The Unconscious

Sigmund Freud is definitively the greatest and one of the most famous psychologists of all time. Hundreds of books were written by him just to set up the foundations of dynamic unconscious processes, which he describes in length through his works. He created psychoanalysis and he is known as the discoverer of the unconscious mind. He was not the first to discover the mechanisms of the unconscious, but he surely developed new methods for its verification.

What is the unconscious?

According to Freudian psychoanalysts, the unconscious is the cornerstone of reality, it’s the true psychical reality, the innermost nature that is unknown to us, it is masked by the data of consciousness and the external world. It is The key to know our true behavior, and the real motive. The unconscious cannot be brought to the forefront of consciousness voluntarily, it needs special paths because there are forces(defense mechanisms) that will not allow to reveal the unconscious because it is too painful and thus is rejected.

Freud learned all this through his hundred of patients and clinical observations. The unconscious on Freud is a synonym of those events that we have forgotten, repressed from conscious memory recall, those events, feelings and or thoughts that are inhibited and suppressed. He learned that through hypnosis that some of these repressed thoughts emerged to consciousness. He promptly learned that the past events or experiences are the cause of present conduct and that some traumatic events in our childhood, emerge in present life as different symptoms. He also learned that when patients where under hypnotic-type states they tend to enter in cathartic(liberation) states where they revived forgotten traumatic states that had a corrective emotional experience through involuntary discharge acts such as tears or movement of paralyzed limbs (cure of the symptoms). According to what we explained above, the freedom of the will is a complete illusion, because we are governed by hidden mental process of which we are unaware and over which we have no control(these mental processes are two instincts, eros or erotic pleasure and thanatos or destruction.)

The dreams as a door to the unconscious

Freud quitted hypnosis and realized that the unconscious manifest itself in several ways. One of those paths, that the unconscious uses are dreams. He realized that interpretation of dreams through free association (he asked patients to say the first thing that come to their minds, even dumb or silly images) were a method to set free the traumas that are the essence of the unconscious. This way, dreams are some sort of metaphor, a figurative representation or dramatization of the unconscious.

Freud explains that it is easier to recognize the unconscious in others than in ourselves. because the unconscious is rejected from ourselves, from our memories. It is closely related with shame, moral and repulsiveness working as motors of the unconscious. Freud soon realized that the unconscious manifest itself not only through dreams but also through slips of the tongue or through neurotic symptoms (paralysis, obsessive behaviors, manias or nervous tics). He stated that any symptom has a hidden sense that is necessary to know. Therefore, psychoanalysis became an art on transforming the unconscious into consciousness.

Classification on the mind

He divided personality into three separate aspects, the Id, the Ego and the Superego. A good balanced individual is someone who has a balanced relationship between those three. The Id is related with primitive basic needs and feelings and its governed by pleasure principle( irrational, the Id is all unconscious and is seeking constantly to satisfy our two primitive instincts: pleasure or destruction). He states that sexual energy(libido) and tanatos(anhiliation and destruction of the self, for example through drugs or risky behaviors) are the real motivations of human behavior. He explains that the individuals are driven from birth by the desired to acquire and enhance bodily pleasures. The ego, is governed by reality principle(the need to postpone or inhibit pleasure principle). The ego is related with consciousness processes such as attention, memory, perception or will. Finally the superego are all the moral, values and mandates that were thought to us since childhood as a norm to behave(the way we are supposed to behave, interiorized by most humans). All civilization arises from a compromise between the Id(pleasure and destruction wishes) and repression of the superego, creating a balanced Ego.

The most important mechanism of the unconscious: Repression

Repression is to push away from conscious mind any instinct or pleasure related with erotic drive or with destruction. It is a defense mechanism (the most important) of the ego to avoid internal conflict and pain, because the superego is always striving for moral aims, censuring what the Id wants. This repressed sexual drive cannot be destroyed because it is expressed in the form of energy, thus it is transformed into neurotic symptoms(anxiety, depression, psychosomatic illnesses). Repression is necessary and normal at some degree in any individual, someone who doest have defense mechanisms will behave as a psychopath and will be a harm to society, however there are degrees of repression. Freud defines the human nature as essentially sexual, thus, through child development repression arises and constricts this impulses into constructive ways such as education and work.

Sources
Freud, S. ( 1963). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. In J.Strachey ( Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud ( Vol. 16). London: Hogarth Press. ( Original work published 1916–1917)
Farrell, B.A. The Standing of Psychoanalysis. Oxford University Press, 1981.
Dilman, I. Freud and Human Nature. Blackwell, 1983