Many modern philosophers and social scientists either dispute the concept of an unconscious, or argue that it is not something that can be scientifically investigated or discussed rationally. In the social sciences, this view was first brought forward by John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviourist. Among philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents. Popper claimed that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable. Still, many, perhaps most, psychologists and cognitive scientists agree that many things of w ...

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

Read more here: » Unconscious mind: Encyclopedia II - Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes

Somewhat related to the unconscious are nonconscious psychic events. The term nonconscious seems to be used in various ways. Some appear to use the term to avoid the somewhat value-laden term "unconscious" or "subconscious", but basically for the same purpose. Others use it to refer to events that can only be observed indirectly (e.g. certain acts of short-term memory), and still others use it to point to events such as brain activity controlled mostly by the autonomic nervous system (e.g. emotional reactions to certain smells). Not surprisi ...

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

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The notion of an unconscious or subconscious has been defined in a variety of ways over time, but in psychology it is considered to be the deepest level of consciousness, a part of which we are not directly aware, but still contains elements that affect conscious behavior. As defined by Sigmund Freud, the psyche is composed of different levels of consciousness, often defined in three parts as the waking consciousness, preconsciousness (which can be recalled with effort), and beneath both of these, the unconscious (which is beyo ...

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Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea Unconscious mind - Freud's definition Unconscious mind - Controversy Unconscious mind - Terminology Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

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The Rorschach inkblot test is a method of psychological evaluation. It is a projective test associated with the Freudian school of thought. Psychologists use this test to try to probe the unconscious minds of their patients. Rorschach inkblot test - History. The Rorschach inkblot test was developed by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychologist, in the early twentieth century. Rorschach was a proponent of Freudian psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the role of the unconscious mind. More recently, the test has bee ...

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Rorschach inkblot test - History Rorschach inkblot test - Methods Rorschach inkblot test - Controversy

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Repressed Memories

A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action.

It is common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences. Many psychologists believe that unconscious repression of traumatic experiences such as sexual abuse or rape is a defense mechanism which backfires. The unpleasant experience is forgotten but not forgiven. It lurks beneath consciousness and allegedly causes a myriad of psychological and physical problems from bulimia to insomnia to suicide.

The theory of unconsciously repressing the memory of traumatic experiences is controversial. There is little scientific evidence to support either the notion that traumatic experiences are typically unconsciously repressed or that unconscious memories of traumatic events are significant causal factors in physical or mental illness. Most people do not forget traumatic experiences unless they are rendered unconscious at the time of the experience.

No one has identified a single case where a specific traumatic experience in childhood was repressed and the repressed memory of the event, rather than the event itself, caused a specific psychiatric or physical disorder in adulthood. Often the memory that is recovered is false or greatly altered by the influences of the psychiatrist or hypnotist.

Most psychologists accept as fact that it is quite common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences, even sexual abuse, and to spontaneously remember such events long afterward. Most of the controversy centers around recovered memories during repressed memory therapy (RMT). Critics of RMT maintain that many therapists are not helping patients recover repressed memories, but are suggesting and planting false memories of alien abductions of alien abduction, sexual abuse, and satanic rituals.

(See also: Repressed Memories, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Nominalists, Nominalism [from Latin nomen name]

In the 11th century, Scholastic controversy arose between the Nominalists and Realists, as to whether substantive reality should be ascribed to particulars or to universals. The Nominalists held that nothing exists but individuals, and that universals are mere names invented to express the qualities of particular things. Thus the conception "man" is a mere abstract idea, a figment of the mind, devised to express certain qualities which we have abstracted from our experience of individual men, but having no existence except as a name. The Realists, on the contrary, maintained that universals alone have substantive reality, and that they exist independently of, and prior to, the individuals, which are derivative from them or expressive of them. The controversy dates back to Aristotle's question as to whether genera, species, and abstract nouns are real or only convenient abstractions and ways of speaking.

Intermediate between these doctrines is that of the Conceptualists, identified with the name of Abelard, who held that universals, while they exist only in the mind, yet correspond to real similarities in things, which previous to creation existed in the mind of God. These notions are well illustrated by the question as to the meaning of such words as motion, force, heat, or light. Are the things studied by science under those names generalizing terms, existing only in the mind and posterior to the objects which manifest them; or are they realities in themselves, prior to the objects, and of which the objects are manifestations? Science often unconsciously uses such words in both senses at once; force, for example, is treated as though it were at the same time a result of motion in matter and a cause of that motion.

