Freud - Complete Works (800 page)

   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 most personal experience what is meant by it.¹
Many people, both inside and outside science, are satisfied with
the assumption that consciousness alone is psychical; in that case
nothing remains for psychology but to discriminate among psychical
phenomena between perceptions, feelings, thought-processes and
volitions. It is generally agreed, however, that these conscious
processes do not form unbroken sequences which are complete in
themselves; there would thus be no alternative left to assuming
that there are physical or somatic processes which are concomitant
with the psychical ones and which we should necessarily have to
recognize as more complete than the psychical sequences, since some
of them would have conscious processes parallel to them but others
would not. If so, it of course becomes plausible to lay the stress
in psychology on these somatic processes, to see in
them
the
true essence of what is psychical and to look for some other
assessment of the conscious processes. The majority of
philosophers, however, as well as many other people, dispute this
and declare that the idea of something psychical being unconscious
is self-contradictory.

  
¹
One extreme line of thought, exemplified in
the American doctrine of behaviourism, thinks it possible to
construct a psychology which disregards this fundamental
fact!

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   But that is precisely what
psycho-analysis is obliged to assert, and this is its second
fundamental hypothesis. It explains the supposedly somatic
concomitant phenomena as being what is truly psychical, and thus in
the first instance disregards the quality of consciousness. It is
not alone in doing this. Some thinkers (such as Theodor Lipps, for
instance) have asserted the same thing in the same words; and the
general dissatisfaction with the usual view of what is psychical
has resulted in an increasingly urgent demand for the inclusion in
psychological thought of a concept of the unconscious, though this
demand has taken such an indefinite and obscure form that it could
have no influence on science.

   Now it would look as though this
dispute between psycho-analysis and philosophy is concerned only
with a trifling matter of definition - the question whether the
name ‘psychical’ should be applied to one or another
sequence of phenomena. In fact, however, this step has become of
the highest significance. Whereas the psychology of consciousness
never went beyond the broken sequences which were obviously
dependent on something else, the other view, which held that the
psychical is unconscious in itself, enabled psychology to take its
place as a natural science like any other. The processes with which
it is concerned are in themselves just as unknowable as those dealt
with by other sciences, by chemistry or physics, for example; but
it is possible to establish the laws which they obey and to follow
their mutual relations and interdependences unbroken over long
stretches - in short, to arrive at what is described as an
‘understanding’ of the field of natural phenomena in
question. This cannot be effected without framing fresh hypotheses
and creating fresh concepts; but these are not to be despised as
evidence of embarrassment on our part but deserve on the contrary
to be appreciated as an enrichment of science. They can lay claim
to the same value as approximations that belongs to the
corresponding intellectual scaffolding found in other natural
sciences, and we look forward to their being modified, corrected
and more precisely determined as further experience is accumulated
and sifted. So too it will be entirely in accordance with our
expectations if the basic concepts and principles of the new
science (instinct, nervous energy, etc.) remain for a considerable
time no less indeterminate than those of the older sciences (force,
mass, attraction, etc.).

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   Every science is based on
observations and experiences arrived at through the medium of our
psychical apparatus. But since
our
science has as its
subject that apparatus itself, the analogy ends here. We make our
observations through the medium of the same perceptual apparatus,
precisely with the help of the breaks in the sequence of
‘psychical’ events: we fill in what is omitted by
making plausible inferences and translating it into conscious
material. In this way we construct, as it were, a sequence of
conscious events complementary to the unconscious psychical
processes. The relative certainty of our psychical science is based
on the binding force of these inferences. Anyone who enters deeply
into our work will find that our technique holds its ground against
any criticism.

   In the course of this work the
distinctions which we describe as psychical qualities force
themselves on our notice. There is no need to characterize what we
call ‘conscious’: it is the same as the consciousness
of philosophers and of everyday opinion. Everything else psychical
is in our view ‘the unconscious’. 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 highly fugitive state. What is
conscious is conscious only for a moment. If our perceptions do not
confirm this, the contradiction is only an apparent one; it is
explained by the fact that the stimuli which lead to perception may
persist for considerable periods, so that meanwhile the perception
of them may be repeated. The whole position is made clear in
connection with the conscious perception of our thought-processes:
these too may persist for some time, but they may just as well pass
in a flash. Everything unconscious that behaves in this way, that
can thus easily exchange the unconscious state for the conscious
one, is therefore preferably described as ‘capable of
becoming conscious’ or as
preconscious
. Experience has
taught us that there is hardly a psychical process, however
complicated it may be, which cannot on occasion remain
preconscious, even though as a rule it will, as we say, push its
way forward into consciousness. There are other psychical processes
and psychical material which have no such easy access to becoming
conscious but must be inferred, recognized and translated into
conscious form in the manner described. For such material we
reserve the name of the unconscious proper.

