Freud - Complete Works (655 page)

  
¹
Cf.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920
g
).

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3952

   For our conception of the
unconscious, however, the consequences of our discovery are even
more important. Dynamic considerations caused us to make our first
correction; our insight into the structure of the mind leads to the
second. We recognize that the
Ucs
. does not coincide with
the repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is
Ucs
., but not all that is
Ucs
. is repressed. A part
of the ego, too - and Heaven knows how important a part - may be
Ucs
., undoubtedly is
Ucs
. And this
Ucs
.
belonging to the ego is not latent like the
Pcs
.; for if it
were, it could not be activated without becoming
Cs
., and
the process of making it conscious would not encounter such great
difficulties. When we find ourselves thus confronted by the
necessity of postulating a third
Ucs
., which is not
repressed, we must admit that the characteristic of being
unconscious begins to lose significance for us. It becomes a
quality which can have many meanings, a quality which we are unable
to make, as we should have hoped to do, the basis of far-reaching
and inevitable conclusions. Nevertheless we must beware of ignoring
this characteristic, for the property of being conscious or not is
in the last resort our one beacon-light in the darkness of
depth-psychology.

The Ego And The Id

3953

II

THE
EGO AND THE ID

Pathological research has directed our
interest too exclusively to the repressed. We should like to learn
more about the ego, now that we know that it, too, can be
unconscious in the proper sense of the word. Hitherto the only
guide we have had during our investigations has been the
distinguishing mark of being conscious or unconscious; we have
finally come to see how ambiguous this can be.

   Now all our knowledge is
invariably bound up with consciousness. We can come to know even
the
Ucs
, only by making it conscious. But stop, how is that
possible? What does it mean when we say ‘making something
conscious’? How can that come about?

   We already know the point from
which we have to start in this connection. We have said that
consciousness is the
surface
of the mental apparatus; that
is, we have ascribed it as a function to a system which is
spatially the first one reached from the external world - and
spatially not only in the functional sense but, on this occasion,
also in the sense of anatomical dissection.¹ Our
investigations too must take this perceiving surface as a
starting-point.

   All perceptions which are
received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within - what we
call sensations and feelings - are
Cs
. from the start. But
what about those internal processes which we may - roughly and
inexactly - sum up under the name of thought-processes? They
represent displacements of mental energy which are effected
somewhere in the interior of the apparatus as this energy proceeds
on its way towards action. Do they advance to the surface, which
causes consciousness to be generated? Or does consciousness make
its way to them? This is clearly one of the difficulties that arise
when one begins to take the spatial or ‘topographical’
idea of mental life seriously. Both these possibilities are equally
unimaginable, there must be a third alternative.

  
¹
Beyond the Pleasure
Principle.

The Ego And The Id

3954

   I have already, in another
place,¹ suggested that the real difference between a
Ucs
. and a
Pcs
. idea (thought) consists in this: that
the former is carried out on some material which remains unknown,
whereas the latter (the
Pcs
.) is in addition brought into
connection with word-presentations. This is the first attempt to
indicate distinguishing marks for the two systems, the
Pcs
.
and the
Ucs
., other than their relation to consciousness.
The question, ‘How does a thing become conscious?’
would thus be more advantageously stated: ‘How does a thing
become preconscious?’ And the answer would be: ‘Through
becoming connected with the word-presentations corresponding to
it.’

   These word-presentations are
residues of memories; they were at one time perceptions, and like
all mnemic residues they can become conscious again. Before we
concern ourselves further with their nature, it dawns upon us like
a new discovery that only something which has once been a
Cs
. perception can become conscious, and that anything
arising from within (apart from feelings) that seeks to become
conscious must try to transform itself into external perceptions:
this becomes possible by means of memory-traces.

   We think of the mnemic residues
as being contained in systems which are directly adjacent to the
system
Pcpt.-Cs.
, so that the cathexes of those residues can
readily extend from within on to the elements of the latter system.
We immediately think here of hallucinations, and of the fact that
the most vivid memory is always distinguishable both from a
hallucination and from an external perception; but it will also
occur to us at once that when a memory is revived the cathexis
remains in the mnemic system, whereas a hallucination, which is not
distinguishable from a perception, can arise when the cathexis does
not merely spread over from the memory-trace on to the
Pcpt
.
element, but passes over to it
entirely
.

  
¹
‘The Unconscious’.

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3955

   Verbal residues are derived
primarily from auditory perceptions, so that the system
Pcs
.
has, as it were, a special sensory source. The visual components of
word-presentations are secondary, acquired through reading, and may
to begin with be left on one side; so may the motor images of
words, which, except with deaf-mutes, play the part of auxiliary
indications. In essence a word is after all the mnemic residue of a
word that has been heard.

   We must not be led, in the
interests of simplification perhaps, to forget the importance of
optical mnemic residues, when they are of
things
, or to deny
that it is possible for thought-processes to become conscious
through a reversion to visual residues, and that in many people
this seems to be the favoured method. The study of dreams and of
preconscious phantasies as shown in Varendonck’s observations
can give us an idea of the special character of this visual
thinking. We learn that what becomes conscious in it is as a rule
only the concrete subject-matter of the thought, and that the
relations between the various elements of this subject-matter,
which is what specially characterizes thoughts, cannot be given
visual expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very
incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands
nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it
is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and
phylogenetically.

