Sigmund Freud - An Introduction

Walter Hollitscher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415177924
• eBook ISBN: 9781136277139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume XII of eighteen in a series on the Sociology of Behaviour and Psychology. Originally published in 1947 this includes a presentation of Sigmund Freud's Theory, and a discussion of the relationship between psycho-analysis and sociology.

The Unconscious¹

Suppose I experience some perfectly ordinary mental event. For example, I think of my parents’ house or I desire to buy a gramophone or I feel angry at having lost my umbrella. The thought or desire or whatever it may be is present to my consciousness : 1 am aware of it. A moment later it has gone : it is no longer before my consciousness : I am not aware of it any more. Then, after an interval, it may come back again, just as it was before. No fresh perception through the senses has occurred in the meantime to cause its reappearance. We say that it has come back from memory.

This fact is so familiar that it may seem to call for no explanation. Yet a moment’s reflection leaves one asking : what happened in the interval? The account we normally give of this matter is that, somehow or other, the thought or desire or emotion has been in my mind all the time, though it was not present to my consciousness. It was “ latent ”. In what form it continued to exist, we do not commonly attempt to imagine.

Philosophical Objections

The whole supposition of the persistence of mental elements while we are not aware of them has been criticized on philosophical grounds. The objection is made that the latent thought cannot be said to have existed as anything psychical at all. It could only have existed as a physical disposition for the same psychical phenomenon to recur. To this objection we may make at least three replies. First, it implies a theory that runs far beyond the domain of psychology proper. Secondly, by assuming the terms “ conscious ” and “ mental ” to be synonymous, it simply begs the question. And, thirdly, the objectors are quite out of order in denying to psychology the right to account for its most common facts, such as memory, by its own means.

Obviously thé first step to be taken is to clarify our use of the terms “ conscious ” and “ unconscious ”. Freud proposes that to start with we should only call a thought or other mental element “ conscious ” if and when it is present to the consciousness, i.e. if I am aware of it. If it is latent, if it exists in my mind but I am not at the moment aware of it, it should be called “ unconscious

But if I am not aware of it, how can I know it exists ? From the nature of the case, the evidence can only be indirect. I can only infer it from indirect signs, from circumstantial evidence. Memory is the example that lies readiest to hand. You mention the Norman Conquest. The date 1066 comes to my mind. Until you spoke the date was not present to my consciousness : I was not thinking of it, as we say. Yet I had been aware of it at times before, and now I am aware of it again. The testimony of such everyday experiences makes us ready to admit that the date has remained in my mind all the time, “ latent.”

How we Ascribe Mental Life to Other Persons

There is nothing very odd about postulating the existence of mental elements of which we are not directly aware. It is what we always do where other people are concerned. For the fact is that the only states of mind of which I can be directly aware are my own. As far as other people are concerned, I can only attribute to them the possession of states of mind— or indeed of consciousness—by inference and analogy. I see them carrying out actions, I hear them speak, and the only conclusion I can draw to render their behaviour intelligible is that they are made in the same way as I am, that they are conscious and have states of mind.

Because of these facts, the methods of acquiring psychological data have been traditionally given as two : by introspection and by observation.

We all take the identity of other human beings with ourselves for granted. But it is not a direct awareness. It is an inference. The inference is spontaneous and universal. In fact, men have by no means restricted it to human beings. It has often been extended to animals. It has even been extended to plants, inanimate objects, the world at large. Among primitive peoples and small children the gulf between the ego and other objects was, or is, not very great. With the advance of knowledge the gulf has widened and to-day we refuse to attribute consciousness to sticks and stones and even plants ; we are doubtful about attributing it to animals. Only in the case of our fellow men has the assumption of consciousness survived criticism. But—let it be repeated—even in this universally accepted instance, the attribution of consciousness is an inference ; it does not possess the direct certainty that we have of our own consciousness.

What psycho-analysis asks us to do is to apply this same method of inference to ourselves, however little we may be inclined to do so. What does this amount to ? It amounts to looking at our own actions in the same way as we look at those of another person. If the actions of another person seem at first sight difficult to account for, we are not content to write them off as arbitrary, mysterious, and inexplicable. We try to account for them. We try to discover what caused them. We assume, that is to say, that the other person’s mental life forms a system of cause and effect ; that his thoughts, desires, feelings, etc., are conditioned and subject to a certain regularity. We believe that identifiable mechanisms are at work. So we try to fit his, at first sight inexplicable, action into the context of his total mental life and account for it by what we believe we know of the principles which operate in it. We all do this and we are reasonably good at it. But when we turn to ourselves and notice actions or other manifestations which we are unable to link up with the rest of our mental life, we hesitate to follow the same procedure. We find it difficult to acknowledge that our own actions, thoughts, desires, emotions, are conditioned. The idea of tracing their causes is repugnant to us. There is a peculiar obstacle in the way of our applying to ourselves the methods of investigation that we apply to others. And this stands between us and a true knowledge of ourselves.

