Below the surface

Freud popularized the idea of a powerful unconscious of repressed desired and fears that could override our conscious control. More recently, psychology has developed a theory of sophisticated unconscious processing mechanisms that provide the foundation for our conscious experiences.

Unconscious Mind

There has been a lot of debate about the relationship of the conscious mind to the unconscious mind. The metaphor of a beast and a rider has often been invoked to show the relationship between the two. There is an ancient set of Japanese woodcuts that chronicle the quest for understanding and control of the unconscious as the search for a bull.

Ten Bulls

INTERACTION OF THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS:

So how do the conscious and unconscious minds interact? An chapter in a book entitled “The New Unconscious” contains a section that breaks it down like this:

Multiprocessing: Control and Automatic Processes can Run in Parallel

The conscious mind handles experiences while the unconscious mind goes about the business of maintaining the many subprocesses that are necessary for normal functioning.

Delegation: A Control Process Can Launch an Automatic Process:

You consciously trigger an automatic process. Like tying a shoe or serving a tennis ball, you tell yourself to do something and then get out of the way.

Orienting: An Automatic Process Can Launch A Conscious Process

You are driving along a familiar road and thinking about something else when all of a sudden you come upon an accident and your conscious mind returns to your driving.

Intrusion: An Automatic Process Can Override A Control Process

You are reaching for a pot that has been sitting on the stove but you don’t realize that it is hot. As soon as you touch it, your system yanks your hand back automatically.

Regulation: A Control Process Can Override An Automatic Process

You are driving to your new house but you absent mindedly start to turn down the street that leads to your old house. You catch yourself and continue on the route to your new place.

Automatization: A Control Process Can Be Transformed Into An Automatic Process

You rehearse a golf swing over and over again, paying attention to every movement until you get it right and it becomes automatic.

Disruption: An Automatic Process Can Be Transformed Into A Control Process

You have a bad habit of reacting negatively to any criticism. You work at consciously stopping your automatic reaction and carefully considering and reacting appropriately to feedback.

THE FOUR MINDS:

In the descriptions above, the term “control refers to conscious processes”. In the concepts discussed next, “control” is a more general term that can refer to either conscious or unconscious processes.

Pavlovian Controller:

Fast but inflexible controller of subconscious instincts and conditioned habits.

Goal-Directed Controller:

Slow but flexible controller of conscious consideration and rational decision-making.

Episodic Controller:

Faster but more primitive controller which applies remembered solutions to situations.

Habitual Controller:

Fast subconscious controller that deals with learned behavior that has become automatic.

HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING:

We have all experience the weighing of immediate gratification against delaying satisfaction. The initials SMS and LML were coined for Small-Reward-Sooner vs Larger-Reward-Later as shorthand for these situations. children who are able to delay gratification at grow into adults who have better impulse control in their lives. I have played around with an equation that encapsulates a number of related concepts about time, value, goals, motivation, etc.

M = (I * P)/(E * D)

M = motivation
I = importance
P = probability
E = effort
D = delay

The basic idea is that the importance of the reward and the probability of achieving the goal increase motivation while increasing effort and increasing delay diminish motivation.

A researcher named Ainslie in the book: Breakdown of the Will has uncovered additional information about exactly how this works. He found that we tend to discount future rewards in a hyperbolic curve. In other words, the motivation strength of a reward falls off rapidly at first and then tapers off more gradually.

The power of an immediately available reward is very strong. A near term reward is much weak but a longer term reward is still close to the near term in strength. We often perform these calculations unconsciously. With respect to controlling our impulses, if we can avoid situations that contain the possibility of an immediate gratification of an undesired impulse, we can often deal with near term temptation.

WHAT AM I DOING?

There is a body of research now that shows that the unconscious mind is fully capable of having its own goals and pursuing them outside of your conscious awareness. This pursuit can be powerful, sophisticated, persevering, adaptable and capable of resuming after interruptions. Studies involving patients who have had the connections between the two hemispheres of their brain severed show that people can be motivation to complex action outside of conscious awareness. When they are asked why they acted the way that they did, they fabricated explanations for their actions that were totally false with out being aware of their self-deception.

LAST WORDS

A friend once asked me what words of advice I could give him from my many years of study and experience to share with the son of a friend he was going to visit. He said that I had ten words or less to condense my wisdom. I thought for a moment and then said, “I can do it in two. Be aware.” The unconscious mind is absolutely critical to functioning in the world but it is important to understand what it is up to.