Freud - Complete Works (498 page)

The Unconscious

2997

   Proceeding now to an account of
the positive findings of psycho-analysis, we may say that in
general a psychical act goes through two phases as regards its
state, between which is interposed a kind of testing (censorship).
In the first phase the psychical act is unconscious and belongs to
the system
Ucs.
; if, on testing, it is rejected by the
censorship, it is not allowed to pass into the second phase; it is
then said to be ‘repressed’ and must remain
unconscious. If, however, it passes this testing, it enters the
second phase and thenceforth belongs to the second system, which we
will call the system
Cs
. But the fact that it belongs to
that system does not yet unequivocally determine its relation to
consciousness. It is not yet conscious, but it is certainly
capable of becoming conscious
(to use Breuer’s
expression) - that is, it can now, given certain conditions, become
an object of consciousness without any special resistance. In
consideration of this capacity for becoming conscious we also call
the system
Cs.
the ‘preconscious’. If it should
turn out that a certain censorship also plays a part in determining
whether the preconscious becomes conscious, we shall discriminate
more sharply between the systems
Pcs.
and
Cs
. For the
present let it suffice us to bear in mind that the system
Pcs.
shares the characteristics of the system
Cs.
and
that the rigorous censorship exercises its office at the point of
transition from the
Ucs.
to the
Pcs.
(or
Cs
.).

   By accepting the existence of
these two (or three) psychical systems, psycho-analysis has
departed a step further from the descriptive ‘psychology of
consciousness’ and has raised new problems and acquired a new
content. Up till now, it has differed from that psychology mainly
by reason of its
dynamic
view of mental processes; now in
addition it seems to take account of psychical
topography
as
well, and to indicate in respect of any given mental act within
what system or between what systems it takes place. On account of
this attempt, too, it has been given the name of
‘depth-psychology’. We shall hear that it can be
further enriched by taking yet another point of view into
account.

The Unconscious

2998

   If we are to take the topography
of mental acts seriously we must direct our interest to a doubt
which arises at this point. When a psychical act (let us confine
ourselves here to one which is in the nature of an idea) is
transposed from the system
Ucs.
into the system
Cs.
(or
Pcs.
), are we to suppose that this transposition
involves a fresh record - as it were, a second registration - of
the idea in question, which may thus be situated as well in a fresh
psychical locality, and alongside of which the original unconscious
registration continues to exist? Or are we rather to believe that
the transposition consists in a change in the state of the idea, a
change involving the same material and occurring in the same
locality? This question may appear abstruse, but it must be raised
if we wish to form a more definite conception of psychical
topography, of the dimension of depth in the mind. It is a
difficult one because it goes beyond pure psychology and touches on
the relations of the mental apparatus to anatomy. We know that in
the very roughest sense such relations exist. Research has given
irrefutable proof that mental activity is bound up with the
function of the brain as it is with no other organ. We are taken a
step further - we do not know how much - by the discovery of the
unequal importance of the different parts of the brain and their
special relations to particular parts of the body and to particular
mental activities. But every attempt to go on from there to
discover a localization of mental processes, every endeavour to
think of ideas as stored up in nerve-cells and of excitations as
travelling along nerve-fibres, has miscarried completely. The same
fate would await any theory which attempted to recognize, let us
say, the anatomical position of the system
Cs.
- conscious
mental activity - as being in the cortex, and to localize the
unconscious processes in the sub-cortical parts of the brain. There
is a hiatus here which at present cannot be filled, nor is it one
of the tasks of psychology to fill it. Our psychical topography has
for the present
nothing to do with anatomy; it has reference
not to anatomical localities, but to regions in the mental
apparatus, wherever they may be situated in the body.

The Unconscious

2999

   In this respect, then, our work
is untrammelled and may proceed according to its own requirements.
It will, however, be useful to remind ourselves that as things
stand our hypotheses set out to be no more than graphic
illustrations. The first of the two possibilities which we
considered - namely, that the
Cs.
phase of an idea implies a
fresh registration of it, which is situated in another place - is
doubtless the cruder but also the more convenient. The second
hypothesis - that of a merely
functional
change of state -
is
a priori
more probable, but it is less plastic, less easy
to manipulate. With the first, or topographical, hypothesis is
bound up that of a topographical separation of the systems
Ucs.
and
Cs.
and also the possibility that an idea
may exist simultaneously in two places in the mental apparatus
indeed, that if it is not inhibited by the censorship, it regularly
advances from the one position to the other, possibly without
losing its first location or registration.

   This view may seem odd, but it
can be supported by observations from psycho-analytic practice. If
we communicate to a patient some idea which he has at one time
repressed but which we have discovered in him, our telling him
makes at first no change in his mental condition. Above all, it
does not remove the repression nor undo its effects, as might
perhaps be expected from the fact that the previously unconscious
idea has now become conscious. On the contrary, all that we shall
achieve at first will be a fresh rejection of the repressed idea.
But now the patient has in actual fact the same idea in two forms
indifferent places in his mental apparatus: first, he has the
conscious memory of the auditory trace of the idea, conveyed in
what we told him; and secondly, he also has - as we know for
certain - the unconscious memory of his experience as it was in its
earlier form. Actually there is no lifting of the repression until
the conscious idea, after the resistances have been overcome, has
entered into connection with the unconscious memory-trace. It is
only through the making conscious of the latter itself that success
is achieved. On superficial consideration this would seem to show
that conscious and unconscious ideas are distinct registrations,
topographically separated, of the same content. But a
moment’s reflection shows that the identity of the
information given to the patient with his repressed memory is only
apparent. To have heard something and to have experienced something
are in their psychological nature two quite different things, even
though the content of both is the same.

