In this preliminary chapter there is nothing new to be said and it will
not be possible to avoid repeating what has often been said before.
The division of mental life into what is conscious and what is
unconscious is the fundamental premise on which psycho-analysis is
based; and this division alone makes it possible for it to understand
pathological mental processes, which are as common as they are
important, and to co-ordinate them scientifically. Stated once more in a
different way: psycho-analysis cannot accept the view that consciousness
is the essence of mental life, but is obliged to regard consciousness as
one property of mental life, which may co-exist along with its other
properties or may be absent.
If I were to allow myself to suppose that everyone interested in
psychology would read this book, I should still be prepared to find that
some of them would stop short even at this point and go no further; for
here we have the first shibboleth of psycho-analysis. To most people who
have had a philosophical education the idea of anything mental which is
not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and
refutable simply by logic. I believe this is only because they have
never studied the mental phenomena of hypnosis and dreams, which—quite
apart from pathological manifestations—necessitate this conclusion. Thus
their psychology of consciousness is incapable of solving the problems
of dreams and hypnosis.
The term ‘conscious’ is, to start with, a purely descriptive one,
resting on a perception of the most direct and certain character.
Experience shows, next, that a mental element (for instance, an idea) is
not as a rule permanently conscious. On the contrary, a state of
consciousness is characteristically very transitory; an idea that is
conscious now is no longer so a moment later, although it can become so
again under certain conditions that are easily brought about. What the
idea was in the interval we do not know. We can say that it was _latent_,
and by this we mean that it was _capable of becoming conscious_ at any
time. Or, if we say that it was _unconscious_, we are giving an equally
correct description. Thus ‘unconscious’ in this sense of the word
coincides with ‘latent and capable of becoming conscious’. The
philosophers would no doubt object: ‘No, the term unconscious does not
apply here; so long as the idea was in a state of latency it was not a
mental element at all’. To contradict them at this point would lead to
nothing more profitable than a war of words.
But we have arrived at the term or concept of ‘unconscious’ along
another path, by taking account of certain experiences in which mental
dynamics play a part. We have found, that is, we have been obliged to
assume, that very powerful mental processes or ideas exist—here a
quantitative or _economic_ factor comes into question for the first
time—which can produce in the mind all the effects that ordinary ideas
do (including effects that can in their turn become conscious as ideas)
without themselves becoming conscious. It is unnecessary here to repeat
in detail what has been explained so often before. We need only say that
this is the point at which psycho-analytic theory steps in—with the
assertion that such ideas cannot become conscious because a certain
force is opposed to them, that otherwise they could become conscious,
and that then one would see how little they differ from other elements
which are admittedly mental. The fact that in the technique of
psycho-analysis a means has been found by which the opposing force can
be removed and the ideas in question made conscious renders this theory
irrefutable. The state in which the ideas existed before being made
conscious is called by us _repression_, and we assert that the force which
instituted the repression and maintains it is perceived as _resistance_
during the work of analysis.
We obtain our concept of the unconscious, therefore, from the theory of
repression. The repressed serves us as a prototype of the unconscious.
We see, however, that we have two kinds of unconscious—that which is
latent but capable of becoming conscious, and that which is repressed
and not capable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way. This piece of
insight into mental dynamics cannot fail to affect terminology and
description. That which is latent, and only unconscious in the
descriptive and not in the dynamic sense, we call _preconscious_; the term
unconscious we reserve for the dynamically unconscious repressed, so
that we now have three terms, conscious (Cs), preconscious (Pcs), and
unconscious (Ucs), which are no longer purely descriptive in sense. The
Pcs is presumably a great deal closer to the Cs than is the Ucs, and
since we have called the Ucs mental we shall with even less hesitation
call the latent Pcs mental. But why do we not choose, instead of this,
to remain in agreement with the philosophers and, in a consistent way,
to distinguish the Pcs as well as the Ucs from what is conscious in the
mind? The philosophers would propose that both the Pcs and the Ucs
should be described as two varieties or levels of ‘psychoid’, and
harmony would be established. But endless difficulties in exposition
would follow; and the one important fact, that the two kinds of
‘psychoid’ as thus defined coincide in almost every other respect with
what is admittedly mental, would be forced into the background in the
interests of a prejudice dating from a period in which they, or the most
important part of them, were still unknown.
We can now set to work comfortably with our three terms, Cs, Pcs, and
Ucs, so long as we do not forget that, while in the descriptive sense
there are two kinds of unconscious, in the dynamic sense there is only
one. For purposes of exposition this distinction can in many cases be
ignored, but in others it is of course indispensable. At the same time,
we have become more or less accustomed to these two meanings of the term
unconscious and have managed pretty well with them. As far as I can see,
it is impossible to avoid this ambiguity; the distinction between
conscious and unconscious is in the last resort a question of a
perception which must be either affirmed or denied, and the act of
perception itself tells us nothing of the reason why a thing is or is
not perceived. No one has a right to complain because the actual
phenomenon expresses the underlying dynamic factors ambiguously.[2]
In the further course of psycho-analytic work, however, even these
distinctions have proved to be inadequate and, for practical purposes,
insufficient. This has become clear in more ways than one; but the
decisive instance is as follows. We have formulated the idea that in
every individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes,
which we call his _ego_. This ego includes consciousness and it controls
the approaches to motility, i.e. to the discharge of excitations into
the external world; it is this institution in the mind which regulates
all its own constituent processes, and which goes to sleep at night,
though even then it continues to exercise a censorship upon dreams. From
this ego proceed the repressions, too, by means of which an attempt is
made to cut off certain trends in the mind not merely from consciousness
but also from their other forms of manifestation and activity. In
analysis these trends which have been shut out stand in opposition to
the ego and the analysis is faced with the task of removing the
resistances which the ego displays against concerning itself with the
repressed. Now we find that during analysis, when we put certain tasks
before the patient, he gets into difficulties; his associations fail
when they ought to be getting near to the repressed. We then tell him
that he is dominated by a resistance; but he is quite unaware of the
fact, and, even if he guesses from his feelings of discomfort that a
resistance is now at work in him, he does not know what it is nor how to
describe it. Since, however, there can be no question but that this
resistance emanates from his ego and belongs to it, we find ourselves in
an unforeseen situation. We have come upon something in the ego itself
which is also unconscious, which behaves exactly like the repressed,
that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious
and which requires special work before it can be made conscious. From
the point of view of analytic practice, the consequence of this piece of
observation is that we land in endless confusion and difficulty if we
cling to our former way of expressing ourselves and try, for instance,
to derive neuroses from a conflict between the conscious and the
unconscious. We shall have to substitute for this antithesis another,
taken from our understanding of the structural conditions of the mind,
namely, the antithesis between the organized ego and what is repressed
and dissociated from it.[3]
For our conception of the unconscious, however, the consequences of our
new observation are even more important. Dynamic considerations caused
us to make our first correction; our knowledge of the structure of the
mind leads to the second. We recognize that the Ucs does not coincide
with what is repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is
Ucs, but not that the whole 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 property of being
unconscious begins to lose significance for us. It becomes a quality
which can have many implications, so that we are unable to make it, as
we should have hoped to do, the basis of far-reaching and inevitable
conclusions. Nevertheless, we must beware of ignoring this property, for
in the last resort the quality of being conscious or not is the single
ray of light that penetrates the obscurity of depth-psychology.
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