From: friday@netcom.com (Carol Anne Ogdin)
Subject: Notions of the Conscious/Unconscious Mind
Summary: A Personal Metaphor of the Mind
Keywords: Mind Conscious Unconscious Hypnosis
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 18:08:37 GMT


                   The Conscious and the Unconscious Mind

Throughout the literature of hypnosis there appear the notions of the
"conscious" mind and the "unconscious" mind.  These concepts are not clear
for most people, because there are so many competing theories that purport
to explain the differences.  In my own work, I have come to appreciate a
rather primitive understanding based on a "functional," or "black box"
model.  I'm not quite sure where these ideas originated, and I'm sure some-
one could find the original sources I've tapped for this model; I claim no
originality.

This is not a "scientific" model of the Mind.  It is my own synthesis of
all I've read, and it has been tested only in my life...but it seems to
work.  If the model works for you, that feel free to adopt it or use it to
modify your own perceptions of how your mind works.  If you have questions
about what I mean, I'm amenable to questions.  If you want to challenge it
through comparison with other models that may've been produced by scholars
in the field, I am defenseless and I'm sure you can easily prove me wrong
by that standard, so save the energy.  I would especially appreciate any-
thing you notice that seems inconsistent or at odds with experience.


The Mind
--------

The Mind is that part of our corporeal existence with which we pay atten-
tion and respond to the sea of stimuli we swim in every day.  To "mind"
something is to pay attention to it.  When we "verb" that noun, we refer to
the Mind; that part of us which pays attention.

I do not have any idea where the locus of the Mind is:  I suspect it is the
entire nervous system and brain complex.


The Conscious Mind
------------------

That _part_ of the mind that think with is what I call the Conscious Mind. 
Thinking is the act of accepting stimuli (both external and internal, like
memories and recollections), perceiving patterns in those stimuli, and
drawing conclusions.  The product of thinking is some action, again, exter-
nal or internal, like the revision or creation of patterns that can--in the
future--be remembered and recalled).

The conscious mind excels at judging, evaluating and sifting.  Because
those processes are often iterative (i.e., repetitive) or recursive (i.e.,
self-reflective), they can take extremely long periods of time to com-
plete...if, indeed, the process ever completes.  The conscious mind may, in
fact, come to the conclusion that no conclusion is possible with the infor-
mation at hand, and may produce the action of acquiring more information;
there being no guarantee that the newly-acquired information doesn't intro-
duce even more confusion, sometimes the conscious mind can become mired in
the paralysis of analysis.


The Unconscious Mind
--------------------

While the Conscious Mind is off doing all the evaluating and judging, the
Body still needs to continue to move in and respond to the Universe:  That
is handled by the Unconscious Mind.  The Unconscious Mind appears to be a
vast network that can very quickly process accepted stimuli into behavior. 
Imagine a huge decision tree with multiple inputs (from the five senses,
and from memories and recollections), and multiple outputs (to the muscles
of the body and feedback to the places of memories and recollections.  It
takes about 20-100 msec (depending on the individual) to process a new set
of stimuli into a behavior determined by the network.

It is the unconscious mind that actually does most of the controlling of
the body:  When you see a flying object coming rapidly toward your face,
the unconscious mind produces a behavioral response of the arm flicking out
to knock the object off its path.  When hear words that, in the past, have
caused you pain, the unconscious mind will produce the grimace (and,
depending upon the context--e.g., the source of the remark is your boss, or
a menacing giant--may moderate that behavior so as to avoid undesirable
consequences).

The unconscious mind's network contains the encoding of the individual's
value system:  If honesty is held to be of high value, then the potential
paths through the network that might produce "lying" behavior are inhib-
ited.  Values that appear earlier in the network are of intrinsically
higher priority than those that appear later; those earlier in the network
select appropriate pathways with larger scope than those later in the net-
work.

The network of the unconscious mind is adaptable and revisable:  It can be
changed as a consequence of behavior ("Ooh, _that_ worked; let's reinforce
that path so the same stimuli will cause this result again in the future!")
or as a consequence of the ruminations of the Conscious Mind.  I am coming
to the conclusion that the network's adaptation is responsive _only_ to
*positive* feedback (that is, feedback that identifies a pathway through
the network that had a desirable or favorable outcome), and that negative
feedback is a purely Conscious mind operator.


The Senses
----------

The five senses are capable of being directed in focused awareness. 
Through the muscles involved in their activation (e.g., eye movements), and
the filters that are intrinsically part of their makeup, the senses produce
information that is accepted by both the Conscious and the Unconscious
Mind.  The filters exist because there is such a vast amount of information
coming into the mind that if we were to accept all of it without selection
we'd be full-time consumed with accepting and have no capacity left for
processing or responses.  In fact, in moments of extreme trauma, it is not
uncommon to experience sensory overload; the startled stance of the stunned
deer in the headlights of a car at night may be just such an example. 
Furthermore, at moments of stress or panic, our information-selection fil-
ters may become aggressively applied, resulting in such phenomena as
"tunnel vision" or muffled hearing.

