, conceptual simplifications, suggested or imposed attitudes, why by various means have sunk from consciousness into the unconscious" (pp. 10-11). Both Kahler (1957) and Erich Neumann (1949/1969) base their discussion of prejudice on the operation of this collective unconscious.
Other good summaries appear in Kahler, E. (1967). Varieties of the unconscious. In E. Kahler, Out of the labyrinth: Essays in clarification (R. & C. Winston, Trans .; pp. 121-160). New York: George Braziller. (Original work published 1960-1961)
Neumann, E. (1969). Depth psychology and a new ethic (E. Rolfe, Trans.). New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Original work published 1949).
A different type of history of the unconscious, focused mostly on the dynamic views, is Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Dear Ronán Michael Conroy and Hendrika Vande Kemp thanks for your answering.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology