| The Unconscious |
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| From Freud, Sigmund. A
Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis. As reproduced
in Sources of the Western Tradition, trans. Joan
Riviere, ed. Marvin Perry, Joseph R. Peden, and Theodore H.
Von Laue, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1999), 276. |
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Sigmund Freud delivered the following lecture in
1909, which was published in 1912. Freud (1865-1939)
defined the term "the unconscious" and its
application in psychoanalytic theory and practice.
The idea of the unconscious, however, would grow to
have implications beyond the psychoanalytic
treatment of mentally diseased individuals; for
Freud and others, it came ultimately to denote a
fundamental, and fundamentally well-hidden, part of
human nature--perhaps even its core. In later works,
such as Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud
would go on to apply his psychoanalytic techniques
to the study of human society in general and western
civilization in particular. |
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| I wish to expound in a few
words and as plainly as possible what the term 'unconscious'
has come to mean in psychoanalysis and in psychoanalysis
alone. . . .
The well-known experiment, . . . of the 'post-hypnotic
suggestion' teaches us to insist upon the importance of the
distinction between conscious and unconscious
and seems to increase its value.
In this experiment . . . a person is put into a hypnotic
state and is subsequently aroused. While he was in the
hypnotic state, under the influence of the physician, he was
ordered to execute a certain action at a fixed moment after
his awakening, say a half an hour later. He awakes, and
seems fully conscious and in his ordinary condition; he has
no recollection of his hypnotic state, and yet at the
prearranged moment there rushes into his mind the impulse to
do such and such a thing, and he does it consciously, though
not knowing why. It seems impossible to give any other
description of the phenomenon than to say that the order has
been present in the mind of the person in a condition of
latency, or had been present unconsciously, until the given
moment came, and then had become conscious. But not the
whole of it emerged into consciousness: only the conception
of the act to be executed. All the other ideas associated
with this conception--the order, the influence of the
physician, the recollection of the hypnotic state, remained
unconscious even then. . . .
The mind of the hysterical patient is full of active yet
unconscious ideas; all her symptoms proceed from such ideas.
It is in fact the most striking character of the hysterical
mind to be ruled by them. If the hysterical woman vomits,
she may do so from the idea of being pregnant. She has,
however, no knowledge of this idea, although it can easily
be detected in her mind, and made conscious to her, by one
of the technical procedures of psychoanalysis. If she is
executing the jerks and movements constituting her 'fit,'
she does not even consciously represent to herself the
intended actions, and she may perceive those actions with
the detached feelings of an onlooker. Nevertheless analysis
will show that she was acting her part in the dramatic
reproduction of some incident in her life, the memory of
which was unconsciously active during the attack. The same
preponderance of active unconscious ideas is revealed by
analysis as the essential fact in the psychology of all
other forms of neurosis. . . .
The term unconscious . . . [thus] designates . . .
ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas . . .
[divorced] from consciousness in spite of their intensity
and activity. |
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