The Unconscious, Freud (1915)
Arguments for the Unconscious
Freud offers a number of arguments for the existence of the unconscious.
Argument #1: The gaps in consciousness we experience necessitate the existence of the unconscious. An example of a gap in consciousness, he points out that sometimes an idea might come into our mind and that we don’t know where this idea came from. He seems to be presupposing a type of causality or determinism, meaning that each idea we have must be caused by a previous idea. For example, if I’m now thinking of a cat, it must have been the case that I saw a cat or that you were talking about a cat, etc. But experience shows us that sometimes I’ll be thinking about nothing evidently related to cats, and then, poof, the idea of a cat comes into my mind. Something must have caused this thought of a cat, and if I can’t state what it was, then it follows that that something must have been outside my consciousness.
Argument #2: The fact that everything we know is not always in our consciousness proves the existence of the unconscious. I might know, for instance, that Napoleon’s army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, but I’m rarely thinking of this piece of information. I still can be said to know this fact, but it’s not in my consciousness; this information must be somewhere, and since it’s not in my consciousness, it makes sense to assume that it’s being stored in my unconscious.
Topography of the Mind
Freud points out that the unconscious contains two different types of material. First, there is preconscious material; this is material which is at the moment unconscious but is capable of quickly becoming conscious. An example would be the thought that Napoleon’s army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Preconscious material has the same characteristics as conscious material, the only difference being that it is temporarily outside of consciousness.
Second, there is repressed material. Whereas an individual readily accepts preconscious material after it has become conscious, he does not accept repressed material when the analyst shares it with him. On the contrary, when the analyst makes repressed material conscious to the patient, “it does not remove the repression nor undo its effects,” and in fact the patient might again reject the repressed idea. This patient will only come to accept this repressed idea until his resistances have been overcome.
Unconscious Feelings
Just like ideas, instinctual impulses and emotions can be unconscious, but they’re unconscious in a different way. When we say that an idea is unconscious, we mean that the idea exists but that repression has kept it out of our consciousness. When we say that an emotion is unconscious, we mean that repression has prevented it from developing. What this means in the latter case is that repression has inhibited “an instinctual impulse from being turned into a manifestation of affect,” which involves “the setting-off of muscular activity.” Sometimes an unconscious emotion develops once the instinctual impulse has found a “conscious substitute.”
Repression
During repression, the libido remains cathected to — or emotionally focused on — an object in the unconscious but stops being cathected to this object in the conscious system. This is kind of clunky language, and in more understandable terms can be stated as follows: We often feel strong emotions toward certain people; during repression, these strong emotions are blocked from our conscious awareness.
Freud offers a number of arguments for the existence of the unconscious.
Argument #1: The gaps in consciousness we experience necessitate the existence of the unconscious. An example of a gap in consciousness, he points out that sometimes an idea might come into our mind and that we don’t know where this idea came from. He seems to be presupposing a type of causality or determinism, meaning that each idea we have must be caused by a previous idea. For example, if I’m now thinking of a cat, it must have been the case that I saw a cat or that you were talking about a cat, etc. But experience shows us that sometimes I’ll be thinking about nothing evidently related to cats, and then, poof, the idea of a cat comes into my mind. Something must have caused this thought of a cat, and if I can’t state what it was, then it follows that that something must have been outside my consciousness.
Argument #2: The fact that everything we know is not always in our consciousness proves the existence of the unconscious. I might know, for instance, that Napoleon’s army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, but I’m rarely thinking of this piece of information. I still can be said to know this fact, but it’s not in my consciousness; this information must be somewhere, and since it’s not in my consciousness, it makes sense to assume that it’s being stored in my unconscious.
Topography of the Mind
Freud points out that the unconscious contains two different types of material. First, there is preconscious material; this is material which is at the moment unconscious but is capable of quickly becoming conscious. An example would be the thought that Napoleon’s army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Preconscious material has the same characteristics as conscious material, the only difference being that it is temporarily outside of consciousness.
