Mind Overview
The mind is made up of two parts; (a) the conscious and (b) the subconscious
The conscious accounts for approximately 5% of the mind and the subconscious around 95%.
The conscious mind is where our intelligence sits, and therefore is the part of us that is able to solve complicated or relatively complicated problems. You could say this is the adult part of the mind
The subconscious mind is the part that is responsible for the safety and efficient running of the body, and only needs minimal intelligence for this, so you can say it is child-like
To keep things simple, I am assuming that the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind are the same thing. They amount to the same thing when it comes to OCD
We cannot directly observe the mind, as it is a non-physical thing. However, for one part of it, the conscious, we can ask a person what they are deliberately thinking about and they can tell us. This is not the case with the subconscious mind. Most of the thinking that the subconscious does is not in our awareness, and therefore no one really knows what is happening in the subconscious mind. This is why psychology cannot be considered an exact science, as we cannot directly probe the subconscious mind.
When the subconscious does want us to be aware of what it is thinking, it will bring those thoughts to our attention. These come in the form of pop-up thoughts, where you are not deliberately thinking about something, but then all of a sudden, a thought pops into your head. For example, you are in the middle of doing an important task at work, then all of sudden you get the thought ‘I need to buy my friend a birthday card’. These pop-up thoughts are also sometimes called ‘automatic thoughts’
As the subconscious makes up around 95% of our mind, it is likely that on a daily basis around 95% of the thoughts are from the subconscious. As our behaviour is driven by our thoughts, and the subconscious produces most of those, then it could be argued that you are being controlled by a part of you that is childish!!
The subconscious is the place where all your beliefs are stored. Not just beliefs about what is right and wrong, but also beliefs about yourself, such as whether you think you are a good person, intelligent, etc. For a lot people, their beliefs about themselves are the main determinant of how happy they are, and not the actual situation they are in
These beliefs about themselves form at two different times in their life
The first period is when you are a child before the age of eight. In this time period the conscious (intelligent) mind has not arrived yet, so all the child has to go with is the subconscious. As we know, the subconscious is child-like and doesn’t have the ability to look at things objectively. So, for example, if a parent is unable to spend enough time with a child because they have to go to work, the subconscious of the child can form the belief ‘my mum doesn’t love me’. This child doesn’t even know that this belief is forming, it just believes it is true because the belief is coming from inside it. Once the child is a fully grown adult, and therefore their conscious (intelligent) mind is up and running, even if they think back to that period and say ‘actually my mum did love me, it’s just she needed to go to work to pay the bills’, that belief will still be there, as once a belief has been in the subconscious for a long time, logical/intelligent thinking won’t change that belief, as the subconscious doesn’t do logical thinking.
The second period is when you are an adult, but you choose not to use your conscious mind. In this case the subconscious is in control, and it can give you a belief that is prevalent in society. One example of this is that of materialism. Society promotes the idea that if you are not rich, or striving to be rich, then you are a failure. If people used their conscious (intelligent) minds then they would realise that wealth does not always make you happy. In fact, if they are prone to comparing themselves to others, there is always someone who is richer than them, so they could actually become sad, despite being wealthy. And also the fact that they are probably spending too much time making money rather than being with family and friends
More about self-beliefs in the section on psychoanalysis
In the next section, we discuss the conscious mind in more detail