Levels of Awareness: the preconscious

Freud contrasted the unconscious with the conscious, and preconscious which formed the three levels of awareness. The conscious state consists of being aware at that particular time while the unconscious state consists of thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness. I found it interesting that we are able to retrieve material, with little to know effort, from our memories such as middle name or what was for dinner the previous night. The act of doing this is preconscious because the material can be easily recalled.