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Sigmund Freud, "The Structure of the Unconscious" http://anupamm.tripod.com/freudst.html From An Outline of Psychoanalysis [1940],
translated from the German by James Strachey, London and New York, 1949, pp.
34-5, 37-9. Copyright 1949 by W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.; reprinted by
permission of W. W. Norton & Co., and The Hogarth Press Ltd. From New Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis [1933], translated from the German by W. J. H. Sprott, New York, 1933, pp. 104-5, 105-7, 108-12.
Copyright 1933 by Sigmund Freud; copyright renewed 1961 by W. J. H. Sprott; reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton &
Co., Inc. [CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS, PRECONSCIOUS] The starting point for
this investigation is provided by a fact without parallel, which defies all
explanation or description--the fact of consciousness. Nevertheless, if
anyone speaks of consciousness, we know immediately and from our own most
personal experience what is meant by it. Many people, both inside and outside
the science of psychology, are satisfied with the assumption that
consciousness alone is mental, and nothing then remains for psychology but to
discriminate in the phenomenology of the mind between perceptions, feelings,
intellective processes and volitions. It is generally agreed, however, that
these conscious processes do not form unbroken series which are complete in
themselves; so that there is no alternative to assuming that there are
physical or somatic processes which accompany the mental ones and which must
admittedly be more complete than the mental series, since some of them have
conscious processes parallel to them but others have not. It thus seems
natural to lay the stress in psychology upon these somatic processes, to see
in them the true essence of what is mental and to try to arrive at some other
assessment of the conscious processes. The majority of
philosophers, however, as well as many other people, dispute this
position and declare that the notion of a mental thing being unconscious is
self-contradictory. But it is precisely
this that psychoanalysis is obliged to assert, and this is its second
fundamental hypothesis. It explains the supposed somatic accessory processes
as being what is essentially mental and disregards for the moment the quality
of consciousness.... We are soon led to make
an important division in this unconscious. Some processes become conscious
easily; they may then cease to be conscious, but can become conscious once
more without any trouble: as people say, they can be reproduced or
remembered. This reminds us that consciousness is in general a very highly
fugitive condition. What is conscious is conscious only for a moment. If our
perceptions do not confirm this, the contradiction is merely an apparent one.
It is explained by the fact that the stimuli of perception can persist for
some time so that in the course of it the perception of them can be repeated.
The whole position can be clearly seen from the conscious perception of our
intellective processes; it is true that these may persist, but they may just
as easily pass in a flash. Everything unconscious that behaves in this way,
that can easily exchange the unconscious condition for the conscious one, is
therefore better described as "capable of entering consciousness,"
or as preconscious. Experience has taught us that there are hardly any mental
processes, even of the most complicated kind, which cannot on occasion remain
preconscious, although as a rule they press forward, as we say, into
consciousness. There are other mental processes or mental material which have
no such easy access to consciousness, but which must be inferred, discovered,
and translated into conscious form in the manner that has been described. It
is for such material that we reserve the name of the unconscious proper. Thus we have
attributed three qualities to mental processes: they are either
conscious, preconscious, or unconscious. The division between the
three classes of material which have these qualities is neither absolute nor
permanent. What is preconscious becomes conscious, as we have seen, without
any activity on our part; what is unconscious can, as a result of our
efforts, be made conscious, though in the process we may have an impression
that we are overcoming what are often very strong resistances. When we make
an attempt of this kind upon someone else, we ought not to forget that the
conscious filling up of the breaks in his perceptions--the construction which
we are offering him--does not so far mean that we have made conscious in him
the unconscious material in question. All that is so far true is that the
material is present in his mind in two versions, first in the conscious
reconstruction that he has just received and secondly in its original
unconscious condition. ----- [ID, EGO, SUPER-EGO] [The id is] . . . a
chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement. We suppose that it is somewhere in
direct contact with somatic processes, and takes over from them instinctual
needs and gives them mental expression, but we cannot say in what substratum
this contact is made. These instincts fill it with energy, but it has no organisation and no unified will, only an impulsion to
obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance With the
pleasure-principle. The laws of logic-- above all, the law of
contradiction--do not hold for processes in the id. Contradictory impulses
exist side by side without neutralising each other
or drawing apart; at most they combine in compromise formations under the
overpowering economic pressure towards discharging their energy. There is
nothing in the id which can be compared to negation, and we are astonished to
find in it an exception to the philosophers' assertion that space and time
are necessary forms of our mental acts. In the id there is nothing
corresponding to the idea of time, no recognition of the passage of time, and
(a thing which is very remarkable and awaits adequate attention in
philosophic thought) no alteration of mental processes by the passage of
time. Conative impulses which have never got beyond the id, and even
impressions which have been pushed down into the id by repression, are
virtually immortal and are preserved for whole decades as though they had
only recently occurred. They can only be recognised
as belonging to the past, deprived of their significance, and robbed of their
charge of energy, after they have been made conscious by the work of
analysis, and no small part of the therapeutic effect of analytic treatment
rests upon this fact. It is constantly being
borne in upon me that we have made far too little use of our theory of the indubitable
fact that the repressed remains unaltered by the passage of time. This seems
to offers us the possibility of an approach to some really profound truths.
