Kucherenko Ie. V. Conscious «self» and superconscious as levels of personality self-consciousness in the practice of psychosynthesis

The paper represents a theoretical analysis of self-consciousness from the perspective of psychosynthesis as a personality theory and a psychotherapy practice. The author emphasizes that the process of self-awareness has not been thoroughly examined in the national science and he suggests considering it as a phenomenon which may be examined as Conscious “Self” and Superconscious in the practice of personal and spiritual psychosynthesis. Therefore a hypothesis about personal and transpersonal levels of self-consciousness has been formulated on the ground of foreign researches.

The author believes that the Conscious “Self” and the Superconscious are the phenomenal levels of personality self-consciousness which are the most inapproachable for the empirical study. However the suggested levels enable an empirical research of qualitative changes in the self-consciousness’ process component through the stepwise practice of personal and spiritual psychosynthesis. This component is the process of self-awareness which comes from the experiencing one’s subjectness as the Conscious “Self” (“I”). Through this experience, using dissociated trance states the client may comprehend the Superconscious, the transpersonal “Self” which manifests sensory-simultaneously in cognitive, emotional and conative form.

It has been proven that the first level of self-consciousness (the Conscious “Self”) is a logical theoretical comprehension of one’s subjectness based on space-time borders, within which the images of “I” are being formed as personality images. The next level of self-consciousness (the Superconscious “Self”) involves sensory-simultaneous experience of its’ own existence irrelatively to the essence of the “I” images and the individual mental activity state. Both levels of self-consciousness have cognitive, affective and regulatory forms of expression under certain conditions.