Concept
Topographical model
Freud's first picture of the psychical apparatus as a set of systems, the unconscious (Ucs.), the preconscious (Pcs.) and the conscious (Cs.), separated by censorships. It was set out in the seventh chapter of Die Traumdeutung (1900) and in the metapsychological papers of 1915. Each system has its own kind of process and contents, and an idea's place in the apparatus decides whether it can become conscious. From 1923 the structural model of id, ego and super-ego was added to it.
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- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1900 Die Traumdeutung pictures the psychical apparatus as a series of systems, unconscious, preconscious and conscious, through which excitation passes as through a compound instrument; regression in dreams is a backward movement through them. Das Unbewußte (1915) sets the model out in its fullest form, with the systems Ucs., Pcs. and Cs.