It is not clear to me whether the Conscious or the Unconscious Mind is
responsible for principal control of the acuity of the senses, but I would
be willing to bet that it is about 20/80 in favor of the Unconscious Mind.


The Actions
-----------

The motor operations of the body are controlled both by the Conscious and
the Unconscious Mind--and sometimes they conflict.  You can consciously
raise your hand into the air, and you can unconscious snap your hand back
from a hot stove; in both cases, the hand moves.

This can often lead to conflict:  If you play a sport, you know what I
mean.  In tennis, when I'm "in the flow," it means that my unconscious mind
is in principal control of my body.  At that moment, the challenges of the
task are exactly matched to my abilities (if challenges exceed ability, it
results in anxiety; if abilities exceed challenge, the result is boredom).  
A proper role of the conscious mind in this endeavor is as passive, posi-
tive judge:  "Gee, that was *good*!," and "Wow, *great* shot!"  That pro-
vides feedback to the unconscious mind about the pathways through the net-
work that are most effective to produce the desired effects...as noticed by
the senses and evaluated by the conscious mind.

After the playing is done, the conscious mind has another appropriate role: 
Evaluation of the patterns of the play to produce useful actions (probably
all internal) that deserve rehearsing.  If we notice, for instance, that
whenever the ball came from one particular direction we had a tendency to
get off balance during the swing, we might then use that to create a behav-
ior which we then rehearse to embed appropriate behavior into the uncon-
scious mind's network.  (Note my assumption here:  There is a mistaken
belief that many people hold that merely *thinking* about something con-
sciously is sufficient; I submit that mere *thinking* does virtually
*nothing* to change the unconscious mind.  That is why just rehearsing the
event through visualization is sufficient:  It is the means by which the
conscious mind can influence the programming of the network in the uncon-
scious mind.  Incidentally, the unconscious mind's network has _no way_ to
make a distinction between externally-observed reality and imagined real-
ity.  Once the network has been changed through action or rehearsal, the
history of where those changes came from is inaccessible to the unconscious
mind's network.)

When the conscious mind decides to get into the real-time act, that "flow"
experience gets impeded.  What apparently happens is that the signals from
the conscious mind (which is, after all, rather slow) and signals from the
unconscious mind (faster, but without judgment) both start down the same
neural pathways to the muscles, and intermingle.  The resulting signal at
the muscle is therefore of such intensity and timing as to be less optimal
than if the signal had originated at the unconscious alone.  The result is
sub-optimal performance.  When the conscious mind begins competing with the
unconscious mind, we often report, "I couldn't get out of my own way!"


Congruence
----------

The unconscious mind produces multiple outputs simultaneously:  Each muscle
in the body can be affected by the output of the network.  As a conse-
quence, we have an exquisite tool for determining whether all the parts of
the unconscious are in agreement.  If a person is presented with a question
that tends to occupy the conscious mind in thought, what we'll generally
see is behavior generated exclusively from the unconscious mind.  When the
entire physiology of the person behaves consistently with the sense and
tone of that question, we have evidence that the person's internal states
(and consequent external behaviors) are congruent.  The word out of the
throat might by "Yes," and the head nods, and the facial expression is one
generally associated with positive response, and the body slightly rocks
back and forth; that is _congruence_.

But, when the voice says, "Yes," and the head shakes side-to-side, and the
facial expression is asymmetrical (left and right halves in different con-
figuration), we have clear evidence of _incongruence_.  Incongruence means
that there are or more parts of the unconscious mind that are not in agree-
ment.  We may not discern the source of that disagreement, but we can
notice that it exists and be aware that there is some internal conflict. 
The ability to be of help to someone else through difficult times seems to
me to be directly correlated to the ability to notice congruence and incon-
gruence, and to respond accordingly.  Experienced and effective helping
professionals, managers, sales people, and others are adept at noticing
changes in congruence in mid-sentence, and making changes in their speech
on-the-fly to move the person toward (or away from) congruence, as appro-
priate to the circumstances and objectives.

This material is Copyright, 1992, 1993 by Carol Anne Ogdin, Santa Clara, CA
95051; all rights reserved.  Distributed through alt.hypnosis newsgroup of
Usenet (Internet), and paper copies may be made for personal use.  Any
other distribution of this material must include this copyright and contact
notice.  The author may be reached as     friday@well.sf.ca.us   
(permanent) or      friday@netcom.com   (so long as I reside in Northern
California).
-- 
--Friday                                    "Knowledge is guesswork
   Carol Anne Ogdin, Principal Designer         disciplined by 
   Deep Woods Technology                        rational criticism." 
     friday@netcom.com                                 --Karl Popper
Newsgroups: alt.hypnosis