The Unconscious Mind

If hypnosis and hypnotherapy work, it’s because they give access to a part of the mind that operates continuously, without the involvement of conscious will: the unconscious.

What is the unconscious mind?

It’s difficult to give a perfectly precise definition, the line between conscious and unconscious is itself fairly blurry. A classic image compares the mind to an iceberg: the visible part above the surface corresponds to the conscious mind; everything below the surface, largely hidden but far larger in volume, corresponds to the unconscious.

Another way to picture it, borrowed from computing, is to compare the body to hardware and the mind to software. In that software, the unconscious would play the role of the operating system, while the conscious mind would correspond to the applications running on top of it.

A term with old roots

The concept of the unconscious is an old one, and it hasn’t reached a definitive consensus, whether in philosophy or in psychology. The related term “subconscious” has a more precise origin: it was coined by the French psychologist Pierre Janet, who introduced it in 1909 at the sixth International Congress of Psychology in Geneva. Janet was keen to distinguish the subconscious, a clinical concept drawn from his work on hysteria, from the unconscious, a more philosophical notion. In everyday usage, these distinctions have largely faded, and the term “unconscious” is now used more broadly, to describe any thought, action, or phenomenon that escapes conscious will.

The unconscious in everyday life

Most of what we do is actually driven by the unconscious. While walking, no one is consciously aware of activating each muscle in turn, the unconscious handles that. The same goes for writing, or any routine task carried out “on autopilot,” while conscious attention is elsewhere, the unconscious remains in control.

Information coming from the body is also processed by the unconscious first. A sensation, a smell, or a sound can feel unpleasant before it is even consciously understood.

Some properties of the unconscious

It is always active, even during sleep. A sudden noise is perceived, analyzed, and compared against what is considered normal before the unconscious decides, or not, to trigger waking. In the same way, during deep hypnosis, even as conscious awareness withdraws, the unconscious remains present and listening.

It holds the memory of our entire life experience, including what we believe we’ve forgotten. The hypnotic state can sometimes provide access to some of these memories, helping to better understand, and sometimes resolve, present-day difficulties.

It is possible to communicate with it. It was precisely this discovery, in the late nineteenth century, that gave rise to modern psychotherapy: in the hypnotic state, it becomes possible to access certain unconscious mental processes, understand them, and sometimes help them evolve.

An ally, not an adversary

Contrary to a common belief, largely inherited from Freudian psychoanalysis or older popular notions, the unconscious is not some hostile or uncontrollable force. Its role is to help us live to the best of our ability, drawing on the full range of experiences accumulated over a lifetime. Its intentions are fundamentally benevolent, much like an organ of the body that, when in pain, doesn’t “want” harm: rather, a temporary malfunction, or an outside cause, is behind the suffering felt.

In other words, when the unconscious seems to be causing a problem, it is generally the means it uses to pursue an otherwise positive intention that produce unwanted side effects, not the intention itself.

Why do some people fear their own unconscious?

Some people cut themselves off from this part of themselves out of fear, which tends to make their difficulties worse rather than better. A few fears come up frequently:

• Fear of the unknown, we naturally fear what we don’t understand. Learning from reliable sources usually helps ease this fear.
• Fear of “discovering I’m losing my mind”, most psychological difficulties have no physiological cause and have nothing to do with serious mental illness. In more serious cases, it’s better to identify clearly what’s going on, consulting a psychiatrist if needed, rather than letting a situation worsen out of uncertainty.
• Fear of suffering by addressing a painful subject, when in fact hypnosis often makes it possible to work through a problem without reviving its full emotional weight. This is one of hypnotherapy’s strengths: it’s possible to address a difficult subject while keeping a certain distance from the pain associated with it.

These fears are usually based on mistaken beliefs about what the unconscious really is, a better understanding of how it works is generally enough to ease them.

What’s next?

• Understand the hypnotic state that provides access to the unconscious → What Is Hypnosis?
• Discover how to communicate with your own unconscious in everyday life → What Is Self-Hypnosis?
• Understand how hypnotherapy makes use of this resource → What Is Hypnotherapy?