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I
Consciousness a
nd What Is Unconsc
iou

But we have arrived at the term or concept of the unconscious along another path, by considering certain experiences in which mental dynamics play a part. We h
ave found-that is, we have been obliged to assume-that v
er

powerful mental processes or ideas exist (and here a quantitative or economic factor comes into question for the fi
rst time) which can produce all the effects in mental life t
hat ordinary ideas do (including effects that can in their turn
become conscious as ideas}, though they themselves do n
ot become conscious. It is unnecessary to repeat in detail h
ere what has been explained so often before. 2 It is enough to s
ay that at this point psycho-analytic theory steps in and a
sserts that the reason why such ideas cannot become conscious i
s that a certain force opposes them, that otherwise they cou
ld become conscious, and that it would then be apparent h
ow little they differ from other elements which are admitte
dly psychical. The fact that in the technique of psycho-a
nalysis 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 e
xisted before being made conscious is called by us repression, a
nd we assert that the force which instituted the repression a
nd maintains it is perceived as resistance during the work o
f a

Thus we obtain our concept of the unconscious from t
he theory of repression. The repressed is the prototype of t
he unconscious for us. We see, however, that we have two k
inds of unconscious-the one which is latent but capable of
becoming conscious, and the one which is repressed and
which is not, in itself and without more ado, capable o
f becoming conscious. This piece of insight into p
sychical dynamics cannot fail to affect terminology and d
escription. The latent, which is unconscious only descriptively, not in
the dynamic sense, we call preconscious; we restrict the t
er

unconscious to the dynamically unconscious repressed; s
o that now we have three terms, conscious ( Cs. ), preconsci
ous (Pes. ) , and unconscious ( Ucs. ) , whose sense is no l
onger purely descriptive. The Pes. is presumably a great deal c
loser to the Cs. than is the Ucs., and since we have called t
he Ucs. psychical we shall with even less hesitation call t
he latent Pes. psychical. But why do we not rather, instead o
f this, remain in agreement with the philosophers and, in a
consistent way, distinguish the Pes. as well as the Ucs. f
rom the conscious psychical? The philosophers would then propose that the Pes. and the Ucs. should be described as t
wo species or stages of the ‘psychoid’, and harmony would b
e established. But endless difficulties in exposition would follow; and the one important fact, that these two kinds o
f ‘psychoid’ coincide in almost every other respect with w
hat is admittedly psychical, would be forced into the background in the interests of a prejudice dating from a period
in which these psychoids, or the most important part o
f them, were still u

I
I The Ego and the I

Now all our knowledge is invariably bound up with consciousness. We can come to know even the Ucs. only b
y making it conscious. But stop, how is that possible? W
hat does it mean when we say ‘making something consci
ous’? How can that come a

We already know the point from which we have to s
tart in this connection. We have said that consciousness is t
he surface of the mental apparatus; that is, we have ascribed i
t as a function to a system which is spatially the first o
ne reached from the external world-and spatially not only i
n the functional sense but, on this occasion, also in the s
ense of anatomical dissection. I Our investigations too must t
ake this perceiving surface as a s

All perceptions which are received from without (sense

perceptions) and from within-what we call sensations a
nd feelings-are Cs. from the start. But what about those internal processes which we may-roughly and inexactly-su
m up under the name of thought-processes? They r
epresent displacements of mental energy which are effected somewhere in the interior of the apparatus as this energy p
roceeds on its way towards action. Do they advance to the s
urface, which causes consciousness to be generated? Or does consciousness make its way to them? This is clearly one of t
he difficulties that arise when one begins to take the spatial o
r ‘topographical’ idea of mental life seriously. Both these possibilities are equally unimaginable; there must be a t
hird alternative. 2