Theosophy, because of the confusion arising in scholastic and modern disputes, points directly to all the phenomena of nature as expressed in beings, objects, entities, and things as arising in spiritual realms, or noumena. The hidden or invisible noumena of beings and things are both real and mere abstract names. Thus force -- electricity, for instance -- is both an existing emanation from cosmic entities, and yet also a "name" or abstraction because it is an aggregate of effects derivative from a hid cause which is the cosmic being or beings. All natural phenomena arise in and are therefore derivative from and emanations from causal and originating cosmic intelligences, which perdure in essence throughout eternity, but express themselves by means of phenomena or effects in comic manvantaras. Thus the phenomena which human intelligence cognizes are transitory but yet are real in their essence, because that essence lies in the perduring intelligence or intelligences from which they flow.

(See also: Nominalists, Nominalism, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Repressed Memories

A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action.

It is common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences. Many psychologists believe that unconscious repression of traumatic experiences such as sexual abuse or rape is a defense mechanism which backfires. The unpleasant experience is forgotten but not forgiven. It lurks beneath consciousness and allegedly causes a myriad of psychological and physical problems from bulimia to insomnia to suicide.

The theory of unconsciously repressing the memory of traumatic experiences is controversial. There is little scientific evidence to support either the notion that traumatic experiences are typically unconsciously repressed or that unconscious memories of traumatic events are significant causal factors in physical or mental illness. Most people do not forget traumatic experiences unless they are rendered unconscious at the time of the experience.

No one has identified a single case where a specific traumatic experience in childhood was repressed and the repressed memory of the event, rather than the event itself, caused a specific psychiatric or physical disorder in adulthood. Often the memory that is recovered is false or greatly altered by the influences of the psychiatrist or hypnotist.

Most psychologists accept as fact that it is quite common to consciously repress unpleasant experiences, even sexual abuse, and to spontaneously remember such events long afterward. Most of the controversy centers around recovered memories during repressed memory therapy (RMT). Critics of RMT maintain that many therapists are not helping patients recover repressed memories, but are suggesting and planting false memories of alien abductions of alien abduction, sexual abuse, and satanic rituals.

(See also: Repressed Memories, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

BLACK MAGIC

Sorcery or Goetia. Eliphas Lévi said it was but the shadow of white magic and that, in greater wisdom, we can see that the light and the dark are the same thing. On the simplest level, White Magic is the work of the conscious mind, with Black Magic the work of the unconscious. Or, as Jung put it, white magic serves the self and black magic the ego. For Alice Bailey, on more complicated levels, white magic deals with the soul, the positive electrical energies, transmutation through radiation and the self-induced development of the Central Self. Black magic deals with the outer form, negative electrical energy, reduction of the human sphere.

But in popular belief black magic frankly isnt just simply intended to harm others more than that, its the worship and glorification of the negative. Said Crowley in a 1933 newspaper article quoted by Grant (The Magical Revival): "To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of science, decency and intelligence. You must be obsessed with an insane idea of the importance of the petty object or your wretched and selfish desires ... I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practise it."

Historians insist that the idea of black magic derives originally from a word in the Arabian version of magic, from a confusion of fehm, black, with fehm, understanding or wisdom. In general, the idea of black or forbidden magic simply arose as a designation for the unofficial or unorthodox. In our predominantly masculine culture, black magic is that which relates to the feminine principle.

HPB designates the symbols of black magic to be the Moon and the inverted pentagram as opposed to white magics sun symbol and point-uppermost star. Black magic, she tells us, is concerned with form and matter, whereas white magic seeks the life and spirit within the form. Black magic uses the astral light to deceive, to seduce and to serve the purposes of involution, whereas white magic uses the same light to instruct others and to aid evolution. For HPB, black magic, furthermore, sought to degrade sex, whereas white magic sought to transmute it to higher creative thought.

Remember that magic is a completely different path from religion or science. Its sometimes called the Middle Pillar. It matters little where you choose to begin. The vodounist, for instance, who thinks he'll just drop in for a lesson in where to stick the pins into the doll will soon discover that sorcery is clumsy and ineffective according to its distance from higher principles of responsibility and inter-relationship with all consciousness, both higher and lower. The person who is merely curious will soon discover that he has a genuine thirst for understanding and his curiosity will blossom into a consuming passion for enlightenment. Consider the life of Tibetan yogi Milarepa, who started out as an evil black magician only to become, eventually, a great saint!

Since the proper goal of magic is to deliver the world from its infernal condition, there is a tendency to view any magic but one's own as black or evil. However, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as black magic. All paths are sacred. The initiate does not distinguish between self and other. Rather than calling white the magic of charity and black the magic of self, we would do better to think of all magic as that which seeks wisdom and designate as leading to evil, sorcery, only that which acts in ignorance. By that definition, most contemporary religion is black magic.

