As a result of all this we are left without any completely reliable text of the paper. No doubt both the revision and the translation were excellently carried out; and probably Freud himself went through both of them. Nevertheless we must necessarily remain in uncertainty where there is a question of Freud’s précise choice of terms. To take an example of one difficulty. The term ‘conception’ is used repeatedly in paragraphs 2 to 5. We should be inclined to suppose that Freud had in mind the German word ‘Vorstellung’ which is usually rendered in this édition by the English ‘idea’. And in fact ‘Vorstellung’ is the word used in the corresponding places in the German translation. At the end of the seventh paragraph and in the eighth the word ‘idea’ appears in the English text, and the corresponding word in the German is ‘Idee. But in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs, where we once more find the English ‘idea’, the German rendering is almost everywhere ‘Gedanke’ (which we usually translate ‘thought’), but in one place ‘Vorstellung‘.
In the circumstances we have thought the wisest course is simply to reprint the original English version, exactly as it appeared in the original S.P.R. Proceedings, with occasional footnotes where the terminology calls for comment.
Our reason for regretting this textual uncertainty will be understood when it is remembered that this is among the most important of Freud’s theoretical papers. Here for the first tirne he gave a long and reasoned account of the grounds for his hypothesis of unconscious mental processes and set out the various ways in which he used the term ‘unconscious’. The paper is in fact a study for the major work on the same subject which he was to write some three years later (1915e). Like the earlier paper ‘On the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ (1911 b) and Section III of the Schreber analysis (1911c), the present one is evidence of Freud’s renewed concern with psychological theory.
The discussion of the ambiguities inherent in the word ‘unconscious’ is of particular interest, with the distinction between its three uses—the ‘descriptive’, the ‘dynamic’ and the ‘systematic’. The present account is both more elaborate and clearer than the much shorter one given in Section II of the great paper (Standard Ed., 14, 172). For there only two uses are differentiated, the ‘descriptive’ and the ‘systematic’; and no plain distinction appears to be made between the latter and the ‘dynamic’—the term which in the présent paper is applied to the repressed unconscious. In two later discussions of the same topic, in chapiter I of The Ego and the Id (1923b) and in Lecture XXXI of the New Introductory lectures (1933a), Freud returned to the triple distinction made here; and the third use of the term, the ‘systematic’ (touched upon only slightly at the end of the present paper), was then seen to be a step towards the structural division of the mind into ‘id’, ‘ego’ and super-ego’, which was so greatly to clarify the whole situation.
The greater part of this paper, in the 1925 version, was included in Rickman’s General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud (1937, 54-62).
A NOTE ON THE UNCONSCIOUS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
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.
A conception – or any other psychical[1] élément – which is now present to my consciousness may become absent the next moment, and may beeome present again, after an interval, unchanged, and, as we say, from memory, not as a resuit of a fresh perception by our senses. It is this fact which we are accustomed to account for by the supposition that during the interval the conception has been present in our mind, although latent in consciousness. In what shape it may have existed while present in the mind and latent in conseiousness we have no means of guessing.
At this very point we may be prepared to meet with the philosophical objection that the latent conception did not exist as an object of psychology, but as a physical disposition for the recurrence of the same psychical phenomenon, i.e. of the said conception. But we may reply that this is a theory far overstepping the domain of psychology proper; that it simply begs the question by asserting ‘conscious’ to be an identical term with ‘psychical’, and that it is clearly at fault in denying psychology the right to account for its most common facts, such as memory, by its own means.
Now let us call ‘conscious’ the conception which is present to our consciousness and of which we are aware, and let this be the only meaning of the term ‘conscious’. As for latent conceptions, if we have any reason to suppose that they exist in the mindas we had in the case of memory let them be denoted by the term ‘Unconscious’.
Thus an unconscious conception is one of which we are not aware, but the existence of which we are nevertheless ready to admit on account of other proofs or signs.
This might be considered an uninteresting piece of descriptive or classificatory work if no experience appealed to our judgement other than the facts of memory, or the cases of association by unconscious links. The well-known experiment, however, 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, as performed by Bernheim, 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 certain fixed moment after his awakening, say 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 had 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.
But we have more to learn from such an experiment. We are led from the purely descriptive to a dynamic view of the phenomenon. The idea of the action ordered in hypnosis not only became an object of consciousness at a certain moment, but the more striking aspect of the fact is that this idea grew active: it was translated into action as soon as consciousness became aware of its présence. The real stimulus to the action being the order of the physician, it is hard not to concede that the idea of the physician’s order became active too. Yet this last idea did not reveal itself to consciousness, as did its outcome, the idea of the action; it remained unconscious, and so it was active and unconscious at the same time.