But I myself have made no further progress here. Naturally, the id
knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. The economic, or, if you
prefer, the quantitative factor, which is so closely bound up with the
pleasure- principle, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge,--that, in our view, is all
that the id contains. It seems, indeed, as if the energy of these instinctual
impulses is in a different condition from that in which it is found in the
other regions of the mind. It must be far more fluid and more capable of
being discharged, for otherwise we should not have those displacements and
condensations, which are so characteristic of the id and which are so
completely independent of the qualities of what is cathected.... As regards a
characterization of the ego, in so far as it is to be distinguished from the
id and the super-ego, we shall get on better if we turn our attention to the
relation between it and the most superficial portion of the mental apparatus;
which we call the Pcpt-cs (perceptual-conscious)
system. This system is directed on to the external world, it mediates
perceptions of it, and in it is generated, while it is functioning, the
phenomenon of consciousness. It is the sense-organ of the whole apparatus,
receptive, moreover, not only of excitations from without but also of such as
proceed from the interior of the mind. One can hardly go wrong in regarding
the ego as that part of the id which has been modified by its proximity to
the external world and the influence that the latter has had on it, and which
serves the purpose of receiving stimuli and protecting the organism from
them, like the cortical layer with which a particle of living substance
surrounds itself. This relation to the external world is decisive for the
ego. The ego has taken over the task of representing the
external world for the id, and so of saving it; for the id, blindly striving
to gratify its instincts in complete disregard of the superior strength of
outside forces, could not otherwise escape annihilation. In the fulfilment of this function, the ego has to observe the
external world and preserve a true picture of it in the memory traces left by
its perceptions, and, by means of the reality-test, it has to eliminate any
element in this picture of the external world which is a contribution from
internal sources of excitation. On behalf of the id, the ego controls the
path of access to motility, but it interpolates between desire and action the
procrastinating factor of thought, during which it makes use of the residues
of experience stored up in memory. In this way it dethrones the pleasure-
principle, which exerts undisputed sway over the processes in the id, and
substitutes for it the reality-principle, which promises greater security and
greater success. The relation to time,
too, which is so hard to describe, is communicated to the ego by the
perceptual system; indeed it can hardly be doubted that the mode in which
this system works is the source of the idea of time. What, however,
especially marks the ego out in contradistinction to the id, is a tendency to
synthesise its contents, to bring together and
unify its mental processes which is entirely absent from the id. When we come
to deal presently with the instincts in mental life, I hope we shall succeed
in tracing this fundamental characteristic of the ego to its source. It is this
alone that produces that high degree of organisation
which the ego needs for its highest achievements. The ego advances from the
function of perceiving instincts to that of controlling them, but the latter
is only achieved through the mental representative of the instinct becoming
subordinated to a larger organisation, and finding
its place in a coherent unity. In popular language, we may say that the ego
stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed
passions.... The proverb tells us
that one cannot serve two masters at once. The poor ego has a still harder
time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and has to do its best to
reconcile the claims and demands of all three. These demands are always
divergent and often seem quite incompatible; no wonder that the ego so
frequently gives way under its task. The three tyrants are the external
world, the super-ego and the id. When one watches the efforts of the ego to
satisfy them all, or rather, to obey them all simultaneously, one cannot
regret having personified the ego, and established it as a separate being. It
