Conscious and unconscious

The argument

What is known of Freud's theories is inseparable from the method he built to investigate them, and the conscious-unconscious distinction is where the theory and the method meet. The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness. The techniques followed from that goal. Freud believed this could be done by encouraging people to talk in free association — saying whatever came to mind without editing it — and to talk about their dreams. Both methods work by loosening deliberate control over what is said, on the assumption that material kept out of awareness will surface when it is not being actively held down. The analyst's posture was part of the technique rather than a matter of manner. The relative lack of the therapist's direct involvement is meant to encourage the patient to project thoughts and feelings onto the analyst. Because the analyst offers little to react to, what the patient supplies comes from the patient. Through the process of transference, the patient can then reenact and resolve repressed conflicts, particularly childhood conflicts with or about parents — the conflict being replayed in the consulting room where it can be addressed, rather than merely described. Behind the method lies the claim that gives it its point. Freud held that the mind is responsible for both conscious and unconscious decisions, made on the basis of psychic drives. Decisions a person cannot account for are not therefore random or meaningless; they have causes, and the causes are simply not available to introspection. It is this last claim that has proved the most durable part of the work. It has often been claimed that the most significant contribution Freud made to Western thought was his argument for the existence of an unconscious mind — an idea that outlived much of the clinical apparatus built around it. Understanding Freud means understanding that division, and interpretation of it has changed over time.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics note the argument mostly restates Freud's own model as though it were settled knowledge, when much of it is exactly what later psychology disputes. Free association, dream interpretation and transference rest on concepts — repression, psychic drives, resolving childhood conflicts — that are difficult to test and have limited empirical support, and mainstream clinical psychology has largely moved to evidence-based approaches. The specific mechanisms described are not so much a stable interpretation that 'developed over time' as claims many now regard as unproven. They add that even the celebrated idea of the unconscious has been transformed rather than inherited. Cognitive science does recognise unconscious processing, but its account bears little resemblance to Freud's dynamic unconscious of repressed drives. So to say 'what we know centres on the conscious and unconscious' blurs a Freudian construct with a very different modern one, and understates how much of the original framework has been rejected rather than merely reinterpreted.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics note free association and dream analysis rest on concepts like repression whose efficacy and even existence are contested, so describing them as 'what we know' overstates their standing. [Rejecting P3] Modern cognitive science's unconscious differs fundamentally from Freud's dynamic unconscious of repressed drives, so crediting the conscious/unconscious distinction to Freud conflates two different ideas and treats a disputed construct as established.

Further reading

Encyclopeadia of Gender and Society, Volume 1 Jodi O'Brien SAGE, 2009