Unconscious Mind

The mind is complex. The ability for us to actually recall past memories (retrospective information) and remember to do something in the future without being prompted (prospective information) is a very interesting component of neurological psychology. The distinction between different levels of memory processes enables us to further understand the unconscious brain processes that occur. It also brings about further understanding of psychological conditions such as psychogenic amnesia. To shed light onto this area, different memory systems have to be observed. Observation of the influence of these systems on events gives us a hint on what is going on inside the brain (Markowitsch, 2010). However, to understand the unconscious, conscious cognition must first be examined. Different categories of consciousness or awareness have different effects on memory recollection (Gardiner, 2001). Therefore, this essay will cover the definitions of autonoetic consciousness and autobiographical memory. We also aim to uncover reasons on how these unconscious processes are interlinked through the development of self and its impact on psychogenic amnesia.

Everyone has a favourite memory. This memory can be about a first kiss or about a honey moon vacation. The reason why we can actually remember these corresponds to Endel Tulving’s introduction of the concept of episodic memory and the contrast he made between this form of memory and semantic memory. His findings revolutionised both neurological and psychological fields of the brain. In short, episodic memory is a form of autobiographical memory that relates back to personally experienced events and are remembered as such (Gardiner, 2001) while semantic memory relates to knowledge of the world without any autobiographical content (Alea and Bluck, 2003). Tulving (1984) changed the understanding of episodic memory by defining them as memory systems instead of the prior widely believed memory task definitions. The proposal was that episodic and semantic memories were made up of functionally distinct, overlapping mind-brain systems. A defining property of these mind-brain systems was the phenomenal subjective experience that accompanied retrieval from them. He proposed a distinction between two kinds of consciousness, which he termed autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness and noetic (knowing) consciousness.

Autonoetic consciousness is a defining property of autobiographical memory (Schroots, Dijkum and Assink, 2004). Mental time travel can be used to further describe autonoetic consciousness where mental-reinstatements of personal experiences of previous events in which one was present occurs (Markowitsch, 2010). Also, this form of consciousness creates a notion of self-identity. Noetic consciousness in turn, is expressed without any self-recollection but instead in awareness of familiarity and knowing (Alea & Bluck, 2003). According to Tulving (1984), experiential and unreflective consciousness