preconsciousadj.n.

1847 H. Hubbell Arnold iv. ii. 43 Oh, Clinton, friend, Had I but held your counsel as my guide! Which seem'd preconscious of some coming ill.

1860 J. D. Morell tr. I. H. Fichte Contrib. Mental Philos. iii. 43 It is not to be denied that all the apparently abnormal phenomena with which men are seized, in somnambulism, in vision,..and in ecstasy, spring out of the same spontaneous and preconscious region [Ger. demselben Gebiete des Unwillkürlichen und Vorbewußten entstammen], from which all involuntary impulses and inspirations take their origin.

1891 Antidote 9 June 180 A yearning which is at present, except in a few cases, all preconscious, but still none the less hopeful.

1925 J. Riviere tr. S. Freud Unconscious in Coll. Papers IV. 25 We have now gained the conviction that there are some latent ideas which do not penetrate into consciousness... We may call the latent ideas of the first type preconscious.

1976 R. Bocock Freud & Mod. Soc. i. 7 The conscious and preconscious systems may not be able to influence the unconscious system at all.

2002 R. Carter Consciousness i. 24 During this split second, the brain does a phenomenal amount of preconscious work in order to turn a stream of electrical pulses into a conscious sight, sound, emotion, thought or perception.

1913 Times 17 Sept. 10/3 There was the preconscious, which was the ante-chamber of consciousness.

1957 R. L. Munroe Schools of Psychoanalyt. Thought ii. iii. 82 The perceptual conscious is what we are actually aware of at any given moment. This rather narrow field extends into the preconscious or foreconscious (the terms are interchangeable), which includes the host of immediate perceptions and memories available to us if our attention requires them.

1988 P. Gay Freud iii. 128 The segment of mind harboring thoughts temporarily out of sight and easily recalled..is what he [sc. Freud] called the preconscious.

1883 H. Maudsley Body & Will i. iii. 52 Men never could have constructed ideally the external world in the same fashion all the world over, had they not had long and patient experience of it, first, preconsciously, then dimly consciously.

1927 J. Riviere tr. S. Freud Ego & Id ii. 32 We have evidence that even subtle and intricate intellectual operations which ordinarily require strenuous concentration can equally be carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness.

1990 S. Turow Burden of Proof ii. xiv. 163 Stern felt his mouth drawing, preconsciously. Various cycles of discomfort started up in different regions of his body.