   So for the moment we are not in a
position to decide between the two possibilities that we have
discussed. Perhaps later on we shall come upon factors which may
turn the balance in favour of one or the other. Perhaps we shall
make the discovery that our question was inadequately framed and
that the difference between an unconscious and a conscious idea has
to be defined in quite another way.

The Unconscious

3000

III.  UNCONSCIOUS EMOTIONS

   We have limited the foregoing
discussion to ideas; we may now raise a new question, the answer to
which is bound to contribute to the elucidation of our theoretical
views. We have said that there are conscious and unconscious ideas;
but are there also unconscious instinctual impulses, emotions and
feelings, or is it in this instance meaningless to form
combinations of the kind?

   I am in fact of the opinion that
the antithesis of conscious and unconscious is not applicable to
instincts. An instinct can never become an object of consciousness
- only the idea that represents the instinct can. Even in the
unconscious, moreover, an instinct cannot be represented otherwise
than by an idea. If the instinct did not attach itself to an idea
or manifest itself as an affective state, we could know nothing
about it. When we nevertheless speak of an unconscious instinctual
impulse or of a repressed instinctual impulse, the looseness of
phraseology is a harmless one. We can only mean an instinctual
impulse the ideational representative of which is unconscious, for
nothing else comes into consideration.

   We should expect the answer to
the question about unconscious feelings, emotions and affects to be
just as easily given. It is surely of the essence of an emotion
that we should be aware of it, i.e. that it should become known to
consciousness. Thus the possibility of the attribute of
unconsciousness would be completely excluded as far as emotions,
feelings and affects are concerned. But in psycho-analytic practice
we are accustomed to speak of unconscious love, hate, anger, etc.,
and find it impossible to avoid even the strange conjunction
‘unconscious consciousness of guilt’, or a paradoxical
‘unconscious anxiety’. Is there more meaning in the use
of these terms than there is in speaking of ‘unconscious
instincts’?

The Unconscious

3001

   The two cases are in fact not on
all fours. In the first place, it may happen that an affective or
emotional impulse is perceived but misconstrued. Owing to the
repression of its proper representative it has been forced to
become connected with another idea, and is now regarded by
consciousness as the manifestation of that idea. If we restore the
true connection, we call the original affective impulse an
‘unconscious’ one. Yet its affect was never
unconscious; all that had happened was that its
idea
had
undergone repression. In general, the use of the terms
‘unconscious affect’ and ‘unconscious
emotion’ has reference to the vicissitudes undergone, in
consequence of repression, by the quantitative factor in the
instinctual impulse. We know that three such vicissitudes are
possible:¹ either the affect remains, wholly or in part, as it
is; or it is transformed into a qualitatively different quota of
affect, above all into anxiety; or it is suppressed, i.e. it is
prevented from developing at all. (These possibilities may perhaps
be studied even more easily in the dream-work than in neuroses.) We
know, too, that to suppress the development of affect is the true
aim of repression and that its work is incomplete if this aim is
not achieved. In every instance where repression has succeeded in
inhibiting the development of affects, we term those affects (which
we restore when we undo the work of repression)
‘unconscious’. Thus it cannot be denied that the use of
the terms in question is consistent; but in comparison with
unconscious ideas there is the important difference that
unconscious ideas continue to exist after repression as actual
structures in the system
Ucs.
, whereas all that corresponds
in that system to unconscious affects is a potential beginning
which is prevented from developing. Strictly speaking, then, and
although no fault can be found with the linguistic usage, there are
no unconscious affects as there are unconscious ideas. But there
may very well be in the system
Ucs.
affective structures
which, like others, become conscious. The whole difference arises
from the fact that ideas are cathexes - basically of memory-traces
- whilst affects and feelings correspond to processes of discharge,
the final manifestations of which are perceived as feelings. In the
present state of our knowledge of affects and feelings we cannot
express this difference more clearly.

  
¹
Cf. the preceding paper on
‘Repression’.

The Unconscious

3002

   It is of especial interest to us
to have established the fact that repression can succeed in
inhibiting an instinctual impulse from being turned into a
manifestation of affect. This shows us that the system
Cs
.
normally controls affectivity as well as access to motility; and it
enhances the importance of repression, since it shows that
repression results not only in withholding things from
consciousness, but also in preventing the development of affect and
the setting-off of muscular activity. Conversely, too, we may say
that as long as the system
Cs.
controls affectivity and
motility, the mental condition of the person in question is spoken
of as normal. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable difference in
the relation of the controlling system to the two contiguous
processes of discharge.¹  Whereas the control by the
Cs
. over voluntary motility is firmly rooted, regularly
withstands the onslaught of neurosis and only breaks down in
psychosis, control by the
Cs.
over the development of
affects is less secure. Even within the limits of normal life we
can recognize that a constant struggle for primacy over affectivity
goes on between the two systems
Cs.
and
Ucs.
, that
certain spheres of influence are marked off from one another and
that intermixtures between the operative forces occur.