Article
The Unconscious
Das Unbewußte
The longest of Freud's metapsychological papers of 1915, first printed in two parts in the Internationale Zeitschrift für ärztliche Psychoanalyse. Freud argues that unconscious mental processes have to be assumed, and separates three senses of the word unconscious: descriptive, dynamic and systematic, the last referring to the systems unconscious, preconscious and conscious and the censorships between them. He asks whether feelings can be unconscious, and describes the topography and dynamics of repression in terms of the withdrawal of cathexes and of anticathexis. The system unconscious knows no negation or doubt, is governed by the primary process with its mobile cathexes, is timeless, and replaces external reality with psychical reality. A final section draws on the speech of schizophrenics to distinguish thing-presentations from word-presentations: a conscious presentation includes both, an unconscious one only the thing-presentation.
Main ideas
- Unconscious mental processes have to be assumed.
- The term unconscious has descriptive, dynamic and systematic senses.
- Repression is described topographically and dynamically, through withdrawal of cathexis and anticathexis.
- The system unconscious has no negation or doubt, follows the primary process, is timeless and substitutes psychical for external reality.
- Conscious presentations combine thing- and word-presentations; unconscious ones are thing-presentations alone.
What it shows
- 1900
Sigmund Freud introduced Topographical model
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.
- 1915
Sigmund Freud developed Repression
In the metapsychological paper Die Verdrängung Freud defines the essence of repression as turning something away from consciousness and keeping it at a distance, distinguishes primal repression from repression proper (after-pressure), and follows the separate fates of the idea and of the quota of affect.
- 1915
Sigmund Freud developed Unconscious
Das Unbewußte justifies the assumption of unconscious mental processes and sets out the special characteristics of the system Ucs.: freedom from contradiction, the primary process with its mobile cathexes, timelessness, and the replacement of external by psychical reality.
- 1900
Secondary process opposes Primary process
The two processes are defined against each other: in the primary process energy is free and seeks immediate discharge by the shortest path, by way of condensation and displacement; in the secondary process it is bound, discharge is postponed, and thinking can test the paths to satisfaction against reality.