But supposing I overcome my reluctance and apply the same method of inference to myself, what does it yield ? According to Freud it does not lead at once to the discovery of an unconscious. The conclusion to which it first gives rise is that there is within me a second consciousness existing side by side with the consciousness I know.

This theory immediately evokes several criticisms. In the first place a consciousness of which its possessor knows nothing is a very different matter from the consciousness of another person. I am not directly aware of the other person’s consciousness, but he is. A consciousness of which nobody is conscious seems hardly worth discussing. Certainly those who reject the idea of an unconscious system existing in the mind, will not accept in its place an “unconscious consciousness Secondly, psycho-analysis shows that the latent mental processes which we infer are to a large extent independent of one another and ignorant of one another. So far from forming a second consciousness, they often seem so disconnected that we should be driven to postulate not only a second consciousness, but a third, a fourth, perhaps an infinite series of them—each unknown to us and to the others. This is not in itself impossible, but the idea that “my mind a kingdom is” in such a populous sense seems too far-fetched to be acceptable. Thirdly, and this is die most serious objection, we must give due weight to the fact that psycho-analysis reveals some of our latent processes as possessing peculiarities which strike us as almost incredible because they run so directly counter to all the recognized attributes of consciousness. They are not like a second consciousness at all. They seem alien to what we know of consciousness

Rejection of the Term Subconscious

This last objection alone would justify us in rejecting the theory of a second consciousness. What we are justified in inferring is die existence within us of certain mental operations of which, while they are going on, we are not conscious. These operations are best described as “unconscious”, and the whole system of them as “the unconscious The terms “subconscious” and “subconsciousness” should not be used, because they are incorrect and misleading.

But is all this of any importance ? Is it anything more than a rather pedantic piece of description or classification ? It might be brushed aside on these grounds if we had nothing more to deal with than the well-known facts of memory and of association by means of unconscious links. But more is involved. There are other facts which compel us to distinguish between conscious and unconscious processes and which lend increased significance to the distinction. There is, notably, the peculiar fact of post­hypnotic suggestion, which has been demonstrated time and again by experiment.

Post-hypnotic Suggestion

Let us consider this experiment. The patient is put into a hypnotic state. While he is in this state, the doctor orders him to perform a certain action—not then, but at a certain definite moment after he has been awakened, say, half an hour afterwards. The patient is then roused from his hypnotic state. He is fully conscious and seems perfectly normal. He has no recollection of what took place while he was under hypnosis. Yet, at the appointed time, the impube to perform the prescribed action comes into his mind and he performs it. He performs it consciously, but he does not know why.

There would appear to be only one way of describing what has happened : the order has been present in the patient’s mind all the time, but it has been latent or unconscious until the appointed moment arrived, and then it became conscious. But when it did emerge into consciousness only part of it emerged-— the idea of the action to be performed. Everything else connected with the action—the order, the influence of the doctor, the recollection of the hypnotic state—still remained unconscious.

Dynamic View

An experiment of this kind has something further to teach us. It leads us from a purely descriptive account of such phenomena, to a dynamic view. For what happened at the appointed time ? It was not simply that the idea of the prescribed action emerged as an object of consciousness. It emerged as a dynamic idea, an idea with active force, so that it was not merely contemplated but performed. This is the most striking point about the whole business. The doctor’s order, given while the patient was under hypnosis, was the stimulus to action. Yet only the idea of the action and the urge to perform it emerged into consciousness. The order itself remained unconscious : it was at one and the same time unconscious and active.

Post-hypnotic suggestion is not, of course, a natural, spontaneous occurrence of everyday life. It is artificial, a product of the laboratory. Nevertheless, if we adopt the theory of hysterical phenomena first enunciated by Pierre Janet and afterwards elaborated by Breuer and Freud_t we find ourselves in possession of a wealth of natural facts, which show clearly what is the psychological character of post-hypnotic suggestion.

