Matakuliah : L0014/Psikologi Umum
Tahun
: 2007
STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Pertemuan 6
CONSCIOUSNESS VS UNCONSCIOUSNESS
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CONSCIOUSNESS
• State of awareness
• is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise
qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience,
and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and
one's environment
• There is more than one kind of conscious states and conscious
awareness qualities
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DAY DREAMS
• Period of thinking and feeling that is not bound by what is logical or likely to
happen
• Sigmund Freud : daydreams reduced the tension left by our unfulfilled needs and
wishes. While daydreaming, we can see all our needs, fantasies, etc.
• Pope & Singer, 1978 – research : many daydreams are filled with regret, sorrow
and guilt, sexual. Day dreams maybe merely a slightly distorted reflection of our
current concerns and emotions.
DIVIDED CONSCIOUSNESS
Ernest Hilgard, 1975, Stanford University, Psychologist
• The splitting of two conscious activities that occur simultaneously
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UNCONSCIOUS MIND
• Mental processes that occur without conscious awareness
Cocktail party phenomenon
When you are in a room where more than one person is talking,
most of the time we will pay attention to one voice and “tune out”
the other voice
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SLEEP AND DREAMS
STAGES OF SLEEP
REM SLEEP AND DREAMS
NON-REM SLEEP AND DREAMS
CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND THE NEED FOR SLEEP
NIGHTMARES AND OTHER SLEEP PHENOMENA
SLEEP DISORDERS
CONTENT OF DREAMS
MEANING OF DREAMS
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STAGES OF SLEEP
• Hypnagogic State
– A relaxed state of dreamlike awareness between wakefulness and sleep
– Myoclonia : on some occasion, we are rudely snapped out of the peaceful
hypnagogic state, then we suddenly feel as if we are falling and our bodies
experience a sudden jerk. These jerk are caused by brief (and normal) seizure
– like states of the brain as sleep commences
• Stages of Light and Deep Sleep
– 4 stages
– Measurement of electrical brain activity : electroencephalogram (EEG)
– Sleep is an almost constantly changing state
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REM SLEEP AND DREAMS
• Dreaming
– Concious awareness during sleep that primarily occurs during REM
• REM : Rapid Eye Movement
– Kleitman & Aserinsky, 1952 : The subject brain activity looked more like he awake than
asleep
– The phase of sleep that characterized by movement of the eyes under the lids; often
accompanies dreams
• Autonomic Storm
– The autonomic nervous system and the other part of the pheriperal nervous system
are very active during dreams, causing noticeable changes in many parts of the body
• Time spent dreaming
– Young adults have 30 – 40 REM dreams/week
– 2 hours of REM dreaming/night
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NON-REM SLEEP AND DREAMS
• Occurring during half of the other 4 – 6 hours that we sleep each
night
CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
• Internally generated cycles lasting about 24 hours a day that
regulate sleepiness and wakefulness, body temperatures and the
secretion of some hormones
• Influenced to some extent by differences illumination during the day
and night
• Jet lag and work shift
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SLEEP DEPRIVATION
• We sleep less; 19 – 30 years old average 7 – 8 hours/night and
elderly adults average just under 6 hours
• Sleep deprivation :
(-) Mood (e.g. irritability), cognitive (mental task – e.g. logical
reasoning, word memory), physical tasks (e.g. walking)
(-) health, slow down body’s immune system
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THE NEED FOR SLEEP
• Sleep and body restoration
– Sleep recharges our run-down bodies and allow us to recover from physical and
mental fatigue (Hess, 1965)
– Adenosien : cells consume energy. Adenosine accumulates, it inhibit brain circuits
responsible for keeping us awake, thereby signaling the body to slow down because
the energy has been burned
• Sleep as an evolved adaptation
– Sleep’s main purpose is to increase a species’ chances of survival in relation to its
environmental demands (Webb, 1974)
– Evolved as a mechanism for conserving energy
• Sleep and memory consolidation
– A gradual process by which the brain transfers information in the long term memory
(Smith et al.,1004, Winston, 1990)
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SLEEP DISORDRES (1)
• Insomnia
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Chronic difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep or experiencing restful sleep
Frequent and persistent sleep troubles
Medical conditions, mental disorders, drugs, stress, lifestyles, jet lag, etc
Treatment : stimulus control – conditioning your body to associate stimuli in your
sleep environment with sleep
• Narcolepsy
– Extreme daytime sleepiness and sudden, uncontrollable sleep attacks that may last
from less than a minute to an hour
– May experienced cataplexy a sudden loss of mucles tone often triggered by
excitement and other strong emotion
• REM-sleep behavior disorder
– The loss of muscle tone that causes normal REM-sleep paralysis is absent
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SLEEP DISORDRES (2)
• Sleepwalking
– Waking and carrying on complicated activities during the deepest part of non-REM
sleep
– Inherited, daytime stress, alcohol and certain illnesses and medication
