Representations derive from perceptions and feed thinking and intuition.
One of the brain's most important functions is its capacity to create future scenarios based on prior information and experiences. Through this, it can also become one of the most harmful functions — and here's why: the brain is constantly interested in "predicting" the future, in order to protect us, to alert us, to prepare us for potentially challenging situations.
Representation as a psychic process
Representation is the first level of organization of autonomous mental activity, independent of the direct presence and action of external objects. Its source is the information provided by sensations and perceptions.
Representation marks the first step on the trajectory of detaching the act of knowing from the immediate concrete toward the abstract and general.
Types of representations
If perceptions are tactile, visual, auditory and olfactory, representations in turn are visual, auditory or kinesthetic. Being a superior psychic process, the complex forms of perception are found in corresponding representations: representation of space, time, movement.
Representations and intuition
To simplify as much as possible, what we call INTUITION actually has its root in representations. In the reflection process, representation performs a selection of intuitive qualities developed through perceptions, reaching a conclusion unique to each person. Representations are practically the main source of information for thinking.
That's precisely why, if you want to listen to your intuition, catch the idea before you begin thinking it!
Representations prepare us for thinking, helping us think anticipatorily and then establish our thinking trajectory, developing our own operations with which we humans can select, schematize, restructure, and generalize.
Mental images
We have thus concluded the series of basic psychic processes: sensations, perceptions and representations. All together create what we call the mental image. And the human capacity to create mental images makes us unique among species!
The mental image is what makes us unique as individuals, because it forms differently from one person to another, even if we look at the same object.
Conclusions
By understanding how psychic processes form and function, we will more easily accept the differences between us. We tend to get close to people who resemble us because we feel comfortable there. If you want to develop, though, you can also listen to the opinions of those different from you.
