1 Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed that behavior and personality derives from the constant and unique interaction of conflicting psychological forces that operate at three different levels of awareness: the preconscious, the conscious, and the unconscious. What do these terms mean? What exactly happens at each level of awareness

The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this the preconscious.

The preconscious mind is the part of the mind that represents ordinary memory. While we are not consciously aware of this information at any given time, we can retrieve it and pull it into consciousness when needed.

The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences 2 Retrieval Failure--So why are we often unable to retrieve information from memory. One possible explanation retrieval failure is known as decay theory.

According to this theory, a memory trace is created every time a new theory is formed. Decay theory suggests that over time, these memory traces begin to fade and disappear. If information is not retrieved and rehearsed, it will eventually be lost. interference theory--suggests that some memories compete and interfere with other memories. When information is very similar to other information that was previously stored in memory, interference is more likely to occur
Proactive interference is when an old memory makes it more difficult or impossible to remember a new memory.
Retroactive interference occurs when new