According to Freud, the structure of our mind is divided into the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. The unconscious has several meanings among which the following stand out: that which is not attended to, felt, forgotten, or remembered; the unlearned; the innate; the unrecognized; and the involuntary.
Our skiing behavior is a partly conscious and partly unconscious process. The conscious encompasses all those experiences of which we are aware. Perception, thoughts, memories, and feelings are largely conscious acts. The preconscious is that which is easily made conscious, while the unconscious is hardly accessible to consciousness.
Freud argued that the unconscious does not govern time in the sense that a person who experiences an unpleasant or traumatic situation can relive it sometime later as if it were happening in the present. An example could be given when we are about to descend an unfamiliar slope. As we descend, we perceive other people and the characteristics of the environment through conscious processes. At a given moment we experience a sensation of anguish and apprehension, feeling uncomfortable we try to recover but it is not easy.
Every time we face a new slope, the same manifestations are repeated, but we do not know why: we are aware of our discomfort, but the cause that generates distress is part of our unconscious. The unconscious past coming from the experiences of our beginner stage can condition our present skiing.
The image of a painful event suffered in an unfamiliar place would remain engraved in our unconscious as an aversion to unfamiliar slopes. Perceived images of external reality are conscious while those of previous situational experiences that are hidden but believed to be forgotten and influence our skiing present are unconscious. These images present themselves in the form of fear, negative projections, distressing experiences such as, to cite an example, a severe fall while descending an unfamiliar run.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, only conscious processes in human behavior were studied. From Freud’s research on the unconscious, which opened up an enormous field of study, psychoanalysis was put into practice as a method to study it.
Based on these investigations, Freud reached certain conclusions about the unconscious. Briefly, the following is mentioned: at birth, the human being possesses instinctive tendencies considered as ‘pleasure-seeking impulses‘ oriented towards satisfaction and, as we are social beings, we are integrated into society through social groups. In the case of skiing, in order to be ‘accepted’, we must mold our skiing behavior according to the norms of the family, friends, group lesson, training group, or FIS Rules of Conduct, which implies regulating our constant search for pleasure.
From an early age, both parents and teachers use rewards and punishments to shape acceptable behaviors and exclude unacceptable ones. Therefore, we will have to eliminate from our conscience those unpleasant or unacceptable behaviors in order to adapt to the social environment. We will believe that forgetting them will be the solution but, in reality, they pass to the unconscious remaining latent and appearing in certain moments of our present.
Freud also discovered the relationship between unconscious meanings and bodily pain. Certain traumatic experiences leave psychic sequelae such as, for example, in an accident that produced a serious injury, we tend to forget it through repression. Through this mechanism we defend ourselves from the anguish it produces, but the remembrance left by the negative experience is not erased and remains stored in our unconscious, reappearing in the course of a similar situation that we are about to live.
In doing so, we experience symptoms such as legs’ trembling, knot in the stomach, intense fear, or compulsive avoidance of certain areas of the mountain, being consequences of the return of the ‘forgotten’ traumatic experience. Although forgetting is a psychological designation, there is no extinction of memory.
In certain cases, there is forgetfulness of the name of the area or run where the painful experience occurred, or the substitution by another. According to Freud, not only forgetfulness but also false memories occur. In conclusion, we may try to repress the lived traumatic experience, but since we cannot completely suppress it from our mind, it will return in the form of a memory or as a somatic symptom, that is, through certain bodily pains.
Eckart Tolle divides unconsciousness into ordinary and deep unconsciousness.
- Ordinary unconsciousness refers to the identification with the processes of thoughts and emotions, with our reactions, desires, and aversions, and maintains that it is the state in which most people find themselves. In this state we experience a low level of discomfort and discontent, and we may not be aware of it because it is normal. In this case, frequent resistance to what ‘is‘, which generates discomfort and discontent, is accepted by many as the ‘normal’ way of behaving.
- Deep unconsciousness is activated when faced with challenges or threats that generate heightened fears with which we identify.
Tolle argues that the best indicator of the level of awareness is in how we handle the challenges that arise. If we are dominated by our own emotional reactions toward skiing situations, we may experience a deep unconsciousness of what really “is”, becoming mentally trapped in what it “should be”; whereas if we become aware of the present moment, we tend to generate the energy needed to look at the situation from a realistic perspective.
Deep unconsciousness prevents us from being present in the here and now. We may have the tendency to prefer to be somewhere else because our “here” does not always satisfy us, and we may want something different, something better and are not satisfied with what “is”, that is, with the situation of the moment.
This author argues that, if the current situation does not satisfy us, there are three options: accept it, change it, or move away from it. In the face of every skiing challenge or threat, any action is generally preferable to no action at all, therefore, it is convenient to choose one of these alternatives and, of course, to accept the consequences.
