3 | THE UNCONSCIOUS
It is impossible to exactly define the term consciousness.7 The best way to define it that I have found, for the purpose of this presentation, is that it is every mental content that is within the subjective experience of a person at any given moment. By deduction, the unconscious is every mental content that is not found within the subjective experience of an individual at a given moment. For example, answer the following question: how old am I? now, the reader has a number in his mind, this mental content, which corresponds to the number of years lived, is now conscious but it was unconscious until a few seconds ago. Of course, there are unconscious mental contents that are easily brought to consciousness— called preconscious— such as our age, but there are other mental contents that are extremely difficult to bring to the conscious mind— called unconscious proper— such as the reasons why we love as we love or why we relate to others as we do.8 To exemplify this, ask the passionate reader why he or she is frequently involved in an unsatisfactory—or satisfactory, for those who are fortunate—love relationship, and the answer would be, in contrast with our age, much more confusing. All cognitive, affective, and behavioral phenomena can be both conscious and unconscious.