If you google the difference between these terms or ask ChatGPT, you will get roughly this answer:
The subconscious is a “background autopilot”: habits, automatic actions, learned reactions. It is a surface layer of the psyche that can be made conscious.
The unconscious is a deeper layer: repressed desires, conflicts, archetypal impulses. The unconscious is, in principle, not accessible to conscious awareness.
In reality, these words are synonyms that were introduced into academic discourse, and later into popular culture, by Freud. In his works he used both terms, though more often giving preference to the Unconscious. Later it was precisely the Unconscious that became established in psychoanalytic science as the main term, while subconscious moved into pop psychology and New Age. But in essence, the two terms are synonymous.
The idea of dividing the psyche into levels sounds appealing (one such model is the Three spheres of the psyche), but the choice of terms is questionable, as is the claim that there exists a layer of the psyche that is fundamentally impossible to become conscious of. The practice of many spiritual traditions clearly contradicts this.
What to use
To simplify, Freud considered impulses, desires, and memories that had been repressed from consciousness to be the source of mental problems and disorders. Therefore, the term unconscious does indeed more accurately describe the non-conscious part of the psyche where these repressed desires are “stored”.
Subconscious, on the other hand, implies a certain subjectivity and autonomy. Here we are speaking rather of background processes hidden from consciousness, yet directed at supporting and carrying out its functions.
Both terms point to the same area of the psyche, concealed from consciousness, but emphasise different aspects of it: the unconscious refers more to the repressed and the hidden, whereas the subconscious refers to background support. From an astrological point of view, both correspond to the Moon.
As an astrologer rather than a psychoanalyst, I emphasise the supportive function of the psyche, and therefore prefer the term subconscious. I see repression as part of this supportive function, even if its consequences are often experienced as unsatisfactory. Besides, using the term subconscious signals my non-professional status in this field: I do not, of course, belong to the egregore of psychoanalysts, nor do I encroach upon their terminology (which, for egregores, is sacred!).