The dark path, Vama Marg or left-hand path, is merely one side of the caduceus, in contrast to the other, and as light is brought into darkness, it ceases to be dark. The phrase, Lux in tenebris, can refer to the light being brought to the darkness, or to the darkness itself acting as light. Like the scientist, the true magician does not shrink from exploring all avenues of the manifest and the unmanifest. Some magicians say that we are actually unable to choose anything but white magic (or enlightenment), since in order for any magical operation to work, one has to refine one's understanding and purify one's vision. In practice, however, the followers of Satanism supposedly align themselves to the development of the individual ego for the sake of personal power. In order to strengthen the ego, detachment is learned through controversial rites. One of the preoccupations of magic is to enlist gods, spirits, elementals, etc. to do one's bidding and to release their power to the practitioner. But the black magician seeks unlimited power, not to borrow, but to appropriate for himself not in order to better the world or himself, but to satisfy his personal greed and to establish his ambitious tyranny. Moreover, real magicians know better than to wallow in close-minded ignorance and self-perpetuating superstition. They certainly arent going to go to all the trouble of throwing out Jesus just so that he can sneak in through the back door wearing the cloak of Satanism.

Serious magicians consider true Satanism (mere Devil Worship, that is) to be shallow and ultimately self-defeating. Power and freedom accrue in direct proportion to the shedding of the ego, not to its inflation. Initiates see Satanism as a pathetic rebellion that merely exalts the other side of the coin of Xtianity. In any case, Satanism is more in the nature of a religion than a magical system, since it is based upon belief and worship. Seeing that Xtianity tars all variance from itself with the same brush, it has become necessary to discourage the childish triflers by labeling dark that which is most holy.

Finally, for the last word on the subject, here is a graffito copied from a San Francisco sidewalk, circa 1987: White witchcraft which fools condemn. Turns to black and crushes them.

(See also: BLACK MAGIC, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Dead/Death - the end of something, with a new beginning i.e., leaving an old job for a new one; death in a dream rarely means a real death.

(Source: Myths - Dreams - Symbols)

Related pages: Dream Symbols, Dream Interpretation, Dream Symbol Death, Dream Dictionary Death, Meaning of dreams about Death, Dream Interpretation Death, Dream Analysis Death, Dreaming of Death

Death, Dead, Death, End of something, New beginning, Dying, Dead person, Deceased partner, Deceased parent, Dead partner, Dead parent, Dead mother, Dead father, Haunt, Haunting, Advise, Relationship, Forgive, Forgiveness, Peace, Healing, Personal growth, Unconscious resentment, Resentment, Love, Respect, Self-acceptance, Self-programming, Message, Guilt-feelings, Martyrdom complex, Guilt, Guilty, Martyrdom, Old self, Old attachments, Habits, Ambitions, Values, Goals, Rites of passage, Mythological symbolism, Mythological, - birth, Initiation into adulthood, Marriage, Career, Resurrection, Resurrection of Jesus, Jesus, Christ, Rebirth, Rebirth symbolism, Development, Symbolic death, Initiate, Rites, Rite, Freud, Freudian, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Eros, Thanatos, Love, Pleasure, Love and pleasure, Freud's theories, Masochistic tendency, Masochism, Criticism, Psychotherapist, Painful experiences, Masculinity, Femininity, Animus, Anima, Dead animal

Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of 'unconscious mind' - and the one which most people will immediately think of upon hearing the term - is that developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers, and which lies at the heart of psychoanalysis. It should be stressed, incidentally, that the popular term 'subconscious' is not a Freudian coinage and is never used in serious psychoanalytic writings. Freud's concept was a more subtle and complex psychological theory than many. Consciousness, in Freud's topographical v ...

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

Read more here: » Unconscious mind: Encyclopedia II - Unconscious mind - Freud's definition

The idea originated in antiquity, and its more modern history is detailed in Henri F. Ellenberger's Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic Books, 1970). Certain philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud, such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, developed ideas foreshadowing the modern idea of the subconscious. The new medical science of psychoanalysis established by Freud and his disciples popularized this and similar notions such as the role of the libido (sex drive) and the self-destructive urge of thanatos (death wish), and the famous Oedipus complex, whe ...

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

Read more here: » Unconscious mind: Encyclopedia II - Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea

The subconscious is not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but it is capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychotherapy. Thoughts, feelings and urges that are repressed are all present in the subconscious mind and "issues" need to be "worked out" with pr ...

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Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Pre-Freudian history of the idea, Unconscious mind - Freud's definition, Unconscious mind - Controversy, Unconscious mind - Terminology, Unconscious mind - Unconscious mental processes, Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind, Unconscious mind - Application of unconscious

Read more here: » Unconscious mind: Encyclopedia II - Unconscious mind - Questions about Unconscious mind