Some terms
The Ego and the Id, chapter 1
Some terms:
There’s the unconscious. Freud admits we know very little about the unconscious. But, he says the whole of psychoanalysis is founded upon the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.
Some of the unconscious is actively repressed.
There is the Ego, which is the conscious part of the psyche (or, that to which consciousness is attached).
But then, some of what is unconscious has the potential to become conscious, which he calls latent. And this recognition leads to a psychical mediator, which he calls preconscious.
Finally, the phenomenon of repression indicates a part of the ego which is unconscious, which Freud calls the Id.
So this is what we’re working with so far:
Unconscious — Unconscious Repressed — Preconscious — Id — Ego
My early thoughts:
It seems really helpful to have a pictorial, even anatomical-ish way to imagine the interior life, even if there’s no real way to verify these terms on Freud’s own grounds. For any self-understanding to happen, I need a way to name things happening inside of me, and this is at least an interesting way to do that.
Also, his discussion of latency and the possibility of bringing what is unconscious to consciousness reminds me of Augustine’s thing about memory, and where a memory goes when we do not actively hold it, and what it says about the human spirit (the depth of it), and how these things are brought up, seemingly without our control. While Augustine says that it must be God who thrusts our memories upon us (the whole conceit of Confessions being that God is bringing him through the ringer of his memory in order to bring him to contrition and praise), Freud determines that it is the analyst whose task it is to render conscious what has been repressed. O, divine counselor, doctor Freud (and all his children), bring us to thy couch and heal us.
