THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS[249]
I.--THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE PERSONAL AND THE IMPERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS
Since the breach with the Viennese school upon the question of the fundamental explanatory principle of analysis--that is, the question if it be sexuality or energy--our concepts have undergone considerable development. After the prejudice concerning the explanatory basis had been removed by the acceptance of a purely abstract view of it, the nature of which was not anticipated, interest was directed to the concept of the unconscious.
According to Freud's theory the contents of the unconscious are limited to infantile wish-tendencies, which are repressed on account of the incompatibility of their character. Repression is a process which begins in early childhood under the moral influence of environment; it continues throughout life. These repressions are done away with by means of analysis, and the repressed wishes are made conscious. That should theoretically empty the unconscious, and, so to say, do away with it; but in reality the production of infantile sexual wish-fantasies continues into old age.
According to this theory, the unconscious contains only those parts of the personality which might just as well be conscious, and have really only been repressed by the processes of civilisation. According to Freud the essential content of the unconscious would therefore be _personal_. But although, from such a view-point the infantile tendencies of the unconscious are the more prominent, it would be a mistake to estimate or define the unconscious from this alone, for it has another side.
Not only must the repressed materials be included in the periphery of the unconscious, but also all the psychic material that does not reach the threshold of consciousness. It is impossible to explain all these materials by the principle of repression, for in that case by the removal of the repression a phenomenal memory would be acquired, one that never forgets anything. As a matter of fact repression exists, but it is a special phenomenon. If a so-called bad memory were only the consequence of repression, then those persons who have an excellent memory should have no repression, that is, be incapable of being neurotic. But experience teaches us that this is not the case. There are, undoubtedly, cases with abnormally bad memories, where it is clear that the main cause must be attributed to repression. But such cases are comparatively rare.
We therefore emphatically say that the unconscious contains all that part of the psyche that is found under the threshold, including subliminal sense-perceptions, in addition to the repressed material. We also know--not only on account of accumulated experience, but also for theoretical reasons--that the unconscious must contain all the material that has _not yet_ reached the level of consciousness. These are the germs of future conscious contents. We have also every reason to suppose that the unconscious is far from being quiescent, in the sense that it is inactive, but that it is probably constantly busied with the formation and re-formation of so-called unconscious phantasies. Only in pathological cases should this activity be thought of as comparatively autonomous, for normally it is co-ordinated with consciousness.
It may be assumed that all these contents are of a personal nature in so far as they are acquisitions of the individual life. As this life is limited, the number of acquisitions of the unconscious must also be limited, wherefore an exhaustion of the contents of the unconscious through analysis might be held to be possible. In other words, by the analysis of the unconscious the inventory of unconscious contents might be completed, possibly in the sense that the unconscious cannot produce anything besides what is already known and accepted in the conscious. Also, as has already been said, we should have to accept the fact that the unconscious activity had thereby been paralysed, and that by the removal of the repression we could stop the conscious contents from descending into the unconscious. Experience teaches us that is only possible to a very limited extent. We urge our patients to retain their hold upon repressed contents that have been brought to consciousness, and to insert them in their scheme of life. But, as we may daily convince ourselves, this procedure seems to make no impression upon the unconscious, inasmuch as it goes on producing apparently the same phantasies, namely, the so-called infantile-sexual ones, which according to the earlier theory were based upon personal repressions. If in such cases analysis be systematically continued, an inventory of incompatible wish-phantasies is gradually revealed, whose combinations amaze us. In addition to all the sexual perversions every conceivable kind of crime is discovered, as well as every conceivable heroic action and great thought, whose existence in the analysed person no one would have suspected.
In order to give an example of this, I would like to refer to Maeder's Schizophrenic patient who called the world his picture-book. He was a locksmith's apprentice who fell ill very early in life; he had never been blessed with intellectual gifts. As regards his idea that the world was his picture-book and that he was turning its pages over when he looked about in the world, it is just Schopenhauer's world, conceived as will and representation, expressed in primitive picture-language. This idea has just as universal a character as Schopenhauer's. The difference consists in the fact that the patient's notion has stood still at an embryonic stage in a process of growth, whereas with Schopenhauer the same idea has been changed from a mere image into an abstraction expressed in terms that are universally valid.
It would be false to assume that the patient's idea had a personal character and value. That would be to attribute to him the dignity of a philosopher. But he alone is a philosopher who raises an image that has naturally sprung up into an abstract idea, thereby translating it into terms of universal validity. Schopenhauer's philosophical conception is his personal value, whereas the notion of the patient has merely an impersonal value of natural growth, in which personal proprietary rights can only be acquired by making an abstraction of the images, and translating them into terms that are universally valid. But it would be wrong if an exaggerated sense of the value of this achievement led us to ascribe to the philosopher the merit of having made or conceived the original image itself. The primordial image has also sprung up naturally in the philosopher, and is nothing but a part of the universal human heritage in which, theoretically at least, every one has a share. The golden apples come from the same tree whether they are gathered by a locksmith's apprentice or a Schopenhauer.
The recognition of such primordial images obliges me to differentiate between the contents of the unconscious; a differentiation of another kind than that between the pre-conscious and unconscious, or between the subconscious and unconscious. The justification for those distinctions cannot be discussed here; they have a value of their own and probably merit to be carried further as affording a point of view. The differentiation which I propose follows obviously from what has previously been said, namely, that in the so-called unconscious we must differentiate a layer which may be termed the _personal unconscious_. The materials contained in this layer are of a personal kind, inasmuch as on the one hand they may be characterised as acquisitions of the individual existence, and on the other as psychological factors which might just as well be conscious. It is, for instance, comprehensible that incompatible psychological elements succumb to repression on the one hand and are therefore unconscious, but on the other hand there exists the possibility of bringing the repressed contents into consciousness and keeping them there, once they are known and recognised. We recognise these materials as personal contents, because we can prove their effects, their partial appearance, or their origin to lie in our personal past. They are integral constituents of the personality, and belong to a complete inventory of the same. They are constituents whose omission in consciousness implies an inferiority in one respect or another, not indeed an inferiority bearing the psychological character of an organic deformity or a natural defect, but rather the character of a neglect which arouses a moral reaction. The feeling of moral inferiority always indicates that in the portion omitted is something that according to the feelings should not be missing; or in other words, could be conscious if we took sufficient trouble about it. The sense of moral inferiority is not the result of a collision with the universal, in a certain sense arbitrary, moral law, but rather the result of a conflict with the personal ego, which by reason of the psychic economy demands an adjustment of the deficiency. Wherever a feeling of inferiority appears, it reveals not only the presence of a demand for the assimilation of an unconscious constituent, but also the possibility of such an assimilation. It is, after all, a person's moral qualities that make him assimilate his unconscious self and retain it in consciousness, whether he be forced to it by a recognition of its necessity, or by a painful neurosis. He who continues to tread this path of the realisation of his unconscious self, necessarily transposes the content of the personal unconscious into consciousness, whereby the periphery of the personality is considerably enlarged.
