Freud believed that our ______ mind reveals itself in our dreams, slip of tongue, forgetting, mispronunciations, jokes etc.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Unconscious
Freud visualised the mind in terms of three levels of consciousness.
Option (1) Conscious — Incorrect. The conscious level holds the thoughts, feelings and actions of which people are aware. Dreams and slips reveal what people are not aware of.
Option (2) Unconscious — Correct. The unconscious includes mental activity that people are unaware of: instinctive drives and repressed ideas and wishes. Analysis of forgetting, mispronunciations, jokes and dreams provide us with a means to approach the unconscious.
Option (3) Preconscious — Incorrect. The preconscious includes mental activity of which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely. Its contents can be recalled at will; they do not need to slip out through dreams or errors.
Option (4) Secondary — Incorrect. Freud’s three levels are the conscious, preconscious and unconscious; ‘secondary’ is not a level of the mind.
NCERT (2025-26): “Levels of Consciousness … Freud’s theory considers the sources and consequences of emotional conflicts and the way people deal with these. In doing so, it visualises the human mind in terms of three levels of consciousness. The first level is conscious, which includes the thoughts, feelings and actions of which people are aware. The second level is preconscious, which includes mental activity of which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely. The third level is unconscious, which includes mental activity that people are unaware of. According to Freud, the unconscious is a reservoir of instinctive or animal drives. It also stores all ideas and wishes that are concealed from conscious awareness, perhaps, because they lead to psychological conflicts. Most of these arise from sexual desires which cannot be expressed openly and therefore are repressed. People constantly struggle to find either some socially acceptable ways to express unconscious impulses, or to keep those impulses away from being expressed. Unsuccessful resolution of conflicts results in abnormal behaviour. Analysis of forgetting, mispronunciations, jokes and dreams provide us with a means to approach the unconscious.…” |