Levels of Awareness | MCAT Psychology Prep

In this lesson, we continue with the topic of psychoanalytic theory of personality by going over the levels of awareness.
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(00:15) Intro to the Levels of Awareness
Freud believed that we had three levels of awareness: the conscious, preconscious and unconscious. And remember, he also believed that the structure of our personality has three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. The way that the structure of our personality relates to the levels of awareness is often represented using a diagram of an iceberg. You can see in the diagram in the video that at the surface you have the conscious then, a bit deeper, you have the preconscious and, very deep, you have the unconscious. You can also see where the different components of personality live in these different levels. So you can see that the ego and the superego can be found at all three levels of awareness. But the id is strictly in the unconscious.
(01:06) The Conscious
Now let's look at each level more closely. First, the conscious, these are our mental contents: our thoughts, our feelings, and perceptions that we are aware of at a particular moment in time. An example could be this lesson that you're paying attention to right now or realizing that you're starting to get a bit hungry. This is our awareness, and this includes our ego and superego.
(01:35) The Preconscious
Next, we have the preconscious. These are the mental contents that are just beneath awareness but can be readily retrieved and brought to our awareness. A very good example is what did you have for lunch yesterday? It's not something that's consciously in your awareness, but you can easily retrieve those memories and bring it to your awareness. And again, this is our ego and superego.
(02:03) The Unconscious
Finally, we have our unconscious. As we've mentioned multiple times, we know the unconscious is very important to Freud in determining our behavior. The unconscious is made up of our memories, emotional conflicts, thoughts, and desires that are not directly accessible, but they greatly influence behavior. An example would be childhood trauma. Freud thought that these kinds of memories and emotional conflicts were located in our unconscious, but still greatly determined our behavior. And because of the importance of the unconscious, Freud's technique of using psychoanalysis to treat patients often consisted of trying to get information about the unconscious. If you look at the way that the unconscious is described, it's not directly accessible, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to access. In fact, some of the techniques of psychoanalysis, such as dream analysis or Freudian slips, were designed to try to get information about the unconscious. And again, the unconscious consists of the id, ego, and superego.