The unconscious
Concept · Sigmund Freud · Psychology, stage 1: Learn the vocabulary
The unconscious, in Freud's sense, is the part of mental life that shapes what a person feels and does while staying out of reach of deliberate recall. Freud did not invent the word, but he built a clinical theory on it: wishes and memories that would be intolerable if admitted are held out of awareness and surface indirectly, in dreams, slips of the tongue, and symptoms. Contemporary psychology accepts that a great deal of processing is not available to introspection, which is well demonstrated, but that is a much weaker claim than Freud's, which was about motivated repression of specific content. The evidence for the specifically Freudian version is thin, and the theory is hard to test because almost any behaviour can be read as confirming it.
Why it matters
It is the single most culturally influential idea psychology has produced, and separating the well-supported part from the untestable part is good practice for reading any theory.
Part of
The unconscious in the glossary
Sources
- Unconscious mind Wikipedia
- Sigmund Freud Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes a direct section on whether psychoanalysis meets the standards of a science.
- The Interpretation of Dreams Classics in the History of Psychology, York University
