preconscious
Below full awareness
Preconscious describes mental contents not currently in awareness but readily accessible—memories, knowledge, or thoughts you're not thinking about right now but can summon at will.
Her phone number was preconscious until I needed to call her.
The term comes from psychoanalytic theory, where it occupies the space between conscious thought and the deeply buried unconscious.
As a noun, the preconscious is this accessible mental realm itself.
Below threshold of awareness
- awarenessState of perceiving reality
- perceptionMental interpretation of stimuli
- liminalAt a threshold
- implicitUnderstood without being stated
priming · marginal · peripheral · incubation · emergence · accessibility · activation · cue
Unconscious blocking of thoughts
- psychoanalysisTreatment via unconscious exploration
- idUnconscious instinctual drives
- egoOne's self-image
- superegoMind's moral overseer
defense mechanisms · free association · dream analysis · transference · resistance · sublimation · psychodynamic · libido
Memory retrieval act
- retrievalAct of getting back
- accessibleAble to be reached
- availableReady to be used
- dormantInactive but capable
storage · recollection · recognition · remembrance · memory trace · encoding · consolidation · episodic
subliminal
Below threshold of awareness
- awarenessState of perceiving reality
- perceptionMental interpretation of stimuli
- liminalAt a threshold
implicit · priming · marginal · peripheral · incubation · emergence · accessibility · activation · cue · signal
repression
Unconscious blocking of thoughts
- psychoanalysisTreatment via unconscious exploration
- idUnconscious instinctual drives
- egoOne's self-image
superego · defense mechanisms · free association · dream analysis · transference · resistance · sublimation · psychodynamic · libido · Freud
recall
Memory retrieval act
- retrievalAct of getting back
- accessibleAble to be reached
- availableReady to be used
dormant · storage · recollection · recognition · remembrance · memory trace · encoding · consolidation · episodic · semantic
- psychoanalysisFreud, id, ego, Sigmund Freud, superego
- awarenessalertness, aware, attention, cognizance, attentiveness
- unexpressedunspoken, unstated, unuttered, suppressed, implicit
preconsciousconscious
Mentally present and alert
unconscious · repressed · conscious awareness · attentive · suppressed
conscious, unconscious, subconscious, consciousness, consciously, prescient, predisposition, precondition, presuppose