FREUD'S UNCONSCIOUS THEORY

Freud's Conception of Unconscious theoRy and the Writing of Fiction

Freud's conception of unconscious theory and the writing of fiction

Introduction

The unconscious, the idea that not all ideas must be conscious to effect mental life, was proposed by Johann Herbart, an influential philosopher of the early 19th century. He also wrote that ideas could vary in intensity and energy, and that those with a certain level of energy could become conscious. His writings had an important influence on Freud's thinking.

Freud thought that the unconscious was not only a large area of stored experience and thought, but also an active mental area. This was shown by the fact that his patients could not explain, consciously, many aspects of their behaviour, except by free association which could eventually get back to the unconscious input. These Freud called the unconscious determinants of human behaviour. When he used the word unconscious he meant it in a dynamic sense: it is entirely unconscious and cannot be accessed directly, but only through interpretation of behaviours which result from unconscious pressures. The unconscious is ideas incapable of entering into the conscious part of the mind, but which nevertheless exert an enormous influence on our actions.

Discussion

The idea that the human psyche includes mental activities that escape conscious awareness has been referred to by philosophers, psychologists, and writers over the last three centuries, but Sigmund Freud is credited with the first systematic theory of the unconscious that claimed scientific validity. Freud suggested that psychic activity is rooted in the flow of instinctual energy that is constantly seeking release (Salberg, 2007). The unconscious consists of instinctual wishes and feelings that have been repressed in order to conform to the demands of civilized life; it may also include the memory of traumatic events that have been repressed, so as to prevent further pain, guilt, or anxiety. This concept of the unconscious is necessary to unravel the meanings of neurosis, verbal slips, and acts of forgetting, dreams, religious ideas and rituals. These phenomena can be seen as disguised expressions of repressed psychic material that has remained active and is looking for release. A major goal of psychoanalysis is to decipher these symbolic disguises of the contents of the unconscious. Relief from neurotic symptoms was possible if repression was overcome, and previously unconscious thoughts and feelings were brought into the full light of consciousness.

Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky emphasized the weakness and superficiality of ordinary rational consciousness. They recognized that the vitalizing power within humans includes warring instincts and emotions that consciousness neither understands nor controls (Thomas, 2007). Yet, the response of many existentialists to Freud's theory of the unconscious has ranged from ambivalence to hostile rejection. While they acknowledge the brilliance of Freud's discovery of human meaning in bizarre symptoms and his appreciation for the influence of thoughts and feelings that are not accessible to ordinary consciousness, they object to the meta-psychological theory he developed to explain such phenomena.

Existentialist objections to the concept of the unconscious are, first, that the theory is deterministic and implies ...