Second, there is repressed material. Whereas an individual readily accepts preconscious material after it has become conscious, he does not accept repressed material when the analyst shares it with him. On the contrary, when the analyst makes repressed material conscious to the patient, “it does not remove the repression nor undo its effects,” and in fact the patient might again reject the repressed idea. This patient will only come to accept this repressed idea until his resistances have been overcome.
Unconscious Feelings
Just like ideas, instinctual impulses and emotions can be unconscious, but they’re unconscious in a different way. When we say that an idea is unconscious, we mean that the idea exists but that repression has kept it out of our consciousness. When we say that an emotion is unconscious, we mean that repression has prevented it from developing. What this means in the latter case is that repression has inhibited “an instinctual impulse from being turned into a manifestation of affect,” which involves “the setting-off of muscular activity.” Sometimes an unconscious emotion develops once the instinctual impulse has found a “conscious substitute.”
Repression
During repression, the libido remains cathected to — or emotionally focused on — an object in the unconscious but stops being cathected to this object in the conscious system. This is kind of clunky language, and in more understandable terms can be stated as follows: We often feel strong emotions toward certain people; during repression, these strong emotions are blocked from our conscious awareness.
Repression can manifest itself in different ways. (1) I can feel anxiety without knowing what it is that I’m afraid of: (a) in my unconscious, I cathect to an object, and (b) in my consciousness, this cathexis discharges as anxiety. (2) During repetition, displacement occurs: (a) in my unconscious, I cathect to an object, and (b) in my consciousness I cathect to “a substitutive idea which, on the one hand, is connected by association with the rejected idea, and, on the other, has escaped repression by reason of its remoteness from that idea.” (3) Something similar occurs during conversion hysteria: (a) in my unconscious, I cathect to an object, and (b) in my consciousness, the cathexis discharges as a physical symptom.
Characteristics of the Unconscious System
Freud describes four characteristics of the unconscious:
(1) Exemption from mutual contradiction. The unconscious consists of instinctual impulses trying to cathect to objects; put differently, the unconscious consists of “wishful impulses.” These impulses are oblivious to one another; when two impulses have contradictory aims, they continue to strive for that aim and do not talk to one another.
(2) Primary process. Primary process consists of displacement and condensation. During displacement, “one idea may surrender to another its whole quota of cathexis.” Meaning, for example, that I initially cathect to Object A but then take all the emotional energy I feel for Object B and put it into and thus cathect to Object B. During condensation, one appropriates “the whole cathexis of several other ideas.” Meaning, for example, that I initially cathect to Object A but then take all the emotional energy I feel for Object A and put it into and thus cathect to Object B, Object C, etc.
(3) Timelessness. The processes of the unconscious are timeless,” meaning “they are not ordered temporally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all.”
(4) Ignorance of the reality principle. The unconscious pays “just as little regard to reality.” Rather, it is subject to the pleasure principle, its fate depending only on how strong its impulses are and whether it fulfills the reality principle.
Characteristics of the Unconscious System
Freud describes four characteristics of the unconscious:
(1) Exemption from mutual contradiction. The unconscious consists of instinctual impulses trying to cathect to objects; put differently, the unconscious consists of “wishful impulses.” These impulses are oblivious to one another; when two impulses have contradictory aims, they continue to strive for that aim and do not talk to one another.
(2) Primary process. Primary process consists of displacement and condensation. During displacement, “one idea may surrender to another its whole quota of cathexis.” Meaning, for example, that I initially cathect to Object A but then take all the emotional energy I feel for Object B and put it into and thus cathect to Object B. During condensation, one appropriates “the whole cathexis of several other ideas.” Meaning, for example, that I initially cathect to Object A but then take all the emotional energy I feel for Object A and put it into and thus cathect to Object B, Object C, etc.
(3) Timelessness. The processes of the unconscious are timeless,” meaning “they are not ordered temporally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all.”
(4) Ignorance of the reality principle. The unconscious pays “just as little regard to reality.” Rather, it is subject to the pleasure principle, its fate depending only on how strong its impulses are and whether it fulfills the reality principle.
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