A Psychology Lesson: The 3 Brains

There are a number of levels to Human consciousness, the way in which we think and perceive the world and ultimately the way in which we act is controlled be one or more of these levels and in some cases by all levels.

In the simplest terms there are 3 main levels of consciousness, two of which are polar opposites and the third of which forms a grey area which resides between the two.  The terms used to refer to these levels are:

Conscious Mind
Perhaps the most intuitive and familiar definition, you should recognise this one quite easily and you should be able to define it quite easily too.  Simply put your Conscious Mind is the "Brain" which you are in complete control of - or rather, is in complete control of you, whichever way you want to look at it.

Sub-Conscious Mind
This definition however and the one below you would be forgiven for considering synonymous and thinking they were the same thing.  They are not.  The Sub-Conscious Mind is what you have probably defined in your mind as being the Unconscious Mind - this definition would be in error as the Unconscious Mind is completely different, but we'll get to that.  Simply put the Sub-Conscious Mind is a grey area that sits between your consciousness and your unconscious mind.  This area is where thoughts from the unconscious filter through, in both directions.  This can best be described as your day-dream like side.  This is where thoughts 'occur' to you before you fully pay attention to them.  It is also where your body's senses are managed - that is your perception of the senses.  Your sub-conscious will see, hear, smell, taste and touch things and then deem if they are worthy of primary thought [think now] or secondary thought [think later].

Unconscious Mind
Now for the gorey bit, and believe me it is quite gorey.  Your unconscious mind is completely abstracted from you and for good reason.  Within this area of your mind your Brain 'trains' itself.  In this area you run through hundreds, thousands maybe even millions of scenarios everyday without ever even knowing it.  Inside this area of your mind your brain asks questions.  Imagine you are standing at a train station surrounded by people.  This area of your brain will ponder things like "what would happen if I jumped on the tracks?", "what would it feel like to be hit by the train?", "what if I screamed right now what would people say or do?" etc, the thoughts get progressively more dark and lean in towards questions such as the repercussions of violently attacking someone.

Now I am sure you are sitting there thinking "I've never thought any of that" well I'm sorry [not really, quite smug actually] to be the one to tell you this but the reality is you have - on the unconscious level, you are simply unaware of it on the conscious level and that is why it is abstracted.  There are mental walls that divide the three minds and prevent certain things from crossing over.

Sigmund Freud was one of the first Psychologists to study the unconscious mind and I believe he also coined the term itself.  Since then however we have come to understand it a lot more.  The walls, it seems are not so concrete.

All I have said still stands.  The unconscious mind is responsible to training, it does however communicate with the conscious mind.  The unconscious mind will feed certain results and conclusions to the subconscious mind.  Likewise the sub-conscious may feed experiences to the unconscious for examination.  If you have ever spent hours trying to solve a problem, gone to sleep and woken up the next day seemingly with an answer emerging from nowhere this can be explained by this process.  The unconscious mind constantly receives information to use in its simulations from the sub-conscious mind.

Build It Up and Tear It Down
The problem with all of this is, that with various illnesses and disorders and even through large amounts of alcohol consumption or other depressants, these walls "fall down" and thoughts that should really stay in the unconscious mind emerge.  This is bad. Very bad because the thoughts in your unconscious mind are not your own - they are the result of endless permutations of various scenarios and more often than not those that the unconscious mind retains for study are those that are in the extreme.  You won't "just like" something you'll either love it like it's the best thing in the world and everyone should know [typical reaction of coke addicts] or you'll hate something, so much you want to destroy it and make sure it never exists again [typical reaction people claim as the result of "a bad batch" ].  These emotions may or may not be related to your conscious emotions.  You may consciously love something and the emerging emotion can be the complete opposite.  This is actually quite logical, remember the Unconscious mind's purpose is to think about things your conscious mind couldn't bear to think of - the scenario of polarised emotions to the ones you feel is quite apt here.

All of the above can be reversed however as anti-depressants and other inhibitors build these walls back up and make them a lot stronger than they are naturally..  This is why people using anti-depressant tablets can seem to be themselves at times and at others they seem completely robotic, and it is also why many users of anti-depressants can't handle new situations or "can't think" about them.  All of this and more is the reason why you should never blame anyone for their actions when drugged or drunk - they really don't know what they are doing.  Their actions may have some basis in their everyday life and conscious thoughts but the things they do are things that they would never do if they were in full control.