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Metapsychology (1915 a, b, c) and The Ego and The Id (1923a). A summary of Freud’s conceptualizations of the unconscious can also be found in: The Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916, 1917), Two Encyclopedia Articles (1923b), New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933) and An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a). Strachey cautions the English reader to observe that an ambiguity resides in the English word ‘unconscious’ which is scarcely present in the German. The German words ‘ bewusst ’ and ‘u nbewusst ’ have the grammatical form of passive participles, and their usual sense is something like ‘consciously known’ and ‘not consciously known’. For Freud, consciousness and unconsciousness were both passive experiences.
II. OVERVIEW OF FREUDIAN CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
II. A. The Discovery of the Dynamic Unconscious (1893-1900) Psychoanalysis was born with Freud’s revolutionary discovery of the dynamic function of defense in the etiology of hysteria. The defense against remembering (repression) clued Freud into the importance of resistance, “ …a psychical force in the patients which was opposed to the pathogenic ideas becoming conscious (being remembered). A new understanding seemed to open before my eyes when it occurred to me that this must no doubt be the same psychical force that had played a part in the generating of the hysterical symptom and had at that time prevented the pathogenic idea from becoming conscious” (Breuer & Freud, 1893- 1895, p 268, original emphasis). This force of resistance, like its opposing counterpoint the upward force of the rejected pathogenic material, was to a certain extent quantifiable with memories “stratified” in proportion to their nearness to the “pathogenic nucleus”. Moreover, it was precisely through its repression that the idea became the cause of morbid symptoms, that is, became pathogenic (ibid, p 285). In order to succeed, repression demands a permanent expenditure of force. Symptoms are the result of the failure of repression, that is to say, the return of the repressed. Simultaneously, the affect that is torn from the repressed idea, is used for a “somatic innervation” (ibid, p 285) appearing as a hysterical conversion into a bodily symptom. The innovative psychoanalytic method of free association developed out of the realization that “ it is quite hopeless to try to penetrate directly to the nucleus of the pathogenic organization ” (ibid, p 292, original emphasis) since the interior layers of the pathogenic organization are increasingly alien to the ego (ibid, p 290). Not all experiences from early childhood undergo repression. The Freudian theory stipulated that the content of the unconscious consists in fixated childhood wishes marked by infantile sexuality. In this early period, as known from his correspondence to Fliess, (Freud, 1892-1899), Freud was developing what has become known as the seduction theory: the child has been seduced by an adult, a relation depositing disturbing traces which later appear in
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