– Treatments : psychotherapy, hypnosis, and awakening the children before the time
they typically sleepwalk
• Nightmare and Night Terrors
– Nightmare : bad dreams
– Night terrors : frightening dreams that arouse the sleeper to a near – panic state
• Sleep talking
– Talking during any phase of the sleep cycle
• Sleep Apnea
– Repeatedly stop and restart breathing during sleep
– Stoppages usually last 20 – 40 seconds but can continue for 1 to 2 minutes
– Cause by obstruction in the upper airways
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CONTENT OF DREAMS
• Images and characters of dreams
– Most of the conscious experience in dreams is visual
– Black and white or color – in between
– Main character : the dreamer (75%), other character : friends,
acquaintances, family member, or other people that you don’t know (50%),
animal (4%)
– Mixture between man and woman
• Sweet dreams : the emotional content of dreams
– Most of the dreams contain positive emotions
– We forget our positive dreams (because the don’t wake us up) and are most
likely to be aware of the negatively charged dreams that awaken us
• Creative and Bizarre Aspects of dreams
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MEANING OF DREAMS
• Day residue and Stimulus incorporation
– Day residue (Freud) : dream content that is similar to events in the person’s
waking life
– Stimulus incorporation : stimuli occurring during sleep that are incorporated
in dreams either directly or in altered form
• Dream Interpretation
– Dreams (Freud) : Royal road to unconscious  allow us to travel deep in the
unconscious mind and view hidden conflict and motives cloaked only by the
symbols of dreams
– Content of dreams (2)
• Manifest : the events that we experience in dreams (the symbols)
• Latent : the true meaning
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ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1)
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Unusual and less familiar realms of conscious experience
Occur during : meditation, drug use, an unusually intense sexual
orgasm, a moment of religious conversion, etc
The general characteristic :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Distortions of perception
Intense positive emotions
Sense of unity
Illogical
Indescribable
Transcendent
Self-evidence reality
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ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (2)
• Meditation
– Several methods of focusing concentration away from thoughts and feelings and
generating a sense of relaxation
• Mindfulness
– The state of focusing conscious awareness completely on what is going on at the
present moment
• Hypnosis
– The individual is highly relaxed and susceptible for suggestions
• Depersonalization
– The perceptual experience of one’s body or surroundings becoming distorted of
unreal
– Astral projection : illusion that the mind has left the body
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DRUGS AND ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
• Psychotropic drugs : the various classes of drugs, including
stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens, that alter conscious
experience
• 4 major categories :
– Depressants : reduce the activity of inhibitory centers of the central nervous
system, leading to a sense of relaxation and lowered inhibitions
– Stimulants : drugs that increase the activity of the motivational centers and
decrease action in inhibitory centers of the central nervous system, providing
a sense of energy and well-being
– Inhalants : common household chemicals that are put to dangerous use when
inhaled to produce feelings of intoxication
– Hallucinogens : produce dreamlike alterations in perceptual experience
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DRUGS AND ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
• 4 major categories :
– Depressants : reduce the activity of inhibitory centers of the central nervous system,
leading to a sense of relaxation and lowered inhibitions
• Sedatives : in mild doses produce a state of calm relaxation
• narcotics
– Stimulants : drugs that increase the activity of the motivational centers and decrease
action in inhibitory centers of the central nervous system, providing a sense of energy
and well-being
• Amphetamines : produce a conscious sense of increase energy and euphoria
• Caffeine, nicotine
– Inhalants : common household chemicals that are put to dangerous use when inhaled
to produce feelings of intoxication
– Hallucinogens : produce dreamlike alterations in perceptual experience
• LSD, PCP
• Others :
– Marijuana
– Act-like and designers Drugs
• ecstacy
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DRUGS AND ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
Drug use : basic considerations
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5 sets of factors influence the individual’s response to drugs
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Dose and purity
Personal characteristic
Expectations
Social Situation
Moods
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DRUGS AND ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
Drug Abuse and Dependence
• Drug Abuse
– If its use causes physical or psychological harm to the individual
• Dependence
– Use psychoactive drugs find that they come to crave them intensely and
suffer intense withdrawal symptoms when they do not take the drug
– 3 reasons :
• Sensitization of pleasure and reward systems in the brain
• Reduction of negative feelings
• Classical conditionings
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