A post-hypnotic suggestion is a laboratory production, an artificial fact. But if we adopt the theory of hysterical phenomena first put forward by P. Janet and elaborated by Breuer and myself, we shall not be at a loss for plenty of natural facts showing the psychological character of the post-hypnotic suggestion even more clearly and distinctly.
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 procédures 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 préepondérance of active unconscious ideas is revealed by analysis as the essential fact in the psychology of all other forms of neurosis.
We learn therefore by the analysis of neurotic phenomena that a latent or unconscious idea is not necessarily a weak one, and that the presence of such an idea in the mind admits of indirect proofs of the most cogent kind, which are equivalent to the direct proof furnished by consciousness. We feel justified in making our classification agree with this addition to our knowledge by introducing a fundamental distinction between different kinds of latent or unconscious ideas. We were accustomed to think that every latent idea was so because it was weak and that it grew conscious as soon as it became strong. We have now gained the conviction that there are some latent ideas which do not penetrate into consciousness, however strong they may have become. Therefore we may call the latent ideas of the first type foreconscious,[2] while we reserve the term unconscious (proper) for the latter type which we came to study in the neuroses. The term unconscious, which was used in the purely descriptive sense before, now comes to imply something more. It designates not only latent ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of their intensity and activity.
Before continuing my exposition I will refer to two objections which are likely to be raised at this point. The first of these may be stated thus: instead of subscribing to the hypothesis of unconscious ideas of which we know nothing, we had better assume that consciousness can be split up, so that certain ideas or other psychical acts may constitute a consciousness apart, which has become detached and estranged from the bulk of conscious psychical activity. Well-known pathological cases like that of Dr. Azam[3] seem to go far to show that the splitting up of consciousness is no fanciful imagination.
I venture to urge against this theory that it is a gratuitous assumption, based on the abuse of the word ‘conscious’. We have no right to extend the meaning of this word so far as to make it include a consciousness of which its owner himself is not aware. If philosophers find difficulty in accepting the existence of unconscious ideas, the existence of an unconscious consciousness seems to me even more objectionable. The cases described as splitting of consciousness, like Dr. Azam’s, might better be denoted as shifting of consciousness, – that function – or whatever it be – oscillating between two différent psychical complexes which become conscious and unconscious in alternation.
The other objection that may probably be raised would be that we apply to normal psychology conclusions which are drawn chiefly from the study of pathological conditions.
We are enabled to answer it by another fact, the knowledge of which we owe to psycho-analysis. Certain deficiencies of function of most frequent occurrence among healthy people, e.g. lapsus linguae, errors in memory and speech, forgetting of names, etc., may easily be shown to depend on the action of strong unconscious ideas in the same way as neurotic symptoms. We shall meet with another still more convincing argument at a later stage of this discussion.
By the differentiation of foreconscious and unconscious ideas, we are led on to leave the field of classification and to form an opinion about functional and dynamical relations in psychical action. We have found a foreconscious activity passing into consciousness with no difficulty, and an unconscious activity which remains so and seems to be cut off from consciousness.
Now we do not know whether these two modes of psychical activity are identical or essentially divergent from their beginning, but we may ask why they should become différent in the course of psychical action. To this last question psycho-analysis gives a clear and unhesitating answer. It is by no means impossible for the product of unconscious activity to pierce into consciousness, but a certain amount of exertion is needed for this task. When we try to do it in ourselves, we become aware of a distinct feeling of repulsion[4] which must be overcome, and when we produce it in a patient we get the most unquestionable signs of what we call his résistance to it. So we learn that the unconscious idea is excluded from consciousness by living forces which oppose themselves to its reception, while they do not object to other ideas, the foreconscious ones. Psycho-analysis leaves no room for doubt that the repulsion from unconscious ideas is only provoked by the tendencies embodied in their contents. The next and most probable theory which can be formulated at this stage of our knowledge is the following. Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable phase in the processes constituting our psychical activity; every psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on developing into consciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not. The distinction between foreconscious and unconscious activity is not a primary one, but comes to be established after repulsion has sprung up. Only then the difference between foreconscious ideas, which can appear in consciousness and reappear at any moment, and unconscious ideas which cannot do so gains a theoretical as well as a practical value. A rough but not inadequate analogy to this supposed relation of conscious to unconscious activity might be drawn from the field of ordinary photography. The first stage of the” photograph is the ‘négative’ ; every photographie picture has to pass through the ‘négative process*, and some of these négatives which have held good in examination are admitted to the ‘positive process’ ending in the picture.