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   Thus we have attributed three
qualities to psychical processes: they are either conscious,
preconscious or unconscious. The division between the three classes
of material which possess these qualities is neither absolute nor
permanent. What is preconscious becomes conscious, as we have seen,
without any assistance from us; what is unconscious can, through
our efforts, be made conscious, and in the process we may have a
feeling that we are often overcoming very strong resistances. When
we attempt to do this with someone else, we should not forget that
the conscious filling-in of the gaps in his perceptions - the
construction we are presenting him with - does not mean as yet that
we have made the unconscious material in question conscious to him.
All that is true so far is that the material is present in him in
two records, once in the conscious reconstruction he has been
given, and besides this in its original unconscious state. Our
continued efforts usually succeed eventually in making this
unconscious material conscious to him himself, as a result of which
the two records are brought to coincide. The amount of effort we
have to use, by which we estimate the resistance against the
material becoming conscious, varies in magnitude in individual
cases. For instance, what comes about in an analytic treatment as a
result of our efforts can also occur spontaneously: material which
is ordinarily unconscious can transform itself into preconscious
material and then becomes conscious - a thing that happens to a
large extent in psychotic states. From this we infer that the
maintenance of certain internal resistances is a
sine qua
non
of normality. A relaxation of resistances such as this,
with a consequent pushing forward of unconscious material, takes
place regularly in the state of sleep, and thus brings about a
necessary precondition for the construction of dreams. Conversely,
preconscious material can become temporarily inaccessible and cut
off by resistances, as happens when something is temporarily
forgotten or escapes the memory; or a preconscious thought can even
be temporarily put back into the unconscious state, as seems to be
a precondition in the case of jokes. We shall see that a similar
transformation back of preconscious material or processes into the
unconscious state plays a great part in the causation of neurotic
disorders.

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   The theory of the three qualities
of what is psychical, as described in this generalized and
simplified manner, seems likely to be a source of limitless
confusion rather than a help towards clarification. But it should
not be forgotten that in fact it is not a theory at all but a first
stock-taking of the facts of our observations, that it keeps as
close to those facts as possible and does not attempt to explain
them. The complications which it reveals may bring into relief the
peculiar difficulties with which our investigations have to
contend. It may be suspected, however, that we shall come to a
closer understanding of this theory itself if we trace out the
relations between the psychical qualities and the provinces or
agencies of the psychical apparatus which we have postulated -
though these relations too are far from being simple.

   The process of something becoming
conscious is above all linked with the perceptions which our sense
organs receive from the external world. From the topographical
point of view, therefore, it is a phenomenon which takes place in
the outermost cortex of the ego. It is true that we also receive
conscious information from the inside of the body - the feelings,
which actually exercise a more peremptory influence on our mental
life than external perceptions; moreover, in certain circumstances
the sense organs themselves transmit feelings, sensations of pain,
in addition to the perceptions specific to them. Since, however,
these sensations (as we call them in contrast to conscious
perceptions) also emanate from the terminal organs and since we
regard all these as prolongations or offshoots of the cortical
layer, we are still able to maintain the assertion made above. The
only distinction would be that, as regards the terminal organs of
sensation and feeling, the body itself would take the place of the
external world.

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   Conscious processes on the
periphery of the ego and everything else in the ego unconscious -
such would be the simplest state of affairs that we might picture.
And such may in fact be the state that prevails in animals. But in
men there is an added complication through which internal processes
in the ego may also acquire the quality of consciousness. This is
the work of the function of speech, which brings material in the
ego into a firm connection with mnemic residues of visual, but more
particularly of auditory, perceptions. Thenceforward the perceptual
periphery of the cortical layer can be excited to a much greater
extent from inside as well, internal events such as passages of
ideas and thought-processes can become conscious, and a special
device is called for in order to distinguish between the two
possibilities - a device known as
reality-testing
. The
equation ‘perception = reality (external world)’ no
longer holds. Errors, which can now easily arise and do so
regularly in dreams, are called
hallucinations
.

   The inside of the ego, which
comprises above all the thought-processes, has the quality of being
preconscious. This is characteristic of the ego and belongs to it
alone. It would not be correct, however, to think that connection
with the mnemic residues of speech is a necessary precondition of
the preconscious state. On the contrary, that state is independent
of a connection with them, though the presence of that connection
makes it safe to infer the preconscious nature of a process. The
preconscious state, characterized on the one hand by having access
to consciousness and on the other hand by its connection with the
speech-residues, is nevertheless something peculiar, the nature of
which is not exhausted by these two characteristics. The evidence
for this is the fact that large portions of the ego, and
particularly of the super-ego, which cannot be denied the
characteristic of preconsciousness, none the less remain for the
most part unconscious in the phenomenological sense of the word. We
do not know why this must be so. We shall attempt presently to
attack the problem of the true nature of the preconscious.

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   The sole prevailing quality in
the id is that of being unconscious. Id and unconscious are as
intimately linked as ego and preconscious: indeed, in the former
case the connection is even more exclusive. If we look back at the
developmental history of an individual and of his psychical
apparatus, we shall be able to perceive an important distinction in
the id. Originally, to be sure, everything was id; the ego was
developed out of the id by the continual influence of the external
world. In the course of this slow development certain of the
contents of the id were transformed into the preconscious state and
so taken into the ego; others of its contents remained in the id
unchanged, as its scarcely accessible nucleus. During this
development, however, the young and feeble ego put back into the
unconscious state some of the material it had already taken in,
dropped it, and behaved in the same way to some fresh impressions
which it
might
have taken in, so that these, having been
rejected, could leave a trace only in the id. In consideration of
its origin we speak of this latter portion of the id as
the
repressed
. It is of little importance that we are not always
able to draw a sharp line between these two categories of contents
in the id. They coincide approximately with the distinction between
what was innately present originally and what was acquired in the
course of the ego’s development.