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After pointing out the different modes of functioning of the conscious and unconscious systems, Freud further discusses the processes of becoming conscious and those of becoming unconscious . He offered two alternative hypotheses: 1) the thesis of an inscription in two places, and 2) the thesis of a functional change. When a psychical idea is transposed from the unconscious to the conscious does that mean, he asks, that we have a “fresh record – as it were, a second registration – of the idea in question … and alongside of which the original unconscious registration continues to exist. Or are we rather to believe that the transposition consists in a change in the state of the idea, a change involving the same material and occurring in the same locality?” (Freud, 1915c, p. 174). The first hypothesis is the topographical one and thus connected to the topographical separation of the conscious and unconscious systems. It suggests that an idea can exist simultaneously in two localities in the psychic apparatus and unless resisted by censorship can move from one system to the other. The hypothesis rests on the assumption that interpretation will create a connection between the two inscriptions localized in the unconscious and preconscious systems respectively. Experience shows, however, that this is not always the case. The character of the unconscious is quite different from what we communicate in words or, as Freud had written, the information given to the patient about his repressed memory does not necessarily put him in touch with the unconscious memory trace: “To have heard something and to have experienced something are in their psychological nature two quite different things, even though the content of both is the same” (ibid, p 176). Closer examination of the mechanism of repression, understood as withdrawal of investment (cathexis), favors the second hypothesis. Freud then addresses a question in which system the withdrawal occurs and to which system the withdrawn energy belongs. Proceeding from his experience that a repressed idea keeps its investment, he concludes that only the preconscious investment can be withdrawn from the idea. Restated differently, repression is a process belonging to the preconscious. It then follows that what happens during repression is a withdrawal of mental energy (cathexis) from the preconscious idea, while preserving the unconscious investment. This is consistent with the second hypothesis, namely that in this case, the transition between the unconscious system and the preconscious/conscious system does not consist of a new registration but of a change in its state, i.e. a change in the quality of mental energy devoted to it. Both hypotheses serve to draw attention to the co-existence of two contradictory processes demanding two different explanations. The hypothesis of registration in two locations may be suitable for illustration of the process of becoming conscious, while the hypothesis of functional change is appropriate when describing the process of repression pointing to an asymmetry between becoming conscious on the one hand and repression on the other. The third important hypothesis emerges, as Freud investigates the representational world of the unconscious realm, distinguishing between thing- and word-presentations. The proposal of differentiating between word- and thing-presentations was the result of observations, which went beyond the dreams and the neuroses. “It is only the analysis of one of the affections which we call narcissistic psychoneuroses that promises to further us with conceptions through which the enigmatic Ucs will be brought more within our reach and, as it were, made more tangible” (Freud, 1915, p. 196). In schizophrenic speech, words can be
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