But the distinction between foreconscious and unconscious activity, and the récognition of the barrier which keeps them asunder, is not the last or the most important resuit of the psycho-analytic investigation of psychical life. There is one psychical product to be met with in the most normal persons, which yet presents a very striking analogy to the wildest productions of insanity, and was no more intelligible to philosophera than insanity itself. I refer to dreams Psychoanalysis is founded upon the analysis of dreams; the interpretation of dreams is the most complete piece of work the young science has donc up to the present. One of the most common types of dream formation may be described as follows: a train of thoughts has been aroused by the working of the mind in the daytime, and retained some of its activity, escaping from the general inhibition of interests which introduces sleep and constitutes the psychical préparation for sleeping. During the night this train of thoughts succeeds in fmding connections with one of the unconscious tendencies present ever since his childhood in the mind of the dreamer, but ordinarily repressed and excluded from his conscious life. By the borrowed force of this unconscious help, the thoughts, the residue of the day’s work,[5] now become active again, and emerge into consciousness in the shape of the dream. Now three things have happened:
(1) The thoughts have undergone a change, a disguise and
a distortion, which represents the part of the unconscious helpmate.
(2) The thoughts have occupied consciousness at a time
when they ought not.
(3) Some part of the unconscious, which could not otherwise
hâve done so, has emerged into consciousness.
We have learnt the art of finding out the ‘residual thoughts’, the latent thoughts of the dream[6], and, by comparing them with the apparent[7] dream, we are able to form a judgement on the changes they underwent and the manner in which these were brought about.
The latent thoughts of the dream differ in no respect from the products of our regular conscious activity; they deserve the name of foreconscious thoughts, and may indeed have been conscious at some moment of waking life. But by entering into connection with the unconscious tendencies during the night they have become assimilated to the latter, degraded as it were to the condition of unconscious thoughts, and subjected to the laws by which unconscious activity is governed. And here is the opportunity to learn what we could not have guessed from speculation, or from another source of empirical information— that the laws of unconscious activity differ widely from those of the conscious. We gather in detail what the peculiarities of the Unconscious are, and we may hope to learn still more about them by a profounder investigation of the processes of dream-formation.
This inquiry is not yet half fînished, and an exposition of the results obtained hitherto is scarcely possible without entering into the most intricate problems of dream-analysis. But I would not break off this discussion without indicating the change and progress in our comprehension of the Unconscious which are due to our psycho-analytic study of dreams.
Unconsciousness seemed to us at first only an enigmatical characteristic of a definite psychical act. Now it means more for us. It is a sign that this act partakes of the nature of a certain psychical category known to us by other and more important characters[8] and that it belongs to a system of psychical activity which is deserving of our fullest attention. The index-value of the unconscious has far outgrown its importance as a property. The system revealed by the sign that the single acts forming parts of it are unconscious we designate by the name ‘The Unconscious’, for want of a better and less ambiguous term. In German, I propose to denote this system by the letters Ubw, an abbreviation of the German word ‘Unbewusst’.[9] And this is the third and most significant sensé which the term ‘unconscious’ has acquired in psycho-analysis.
[1] [In the 1925 English version, throughout the paper, ‘psychical’ was altered to ‘mental’.]
[2] [In the 1925 English version, throughout the paper, ‘foreconscious’ was altered to ‘preconscious’, which has, of course, become the regular translation of the German ‘vorbewusst’.]
[3] [The reference is to the case of Felida X., a striking example of alternating or double personality ans probably the first of its kind to be investigated an recorded in detail. The case was first described by F. Azam of Bordeaux. (Seezam, 1876 and 1887.) ]
[4] In the German translation the wholc phrase is rendered ‘Tagesreste’, for which the usual English équivalent is ‘day’s residues’.]
[5] [In the 1925 English version the word ‘mental’ was inserted before ‘work’.]
[6] [In the German translation the last nine words are replaced by : ‘the ”day’s residues”, and the latente dream-throughts…’. ]
[7] [This word was altered to ‘manifest’ in the 1925 English version.]s.F. XII
[8] [This was altered to ‘features’ in the 1925 English version.]
[9] [The équivalent English abbreviation is, of course, ‘Ucs.’.]