   To return to our argument: if,
therefore, this is the way in which something that is in itself
unconscious becomes preconscious, the question how we make
something that is repressed (pre)conscious would be answered as
follows. It is done by supplying
Pcs
. intermediate links
through the work of analysis. Consciousness remains where it is,
therefore; but, on the other hand, the
Ucs
. does not rise
into the
Cs
.

   Whereas the relation of
external
perceptions to the ego is quite perspicuous, that
of
internal
perceptions to the ego requires special
investigation. It gives rise once more to a doubt whether we are
really right in referring the whole of consciousness to the single
superficial system
Pcpt-Cs
.

The Ego And The Id

3956

   Internal perceptions yield
sensations of processes arising in the most diverse and certainly
also in the deepest strata of the mental apparatus. Very little is
known about these sensations and feelings; those belonging to the
pleasure-unpleasure series may still be regarded as the best
examples of them. They are more primordial, more elementary, than
perceptions arising externally and they can come about even when
consciousness is clouded. I have elsewhere expressed my views about
their greater economic significance and the metapsychological
reasons for this. These sensations are multilocular, like external
perceptions; they may come from different places simultaneously and
may thus have different or even opposite qualities.

   Sensations of a pleasurable
nature have not anything inherently impelling about them, whereas
unpleasurable ones have it in the highest degree. The latter impel
towards change, towards discharge, and that is why we interpret
unpleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of
energic cathexis. Let us call what becomes conscious as pleasure
and unpleasure a quantitative and qualitative
‘something’ in the course of mental events; the
question then is whether this ‘something’ can become
conscious in the place where it is, or whether it must first be
transmitted to the system
Pcpt
.

   Clinical experience decides for
the latter. It shows us that this ‘something’ behaves
like a repressed impulse. It can exert driving force without the
ego noticing the compulsion. Not until there is resistance to the
compulsion, a hold-up in the discharge-reaction, does the
‘something’ at once become conscious as unpleasure. In
the same way that tensions arising from physical needs can remain
unconscious, so also can pain - a thing intermediate between
external and internal perception, which behaves like an internal
perception even when its source is in the external world. It
remains true, therefore, that sensations and feelings, too, only
become conscious through reaching the system
Pcpt
.; if the
way forward is barred, they do not come into being as sensations,
although the ‘something’ that corresponds to them in
the course of excitation is the same as if they did. We then come
to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct manner, of
‘unconscious feelings’, keeping up an analogy with
unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually the
difference is that, whereas with
Ucs ideas
connecting links
must be created before they can be brought into the
Cs
.,
with
feelings
, which are themselves transmitted directly,
this does not occur. In other words: the distinction between
Cs
. and
Pcs
, has no meaning where feelings are
concerned; the
Pcs
. here drops out - and feelings are either
conscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to
word-presentations, their becoming conscious is not due to that
circumstance, but they become so directly.

The Ego And The Id

3957

   The part played by
word-presentations now becomes perfectly clear. By their
interposition internal thought-processes are made into perceptions.
It is like a demonstration of the theorem that all knowledge has
its origin in external perception. When a hypercathexis of the
process of thinking takes place, thoughts are
actually
perceived - as if they came from without and are consequently held
to be true.

   After this clarifying of the
relations between external and internal perception and the
superficial system
Pcpt.-Cs
., we can go on to work out our
idea of the ego. It starts out, as we see, from the system
Pcpt
., which is its nucleus, and begins by embracing the
Pcs
., which is adjacent to the mnemic residues. But, as we
have learnt, the ego is also unconscious.

   Now I think we shall gain a great
deal by following the suggestion of a writer who, from personal
motives, vainly asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours
of pure science. I am speaking of Georg Groddeck, who is never
tired of insisting that what we call our ego behaves essentially
passively in life, and that, as he expresses it, we are
‘lived’ by unknown and uncontrollable forces.¹ We
have all had impressions of the same kind, even though they may not
have overwhelmed us to the exclusion of all others, and we need
feel no hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck’s
discovery in the structure of science. I propose to take it into
account by calling the entity which starts out from the system
Pcpt
. and begins by being
Pcs
. the ‘ego’,
and by following Groddeck in calling the other part of the mind,
into which this entity extends and which behaves as though it were
Ucs
., the ‘id’.²

  
¹
Groddeck (1923)

  
²
Groddeck himself no doubt followed the
example of Nietzsche, who habitually used this grammatical term for
whatever in our nature is impersonal and, so to speak, subject to
natural law.

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3958

   We shall soon see whether we can
derive any advantage from this view for purposes either of
description or of understanding. We shall now look upon an
individual as a psychical id, unknown and unconscious, upon whose
surface rests the ego, developed from its nucleus the
Pcpt
.
system. If we make an effort to represent this pictorially, we may
add that the ego does not completely envelop the id, but only does
so to the extent to which the system
Pcpt
. forms its
surface, more or less as the germinal disc rests upon the ovum. The
ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges
into it.