I have already, in another place,3 suggested that the r
eal difference between a Ues. and a Pes. idea (thought) c
onsists in this: that the former is carried out on some material w
hich remains unknown, whereas the latter (the P es.) is in addition brought into connection with word-presentations. T
his is the first attempt to indicate distinguishing marks f
or the two systems, the Pes. and the Ues., other than their relation to consciousness. The question, ‘How does a thing become conscious?’ would thus be more advantageously s
tated: ‘How does a thing become preconscious?’ And the a
nswer would be: ‘Through becoming connected with the wordpresentations corresponding to i

These word-presentations are residues of memories; t
hey were at one time perceptions, and like all mnemic r
esidues they can become conscious again. Before we concern ourselves further with their nature, it dawns upon us like a n
ew discovery that only something which has once been a C

perception can become conscious, and that anything a
rising from within (apart from feelings) that seeks to become conscious must try to transform itself into external per
ceptions: this becomes possible by means of mem
ory-

We think of the rn’ilemlc
’
residues ·as bet�� contained i
n - ,f’ :..- , . c.. ; … - <
-systems which are directly adjacent to the system Pcpt-Cs
., so that the cathexes of those residues can readily e
xtend from within on to the elements of the latter system. 4 W
e immediately think here of hallucinations, and of the f
act that the most vivid memory is always distinguishable b
oth from a hallucination and from an external perception;5 b
ut it will also occur to us at once that when a memory is r
evived the cathexis remains in the mnemic system, whereas a hallucination, which is not distinguishable from a perception, can
arise when the cathexis does not merely spread over from t
he memory-trace on to the Pcpt. element, but passes over to i
t entirely.

Verbal residues are derived primarily from auditory perceptions,6 so that the system Pes. has, as it were, a s
pecial sensory source. The visual components of word-presentations are secondary, acquired through reading, and may t
o begin with be left on one side; so may the motor images of
words, which, except with deaf-mutes, play the part of auxiliary indications. In essence a word is after all the m
nemic residue of a word that has been h

We must not be led, in the interests of simplific
ation perhaps, to forget the importance of optical mnemic re

dues, when they are of things, or to deny that it is p
ossible for thought-processes to become conscious through a reversion to visual residues, and that in many people this s
eems to be the favoured method. The study of dreams and o
f preconscious phantasies as shown in Varendonck’s observations’ can give us an idea of the special character of t
his visual thinking. We ]earn that what becomes conscious i
n it is as a rule only the concrete subject-matter of t
he thought, and that the re1ations between the various dements of this subject-matter, which is what specia11y characterizes thoughts, cannot be given visual expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of
becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer t
o unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it i
s unquestionably older than the latter both o
ntogenetica11y and phy1ogenetica11

To return to our argument: if, therefore, this is the w
ay in which something that is in itse1f unconscious b
ecomes preconscious, the question how we make something that is
repressed (pre)conscious would be answered as fo11ows. It is
done by supplying Pes. intermediate Jinks through the w
ork of analysis. Consciousness remains where it is, t
herefore; but, on the other hand, the Ucs. does not rise into the C

Whereas the relation of external perceptions to the ego
is quite perspicuous, that of internal perceptions to the e
go requires special investigation. It gives rise once more to a
doubt whether we are rea11y right in referring the whole of
consciousness to the single superficial system Pcpt. -

Internal perceptions yield sensations of processes a
rising in the most diverse and certainly also in the deepest s
trata of the mental apparatus. Very little is known about t
hes

sensations and feelings; those belonging to the pleasureunpleasure series may still be regarded as the best exampl
es of them. They are more primordial, more elementary, t
han perceptions arising externally and they can come about e
ven when consciousness is clouded. I have elsewhere8 expr
essed my views about their greater economic significance and t
he metapsychological reasons for this. These sensations a
re multilocular, like external perceptions; they may come f
rom different places simultaneously and may thus have d
ifferent or even opposite q
ualitie

Sensations of a pleasurable nature have not anything inherently impelling about them, whereas unpleasurable o
nes have it in the highest degree. The latter impel towards
change, towards discharge, and that is why we i
nterpret unpleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of energic cathexis.9 Let us call what becomes c
onscious as pleasure and unpleasure a quantitative and q
ualitative ‘something’ in the course of mental events; the q
uestion then is whether this ‘something’ can become conscious i
n the place where it is, or whether it must first be t
ransmitted to the system P

Clinical experience decides for the latter. It shows us t
hat this ‘something’ behaves like a repressed impulse. It c
an exert driving force without the ego noticing the compulsion.
Not until there is resistance to the compulsion, a hold-up i
n the discharge-reaction, does the ‘something’ at once b
ecome conscious as unpleasure. In the same way that tensions arising from physical needs can remain unconscious, so also c
an pain-a thing intermediate between external and inte
rnal perception, which behaves like an internal perception e
ve

when its source is in the external world. It remains t
rue, therefore, that sensations and feelings, too, only b
ecome conscious through reaching the system Pcpt ; if the way
forward is barred, they do not come into being as s
ensations, although the ‘something’ that corresponds to them in t
he course of excitation is the same as if they did. We then co
me to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct m
anner, of ‘unconscious feelings’, keeping up an analogy with unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually t
he difference is that, whereas with Ucs. ideas connecting l
inks must be created before they can be brought into the Cs.
, with feelings, which are themselves transmitted dire
ctly, this does not occur. In other words: the distinction b
etween Cs. and Pes. has no meaning where feelings are co
ncerned; the Pes. here drops out-and feelings are either c
onscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to wordpresentations, their becoming conscious is not due to t
hat circumstance, but they become so dire ctly.lO

The part played by word-presentations now becomes perfectly clear. By their interposition internal thought-processes are made into perceptions. It is like a d
emonstration of the theorem that all knowledge has its origin in e
xternal perception. When a hypercathexis of the process of t
hinking takes place, thoughts are actually perceived-as if they c
ame from without-and are consequently held to be t
ru

After this clarifying of the relations between external and
internal perception and the superficial system P cpt-Cs., w
e can go on to work out our idea of the ego. It starts out, a
s we see, from the system Pcpt, which is its nucleus, a
nd begins by embracing the Pes., which is adjacent to t
he mnemic residues. But, as we have learnt, the ego is a
lso UnconSCIOUS.

Now I think we shall gain a great deal by following the
suggestion of a writer who, from personal motives, vainly
asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours of p
ure science. I am speaking of Georg Groddeck, who is n
ever tired of insisting that what we call our ego behaves essentially passively in life, and that, as he expresses it, we a
re ‘lived’ by unknown and uncontrollable forces. II We have a
ll had impressions of the same kind, even though they may n
ot have overwhelmed us to the exclusion of all others, and w
e need feel no hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck’s
discovery in the structure of science. I propose to take it i
nto account by calling the entity which starts out &om t
he system Pcpt and begins by being Pes. the ‘ego’, and b
y following Groddeck in calling the other part of the m
ind, into which this entity extends and which behaves as t
hough it were Ucs., the ‘id’ .l 2

We shall soon see whether we can derive any advanta
ge from this view for purposes either of description or of understanding. We shall now look upon an individual as a psychical id, unknown and unconscious, upon whose surface r
ests the ego, developed from its nucleus the Pcpt system. If we
make an effort to represent this pictorially, we may add t
hat the ego does not completely envelop the id, but only d
oes so to the extent to which the system Pcpt. forms its [
the ego’s] surface, more or less as the germinal disc rests upon
the ovum. The ego is not sharply separated &om the id; i
ts lower portion merges into i

But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is m
erely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from t
h

ego by the resistances of repression; it can communica
te with the ego through the id. We at once realize that a
lmost all the lines of demarcation we have drawn at the i
nstigation of pathology relate only to the superficial strata of the mental apparatus-the only ones known to us. The state o
f things which we have been describing can be r
epresented diagrammatically (Fig. 1 );13 though it must be r
emarked that the form chosen has no pretensions to any s
pecial applicability, but is merely intended to serve for purposes of
expos

We might add, perhaps, that the ego wears a ‘cap o
f hearing’14—on one side only, as we learn from c
erebral anatomy. It might be said to wear it a
wr

It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id w
hich has been modified by the direct influence of the e
xterna

world through the medium of the Pcpt. - Cs.; in a sense it i
s an extension of the surface-differentiation. Moreover, t
he ego seeks to bring the inAuence of the external world to b
ear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to s
ubstitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns
unrestrictedly in the id. For the ego, perception plays the
part which in the id falls to instinct. The ego r
epresents what may be called reason and common sense, in c
ontrast to the id, which contains the passions. All this falls into l
ine with popular distinctions which we are all familiar with; at
the same time, however, it is only to be regarded as h
olding good on the average or ‘ideally’

The functional importance of the ego is manifested in t
he fact that normally control over the approaches to motility
devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a m
an on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior s
trength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to d
o so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed f
orces. The analogy may be carried a little further. Often a r
ider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to g
uide it where it wants to go; 15 so in the same way the ego is i
n the habit of transforming the id’s will into action as if it w
ere its own

Another factor, besides the inAuence of the system Pcpt.,
seems to have played a part in bringing about the f
ormation of the ego and its differentiation from the id. A person’s o
wn body, and above all its surface, is a place from which both
external and internal perceptions may spring. It is seen l
ike any other object, but to the touch it yields two kinds o
f sensations, one of which may be equivalent to an inte
rnal perception. Psycho-physiology has fully discussed the man

ner in which a person’s own body attains its special p
osition among other objects in the world of perception. Pain, t
oo, seems to play a part in the process, and the way in w
hich we gain new knowledge of our organs during painful i
llnesses is perhaps a model of the way by which in general we a
rrive at the idea of our b
od

The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not m
erely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface.l6 I
f we wish to find an anatomical analogy for it we can b
est identify it with the ‘cortical homunculus’ of the a
natomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its hee
ls, faces backwards and, as we know, has its speech-area on t
he left-hand s

The relation of the ego to consciousness has been e
ntered into repeatedly; yet there are some important facts in t
his connection which remain to be described here. A
ccustomed as we are to taking our social or ethical scale of values a
long with us wherever we go, we feel no surprise at hearing t
hat the scene of the activities of the lower passions is in t
he unconscious; we expect, moreover, that the higher any mental function ranks in our scale of values the more easily it w
ill find access to consciousness assured to it. Here, h
owever, psycho-analytic experience disappoints us. On the one h
and, we have evidence that even subtle and difficult int
ellectual operations which ordinarily require strenuous reRection can
equally be carried out preconsciously and without c
oming into consciousness. Instances of this are quite i
ncontestabl

they may occur, for example, during the state of sleep, as is
shown when someone finds, immediately after waking, t
hat he knows the solution to a difficult mathematical or o
ther problem with which he had been wrestling in vain the day
b efore.17

There is another phenomenon, however, which is f
ar stranger. In our analyses we discover that there are p
eople in whom the faculties of self-criticism and consciencemental activities, that is, that rank as extremely high onesare unconscious and unconsciously produce effects of the
greatest importance; the example of resistance r
emaining unconscious during analysis is therefore by no means u
nique. But this new discovery, which compels us, in spite of o
ur better critical judgment, to speak of an ‘unconscious s
ense of guilt’ ,Is bewilders us far more than the other and sets us
fresh problems, especially when we gradually come to s
ee that in a great number of neuroses an unconscious sense o
f guilt of this kind plays a decisive economic part and puts t
he most powerful obstacles in the way of recovery .I9 If we
come back once more to our scale of values, we shaH h
ave to say that not only what is lowest but also what is hig
hest in the ego can be unconscious. It is as if we were t
hus supplied with a proof of what we have just asserted of t
he conscious ego: that it is first and foremost a b
o

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