What is insight?

One way to understand what insight is involves the assumption that, within our consciousness, there are things within our awareness and things outside of our awareness.

This is not the same as a fact we don’t know, like where all the lost socks go when we do our laundry. Rather, there are things that are within in our mind as a whole—like a memory of our 8th birthday or an unacceptable feeling—that are not within our conscious mind. You may be familiar with the iceberg metaphor, which suggests that within our mind—the entire iceberg itself—there is more we are unaware of—the parts under the water—than we are aware of—the parts above the water.

We tend to be pretty bad observers of our unconscious mind, because it is unconscious for a reason—usually because it would overwhelm us with fear, loathing, shame, or some other intolerable feeling.

Okay so what’s insight then? Well, insight is the process by which we incorporate things from the unconscious mind into the conscious mind. This would seem simple enough except that things in our unconscious mind are there for a reason, usually because they would be too threatening or overwhelming if we thought them.

Having another person there, like a therapist, who is trained to listen for and help put into words (symbolize) what is unconscious is one of the ways that we can begin to gain insight and therefore greater depth and clarity about ourselves and the world around us.