Unconscious Ideas in Hysteria

The mind of the hysterical patient teams with ideas which are at once active and unconscious. All hysterical symptoms, come from such ideas. The hysterical mind is ruled by them. Suppose, for instance, that a hysterical woman vomits. Her vomiting may spring from the idea of being pregnant—an idea of which she may be quite unaware, although it can easily be detected, in her mind and made conscious to her by psycho-analysis. Or take another case. A hysterical patient may be subject to jerks and sudden movements, constituting what will be called “one of his fits”. In carrying them out he is not aware that they represent anything at all. He may not have any particular feeling about them. But analysis will show that, far from being arbitrary and meaningless, these movements are a sketchy reproduction of some incident in the patient’s life. He has no conscious recollection of the incident while he is re-enacting it, yet there it is, operative and active during the fit.

The Strength of Unconscious Ideas

Analysis shows that in all forms of neurosis the essential fact is this preponderance of active unconscious ideas. A latent or un conscious idea is, therefore, by no means necessarily a weak one. Analysis also shows that the presence of such an idea in the mind can be established by extremely cogent, albeit indirect, evidence.

On the strength of what we have seen so far we can amplify our classification of ideas as “conscious” or “unconscious” by drawing a fundamental distinction between different kinds of unconscious or latent ideas. The theory that once prevailed was that every latent idea was so because it was weak and that as it gathered strength it became conscious. We now have reason to believe that there are some latent ideas which, however strong they have become, do not pierce their way into consciousness. Freud therefore distinguishes between two kinds of latent ideas. Those which as they grow stronger thrust themselves into consciousness, he calls pre-consctous. He reserves the term unconscious for those others which for all their intensity and activity, do not become conscious—the type which he first came to study in cases of neurosis. Thus the term unconscious which we have used up to now in a general descriptive sense as equivalent to “ latent ”, becomes more precise : it comes to designate ideas which have a certain dynamic character that withholds them from consciousness despite their intensity and activity.

The Concept“Preconscious ”

At this point a number of objections will probably be raised.

Instead of assuming the existence of unconscious mental elements, of which we can have no direct knowledge, would it not be better to assume that consciousness can be split up in such a way that certain ideas or other psychical elements form a consciousness apart, detached and estranged from the main body of conscious activity? There are well-known pathological cases, such as that of Dr. Azam or the cases studied by Dr. Morton Prince, which have led serious investigators to conclude that in fact consciousness can be split up.

Rejection of the Term “ Split Consciousness ”

To this Freud answers : unless the word consciousness is to be robbed of all meaning, we must not use it to cover anything of which the owner himself is not aware. To speak of a conscious ness of which the owner is not conscious is to trifle with words. Pathological cases like those cited are better described as a shifting of consciousness, rather than as a splitting of consciousness. For, after all, what happened in these cases was that the consciousness oscillated between two different psychical complexes, so that they were conscious and unconscious by turns. In any case, as was said before, those who refuse to countenance unconscious ideas are not likely to be appeased by the offering of an “ unconscious consciousness

“Gradations of Consciousness”

A second objection may be raised. Many psychologists who acknowledge the facts of psycho-analysis, try to account for them without accepting the theory of the unconscious. Desiring to hnd an explanation solely in terms of consciousness, they seize on the indisputable fact that there are many gradations of consciousness —gradations of intensity or clarity. Some ideas, they point out, are vivid and sharply defined in our consciousness, while others are so faint and blurred that we do not notice them. What psychoanalysts do (they argue) is to give the most dimly conscious ideas the inappropriate name of “unconscious”, whereas these ideas are just as much “in consciousness” as the most vivid ones and can be rendered completely and intensely conscious if sufficient attention is paid to them.

Freud replies : the fact that there are gradations of clarity in consciousness does not prove that there are no unconscious ideas. There are many gradations of light, from dazzling glare to faintest glimmer, but we cannot therefore conclude that there is no such thing as darkness. There are varying degrees of vitality, but we cannot conclude that there is no such thing as death. Furthermore, if “what is unnoticeable” is to be included under the concept of “what is conscious”, we are back at the absurdity already referred to, the absurdity of a “conscious’’ idea of which the possessor is not conscious. And this surely plays havoc with the one and only piece of direct and certain knowledge that we have of the mind. Finally, says Freud, the attempt to equate what psycho-analysis calls “unconscious” with what everyday language calls “unnoticed” ignores the dynamic conditions involved in the phenomena we are seeking to illuminate— conditions which had a decisive influence on the formulation of the psycho-an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Title
• Title
• Copyright
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Preface
• Introduction
• Freud’s Teachings
• Postscript—Concerning some Difficulties
• Freud : List of Translations
• Bibliography on Psycho-Analysis and Sociology
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects