From the great source:
The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the thoughts in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection, and include thought processes, memory, affect, and motivation. [1] Even though these processes exist well under the surface of conscious awareness they are theorized to exert an impact on behavior. The term was coined by the 18th-century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The concept was developed and popularized by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, thoughts, habits, and automatic reactions, [1] and possibly also complexes, hidden phobias and desires. In psychoanalytic theory, unconscious processes are understood to be expressed in dreams in a symbolical form, as well as in slips of the tongue and jokes. Thus the unconscious mind can be seen as the source of dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without any apparent cause), the repository of forgotten memories (that may still be accessible to consciousness at some later time), and the locus of implicit knowledge (the things that we have learned so well that we do them without thinking).
and from the same:
The subconscious is commonly encountered as a replacement for the unconscious mind and therefore, laypersons commonly assume that the subconscious is a psychoanalytic term; it isn't. Sigmund Freud explicitly argues:
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"If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious." [3] |
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In Freud's opinion the unconscious mind has a will and purpose of its own that cannot be known to the conscious mind (hence the reason why it is called the "unconscious") and is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression.
Charles Rycroft explains that the subconscious is a term "never used in psychoanalytic writings". [4] Peter Gay says that the use of the term subconscious where unconscious is meant is "a common and telling mistake"; [5] indeed, "when [the term] is employed to say something 'Freudian', it is proof that the writer has not read his Freud". [6]
Freud's own terms for thinking that takes place outside conscious awareness are das Unbewusste (rendered by his translators as "the Unconscious") and das Vorbewusste ("the Preconscious"); informal use of the term subconscious in this context thus creates confusion, as it fails to make clear which (if either) is meant. The distinction is of significance because in Freud's formulation the Unconscious is "dynamically" unconscious, the Preconscious merely "descriptively" so: the contents of the Unconscious require special investigative techniques for their exploration, whereas something in the Preconscious is unrepressed and can be recalled to consciousness by the simple direction of attention. The erroneous, pseudo-Freudan use of subconscious and "subconsciousness" has its precise equivalent in German, where the words inappropriately employed are das Unterbewusste and das Unterbewusstsein.
Again, obviously I am not an expert in this area (using wikipedia as a source), but is seems like the subconcious mind is not the prefered term. Anyone in this field professionaly want to share their thoughts?
