Levels of Mental Life

• Mental life is divided into two levels, the unconscious and the conscious. The unconscious, in turn, has two different levels, the unconscious proper and the preconscious.
• The (id) unconscious contains all those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness but that nevertheless motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions.
• Freud believed that a portion of our unconscious originates from the experiences of our early ancestors that have been passed on to us through hundreds of generations of repetition, this is the phylogenetic endowment.
• The preconscious level of the mind contains all those elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite readily or with some difficulty (superego)
• Conscious. The first is from a perceptual conscious system, which is turned toward the outer world and acts as a medium for the perception of external stimuli.
• The second source of conscious elements is from within the mental structure and includes nonthreatening ideas from the preconscious as well as menacing but well-disguised images from the unconscious.
• Das Es - Id serves the pleasure principle.
• Das Ich - Ego is governed by the reality principle.
• Uber ich - super ego is governed by moralistic and idealistic principles.
• Neurotic anxiety is defined as apprehension about an unknown danger. The feeling itself exists in the ego, but it originates from id impulses.
• The second type of anxiety, moral anxiety, stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego.
• The third type of anxiety, realistic anxiety, is closely related to fear.