Consciousness In Psychology: it’s Significance
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Consciousness is the awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, emotions, sensations, and surroundings. A person’s consciousness is about their awareness of themselves and the world around them. Your level of consciousness is unique to you. Lets check out what is Consciousness In Psychology
A person’s consciousness is characterized by his or her ability to describe what they are experiencing.
How Does Consciousness Relate to Your Physical Being?
It is suggested by some psychologists that consciousness is simply a physiologic process. The monism theory is based on the assumption that your mind and body are the same.
Scientists are increasingly demonstrating connections between mental experiences and brain conditions, as reflected in EEGs, and therefore the concept of monism is becoming more acceptable.
However, other psychologists think that the body and mind are separate entities. In spite of the decline in popularity of this two-fold theory, no one has developed a definition that recognizes the physical aspects of mind without disregarding free will.
What are the levels of Consciousness In Psychology?
According to psychoanalytic theory, there are different levels of consciousness. There is an inherent conflict between various levels of awareness when it comes to this issue.
We have the so-called “low sensitivity” to subtle, subliminal influences. Additionally, there is you—the conscious thinking, feeling you, which includes everything you are aware of right now, even reading this sentence.
The different levels of awareness can be better understood by considering them separately.
Being conscious
In the previous definition of consciousness, it was defined as all the thoughts, sensations, emotions, and experiences you are aware of at any given moment. You can rationally analyze what you’re experiencing if you’re conscious of what you’re feeling.
A preconscious state
Scientists think of the preconscious as all your memories that you have easy access to. Those memories aren’t visible to you right now, but you can call up those memories whenever you wish.
An unconscious state
The unconscious attracted the attention of scientists. They believed that unlocking the unconscious would provide relief from neurotic behavior. In their view, the unconscious is a part of the mind that’s hard to access.
The unconscious contained fears, immoral and sexual urges, violent motives, irrational wishes, selfish needs, and shameful memories. The unconscious housed fear, irrational wishes, selfish needs, and shameful experiences.
Also, the unconscious was not just a mental vacuum.
In reality, it was more like the largest part of an iceberg, hidden beneath the surface of awareness. Psychiatrists believed that the unconscious influenced consciousness and behavior profoundly.
Types of Consciousness
Consciousness can be affected by a variety of factors. Drugs or brain damage can cause some of these, while others arise naturally. Changes in consciousness can also affect the way we perceive the world, think, and understand it.
Consciousness can be divided into different states:
- Having dreams.
- Having hallucinations.
- A hypnotic state.
- Practicing meditation.
- Then sleep.
- Psychoactive drugs induce states of consciousness.
Consciousness and unconsciousness are both normal states of awareness. There can also be altered levels of consciousness caused by medical or mental conditions.
The following types of altered consciousness exist:
- An unconscious state.
- Conflict.
- Delusions.
- Feeling disorientated.
- Laziness.
- Stagnation.
A doctor or healthcare professional may use different methods to measure and assess consciousness levels. The results of these assessments can help guide diagnosis and treatment decisions.
What led to the evolution of consciousness in psychology?
The act of choosing. We hypothesize that consciousness’ primary role is to facilitate decision-making movement. A conscious organism is more likely to direct its attention, and ultimately its movement, to whatever is most important to its survival and reproduction.
A proper understanding of consciousness cannot be achieved without knowledge of decision-making. Our basic hypothesis is that the failure to take voluntary action seriously has been and continues to be the greatest impediment to progress in psychology and consciousness studies generally.
The fact that humans are conscious and therefore volitional makes it possible to break free from this dysfunctional pattern.