feels itself hemmed in on three sides and threatened by three kinds of
danger, towards which it reacts by developing anxiety when it is too hard
pressed. Having originated in the experiences of the perceptual system, it is
designed to represent the demands of the external world, but it also wishes
to be a loyal servant of the id, to remain upon good terms with the id, to
recommend itself to the id as an object, and to draw the id's libido on to
itself. In its attempt to mediate between the id and reality, it is often
forced to clothe the Ucs. commands
of the id with its own Pcs. rationalisations, to
gloss over the conflicts between the id and reality, and with diplomatic
dishonesty to display a pretended regard for reality, even when the id
persists in being stubborn and uncompromising. On the other hand, its every
movement is watched by the severe super-ego, which holds up certain norms of behaviour, without regard to any difficulties coming from
the id and the external world; and if these norms are not acted up to, it
punishes the ego with the feelings of tension which manifest themselves as a
sense of inferiority and guilt. In this way, goaded on by the id, hemmed in by
the super-ego, and rebuffed by reality, the ego struggles to cope with its
economic task of reducing the forces and influences which work in it and upon
it to some kind of harmony; and we may well understand how it is that we so
often cannot repress the cry: "Life is not easy." When the ego is
forced to acknowledge its weakness, it breaks out into anxiety: reality
anxiety in face of the external world, normal anxiety in face of the super-
ego, and neurotic anxiety in face of the strength of the passions in the id. I have represented the
structural relations within the mental personality, as I have explained them
to you, in a simple diagram, which I here reproduce. You will observe how
the super-ego goes down into the id; as the heir to the Oedipus complex it
has, after all, intimate connections with the id. It lies further from the
perceptual system than the ego. The id only deals with the external world
through the medium of the ego, at least in this diagram. It is certainly
still too early to say how far the drawing is correct; in one respect I know
it is not. The space taken up by the unconscious id ought to be incomparably
greater than that given to the ego or to the preconscious. You must, if you
please, correct that in your imagination. And now, in concluding
this certainly rather exhausting and perhaps not very illuminating account, I
must add a warning. When you think of this dividing up of the personality
into ego, super-ego and id, you must not imagine sharp dividing lines such as
are artificially drawn in the field of political geography. We cannot do
justice to the characteristics of the mind by means of linear contours, such
as occur in a drawing or in a primitive painting, but we need rather the
areas of colour shading off into one another that are to be found in modern
pictures. After we have made our separations, we must allow what we have
separated to merge again. Do not judge too harshly of a first attempt at
picturing a thing so elusive as the human mind. It
is very probable that the extent of these differentiations varies very
greatly from person to person; it is possible that their function itself may
vary, and that they may at times undergo a process of involution. This seems
to be particularly true of the most insecure and, from the phylogenetic point
of view, the most recent of them, the differentiation between the ego and the
superego. It is also incontestable that the same thing can come about as a
result of mental disease. It can easily be imagined, too, that certain
practices of mystics may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between
the different regions of the mind, so that, for example, the perceptual
system becomes able to grasp relations in the deeper layers of the ego and in
the id which would otherwise be inaccessible to it. Whether such a procedure
can put one in possession of ultimate truths, from which all good will flow, may be safely doubted. All the same, we must admit
that the therapeutic efforts of psycho-analysis have chosen much the same
method of approach. For their object is to strengthen the ego, to make it
more independent of the super- ego, to widen its field of vision, and so to
extend its organisation that it can take over new
portions of the id. Where id was, there shall ego
be. It is reclamation
work, like the draining of the Zuyder Zee. |