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Unconscious

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By tavus
Words 1262
Pages 6
"The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psychoanalysis" (1923b, p. 19). The unconscious emerged from practical treatments, from the theory of repression, and from the theory of sexuality. The adjective qualifies localized formations in a state of repression, various processes, and later on, agencies as well. The noun describes the "locality" that, according to the first topography, is set against the preconscious-conscious system. Both the adjective and the noun imply that psychical life is in conflict (the dynamic point of view); that memory exists without interest, that the energetics, indeed, the structure of psychic processes is determined, on the whole, beyond consciousness (the economic point of view); and that finally inaccessibility to consciousness is undeniable (the descriptive point of view). Freud transformed philosophical and psychiatric tradition with these ideas and his refinement of the terms (Hartmann, 1931; Whithe, 1961).

When he advanced the theory of repression and the psychoneurosis of defense in 1894, Freud managed without the word unconscious. Thus ideas (or representations) that were intolerable, irreconcilable, repressed, durable, and pathogenic were beyond association, forgotten, outside of consciousness. Freud then made use of the term unconscious three times in Studies on Hysteria and called for research: "The ideas which are derived from the greatest depth and which form the nucleus of the pathogenic organization are also those which are acknowledged as memories by the patient with greatest difficulty. Even when [. . .] the patients themselves accept the fact that they thought this or that, they often add: 'But I can't remember having thought it.' It is easy to come to terms with them by telling them that the thoughts were unconscious. But how is this state of affairs

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